Chaos and Cupcakes

Today at lunch, we roughly mapped out the next few years of vacations.  We are a vacation-loving family (especially now that Jared works from home or wherever there is good wireless internet access and the ability to find a quiet room while he’s on calls).

We were having a conversation about maybe taking a long weekend trip over to San Francisco sometime this summer.  Here’s an excerpt of the conversation:

Me:  “Do you guys want to go to San Francisco for a weekend this summer?”

Olivia:  “But I don’t know how to golf!!!!!” (Yes, that many exclamation points were needed to emphasis the depths of despair in her voice).

And then she proceeded to go on and on about how we can’t go to San Francisco until she learns how to golf.

Can someone enlighten me on the correlation between going to San Francisco and knowing how to play golf?  When we went to San Francisco a couple of years ago, there was no golf-playing going on.  I don’t know where she is getting this from!

This is often how our family planning meetings go.  But I firmly believe in letting the kids have a voice and a vote in these matters.  And I also think the things that come out of their mouths during these discussions are hilarious.

Taylor has far different ideas about where he wants to go on vacation than me.  For instance, today he tried to sway me into adding Okinawa to our destination list (he is into World War II history).  He thinks the places I want to go are too trite and touristy.  Just like Taylor, Jared also prefers to go to places with historical significance.  I want to go to places with a pristine beach and a glistening ocean.  Thus why we have to map it out a few years in advance so everyone is happy.  Since we went to California and stayed at the beach this year, Jared gets a couple of years beach free (party pooper).

Remainder of 2009:  Yellowstone (June) and maybe San Francisco

April 2010: Europe (without kids);    Summer 2010:  Seattle / British Columbia

Summer 2011:  Road trip to DC, NYC, and Boston

Summer 2012:  Hawaii

Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that gas prices don’t sky rocket again (although I am sure they will anyway).

I think Taylor is now the only child whose birth story I haven’t posted yet.  His is probably also the least dramatic birth story.  That just goes along with him being the least dramatic child, I suppose.

From the moment Jared and I got married, I couldn’t wait to have a baby.  It was often all I could think about.  A few months after we got married, I started working at LDS Family Services.  I would see all these pictures of little babies who had been adopted and I would hear about the pregnant birth mothers and just yearn for the day when I was pregnant and for the day when I would have a baby.  Jared and I would babysit for the kids of 2 different couples who were friends of ours and that just sent my baby-hunger into hyperdrive.  Unfortunately, I had an early miscarriage about 6 months after we got married.  That was a hard thing for me to deal with, even though I was only 5-6 weeks along.  The very next month I got pregnant with Taylor.  I found out I was pregnant with Taylor on a Sunday and had to wait till Tuesday to see the doctor since that Monday was Labor Day.  The doctor had me come right in and do my bloodwork since I had just miscarried and he wanted to check my hormone levels.  Sure enough, my progesterone levels were extremely low and that was most likely why I had miscarried before.  He had me immediately start on progesterone supplements and I continued on those until I was 14 weeks along.

I had horrible, awful morning sickness with Taylor (as well as with the others).  I remember one morning going to the gas station close to my work to get some juice.  I walked in and was hit by the smell of freshly brewed coffee and proceeded to throw up all over the floor of the gas station in front of several people.  Througout the pregnancy, I would go to lunch quite often with my mom.  She worked at the nearby high school and I would drive over to pick her up.  One day, I drove up to get her and just as she was walking out to the car, I had to open my door and puke.  Just what the students wanted to see, I’m sure.  For the majority of the pregnancy all I could handle eating at our lunches together was either a baked potato from Wendy’s or a veggie sub from Subway.  We became fast friends with the workers at those 2 places and they kept up with how things were progressing throughout my pregnancy.

I found out during my pregnancy that my uterus was tilted backwards.  Because of this, the baby’s heartbeat was very difficult to hear with the Doppler and so I was able to have quite a few ultrasounds.  The most memorable ultrasound was around 20 weeks when I found out the baby’s gender.  I was so excited to finally be able to have a name to call my belly.  Jared and I had picked out Taylor’s name before we were even officially engaged.  Jared is for, obviously, Jared.  Taylor is for my all-time favorite musician James Taylor.  It’s also a family name on my side.

My last month of pregnancy with Taylor was filled with contractions.  All.  The.  Time.  It was so nerve-racking for a first-time mom who had no idea what labor was like to have contractions constantly but never go into full-blown labor.  2 nights before Taylor’s due date Jared and I decided that I should go to the hospital.  I had been having contractions all day and spent the majority of the day in the bathtub to deal with them.  At the hospital they confirmed that I was 4 cm dilated, which I already knew since I had been 4 cm dilated for a few weeks by that point.  In fact, at my 37 week appointment my doctor told me that I was 4cm dilated and that it would be any day now.  Yeah, right.  Anyway, after monitoring my contractions for an hour the nurses sent me home because there was no pattern to my contractions.  Jared’s dad was in town for work and was staying for the weekend in case I had the baby.  So the next day, Saturday, we decided to walk around the mall and go for a bumpy drive to try to get things going.  No luck.  I was still having plenty of contractions but without any pattern to them.  Dad O. left on Sunday still grandchild-less.  On Monday, I went in for my check-up.  My doctor suggested an induction the next day.  The day before (April 29) was the due date based on my LMP, although based on early ultrasound my due date was May 5th.  But with me being at 4cm for 3 weeks, he felt an induction would be safe and easy.  That night I went for my nightly swim with my parents at the rec center in our neighborhood.  (We lived one street over from my parents at the time).  In the locker room, a lady asked me when I was due.  I said, “Yesterday.”  She said, “No, I asked when you are due.”  I said, “Yesterday.”  She didn’t believe me.  I suppose since it was my first baby and my stomach mucles weren’t shot, I never got very big with Taylor.  I actually never got very big with any of them but with him people remarked all the time that I didn’t look very pregnant.

The next morning, Tuesday, May 1st, Jared, my mom, and I headed over to the hospital bright and early in the morning.  I was hooked up to the monitors, started on Pitocin, and had my water broken.  Around noon, the doctor came back to check me and I was still at 4 cm.  He suggested that I have an epidural to relax me and speed things up.  I had wanted to have Taylor without drugs but decided to go ahead with the epidural.  It did the trick and 2 hours later Taylor was born at 3:14pm.  He weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces (my biggest baby).  He had a headful of dark hair, which later fell out and came in white-blonde.

Taylor was an amazing baby.  He rarely cried.  I think he cried maybe a handful of times as a baby.  He was an early crawler, walker, and talker.  I always say that he was never really a baby, but was born a much older and wiser person.  He has always been extremely mature for his age.  I cannot imagine a better start to our family.  He is the perfect big brother.

The 8 years since Taylor was born have absolutely flown by.  I cannot believe I have a baptized Cub Scout now.  I am so proud of the young man that Taylor has become.  I can’t wait to see what the coming years have in store for our oldest baby.

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April 2nd is Autism Awareness Day and April is Autism Awareness Month.  This is a wonderful time for people to educate themselves about autism and the autism spectrum.  Of course, the issue of autism awareness is important to me because my son Andrew (age 6) has Asperger Syndrome.

I have been reading blogs devoted to autism tonight while I pretend to watch Quantum of Solace with Jared.  I came across this article and am completely and utterly horrified.  In summary, an 8-year-old girl with Asperger’s in Idaho wanted to attend her school’s Christmas party.  She was told she had to take off her hoodie which had a cow print on it with a tail and ears.  She has a security attachment to this sweatshirt and didn’t want to take it off.  So some teachers took her to an empty classroom and the little girl got very upset and violent.  The teachers held her down and called the police.  The police took her from the school in handcuffs and charged her with battery.  Thankfully, the case was dismissed.

OH. MY. GOODNESS.  I sure hope this school has since taken it upon themselves to educate themselves about autism and Asperger Syndrome.  I am appalled at the way this school handled this situation.  The girl had an attachment to her sweatshirt.  Was it that big a deal that she didn’t want to take it off?  Did they not foresee that this would cause an episode characteristic to Asperger’s?   Newsflash:  Aspies develop strong and irrational bonds to objects.  They will get violent if you try to take that object away.  Does this mean that Aspies should get away with not following rules?  No.  Not necessarily.  But it is hugely important to choose your battles carefully when dealing with an Aspie.  Was this really a battle worth fighting?  Also, the school should have a procedure in place for dealing with situations where the child becomes agitated.  They called the police but didn’t call her parents?

This story really gets my blood boiling but it also frightens me.  Do you know how many times Andrew’s school has called to tell me that he was having an irrational fit and they couldn’t calm him down?  Or how many times he was having a fit and they were able to calm him down?  He has thrown chairs, run away from school, said that people were trying to kill him, etc.  The school has measures in place to try to help him when he gets upset.  He can go to the resource room and sit on a special bean bag with his Star Wars blanket that we leave at the school to calm down.  They ALWAYS call me or in cases where they were able to calm him down, they at least let me know about it later.  They have gotten permission from me to restrain him when he is violent.  They have taken the time to learn about Asperger’s.  The school had an inservice about it over the summer.  Andrew now has a one-on-one aide to help him.  Thank heavens Andrew attends this school.  Thank goodness I feel comfortable addressing issues with the staff at his school.  I had some frustrations and let the school know and a conference was scheduled to discuss Andrew’s IEP.  They addressed all the issues and took the appropriate measures (such as getting him an aide).  I feel so, so badly for this little girl and her family that this happened.  How traumatic for this poor girl to be handcuffed and taken away in a police car.  She is 8!  Shameful!

My goal for the month of April is to help those around Andrew understand autism and Asperger’s more.  I plan to have different posts about issues surrounding life with an Aspie throughout the month.  For example, due to this article and also to an incident that happened over the weekend with Andrew, I’ll be writing a post about how to deal with an Aspie who is having a fit.

Check back throughout the month for these posts!  You never know when your path will cross with someone who is on the autism spectrum.

I looked back in my archives and I had never posted Sawyer’s birth story, so here it is:

WARNING:  This is a TMI (too much information) post!  It is also kind-of gruesome and scary.  Enter at your own risk.

When I was pregnant with Sawyer, I went into labor at almost 34 weeks.  Jared rushed me to the hospital and the doctor started tocolytics and magnesium sulfate.  They were able to get my labor stopped by the time I reached 4 cm.  I had to stay in the hospital on the anti-labor meds for several days before my doctor finally let me go home on strict bedrest.  I went in for a check-up the next week on March 15th.  By that point I was just over 35 weeks.  My doctor was running really behind with his appointments that day and so his nurse-midwife checked me.  I knew immediately that something was wrong when I saw the look of horror on her face.  I started to sit up when she said, “No!  Don’t sit up!  Lay down and don’t move!”  She ran out of the room to get the doctor and I burst into tears.  I grabbed my phone to call Jared who had taken the kids down the road to lunch while they waited for me.  I said that I didn’t know what was going on but that he needed to get right back to the doctor’s office.  The doctor came rushing into the room and I said, “Could somebody please tell me what is going on?”  He explained that when the nurse-midwife checked me she felt both of the baby’s feet out in my almost fully dilated cervix and that I was starting to bleed.  Umm, yeah.  I had no clue.  Before I left the hospital 5 days earlier, an ultrasound showed the baby head down.  I never felt him do a full body flip.  Nor did I feel like I was in labor.  They did a quick ultrasound which showed that the placenta was rupturing.  Nice.  I was supposed to deliver at a hospital that was just a couple of minutes from the doctor’s office.  I said, “So should Jared drive me right over to the hospital?”  The doctor said that no way was I getting in a car.  So I asked if I would go by ambulance.  He said, “No, we’re going to have to do this here.”  His office is adjacent to another hospital that my insurance didn’t cover.  He said, “It does in life and death situations.”  At that point, it hit me just how serious and scary this situation was.  Jared had the 4 kids with him so the doctor said to take them to someone quickly while he scrubbed in and while I was being prepped for surgery.  Jared made it back just in time for the birth of Benjamin Sawyer Ottley.  After Sawyer’s birth, the doctor told us no more babies.  He’d had to do a T-incision to get Sawyer out as he was in a very awkward angle and my uterus was in bad shape.  He told us that my uterus ended up having to be stitched up like a baseball.  The chance of it rupturing with a future pregnancy was high (see Parker’s birth story).  In addition to all the extra stitches on the inside, he’d had to cut an exterior incision twice as long as a normal incision in order to get everything inside fixed.  The c-section recovery was painful and rough.  I was used to easy recoveries.  This was a whole different ballgame.  I spent the first 3 days in a complete haze of painkillers.  Despite the horrible and early birth, Sawyer was so healthy!  He was just perfect.  Sawyer weighed 6 pounds even and had a nice head of light brown hair.  He was so adorable (and still is!).

Sawyer was teeny tiny his whole first year of life.  I was reading back through my blog and at 2 1/2 months he was only 7 pounds.  But as soon as he hit his first birthday, he started catching up and growing in leaps and bounds.  I can’t believe he is 3 now!  He is such a happy boy.  He loves to cuddle, talk on the phone, play with his siblings (especially his best friend Olivia), play with Giz, help Mommy, wrestle with Daddy, and play outside.  He looks just like his Grandpa McGrath.  He is a smarty pants and has an amazing vocabulary.  We are so blessed to have him in our family.  I love you, SoyBoy!

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If you know my family in real life or follow this blog, you known that I’ve had some pretty scrawny babies.  Taylor was 19 pounds at a year and Cameron was 20 pounds at a year, so skinny since they were tall, but it was a decent weight.  And even though Andrew was the smallest and sickest baby, he did a good job catching up and was almost 18 pounds by his first birthday.  The last three babies, however, have had difficulty gaining weight their first year.  Olivia was only about 14 1/2 pounds at a year, Sawyer was only 16 pounds at a year, and Parker was just over 14 pounds at a year.  Scrawny babies.  Once Olivia and Sawyer hit a year, though, they started catching up and filling out and we stopped worrying.  Parker is now 16 pounds at a few days shy of 15 months, so he has gained weight, just not as much as we (and the doctor) would like.  I would really like to see him hit that 20 pounds mark.

However, just because Parker still looks like a baby doesn’t mean he isn’t turning into a very mischievous toddler.  He gets into EVERYTHING!  He goes up and down the stairs in a flash.  He can get down off of beds and couches by himself.  And he climbs on everything.  Today he found a new temptation… the kitchen counter.  This very resourceful guy pushed the step-stool over to the bar-stool and proceeded to climb his way up to the counter:

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When I took the Christmas decorations down after New Year’s, the blah of the post-holiday comedown combined with the blah of the January skies gave me an itch to want to do some decorating around the house.  Jared hates when I get this urge.  Not only does he hate the expense of my proposed projects, but he is leery of what tasks will be required of him.  When we lived in Louisiana and bought our first home, he did a lot of painting.  First he painted our master bedroom and bathroom (which included many, many hours of stripping wallpaper), but that didn’t hold a candle to the next chore of painting the entire exterior of our home.  That made him decide that he had done enough painting to last him for many years.  So we came to an agreement that if he would tape (I am a terrible taper) than I would do all the painting in this house.  Here are the results of the fruits of my labor (and a little bit of Jared’s).  The pictures were taken at night so excuse the darkness and/or lighting glares.

Powder room (went from beige to green; added new towels, pictures, and switches):

Kids’ bathroom (changed from duck theme to penguin theme; painted an accent wall):

Living room (painted an accent wall):

Hallway (from beige to Tobacco Road):

Family room (painted the back wall; added new chairs and a rug):

Mudroom (from beige to green):

Dining room (Tobacco Road):

Bedroom (no painting done here; just added the chaise and a painting):

And here is a picture of my helpers:

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Today is Jared’s birthday.  It has been an awful birthday for him.  First, we missed the movie we were going to go see on Saturday night to celebrate his birthday, just the two of us.  Then, a bunch of us have been sick, including me.  So he spent today taking care of the kids and me, picking up prescriptions, working, etc.  He didn’t even get a cake since I was too sick to make one or to go to the store to buy one.  I feel so bad.  We were going to go celebrate with my family tomorrow but now since we are sick we can’t do that.  I promise we will make it up to you later in the week, Jared!

I am the luckiest girl in the world to have such a wonderful husband.  I could go on and on about how fabulous Jared is.  He is the best father.  He loves to play games with his kids, to teach them, and he loves to just be with his family.  He works so hard for us and is so good at his job.  He is the smartest man I know.

I would write so much more about how wonderful Jared is, but I can barely stay awake.   Just know that I love you with all my heart, Jared.  Happy birthday!

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After the nightmare surrounding Parker’s birth, my doctor told Jared and me to expect it to take several months before I felt better and “back to normal.”  It has been almost 14 months and I am still waiting.  I feel like a walking zombie 95% of the time.  I hate this.  I used to have so much energy and felt like “Supermom.”  Now I am just “Night of the Living Dead Mom.”  To top that off, my body is falling apart.  I am barely 30, yet I often feel like I am at least 30 years older than that.  No matter how much sleep I get, it is never enough.  I thought after I stopped breastfeeding, my iron levels would go up and I would feel better.  I don’t.  My migraines are pretty much a constant now.  And now I have this stupid torn rotator cuff.  I am so tired of feeling like this.  It is so depressing.

Now, anything you need to get off your chest?!

In lieu of making New Year’s resolutions, I am making goals for 2009.  Why?  For some reason, I think I will be more apt to work on a goal.  You may be thinking, “What is the difference?”  To me, New Year’s resolutions seem to be more trite and often forgotten by the second week of January.  A goal seems more habit-forming and permanent.

1)  Eat out less often.  I like to eat out.  I like someone else to cook our meal, serve it to us, and clean up after us.  The kids get to order what they want instead of having to eat whatever it is I feel like making.  However, the amount of money we spend on eating out is atrocious.  Eating at home can also be healthier than eating out, although when you have children who despise french fries and always order fruits or veggies as their sides, this isn’t as much a concern for me.  Anyway, this goal leads to the next one…

2)  Be more frugal and mindful of our spending.  Jared and I have never gone through the “poor, starving student” stage together.  We have been blessed to have great employment opportunities throughout our marriage.  This has utterly spoiled us.  We want something, we go buy it.  This has rubbed off on our children, much to our chagrin.  We are trying to teach them the concept of saving up for something that they really want.  Now it is time for me to teach myself this concept.  I need to take stock of all that I have been blessed with and learn to appreciate and value it.  This segues into the next goal…

3)   Be content with my blessings.  Instead of wishing I had a 12,000 square foot house with an indoor/outdoor pool and full-size basketball court in the sub-basement on a 10 acre lot but still in a city with a SuperTarget within 5 minutes of my 8 car garage, I should think about how blessed and lucky I am to have the home that I do have.  I should give thanks for the warmth we enjoy inside our home when it is 16 degrees outside and the food overflowing our pantry when there are too many people wondering where their next meal is going to come from.  Instead of raging about the unfairness of being 30 and uterus-less, I should realize how absolutely blessed I am to have the 6 brilliant and beautiful kids that I have when there are women struggling to bear one child.

4) Learn to let things “roll off my back.”  I have always been an (overly) emotional person.  I let things and people bug me and bog me down.  Jared, however, has mastered the art of letting things roll of his back.  He doesn’t let slights and situations bog him down and uspet him like I do.  Consequently, he sleeps much better than I do at night.  Which leads to the next goal…

5)  Learn to become a morning person.  I am NOT a morning person.  At all.  Never have been.  I detest mornings.  I am a night owl, just like my parents.  However, with 4 children whom attend school (early) in the morning, I would really like to learn how to not dread the sound of the alarm clock, to not hit snooze so many times that a indentation has formed in my snooze button, and to not walk around bleary-eyed and zombie-esque all morning long.  That’s where the getting a good night’s rest without rehashing life’s injustices comes into play.  Perhaps instead of counting sheep, I will count blessings.

6)  Become a better scriptorian.  Ask me about any Jane Austen, Jodi Picoult, Chris Bohjalian, Henry James, etc., novel and I will give you a full synopsis and opinion about it.  But my 7 year old delves more deeply into the scriptures than I do (true, the kid is an anomaly and is actually frightening in the depth of his knowledge and wisdom and photographic memory).  However, there is no excuse for someone who is such a voracious and enthusiastic reader to not be a better scriptorian.

So here is to 2009!  Let it be a transformative year!

I’d love to hear your goals/resolutions…

This past Monday marked our 9th anniversary.  The nine years have absolutely flown by.  I am so thankful to be married to the world’s most wonderful husband and father.  Jared is a very hard-worker, ambitious, intelligent, passionate about his job and family, witty, and fun.  He is truly my best friend.  Thank you for always taking such good care of us, Jared!

We celebrated a day late.  Last night we went to The Melting Pot for dinner and then went to a movie.  Dinner took longer than we expected so we didn’t get to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as we had planned.  Instead, my sweet husband (I told you he was wonderful!) took me to see Twilight.

My anniversary gift

Jared's anniversary gift- new sunglasses

Today was a nice, relaxing, low-key New Year’s Eve.  We went to lunch at Chili’s and then did some shopping.  We came home and relaxed for a bit before dinner.  Inspired by our delicious anniversary dinner, we decided to make a new New Year’s Eve tradition– fondue!  The kids loved it!  Taylor asked me tonight if he had to stay up late, because he was tired and wanted to go to bed.  So we had a faux countdown to midnight at 9pm, sang Auld Lang Syne, had Martenelli’s, and sent the kids up to bed.  A funny story about the Martenelli’s– Taylor declined having a glass.  I asked him why and he said, “I don’t drink alcohol.”  I explained to him that Martenelli’s is non-alcoholic sparkling apple cider.  He said, “Can I read the ingredient list myself, please?”  Once satisfied with the “Contains no alcohol” on the front label, he accepted a glass.  I sure love that kid.

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