MIA, but not really.

I don't know how many people actually follow this blog, but I've been absent so maybe even fewer than before!

I've been wrapped up in an endless array of projects (fun ones, like birthday party planning and building fun things for Elijah to play with, and mind-numbing ones like household paperwork).  One project that I've been working on is a new blog, called "Mom's Daily Adventures."  I wanted to chronicle some of the creative projects I've been doing, and thought I'd separate the personal stuff from the more general, mom-of-toddler-related stuff.  So I'm figuring out the marketing of the new blog, tweaking the design, and developing more content. (Really, this is not that much work: I typically photograph and write about things that I make, so it's just one more step to post it somewhere.)

So, check it out:  http://www.momsdailyadventures.com/   Let me know what you think---suggestions are welcome!

My next big project is to launch an Etsy store to sell off some of the things I've been creating, such as jewelry made from Lake Michigan rocks.  I can't possibly wear this many necklaces.    :)  Stay tuned!

-Amber

The $150 vacation

I have been negligent in updating this blog, for many reasons; rather than try to summarize the past 6 months, I'll just pretend there has been no long gap between posts.

We just returned from a week-long vacation to my parents' place on Lake Michigan. It was an awesome week. We bought a typical week's worth of groceries before leaving home, so I'm not really counting that in the $150 price tag for the trip. We weren't trying to be super-cheap, because the lodging was free, but that's how it went down. One nice restaurant meal (Brewster's!!), gas, and very little else.

It was 95 degrees for several days, so we didn't hit the beach every day. We went on two long bike rides (these were E's first-ever bike rides, and he did quite well being strapped into the seat and wearing a helmet---thanks, Alison!), played in the backyard, and hit the produce market. (BTW, if you're ever in Southwest Michigan, the Sawyer Garden Center is AWESOME! Love that place!)

On the beach, our $5 inflatable baby pool totally made the trip. Seriously. He could sit in a baby pool for hours, pouring water out of a watering can, splashing with sticks, plopping rocks into the water...you get the idea. It was wonderful to sit next to him with a book instead of chasing him everywhere. Though there was plenty of chasing at other times.

The lake was varied, as usual--a big-wave day for jumping; a crystal-clear, calm day for using the baby float, and the rest were perfectly in-between, providing a pleasant audio backdrop.

(current favorite pastime: screaming.)

We spent the lone rainy day at the Curious Kids Museum in St. Joseph, MI. It was small, but nice. And FREE because we are members of the Kohl Children's Museum at home. (We are so spoiled by our local museum that it makes anything small look, well, not so nice.) Will stopped back there on our way out of town while I was doing laundry, and then it was empty, and even had some reptiles in a hands-on exhibit---even more fun.

We got to spend a day with my parents toward the beginning of the week, and the highlight of the trip was the fireworks display on the 4th. I forgot how awesome it is up there on Independence Day; we haven't been there in 2 years. (Last year E was too little for it to be any fun, and the year before, I was nearing my due date and couldn't travel.) The little guy LOVED seeing the fireworks, which stretched up and down the miles of beach within view. I seriously don't ever want to go to a city fireworks display again---it was that awesome. E fell asleep on Daddy, while still chewing a graham cracker. (Mmmmm....S'Mores.)

The joke of the week was that since our vacation was so cheap, we could go buy ourselves an iPad. I think we both want one, but don't---it would be fun and cool, but we can't justify the cost. We CAN, however, justify the cost of a gas grill, which we just might buy for ourselves. We'll see! (We tell ourselves that we'll eat at home more, eat more veggies, it would heat faster than our charcoal grill, blah, blah, blah. We are SO good at justifying purchases, it's scary. We almost did that recently with a HOUSE, but that's another story altogether.)

But I digress. Our vacation was super-fun, relaxing, and after we added a room-darkening shade, E let us sleep an extra hour each morning. Beautiful.

Checking back in...to life.

When writing about my life, I tend to use some hyperbole: "this has been the craziest month EVER!" But when I think about the past month, I really can say that I've had the craziest series of events happen to me---ever. Including having a baby. Including the month when I graduated from college, got married and moved to another state. All of those crazy times in my life were full of the unknown, of worry, and even some fear here and there. But on the whole, they were full of relatively normal life events. THIS month, however, was anything but normal.

Elijah was near the end of some kind of viral illness and ear infection; he hadn't had a fever in a day but I kept him home from church that Sunday morning (January 24) just to be safe. And wow, am I glad I did. While I was feeding him an early lunch, I started to have an excruciating pain in my left side. It was all I could do to clean him up and put him in his bed for naptime. Then I laid down on my bed, literally writhing in pain. (I had never truly experienced what is meant by that phrase, but I was continually moving, unable to find any comfortable position.)

Long story short: I had a kidney stone. I went to the ER that afternoon, was sent home with pain medication, and by midnight was BACK in the ER with the absolute worst pain I have experienced in my life. So bad that it made me puke. (Sorry for being so graphic.) The next day, they went in and got the kidney stone.

Another long story short: because of the stone "backing things up," I had an infection. Or maybe, I had an infection before the kidney stone ever happened. We won't ever really know. But they sent me home on Tuesday with antibiotics that were no match for the infection (we found out much later).

The symptoms I was having for the next day and a half ranged from the worst headache I had ever had, my entire abdomen swollen and in pain, strange dreams/hallucinations while I was sleeping, breathing difficulty, and a heart rate that dropped to around 40. And waking up frequently at night, gasping for breath, with my heart pounding. It was terrifying, and that is an understatement.

I went to the nearby urgent care clinic, which sent me to the ER because they thought I had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lung).

I didn't have a PE. But after two more days, dozens of blood draws, multiple CT scans, ultrasounds, cardiac workup, exams, and more doctors than I could count (it's never a good sign when a doctor says "I've never seen anything like this"), they realized that an inflamed gallbladder was pressing on a nerve that was affecting my heart rate and respiration. And the gallbladder, along with everything else in my abdomen, was inflamed because of the infection that had "leaked" out everywhere.

The official diagnosis: sepsis. I made the mistake of Googling it. Scary. A doctor told me that if I had waited one more day before going back to the hospital, I would have landed in the Intensive Care Unit. I could have died. Including my first hospitalization, I was in there for 6 days.

It was really scary when they were trying to figure out what was wrong, and it was almost worse when I found out how serious of a diagnosis I had. Mentally and emotionally, this has been a rough road. When I got out of the hospital, I had to gradually re-enter my life, and all of my regular routines and places that I go. But I don't feel like the same person that I was before. It's been a lot to process, and not something that I feel like anyone else really understands.

Recovery: my doctor told me it could take a month (maybe more) to feel like I'm completely back to normal. This has been MUCH harder than recovering from my C-section. (Except that there's no surgical incision, so I don't have that pain.) I'm totally exhausted at the end of every day, and I've been home for a couple of weeks. Sometimes I don't feel like my brain is working very well---like my head is cloudy. And I'm not even taking any medication. :) So my answer to everyone who asks is, yes, I'm feeling better, but no, I'm not totally back to normal and I have no idea when that'll happen.

I have bursts of energy, and I have to take advantage of them to play with Elijah, clean the house, work (I am SO far behind on every deadline I can think of), organize papers, etc. It's been overwhelming in this sense, too, to have to re-enter life after it basically stopped for a few weeks.

I can't say enough about how thankful for everyone who prayed, helped with Elijah, brought meals, and sent encouraging words my way. I am walking away from this situation with profound gratitude for my family, friends, and church community. There truly are no words.

So that's the story, and I guess I'm back, sort of!

Time moves too quickly

Recently, while visiting with a friend who has several school-age kids, I noticed how quiet her house was. I asked her where everybody went, and each of her kids had taken off to a different friend's house. Everything was completely still---very unusual, to say the least.

It struck me how few years it will be before Elijah is not going to want to hang out with his mom anymore---it's going to happen faster than I could imagine!

For the last few days, perhaps because he's been getting over a cold, or because our routine is slowly becoming normal again after the holidays, Elijah has been much more clingy and in need of Mama. Even when he's playing by himself, he just wants to know that I am there. Completely out of the blue today, he came over and smiled, gave me a big hug, and kissed me on both cheeks.

He is 17 months old, as of yesterday.

Or, he will be playing, and every now and then, will run in my direction, into my arms. I dread the day when that is no longer a favorite game of his! I'm sure he will never stop needing my presence or my hugs, but I am so thoroughly enjoying this current stage. (Of course, it occasionally is a little too much, like when I can't eat breakfast while Daddy watches him, because he knows I'm still there and starts calling out, "Mama? Mama?? MAMA!!")

So my friend's growing-up-too-fast kids were a reminder that I need to continue enjoying every moment. To be fully present whenever I possibly can. To put off the things that aren't urgent or important and BE with Elijah (put off housework: CHECK!). And my goal for this year is to figure out that balance a little better: how to put things off to spend time doing the important stuff, and still figure out how to get to the growing to-do piles in a way that doesn't stress me out.

Today we watched a friend get married, and as her dad gave a toast at the reception, it was as if Elijah's next twenty years flashed before me. This, God willing, will be me someday, standing by my child as he enters another new phase of life. It will be me, sending him off to start his own family.

Ok, rewind...back to today. Enjoy today, enjoy today, enjoy today!