Friday, July 13, 2012

Adessa - July 14th, 2012

Hi baby!

Holy crap, are you one cute baby or what?  I'll be doing a little backtracking to fill you in on your birth story and the lead up to now, but man, do we ever delight in you.  As Dad says, your smiles are like crack and you give them out all the time!  You're just pure joy, sweetheart.

This is what I get to wake up to every morning.


This is just how you wake up.  All the time!  You're about as happy as can be and it absolutely slays me.

You can also see the tail of your scorpion that you sleep with.  You were having trouble falling asleep and liked to hold my finger while you were drifting off, so I tried to find a lovey for you that you could hold onto like my finger.  So I found a stingray and a scorpion and you grabbed onto the goofy scorpion (he's kind of cute, really) and hung on for dear life.  It kills me the way you clutch his tail and his claw and wriggle around until you fall asleep.

I always laugh when we have to be like, "Where's Adessa's scorpion!?  She needs her scorpion."  Who even makes a scorpion stuffed animal.  So funny.

Yesterday we had to take you to the doctor.  By the time you're reading this you'll probably have outgrown everything or have had surgery, but at this point in life, you breathe really funny.  It's almost like you have something deep in your throat. It makes me want to clear MY throat.  It's worse on the inhale, worse right after you eat and best when you're in a deep sleep.  Pretty much everyone that holds you is like, "Is she sick?"  Nope, that's just how you breathe.

When you were first born, it was bad.  Really bad.  You would pull for air so hard and top breathing for ten seconds at a time and you would have the episodes where you would breathe fast and erratic and you could see your stomach and neck muscles retracting.  I never knew what to do...it was so scary.

I took you to the doctors in our practice several times, and each one of them said..."She's a baby, they make a lot of noise when they breathe.  It's fine.  It's fine.  It's fine."  Finally, I got so sick of it (because you would make noise when I would bring you in, but you wouldn't have a really bad episode in the doctors office.) that your Nana got us an appt with an ENT and we took you yesterday to get scoped.

That sucked.  They had to put numbing stuff in your little nose and slide a scope up through your nose and down through your sinuses to see your vocal cords.  And we were right!  You have something called laryngomalacia, floppy tissue over your vocal cords that can be a hindrance when you breathe.   It sounds like some cases are really severe to the point where babies can't eat, so we're lucky that yours is such a mild case.  However, we have to make sure it gets better as you grow.  If it gets worse, they have to scope you again (I CANNOT even explain how pissed you were.  Red as a tomato) and possible put you all the way under.  I'm really praying and hoping that we can avoid all of that and that you just grow out of it on your own which is very likely.

But after the procedure, you were very upset for the rest of the day and just wanted to sleep on me.  So we cuddled bunches and I will take that any day.

I've got to go to bed now.  I'm falling asleep while typing.  You got up at 5:30 (eat and then sleep until 7:30/8) but my brain wouldn't shut up once I was awake so I had to get up and do stuff.  Now I can barely keep my eyes open.

I love you so much sweetheart!!!

Love,
Momma

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Ena - July 10th, 2012

Hi Ena girl! You're sleeping at the moment. (I think) Man, so much has happened in the last couple of months I'm not even sure where to start. Well, first, Adessa was born. It was an interesting transition. You stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for three or four nights (at that point, night and day doesn't really have much reference) and I kept wanting to get home so you could be in your own bed and your own space again. Adessa had some other plans. But you came to the hospital and we had the cutest family love fest ever.
You loved her right from the start. Our problem has never been jealousy and too this day I don't think you've ever expressed jealousy or anger towards her. It's almost been reigning in the love you've got and trying to keep you from squashing her! Even now, in the mornings when you see her for the first time you always say "Adeeeeesssa!!!" And run a give her a hug. (I'd rather have that problem.) Not to say it was perfectly smooth. Because of the close quarters of the Elgin house and your intense desire to love on your sister, all of a sudden it seemed like there was tons of "No, Ena." "Be quiet, Ena." "You can't, Ena." Can't swing the baby in the swing, Can't stomp around while the baby is sleeping, Can't go outside right now. Trust me, we were both frustrated and my heart broke for you because you were just being a kid. We went on as many walks as possible just so you could run around without me having to say no! Then something happened! Nana decided that we needed to move ASAP. So she decided to give Daddy a large chunk of what she had inherited from his grandmother Eris (your great grandma. She passed away while I was pregnant with you.) Someday I'll tell the story about how great-grandma's husband's kids stole all her money while she had dementia. The only thing that Nana got from her mother was the house, and she gave a large chunk of the money from that to us. Anyways, Dad decided that he was going to start looking at houses. He looked at several, and they were all nice but too small, or big but in terrible condition. Then he called me and said, "I found our house." Can I tell you this? I never saw the house before we put a bid on it. We won the house in days! it was crazy. Then someone put a bid on our house! Also crazy. That fell through. During all this, your Papa-Bob started getting worse. He couldn't remember much and started to hallucinate at night. I think Nana about ran herself into the ground trying to take care of him. He passed away about a month after Adessa was born. You and your sister were some of the last people he was really conscious for. I think he had been waiting to see you guys. After that, he fell asleep and didn't wake back up. I want you to know that he loved you very very very much. I think my favorite memory of him with you was when we went on a weekend vacation with Nana and Papa to Lake Geneva. We would do the continental breakfast with them every morning and you would sit next to Papa and he would slip you bits of donuts "secretly." You loved it. The funeral was a few days later. It's been weird to process Papa dying with you, because you definitely knew something was going on. Dad called me the morning that it happened and we turned off the TV for me to tell you that Papa had died. I asked you if you knew what that meant and you said, "He went to go live with Jesus." Yup, that about sums it up. We talked about how we would miss him and he wouldn't be here with us any more and that when people's bodies are old or sick, sometimes they stop working and die. There's not a lot that you're satisfied with right now. We've talked about death, God, how Jesus lives in our hearts, how can Papa be with God, how did Adessa get in my tummy and er...how babies come out, and you have so many questions that it's hard to not wind up in some left field philosophical discussion that's way over your head. Try explaining souls to a four year old. We've processed Papa's death together a lot as it comes up. Passing gravestones we talk about how Papa has one and it's to help us remember him, seeing Nana, but not Papa, and occasionally you just miss him. I get that. It also comes up in play or conversation, the whole death thing. Your dolls get sick and the other dolls "talk" about how she's going to die, or you've had a cold for the past two days and asked me today if you were old and going to die. However, you trust me when I say no, and it hasn't seemed to rattle you much, but you're definitely exploring the theme of it. We closed on the house soon after Papa's funeral. Then after ALL that change, Dad was gone fixing up our new house for us to live in and it was just you, me and Adessa for awhile. We boxed up stuff, people visited us, and Dad was in and out occasionally. Finally, it was moving day and we cleared out so Dad could move us. We went with Grandma and Grandpa and had a ball with them for five days so Dad and Nana could settle the house. (Lemme tell you, it was weird to let someone else move us. Also, I had only seen the house once for 20 minutes prior to us moving in.) Finally, we arrived! You took to your new room (and new freaking BED!) like a champ and have been overwhelmingly positive about the house the whole time. You can be loud downstairs while Dessa sleeps. You can run around in your new backyard. You have your own big room with all your toys in it and have done really well all over. You've also gotten more attached to your Daddy now that you've been able to be around him and see him every day. Not that it was bad before, but we had three days in the middle of the week where it was rare for you to see him, and then four days where he would be around a lot more. I'm actually a little nervous now for when he goes on the mission trip. I think it's going to affect you a lot more this time that it has ever before. Phew. I think we're caught up. You're out iceskating with Dad right now and we'll see how that goes :) Love you so much lady. I'm loving who you are and the games we play together. You're my joy. Love, Momma