Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Refining

It's almost April and I'm wondering where the time has gone. A quarter of this year is nearly gone! Two small children keep a girl occupied, I guess!

I'm feeling very tired right now. I've been doing a lot of traveling these past three months. I've already been back to San Diego 4 times since January and I've lost count of the number of trips to Portland we've been making. That's been averaging at least once a week. Portland is an awesome city and I wish we were going up there for sightseeing. Unfortunately, most of our time has been spent at Children's Hospital. Next week Jack is going to have a fairly invasive surgery to (hopefully) prevent him from having the degree of reflux he does and the laryngospasms. At the same time, they will put a feeding tube in his stomach, with a "button" on the outside of his tummy. The feeding tube will be primarily so that we can "vent" his stomach or empty it if he is nauseous.

At the same time, Charlie has been showing many of the same symptoms and so he's been undergoing a few tests, as well. What we know from the initial tests is that he, too, is aspirating when he nurses or drinks from a bottle so I had to give up breastfeeding and go to exclusively pumping so we can thicken the milk to prevent it from going into his lungs. Funny--I was so reluctant about breastfeeding after my experience with Jack, I was thoroughly planning to pump like I did for Jack. I never dreamed how much I would wind up enjoying the experience of nursing. I have been so sad about giving it up but after seeing how much less pain Charlie is in when drinking thickened milk, I can see it's the right way to go. He has a couple more tests in April and then we'll go from there as to whether he will also need this surgery.

This has been a hard decision to come to. Every doctor he has seen, including some second opinions, are all in agreement that he needs this surgery. I'm still struggling with reconciling what appears to by my perfect healthy baby with what all these tests tell us is really going on inside of him. I'm so scared that we are making a decision that is going to make things worse than better. This is what I think is one of the hardest things about being a parent: being the judge and jury for your child's health. I feel very unqualified sometimes (well, most of the time!) to do this. So, nearly two years to the day Jack finally got released from the NICU, we are heading back to the hospital. I'm trusting God that this is the right path, the right decision, and that this experience is refining our faith.

On another note, I've written before about our struggle to find a church up here. We have been looking for the right church with the right community so we can meet some people up here, ideally some other young families. We did find a Catholic church that we like and have gone a several times, with the challenge that Jack lasts about 10 minutes in the nursery before we are called to come get him. He's not so good about sitting through Mass with us, though, so church has been a bit of a challenge. (How do you other mommies deal with 2 year olds and church????) So, although St. Mary's has been good, we still haven't found that community we were looking for. We made the decision to widen our horizons a bit so last week we went to a community church in our area. Wow--it was an amazing experience. This was the most family-centered, welcoming church I've ever been to. Jack still didn't last long in the nursery (I think we are going to have to keep working on this) but after the service, we were feeding Charlie in the common area outside of the santuary and at least 11 different people introduced themselves to us, realizing we were "newbies." We were invited out to lunch, to join a small group, and to join a mom's group. Everyone was so incredibly sincere and friendly that we immediately felt right at home. The service was different for us--defintitely more "casual" than a Catholic service but the sermon was good and the music was amazing. The community was just what we have been searching for. So, I think we are going to split our time. My Catholic faith is still very important to me, as is raising my kids in the Faith, so we plan to do Saturday night Masses and Sunday mornings at this new church. I'm excited to see where this brings us.

That's about it, please keep Jack in your prayers next week (and this nervous mama too!).

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Cousin Love

Although I have a lot of siblings, we did not grow up with a lot of cousins and none that lived close or that we regularly got together with. It is such a special thing, then, to see our children having the benefit of cousins! Of the eigh grandchildren my parents have, 6 live within two blocks of eachother. Jack and Charlie are the only two that don't live close. But, whenever we are in town, they love my boys like they were around the corner every day.

Little C, in particular, had a special love for Jack when he was a baby and shows the same sweet affection for Charlie. She is a great cousin and it is so cute to see her dote on him!

Here is Little C with Jack as a baby:


And now with Charlie:

Baptism

Oh, Blog, how I've neglected you. It's crazy that four months has passed. Baby Charlie did make his appearance one day shy of 40 weeks on November 20, 2009. This birth experience was a breeze compared to Jack's birth...and I got to take a baby right home with me! What a difference!

So, in the four months since then, we've been incredibly busy. The week he was born, Jared's brother and family came for Thanksgiving, which we had at our house. Fortunately, we had lots of hands to help host since Charlie was less than a week old. The next week, one of my best friends, Michelle, came up for a visit. It was her first visit since we moved up here and she and I got to share some sweet girl time together. She and I have a long history together, including having lived and worked together, but we really made some very wonderful memories during this trip. I am so grateful she was able to come. My mother and father followed suit the next week and we were spoiled with my mother's cooking, lots of Christmas shopping and a really yummy dinner out with them while Jared's parents babysat. We then took a very short breather and flew to San Diego for Charlie's first Christmas! I can't believe we were able to take him on a trip when he was less than a month old! Jack wasn't even out of the hospital by then! Since Christmas, Charlie has been on 3 more trips to San Diego and too many car trips to Portland to count at this point. He's becoming a very seasoned traveler!

Charlie's Baptism

We decided to do Charlie's baptism in San Diego at the church we were married in and Jack was baptised in. We have been going to this church for a long, long time and leaving our church and finding a new "home" has been one of the hardest parts about moving. The priest, Father Matt, is very special to us. He married us, was one of the first people to visit Jack in the hospital to pray over him, he baptised Jack and we decided to give Charlie his name as a middle name. Fortunately, he was able to baptize Charlie as well. Here are some pictures of Charlie's big day!

This is my best childhood friend, Brigid, me, and Charlie. Brigid has become an amazing seamstress recently and given the amount of time we spent baptizing our dolls and pets as children, it was only fitting that she made Charlie's gown. It is so beautiful and she put so much care into the detail (right down to crosses in the lace edging!):


Our best friends, Jenn and Robby, came in from Texas for the baptism. Jennifer has been my best friend for years and I miss her so much! It meant so much to me that they came out for the big day and were Charlie's Godparents. Sadly, they weren't able to bring their two little girls with them (one of them my namesake and Goddaughter!) but I did get to meet her little baby bump, Addison (scheduled to make her arrival on or about June 7th!).


After the baptism, we celebrated the newest Christian with a brunch hosted by my parents. The weather was beautiful and so many people came to celebrate.



Daphne, with her husband Nick, was one of the leaders of our Engaged Encounter weekend. She and Nick were such an inspiration to us that weekend. I'm so glad we've kept in touch.


Finally, Jack was such a good boy and good big brother during the baptism. It's hard to believe it was only a year and a half since we were celebrating his baptism!


I am so grateful for the gift of my two little boys!