This, that, and garage sales

This Friday marks one month that I have been home on doctor prescribed "bed" rest. I say "bed" rest because it is my own special interpretation of rest that I am participating in. I cannot lay in bed or on the couch all day because that causes pesky little blood clots. I cannot be on the move constantly because that causes such severe leg pain that I have a hard time walking. Aside from that, I do have a couple other medical issues so my doctors want me to slow down, but not stop, so that is what I am trying to do. I go in spurts where I am quietly productive, and other days when I am not interested in doing much of anything. Some days I am folding baby clothes, reorganizing the Tupperware drawer, and cleaning out a closet. While other days I am absorbed in Facebook garage sale purchases and what level of Candy Crush I am on! If you have been in my general vicinity the past few months you would know that I am not loving this pregnancy (sorry Emerson). It has been much more painful and the amount of medical issues are verging on ridiculous. Aside from the fact that I am going to have a beautiful little girl at the end of all of this, the one other positive note has been the time that I have been able to spend with Grace. Her school bus picks her up and drops her off at the end of my driveway everyday, and I love it. The highlight of my day is when she comes home and gives me a big hug and kiss. I had high hopes of doing pinterest inspired activities with her daily, but that hasn't exactly happened. Don't get me wrong we still do lots of games, cooking, and art, but not as much as I had initially planned. The word "daily" is laughable! I am hoping that when this pregnancy is all said and done that the lasting memory that I take away from this experience is not the medical issues, but the amazing time that I spent with Grace.

With each blog that I post I am planning on making a reference to something ridiculous that one of my children has said or done. Yes, I am one of those moms. Here it goes:

Crazy kid moment: The other day I asked Grace to get her jacket and her reply was "Not now Mom, I'm busy". At this particular moment she was petting Peanut, our dog. Fortunately, she is still at the age where the "mom look" still works, so all I had to do was look at her with a raised eyebrow and she was on the move. Is this a glimpse into her teenage years?

So, did you catch my reference earlier to Facebook garage sales? It is now time to talk about my guilty pleasure. I like to buy stuff on Facebook and you can't stop me. Here is Jeff's explanation: Basically people don't want their crap anymore, so they try to sell their crap, and then Tara buys their crap. Here is the REAL explanation: I buy things online for amazing prices. :) Here is an example, I really wanted a glider with an ottoman for Emerson's room. Well, we were going to have to spend about $180 for one UNTIL I found one on facebook for $60. Yes, $60! It is in perfect condition and is the exact same one that sells for $180. Yay me :) I also got a fantastic bread box that I could talk about all day, but I will spare you :)

The amazing bread box that I now own.

 

I think this is where we will part ways for the day. There are a lot of things that have happened since the last time that I wrote, but I think I will just start here and move on. It would take 10 blog post to catch up on everything! I can pretty much wrap up the past 2 years by saying: I have loved, I have lost, I have triumphed, and I have failed. I have zero regrets, my life is my own.



Want to ride a hippo?

So much has happened in our busy little lives so I will try to give an abbreviated version, but I make no promises. I will start with me. In February I moved to my shiny new Pre-K classroom and after I was in it for a few weeks, I found out that my position was being cut. Gulp. My school was going to go from having 2 prek teachers down to one. And considering the fact that I was lower in seniority I was getting the boot. I could have chosen to stay at my school and be a Kindergarten teacher, but I felt that it was time to make a change. A big change. After lots of tears, stress, and waiting I was offered a 2nd grade position at a school near Grace's daycare. I am so very excited! Not only THAT, but I also get to team teach with my dear friend Natalie! She will teach reading to both groups and I will teach math. I am a little nervous because this is definitely outside my "box" but I am also excited for the same exact reason. It is going to be an interesting year...new school, new grade level, new way of teaching, etc.

Now on to Grace. The last time I posted I gave the wonderful news that Grace was being a champion eater and we were waiting for her April GI appointment to find out if her tube could be removed. We waited, and waited, aaaaand waited. April 13th finally came around and the good news came...her tube could be removed! He did it right there in the office and it really did feel like one of the happiest days in a long time. The next day...not so much. In fact, the next two weeks were absolutely terrible. There was so much leakage that my washing machine did not stop and we spent a small fortune on gauze and tape. We hoped and prayed that the hole would close on its own but after months of wishing we finally came to the conclusion that surgery was necessary. The only silver lining was that the surgeon could also repair a hernia that Grace was born with. We had known that this was necessary to fix but we had been putting it off because we did not want her to undergo another surgery. Two birds, one stone, yay. The surgery was almost two weeks ago and the hernia is healing perfectly. The hole closure...not so much. About a week after the surgery we noticed that the incision had opened. Yes, opened. It was also layered with a very un-friendly looking substance. Grace does not need another surgery to repair the area, just antibiotics and hydrogen peroxide for about a month.

More Grace business...she recently was given ankle and hip braces to help her to start walking on her own. She doesn't seem to mind them, thank goodness! She has also been talking up a storm and I think it is so funny when she gets into one of her chatterbox moods. I think that she is going to be just like her momma! One thing I do not understand is how a two-year old does not understand the value of a nap. Even though they are still way necessary for her, Grace hates naps. I mean realllllllly hates naps. Kicks, screams, cries, goes insane, then passes out for 3 hours haha.

This Wednesday Grace is going to go for her initial evaluation for hippotherapy. This is therapy where she rides a horse, not a hippo. Although that would be pretty awesome. I am really excited about it because I have heard/read that this type of therapy is really helpful when a child has trouble with balance and walking. So now Grace is going to be involved in physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, gymboree, swim lessons, AND hippotherapy! Busy, busy, busy (but I can't lie...I like it that way).

Upcoming fun....my sister's birthday! Then the next day Jeff, Grace, and I will hop in the car for 2 weeks and travel up the coast to Washington. We will be stopping in Lake Tahoe, Sacramento, Klamuth CA for the Trees of Mystery, Portland, and last but not least Ferndale, WA. On the way back we will stop in Seaside OR and Mt. Shasta. Aside from Ferndale I am most excited to stop in Sacramento! Can't wait to see some awesome people :)

Well, that's all folks. I really hope that what I have written does not come across as a pity party or complaining. I just want to give facts and info because so many people ask me about Grace. I am really trying to look at life as a gift and I always remind myself that everyone is fighting their own battle and that things could be so much worse. I am so lucky.

K, that's all. Love you long time.

A little of this, a little of that

So much has happened in the past few months! No, I am not pregnant, so don't get any ideas. Let me take a moment to blab about my little lady. Grace has not had a tube feeding in over 6 weeks!!!!!!!!! Yes, all of the additional exclamation points were necessary. I am still in utter shock that we are finally at this point in her development. There were times that I would cry thinking that she would never get to this point because she was not able to drink one ounce or take the smallest bite of food without gagging. Grace sees a gastroenterologist and feeding therapist on a regular basis and over Christmas break we also met with a nutritionist a few times. After MANY conversations with Jeff about weaning Grace off of tube feedings we decided to just do it. We were really nervous because we did not want Grace to lose any weight and we just didn't know how it would go. She did not eat much the first day, but after that her appetite kicked in, and WOW. She was (and still is) an eating machine! We have seen such a huge improvement in the past month. She is able to drink so much more and can eat "normal" size bites of food for a toddler. If she can go another 6 weeks with zero tube usage the GI said she can have her tube removed! He will just want to make sure that she is eating enough and gaining enough weight. I cannot wait until her appointment in April! More info to follow.

Next order of business: our surprise visit to Washington! We had been planning this for months and it was so we could surprise Jeff's mom for her 60th birthday. While it was wonderful to see everyone, it was not as great as we had hoped because Jeff was super sick the entire trip. When we got back to Vegas our first stop was to Quick Care to get him looked at. I was shocked to hear that he had a double ear infection and bronchitis! On top of that the airline broke our stroller and when we were driving to Quick Care one of the windows in the Jeep broke. Fortunately, it has been a week since this all happened and I can happily report that Jeff is better and the window has been fixed. We are still waiting on darn Alligient to pay us for the stroller though grrrrr.

Another bit of news...I am moving classrooms. I will still be teaching Pre-K at the same school but I am going to be moving across the hall to a brand spankin new room. While it is stressful because we are doing this mid-year and I still have to teach surrounding the move, I am really excited. First of all, our new classrooms are going to have BATHROOMS! Believe me this is incredibly exciting news when you teach four year olds with weak bladders. Also, I like the idea of moving because it is as if I get a fresh start in the middle of the year. Since I love organization and I obsess over classroom setup I am super excited to get in there and make it better than before. I will try to post pics once it is all set up. Also, the new room is going to have tile so I actually get to use my sand and water table for things other than paper and beans! I cannot wait to get some messy fun going on in there! AND I am going to have an adjoining door with my good friend and Pre-K coworker. So long are the days where I would have to put my jacket on, walk out of my classroom, and knock on her locked door just to ask her a silly question. No, no! I will be able to bother her as much as I want!!! Bwahahahahaha.

Random final note: this picture was from Christmas. While we did get Grace some awesome stuff, all she wanted were the bubbles and owl bowls. Sigh. Maybe next year!

Finally going 65 in the middle lane

Flashback: April 9th 2010. The day it all began. That is when my life in the fast lane took off and nothing was ever the same. Often times I found myself looking back though...begging for the simple days of the past and wondering whether or not it was normal to feel I needed a secretary (and a SWAT team of medical personnel) to raise my child.

Fast forward to now: Life is good. Doing 65 in the middle lane and I have to say I love it.

So, how did we go from THAT to THAT? It all starts with an awesome husband. In order to explain the rest I will have to back it up to about March 2010. At this point I started to get to that point of pregnancy where it hurt. I was uncomfortable ALL the time and I felt like I was going to burst. I thought this was strange because I was not due until May 13th and the doctors just smiled at me and said "Sorry hon, that's the way all women feel". And what did I know, I had never done this before. Within a week or so though they were even scratching their heads because I was BIG. It was soon found out that I had waaaaay too much fluid going on in the belly area and ultrasound showed that there may be some sort of blockage in Grace's nose/mouth area. During the next few weeks my stomach grew and grew and I was told that I was measuring out to be a woman that was carrying triplets. Yes you read that right...triplets! Jump to April 8th....around 2:30 I am at work and I call my doctor's office in terrible pain. I explain that I am so very miserable and I began to cry. They ask if I am having contractions. No. They ask if my water has broken. No. They ask a million questions. No. No. No. They gently try to tell me that there is nothing they can do but they finally book an appointment for me the next morning when I insist. Two hours later...Cheryl is trying to calm me down because my water has broken at our local Jimmy Johns sandwich shop. Oh and by the way, I am still upset about the fact that I never got to eat that delicious sub sandwich! And if you are looking for a way to get out of a teacher required night such as your school's literacy night you should make sure that your water breaks five weeks early....works like a CHARM! lol Remember how I mentioned that I had excessive fluid going on? Well, you should have seen the looks on the teenagers faces that worked at Jimmy Johns when my water broke. I think I would have quit my job if I worked there when that happened! Now that I have given you a great visual, lets move on.

Or not. I can't really go into the next 12 hours because it all really is a blur to me. Here it is in a nutshell. Hospital, doctor, pain, family, friends, pain meds, more pain meds, epidural, c-section. A lot of crazy business happened in there and I could tell you about it but it really is just bits and pieces and I do not remember quite a bit. So lets go to 4:55 a.m. on April 9th 2010. I can remember this moment like it is yesterday, my beautiful baby is here. They bring her over to me so I can kiss her and Jeff and I fall in love. When they take her away my doctor is smiling and tells Jeff to go to Grace to take pictures, but I knew something was wrong because everyone else in the room was quiet and moving very quickly.

She was not breathing. The ultrasound that I had mentioned was right, there was some sort of blockage in Grace's nose that was obstructing her airway. She was immediately put on a ventilator and we were left wondering what was happening. The next five weeks were the scariest time of my life. We were brand new parents and we were in a land where they were speaking a different language. I was fortunate enough to have people around me that were well versed in the medical world so they were able to help me understand what was happening. The hospital where Grace was born only has a level 2 NICU, so two days after she was born she was transferred to Summerlin Hospital so surgery could be performed on her bony bi-lateral choanal atresia. Catch that? Yeah basically those are the fancy words for bone blockage in her nose. It is pretty rare, and it is often times a tell tale sign of C.H.A.R.G.E. Syndrome. In the next few weeks Grace had two surgeries to remove this blockage and she also had a fundoplication and g-tube placement surgery because she was refluxing fluid to her lungs. And in the middle of all of this I was admitted to a different hosptial because of a blood clot. We had gone to the hospital closest to my house because I had really thought that it was only a pulled muscle and that I would be out of there within hours. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I ended up staying for a week and I was not able to see Grace at all. Getting too deprssing for you? Sorry! It will pick up soon, I promise!

Five weeks later, on May 17th (4 days after my original due date) we took her home! (See thats better). I was lucky because my maternity leave bumped right into summer vacation, so I did not go back to work until Grace was almost 5 months old. That summer was filled with doctors appointments, therapy sessions, tube feedings, doctor shopping, learning about C.H.A.R.G.E., and all the other stuff new parents have to learn. Between my and Grace's medical issues we seriously had an appointment everyday that summer and then everyday after school once the school year began. I imagine that is what happens when your kid has 17 doctors and therapists. Grace also had 3 more surgeries: April: ear tube placement, June: cochlear implant, and August: removal of tonsils and adnoids (sp). We were going a hundred miles an hour and we really did wonder whether or not life would ever calm down.

Well, it did. Ok, big collective sigh of relief. Ready, in, and out. That is so much better. I only have to go to the doctor every 3 months and they finally took me off my blood thinner, Coumadin. Yaaaaaay!And a lot of Grace's appointments are check-ups that happen every 6 months to a year except for the big ones....ENT, gastro, audiology, but even those only happen every 2 months or so. And she still gets therapy 3 times a week (used to be twice a week but we are upping it to get her walking), but they have become so much a part of our routine that it would confuse me to NOT go because I would not know what to do with myself lol.

And there you have it. A glimpse into the past 2 years of our life. It was not always pretty and we are still learning as we go, but I couldn't be happier. It may sound crazy but I would not trade these past years for anything. I take that back, I would like to take away all the pain Grace had to feel to get to where she is today. It brings me to tears to think about it. Such a little baby had to go through so very much. You want to talk about strength, look at my daughter. Back to the happy...steps are being taken, words are being spoken, food is being eaten (I will post about this later). I don't torture myself into the wee hours of the night anymore to research C.H.A.R.G.E. and hearing loss, now I torture myself into the wee hours of the night blogging and reading my kindle! It was all worth it. I mean come on, I heard the word "mama" for the first time the other day! Granted, she was looking at the dog when she said it, but hey, I'll take it.

The origin of a name...

So in case you did not catch it, the name of my blog is "How sweet the sound". Pretty catchy eh? (Whenever I say "eh", I think of my sister...I dont really know why). Back to the blog title...well, this title comes from the second line of the song "Amazing Grace" (which I did not come up with). This blog name could not fit my life more perfectly. I have a daughter who in my most clear definition, is amazing and guess what? Well, by golly her name is Grace.

The name of this blog fits me perfectly because I consider myself to be incredibly blessed in all that I have. I have a beautful family and home, a job that I love, and friends near and far. And even though there are many more reasons to state why this blog name fits me perfectly I will only bring up one more. My little one was born with C.H.A.R.G.E. Syndrome. Charge is a very complex thing, which I will probably talk about in a later blog because frankly, it is 1:41 in the morning and I have to be up in about 6 hours. The part that I would like to mention right now is the letter E in the acronym C.H.A.R.G.E. The E stands for ears. Grace was born with severe/profound hearing loss and was fitted for hearing aides when she was exactly 4 months old and then when she was 14 months old she had a cochlear implant placed in her left ear. Say what you want about CIs, but this is the decision we made as a family because it is what we felt would be of most benefit for our daughter. Since the surgery we have seen an unbelievable improvement in Grace's speech and language development.

This bring me back to my blog name.This is the part where I promise I will not cry. I promise. I think. Well, maybe. How sweet the sound. How sweet the sound. It is amazing, a miracle, to experience your child hearing something that they have never heard before. My biggest joy in life is interacting with my daughter and seeing the wonder in her eyes when she hears something. You do not realize how much you adore this until it is there in front of you. I have learned to not take things for granted. Even the small things, like making a big deal about the sound it makes when you are setting up your Christmas tree. We had an entire speech/language experience all because of the sound fake tree branches make when they are coming out of a box.

Speaking of name origins, it drives me nuts that I cannot remember the conversation that Jeff and I had when we decided on our daughter's name. The dreamer in me would like to say that at the exact moment Jeff and I chose the name Grace, was when God decided who he was going to give to us. I am not an incredibly religious person, but I would like to think that he looked at us at that moment and thought "they're ready."

Oh, and btw...yes, I said fake tree. This is the first time EVER that I have a fake tree. While it certainly is cleaner and easier to set up, I miss the smell of pine. And that reason alone is why I am going to weasel my way into getting a real one next year! Shhh don't tell Jeff.

Well, my amazing Grace is going to be awake so, so soon. It is funny to think I used to sleep until noon. ha. Goodnight world

I have an addiction...

....to reading blogs. For the most part, I am going to have to blame Becky Higgins at beckyhiggins.com. I have recently become obessed with scrapbooking, but considering the fact that I now have three scrapbooks that are not complete, I was delighted to find out about Project Life (her amazing product). In finding out about this way of documenting life, I also have found many other people that participate in Project Life. They do more than participate, they EXCEL at it! I have read soooo many blog posts and it got me to thinking..."hmmmm blogs are kinda fun to read, I wonder if I should also try to write one". So here you are. I hope this does not end up like my diary writing attempts from my youth. I always seemed to get a new diary for Christmas so my entries always started like this:

January 1st
I am so excited to start writing in my new diary! I plan on writing it it EVERYDAY!

January 6th
Oh wow, it has been a busy few days.

Approximately 360 days later:
January 1st
Ok, this year I am DEFINITELY going to write in here everyday! Cannot wait!

And it goes on and on. So while I am going to try and make it a point to write here as often as I can, I shall make no promises! Once a day, once a week, whatever it may be. It's funny...I swear I will find these sentences in a few of my old diaries....