Wherever you are

This has quickly become one of my favorite books to read to Lucas, although unfortunately we have a nice hardback/paper copy and he always tries to grab/eat/chew/tear it, so I have to read fast and keep it out of his reach. The illustrations are fantastic and we just got "It's Time to Sleep, My Love" from the same author with equally breathtaking illustrations. (p.s. They sell Nancy Tillman's books at Kohls for $5, as well as the stuffed animal characters illustrated in her books for $5, and all the proceeds go to charity from the book/stuffed animal sales. )
I always feel like I'm reading it to both of our babies, which is pretty obvious why when you read it:

"Wherever You Are My Love Will Find You" by Nancy Tillman

I wanted you more
than you ever will know,
so I sent love to follow
wherever you go. 

It's high as you wish it. It's quick as an elf.
You'll never outgrow it...it stretches itself!

So climb any mountain...
climb  up to the sky!
My love will find you.
My love can fly!

 Make a big splash! Go out on a limb!
My love will find you. My love can swim!

It never gets lost, never fades, never ends...
 if you're working...
 or playing...
or sitting with friends.

You can dance 'til you're dizzy...
paint 'till you're blue...

There's no place, not one,
that my love can't find you.

And if someday you're lonely,
or someday you're sad,
or you strike out at baseball,
or think you've been bad...
just lift up your face, feel the wind in your hair.
That's me, my sweet baby, my love is right there.

In the green of the grass...in the smell of
the sea...in the clouds floating by...
at the top of a tree...in the sound
crickets make at the end of the day...
"You are loved. You are loved. You are loved," they all say.

My love is so high, and so wide and
so deep, it's always right there, even
when you're asleep.

So hold your head high
and don't be afraid
to march to the front
of your own parade.

If you're still my small babe
or you're all the way grown,
my promise to you
is you're never alone.

You are my angel, my darling, 
my star...and my love will find you,
wherever you are.

Thanksgiving 2011

Oh, how far we have come. I remember Thanksgiving a couple of years ago was just brutal. Olivia died at the end of September, I was released from the hospital in October, then Joe's family was here and we buried her, and suddenly it was November. When Thanksgiving hit, I was just coming out of that self protective numbness blurry fog that is the first six-ish weeks. Why we tortured ourselves trying to go places that first Thanksgiving, I don't know, but it was a big mistake. We wisely stayed home and pretended Christmas didn't exist that year. Last year, we were just freaking terrified about what might happen in the months ahead.

But here we are in 2011 and we have a healthy, happy, wonderful little boy to show for the terrifying pregnancy that was last holiday season, and he has brought us a long way in healing. While we won't ever be exactly the same people we were pre-September 2009, I never thought that I could or would ever be this happy again. Yes, there's a lingering sadness or a scar, behind the happiness, but the happiness is there. But there's also a sense of pride in how far we've come, and a resiliency I didn't know I had.

Anyway, our Thanksgiving was good. Lucas was happy and good and we had a nice day with family.

Could this Thanksgiving have been better? Of course. It will always be "could have been better", but for what it was, it was better than I imagined it ever could be again. It still sucks, but oh, it can and does get better.

Thanks and giving

Luke has decided that sleeping through the night like he has done for the last 3 months or so is lame. Boo to sleep, I like waking up every 2-3 hours to chat with my mommy! I'm not complaining, the first few weeks of him sleeping through the night, I missed him. But by now, I've gotten spoiled sleeping through the night for weeks and weeks, so this up-every-3ish hours stuff is making me a tad sleep deprived. The real problem is rolling over. Luke rolls over and then wakes himself up and then I guess thinks, "Hey, I'm awake, let's chat and play for awhile!" He's never crabby though he will cry if I don't get him. I know some or a lot of people are fans of cry it out, but I'm adamantly against it and not willing to consider it no matter how tired I get. (Though I'm not opposed to taking a nap on the floor while he plays next to me!)

But anyway, I didn't have kids so I could get a full night's sleep. Secondly, oh, what I would have given to have Olivia wake me up 3 times a night...I really can't complain about Lucas doing it. Lucas slept through the night for a pretty long time before this and is such a good, happy, easy baby overall that it's pretty lame to complain about this, especially since at least when he wakes up at 2 or 3 am, he falls right back to sleep the second I pick him up. He's pretty good about only wanting to get up and play at reasonable wake up times (like 9/10/11/12 ish- when I'm still up usually anyway.) Today we took an awesome nap together from 2 to 5 pm and it was MUCH needed and I feel a lot  better overall. Anyway, sleep or no sleep, we are so lucky to have him and he's such a great baby.

On that note, he is getting so mobile. I just watched him pull himself ACROSS our living room (10+ feet) and then when he got to his desired location (Koda our husky who is none too pleased with this development- he watched Luke warily as he got closer and then when Luke was a few inches away, jumped up and moved several feet farther), he pushed himself up to sitting and started playing with a box of diapers instead. (I'm pretty much over cloth diapering.) That's the first time I've seen him manage to push himself up to sitting all the way from laying. So for now he's army crawling and pushing himself along but he gets up on his hands and knees and is not too far from real crawling. Again, it's so much fun to see him figuring out new things and his personality emerging, but wah, he's getting so so big! I think he's going to have a blast for Christmas with all the wrapping paper this year. We are so incredibly thankful that he's here and happy and healthy.

Today I picked up an angel tree child. For those not familiar, a bunch of places and the Salvation Army gets names of needy families/children, and those more fortunate select a child and buy Christmas gifts (needs and wants) for them. Last year, we were so focused on trying to survive the holidays and also so scared what was going to happen with my pregnancy that we just couldn't do anything but get through them. This year, we are in a much better place and decided we wanted to do it. So we are buying gifts for a 2 year old girl...although it's going to be a little tough because their list was so vague...needs: "stuffed animals" (really?) wants: "toys, blanket"...so hopefully we do okay. (Other people had specific stuff, clothes sizes, etc. which would have been a little easier maybe but this was the only 2 year old girl option and the listed wanted/needed stuff is kinda sad, I think. (I mean others were asking for things like a Nintendo DS, etc.) But a blanket and stuffed animals and toys, I think we can handle. I'm not sure how ready I am to look at two year old girl stuff, but I will suck it up and do it (maybe online, luckily if I order stuff through JCP- which is where I signed up for my name anyway- they will ship anything I buy for gifts to her/the salvation army for free.)

Anyway, I'm done babbling for awhile, I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving. And for my babyloss mom friends who may not be feeling especially thankful this year (oh, have we been there), I will be thinking of you through this upcoming holiday season, I know it's not easy.

Baby Tyler

A huge story in our area right now is Baby Tyler, a 13 month old who was reported missing Tuesday, his body was found about a half mile from his home a few hours later. His mom has confessed to killing him (beat him to death because he wouldn't go back to sleep/stop crying), some reports say that she disposed of his body then went home and slept before waking up and reporting him missing. It's a chilling, disgusting story. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/veteran-detective-had-immediate-suspicions-about-missing-st-louis-county/article_daf1c51a-996e-5e6e-a985-fd76d4262269.html  That poor baby.

And don't even get me started about missing baby Lisa (that was 3ish hours away). I just hope that they find her soon, too.

Some things in this world make no sense at all. I will never understand how or why people *like that* can get pregnant easily (even accidentally) and go on to have babies they don't want (and kill/abuse/neglect them), while wonderful people who desperately want babies struggle to get pregnant or lose their babies or both. WTF, universe, WTF. Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason to it all....horrible things happen to wonderful people and wonderful things happen to horrible people. I hate that.

As awful as it was to lose Olivia, at least all she ever knew was love. I cannot wrap my mind around someone killing their own child, I would have gladly died to save our baby. And the footage I have seen of the mom walking around while talking to the police (when he was still just missing) is downright chilling. At one point she even smiles.

WTF, universe, WTF.

Rest in peace, baby Tyler.

Oh blog.

I'm still in this weird phase where I start writing a post, then quit.

All is pretty well here. We survived Pennsylvania. Luke tolerated the 22 hours of driving like the perfect baby he is- didn't cry once. That's about all I have to say about that here in blogland.

And as for Lucas, oh my. He makes me so happy and oh so sad all at once. I can't believe how fast babyhood is dwindling and toddlerhood emerging. He's mobile, not quite crawling but rolling and pulling himself enough to get wherever he wants. He loves plastic bags and paper and gets ANGRY if they are taken from him. He babbles all the time and Joe swears he intentionally says "ma" or "mom"  when he gets whiny but I'm pretty sure it's just coincidental, though it really does sound like mom. His days of sleeping in our room are numbered, not that he'll even notice the difference anyway, but oh, that part especially makes me so sad. I may end up sleeping on the floor in his room for the next 18 years or so. Okay, maybe not. But I can't say exactly in words how much I love opening my eyes and seeing him sleeping there a foot away from me. I remember telling my friend Jackie at 10 weeks or so how it was such a perfect age. But honestly, every age is the perfect age. (Although he has started doing this weird gaspy laugh that almost gave me a heart attack driving 5 minutes to my mom's house yesterday because hearing your 6 month old gasping over and over from his carseat when you can't see his face and you are already paranoid makes for a nervewrecking drive. I could tell that he was okay because he had some babbles and normal giggles in there between the raspy gasps but I hope he stops doing that soon because he's going to give me an ulcer with that.) Sleeping through the night is inconsistent but I can't say I mind much. The nights he wakes up, we end up cuddling in the recliner together until we both fall asleep which generally takes 10 minutes or less, no big deal.Works for us.


The approaching holidays this year are weird. The past two years, the holidays were so hard and miserable that we mostly just wanted to ignore them. But now we have Lucas. And I think the holidays will still be hard to some extent, but now we have to suck it up and make the best of them for him. I am sure he will have a blast with the wrapping paper and new toys. But it's complicated.

Halloween 2011

Luke's first Halloween was pretty uneventful. I wasn't going to be one of those people who takes their baby trick or treating for candy they obviously can't eat. Instead, we dressed him up and took him over to my parents and raided their candy instead. (I had candy instead of dinner, yum.) I haven't been a fan of halloween for a few years, still not really. I figure this is our last year we can get away with not doing pumpkins (we do have a picture of Luke with a pumpkin), next year we will probably go all out.

Pre-halloween:

 (He doesn't really need the boppy behind him anymore but I was afraid he'd get distracted and fall backwards when I took the picture.)










 I can put my binkie in my mouth by myself, Mr.Independent.

He still doesn't sleep in that lovely crib yet. I put him in there while I ran to the bathroom because he's started rolling to stuff and we aren't babyproofed at all yet, a few days ago I left him playing happily on the middle of the floor and came back to find he'd rolled himself under the coffee table and was enjoying chewing on the bottom of my flip flop...gross...I wore those flip flops in the hospital even. Luckily he seems to have survived. But until we are babyproofed (which will happen as soon as we get back from our trip to PA) I use the crib as a baby cage, he thinks its fun in there.

 So my camera flashes a small orange light before the real flash/picture. Which makes it almost impossible to get a pic of him smiling these days because even if I make him smile, once he sees that light his expression changes to puzzled or sucking his lower lip like t
he first pic.

    
And at 4 months, Luke would screech all the time just for the hell of it, I never could catch it on video because he'd stop when he saw the camera. Well the past few days the screech has been back, and today he did it on camera...(he also "talks" normally but prefers screeching today.)

I can't believe my baby boy is 6 months old already, sheesh, time flies.