Enough is enough

Time for this girl to learn ...

My heart didn’t break into a thousand pieces after he left. Instead, I realized all the things he didn’t do. He didn’t want to hear my stories. He didn’t ask me questions. He didn’t smile when I was talking to him. He didn’t hug me out of the blue to make me feel good. His hugs were always a preamble to something else and after he was gone, I wondered if he ever knew me at all.
… Diane Les Becquets, Love, Cajun Style

In centers

I dreamed a dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zczfw9bdVQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living

missing...

Pandora has it out for me....


Today is not my best of days.
But i suppose it isn't my worst of days.

Hoping the sun starts to shine again soon.

Ache

I hate how fatigue can interfere with general coping mechanisms.
I have a migraine the size of New England. And an ache bigger than the planet.
All I want is to be in bed.
And not be missing.

I need to go save some babies instead.
Still work for the weary.

Above the Waves

Today is a new month. I had great hopes for January. But the tragically devastating loss of a dear friend on New Year's Day has sent my little family reeling and spinning off its stable axis.

Today is a new month, but the loss is still so great. So many unanswered questions makes it hard to overcome. We feel not only her loss daily, but also her presence, the two playing tug-of-war in our hearts. The weight is still so heavy to bear.

There are nightmares.
There are tears once the sun sinks low, and the little is asleep.
There is anger and confusion and anxiety.
There is the weight.  The weight is. so. much.

I am white-knuckling the rope to my anchor-sister so she doesn't slip beneath the waves. There will be no drowning. There will be no more drowning.

I haven't forgotten the good that January has brought: the fresh starts, the new plans, the love. It is the sunshine to focus on when the days are clouded.

I will keep our heads above the water. And this grief will subside like the tide. We will roll with it.

February is a new month, and there are calmer seas ahead.

my delicious little elf

What do you get when you pair $1 leggings from target with some froggy boots and the cutest cloth diaper ever?

This is what....

Some of you may think it's cruel to dress your toddler up like an elf...but man.....she is so delicious! How can I not? besides....she had more fun than I did. :)

I know I haven't posted in forever. But life is sad here in my little gingerbread house. And I have been trying to be the very best mommy that I know how to be.

And that requires $1 target leggings. and froggy boots. and silly photo shoots. and gingerbread cookies while cozying up under our favorite blanket watching Elmo's Happy Holidays video. Over and over. And over.

When I'm with my littlest elf, things here aren't so sad. And everything is merry and bright.

So Merry Christmas....

Enjoy your holidays, whatever it may be, with full bellies and new memories. Lots of love, overflowing hearts, and laughter. I know we will.

And may all your Christmases be white...

MUAH!

she loved him...

my favorite poem.....

she loved him all her life

and when she thought that he might die

she tied her wrists to his at night

so that his pulse would not flutter

away from her

suddenly

and leave her

stranded.

the author's name escapes me. i have loved this poem since seeing it tucked away in a margin of my high school's freshman year world lit book. i remember how my soul sunk when i read these words, and i would find myself returning to it for many mid-class daydreams. i have written it and rewritten it in the margins of homework, papers, scribblings and journals.

it is still my favorite. of all time.

i don't know anything about this little story. this little author.

who was he?

was he her lover? an unrequited love? and when she learned of his fate, did she rush to his side? so that he would know that she had always loved him? never forgotten? did he love her still?

was he her devoted husband? did he give her violets on their wedding day? did he make her waffles on sundays? did she raise his babies, all grown now? was he a young man, dying in his prime? or old and wrinkled with a life well lived?

Was he her daddy? was it just the two of them now that their matriarch had passed away? did she remember him promising her sweets before dinner, that she could do anything, the moon and the stars and everything beyond?

sometimes, with better known authors, you can discover these trinkets of information...but i have never tried. i like not knowing. i like to imagine....

she is old and weathered.

sitting at his bedside. white walls. white linen. white flowers at his side.

she lays with her grayed head on his chest, and her thin, delicate fingers interlaced with his. she is holding tightly. so tightly.

a fine red thread wrapped three times and tied at their wrists...

it doesn't matter so much who the man is to her. their love is otherworldly. i always imagine this the same. the same way, every time.

i have many otherworldly loves of my life. my great loves. i imagine that i will do the same as this woman, tethering their souls to mine, for as long as they will have it. to never be alone. to never be stranded.

and when it is time for them to leave, i imagine that my pulse will slow with theirs, thready and weak. and we can go together, peacefully and quiet into the light. with hearts full, and long lives well lived.

what is your favorite poem?

11 Month Newsletter

Avonlea,

You are 11 months old. Holy cow! I can't believe that in 4 short weeks, you will be a year! Where did this year go?? We were so wrapped up in you that we hardly even noticed the changing of the seasons, the increase in grey hairs, and the newly emerging fine lines around our sleep deprived eyes.

You have had another growth spurt since our last newsletter, suddenly out growing all of your 9 month clothes and fitting perfectly into 12 months clothing. As we speak, we have just returned from a shopping spree at our favorite baby consignment shop in town, grabbing tons of great summer finds for you for our trip to Martha's Vineyard. Daddy can't wait to show you around his favorite little island, and I can't wait to go there for the first time with you, my love!

A month ago, we started taking Saturday morning swim lessons at our local pool. You weren't as interested in the "swim" part of swim class as you were in the "class" part. You waved and dove at the other babies, smiling and saying "heeeey!" while waving your arms furiously. Eventually, we got you to focus on the task at hand...and now you LOVE to swim, and will even put your face in the water to blow bubbles. We have one week left of this swim class series, and then we plan on definitely signing up and continuing this great class. We have made some good friends here, and have fun every saturday! We know that you will love the water when we head to the vineyard, and if you are anything like your mommy and daddy when we were kids, we will have to beg and plead to get you out of the water!

You started this month cautiously standing at furniture and letting go, crashing to the floor only to giggle and get back up again. And now, as I write this, you walk all over the house. The transformation from "crawler" to "walker" has been amazingly adorable. And tonight, at Grandma's house, as she stomped behind threatening to "get you", I do believe I saw you begin to RUN to get away! You now prefer walking to crawling, and I imagine it is because crawling just takes far too long now!

When last we left, you were giving us a run for our money in the sleep department. And With great persistence, great love, and of course, the Sleep Lady Shuffle, you now go to sleep all on your own, easily, and without tears. You surprised the both of us with how easily you taught yourself, and made us realize that it wasn't really YOUR fault to begin with. We taught you to need our help to go to sleep, and we had to teach you to learn to fall asleep on your own. If I only had a dollar for every time we have said "well...now we know for next time!".

(don't get too excited....."next" time is years away....) :)

February was a very challenging month for our little family, and with great sadness, we have all gained another guardian angel. You did not know your Daddy's Nana, but we have learned of her great love for all of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and her incredible culinary skills. Although it seems that we have been surrounded by loss in this past year, you have shown us that when we fall, we get back up. I know that our angels, our Nana, our Babci, our Marge, are there holding your hand as you take your first steps, and I know that you are surrounded in their love.

Earlier in the month, we went to your friend Sara's first birthday party, where you got to eat your first cupcake. I love seeing you with other babies, especially Kylie, Cailin, and Sara...it is amazing to me how different you are with each of them....which personality traits emerge depending on who you are spending time with. I love how you buzz around, and barely have time to stop and give your momma a kiss, because you are far too busy playing with your friends. I love that when you see them, you toddle over to them and give them big sloppy kisses. I am excited to say that in september, you will have a new little friend, and we can hardly wait to meet them...until then, I know that you will share your guardian angels....not that we could keep them away! Congrats, D&D!

This week begins the furious party planning for your first birthday....and like your amazing personality, it will be fun, bright, and full of smiles, cuddles and sloppy wet kisses.

So, let the party planning begin!

We love you, muffin!

lions on lambs

So often, I take photographs and am frustrated with the outcome....they either aren't as beautiful as I had imagined them in my mind, something was out of focus, my subject moved too quickly....the list goes on...

Tonight, my goal was to realize the beauty in my own mistakes. There is great beauty here, in this every day life of mine. This raw, real, every day life.

I feel like this photograph is the story of my life lately....She's growing up so fast. She is my storm, and I am her calm.

February was a busy month. And it was easy to get lost in the to-do lists and must-get-dones, sadness and uncertainty. I'm embracing March and what it has to offer....hopefully gorgeous signs of spring, warmer winds, and a little less of the sad chaos that February blew onto us.

So welcome, March. In like a lamb....let's go out like lions, shall we? Bring it.

4 month newsletter

Avonlea,
You are now 4 months old. At your 4 month check-up, you were 11 pounds 4 ounces and 22.5 inches long, still very petite for your age. You are still in your Newborn and 0-3 month clothing, and will not outgrow them for quite some time, as most of them are still baggy on your little body. I can count 5 mini chub rolls on your legs, and I can’t wait until they get meatier and I can really take a good nibble out of them. Your eyelashes are even longer now, and “Auntie” Amy thinks that I put mascara on them before I bring you over….Maybe it’s Maybelline. This month, we can’t get you to stop talking if we tried. You are very verbal, and everyone seems to think that you are going to learn to talk very early, as you watch our mouths very closely and respond back to us with like-sounded coos. You drool like no other baby that I have ever seen, and if I had a dollar for every person that told me you were teething, I could send you to an Ivy League school! Alas, I can see the teeth beneath your pink gums, but none have cut through yet. You giggle and laugh at your Daddy and me, especially when he blows raspberries on your belly before bed, and when I tickle your neck with my fingers. Sometimes you chuckle at us for no reason at all.
Last month, you would just barely pick up your toys if we placed them in your hands, but this month you dive for them, first grabbing them with one hand, and now with two. One day this week, you woke up and realized that your two hands were connected to the same body. You clenched them together, looking at them as though you had never seen hands before, and you have used them in conjunction with each other ever since, mainly to bring toys to your drooly mouth, or pulling our faces in for slobbery kisses.
You have grown into quite the independent lady (thank god!), and we can put you down for long stretches of time. You LOVE your excersaucer, diving forward to play with the toys attached to it, and Daddy configures crazy dangling toy-setups from the arches along the top of it for you to enjoy. When we first broke out this insane little baby-entertainer, your little feet didn’t even touch the ground, but now your tippy toes can reach! You also LOVE your doorway jumper, and prefer to swing in it, swirling around and around depending on where we are in the house. More recently, you have begun to bounce, and love it! You spend most of your awake time in these toys, giving us time to get things done around here!
This month, Daddy and I went away for a night, leaving you with Auntie Sarah while we went to a wedding in NY. With two instructions in mind, 1. Feed baby every three hours and 2. Put baby down for nap after she’s been up for 1.5 hrs, we left. It was a great break for us, and Sarah had a great time with you without any problems. You watched Grease, went for walks, took lots of naps, and played until you were pooped. A week later, Daddy left for a mini-vacation to Pittsburgh where you and I had a blast visiting friends, shopping, and catching up on much needed mommy-baby time.
These mini-vacations were a much needed break from the sadness that we had all been through earlier this month. Anyone who knew our Babci knew that love was the center of her world. She had a surreal capacity for loving all things: animals, family, friends, knick-knacks and children. You were one of her favorite people on earth, and as soon as she set her blue eyes upon you, she needed to hold you and surround you in her love. She had a long and beautiful life full of just that, and left this great earth on her own terms, in her own way, sending us all off with her own advice on how to bring more and more love into our lives.
There are no words for the magnitude of how much she will be missed. But, I know that our Babci-doodle is up there, dancing with Dzidzia in her pretty blue gown and watching over us all. We promise that you will grow up surrounded in her love, as she would have wanted. We promise to always love you, a bushel and a peck….a bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.

We love you, baby girl!

There are angels among us.

I have been an ICU nurse for over 3 years now. Unfortunately, I have seen many kids die on our unit. Most of the time, these kids were born to die....meaning that from the moment they were born, they had multiple health issues that would inevitably, invariably lead to their demise. Fewer passed away from acute issues, like traumas or sudden cardiac arrest. I've lost patients that I have cared for, some for a short amount of time, and some for a very long time. But I had never lost a patient on my shift. Until last week. :(
"E" was a one week old baby that was admitted to our unit with probable seizure activity. He was perfectly healthy, perfectly normal until one night, his parents noticed that he wasn't eating well. When he started to have a seizure, they brought him to the ER and then he was transferred to our unit, where I admitted him. I took care of him for 3 weeks, before unfortunate blood tests ruled that he had a fatal error of metabolism (meaning that his body couldn't handle waste products efficiently, and would leave him neurologically devastated). His parents lovingly decided to make him comfort measures only, removing him from the ventilator, and allowing him to die a peaceful, dignified death.
I took care of him the night that he passed away, giving him morphine, and watching his breathing slow. And when he died, I took him from his grandmother's arms and bathed his little body one last time, covering him with yummy smelling lotion, leaving him smelling like a baby and not like our hospital. His death was very hard on me, because when I looked at him in that big bed, I saw my own daughter, grey and limp.
I think that with time, health care professionals become jaded, not that they don't still empathize with families when they lose their loved ones, that is inevitable when you work in a children's hospital, but there is a certain amount of distance that you have to put between you and the kids that you care for. When I was a nursing student, every patient's death was devastating, every death profound. And the longer you are there, the more you start to realize that certain kids really are better off dead than living the life that they are living, and so it is easier to justify death.
After "E" passed away, I held him and wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, as I had never lost a patient on my shift before. Thankfully, three other nurses who saw my flat-lined monitor came to my rescue, silently warming the water, changing the linens and rubbing lotion over him as my tears fell for him and his family. When I think back to that night, I imagine that those three girls floated in with long, wispy white gowns, like angels to take care of the two of us. And I am reminded of the scene in Les Miserables where the women sing and clean up the fallen soldiers after the revolution.
Somehow, having Avonlea has filed down my jagged, jaded edges and now I am just a pile of mush all over again. Empathy has a whole new meaning.
My heart breaks for "E's" family, and I hope that they can find some peace in his passing. I know that with my amazing friends, I have found my peace. Thank you, my angels.

3 Month Newsletter

Avonlea, today you are 3 months old. This has been a challenging and rewarding month

You are now just about 9lbs and 21 inches long, and have aaaaalmost outgrown all of your preemie clothing and have triumphantly grown into most newborn sizes. Proportionately, your waist is tiny, and newborn pants sadly leave too huge of a gap to wear out in public, but with your fluffiest of cloth diapers (a sunny yellow Happy Heiny), we might be able to pull it off! Your eyelashes go on for miiiles now, and get darker and darker every day, gorgeously feathering your aqua moon-crater eyes.

This month you have begun “talking” up a storm. You are most vocal in the mid mornings when we coo and laugh and “oooooo” all over the place, your tiny pink circle of a mouth letting drool dribble to your chin and down your onesie. You respond to my questions with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, as though you are actually considering what I’ve just told you to be the most interesting thing you’ve ever heard, and usually jabber back at me “eeeeeoooooooaaaaa”. And it is the most lovely sound. Giggles are much more frequent than last month, especially when you are being changed, and we talk to the painted pictures of a hatching chick above your changing table.

You are phenomenal at eating now, and although it doesn’t seem that you are eating much more than you had been, you continue to gain weight, and so we know that all is well in that department. We are much more comfortable with breast feeding, and you fall asleep fairly quickly at our night time feeding, preferring to snuggle in close to mommy rather than a bottle, and slip into dreamland. You are excellent at sleeping through the night and last from 9pm-530am, and stay in our bed for the rest of the night for prime mommy and daddy snuggle time. I know that eventually I will have to start staying awake for your early morning feeding to place you back in your own bed, but for now, there is nothing sweeter than feeling your breath on my skin, and your hand tickling my belly.

This month you started holding toys, you aren’t very good at it, as you prefer to keep your little hands clenched tight, so we usually have to pry them open and slip the toy in….but a few times you have grabbed at things on your own. You are becoming more aware of your uncontrollable limbs, and you are humerous to watch. You have also begun to love being carried around with daddy in the Jeep carrier, looking out and taking in the sights. You are mesmerized by the TV and we have already begun to be careful with how much exposure you get. You also are allowing us to put you down for longer stretches of time, I think I got 45 minutes out of you today while I rearranged your dresser drawers! Every day, you cry less and less, and smile more and more.

We had our first night out without you, the fantastically fun family wedding of Mia and David. And you had a grand ol’ time with your Baba and Grand-pa-pa, and didn’t give them much trouble at all, besides all of the inquisitive mustache pulling. It was nice to be non-mommy and non-daddy for a night…although I must confess, when I asked your Daddy if he would call to check in on you, not even 2 hours after we’d left, he already had. It choked me up to see how on the ball he was, but then again, he always is when it’s about you.

Despite your widening smiles, our little family was saddened by two tragedies this month. We lost a dear, dear friend to your Grammy-mother, Marge DiTullio. Although you will never remember meeting her when you were only 8 weeks old, she sure adored you. Thankfully, you were still so tiny, and she was able to hold her though her body was weakened by her failing heart. She was larger than life, crass and opinionated, but diligently respectful and easily one of the funniest women I have ever known. She beat the odds, living far longer than I think many of us expected her to, and living life to the fullest right up to the end, sipping on her beloved bubbly orange soda. You will hear Auntie Sarah and Mommy speak of her often when you grow up, and of all of the funny things she used to say and do, because we will tell you of her life and her loves, and carry her Christmas traditions and family into our homes. She will be missed forever and ever.

A week after we lost Marge, you were admitted to the hospital for scaring the life out of me. While visiting your future BFFs, Kylie and Cailin (and Amy), you went gray and limp in my arms. We took you to the Pediatricians office, who had us admitted to the hospital to monitor you, and after one terrible night in the hospital, we were discharged with a “clean-ish” bill of health, and a prescription for anti-reflux medications. That one night in the hospital rocked your little world, and it took us nearly 3 weeks to fully recover and return to your previous eating and sleeping habits. Thankfully you haven’t had another episode like that one, but it certainly prompted us to buy a special monitor to help us all sleep a little better at night. Especially since my maternity leave has come to an end.

Although I am grateful and excited to go back to work and my friends and I am sad to leave your little body at night, I know that you are safe and thriving with your Daddy. So far, it hasn’t been easy on him, and I hope that the two of you can come to terms with me being gone and move on to your own special bedtime routine for the nights that I cannot be with you to nurse and snuggle.


And so I write this from work, monitors beeping in the background, and vital signs waiting to be taken. Although these babies will never be as important to me as you are, I have to go and feed their little bellies and keep them safe at night. So sleep tight, my sweet babe….Daddy’s got this one. “I gotta go!”