My sweet Walter, Today you turn five. Five feels big. Five feels like the official goodbye to babyhood, toddlerhood, and so many little moments I’ve held onto with both hands. You came into this world with a sweet simplicity, and you have been healing parts of me ever since. You’re our youngest of three — the grand finale — and somehow watching you turn five feels both impossibly fast and incredibly sacred.
I’ve known this day was coming, but there’s something about the youngest hitting this milestone that hits a little differently. You’re the last one who needed me for everything. And now here you are — tall, hilarious, opinionated, fiercely independent, and so wonderfully you.
You were born into a loud house with siblings who have wrapped you up into their chaos. You’ve grown up trying to keep up with the big kids — running a little faster, climbing a little higher, talking a little sooner and a whole lot more. You’ve taught us all how to laugh at the chaos and soften in the sweetness.
You are the perfect blend of tough and tender. You know how to hold your own, but you also know how to melt into us when you want to be little. I secretly love those moments — the ones where you curl up next to me and remind me that no matter how big you get, you’ll always be my baby. You did this last night as climbed up to me to snuggle after you had a scary dream, and I will hold those last moments of being four so dear.
What I want to remember about this age with you Wally:
The way you are always the last to wake up, and always with wild hair. You still have me carry you down to breakfast on school days, and I will keep doing it since I never know when the last time will be.
The sound of your footsteps running down the hallway because you have important things to tell us…or how you are sneaking down to get a late night milk.
Your obsession with chicken nuggets.
The way you throw yourself into things and teach yourself how to do something hard, like swinging on your own.
The way your body moves and dances anytime you hear music. Your movie credit dancing is my favorite.
The way you set your boundaries and stick to your strong will. You are firm when you don’t want to do something, and you cannot be swayed once you are convicted. This isn’t just about doing things like chores, but how you aren’t going to engage in activities that don’t bring you joy even if they seem fun to the rest of us.
The way your brother and sister light up when you do something funny. You bring out the kid in all of us. You are always trying to make everyone smile around you, and you bring levity into every situation.
You are wild beyond measure, but you still search for my hand to hold as we walk places which reminds me of your gentleness.
I want to remember how you look at the world with wide-open excitement, as if everything is an adventure waiting for you to join in.
You made our family feel complete. You taught me how to let go of perfection, how to savor the littlest moments, and how to find joy in the middle of messy days. You stretched my heart in ways I never expected.
As you step into five, into kindergarten this next year, into bigger shoes and braver steps, I hope you carry these things with you:
Keep your imagination big.
Keep your laugh loud.
Keep your kindness close.
Keep your dance moves coming.
And keep believing that the world is good, because you make it better just by being in it.
One day, you’ll be too big for my lap and too cool for my hugs. But I hope you’ll still read these words and know how fiercely loved you’ve always been. You are my last baby, but you’re also the one who taught me that endings can be beautiful — because they’re really just beginnings in disguise.
We love you more every single day Wally, and we can’t wait to see you grow this year.
Here’s to five — to the magic, the mischief, and the memories ahead.
In honor of his birthday, we did a kid interview to document his personality during this sweet time.
What makes you happy? That Sister plays with me.
What makes you laugh? Tickles.
What makes you mad? Georgie’s hurts. (These two are always fighting…)
What is your favorite toy? Scooter, but my favorite stuffie is Mickey Mouse.
What is your favorite show? Bluey.
What is your favorite animal? Elephant.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Artist.
Who is your best friend? Nicholas. (This is my other half’s son who is in middle school, and they live in KC. So stinking sweet that he made such an impression on Wally when we see them a couple times a year.)
What is your favorite color? Blue. (This changes every day.)
What is your favorite food? Grapes.
What is your favorite part of the day? Sunny days.
What is your favorite game? Ninja Turtles (It’s the old school arcade game.)
What are you good at? Running. (Accurate)
What is your favorite thing about yourself? That I draw.
What is love? Hugs and kisses.
I also asked the family their favorite things about Wally to honor his birthday.
Tom: He is our sour patch kid. One minute he wants to cuddle up and the next he is running away from you on his scooter.
George: That sometimes he is not annoying. I do like playing with him.
Daphne: I love playing with him. My favorite is playing with him with our nativity set and our blocks.
Me: I love his self-confidence. He is so sure of what he wants and how to use his voice to advocate for himself. He can command a room and not be pushed around. For being the smallest in the house, he holds his own. I love that once he puts his mind to something he will keep trying until he masters it because he knows deep down that he can do it. He is so determined to be fully himself!
We love you sweet Wally! You brighten our days with your humor and playfulness. Wally, you are so bright and make everyone a friend. You can make everything seem like the most fun thing ever. This our last year before you are off to school, and I can’t wait to see how much you grow this year!
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!
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.”
Health: We had to go to Urgent Care a couple weeks ago because he just couldn’t get rid of a cough. He is cutting his molars, but we also suspected that he had RSV since Daphne was diagnosed at the same visit with it. He also had ear infections at the same time.
Diet: His appetite is almost non-existent. He eats fish, chicken nuggets, and meatballs. He hates pasta and pizza. He will eat peas, broccoli, and any fruit you put in front of him. His favorites this month are his breakfast bars, Gogurts, crackers, blueberries, and grapes. He also knows how to get into the pantry and pull the step-ladder over to get his favorite snacks. His favorite treat is chocolate covered pretzels like his mama.
Clothes: He is in size 2T clothes, size 7 in diapers, and size 8 shoes.
Sleeping: For the most part he is doing an ok job sleeping. Sometimes he can be a bear to get down. He has started talking in his sleep, or rather singing in his sleep. He does still have a nap during the day, but only if he is in his crib. He fell asleep on me for the first time in a really long time over our vacation because he fought a nap so hard at Silver Dollar City. His bedtime is 8pm, and he usually gets up between 8-9am. He DOES NOT like to be woken up. He also has started sleeping with a little mini lovey handkerchief sized thing. I am still too scared to give him a full blanket.
Likes: He loves magnatiles, Legos, and dinosaurs. His favorite shows are Bluey, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Super Monsters, and Dinosaur Train. He is constantly reading, and has many of our books memorized. He loves running water, and he can reach the handles now with a step stool, so that has been fun to pull him away from. He loves to run and jump into furniture, like launching himself with no abandon at full speed. His favorite phrases are “No” and “I don’t want it.”
Dislikes: Sitting at the dinner table. Being told what to do.
Milestones: He has so many words. I feel like there are new ones every day, and he has 4-5 word sentences now. He can count to 15, and spell his name.
Quirks: The way he says “Okay” is by far the cutest thing he does. When he roars like a dinosaur, he does it with his whole face. If you say “I love you forever and ever,” he will respond with “and always.” He calls donuts, “doodats.” Since he watches Bluey all the time, occasionally he will call me “Mum.” When you ask him where is eyes are he closes them instead of pointing them.
We parents are: in a whirlwind, and honestly it is survival mode over here. A month ago, Tom had an unknown stroke in the bottom half of his body, which made for some very painful days. After consulting the urologist, we learned that he had a mass in one of his testicles, and the stroke had basically made that one die which was the pain he was feeling. Fast forward to this week after a month off work and barely being able to walk, he had an orchiectomy and a vasectomy. In basic terms, he had a testicle removed this week and is an unbearable amount of pain. There is a thought that the mass could be testicular cancer, so as crazy as it sounds, we are fortunate that he had the stroke because that mass was not there over the summer which means it could have gone undetected and passed on to other organs. Taking it out this week removes any chance that a cancerous mass could spread now, but we are still waiting to hear if it was actually cancer. So needless to say our life has been chaos. It is chaos on a normal month, but this month has been extra hard. I am really glad that we have each other to lean on.
Big kids are: doing great. They got glowing reports from school, and I am so proud of all that they are learning and how they are showing kindness to others. Both received a month award in the first two months, which makes me a little weepy! Walter is obsessed with his big siblings. He follows the big kids around, and tries to imitate them all the time. Tonight George said to me after hanging out with Wally, “I am trying to spend as much time with him because I just love him, and I know he won’t be this little forever.” When Daph is home, these two are stuck at the hip. They love each other so much. Their favorite thing to do together is play with puzzles and this plastic flower set. However, they are going to have to watch out because Wally has no limits. He tackles them all the time with full force. He has not learned that diving head first is not the preferred method of hugging. He is the honey badger of the family.
Daisy is: just living her best life. Wally loves to boss her around. He tries to get on her back. And one of his favorite things is getting food for her.
In case you are curious, here is George at two years and Daphne at two years.
There is something different about each of his milestones. I know Walter is my last baby. So I feel like I am cherishing the moments more than I ever did with the other two because I know this is the last time for us to experience all that this is.
findingmyyellow.com 