A Season Past Springtime

Trick or Treat!

or as Katrina puts it “Candy”!

Generally, I do not like e-mail forwards. Occasionally a friend will send me a choice forward that is very funny or can relate to my life, but for the most part I get these sappy cheesy forwards that just make me groan. And, no offense to any one out there, as soon as I see anything that says, forward this to ten friends and/or get blessed/cursed/a special surprise, it just makes me so annoyed I have to delete it immediately.

So, all that to say, I got an annoying forward the other day, but I have to admit it made me think a little. It was discussed the topic of worrying about your kids and if that ever goes away. It goes through various stages of life and what worries about your kids you have in each stage. It ends with the person in their 60’s saying,

Can it be that parents are sentenced to a

Lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another

Handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of

Human frailties and the fears of the

Unknown? Is concern a curse or is it a virtue

That elevates us to the highest form of life?

One of my children became quite irritable

Recently, saying to me, “Where were you? I’ve been

Calling for 3 days, and no one answered I was worried.”

I smiled a warm smile.

The torch has been passed.

So, what that says to me is you stop worrying about your kids when they start worrying about you. And that worrying somehow makes you better. Umm…no.

I don’t consider myself to be a huge worrier. I think worrying is human, it’s hard to be completely worry free. At the same time I try to adhere to the Biblical principal of “worry not about tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of it’s own”. I believe God is in control and if I trust and follow Him he will work everything out. Of course I also have a vivid imagination, so I won’t deny that if anyone is late my mind starts going to injured bodies lying on roadsides; and I do look at my children at the top of a play structure chortling with glee and have a flash of them at the bottom screaming in pain with something broken. However, I refuse to let that dominate my life. So, what’s my point? Where am I going with this e-mail forward? It made me laugh and shake my head because now, more then ever, I can worry about everyone! I think this might be the most worrisome period in life. Maybe it’s just me, but I think back to high-school, and college, and I pretty much just worried about myself. Then I got married and started adding Christoph into the mix and my little brother who was in college now too (I felt a little responsible for him). Now I worry about my kids, my husband, my brothers, my parents. If that e-mail is right and parents pass the worry torch when their kids start worrying about them, that happens way before their 60’s and when they also have their own kids to worry about. Personally, I think we never stop worrying. Once you add someone to your worry repertoire, they never get taken out, you just keep adding more. It’s part of loving people. That’s why we have to brace ourselves, face the fear, stamp it down and above all trust God. Besides, usually it’s the thing I didn’t think to worry about that actually happens.

Yes, we are having another baby. We are all excited and happy as you can see from Emily’s reaction if you go to:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-510491762246033035&hl=en

According to my calculations (haven’t seen a doctor yet) I am eight weeks and my due date is June 3, 2008. That just happens to be my dad’s birthday which I think is pretty cool. So far things are going fine, although I’m not enjoying the morning sickness or the exhaustion. More on that later. It’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to… but I’ll try to keep this post upbeat. Of course Katrina has no idea what’s going to hit in 32 short weeks, but she currently LOVES babies, so I feel confident in her ability to adapt. It will be interesting to see the differences having kids two vs three years apart. Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll keep you posted on further developments (hehe).

So, it happened. The day every parent waits for and treasures. I was doing the boring, ordinary task of putting cans into a garbage bag for recycling when Katrina wandered over, laid her head on my shoulder and said, “I yuve u, mommy” and toddled off. Completely spontaneous and totally unprompted. Ah…bliss.

So the last month seems to have been a bit accident prone. First Katrina eats random plant matter, then Emily falls and you guessed it, got stitches. Wow. In some ways it strikes me as just being one of those childhood things. On the other hand, Emily is the less rowdy of my two girls. I managed to survive my entire childhood without getting stitches. This could be because I liked to read a lot and was not into organized sports. I did my share of bike riding and tree climbing however, so maybe I’m just more graceful. My brothers both got stitches at different times. Christoph also remembers getting stitches as a child. So, Emily is by no means alone in her venture. The sad, or funny thing, depending on your perspective, is that she went through the entire thing without Mom or Dad.

Yep, you heard right. Seeing as I had just gotten back from a two and a half week trip, Christoph planned a romantic overnight date for us. Our friends the Divineys were kind enough to watch the girls for us. Little did they know what they were in for. Saturday morning Emily was outside playing. Somehow, she managed to trip and hit her forehead right on the edge of a brick. After some phone calls back and forth Amber and I decided it should get looked at by the doctor. By the time we figured out where she could be seen on a Saturday it was almost time for us to head back anyway. We were on the Oregon coast, about two hours away. We got some lunch and headed back, but arrived after all the excitement was over. Turns out it was good we had her seen since they put five stitches in her forehead. I felt bad that our friend had to go through such an ordeal with Emily but, I was also glad it was her. Emily knows Amber well and is comfortable with her and Amber is very capable of staying calm and doing what has to be done. I found out after the fact that she was also a great patient advocate for Emily which made me very happy.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Lidocaine (the numbing medicine) doesn’t have much effect on Emily. Amber says she could feel the pain radiating through Emily’s body as they stitched her up. One interesting thing about my daughter is she absolutely HATES being held down. I’ve learned this through having to give her eye drops, get sand out of her eyes, and deal with her earrings. If given the choice between being perfectly still and being forcibly held down, she will show incredible self-restraint in holding still. On the flip side there is no quicker way to cause a full on, freak-out fit then holding her down against her will. I had warned Amber about this and she told the nurses and doctor that they could not tie her up. They listened, and Emily rewarded their trust by holding completely still even though she was having a lot of pain. Unfortunately this doesn’t relay to her mouth, so even though she doesn’t move she is by no means quiet. According to witnesses she screamed almost the entire time.

Not to make this all about me, but I’m just not sure, as a Mother, how to feel about the whole thing. I mostly just feel horrible that my friend had to go through making the decision to have Emily seen, drive her there, and then spend two hours holding a screaming child who is getting her forehead sewn up three inches from your face. Ok, the sewing part didn’t take two hours, there was getting checked in, waiting for the topical Lidocaine to start working, moving on the the injectable Lidocaine, but you get the idea. I also feel bad for Emily who had to be so brave and go through all that pain without Mommy or Daddy to hold her and comfort her. Does it mean that I’m a bad Mom because I feel more sympathy and guilt for my friend then for my child? It probably helps that when we got back Emily greeted us with, “Why are you back already? I want to sleep here more then one night!” I feel bad I wasn’t there to be strong for my baby, but at the same time I have a nagging feeling that Amber was probably more patient with her screaming then I would have been. The fact that Emily held still without restraint for the whole thing makes me proud and also scares the crap out of me. This girl likes control.

Fortunately her wound seems to be healing very well. The stitches came out practically painlessly and the scar seems to look lighter almost daily. At least on her forehead she can have bangs to cover it if she wants to. And to quote my friend Amber, “When she grows up, I’m going to have to tell her she can definitely handle drug-free childbirth.”