Bits and pieces

It's hard to believe that November is halfway gone. Lily's six month birthday celebration was over two weeks ago, and we're still celebrating in our hearts around here. She goes to the doctor today, but she was weighed on Friday, and she's almost 10 pounds. My heart leaps for joy when I think about it. I never imagined having her with us for six months, let alone having her weight escalate into the double digits. It's so exciting!
Staying at home with her and Gabriel has been wonderful! I wish I could say that it's been easy. Lily is still not taking a bottle and still not letting me get the rest I so desperately need, but I am happy to report that last night she ate around 8:30 and didn't wake up until around 2. I'm still not smart enough to go to bed when she does, though. Instead, I stayed awake until around 11:30 to help Autumn with scholarship paperwork. As our little sleep sprites would have it, I woke up around 12:30 to Gabriel crying because the smoke detector in his room was making the dead battery noise. I probably got back into bed around 1. Lily woke up at 2 and didn't go back to sleep until after 4. I finally swaddled her and put her in her crib and just said "You're on your own," and crawled back into bed and listened to her root around for who knows how long. This is the third night within the past week where we've had to deal with Lily not wanting to sleep at that 2/3 o'clock feeding. I'm definitely trying to keep her awake today!
Yesterday was an adventure. Gabriel can now show his battle wounds. He fell out of a wheelbarrow at my mom's house and hit his head. He now has six stitches right above his hair line. He's such a brute! He cried when it happened but was such the trooper in the emergency room, saying "ouch" and "that hurt" only twice. No more tears. He woke up this morning, raring to go!
More about the birthday celebration. . .we had about 20 guests drop by throughout the day. It was a fun time, and I'm so thrilled that there are so many people out there celebrating with us. Thank you for coming or for stopping and saying a prayer for our family. And thank you to the person who left the surprise for us in the closet. Autumn found it the next morning. As you probably already know, you didn't have to do that, but Dave and I appreciate your generosity.
Thanksgiving is almost here, and there is so much to be thankful for. We don't have much materialistically, and my staying home will mean even less, but gosh, in other ways, we have so much more than that. Crazy as it may sound, it's all I need.

Lily on the day of her six month celebration

Sweet

Hydrochloric Acid

Thanks to Connie, Mallorie's mommy, we discovered that sure enough, Lily does have reflux. The doctor prescribed Zantac, and Lily got better. A little. It seems to work very well for her during the day, but come night, and she's struggling a little. I can hear it as she lies in her crib--something comes up, and she swallows it down. Her discomfort unsettled me, so I called the doctor and told him that something wasn't right. Others had suggested Prevacid, and said it worked wonders, so I hoped that maybe a prescription change would make things better. Instead, the doctor upped her dosage a tenth of a milliliter. I can't say I saw a huge difference, but I figured it would take a little time.
Apparently, this stomach acid is some pretty heavy duty stuff. The other morning, I forgot to give Lily her Zantac. When Kristen, the speech therapist, was here, Lily threw up a dab. It got on her lavender pair of pants, and I'm not kidding you, changed the color of the pants in the area where it landed from lavender to pink. I thought that maybe it was just discoloration because it was a liquid, but some breast milk got on her and didn't have that effect. The poor little girl. I can only imagine the pain she's been going through. Luckily, she had an appointment to get an RSV vaccination, so I brought up the issue of the reflux and told the doctor what had happened with the spit up. This time, the doctor prescribed Prevacid to go along with the Zantac. We'll begin that today. I'm hoping that we'll have 100% relief. I hate to think of Lily in that much pain.
But speaking of her doctor's appointment, Lily is a whopping 9 pounds, something ounces (6, 7, 8, or 9--I can't remember). She's growing so big and getting to be so playful. She'll almost laugh when we tickle her, and today she began following the fish that spin above her in her swing. I don't look at Lily's developments as I did with Rani, Autumn, and Gabriel. With them, there was this expectation that they would smile or laugh or sit up or walk by a certain age. I know with Lily's condition comes developmental delays. That's reality. But in my heart, I believe, given her own sweet time, she will do these things. She may not do them when "healthy" babies do. That's ok. That also makes it that much sweeter when she does accomplish something. Seeing her follow those fish today warmed my heart. She accomplished something today.

If you look closely in the middle of the pants, you can see what the spit up did. I took this picture about 10 hours after the fact, so it had dried.

Lily's so happy because she loves that her mommy is now staying at home with her.

Lily looks so chunky in this picture. Look at those arms!

I love her quirky little smile in this picture.

Invitation

Lily Grace Is 6 Months!

Come drop in

Saturday, October 31, 2009,

from 12 - 3

for cake and ice cream

and to help us celebrate

Lily's first six months!

Email for directions.

May your presence be our presents!

If you can't make it, would you instead please offer up a quick "thank you" to God for our little miracle some time during our drop in time?

More decisions

I am about to make the hardest decision of my life. Anna, our babysitter, gave us her two-week notice on Wednesday. She has found a job where she will work in the career she went to school for. Although we are happy for her, we are sad to be losing her. She's taken great care of our little ones. For us, she's dealt with pinkeye, fevers, breathing treatments, crying, more crying, and even more crying. I know there are people out there who will do just as good of a job as Anna has done, but the emotional turmoil finding another babysitter will put me through is not something I look forward to. Unfortunately, I have trust issues.
Dave and I have been thinking that maybe I should just stay home with the kids. It's too much stress dealing with feeding Lily every three or so hours. The other night, she was crying, and I was just so exhausted that I couldn't even tend to her. She had already eaten, but I know she was still wanting to eat, but I just didn't have it in me to give her that comfort. I'm so fortunate that even though Dave works, he's still willing to get up with her when she cries, which he did when I was unable. If only she would take a bottle!
There is a fear there, actually. I'm so afraid that I'm pushing myself too hard. That there's only so much I can take until I shut down. I don't want to get to that point. That pushes me to stay home.
I know staying at home will have it's own stresses. Financially, I'm worried. We've gone through our budget, and well, we're just going to have to cut back. We have student loans we can "turn off" if we need to, but we've been working so hard to be debt free (check out this website if you have the same desire http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/managing-debt/debt-pay-down-calculator.aspx). As worried as I am, I like the challenge. We're just going to have to be a little more creative. And, please, if you have any creative suggestions--cheap meals, cheap dates, cheap ANYTHING--please share!
Luckily, we have no problems communicating, and we both know the challenges we're up against. I'm hoping that awareness will keep a lot of the stress off of us.
I haven't take the leap yet, but I think it's the right thing to do. And as I've come to find out, the right decision isn't always the easiest.

I love the weekends!

During the week, life is not easy. A typical day at work for the past three weeks involved waking up at 6am, getting ready in barely enough time before feeding Lily, going to work where I'm doing the work of three people (and slowly becoming more cynical towards the education system). I come home, exhausted, wanting to take a nap so badly, but I can't sleep with Gabriel running around the house. Besides, it's then time for Lily to eat and to have fun with her smiley self after feeding her. A little cooking, straightening up, and other household duties call, and by the time Gabriel is in bed, I'm ready to hit the sack, but my stubborn self doesn't usually go to sleep then. Instead, I'm trying to get a little quiet time. But something happens at night where cute little Lily just doesn't want to be so cute anymore. The scenario usually involves an hour and a half to two of crying before she'll finally go to sleep with either Dave taking her outside so I can get some sleep or me walking around the living room or the bedroom (Dave's a pretty heavy sleeper) trying to get Lily to calm down and go to sleep. The other night, she woke up at 11 (I had gone to bed at 10:30) and cried until 1:30. I fed her until 2, which is when Gabriel woke up. He kept crying every time I left his room, so I opted to lie down on the recliner in his room, where I dozed off and on until 4 in the morning. At 4, I went back to my room, thinking at least I have two more hours. As soon as my head hit the pillow, Lily woke up. It took at least 45 minutes to feed her and change her diaper. One hour and fifteen minutes. Something there is that does not love to let Jill sleep. That was the worst night of them all, but the better nights aren't that much better. Lily is now on reflux medicine, and that is helping, but something is going on anywhere from 10 until 4 that could at any time explode within this child. Do any of you think it could be her recognizing nighttime and wanting to eat more so she can get a better night's sleep--better than the usual 3 to 4 hours? I mean, after she's cried like that and I feed her on schedule, she seems ravenous. Maybe crying like that makes her extremely hungry.

Whatever it is, though, has got to give. I feel so volatile. I try to avoid confrontations at work so I don't lose it. Oh, don't worry, I have the patience of a saint with Lily, but while I'm holding her trying to calm her down, I'm mad at anybody I can blame anything on. Good thing I get it out of my system by morning.

And this is why I did not post anything on Wednesday when it was Lily's 5 month birthday. I was just too dang tired. But here she is, 5 months old and cute as can be. My, how blessed we are, despite the rough nights and the exhausting days. She smiles, and it makes up for it all. I was giddy this afternoon because she and I had such fun playing together. I was trying to sit her up on the couch and take a picture of her, but she kept toppling over. Every time she fell over, she smiled a big smile. I think she might have been doing that on purpose! And I'm posting the picture that proves it! We all just seem to be more relaxed on the weekends.

Appreciating the moment

Yesterday, I took Lily to another doctor's appointment. She was so sweet, just lying there. It was a beautiful moment. Her calmness had the capacity to just suck me into it, and I was able to stop and appreciate the moment.
I don't want to mislead anyone. Lily cries a lot, and we're trying to find out why. But this morning, she was not crying, and I was able to listen.
There are times when I hear this voice that says I'm sticking around for a long time. I try to shake my head of that voice, afraid that I'm holding the Bazooka Bubble gum wrapper where the fortune says What you think will happen, won't. But every time I hear that voice, my heart does a flip. It wants to pound out of my chest and for a small, sweet moment, I envision a little girl running and jumping into her mommy's arms. The two turning in circles and laughing. It's like my heart is pumped with endorphins. It's a hope that I know every Trisomy 18 mommy craves. Just as soon as it begins, I force it to end. I am afraid. I fear it all crashing to the ground, so I try to keep my thoughts in the here and now. Lily is with us here, right now! For that, I am thankful.