When we started planning for our last pregnancy, the reasoning I kept coming back to is “our table didn’t seem full.” I just knew there was something missing from our family being complete.
Enters this little wild spirit.
Three years ago, he took a hold of my heart and filled the last spot at our table.
Wally is the best little balance in our family.
He is so joyful and appreciative of every moment. He fills the room with “this is amazing” and “wow” and just takes his environment in for what it is. Seeing life through his eyes is pretty awesome and a good reminder of how precious everything really is.
He is the smartest three year old you will ever meet. He keeps up in conversation with us and his vocabulary and usage will blow you away. He loves reading and trying to keep up with his siblings all day will do that I guess. He is like a sponge when it comes to new information.
He is our carefree child. He is up for literally anything. He is going to be our adventurer, the one who lives life to the fullest. He does not worry about bodily injury or what he is actually getting himself into, he is just ready to try anything. It is beautiful to watch his confidence and how he is so sure of everything.
Walter is such a little actor and knows how to work a room even at his young age. He has never met a stranger. He will befriend anyone and bring you along for the ride. He is such a bright and bubbly little dude.
It may be him being three and learning his boundaries, but I think he is just a confident person in the making. If he does not want to do something, he will kindly say “No thank you,” and then continue doing what he wants to do. I love that for him and his grown up self that he can stand firm in his boundaries.
One of my greatest joys though is watching Wally with his brother and sister. He ADORES them. He is their biggest fan, and their little shadow. I had doubts about George and Wally sharing a room with a six year difference, but Wally is thriving being a big kid with George. Much to our chagrin sometimes, he wants to be doing everything that our nine year old is doing including climbing to the top bunk every night unsupervised. It is a like a slumber PARTY every night. He is up for any pretend play that Daphne comes up with, and she can soothe him in a way no one else can. I can hardly put into words the emotions I have watching them together.
Wally, you are everything our family needed. You are the greatest little bookend. This year you officially entered the big kid stage. While I am sad that I no longer rock you to sleep, I am so excited to see where you jump to next. Watching you explore is so magical and keeps us moving!
It is so hard to believe that you are nine today sweet boy. You are the child that God knew that my heart needed. You have been unexpected since the moment we found out about you, and you teach me so much about life and love. As a parent, we hope for so much for our children. These are just a few of the wishes we have for you on your ninth birthday.
My wish is that you find your people. You are entering a time of complicated social dynamics, but you are also one who tries to connect with everyone you meet. You love reaching out to people and make them feel seen. However, we know that is not always reciprocated now. We hope that you are able to find people who lift you up and are able to recognize your specialness and not tear you down for it.
As much as we want you to find good friends, we also hope for you to be a kind and loyal friend. You are one of those people that when you find someone you connect with you imprint on them for life. I hope you never lose that dedication and zest for pouring into other people and pumping up your friends. You are so kind to others, and no matter how hard people can be I hope you never lose that ability to see past that and find goodness in others. This is one of your most special qualities.
You are going to a new school this year, and third grade just seems so big. My wish is that you keep an open mind to learning and transition to these new expectations like a champ. You are one of the smartest kids I know, and my wish is that you continue to find the fun in learning and are able to thrive.
My hope is that you can learn from failing. You are wild and go straight into things with unparalleled confidence. The road to success is paved with mistakes well-handled. I hope that you keep trying even when it seems impossible.
As we near double digits, I hope that you still have that child-like wonder and find fun in every day. I think in this world we try to jam so much into our days and forget to slow down to appreciate it. I want you still to be a kid even if the pressures around you are to grow up. I hope this year is filled will play, laughs, and freedom to explore.
I know we tell you all the time that you have a big responsibility as a big brother to Daphne and Wally. While I do want you to be a role model to them, what I hope most is that you develop a strong bond with your siblings. I hope that you are each other’s biggest cheerleaders and inspire each other as you grow together. My wish is that you know each other’s hearts and share time together.
George most of all I just hope that you just keep being you. My wish for you is that you don’t ever let anyone dampen your light. You have a presence about you that is unmatched. You make us smile every day, and we have loved watching you grow into the person you are.
I am incredibly proud to be your mom. I am so in love with your beautiful heart. Your sweet, curious, and blunt personality has kept us on our toes, and is a constant reminder that God gave me you for all the right reasons. You are my biggest teacher, the one who is up for any adventure, the one who can make me laugh until my belly hurts, and the one who is brave beyond measure. Here’s to year nine and may it be your wildest year yet. Happy birthday buddy!
If I think back to the summer of 2007 when we met, I would never have dreamed of the life that we have. It’s funny that our life together started at an amusement park, because it is the perfect metaphor for our life together.
From the moment we got married though in 2011, I knew I was in for ride with many twists, turns, exhilaration, and lots of snacks along the way.
Every year, I take some time to reflect on our marriage and how it has grown and evolved over the past year.
Some years I share how hard our communication has been.
Some years I give a timeline of growth we experienced that year.
Some years I highlight the belief we have in each other.
I generally always give thoughts on the milestones of the year.
This year, I wanted to talk through what this year in our marriage has meant to me.
Year 12 was a year of teamwork. This year emphasized why our marriage works. Yes we respect, admire, and love each other. But I think this works mostly because Tom and I are truly partners at this life.
Teamwork in Well-being
Tom has had several health scares this year. In October, he suffered a stroke that actually led us to testicular cancer that we fortunately caught before it could spread to his prostate. The recovery from the surgery was longer than expected due to his autoimmune disease having a reaction to his medication and bedrest. Then in February, un-diagnosed ulcers ruptured in his stomach causing him to be in the hospital for days.
We had the life altering moment of watching Wally have a seizure and still have no understanding fully of why it happened. To feel so helpless as parents wrecked me. To have Tom as a strong hold got me through that first month of worry. He made sure I ate and did everything he could to give me peace to sleep.
It was in these moments where we had to lean on each other physically and emotionally. We crawled into the hole together some days and were mad and sad at the situations happening to us. It was scary as the care taker to watch each other in those moments. But the teamwork meant for me to be even more present in these dark moments for us to stay strong together.
Teamwork in Faith
As we made decisions about our family’s faith journey this year, we knew we had to do this together. Faith in God is a personal commitment, but we needed to be in lockstep about our game plan as we are role models to our children. We have struggled with finding a community that we felt would help us grow but also nourish our family as a whole. We took a leap this spring and made a commitment to a church home this spring, and it is the first time we both felt called to the same church.
Teamwork in the House
We are both fully capable people and can do all the things around the house. But what is the fun in that? We divide and conquer with our natural strengths. For example, I keep our schedule managed as it overflows with commitments, and he can add more garden beds each year with great ambition. I make all the plans, and he is the fixer upper.
It helps knowing that I don’t have to carry the burden of the household completely alone, and he keeps life interesting with all of his house projects and ideas. We rely on each other to make this household run completely without feeling the burden one way or the other.
Teamwork in our Careers
We both have fully earned our spots in our careers. We both have worked hard, dreamed big, and never gave up. But I truly believe that I would not have the same strength to be who I am at work without his support at home. He makes me feel more confident and is my first sounding board when I am struggling. Both of our jobs take a lot of mental effort and time, and it is great to have a partner who is understanding when our brains need to shut off when we get home or that we may be running just a little late here and there.
Having a partner who supports your career aspirations means the world. He is my biggest cheerleader, and he is often the reason I feel brave enough to jump into new situations. I mean if he can believe in me, why can’t I believe in myself? Having someone that supports you this fully makes it seems like we are not having to sacrifice in order to chase these dreams at work.
Teamwork as People
We compliment each other well in our personality and strengths. It is honestly amazing how opposite we are from each other, but it really helps fill in the gaps where we need something in this marriage. We are able to balance each other out, and this helps when we have to solve problems in this roller coaster of life because we can see different angles when approaching different situations. And I would be remiss to say that everything is equal all the time around here. I think 50/50 is a myth in so many ways, but that is for another day. The beauty of this team work is that we can be teeter totters for each other. There is an ebb and flow with our energy and time, and we acknowledge when we need to make shifts for each other. We have gotten so much better about communicating our needs to each other so that we can truly be the best partners to each other.
There is no one I’d rather ride along in this life with then Tom.
How are we here? Today my dearest daughter is six years old.
SIX Years with this sweet Doodlebug.
This year, I wanted to memorialize all the ways our family loves this girl, and then hear from her a few fun six year old thoughts.
I asked everyone what their favorite thing to do with Daphne was:
George-I like playing games with her.
Wally-I play legos with Sissy.
Daddy-On my days off work, I love to pick her up on the days George has run club to go get ice cream and play at the park together.
Mommy-I love to go flower shopping with her and picking out our favorite colors.
Here is what everyone said about their favorite trait of Daphne’s:
George-Everything she does makes me happy, but I love the faces she makes.
Wally-She shares.
Daddy-She loves her brothers so much. I never imagined having kids who love their siblings so much.
Mommy-I love how she fills others’ cups up. She is so intentional about paying attention to others’ interests and needs and tries to make people feel seen.
Here is how Daphne feels now as the six year old.
Who is your favorite person in the world? Mommy
What is your favorite color? Magenta
What is your favorite T.V. show? My first favorite was Pokemon, then it switched to Abby Hatcher, then back to Pokemon. Now it is Spidey Friends.
What do you like to wear? Dresses
What is your favorite song? Meghan Trainor, Me Too
What is your favorite food? Pancakes
Who is your best friend? Harrison
What do you want to be when you grow up? A singer, I am good at singing.
What is your favorite book? The rhyming books (the phonic readers from Usborne)
What is something you are good at? Building Legos
Where do you want to go on vacation? Florida, I love it there.
What is your favorite memory? Summer School, I will always remember it.
Who is your hero? Daddy…my family actually.
What is your goal this year? Get better at cartwheels
What is your favorite part of school? Choice time with the little shapes.
What are you scared of? That things will fall and break on me, and the dark.
If you were an animal, what would you be? Allicorn
What is something you are thankful for? My family
What makes you happy when sad? Music and hugs
What is your favorite holiday? Christmas. No one’s birthday is a holiday, except for God and Grandma who have the same birthday.
What is the best thing about being a kid? You don’t have to go to work, and the worst is that you have to do what grown ups say.
What are you excited about being six? That I am going to be taller.
Daphne is such a sweet young lady. She is so smart and kind. She has rocked kindergarten, loves going to school, and knows how to read well above her grade level. She is so observant. She feels her emotions fully, and she interprets others feelings just as deeply. She likes to warm up to new things, but I am so proud of her bravery for trying new things this year even though she is scared. She is one of those people that just warms your heart by just being in her presence.
When you become a parent, there are talks of sleepless nights, methods for dealing with runny noses and conversations about general sickness. We are warned about temper tantrums and the rise and fall of emotions.
But how to look for a seizure? Absolutely never a conversation we had.
It is one of those things that I am sure we all have seen on TV or movies, but never truly stop to think about how that may look in your world and with your kids.
As of a couple weeks ago, our life will never look the same because a seizure made its way into our reality.
Tom and I were watching TV when we heard Wally screaming. This is not abnormal behavior for Wally recently, and usually he is quite the bear to get back to sleep. He is very reactive waking up in the middle of the night, and it takes us several tries to lure him back to sleep.
So, when Tom yelled for me to come help him, I didn’t really think anything of it.
But as I walked in, I immediately knew something was wrong.
Tom had found Wally face down in his crib lying like a T, but just screaming.
The noise he was making was like nothing we had ever heard before. It was like a monotone screech.
His body was odd. It was like he was limp and stiff at the same time. He was not reacting to us picking him up at all with his body, but you could see the terror in his eyes.
I laid him down on our bed, and he just laid there like he was a doll. Normally, Wally would have climbed his way back on me immediately like a wild spider monkey, but he did not react besides the scream.
And then I started seeing his eyes roll back in his head, and I turned to Tom and said, “I think he is having a seizure.”
He was having a seizure.
We all started panicking, but Tom and I went into survival mode. I told Tom to go call 911, and I went back and forth from holding Wally and keeping him comfortable on the bed. I tried soothing him him the best that I could, all the while getting zero response from him.
His little body was limp and would go in and out of tremors, all the while his eyes were rolling back and forth into focus. When I could tell his eyes were with me, it was like he was trying to signal something to me.
We were both terrified.
And there was nothing I could do but watch. I felt so helpless, and here is my job to protect him, and there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening to him.
I am not sure the time that passed, but I would say the seizure lasted for at least 5 minutes if not closer to 10. It felt like an eternity for the ambulance to come.
Once they did arrive, Wally had stopped seizing. We decided for him to go to the ER to get checked out and be monitored in case another one came.
And here starts our education on what life with seizures could be.
I watched them put my two year old in an ambulance and then I drove behind the ambulance to the hospital. Tom rode with them, which honestly was a Godsend so I could have a break down in my car privately.
I cried the entire way following that ambulance. I knew nothing about what we were in for. I was scared for Wally. He is only two, and what does this mean for his life?
My anxiety went into overdrive.
Did we miss signs from the day?
Is this going to impact his development?
What happens if this continues?
What if? How come? Why didn’t we?
Fear overtook my ability to be logical.
Looking back, there was nothing about the day that stood out as a sign of something to come. He did not have any fever, ate normal, acted like the wild two year old that he is. There was no way for us to know.
Once we got to the hospital, the tests began.
They took a blood sample first, which they had to give him loopy meds for him to calm down to get the needle in.
The blood tests all came back normal. So no signs of viral or bacteria causes.
The next step was admitting us over night to do an EEG to get more information to a neurologist.
Wally does not like to be touched in general but add in the factors for strangers, exhaustion, and scary machines. This was torture for all of us. It took about 30 minutes for them to put all the EEG things on his head. 24 little nodules that they had to glue to his head while Tom and I both held him down. This was at 3 in the morning. I will never complain about having to wrestle him to get a diaper on again. That is a piece of cake compared to this experience.
Once it was on, we could not get Wally to sleep alone, which is a surprise because Wally has never been a fan of co-sleeping. I wasn’t mad about having to hold him for the rest of the night.
So the wait began.
The EEG monitored him for about 5 hours before the neurologist came to see us with his thoughts.
The EEG came back abnormal, and the neurologist confirmed the seizure from the reading. However, there was nothing else conclusive to share at that time.
They set us up with an MRI and a two follow up appointments: one with our pediatrician and one with our new pediatric neurologist.
Wally now has an neurologist.
My brain could not keep up with the information that was coming at me. I heard words explaining the medicine and the signs to look for, but honestly it is a blur.
The neurologist did explain that seizures are more common in toddlers than people realize. And all I could think was why no one prepared me for this. I guess the development occurs so quickly in toddlers that for some it can cause essentially “skips” in the brain communication in turn causing a seizure. They explained more, but that is what I gathered from the conversation.
And honestly I have refused to Google really anything since. I am scared the rabbit holes that I will be sending myself down to, and I am trying to have trust that we are getting the tests necessary to find out answers. My anxiety does not need to be diagnosing anything from the internet.
But the reality is that we may never have answers. It may be something he has routinely without warning or he may never have one again.
We may never know.
What I do know is that we are taking care of him, and we definitely listened to our guts that night, but it is scary to feel like we have zero control on this situation.
But here are a couple things that I have realized after having some time to process that night.
My feelings were a super power in that moment. My concern that something was off helped me in this situation. Who knew that my anxiety would help me lean into my instincts and shift into action to get care for my child?
The first 48 hours were honestly really debilitating. There have not been many moments in my life that I have felt that low and at a loss for control. I didn’t sleep, and I cried almost instantly thinking and overthinking every breath and move he made. I felt guilty for not having my eyes on him 24/7, which brought me to my knees. Through that reflection, I realized that fear could either define and limit me or I could process it and continue to move through it. I had to push myself to understand and accept that this unknown life with seizures is our new normal. That meant moving on with our days and going back to work, and not letting that fear dictate the kind of life we had. And eventually I have started sleeping again. There is not a day that doesn’t go by where I don’t think about it, but I can say it is not continued to be all consuming as it was that first week.
I am so thankful for Tom and I’s partnership. We were able to lean on each other during this to provide support, comfort, and stability through this difficult time. We both utilized each other’s strengths to provide Wally the best care imaginable, so for that I am truly grateful to be walking together through this.
I am usually pretty private with how I am really feeling with my anxiety. For the first time in my life, I actually communicated out that I was not OK. This was a huge step for me as I often don’t let people in to see that or ask for help. There were moments where thoughts entered my mind of how I could do certain things to meet all the responsibilities at home and work even though this huge thing just happened to us. I was able to catch myself and put some boundaries so I could honestly grieve. Because there is an element of grief here. Our life prior to that Sunday night is no more. And walking around like I was OK was not helping me. I was present, but I let my feelings out and shared them. I delegated things that in the past I would have just shouldered with my plate of armor not letting anyone in even though I was screaming inside that I was drowning due to the armor being to heavy. In a way this grief gave me permission to just let some of that facade go.
I don’t think we as parents are every fully prepared for these types of events. Not only the advocacy for your child and learning medical terminology, but also the emotional and physical toll that it takes as the parents who have to burden this weight. There is this push and pull of being strong and of sound mind to take in all the information and process it in order to ask the right questions and be the champion for your child but on the flip side your own needs are being stretched thin, but then you feel guilty for taking care of yourself so down this spiral you go trying to navigate a medical journey that is scary in its own right but when it is your child it is a whole other level of scary. I don’t know if it every makes sense but it is emotionally, physically, and all the things draining. It is a lot, and while it would have been nice to have known the possibility, I still don’t think you are every fully ready to be in this position. So with that I need to just focus on what I can do, what are the facts we know, and be willing to share with others more because all that is certain is this moment.
We have several appointments set up in January to hopefully find more answers, and for now he is on preventative medicine. I share this now because I felt so unprepared, and I wish I had known more in advance. While I am no medical professional, I hope that hearing some of these things may help someone in the future have their feelings and gut instincts perk up louder for their child.
In case you have not talked about seizures, here were things shared with us:
Seizures can present in many ways: fainting, convulsions, twitching, loss of consciousness, etc. They can be talking, or in our case, screaming through it. The eyes rolling back was the big signal to me beyond his body movements.
During a seizure, turn that person on their side and check for any airway issues.
Loose clothing if feasible.
Time the seizure, and document for yourself how the person acted. There will be A LOT of questions about their movement.
Call your doctor or 911.
Wally is seemingly back to normal, like it never happened. I, however, am forever changed. Will I forever wonder if today is the day for it to happen again, possibly? Am I OK today? Sometimes the fear still over takes me. (I cried the entire time writing this.) It is still a very vivid sight and sound in my mind, and there are moments where I am still reliving it on a loop in my mind. But I know I will eventually be OK, or I will be better equipped to move through the fear when I am not OK. I think I will forever be learning how to let others in and help when I am struggling, but I feel progress happening there. I am hoping that eventually we will have answers, but I have to trust that God will provide me comfort any way that this will go.
On a side note, hearing your two year old sing Mickey Mouse “Oh Toodles” while high on sedation medication during this process was a place where I think God said “hey you are struggling so here is this moment to lean on and smile at.”
findingmyyellow.com 