Our Week :: June 22-28

There has been a lot of reading in our house this week! Meghan has been reading the parts of books she knows to herself. In this picture, she was reading Old MacDonald and saying "e i e i e i" the whole time she was reading it. 

In an effort to encourage more calories in her diet we have been encouraging her to experiment with things that can be dipped. She finds the dipping process fun. While she doesn't eat much dip at all, we are hoping she will begin soon. This night it was home baked french fries and barbecue sauce.

Study. Study. Study.

She hates messy hands, so the fork proved to be helpful.

She quickly learned to dribble a soccer ball after learning to walk, this entertains her for long periods of time:

She has been loving having us read paper books to her, but they are all up on high shelves on the bookshelf because she also loves tearing paper. On Monday, she kept saying please, pointing to the books, and begging me to let her have one. I gave her three and stayed close to see how she would do with them. She LOVED reading them and turning the pages to look at new pictures. I am cautiously optimistic that she will be able to be reading paper books independently soon.

I love watching her love reading!! When she does it on her belly it's even cuter!! 

We had friends come over on Wednesday morning to swim in our pool. We were given a blow-up pool from another friend and the girls had a blast playing in the water. Meghan did not enjoy getting into the water - the bottom was slippery and she kept falling down while standing. She did, however, love playing with cups and bowls in the water - even dumping it all over herself!

She has been loving building with her Mega Blocks. This is a tower that she built all by herself. I held it still for her while she continued stacking the blocks. She was so proud and then so excited to tear it all apart when she was done.

Since playing outside at the pool in a hat, she has been all about wearing hats. This day she wore her (ADORABLE) bucket hat to the store and through dinner. It was just so cute! We got home from running errands after her dinner time....and she was starving and ate dinner while sitting on the island as I was preparing food for her. 

We also introduced Meghan to peanut butter. She's been food allergy tested and we know that she is not allergic to peanuts. She loved it and has eaten several spoonfuls full this week! She doesn't really like it on crackers or bread yet - just right off of a spoon!

Meghan learned what the fox says.....like the ever popular song "Ning. Ning. Ning."

This girl loves her accessories :: hat, tutu, and boots .... isn't this how most people start their day?

We harvested carrots this week - 12 lbs of them which turned into 12 pints of canned carrots!

Here's the cross stitch - coming this week will be Little Bo Peep and her sheep scattered throughout the right side! 

Our Week :: June 15-21

Meghan is proving to have a super girly streak - here she is in her tutu, boots, purse, and bracelets. It's so funny to watch her dressing up and wonder where she came from - I guess I enjoyed playing dress up as a kid, but I am so simple and un-fancy in my dress :) 

She has also been loving her big books a lot this week! Especially this one which has super busy pages for you to find things in - she doesn't necessarily look for things listed to look for, she just scours the page pointing out exciting things that she sees.

She was showing Daddy what she found....

..... and then decided she needed to take the book away :)

Missy started working on some molars this week and got a shot at her doctor's appointment....she was feeling pretty crummy the next day. But, she was all smiles despite her fever!! The only way we knew she didn't feel well was her fever, the fact that she wouldn't eat very much, and the fact that she took five hours of naps!

She's such a good Mama to her baby! She is way into giving her baby and dogs drinks.

When I find myself especially sad about the baby we lost, I remind myself to live in the now. I take some time to just take in everything about the baby we have. I remember that she was a miracle and we've not been promised that we can have another child. With my health problems there was a good chance we could never have a child at all and I never want to forget that she was and is such a miraculous & wonderful gift. If God doesn't have plans to give us another child she will still be a story of his amazing grace in our lives. So, when sadness threatens to overtake me, I study her, all her little features, and her person....this day I took about 200 pictures of her. Don't worry, I cut that number down for the blog :)

I love these sweet little curls....

And, I never want to forget these little toes, with chipped nail polish (she LOVES having her toenails painted), and covered with sand.

This girl is all sweetness and loves playing in her sandbox.

She started out sitting on the edge, but by the end she was completely inside the sandbox and had sand everywhere!

"eease!" (please - as in please take this away from me!) - she passed me every little rock she found in the sand.

She spent a very long time transferring sand to her bucket by hand.

Cole took her out in the evening to play with chalk while I mowed. He also took a ton of pictures of her!

Her thinking hard face:

"Monster Meghan" or so she appears from this angle.

Her completed picture:

This kid is just so adorable!!

This is her goofy, silly face:

Apparently she thought the cord was an un-crossable border and she wouldn't cross it unless Cole picked her up over it.

I love this picture.....Daddy and Baby spending quality time....my two loves just enjoying each other!

Meghan loves tortilla chips. She recognized the immediately when I put them in our cart at Costco and she requests them quite often. This night she made her way into the pantry, pulled the bag into the kitchen, removed the clip, and was starting to open the bag when we caught her....so she started signing please and asking for "mow" (more). Yes. These make her so happy!

And here's the cross stitch this week. Adding the border all the way around helped a lot to make it look like completion will be possible :) I'm finding that I'm really enjoying the cross-stitch process. Last time I did it, I was not such a fan - this time, I'm having a lot of fun! 

Meghan @ 16 Months

Fine Motor: 

• She continues to love pegging toys. Even ones of more complexity. 
• She loves nesting her cups. 
• She enjoyed picking up sand with her hands and trying to put it in her bucket.
• She explores water movement with a cup in the bathtub. 
• She easily turns pages in paper books as well as board books. She still can't have them unsupervised as ripping them is also fun :) 

Gross Motor:

• She walks everywhere consistently now! 
• She is getting very close to running - we figured she would do that pretty quickly after starting to walk consistently. 
• She is developing quite a throwing arm. She works on it a lot while throwing her cloth wipes into the dryer. 
• She can kick a ball while walking.
• She loves to "run away" from us.

Language: 

• Words (45): bwoo (blueberry), apple, spoon, nap, bird, poop, shoe, cup, bow (hairbow), boots, barn, clap, cheese, help, down, milk, mouth, ear, room
• Previously: ah (all done), baba (Dad), baby, ball, balloon, boo, book, bottle, bug, bye-bye, eat, hat, hi, mom/mama, more, oatmeal, papa (popcorn), please, prune, sock, teeth, that, uh-oh, wow, yay, yum
• Sounds (17): pig, elephant, rooster, donkey, chicken, frog, bird, owl
• Previously: dog, cow, rabbit, duck, sheep, horse, cat, "vmmm" for cars,  "mmm" while eating
• Signs (27): train, apple, bracelet, cracker
• Previously: all done, more, milk, hat, no, yes, eat, diaper, wash, phone, please, thank you, hot, cold, help, water, shoes, socks, up, book, bird, sleep/nap, dog
• Points To (12): feet, ears, toes
• Previously: hair, teeth, belly button, nose, mouth, shirt, pants, socks, diaper
• She signs please and then points to what she wants. 
• Her receptive language is increasing like crazy - when you say a word that she knows, she will look to/for the object. Example: ask her if she wants the fan on and she will look at and point to the fan.
• If she's getting frustrated by the length of a car ride she is easily distracted by asking her to make the sounds of various animals. 

Eating:

• She has completely given up the baby bottle! 
• She has started using a fork to eat. The night I introduced it, she ate 5 chicken nuggets just to get to keep using it! 
• She enjoys using her trainer open cup to drink water. 
• She generally eats very well. When she is teething she eats less, prefers pureed foods, and loves gnawing on frozen veggies.
• She LOVES eating food right out of the gardens!
• Her weight has continued making significant drops off of her growth curve. After all of her feeding issues as a baby, she stabilized around the 40th percentile. Her last two appointments have had significant drops - she's now in the 13th percentile. Her height also dropped percentiles in that time frame - she's still quite tall, but not following the curve she had been on. If she doesn't begin to come back up or drops even further she will most likely have some testing done just to be sure she doesn't have some sort of metabolic disorder, hormonal disorder, or something else medically that could be impacting her growth. Or, she may just be a skinny little thing! 
• To help ensure she is getting enough calories each day, she now drinks milk mixed with heavy cream! In one cup of milk (3/4 c. milk + 1/4 c. cream) there is an additional 140 calories! 

Sleeping:

• She rarely takes a morning nap. She wants to lay down for it though! She will request it if you "forget."
• She takes a good afternoon nap most days for 2-4 hours. 
• She generally sleeps from 7:00/7:30 pm to 6:30/7:00 am. 
• She does not want rocked before going to sleep anymore - I think this is mostly because she's so long and can't get comfortable. 
• She now coaches me through her pre-sleep routine. She points at each thing saying "that" as if I'm going to forget the order we have been doing these tasks for months :) 

Other Updates:

• She has eight teeth and is working on her molars now. Her last two teeth had only been through for a week and the molars started. Poor girl! 
• She is in love with corners. There is one in her playroom that she loves to play in and one in her room where she will carry toys to play with during roomtime!
• She loves bath - just saying the word is sure to get her to walk quickly towards the stairs. The entire time you draw the bath she will repeat "bath, bath, bath, bath."
• She enjoys having lotion put on after a bath. For a while it annoyed her, but she loves it now. 
• She loves helping with whatever "chore" Mama is doing - she sweeps, plays with the vacuum, helps with the laundry, etc. Whatever I am doing she will try to do. 
• She loves glitz and glam. Favorites this month are: bibs as capes, a purple tutu, pink sequin boots, bracelets, and her purse! 

Dear Baby, The One I Never Met

Dear Baby,

It's been one month since your birth. One month since the day you came into the world seven months too soon. One month since our hearts broke at the loss of your presence in our family.

I never shared your sister's birth story with the world; it felt very private and like something our family could cherish in our memories alone. But with you - with no further story to share, with no funny things you do or say, with no pictures of you as you grow - your birth story is the only story of you I have to tell. And I want this story preserved in writing. So, here it is. This is your story.

You were wanted, sweet baby. You were prayed for. You were desired. And we were overjoyed when we found out you were on your way!

Your pregnancy was much easier on my body than your sister's. I was very nauseated, but didn't ever throw up. I had food aversions and cravings, but was able to eat a variety of foods from all of the food groups. I was tired, but able to keep up with your sister. I was very bloated and already starting to show by six weeks (if you knew to look for it) and elastic waist pants were quickly becoming my favorites.

Meghan and I went to Manhattan to visit our family; Aunt Lauren and the twins were up from Texas so we traveled there to see them and spend some time enjoying our family. Your sister loved the babies and I was so optimistic that she would love you and be a great big sister to you. She would have been - she would have loved you so much! We drove home on Friday morning and I spent the afternoon unpacking and resting.

The afternoon progressed typically and after preparing Meghan for bed, I passed her off to Daddy for the two of them to read some bedtime stories while I went to the bathroom. That's when I noticed a bit of blood. A quick google search revealed that a little bit of blood can be very normal in the first trimester and that I should take it easy. So that's what I did Friday night. I rested on the couch and prayed that you were safe.

However, every time I went to the bathroom, there was a little more blood.

When I awoke in the morning I was feeling well rested and hoped that all was going well for you. There had been no blood when I went to the bathroom. I made breakfast and played with your sister. However, when I took a shower, the blood began to flow much more rapidly and I told your dad it was time to go to the ER. He stayed home with your sister (we wanted life to stay as normal as possible for her) and I drove to the hospital.

I had a very sweet nurse caring for me and she said that the first thing the doctor would probably want was a urine sample. I went into the bathroom to give the sample, but instead of urine, the cup quickly filled with blood. I could feel my stomach writhing. I wanted to cry, but somehow I managed not to. The doctor did an internal examination - the cervix was still closed. This was good news. And I clung to it. Desperate for you to be okay!

They drew some blood and waited for results.

Next was the ultrasound. The technician allowed me to watch as she found you. I saw you, nestled into my womb, looking healthy. I prayed that you were. You were measuring 5 days small; that was possibly okay. Your sister measured small her entire pregnancy and still is a very little tike. It was also possible that, despite using medications that should have triggered ovulation on a certain date, that it was actually a few days later. Then as she began to search for your heartbeat, she turned the screen away from me to hide what she was finding - there was no heartbeat. Nothing. I felt as though someone had stabbed a knife right through my heart. How could you not have a heartbeat? My precious baby, how could something be wrong with you?

The blood test results came back. My HCG count was very low for this stage in the pregnancy. Soon after I was discharged with the diagnosis of a threatened miscarriage. There was still a chance you were younger than expected and that you would be fine, but for now I was on bed rest and given a list of symptoms to come back if I experienced.

I bawled in the parking lot. Then I drove home.

I've never been one to just sit and do nothing. To lay on the couch, watching your dad and sister go about the day without me, and worry about you was so very difficult for me. But I did it. Anything to protect you. I prayed and prayed and prayed that God's will would be for you to live.

That night, as I listened to your Daddy rocking your sister - the sound of his singing and the squeaking of her rocking chair - the contractions began. I tried to convince myself I was just hungry, but they came and went just as they had in the early stages of your sister's labor. As the night went along, they came closer together, but did not significantly intensify in pain.

It stormed all night. Strong storms. They mirrored the feelings inside of me. I felt as if my whole person were being ripped apart. Into shreds of tortured pain. I knew what was happening and it was terrible. The first time I was in labor the promise of a healthy baby lay ahead and I could endure in excitement. But this. This was true pain. Physical, mental, emotional. We finally decided to go to bed and see if I could get any sleep.

By morning, the contractions had me stopping in my tracks and thinking about breathing through the pain. It was agonizing. Here I was laboring for you - and I would never get to hold you. I knew this was the last thing I would ever do for you - labor for and then deliver you.

I vividly remember 7:20 on Sunday May 17th.

I watched as my body delivered yours.

There were no doctors, no nurses. Your Daddy wasn't there watching with a look of pride and overwhelming joy mixed with a touch of disgust. You were not placed screaming and wiggling, warm and wet on my chest.

I cried. But these tears were so different that the tears I cried at your sister's birth.

I missed you. I missed you so much already.

And then, possibly the hardest thing I have ever done in my life: I flushed your little body down the toilet. My child, my littlest love, and there was nothing to do but flush you away as though you were waste. The. Hardest. Thing. Ever.

As I sat there, a crumpled mess on the floor, wondering how I could ever move on without you, my person was flooded with warmth. I cannot fully describe it and to hear me say that must sound crazy. But God was there. He was holding me. As I wanted, more than anything, to be holding you warm within my body still, he was holding me. I was heartbroken. But I was being held. 

Eventually, I left that bathroom. We headed to the ER again. This time as a family.

Blood tests revealed drastically lower levels of HCG. An ultrasound confirmed that you were gone.

I missed you. I still miss you.

We drove home as a family and we cried.

As we walked into the house, I noticed out the kitchen window that they peonies were beginning to bloom. As you left, those blooms exploded into life.

The contractions continued - every contraction was a screaming reminder that you were gone. They were agonizing and lasted about 36 hours after your birth. Finally, Monday evening they were done.

We shared the sad new with our family and then with our friends on Facebook. We were overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and prayers that we experienced. So many messaged us to say their hearts were breaking with us, that they were praying for us, and friends shared their favorite scriptures and encouragement they clung to after their miscarriages.

We clung to this one from Isaiah 25: He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.

Your Daddy had a week of bereavement leave from work - and we spent the week together as a family learning how to do life now. The hardest times were rocking your sister to sleep - the time when I used to cherish the fact that I was rocking both of my babies. And when showering and falling asleep - times when I used to sing & think to you. 

However each day that went by also brought with it hope. We missed you, but God was beginning to show us that he has a plan for our family and has promised that someday we will understand why your life was so short. Throughout the pain, this song ran through my head constantly: 

"There is strength within the sorrow. There is beauty in our tears. And You meet us in our mourning with a love that casts out fear. You are working in our waiting. You're sanctifying us. When beyond our understanding you're teaching us to trust."

One week after losing you we went to church. Your Daddy was drumming in the band and your sister and I were in the congregation. It was HARD. While we hold no anger at God for losing you, understanding that God works in ways we do not understand is insanely difficult for the human heart to even begin to comprehend. I believed all of the words that I sang. I clung to them. And I sobbed my way through them. And I was so thankful for a sweet friend who had kleenex and an arm to wrap around me. 

As the weeks have gone by, I've already found one way your life has completely changed mine. I have never been an "expressive" worshipper. But that first Sunday and those that have followed have found me in the world of raw emotion. And instead of trying to hold that emotion in, I have become very comfortable with tears in worship. And raising my hands in worship - especially when the tears keep the words from coming out. And with being my raw self in the presence of God and the other worshippers in our church family.  

Sweet baby, we don't understand why you weren't able to stay with us. We miss you. And still think of you daily. But we know God had a plan for your life and that as we go through the rest of ours we will understand that even more. We know that God has a plan for our family and we will see that unfold as the days and years go by. And we know we will understand it all when we get to heaven - when he reveals the plan he was working in and through our lives all along.

Dear baby, we loved you. We still love you. We will always love you. 

love, 
Mama

-------

It bothered me that we had a life in our family and no tangible way to remember it. I thought to ask my doctor for a pic from our ultrasound, but we didn't have any ultrasounds before the baby passed. The day of the miscarriage, our peonies started to bloom - and a few days ago I figured out the perfect thing. My "love necklace" which had our wedding date & Meghan's name now has a peony charm to represent that sweet baby we lost. This feels right. All of my loves hanging close to my heart!