Archives for December 2011

To our friends and family,

There are many we love that we weren’t able to see during the holidays, so I wanted to write an update about how we are all doing.

Let’s start with the star of this blog, Mr. Nathan.

Nathan’s had a very hard year. He has been sick innumerable times; before he recovers from one illness, he’s on to the next. At the beginning of the year he became ill enough to be hospitalized, which was a very scary experience for all of us. He’s been healthier since, but still very prone to every cold and flu flying about, which immediately sends him into asthma and bronchitis. On happier news, he is progressing with his ability to communicate using his Dynavox communication device, and is able to play games, make choices, and simply tell us what’s on his mind. He is such a sweet, bright little boy and he is a wonderful, loving big brother.

Isabelle is a force of nature. She is exuberant, intense, dramatic, brilliant, strong, kind, sweet, smart, funny, shy, and feisty. It’s hard to believe that one little girl could be so much, but trust me, she is. This was a very big year for Izzy too. She learned to walk, talk, and started preschool. She goes to a Montessori school two days a week with kids aged 2-5 and to a private preschool with kids aged 18 months to 32 months. She amazes her teachers at both schools with how smart and capable she is. In the afternoons she takes tap, ballet, and gymnastics classes. She has now learned how to swim and can go from one end of the spa to the other, hold her breath for about 12 seconds, and can jump into the water, hit the bottom, and jump out. Her language is exploding, with new words emerging every single day. She is now starting to put words together and mostly speaks in sentences. I was shocked a few days ago when I heard her say, “Mommy, more TeTe (bottle) please),” and “Marce, play shrek ipad please”. She is in LOVE with the Ipad and demands to play on it every morning (right after tete). She can app surf, start and end apps, and has mastered many of the games that we have on the ipad. She reads books (Shrek is her favorite) on the ipad and is learning to trace letters, to match, sort, and to label things like colors and shapes. Her tantrums are truly monumental and we are learning how to teach her boundaries and how to handle her own frustrations, which has been a challenge. Even though being with Izzy requires lots of patience, she is truly wonderful to be with.

Isabelle adores her brothers. Throughout the day, she has to know where they are, and if she doesn’t see them for a little bit, she will ask and ask for them. They are her anchor, always revolving around her brothers, always checking on them and loving on them.

Gryffin turned 4 months and is absolutely sweet, easy-going, and oh so adorable. He is a very happy baby. His Christmas gift to mommy was to roll from his belly to his back for the first time! He is almost able to roll from back to belly, he just needs that last little bit to complete the turn. Most nights he won’t wake up more than once to eat, and some nights he will sleep all the way through. He is absolutely a mama’s boy and can’t catch sight of mommy without giving her humongous toothless smiles. He loves his bath, loves to play in his gym mat, loves sitting upright watching the world, and going for walks. Gryffin’s big problem is car rides; he detests being in the car and screams bloody murder the whole time he is in the car seat. Nobody is perfect and this is Gryffin’s big issue. He is already 15 pounds and has never tasted anything other than breast milk. Gryffin was so adequately named, he really is a king of kings.

I tried very hard to take pictures of all of us but failed miserably. Soon I will post a few of the pictures I was able to get but unfortunately they were just not very good.

In general, even though this has been a very challenging year in many ways, it has also been soooo very rewarding. This year brought us Gryffin, it brought so many new skills for both Nathan and Izzy, and all of our tribulations has brought us closer together.

We are excited to start a new year, with lots of hopes and adventures to look forward to.

Thanks for sharing this journey with us and we hope you’re having a wonderful holiday!

Almost unreal to think that 4 months have passed since Gryffin decided to come into the world. Here’s a little story about him that I haven’t shared here. I had a feeling that Gryffin would be born early. At about 36 weeks I could almost feel him saying, “Mommy, I’m ready!”. But I know how important every week of gestation is, so I thought to him, “If you want to come early, you better start the labor, because I am not going to bring you in early.” The feeling persisted and I told everybody he would be early, but nobody believed me. One of my dear friends is an astrologer, and I asked him when would be a favorable day for him to be born. He said to me the ideal would be Aug 22nd. Sure enough, on the night of Aug 21st, I went into labor, and Gryffin was born the following morning at 9:36 am.

He has grown and advanced so much in 4 short months. He is such an easy-going, happy, alert, gorgeous little boy. His gentleness doesn’t cease to amaze me. He is the first baby I know who actually LOVES tummy time.

He is so expressive and makes the cutest little faces! He hardly ever gets angry, but every so often, I do get this sad face.

But it quickly becomes happy face

And here’s his curious, but I’m not sure face

He is learning so much already. He is already grabbing toys and bringing everything to his mouth. He is rolling from back to side and tummy to side but can’t quite make it all the way yet. He can scoot on his belly on the floor a little bit and if he wakes up he will often just hang out there playing and kicking in his crib. He loves to sit upright and observe the world, so when we are out with friends or at restaurants, all we have to do is hold him on our lap looking out and he is happy as can be. Or we can sit him in a high chair and put toys in front of him, and he can entertain himself for a long while. He is so curious and just stares at everything with avid interest.

He still loves his bath more than anything; bath time is definitely the highlight of his day. He is starting to play with bath toys and is starting to kick and loves splashing himself. He is a great eater and weights a whopping 15 lbs.

And one of the most amazing things to me is that he will often sleep through the night! Not all the time yet, but there are nights when he goes all the way through. And on a bad night he will wake up twice at most.

These last 4 months have been amazing, I absolutely love nurturing and caring for this little boy, he has the happiest soul and spirit, an absolutely contagious joy. And his development is just beginning, so much more amazing things to come!

I tend to be the kind of person who takes on a “project” and then focuses body mind and soul into that project. For years my “project” was helping Nathan. This changed towards the middle of this year.

During my trip to Colombia in May I spent a lot of time reflecting about my life. I came to many realizations – most importantly, that I am a person who deserves as much love and attention as my children do. In nurturing Nathan I forgot to nurture myself and those in my world. I lost touch with Owen, with many of my friends, forgot what it is about life that I enjoy, who I am, what makes me tickle, what brings a smile to my face. I forgot myself, and consequently, there wasn’t much I could give others.

Since May I have been changing all of that. I have been prioritizing myself – taking time to have fun, exercise, meditate. I have organized my life so i can get a night off every week (thanks mom!!! ) and made it priority to use that time to have fun! I take time every single day to do at least one thing for ME.

And oh, how it’s paid off. I am so much happier. Owen and I are finding our way back to each other. I am a better mother to the children. I am a better friend (to those I have left). I am healthier, fitter, more joyful. I am enjoying my babies and not resenting them for everything they are taking from me.

In order to do all of this, I had to come to a deep understanding and acceptance of Nathan’s disability. This was the year that I simply said, Nathan is who he is, and he is perfect the way he is. I still worry about him, but I work on that every day and I try to bring peace and acceptance into that space of worry. This acceptance freed me to move on with my life. For the first 5 years it was all about waiting to see how Nathan developed. Now we know.

So now it’s about enjoying his perfect, joyful soul and living life to its fullest as a family of 5. It takes a lot of letting go. Every single day I have to watch as my mind tries to control things, and I have to breathe release into that desire to control. Instead, I accept and go with the flow. This has meant making compromises. Way up there is my ideal for how I want to raise my kids. A few notches down is an acceptable paradigm. So I ask myself every day, what do you want, to be right, or to be happy? I want to be happy, so that means making compromises – for example, I would love for my kids to be Gluten free, but it’s too difficult and stressful, so we eat as healthy as we can within normal limits. I would love to do more Medek in New York, but now that there are 2 more children, I appreciate every little bit we can do from home. And so my life goes.

It’s been the hardest year of my life. It’s been the fullest. The most fulfilling. I am so grateful for everything this year has brought. It brought me back to myself. A little baby! Acceptance of Nathan. Joy in mothering all my children.

I know it’s been a long time… and to all those die hard fans that still stick around, sorry! I’ll try harder to write more often.

The kids were pretty sick for a while there. Nathan went down with pretty bad pneumonia, ear infections, etc. He recovered pretty quickly from it and is back to his happy self.

He is doing quite well. He is getting stronger with his Medek exercises and developing more strength in his abs and back, which were his weakest points. Since his Dynavox is still not back, we have been focusing on improving his eye gaze with partner assisted scanning for times like this when we are sans-device. We are getting ready for another IEP next week and some changes to his education starting in January. More about that later.

Izzy and Gryffin are doing well. Izzy has been cutting new teeth and under the weather for a while, which has made her more needy than ever, so we are just trying to hang in there until she gets past this. Gryffin is growing so much so fast, is now awake most of the day, sleeps through the night, is grabbing things, engaging people, tracking, and doing amazingly well. He is such a joy.

Overall things are good. Nothing new and exciting to report. I think this year has been pretty chilled, the focus has been quite different. I’m planning on jumping back on the saddle early next hear with Nathan’s stuff as I’ve become a slacker! There is so much I want to do with him, particularly around the communication issue.

I’ll post some pics soon. Thanks for stopping by!