A little piece of heaven

Today Belle is 1 month old. Today is the day I say, “bye for now” to all of you who regularly visit this blog.

Why? you may be wondering. The answer is simple. And complicated.

When Nathan was born it was all doom and gloom. He cried all day. It was hard. Hard. HARD. His first 6 months of life were the hardest of my life. He was going to die. Then he lived. It was joyful and beautiful but hard. And intense.

Now I have the opportunity to truly glorify in the first months of life of another human being. And I want to experience this time fully. I deserve to. It’s been a long, beautiful, intense almost 4 years.

Today I got upset when Belle was crying. I sat at the computer to try and answer my emails. And 2 seconds later, Belle started crying. Again. Failed attempt # 556. I wanted to let her cry. I just wanted to answer my emails.

Instead we took a bath together and while soaking in lavendar bath salts and nursing I had my epiphany. You can’t help others. Help yourself first.

I write this blog with the desire to help others. Writing helps me. But it’s easier to write privately. I write publicly in hopes that my experiences and what I’ve learned might bring benefit to others.

And in the bath I realized that the people who have helped me the most throughout my 30 years of life are the people who are deeply loving, peaceful, and spiritual. They help not by what they say, but by the way they ARE, by the peace they experience and the love I feel emanating from them. Today I realized that if I truly want to help others I have to BECOME deeply peaceful and loving.

Instead of writing blog posts in my head while Belle is nursing, I want to just be PRESENT. I want to stop worrying about all of the emails that I need to respond to. I want to stop feeling like a bad person because I haven’t had a chance to get back to everyone who’s commented on my Facebook profile or to reply to everyone who’s commented on the blog. It creates an anxiety that I really don’t want to experience.

Today while Belle looked me deeply in the eyes I knew what she was asking of me. Be with me mommy. I want to feel you’re here with me. Because being physically present but mentally composing lists or emails or blog posts is very unsatisfying, like drinking salt water.

I will continue to post pictures and videos sporadically. If I learn something interesting I will write a post. And if I feel deeply compelled to share an experience I will.

If you would like to receive my sporadic updates, I suggest signing up for my feedburner list. That way you can receive an email when I write a post. You can sign up here:

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I am realy grateful to all of you who have come back day after day, month after month, even year after year, to connect with us. We have formed forever bonds that we will always cherish. Thank you for sharing yourselves with us.

I am so grateful for all of the prayers. I am so grateful for the support. I am so grateful for the comments and advice. I am so grateful for all the times when I could “look around” and feel lovingly surrounded during this journey. It’s been a pleasure and a blessing. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.

I leave you with my favorite haiku:

Awake Butterfly. It’s late. We’ve miles to go before we sleep. And miles to go before we sleep.

Miss Belle is starting to learn how to play with things:

Who said girls can’t wear blue?

Yes, I know the bow is a bit big, hopefully she’ll grow into it soon. The bow and bib and shoes and hand mits were made by her great grandma Celia! Isn’t she so talented?!

We’ve discovered she LOVES hanging out wherever Nathan is. If I put her down in her crib – she wakes up and I have to hold her. But if I put her down close to Nathan, this is what happens:

It’s not often that she’ll fall asleep with Owen, but if Nathan is around, she is more relaxed and can sleep with daddy.

This is Belle’s special spot with daddy. He holds her just like that and “shows her the world”. She gets bright-eyed and bushy tailed and loves seeing everything!

Here they are at Urban Home:

And this is Nathan with Nanny McPhee Marta doing the cold laser therapy. Basically, she uses the laser probe (seen in the photo) on specific points throughout the body. At this point in time our focus is points that help him overcome infant reflexes, such as moro and ATNR.

And then today we did something very important. After breakfast, where Nathan had a blast doing one of his favorite things – ripping paper:

We went and gave Nathan a much needed haircut. It started with the hair stylist washing his hair:

Then she combed it out a little

And trimmed it a bit to give him this super cool 80’s dude cut:

And since Nathan got his hair cut, Isabelle, also wanted something pretty on her head:

This was also made by her great grandma, pictured here:

And towards the end of the day:

Isabelle was DONE. A good time was had by all 🙂

Interesting article:

Blue laser could lead to autism cure

I guess we really are in the forefront of this therapy as we’re already using it therapeutically!

I’ll talk more about the laser as I learn more – I have a binder full of info that I will read in the next few days! But for now, everything I’ve heard about the laser is super positive.