Four Years Flash By

Look who turns 4 this weekend!

A look back over the four years that flashed by:

Celebrating Three, October 2013

 

Celebrating Two, October 2012

 

 Celebrating One, October 2011

Eva's Arrival, October 2010

 

 

Last Big Hurrah with Wonder Woman

Sam started kindergarten with a little anxiety and some picture taking, and the first two weeks were thrown off by half days and unexpected school closings due to heat indices over 100 degrees.  So rather than one last big hurrah at Jamie's Play Palace, Sam was slowly weaned from the daily routine by first giving up half days and then going back for two school holidays and finally converting to full days at St. Mary's during his second week of school.  It was the end of an era and I felt perhaps I was the only one who was sad about the fact that he won't be getting out of the car every morning to run onto the porch to show the big boys his latest Yo-Gi-Oh cards before turning to me arms open and chin up and saying "Huggie and a kiss."  He will no longer be running up the chalk covered sidewalk to greet me in the afternoons, smeared with sweat and dirt and red sauce from his lunch, not sure where his shoes are but very excited to show me his latest trick on the scooter or the skateboard or the 16" bike.  No more winter afternoons standing talking and shivering with Jamie while Sam climbs and then sleds down the giant snow pile left by the used car lot plows.

So when Jamie texted me on Thursday to ask if Sam could come to her place for a celebratory end-of-summer party on Friday, I said yes immediately and informed St. Mary's that he wouldn't be in their aftercare program that he had started the week before.  Sam was going back to Jamie's for one last hurrah with Max and Owen and Ayanna, one last afternoon of learning through play and making messes and joy and fun.  And when I arrived at the end of a hot afternoon to pick the kids up, Eva stomped up to me in her soaked purple tank top and announced that her clothes were wet before showing me how she could put her enter face into the sprinkler spray.  Sam barely noticed I was there and Ayanna gave orders and Max and Owen and Sam did as they were told, marching through the water and racing back up the sidewalk for more instructions while Jamie and I wringed out wet clothes and gathered shoes and loose yo-gi-oh cards and wondered where the summer (and the years) had gone.  When she handed me the framed collage of photos she had collected since Sam was 12 weeks old, I smiled and teared up and once again knew that Sammy had spent his formative years with Wonder Woman.

Just Like That

Before she was born I often wondered how it would be possible that I would love another child as much I loved my first born, how another child could take over my heart in that same way.  But as soon as I saw her, all screaming red mad, nearly 10 pounds of feisty girl opinion, I adored Eva.  And when she snuggled up to my chest and her wet, warm little head melted against my skin I knew it was possible to love more than one child with all my heart.

Last weekend I was in the kitchen cleaning (don’t so many of my blog posts start this way?) and I heard water running in the bathroom. I turned the corner to see Eva sitting on the toilet, her little butt pressed onto the potty seat and her chubby feet resting on the stool.  She had seen Sammy sit like this dozens of times, and while I was cleaning she had piled her black stretch pants and her dry diaper on the rug and placed the stool and the potty seat and crawled up to go potty all by herself.

When I told Jamie she suggested big girl underwear might be a good birthday present, and here we are two years after, as Sam says, “the doctor cut Eva out of your belly.”  Two years.  Just like that. 

We walked in to Gunderson Lutheran today to visit the pediatrician for her two-year well visit and Eva strutted through the doors and announced “I want see birdies.”  How she remembered the little aviaries set up throughout the clinic I do not know, but my highly verbal, independent, opinionated two-year-old lights up my life every single day. 

“I do it,” she says when I try to buckle her car seat.

“I want other shoes,” she says when I try to put on her blue shoes and she wants the black shoes.

“I no like ‘cado,” she says when I place dinner in front of her.  “I like ‘matoes.  I like ‘matoes, no cut.”

“Sammy no like bananas,” she says when I hand her breakfast in the morning.  “I like bananas.  Sammy no like bananas.”

“Kids no have it,” she says when she gets out of the car at Jamie’s in the morning carrying an apple slice or a Ritz cracker.

“Look mom,” she says as she stands on the arm of the couch and imitates her brother.  “I no careful.  Look mom.  I no careful.”

“I too little,” she laughs as she gets up from a face-plant into the carpeting because she sometimes thinks she can do everything her big brother does and living room gymnastics are part of his daily routine.

Every day with Eva brings new surprises that make me laugh, and when she and I read a book and rock together for a quick ten minutes alone before bedtime every night I sometimes want to slow it all down, pay more attention, memorize her face and her laugh and her adorable little voice before everything changes.

Two years.  Just like that.

Who Needs Those Little Ones?

Seriously, who needs those little wheels hanging off the sides of your first bike anyway?  Sam, who rarely rides his bike because it has never been nearly as fast as his Razor, asked me this weekend if he could take off his training wheels.  Friday he had witnessed the overwhelming family joy and over-the-top praise and celebration that a 4-1/2-year-old gets when he rides without training wheels after his friend Nathan did it for the first time.  There were applause and high fives and fist bumps (the exploding kind) and picture taking and lots and lots of smiles, so the next day when faced with his slow "baby bike" Sam asked if we could take off the training wheels.  And after some quick work with a socket wrench the bike was ready.  But Sam wasn't quite.  Not yet.  I think part of it was that his mommy was hanging over him and despite evidence that he has great balance (which he displays while doing tricks on the Razor) she clearly hadn't accepted the fact that he was capable of doing this without scraping all the skin off his legs.  And she perhaps needed to get out of the way.

When I dropped him off at Jamie's Monday morning, I noticed a new bike leaned against the house.  And his friend Owen also brought a bike without training wheels ("We're trying that," Owen's mom said) and dropped it in front of me as I headed to my car.  A little piece of me thought "Sure, he'll probably finally do it when I'm not here to watch."

Fast forward 2 hours and Jamie sent me a picture on her phone, and off I went to witness the milestone.  My boy.  No more training wheels.  Thanks to Jamie's Bike Riding School which is far superior to anything Mommy could do.  (As are her noodles and mashed potatoes and tomato soup.)

Field Trips with Kids

 A picnic by the lake after fishing

Another reason I love Wonder Woman:  She takes my kids on great adventures.  This week there are parades and fishing contests and boat races and concerts in the park.  I have trouble imagining doing these things with just Sam and Eva, but she has her giant van and she doesn't let multiple children slow her down at all.  My children are so lucky!  As am I.  (For the record, not all the children in these pictures are hers.  Today they were traveling with another Mommy.)

 

Excited to show me their first fish (caught by Kaj) 

Getting Noticed

I woke up at 1am this morning, and after peeing and getting a drink of water, I laid down and began tossing and turning.  When I had gone to bed, Sam's peanut allergy had not even been on my radar, but somehow those middle of the night sleep cycles bring the subconscious mind to the surface, and from 1am until 3am I flipped and kicked and wrestled with my blanket as I composed emails to his school.

He came home with another piece of non-peanut-friendly candy yesterday.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays another mother from our daycare picks him up, so I didn't get all the details, but Jamie handed me a little blue plastic egg with a chocolate bunny inside, and we stood on the sidewalk and discussed our disbelief.  The other mother who had done the preschool-to-daycare shuttle earlier in the day arrived and she handed me a bag of peanut-friendly candy, "because I felt bad for Sammy."  Sammy's eyes lit up and I reminded him to thank Pandy, and then we three mothers again talked about how it made no sense that this was still happening.

At 2:30am I finally got out of bed and went to my computer.  I opened up Microsoft Word and typed NOTICE in big bold letters at the top of the page.  I wrote a brief note about how there is a child in this classroom that has a peanut allergy and that peanut allergies can be fatal.  I asked for help in keeping my child safe and I included a list of peanut friendly snacks for parents who want to bring treats in to the classroom.  I then composed an email to Sam's teacher and attached the document.  I told her I didn't think the gentle reminder in last month's newsletter had been enough, and could we perhaps post this NOTICE outside Sam's classroom and include a copy in all the kid's cubbies?  At 2:58am I hit the send button.

At 7am I was secretly dreading our arrival at school, a little nervous about having to discuss the issue with Sam's teacher, afraid of being "the difficult mom."  But before we even got to his classroom I saw a bright yellow copy of the NOTICE posted beside the classroom door.  And as I helped Sammy take off his coat and hang it on the hook below his name, another parent set down the pile of papers in her hand while she helped her daughter.  On the top of her pile was a yellow copy of the same document, the big bold letters at the top saying NOTICE.  I peeked in the classroom and saw Mrs. Heather sitting at her desk smiling, and I waved and said thank you.

Only after I got in my car did the relief and gratitude bring tears to my eyes.  I'm still learning how to navigate the world as a peanut allergy mom, and I'm so grateful to those around me who support me in keeping my child safe.

Jamie's Buttered Elbow Macaroni

Before dinner he is sitting at the kitchen counter playing with all the tiny brown and green pieces from the Ninjago kit he earned the day before.

"What do you want for dinner?  Tortillas with cheese or noodles?"

Silence

"Sam.  What do you want for dinner?  Noodles or tortillas with cheese?" 

Silence

"Sam."

"What?"

"Dinner?  Noodles or tortillas with cheese?"

"Noodles!  Yay, noodles!"

During dinner:

On his plate are sliced carrots and ranch dressing, freshly cut mango, the requested "Smooshed up avocado" and a pile of penne slothered with olive oil, garlic salt and freshly shredded reggiano.  I am cleaning up a puddle of milk from where Eva has thrown her sippy cup to the ground for the 3rd time, and I step on a piece of slippery mango and nearly fall.

"Come sit by me.  When are you going to sit by me?"

"Just a second," I say as I close the three open kitchen cupboards.  I toss the mango peel and avocado pit into the garbage under the sink, wipe the yogurt off Eva's face and hands and arms, tighten her sippy cup lid and remind her of the mango on her high chair tray before grabbing a bowl of pasta and a glass of water and sitting next to Sam.  Exhale.

"At Jamie's the noodles are better than these ones," he says.

"Well then maybe you should go to Jamie's for dinner."

"Jamie's kind is yummy.  Jamie can show you them when you drop me off tomorrow."

Sigh.

Harmony

Eva's daycare twin Harmony spent the weekend with us, and I got a little taste of their adorable love/hate relationship.  So much fun.  Well, when they weren't screaming at each other because they both wanted the same toy.

 

 

Call Me Nutty

The summer that Sam was 2 and 1/2 I pulled up to the daycare and the kids were all outside playing.  Sam's eyes were swollen and red, his face puffed up as if he were full of air, and a steady stream of snot ran down his upper lip.  This was four hours after he had screamed at Jamie that he'd gotten some peanut butter on his hand and Jamie said "Oh, just lick it off."   Standing on the sidewalk in front of Jamie's listening to the story my first thought was "Oh no.  Not THAT allergy."

Admittedly before my son was diagnosed with a peanut allergy I didn't know anything about them other than the fact that peanut allergies can kill.  I didn't know that nearly 6 million (or 8%) of American children have food allergies.  I didn't know that the prevalence of peanut allergies among children had tripled between 1997 and 2008.  I didn't know that 1 in 13 children under age 3 were affected by food allergies.

After Sam's initial scratch test in which a tiny peanut protein caused a welt the size of a half dollar on his back, I knew our lives would change, that we'd have to watch everything he ate, that he wouldn't be able to eat baked goods from commercial bakeries or any food from Chinese restaurants, that we'd have to ask about anything he ate that we didn't make ourselves because peanut butter is often used to thicken sauces and peanut oil is occasionally used in restaurant cooking.  I knew he'd never run around and play with a child who had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich.  And I knew he'd have to always carry an epi-pen in case of a severe, rapid-onset reaction called anaphylaxis which results in sudden throat swelling and low blood pressure that can be fatal.

I am a mother of small children so I understand how overwhelmed every parent is just remembering the needs of their own children.  I sometimes can't remember my own phone number or where I parked my car, so I completely understand a parent who barely knows my child who doesn't remember that he has a peanut allergy.  I understand that it is MY responsibility to over and over again gently remind those who are around Sam that he can't have peanuts.

But Valentine's Day caught me completely off guard.  The school knows he has a peanut allergy.  The school knows another child in his class has a tree nut allergy.  The school knows food can be a tricky thing for a child with a peanut allergy.  When I received a letter from Sam's teacher giving me a list of children who he would share "Valentines" with, I bought a package of little cards with little heart stickers and temporary tattoos, and Sam and I sat down and wrote his name and the names of his classmates on 21 of them.  The letter didn't mention food.  The letter didn't say anything about candy.  But I have learned my lesson and I now know that "Valentines" means something very different than it did when I was in preschool 40 years ago.  "Valentines" means little card and bag of candy... and an opportunity for the exhausted overwhelmed parents of Sammy's classmates to forget that a child in their class can die if he consumes peanuts.




According to a study released in 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food allergies result in about 300,000 ambulatory-care visits per year in children.  More than 15% of school aged children with food allergies have had a reaction at school.  And approximately 20-25% of epinephrine administrations in schools involve children whose allergy was unknown at the time of their reaction.  Every year we hear about children who have died in school as a result of something they ate.  And if your child doesn't have a peanut allergy you may not pay any attention.  But when you're the parent of a child with a peanut allergy, news of the preventable death of a child with an allergy triggers fear and anxiety.  It is a good reminder that your child CAN die from a peanut reaction.  It is a good reminder that living with a peanut allergy will require you to step out of your comfort zone and keep reminding people over and over again that you are just one person and you would appreciate their help in keeping your child safe.
 
Here is a great list of 10 things you should remember about food allergies in the classroom.

Valentine's Day was a great lesson for all of us.  I now realize the importance of working with the school to get the word out about my son's allergy, and I now know that I need to be the one responsible for gently, consistently reminding other parents that there is a child in their child's class who can die from peanuts.  I don't blame anyone for forgetting, and I don't blame the school for failing to remind them.  I blame myself for not being more informed about what he encounters at his school and what his school policies are regarding allergies.  But you can bet that has changed.

Second Best

As Kelly and I sat on the couch at the end of the day after finishing the last of the champagne and finally getting Sammy to sleep, she told me she didn't know how I did it. She said that she had been exhausted at 3pm and was thinking she wasn't going to make it through the day. How do I do this every weekend? It was now almost midnight and we were talking about men and relationships and the ups and downs our lives have been through during three decades of friendship. And I had to remind her that TODAY I didn't do it all alone. Today I had her. And Jamie. And other wonderful friends who step up and support me when I need it most.

Our day started with the LEGO advent calendar and glazed vanilla doughnuts and a 4-year-old who could barely contain his excitement about having a birthday party. And over and over again throughout the day I felt the quiet presence of this good friend of mine who came to help and who definitely made my boy feel special during his 4th birthday. She patiently babysat Eva while I tended to party business and greeted pre-schoolers and took photos of the blurry mass of them as they tumbled and raced and jumped and climbed at Kidsport. She helped with loading and unloading the car. She played with the sugared-up, hyper-stimulated children while I cooked lunch when we returned home. And she absolutely made everyone's day with the cardboard rocketship that our entire family enjoyed. So while this post should be about Sammy and how incredibly fast the past four years have gone, it's about this wonderful friend of mine and the way she made it all possible. When Kelly's boys were little I used to train them to say "You're the best mommy in the whole wide world," and when she started trying to teach Sammy to say this about me on Saturday, I had a hard time not saying "Second best."






A few birthday party pics: