Survival Instincts

Today sucked. 

I wish I could open with something better for this blog update, but really, I'm just tired and weary tonight. That's OK. Tomorrow is a new day! 

Last night I went out with friends. As midnight came and went as we enjoyed junk food from IHOP, we laughed and cried and laughed some more. None of us facing exactly the same challenge. None of us asking each other to put the best foot forward, we just sat together in empathy and true friendship. It was so uplifting...

But alas, a great night out cannot undo the built up stress of late. So today, I feel crappy.
Dumb.

This week when I was at the temple with my husband, I was pondering our survival instincts. Ya know, those ones that naturally kick in without you actively thinking about them? Yea. Those ones. Push turn to shove - we absolutely have them in our home. When we're crunched and stressed and just feeling blah.

I realized, when the world seems like a cold and dreary place - we circle the wagons! 

Sometimes I refer to myself as a ostrich. I've had to make several very important calls this week. Some financial mountains had to be scaled. Some routine things. Some new and exciting things. That's a lot to face in a week!

Often times our circling the wagons comes out as play. We want to hide from the world and just absorb all that is good within our walls.

We also set goals when we're stressed. 

Or do things that likely make our neighbors think we are completely insane. 

We celebrate the little things, because they are big things to us. 

We take naps, read books and snuggle with our favorite people!

and the routine things seem like great accomplishments!

And sometimes, routine appointments lead to fun new glasses!

Laughter cures all woes 

And the simple homemaking tasks can make you smile with pride. 

And sometimes, you just have to get outside in the sunshine and get dirty!

Besides, when you're outside at our place, you have these funny little animals follow you around. 

And then, there is the "I have no idea what to do either, let's play cards" 

Or a board game... one that Lani hasn't lost all the pieces to

When we're crunched, sometimes it helps to grow some ways that are unexpected.

I can't say I have any answers to some of the things keeping me up at night, but I can say I feel like I have everything I need. Support networks, outlets for emotions, and a healthy strong marriage that keeps me sane when I want to cry or rage about the injustice I see in the world.

It's been a crappy day but I knew flipping through our photos of the last 60 days, I'd find myself releasing stress and reminded of all the joys in my life.

Stellar way to end a crappy day. Perhaps it's not crappy after all. 

The view from up here.

I cannot believe it's been MONTHS since my last blog post. 

I have a confession to make - I fell into a pretty crappy place of being over the last couple months. Guess what else? I am no longer there and I completely forgive myself. 

If you've read my blog ever you would know I'm working on forgiving myself and I was climbing a mountain for the last 5 months. Well, let me tell you folks, we made it. WE FREAKING MADE IT. 

No more therapies. No more specialists. No more pumping. No more keep-your-phone-on-you-because-it-has-your-pump-alarm. No more stress.

Here's the thing though, I had to truly humble my expectations before life changed for us. 

There is so much I could say about this subject but at the core - I learned a lot.

Fundamentally, I learned that it didn't matter if I spent my year like this: 

Or like this:

I mattered as his mother either way.
HE mattered as my child either way. He was perfect in my eyes. Absolutely perfect.

I could say so very much. I could talk about the tears, the fears, the courage to try nursing again after burn out. I could give lengthy details about our oral reflex and strength training routines. I could cite the muscles he learned to use in his tongue or the sequence needed to correct his torticollis. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Our mother-baby dynamic is not measured by this one fact alone and when I accepted that, the Lord extended me a tender mercy.

This view from the top of our mountain climbing experience has humbled me. I have a profoundly deep respect for creation and how perfect each one of us is just as we are. I have learned to rely on the Lord for strength when my path was uncertain and learned to truly pray for the first time in my life selflessly.

The view from the top is glorious. 

My climbing buddy is pretty cute too :)

Christmas 2014

I have celebrated 27 Christmas's in my life. This year marks the 13th with my husband (we missed one due to my stubborn life crisis as a teen) and I felt so many many emotions this morning. Yesterday my family hosted "Christmas Dinner" with my siblings, their awesome children, spouses, and even my birth mother was there. It was a special kind of deep pain to feel the emptiness of my Mom not being there. I hadn't really thought about it until all of us were sitting around the table, our plates loaded with food and I asked a really simple question - what's a favorite Christmas memory everyone has? Then grief came deep, swift and leaving me mourning. Food tasted like shit after that. I didn't even know it was possible to ruin cheesecake but let me tell you, it is possible and grieving is the unsettling emotion that can do it. 

But it's not all bad - my favorite Christmas memories surround WRAPPING! My mom would tell the same story every year about her job at a local toy store in Nampa Idaho in the 1950s. She was hired during the Christmas season to wrap gifts for customers. That story was always told when she was surrounded by a million gifts for my siblings, that she always hid in the trunk of her car, and she taught me how to make a package beautiful. This year as I wrapped presents for my babies, that I had hid in the trunk of my car, I felt myself tear up as I wished she could know how grateful I am for her legacy. Though this is the second Christmas without my mom, it is the first one I felt it. Last year I was too close to everything to process. I was on auto-pilot, I had just planned my first funeral. This year, I let the emotion in and experienced it. I feel overwhelming joy for the life I have and while this sadness was present, I did not invite it to stay, I had too much happiness going on! And, I got the stellar perk of cuddling Anaius - our rainbow baby after our lost little, and reminded that I found out I was expecting him on Christmas last year! 

Here's what Christmas morning looked like in our house:

(4 of the 5 looking and smiling? A Christmas miracle indeed!)

Ya know those people that get around and complain about their mother in laws? I cannot do that. My mother in law is fabulous! Our kiddos are loving their new Christmas Jammies compliments of my lovely MIL. It's adorable to watch them open them and mad-dash to put them on as fast as possible. So fun. This is a tradition many families, including my husbands family, does every year. I hadn't heard of it though until I had my own kiddos and my MIL sent jammies <3 

All around, a fabulous morning. In our home, we start with someone opening a gift and then they pick the next to give to someone, and that person opens then picks a next for another... it is fun to watch the kiddos want their siblings to get more gifts. 

One of the perks? Since yesterday was the big dinner, I didn't slave in the kitchen today! Left overs rock. Ham, garlic and cheddar potatoes and pie? Yep, pretty much amazing.

And a crock pot with hot cider, cinnamon and cloves in it? Oh. My house smells like heaven and I've been sipping this fabulousness all day!

Tonight we plan on laying tile in our bathroom to almost wrap up what's left of our remodel (blog to come on that fun!!) but one of the activities we will do that I'm super excited about it make candy nativity scenes. The kids are thrilled and I think it helps them remember the reason our family celebrates Christmas. I am so grateful for today.

I am wishing everyone a beautiful, blessed, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 

December's beginnings.... kicking off the Xmas Season!

We have a tradition in my home that really kicks off the Christmas season for all of us. Thanksgiving weekend our family attends the Boise Festival of Trees! It's really a fun time we all look forward to. This year we decided to make a whole day of it. We had a slow start to our black-Friday morning and then set out to hit the FOT first. We enjoyed several hours of admiring trees, watching performances on stage and doing a scavenger hunt. We all worked up an appetite and decided to grab tacos before surprising our kiddos with taking them to a 7 pm movie in the theater! We saw "The Boxtrolls". It was a cute movie and enjoyed by all. 

We picked up a Christmas tree in town this year. Our 4-wheel drive on our Betty is broken, Anaius is tiny, I'm glued to a pump. I was just too exhausted to commit to hunting for a tree in the mountains this year. I hope to do it again next year! 

Our kids have been enjoying dance classes on Tuesday mornings for the last three months. It's been a fun time for them to do something "just for big kids" because so much of my time is very busy with Anaius. Here's some quick snap shots of their lessons. 

Another fun fact : We have TWO kiddos who can sing "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" this year!

We also ventured out on an awesome "field trip" with a home school group and watched "Nutcracker Jr" ballet. It was an hour long and Daunika is begging to go to the full version next year. She LOVED it. We all had a good time and it was long enough to feel worth it, but not long enough that anyone in our young crew got restless. They also got to check out the costumes before the performance. Perfect :) 

One of the best parts of this December was our family going to the Boise Temple to be sealed for time and all eternity! It was a special day for us. We felt so loved and supported by those of our friends that came to witness our deeply personal ordinance. It was a beautiful day indeed! 

I have no words for how amazing it is to call this family mine.

And it wouldn't be mid-December without Kalani's birthday!!! I cannot believe this little spitfire tot of mine is THREE. She is such a joy. There is always laughter in her eyes as if she's clued into a joke I can't hear.

What a wonderful first half of the month it's been! 

Three months and still mountain climbing.

I absolutely love referring to our adventures in feeding Anaius as mountain climbing. Someone asked me a couple weeks ago why label it with something so hard... and I got to thinking about that. I don't think mountain climbing is that hard? Can I do it today? Heck no. But I think it takes a team effort, you cultivate skills to manage the climb, and then you work diligently toward your goal... You do not sit at the bottom of Mount Everest and decide you're just going to have a casual Sunday stroll up it. I've looked at this journey like mountain climbing because I have had to assemble a team. I've had to learn to skills and facilitate an environment that my son can learn new skills too. Diligently striving forward.

We break up our routine into multiple sections - feeding, pumping, torticollis, and alertness/weight gain. Sounds complex but it's really not. It's just the four categories we seem to measure his progress in right now. Anaius doesn't cry. If he's hungry, he will just give up and go back to sleep. A baby who doesn't cry? Sounds amazing right? Well, kind of. Yes, we love his peaceful nature but watching his cues is very different from our other four kiddos.

So, for feeding - we have to provoke him, often, to remind him that food is a good thing. Silly little man would be content to be worn on me all day and sleep to death. OYE! He is such a peaceful spirit.

But there are so many funny things about him. He has all this gorgeous hair right? Well, instead of losing hair in the back of his head, he's got BABY DREADS!! 

Anaius has decided to take his physical therapy into his own hands. He has right sided torticollis and that means his head almost always looks toward the right. We consistently work with him to encourage him to look left..... Well, our little man has found a love for his LEFT thumb!!! WOOT! He has made huge improvement in the last month simply because of this one fact. It's amazing. I'm so happy for him! 

If you've ever had a baby struggle to gain weight, I'm sure you can understand how very awesome it is that Anaius has grown so much that he's far outgrown his 3 month clothing (and maintains a really cute double chin!)

I'm just so incredibly blessed to have this little man as my child. This experience has taught me more patience, advocacy, compassion for others, and more love for all my children than I knew I had in me.

This little soul is such a wonderful one. 

Our goals this month are to continue physical therapy, begin-again speech/feeding therapy. Continue with cranial sacral therapy and enjoy just being a family. As Anaius has begun to giggle with the kids, they are enjoying connecting with him and all look forward to playing! I expect to continue the every-two-hour-with-out-fail pumping schedule until he can master nursing on both sides. Until then, he won't want for milk at all in this home.

I am committed, one day at a time, to stay in tune with what we all need. It's a really fabulous mountain we're climbing! 

Onward, upward.

November Fun!

I cannot believe it's the end of November already. Thanksgiving has come and gone. Where did this month go?! It's been a really great month. We've had some great fun, lots of hard work and are excited to begin decorating for Christmas soon!

Many of our days are spent at home looking a bit like this: 

Daunika has continued her interest in all things pertaining to ancient Egypt but has found a new interest in fashion design. She has checked out many books about it recently and has decided to keep a notebook full of her designs. It's very cool! In this picture she was just coloring on her easel but she can often be found designing something fabulous! 

It's hot cocoa season around here! Seeing these two together never fails to make me smile. Such a good impulse buy don't you think?

This month we celebrated 9 years of marriage! 

Ya know, when you think of it, it's been a crazy 9 years. 5 children, 5 moves, a whole bunch of pets, crossing into another decade together (we've seen our teens, our twenties and now my love has hit his thirties!). In the last 9 years we started college, then quit college. We started a career and decided to change into full business ownership and all it's vulnerable glory! We have likely fought a million times and spent countless hours laughing, talking late into the night. We have changed our faith, core beliefs and religious preferences completely. We learned to be intensely vulnerable with each other to connect in a sacred and protected space together.

We have been SO blessed. I am humbled that his love makes me a stronger woman who strives to be the kind of wife he's proud to call his. <3

November also brought some wild weather!! 

I learned what it looks liken when the clouds dump 8 inches of snow on my old farm house with it's metal roof. We had to enforce strict rules for no one going on the front porch because we were concerned all the snow would fall at once and injure someone. It didn't... it fell in pieces and displayed some really cool icicles! 

But just 10 short days after this 8 inches of snow, we had a record HIGH temp. What did we do? GARDEN!! Of course, if you know me at all, that was assumed right?!

One of my greatest joys in purchasing our first home is planting things that can be enjoyed year after year. Damon picked up a yard of fresh top soil for me as the beginning of my landscaped front surround for the porch. Since we're on a tight schedule with Anaius still, this is all I could manage this month. My awesome bunch of children helped me plant 150 bulbs of tulips and daffodils!

I can't say that anything that went into the ground was straight, organized or well planned but I can say we had so much fun digging in the dirt together and I felt renewed in a way I have missed this fall. I love gardening and working in the dirt grounds me.

Speaking of my little helpers... They've banded together into a goofy pack of children throughout these last 11 weeks. I'm so proud of their solidarity and willingness to help one another. Fear not, there is plenty of sibling squabbles to remind us they are real kids.

Sometimes, it really is the simple things in life that are the best to witness!

It's been a dependable month. Our kids are enjoying weekly dance classes, we've hit the library about every 10 days, we wrapped up co-op for the year and are generally just accomplishing what we need to all around.

Onward to the end of the year race... I swear time speeds up in December!

Shenanigans of late

For those of you not on facebook, we're alive and well around here!

As in well, I mean we are finding a new normal. A different normal. Our normal, for now. 

Work is busy busy busy. Projects that started months ago that are lingering are in the final stages. We are thrilled to mentally "check them off the list". We are thrilled to see our business not just sit but be booked out until December! What a glorious fact indeed.

Around the house, our new normal is paper plates, quick meals and genuinely seeping in gratitude for those who have helped. I was well prepared for having a baby, I had meals prepped and a realistic expectation for a peaceful transition... I wasn't prepared for this new normal but by the blessing of those who have extended their love for us with service, I think I am ready to call this my normal now and have a realistic expectation of what my day will look like!

I'm putting myself through "school". I'm learning so much about muscles, their functions, how they develop and relate to each other for effective use for a lifetime of needing to consume food. I purchased a book that is stretching my brain in all directions. It's not a light reading type book, so when I'm exhausted, I often have to re-read the same page a few times to fully grasp it's text. I'm taking copious amounts of notes. 

And the pictures are awesome! 

Life is continuing to move at lightening speed... Aurora is thrilled with losing her front top tooth (this makes tooth #3 for her) and she is working on getting out her other front tooth. Silly girl!

Years ago there was a point of contention in my marriage.... Nothing huge, just irritating mostly. This point of contention was over laundry. Specifically there was laundry always sitting on the couch, usually folded and waiting to be put away. At that time, I decided that the way to resolve this contention was simple: I went out and bought myself a LAUNDRY couch. I'm not even kidding. I specifically acquired a couch so I could sit laundry on it and fold it and we could have our other couch for sitting. (Oh my poor husband) Well, as a few years passed and I grew into a routine of chores, the couch began to bother me too. In a stunning move, I offed the couch and began to keep up with laundry very well with habit.

Well folks, I'm here to tell you that in this new normal, my familiar couch has returned. Since I consider this temporary, I am not going out to get another couch but for now, I am peacefully accepting that what I am accomplishing with Anaius is far more important than a few months of irritating laundry on my couch. Neither of us seem to care too much either. We're busy mountain climbing. The clothes are clean and folded, but that final step sometimes just doesn't get done. Oh well. 

Realistic expectations for this new normal are critically important to sanity! 

But fear not, I have amazing helpers who are just all too willing to clean the house.... 

When I asked her what she was doing, she replied simply "the window was dirty"...

In other news, my awesome mom-mobile rolled over into a new mileage. And to think, this is our low-miles vehicle, our truck sits with over 350,000. 

I accomplished a MAJOR feat last week.

Let me tell you a simple fact about my life right now - I pump ALL.THE.TIME. To ensure that my baby has enough milk and to re-establish a supply that was badly damaged through stress, I am pumping every 2 hours around the clock. Without fail, I am attached to this machine and with each tiny drop, I am further committed to understanding the complexity of his needs. When Anaius is sound asleep in the middle of the night, I still have to get up.

Since this was my new normal, I knew immediately that to ensure my sanity, I had to find a way OUT of the house. First, I overcame my shame surrounding deep feelings of failing my baby somehow and I asked for help. I asked three safe friends if I could come to their planned gatherings at their homes and find a safe place to pump in their home. All three said yes and I cannot tell you how scared I was that they would say no. I didn't even realize it until they responded.

Well, then there was the logistics of balancing a baby, lugging around a pump, and all that.... Man, this is complicated!

This photo is shared with sincere pride that I have not crumbled. I still get out of the house. I still have friends who love and support me. I am finding my new normal. 

That's me, sitting on the floor of a friends daughters room, with my sleeping baby shifted comfortably to my back and I'm pumping. 

I still felt bad a bit. At both places, I was the last to leave and I didn't want to feel like I was imposing my trial on their schedules. I'm working through that. I am having to check my emotional fears and realize that adults can and do express their thoughts without me placing them in their heads for them.

We're also successfully finding a schedule that allows us to breathe fresh air. Getting out and walking the dog. Seeing the blue sky. Being the new normal for us.

I'm also realistic that if I'm awake every 2 hours (3 hours max at night) around the clock, I need to nap.
And apparently my big girls decided it was OK to take a picture of me while sound asleep.... At least I'm not snoring or drooling on him :)

There is so much to say, so little time. 

My alarm is ringing on my phone - off I go to go pump!

<3