Dan worked all day Saturday and I felt bad his weekend was so short. I wished we could spend more time together. How about almost two days in a tiny hospital room watching our baby struggling to breathe? I do not recommend this as an activity for couple bonding. Adam came down with a fever on Sunday that reached 102. I took him to the doctor the next day and they diagnosed infections in both ears and sent us home with a prescription for antibiotics. That night he started sounding congested and had a lot of trouble sleeping. By morning he was wheezing so I called the doctor’s office and when they heard him they told me to come in immediately. I was still in my pajamas so I threw on some clothes, ran a comb through my hair, and bundled him into the car. The doctor took a listen and started him on oxygen, then called an ambulance for a trip to the hospital. It was a pretty bad case of the croup. They had to give him an additional breathing treatment in the ambulance and three more once we were in the emergency room. It’s pretty scary to watch paramedics strapping your tiny child to a huge ambulance gurney; you realize this is for real. It was never life threatening but he was a pretty sick little boy. We were admitted and I sat in a rocker for hours in my dirty jeans and stringy hair watching the monitor numbers rise and fall with each breath. He started to improve pretty quickly and by yesterday morning he was bouncing around trying to play with all the buttons on the bed. His appetite reappeared today and he’s got a twinkle in his eye again. Whew.
Be careful what you wish for
Dr. Destructo
Raising boys! Aieee! Is it seriously going to be this way from now on? Adam’s not crawling yet but he has figured out how to scoot around on his bum. He leans forward and pulls with his hands while kicking wildly with his feet, he looks like a crab. We’ve now started referring to it as crabbing and we’ll tell him to “crab on over here” and get whatever he’s wanting. So movement - yay! Though we’ll probably get in trouble for encouraging it when his therapist comes next week because she really wants him to crawl. I do too, but he gets so upset when we try to get him into crawling position. He collapses into tears and sobs and then wipes snot all over my carpet. We obviously have a way to go with the crawling so I’ll take crabbing for now. Now that he can move, he’s everywhere and in to everything. And he’s rough! Lots rougher than my girls were. Toddler toys the girls played with that we’ve been saving for years in the basement have been quickly dispatched to that great toy box in the sky. Board books have been torn apart, doors and windows have been snapped off of houses and barns, electronics have been smashed, and stuffed animals have been horribly maimed. And it’s not just his toys. He’s been singularly responsible for the destruction of several containers of eyeshadow (mine), a pair of sunglasses (mine), some magazines (Dan’s), and a My Little Pony Sit ‘N Spin display stand (Mia’s). Dan has started calling him the Tasmanian Devil because he crabs through the house like whirling dervish destroying everything in his path. I’ve been sensitive to the whole “nature vs. nurture” debate since we had Adam and I do find myself treating him differently than I did the girls. When they bumped their heads or fell while learning to stand I’d coo and cuddle them until they felt better. With Adam I find myself telling him to be tough and when I notice the difference, I hate myself for it. But he is tougher than they were and I don’t know if it’s because he’s just that way or because we expect it of him. Either way, I fear for us when he finally learns to walk. Thanks, everyone for your kind comments about the baby. My due date is January 13 which means if this one comes as early as Adam did, I’ll have a Christmas baby. Not really looking forward to that possibility but if it happens, it happens. There’s nothing we can do about it now. (Shoulda thought of that a few months ago and done the math a little better, eh?) I did some first level genetic screening in July, mostly because I’m 35 and birth defect risks increase quite a bit at that age. Of course we’d accept and love a disabled child just as much as we do the others, but I wanted to be prepared. It doesn’t help that the paperwork I’m getting from my doctors and insurance company justify the reason for the screening as “advanced maternal age.” Phooey. I have a tween hitting puberty, I don’t need anything else making me feel old. The tests came back normal and our risk for Downs Syndrome dropped from 1/60 to 1/2400. So things are looking good so far. My next ultrasound is scheduled for August 29 and we’ll find out the gender. I hope it’s a boy for Adam’s sake so he can have a buddy but I won’t be disappointed if it’s a girl either. I’m not quite ready to give up the dress up, princess, twirly dress thing and Amy and Mia are definitely too old for most of that.
Blessed
In spite of all the financial turmoil and stress we’ve endured in the past three years, I am still overwhelmed by my blessings. I know it’s a blog no-no to write endlessly about how wonderful one’s children are (and someday I swear I’ll return to a wider variety of topics) but right now I’m just so in love with my kids. They give me so much to be grateful for! There’s this - And this - And this - And this - Baby number four, due mid January! We haven’t quite decided yet if we’re incredibly brave or incredibly stupid since Adam will only be 20 months old when the baby is born. I can’t imagine how I’ll mange four children, but I didn’t know how I’d cope with one, then two, then three so things will work out. We’re likely to have plenty of days that totally suck, but I know we’ll have more good days than bad. This baby represents the culmination of some intensely spiritual moments where we realized with absolute certainty that God had more spirits destined for our home. Not just one, but two. We knew Adam needed a buddy and from the moment he was born we felt the void that meant our family was not yet complete. However, this is definitely our last. I have a little countdown clock running in my head and it’s a good feeling to know that this is my last time dealing with morning sickness, my last time going through childbirth, my last time . . . (fill in the blank). I’m sure at some point I’ll feel wistful and a little baby hungry again (probably when my youngest is 30) but right now I’m really really happy to glimpse a light at the end of the vomit/weight gain/stretch mark tunnel.
About my mid-life crises starting earlier than planned
Amy is growing up way too fast for my comfort level. She’s almost as tall as me, she eats more than I do, and her shoes are only one size smaller than mine - and I have big feet. For someone who is only 10 (TODAY!) she seems to be maturing too quickly. All this hit home a few months ago when I was helping her wash her hair in the shower. This was before our newfound independence when I still had to make sure she got all the soap out. She had lathered and rinsed and we were waiting for the conditioner to do its job, which takes a few minutes since her hair is very thick. While I was waiting, I noticed a hair hanging down the back of her arm and tried to pull it off only to find that it was attached . . . to her armpit. She screamed, I screamed, and then I aged 10 years on the spot. Why is my (then) nine-year-old producing underarm hair? Not only that, LONG underarm hair and why hadn’t I noticed before? And oh crap, she’d been wearing a sleeveless leotard to dance class and had anyone there seen it? And why didn’t she tell me? And am I the worst mom in the world to not have figured this out before now? Should I have been more aware? I didn’t even know I had to be aware yet. And blar-de-blar-de-blar… Amy was embarrassed and didn’t want to show me again so I waited until she fell asleep and snuck in with a flashlight to peek down the sleeve of her pajamas. I know, sneaky, but I had to KNOW. I had to see what I was dealing with. And yes, underarm hair. Not as long as I’d first thought and not very thick, but still. So the next day we had a talk in which I tried to make it sound like not a big deal even though to me it was a very big deal. And we bought her some Veet which did absolutely nothing so we bought her some razors and now she’s fine and hair-free. For now. And I feel suddenly a lot older. Happy birthday Amy! You’re awesome. I love you!
At Least it’s Over
Sorry for the silence. It’s been a stressful and eventful couple of weeks and I haven’t felt much like inflicting my whining on you. But I will now. After almost two years of back and forth, the bank finally accepted our settlement offer, signed the bloody papers, and dropped the lawsuit. Two years! To accomplish something that could have happened in half an hour if they had been willing to simply talk to us face-to-face, as we requested many, many times. Since our house hasn’t sold yet, we had to refinance our mortgage to get the money to pay the settlement and the lawyers. Not our first choice but it was our only option. I was really tempted to do something gross to the cashier’s checks but finally decided to take the high road. The relief around here is tangible. Obviously we wish things could have turned out differently and that it had not cost us all this money but at least it’s done. We don’t have to dread the next phone call from the lawyers or worry that something worse is just around the corner. It’s been a long stretch of anxiety, stress, tears, worry, and grief and I’m glad to see it go. There are lots of things we’ll never be able to resolve. We let the statute of limitations lapse on our option to sue the builder for stealing our construction loan because we don’t want to spend any more time or money on this. We’d love to see him pay for his crime and we have a very good case so we’d most likely win. But awarded money is not the same as collected money and we know we’d never see a dime. We also will never know the extent of the bank’s involvement. We paid them to verify the work was done before releasing funds and they didn’t. We’ve asked them to justify that many times and they’ve refused. We don’t know if it was negligence or if something else was going on and the only way we’d get it out of them is in a trial. Before the ink was dry, before the papers had even been officially filed, our lawyers started hassling us for the rest of the money we owed them. At the beginning we paid them a large retainer (which they burned through in about five weeks) and since we didn’t have yet another umpteen thousand dollars to dump into their till, they agreed to accept monthly payments. We didn’t even have a copy of the settlement agreement yet and they started sending nasty emails and calling several times a day demanding payment in full. Paying the lawyers was almost as galling as having to pay the bank. When we met with them two years ago, they assured us, promised us that we would never have to pay anywhere near the amount the bank was originally demanding. Well, we didn’t have to pay it to the bank. But when you add in their fees they ended up saving us about $3000 and added to our stress level considerably. In hindsight I’d almost rather have just paid the bank what they asked and been done with it. To summarize… Us = Not happy. So much time, energy, and money gone. The bank = Not happy. Probably spent more suing us than they got back in the settlement. The lawyers = Very happy. Multiple steak dinners on our dime, two years of steady work, and payment that does not justify the work performed. We’ve endured plenty of very dark days but the clouds are starting to lift a little. Our financial future has taken a huge hit and we are having to let go of many cherished dreams. It will take a long time to recover from this and I’m sure there will be difficult decisions and hard days ahead, but there are many people better than me who have been through far worse. I’m grateful every day that my children are healthy and happy and we have our freedom and our faith. Dan and I have learned a lot, mostly the hard way, and from now on we’ll be wiser and more careful with our future. If I could pass on any advice, it would be this: (1) Be careful who you trust. No matter how sincere someone may seem or how long you’ve known them, money changes people. (2) Question everything and get it in writing. Be very wary of deals where the risk is not spread evenly. (3) Trust your gut. Big money and fantastic returns rarely come without strings attached. (4) Don’t let anyone have access to your money or your credit. (5) Avoid lawsuits like the plague. If you’re in a bad situation, try and work it out. Use a mediator if necessary but do everything you can to stay out of court. (6) Never, NEVER completely trust a lawyer. They’ll always put their own interest over yours.