sage advice from the future

If I could sit down and have a talk with myself from approximately this time last year, there are a few key points I would be sure to cover. They would go something like this: (in no particular order)

In about a year, you're going to need to figure out how to put a diaper on a baby who is standing up (and moving around quite a bit). It's not easy, so you might want to start practicing now.

Best mothering advice ever: This too shall pass. That goes for both the good and the bad habits of your baby. When your baby is going through a really rough stage, know that it will not be that way forever. Find comfort in that knowledge. When your baby is going through a truly amazing stage, beware... it will not last forever. Cherish it.

Do NOT freak out about making sure your baby knows how to put himself to sleep in his own crib at the measly age of 3 months. Even if he learns this trait at that time refer to my previous piece of advice and realize that it's completely worthless to waste a single moment of worry over this. Give it a few months and then we'll talk.

Feed your baby from bottles. Regularly. Do not be afraid of formula. Do not form any negative opinions about pumping. Your breastfeeding only mantra is going to come back and bite you in the butt BIG TIME. Heed my warnings.

When you get back to San Diego, don't give all of your pre-pregnancy clothes to Good Will. It might seem unlikely, but you're going to lose all that pregnancy weight and more... and if you give those clothes away you're going to be stuck wearing the same 3 shirts all summer long because you just don't have the time or the desire for a major shopping trip.

Some doctors are going to scare the living shit out of you... again and again and again. Your baby is fine. will be fine. See below.

Keep your sense of humor. You are in for the challenge of your life, and it's going to go much more smoothly if you take things in stride and figure out how to keep a smile on your face.

When Mike gets to South Carolina to pick up the keys to your house -- don't take the first one they give you. For serious, my friend. Know much about fleas? No? And you don't want to either.

I probably shouldn't be telling you any of this since all of those time traveling movies seem to stress the importance of not changing the past and all that jazz, but since I've already done some damage, I might as well tell you... you are going to have the most gorgeous little boy on the face of the planet. He's going to be so well-behaved and sweet natured that he is sure to spoil you for any future babies. You will lose hours upon hours of your life just staring in awe at this amazing little guy. You are one lucky lady. Enjoy.

Oh. and P.S. - You're going to be in labor forEVER so put your feet up and try to get as comfortable as you can because you are in it for the long haul, girl.

this time last year...

cyber dress shopping fun

Soon after I hit publish on that last post, and after I received input from my sister and hubby, I stumbled upon this dress.

and fell head over heels in love.

Sadly, this dress was not available in my size. :( So I ordered it in a size smaller and to be safe ordered this one in my size.

I don't like the shoulder decoration on this one as much, and it seems to be a different fit than the other one (though that could just have to do with who's wearing it).

I am super excited for these dresses to arrive in the mail tomorrow.

But while looking for pictures for this blog post, I came upon my favorite dress in a just released color:

and my heart dropped to my feet because OMG I LOVE THIS ONE EVEN MORE! That color is just to die for. *sigh. I suppose I could return both of the other dresses and get this one if I want to. There is still time. We shall see.

Oh. dress shopping online is so much more fun than it is in the store (which is generally very depressing and flourescent light-ish). Hopefully the fun will continue when the dresses arrive on my doorstep tomorrow. I will be anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Also, I just adore the Suzi Chin for Maggy Boutique dresses from Nordstrom. Check her out! http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/suzi-chin-for-maggy-boutique?origin=brandindex

Decisions Decisions

This year's Marine Corps Birthday Ball is right around the corner, and I am very excited. We don't get to go every year because of deployments, but it is always a super fun occassion. I mean, who doesn't love to get really dressed up, eat good food, drink it up, and enjoy some lovely company?

My birthday is only 2 days after the Marine Corps' birthday, so we're generally celebrating both events in the same week. This year, with Sawyer, we are going to celebrate my 30th birthday together the same night as the ball. I really don't think I could manage two nights away from my precious baby -- just the one night might do me in as it is. This year's ball is at a resort in Hilton Head, SC, and I have spent countless hours on the web searching for that perfect dress.

Yes. I have two dresses in my closet from previous balls already. BUT, since it IS my 30th birthday and all, I really want a new dress to make me feel young and beautiful.  I'm having trouble, though.




DRESS 1: right now, this dress is my front runner. This is the only color it comes in, though, and I'm not sold on it.



DRESS 2: I spent a good while considering this dress, but in the end decided that the material doesn't seem very forgiving.

DRESS 3: I've also flirted with the idea of going shorter (there have always been a few girls at the recent usmc balls with a shorter style dress.)

DRESS 4: I think I love this dress (probably in a navy blue, though) but then when I look more closely I am not sure about all of the fringes on the top of the dress. It looks kind of messy, no?

DRESS 5: loved this dress at first, but going back and forth about whether this neckline would flatter me.

DRESS 6: a knee length, silver version of this dress was my front runner for quite some time. I love the longer sleeves and the shiny dress - but if I'm going to go shorter, this version is definitely TOO short, and the other one isn't on the website anymore, so I am SAD. :(
(all of these dresses are nabbed from nordstrom.com am I going to get into some sort of copyright trouble for pasting them here? hope not.)

It's pretty clear that I'm going to have to do some serious time trying on dresses in the store, but in the meantime, opinions are welcome. Which style was your favorite? Also, I am seriously considering the idea of a navy dress. What color shoes does one wear with a navy dress, anyway?

Thanks for your help!

Reality Junky

I have a confession. I am a reality nut.

I am pretty sure I can trace it back to Reality Bites - my absolute favorite movie in junior high. This movie also gets credit for the video camera I purchased in 7th grade (with the money my aunt very generously left me in her will) and the subsequent dozens of videos chronicling my teenage years with my besties.  (I really need to put those videos on dvd... stat... lest they be lost forever).

I was completely obsessed with The Real World for years and years. Back when it wasn't quite so.... trashy and was really an experiment in sociology. In fact, it was my life's goal for quite some time to actually be on The Real World.

I am also completely enthralled with the "reality" genre of books. My absolute favorite books of all time are true stories... I think that's why I like them so much. They're real. I am amazed by the things that people have encountered, survived. The Glass Castle = the greatest book of all time. My jaw was on the floor through 98% of that book, and it's one of the few I've read over and over and over again only to be continually shocked and amazed.

...which brings me to my latest obsession. Sister Wives. Have you watched this show? I am totally captivated by it. Last year when I was pregnant, I spent an entire weekend watching every episode of the first season on TLC on demand. I couldn't look away. The new season recently started, and apparently it's so much on my mind that I had a dream that I was one of the wives in a polygamist family, and I was trying to get my husband's attention the entire dream. It was terrible! I definitely think the idea behind polygamy is completely bogus, and I can't say that I think these people are doing their kids any favors by bringing them up in this lifestyle.... but... there's something so innocent and sincere about these people and their kids. It's intriguing.

My other TLC reality fave is The Little Couple. LOVE THEM.

I admit I also have been known to frequent such classless shows as The Real Housewives of (fill in blank because I watch them all), Keeping up with the Kardashians (everything that happens in that show is so obviously staged, but it still sucks me in), Teen Mom (which is completely depressing, but it's one of those car accident kind of things where I just can't look away), and the absolute worst of the worst..... nevermind. I just can't admit to watching that, but you can probably guess...

I am a snoop by nature. I love to know about people's lives. Yes. That's right. I'm a reality junky and not afraid to admit it.

Blessed

A month ago at Sawyer's 9 month check up with his new pediatrician here in South Carolina, the doctor plugged Sawyer's stats into his computer as though Sawyer was a 15-month-old.
Before this mistake was discovered, we all had quite a panic when we found that not only were Sawyer's weight and height still hanging out below the 5th percentile on the chart, his head circumference, which had been holding steady at the 25th percentile from birth, had dropped to zero percentile.

This particular pediatrician was not prepared for us to walk into his office that day. He was not prepared for the failure to thrive diagnosis, the in-patient stay in the hospital, or Sawyer's supposed stats.

He needed some time to discuss what was going on with his colleagues.  He sent us out to lunch for an hour.

During this hour I believed that there was something seriously wrong with my baby. At that point, I knew for sure that he was eating and eating well. I believed that his hospital stay was all for naught - the reflux diagnosis a sham, and I saw before me what was certain to be a long, difficult road.

I was scared, but ready.

The sobs of anguish I let out on my way home from the doctor in Poway after Sawyer had his attempt at a blood-draw. The utter terror I felt making the decision to take him in-patient and walking him into the pediatrics ward in San Diego. These feelings were gone. In their place was strength. calm. fear, yes. sadness, yes.

But I was ready to take on whatever that day held. Sawyer is a brave little soldier, this I knew for certain. Together we had been through much, and it was terrible and not as bad as I thought it would be both at the same time.

And just as I set my shoulders firmly in the direction of strength and survival, Mike plugged Sawyer's numbers into a website on his iphone and found some very different percentiles than what the doctor had told us only 40 minutes before.

When we got back, Mike and the doctor looked at the doctor's chart together, and Mike noticed that it was a chart for a 15-month-old.

I almost collapsed with joy.

My uncle later commented that he was shocked that this particular doctor didn't get a solid punch to the face for his mistake. Instead, we were both just filled to the brim with relief and happiness. For a solid hour we truly believed that what Sawyer had was one of those really bad things the doctors had ruled out at the hospital. Thankfully that wasn't the case. We were ready to face it if it was, but it wasn't. Thank God.

The Military Makes Planning Impossible

I just wasted quite a bit of my life trying to decide on a new template for my blog via blogger. I'm not happy with it, but I can't waste another second of this day doing this so I'm just going to move on...

*ahem. shall I start again?
What I meant to say was...

There are many not-so-easy things about being married to the marine corps, but the one that gives me the most trouble is not being able to plan ahead.

Example: Mike was told before we moved here that he should take all of his leave before he arrived because the new guys get the worst schedules and there wouldn't be any time for vacation.  For this reason, I told my parents that they were going to be visiting us this Thanksgiving holiday. If Mike did get Thursday off, he certainly wouldn't get much more than that, I reasoned.

When he started shadowing and learning his job, his buddy told him that they are getting off from the day before Thanksgiving until the day after New Years. Wow! My mind started reeling instantly. So many plans to make, so little time.

The day that I finally wrote emails to my family announcing that we would be going north for Thanksgiving this year, Mike came home and told me that only that particular company gets vacation from Thanksgiving until New Years and there's no guarantee that he will stay in that particular company...

...

How many times have I made plans only to have to change them later? How many times has my family hung in limbo waiting for my GO AHEAD to buy plane tickets or plan an event? How many times have I simply said, "Don't plan around US. We have NO IDEA what will be going on in our lives then."

(thankfully, he did find out only a week later that he will, in fact, be staying in the company with the awesome holiday vacation schedule. I am excited, but I'm keeping my cool over this one. I don't want to be too shocked when the text comes in stating that he was misinformed...)

....

Also. I was super excited to go to our town's annual shrimp festival as a family this weekend. Mike is still shadowing, so his hours are pretty relaxed compared to what they're going to be. He gets home at a reasonable hour every day. He's even been able to sleep in once or twice. We both figured that since this festival is going on for 2 straight days, we wouldn't have a problem figuring out a time to check it out. Yesterday afternoon, though, I received a text.

He was assigned to do a command investigation that is due promptly Monday morning. He didn't get home until only an hour before Sawyer's bedtime last night (translation: no festival) and he hopes to be home today in time to be able to make it to the festival this evening.... but no promises.

Plans. Hopes. Expectations.
not for this military wife.

Words and Feelings

There are pictures of Sawyer that are difficult for me to look at now. He looks so skinny. So tiny. It hurts to see them. I think to myself, how did I not know? How did I miss this? How?

I remember the first time someone mentioned to me that he looked small. It was my dear 75-year-old friend from the school I taught at. She picked him up and said, "He's small for his age, isn't it?"

"No." I immediately responded. "He's long and lean according to his pediatrician."

But her words echoed inside my mind for days. weeks. She was, afterall, mother to 8 kids and grandmother to many more. Wouldn't she know? It struck a nerve. Maybe I did know there was something off with his growth then and I just wasn't ready to admit it. I don't know.

I do know that the words people have used to describe him since the hospital have often been stabs straight to the heart. "Oh. What a little PEANUT!" someone once said. 

"He looks just like Michael when he was a baby," explained Mike's sister to her husband. "Except Michael was much chubbier. Imagine a chubby Sawyer and that was Michael."

These comments struck me right to the core. They meant nothing by them. They couldn't possibly have known how sensitive I was and how carefully they needed to tread so as not to hurt my feelings.

So when we took Sawyer in for his endocrinology appointment and the doctor walked in and immeidately proclaimed him to look just fine AND the lab tech drawing his blood went on and on and ON about his chubby thighs, I sang on the inside.

When we introduced him to our new neighbor, she exclaimed, "What a big boy!"

Mike and I exchanged a look of stunned silence. "We don't hear that very often," Mike responded.

"Really?" she said. "My kids were all tiny, skinny little things. Look at those legs!"

I could have hugged her.

.......................................................
But it isn't over yet. Maybe this will be an ongoing, forever struggle with my little man. He doesn't eat enough formula. Often he makes up for that by eating a lot of "solids", but not always. I still panic and fret and mentally bang my head against a wall.

Sure he's doing fine now, but he could easily get back to that place. That unhealthy place of low percentiles and frightening statistics. He comes back anemic in every blood test he's ever had, and I know. I know it's because he doesn't eat enough of what he needs to eat and that's the nutrition-packed-formula. I feel helpless and afraid. I feel alone in this battle. No one can help. Of all the doctors we have seen, no one has been able to give me the magic answer. Sometimes Sawyer just refuses, and there's nothing anyone can do.

I always knew that motherhood would be heartbreaking and challenging, but I never fathomed the extent of it.

It's tough.
It's the love that makes it so difficult, though. It's because he is my world that I struggle so much with his eating and growing problems. I so desperately just want him to be healthy.

He is happy, though. Always has been. And for as often as I fret and want to bang my head up against a wall with frustration I laugh and smile 50 times more. It's an interesting business - this parenting stuff. Interesting indeed.