Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  We celebrated by planting some flowers and pumpkins in our back yard.  We played outside for a few hours.  And we've relaxed all day.  I didn't care what we did, as long as I was with my two girls and my hubby.  I love being home with my girls every day.  Some days I forget that.  Today was a good reminder of how lucky I am to be a mom!

Living in the Moment

We started our "lock down" 5 days ago and are still going strong.  We have only left the house to go on walks around the neighborhood.  As we walk I keep my eyes peeled for humans walking around that we need to avoid.  Yes, this is what life at our house has been like this week.  My husband's thoughtful grandparents brought us cupcakes the other day.  We waved at them through the window like quarantined animals!  My dad dropped off Mia's new prescriptions yesterday and we did the same.  As it happens, it seems so silly and I feel so overprotective, but oh well.  We're almost there and we're all healthy.  In less than a week Mia's cath will be done and we'll be moving on to the next phase of life.

We talked to our cardiologist on the phone at the beginning of the week.  Just had some questions we wanted to make sure were answered before the procedure.  She told us that potentially Mia's surgery could be within 6 weeks from the cath depending on what they find.  That hit Art and I hard.  We may be going from lock down right now to major lock down in another few weeks.  That scared me, but it's comforting to know that in less than a week we'll have answers to our burning questions.  Finally.

I've actually really been enjoying our time at home this week.  I've been drinking in my girls and the fun ages that they are.  I love seeing Izzy's imagination going wild and Mia exploring everything in our house.  I thought that I'd be brutally bored, but that's not the case at all.  It's nice having so much time, just the four of us, before our life gets interrupted with another open heart surgery.

As I'm typing this, Mia is standing next to me, talking to me in her own little language and putting stickers on a piece of paper.  I love her so much.  Her smiling face gives me hope and when I look at her my heart aches because I never want anything bad to happen to her.  I want to protect her in any way I can, I want to give her half of my heart.  Since I can't physically do that, I will instead give her my whole heart full of love. That sounded really cheesy, but it's the truth!

Packed Away

Last night I sold one of the last "baby" items that we still had in our house, our Pack N' Play.  I wasn't sad at all as I posted it on Craigslist and got it all cleaned up.  I wasn't even sad when the buyer came to pick it up. Suddenly this morning, I was standing in Mia's room, which now has lots of extra space, and it hit me that my girls aren't babies any longer.  Mia is running all over and saying a new word every couple of days.  Izzy is finishing her first year of preschool and is going to be starting soccer soon.  They're growing up.  My memories of them being tiny are packed away in my mind and I will treasure them forever.  Instead of packing the pack n' play away with those memories, it was time to let it go.  On to the next chapter!

Justification

When I dropped Izzy off at school today, I let her teachers know that she will not be in school for the week and a half leading up to Mia's cathiterization.  About a month ago, I had informed them of what was going on with Mia and that Izzy can, at times, be impacted by the additional stress and doctor's appointments in our household.  When I left her classroom today, I felt horrible.  It's not fair in so many ways, specifically for Izzy in this situation, but for all four of us as well.  As I was driving to run errands with Mia in the back seat, tears came to my eyes just thinking about what we have in store in less than 3 weeks and then whenever Mia's surgery will be.  I was feeling guilt for it affecting Izzy & Mia's day to day lives, I was feeling sadness because her teachers informed me that we will miss the Mother's Day presentation the kids have prepared, and I felt fear for what lies ahead.  I also felt this need to justify our decision to keep Izzy home from school and to seclude our family prior to the cath.  Then I thought, why should I have to justify it?  And I got angry.  If people can't understand why we are making this decision, well, I'd have a few choice words for them that aren't really appropriate.  I would ask them to please put themselves in our shoes for a split second.  Mia needs to be healthy and we all need to be germ free.  This will help her during her cath, it will help us to take care of her without worry that she'll get sick, and it will help her fight the germs we encounter when staying in the hospital.  For those people that need us to give justification, there it is.

Lock Down

All four of us have had a really bad cold, going on a week or so now.  I guess the one good aspect of this is that we're all sick at the same time.  Hopefully that way we won't keep passing it back and forth.  And better for it to happen now that a few weeks from now.

The doctors have told us that it would be better for Mia to be healthy (obviously) for her cath on May 15th.  We think that if she had a slight cold, they'd still do it, but to us, her being sick could potentially add risks that we can avoid.  So we're going to go on lock down.  We've done it before, for 2 weeks before her Glenn surgery.  This time we're going to plan on a week and a half, starting the first weekend in May.  Izzy isn't going to go to school, the girls aren't going to go to any stores or public places, Art & I will sanitize like crazy if we do need to run an errand, and we will not be having anyone coming in our home.  It may seem extreme, but we do not want to add any complications to any part of Mia's cath.

The last cath she had, pre-Glenn, she was under anesthesia for about 2 hours longer than planned because they were having trouble finding a site to use.  Meaning, they couldn't get the catheter in her vessel.  This means she had her breathing tube in that much longer and her body had to endure more pokes and prods than I want to think about.  The cold she has right now is awful.  Runny nose to high heaven and a bad cough.  Push a breathing tube down her throat in that condition?  No thanks.  So we're going to do what we can to prevent it.  We'll probably miss out on some fun family gatherings, but we have to set our priorities.  We are lucky in the fact that all our family lives near by and we can see them whenever we'd like.  We can reschedule plans or celebrate holidays at different times.  Izzy can miss a few weeks of her 3 year old preschool class.  Our priority is our little girl.  So much is riding on this cath.  We want Mia to be the healthiest she can be so that we can get the best results possible to move forward.

Happy Birthday Izzy!

It's official, my baby girl is 4!  How four years have already gone by since the day she was born is seriously shocking to me.  Parents aren't kidding when they say that time flies in regard to their children growing up.  Izzy has grown up so much in the past year.  Art and I were remembering just the other day that it was a year ago, when she turned 3, that we finally took away her trusty pacifier.  Seems like she was so little then, and now, all of a sudden, she's a big girl.  We keep track of how tall the girls are on our basement wall.  We measured Izzy yesterday and she grew at least 3 inches in the past year.  She's already half as tall as I am.  Just doesn't seem possible.  To celebrate?  We did what most parents of a 4 year old do, we had a vampire party!

Several months ago, Izzy wanted a "Brave" birthday party.  She had gotten the movie for Christmas and we watched it nearly every day.  I was happy about that choice because that would be a really easy birthday to have, lots of fun games and decorations.  Not too overly girly.  That all changed when we rented "Hotel Transylvania."  Art took Izzy to see it in the theater, but once we rented it and she saw it again...Izzy had her new obsession!  She loves the main girl character in the movie, Mavis (Dracula's daughter).  So then her new idea was that she wanted a vampire birthday.  I tried convincing her several times that Brave was a better way to go.  Nope.  She wanted Hotel Transylvania.

Definitely an original theme for a 4 year old birthday party!  Original in the fact that probably not many 4 year old girls choose that theme, and also original in that, it's extremely hard to find pre-made party supplies that are kid-friendly in a vampire theme.  So, Mommy to the rescue.  I made the invitations, those turned out to be quite easy.

Party favors = vampire decorated Tootsie Pops (in a graveyard, of course).

Bats made from toilet paper rolls for decoration.  We stuck with a red and black color theme, so we had red and black crepe paper and balloons.  Along with some vampire window clings I was able to find online (thankfully).

Daddy made the "Pin the Bat on Hotel Transylvania" game board.  Turned out great!  I also made a toilet paper bowling game that we didn't end up playing, but I taped ghost faces on each toilet paper roll and used an orange basketball (really supposed to be a pumpkin) for the bowling ball.

Art Photoshopped all of us (including the dog) into the Hotel Transylvania picture for the cake.  For snacks I made mini mummy hotdogs (mini hotdogs wrapped in crescent rolls), apple mouths (two apple slices with marshmellows for teeth) and I was going to make skeleton bones (pretzels with marshmellows on the ends, dipped in white chocolate), but they didn't come out very good.

All the hard work paid off.  Izzy had a fabulous party.  Here she is in her Mavis outfit.  Complete with her dracula cape, black and red tights, and red shoes.  It was most definitely an unforgettable party!

Jump Izzy Jump! Jump Mia Jump!

The other day after Mia woke up from her nap, Izzy wanted to go get her in her room.  I let her go in before I did so that she could by my big helper (knowing very well she can't lift Mia out of her crib).  After a few minutes of not hearing much, I decided to go investigate the situation.  Here is what I found them doing (click on the link below, I cannot for the life of me get a video to upload on here properly).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6mxO7eW5w8

I love how my girls interact with one another.  They're so funny together.  I see them getting into lots of mischief very soon.  It's so hard for me to believe that Izzy is going to be 4 on Saturday and Mia is going to be 1 1/2 next week.  It's going way too fast!  I treasure moments like these!