My baby girl is 12!

Wow..  today is Chloe's 12th birthday.  This is so hard to believe, it was just SO not that long ago, and yet it was- it was 2 homes ago, 4 children ago, and 12 years ago!

I tried to find Chloe's birth story but didn't have any luck.  I think i've been through way too many computers and this one slipped through...  at any rate, i'll give a quick summary.


Chloe was my very first homebirth, and my ONLY successful waterbirth! (Anna and Leif were supposed to be since I determined after Chloe that i was NEVER giving birth on land again!! but various mishaps made that not happen)   With Chloe, I was so excited to have an actual homebirth.  Alex was born in a hospital- pretty miserable,  Nik was born in a birth center with a very medical midwife, which was scary and inconvenient when we had to go home like 3 hours later.  So when we were pregnant with Chloe, we decided to use a lay midwife, one who was NOT so medical and would let me do my thing and give birth without so much interference.

We chose Sue Ellen Jeffrey who was really outstanding.  She also had a trainee, Amy Gordon who was wonderful as well.  For my first homebirth, i opted to make it kind of like a giant birth party (LOL) yes, i'm an extrovert!  I had several friends present, mostly my natural mama, birth interested friends, including 2 preggo friends, Kristan and Heather.  There was one guy friend present, my frend Gena and her husband "crazy Mr. Matt" but he was thoughtful and didn't come in when i was more exposed...  

An amazing picture, photographed from Chloe's scrapbook album, of Chloe emerging from the water.  SueEllen is on the left and Amy on the Right

Strangely enough, i remember what i was wearing.  I was wearing a black tank top, since i'm not really into being naked in a room full of people, nor in being completely naked birthing, which i think makes me weird, but that's me! I was in the tub with Andy- i totally made him get in there with me and completely mauled him when it was time to push-  I remember like each of my homebirths i woke up the night before, around 4 am in labor, got up, got some work done and finally had Chloe around 1 am the next night (my shortest homebirth and also smallest homebirthed baby!)  She was...  8 lbs 5oz i think? having arrived 4 days early, and she was TINY :) such a beautiful little girl.  She emerged into the water gently, and peacefully looked around.  I broke my own quiet and dark rule by screaming, "get it out of the water!" :) mama instinct i guess.  She came out, and i immediately asked, "is it a boy or girl?"  We didn't find out with Chloe, or coincidentally with Annabeth either! they were the only two we didn't find out ahead of time and the only two who were girls :) I had 2 boys at this point and didn't want to be disappointed if Chloe was another boy and i figured that after giving birth, i'd just be grateful it was OUTTA there, and what a thrill finding out she was a girl... my beautiful daughter.  

Poor quality picture, unfortunately we were not yet in the digital age- and we also wanted to have dark to go easy on her sensitive eyes, but here's my sweet little Chloe shortly after birth, swimming in her sleeper bag.

I named her after a little girl who was in the 4yo class at the childcare center i worked at on post when Andy was in the army.   It was my favorite classroom, and there was a sweet little girl there, I asked her what her name was and she said, "My name is Chloe" and it was sooo cute how she said it, i decided then and there that if i had a little girl, she'd be a Chloe :)  Its funny how all the little parts of life work together to build our futures..

After she was born, i remember being so comfortable. It totally didn't feel like i gave birth at ALL, other than my tailbone was bruised so my butt hurt, it felt like i'd been sitting too long.  but it was amazing how little physical damage occurs with a water birth.  Its too bad that never worked out with any of my 4 other babies.    The next thing i remember was an overwhelming sense of fear, i remember the realization hitting me that i had a DAUGHTER.  That I would somehow have to protect her, and i was beside myself.  How could i protect this sweet, fragile little girl from this big, bad, nasty world.  It was and is overwhelming, though i have 1. a strong faith that God will take care of my babies even better than i can, and 2. the knowledge that i'm a strong, powerful woman, capable of inflicting an enormous amount of pain on anyone that would dare harm any of my children.   That's the best i can do.  And that's ok.

Today is all about Chloe.  We are going to skip school today, and focus on getting the house in decent shape, and we will be surprising her with a visit this evening from her best friend, Hannah :) she doesn't know she's coming.  we had hoped to have her sleep over, but she has a softball tournament in the morning, so we decided to do it another time but her mom suggested she maybe come over to hang out for a few hours so that's what we shall do! i think i'll have them make cupcakes together and then play or watch a movie or something.  fun! girls are awesome <3 <3

Autism, bullying and abuse.

I saw this video on facebook today, and it completely brought me to tears.  I remembered a couple of months ago, Ash crying when i'd try to get him on the bus, him staring at me as the bus drove away with tears in his eyes....  I remembered the week that he'd spent the mornings running to his bed and hiding under his covers when it was school bus time.  I remember that heartbreaking morning when i woke up and walked to the living room, saw my husband holding Ash, point to me and say, "Look, its mommy!" and saw ash JUMP off his lap, blow past me into his room and under his covers.  My baby...  We pulled him out of school after that week.  I don't know, and we won't EVER know whether he was being abused by a teacher, perhaps bullied by a student (though not likely in preschool) or just was immature and couldn't deal with school.  And without CAMERAS in special needs classrooms, parents have NO way of knowing.  We NEED cameras.  We need to DEMAND cameras.  Because our precious little vulnerable children's well being depends on it.

However, we don't have cameras, we likely won't get them anytime soon.  So what can be done? I'd encourage any of you who are in this situation to NOT ignore your nonverbal child.  LISTEN to his voice, even if it is in actions not in words.  And if you can't settle the situation to your satisfaction, do what it takes to homeschool them.  I know that it is much harder to make life happen with Asher home.  MUCH harder.  We all pay a price for it, but we are much more ABLE to bear that burden that little 3yo Ashie.   Something to think about!

On a personal note, i am glad i watched it.  It really reinforced how much i care about what we are doing here.  With ALL the kids, not just Ash, but especially with Ash, and Annabeth.  And heck, we've seen how wildly successful our mission has been with Alex! WOW, he's just SOARING through college!  But WAY more important than that, he's self assured, confident, and has an amazing motivation and desire to be Christlike, and is becoming moreso every day.  WHAT more could I ask for?

Its a sad day when the mom has almost as many meltdowns as the autistic 3yo!

Ok, that's an exaggeration- i just had ONE meltdown.  Though one is enough.  I just finally reached the end point of tolerating asher screaming bloody murder because he didn't want to wait 5 minutes for lunch, and SCREAMED and threw the book across the room.  Nice.  Sigh....  My job is impossible. I just need to get that and have grace with myself.  Pretty sure there's not a person in the world who could pull off what i'm trying to make happen here, so i'll tell andy to NOT tell me when his mother disparages me over the phone.  I'm trying.  I'm trying SO HARD.  I just can't be everywhere at once.   And wednesday's weigh in? OH man, that's going to be BAD.  REALLY BAD.  Thankfully I live in a time with running water...  A nice hot shower fixes everything doesn't it?  And i swear, Anderson soap company, out of Oregon, makes life worth living.  NO exaggeration!  get on their mailing list, they have super good discounts.  I recommend you get the soap in a jar, the fabulous "infinite romance" being my favorite so far... .ahhhh.....  also the soap samplers are great because you can switch it up a lot and not waste.  Today i tried Chai tea olive oil soap. FABULOUS.  Anyway, so i had a nice long shower and brushed and flossed, nothing like clean teeth to make you feel human again....

I'm going to take a nap with Elliott.  I think i'm getting a virus, i totally just want to sleep all the time.  If i could do nothing but sleep and shower, i would be a happy camper.  Oh and read, but not aloud, even though i'm clearly gifted at doing the voices :)  And sing, but only when my throat isn't sore.  not much singing going on today- and screaming hurts.  a LOT.  Tell me things are going to be ok...  please?

A wonderfully productive day!

Every other saturday is crazy busy.  We do bountiful baskets, which is a produce coop, which i HIGHLY recommend!  Its a fabulous deal!  Here's a pic of our haul, which was HUGE, filled half of our large kitchen table and some stuff was covered up!

 For a regular basket (nonorganic) its $15 and that includes a small round laundry basket's worth of veggies, and one of fruit.  STELLAR deal.   Additionally they have add ons, like to make your basket organic, its $25 which you get a box of produce, less than the regular kind, but still is a good deal.  We buy them every other week just so we don't have so much labor and have to drive there in the morning on saturday :) Saturday is our only sleep in day.  Plus the processing of it all is pretty sizable.    So anyway, Today, we went to our produce pick up, got our stuff and then hit Fred Meyer for the annual Fuchsia sale. It was FREEZING out and windy but typically beautiful, majestic western Wa weather.. I LOVE it here... I hope we get to live here forever, its so wonderful.

They planted the plants too- ALL the dirty work ;)

Those are BOTH our carts :) 

Us all windblown

  That is where you can bring all your garden pots and buy new plants for them and they fill them with black gold soil for FREE.  Which if you've bought soil before, you know is normally EXPENSIVE! that particular kind is $9 for 16 cu ft. which doesn't go very far! So we brought a TON! and even with that ended up with more plants than containers, mainly because the broccoli is so space consuming! i'm psyched about it though and hope my usual black thumb doesn't kill all $100 of plant purchases :)  (not entirely true, we also bought a couple extra containers and fertilizer and gloves and a scoopy thing.  Anyway...

So then we went home.  Ash was good for the older kids, THANKFULLY because Alex was working with Grandpa, so it was just Nik and Chloe holding down the fort.  

Andy TRIED to get Ash to sleep and i sucessfully got Elliott to sleep thanks to my secret weapon- Breastmilk! its the bomb, it has magic make the kid go to sleep hormones in it.  Unfortunately it also has magic make the mom go to sleep hormones too, so usually i nap with him,  which is AWESOME! i'm so enjoying my last baby (or now toddler, he's 3) nursling.  Its such a nice snuggly bonding time for a mama and her way too busy boys.  Ash weaned at about 10 months which was such a bummer :( he'd bite, i'd react, and he'd get SO scared poor little booger...  He finally went on a nursing strike, and didn't start back up,  i guess poor mouth motor skills is a common thing with autistic kids, and he HAD been much more difficult to nurse from the get go.  So anyway, i snuggled the bean and then helped with the garden stuff.

We first had to take care of weeding and edging the lawn, and then set up our planters, planted the strawberries in our little strawberry patch, and cleaned up what we could, only getting rained on heavily ONCE.  Not bad.

Then i got to the HARD work of getting all that produce put away, packaged, and chopped if necessary for our little fridge! not easy.  but done!  Now i'm making Andy do all the clean up since he was a slacker and didn't help me :)  Clean up is the icky part too.    I still hope to get some more work done this weekend, i'd love to get STARTED organizing our homeschool stuff, talk about a mess! but not sure if i'll have time today.  When Grandpa and Alex are done working, we're off to dinner somewhere and i'm SO hoping Ash can deal since he didn't have a nap.  Maybe i'll dress the dudes in sleepers so they are all ready to go to bed when we get home... (yeah, wishful thinking on our part for Elliott anyway!)   that dude could practically stay up all night long.  Let's hope not.

Tomorrow we are going to start going to late service.  We had been going to early service, but lately are just NOT able to make it happen, and wanting to not mess with ash's routine we've just been NOT going, which isn't ok, so we'll be changing up the routine.  Maybe i'll make a visual schedule, like i've been meaning to forever!

Wishing you all a blessed weekend.  I wish we could celebrate the sabbath on the REAL sabbath. (Saturday) but there's WAY too much work on Sat...  and our church is only on sunday, unfortunately!

Admin Friday

Well, Its friday morning- (or rather, friday afternoon, after morning extended because i got so much done!) Admin time.  This is the time i've set aside to do paperwork, which isn't nearly enough.  I need to rework my schedule because its not nearly enough.  i swear, my secretarial skills alone would comprise a full time job in this house! this is exactly why i'm trying to talk andy into taking thursdays off.  BUT i did get a mountain of work started and got most of the bills paid, and am now finishing up and eating my favorite simple lunch of meat, cheese and crackers.  (i'm so sophisticated, i know :)




Yesterday... sigh...  it was a chaotic mess.

First was our dental appointments and Annabeth's therapy appt.  I thought i was getting a crown placed but it turns out the plan was to both place the crown on my lower left and do the fillings on my upper right side.  Yowza.  I'm one who doesn't get numb easily so they -caine me half to death, and usually i still am not entirely numb, which was the case this time, but i just wanted to get DONE with it, so i let it go.  I'm a warrior mama after all right? i had 3 babies at home, no meds, one was 10 lbs 8 oz.  I can do a little tooth pain!  Well, the real issue with the dentist is i have a HUGE amount of dental anxiety, so that's the real problem and the reason getting it all done on one day was a really good thing.   I thought it was funny how puffy and crooked smiley i looked. see-

Hahaha! i drew the line at taking a picture of me trying to drink my smoothie from a straw, that was extremely comical.  the non-numb corners of my mouth wrapped around the straw properly and the numb sides did nothing.   Yeah, i'm easily amused and prone to self-portraits.  Even post-dental ones.  

 Its SO hard to get out of the house!!! we were late meeting my dad, we went to Salty's for lunch at Redondo Beach on the waterfront, which was nice..  but totally lost track of time and didn't get to play on the beach because it was like, "Oh crap, Birthday party in an HOUR!" and we had to split.  it was pretty gray out anyway, our picnic went well thankfully, we narrowly missed a rain squall before hand, but not bad.

The cute portion of the fam at Salty's 

The almost birthday girl and grandpa <3

So after the beach was Chloe's BD party! She'll be 12 on the 19th.  She decided to have her party early so that Grandpa could be there and this was the ONLY day that worked out.

Wow.  i have a 12 yr old daughter! how did that happen! i still remember clear as day the night she was born...  maybe i'll do a special Chloe birthday post with my birth story.   Anyway, I'm old.  I suppose maybe its time i start wearing makeup like a grownup? or not.   Speaking of GROWN up i'm still a bit in denial about Alex turning 18 next month and realizing he's only about a year away from the age i was when i had HIM.  Wow.  hard to imagine.  My life before we moved here still seems like someone else's life, though certain things tend to bring it back...   I am a new person now, so different than who I was before.  I still struggle with the memory loss- most of my life is hidden from me, as a defense mechanism, not just the bad stuff though which is a bummer.  I think there's some neurological connection between PTSD memory loss and general memory loss. Because i swear i have half a brain! i've started using a calendar and writing stuff down in a little notebook, stuff i used to be able to just remember!  Maybe much of it is just growing old.  

Yesterday evening though was the best part.  I got to hang out with my friends Lina and Leiloni at the special needs meeting and chit chat and giggle, make a date for a girl night with Leiloni on saturday! WOOT! will be posting about that!   AND got to hear a fantastic speaker-  Hunter who is an adult living with autism.  I was SO eager to hear this speaker because he's just about 7 years ahead of Alex in age, and i SO want to help him avoid some of the pitfalls of being a first child AND a first child being an autism adult.  I did get some valuable info and i plan to email Hunter as well as see if he wants to meet up with Andy and I for a starbucks date!  (in all my massive free time <eyeroll>)  

What really surprised me about the meeting was I expected to identify a lot with Alex being a lot like Hunter, but in reality i found myself seeing so many similarities to ME.  In fact i kind of laughed to myself thinking about how opposite of Alex the young gentleman speaking was...   too funny.  Alex is an introvert, an extreme introvert.  His favorite place to be is in front of his computer programming something or doing math.   Andy and i are basically his best friends and he prefers quiet and being home.   He is so brave though and is doing so well in college, he's joined CRU, campus crusade for Christ, and Engineering club, and is super active in those, as well as being in the prestigious math society, was it Phi Beta Kappa? i can't remember its greek name.  Anyhoo, he's awesome.  I hope he finds a wife worthy of his awesomeness.  

So anyway, Looking back through our family history the autism thing shouldn't come as a shock at all, my dad has almost all the classic symptoms of aspergers, so does my uncle on my mom's side.  And on Andy's side, he has a nephew from each sibling (2) one with autism, one with aspergers, so we are like a perfect storm of autism :) of course that's not a bad thing.  of the two who we know have aspergers, Alex and Chloe, they are basically just quirky, extra smart, and unique.  They have challenges, sensory stuff, adaptations that need to be made, but you deal with that, talk out issues, and everything is fine.  Anna and Leif we are watching and trying to decide if we want to pursue a formal diagnosis if that's the case,  Anna we might need to just so she can get the therapies she needs, she's the second most affected in that she has really slow processing, extreme auditory processing, and sensory issues that impede her life significantly.   Leif is just VERY literal, very serious, and has temper issues and a short attention span.    Asher, of course is the most seriously affected of the bunch, but even he is starting to use words, not all that communicatively but a bit, and he's showing improvement since we pulled him out of school- that was a GOOD choice, even though its made life really really hard.  We are still trying to adapt as a family... someday!  

Elliott is super smart too, but is in all likelyhood NOT autistic in any way.  That's fine too.  Andy shows certain signs, like a FREAKISH knowledge of music history and the ability to never forget a street address (both annoying!!), and not knowing when to stop talking in public,  but i have more signs.   The quirky thing, (got that in spades)  Some sensory issues, but not severe. the "Mind vortex" that Hunter described.  SO got that one! the inability to shut my brain down... i have a hard time getting to sleep, i usually read blogs, read books on my ipod, or play solitaire or sudoku on my ipod till i crash out- every night.  and i also have a constant fidget...  usually my left leg.  always moving.  Oh and coffee doesn't work on me! i had just suspected it didn't affect me at all, but Hunter says it calms him down, and come to think of it, i'll quite often have a cup of coffee and then go take a nap.  Maybe that's related?  Anyhoo, he hated being on meds, and while i'm considering getting diagnosed so that i can get meds to help me focus better, i'm wondering if i'd hate them too.   Anyone out there who had ADHD meds as a kid and hated them feel free to chime in if you'd like ;-)  Maybe they are easier to not hate when you are grown up? maybe not. i don't know.  

So much to learn, and yet so much new self awareness.  I definitely am feeling like i "get" myself a lot more each day.  I have accepted that there is NO room in my parking lot for cars that are overly sensitive and who cause me to constantly wonder if i'm offending them.  My parking lot is certainly not full, but its also not empty.  I have such a great variety of cars in my lot.  I am blessed to have each of them.  (Great analogy- thanks D!)   I'm going to focus on that instead of the missing ones. 

Hope you all have a wonderful blessed weekend. 

Today is another day...

Jan 22, 2013

I'm feeling better today.  :)  I'm particularly excited because my DADDY is coming to visit! he'll be here around 5:30 which is my family's way of saying 7:00 so i'll be sure not to make dinner too early. :)  I'm so not complaining.  Things have finally gotten way better with me and dad.  I think my mom situation has really caused me to let go of the little stuff with Dad and appreciate him when he's still around and apprecate that he may have failed me in a lot of ways, but he's HERE, sorta... and he's trying.  And that's good enough, that's a blessing.   And i'm very excited for the first time instead of all stressed out, which is a great feeling.

An Asher update- things are difficult.  even from the picture you can see my handsome little boy mini-me is just not himself lately.  We're trying to figure out what's setting him off, i'm looking into more supplementation, we are partway through the slooooooow process of getting ABA started for him, and i've been TRYING to get him in a reasearch study through Seattle Children's hospital, which has been unsuccessful thus far, the one i had high hopes about he was immediately excluded from because he's a twin, and the twin studies are for older kids and most of the other studies were for younger kids! ugh! i wish we started with SC instead of Mary Bridge, which stinks.  I started the whole research process after finding out that he still had like at least 3 months left on the waiting list, to get seen and start getting case management and services to help him be more functional.  I am SO ready to consider meds. SO ready, and that's one of those many "things i will never do" things that seem to always end up getting DONE when push comes to shove.  And push HAS come to shove, and bite and scratch and particularly- spit.....   Anyway, i'm a little stressed about his interaction with my dad, which is not ideal.. the older generation doesn't really "get" stuff like this, but at least my dad is fairly open minded and was always a very permissive parent, and he seems to be handling my "please don't yell at my kid when he spits all over you!"  which is awesome.  Crossing my fingers..   The weather makes a huge difference.  Right now Nik is out playing with the twins.  (Bless his heart, my right hand man, i do NOT know what i would do without Nik!) and that will alleviate some of the ash tension, the rain has NOT been going well for us.

So, we have a super fun day ahead of us- Sorta....  Andy and I both have dentist appts early in the AM, and Annabeth has therapy right after and then we have from 12-6 to spend time with grandpa and go do tourist stuff, and also we have our special needs meeting at 6 which is AWESOME! our favorite day of the month- the kids get the run of the tacoma children's museum and we get to sip coffee, listen to adults talk about autism and have NO one pulling at our clothing.  (or depants-ing us as ash very nearly did to me one time we were out recently :-o)   so aside from seating my new crown, ugggg...    it is going to be a wonderful day and i'll be posting pics!   Thanks for listening my faithful following few :)

A setback

You might say that I experienced a setback to my effort to convince myself that people aren't all awful.  (Except for my children, which we've established)  I lost a friend yesterday.  Not just a facebook friend, but an actual, real life friend, who lives just far enough out that we really only effectively functioned on facebook as friends anyway.  But yeah, one of my friends put something in a discussion, and while I wasn't even AWAKE, she had defriended me.  We talked about it a little and her stance was that If i could be friends with someone with opinions like "her" then i wasn't going to be her friend.  (Yes, i know this is OH so, Jr high)  Anyway, I shouldn't care.  I am so freaking used to rejection by now, that i should pretty much EXPECT the people i'm closest to to decide to throw me away, but for some reason, I just don't seem to GET that memo.

I know that God created me soft.  (hey! i didn't mean in the midsection ;)  I am a strange variety of woman who seems to not be able to be hardened by crap in life.  You'd think i would have written off everyone by now, but here I am.  Hurt.   It has good things about it.  I'm able to be an outstanding mom, i'm able to be a great lover, a really good friend, I'm pretty loyal, overall...  but there's a price.  And i'm paying it now.

 Its ok, it is what it is.  I'll take a shower tonight.  Have a good cry and start over again tomorrow.  I'm having way too many crying showers these days, for my taste... but it is what it is.  Hey, i think i found my gravestone inscription

Rebecca Kvenvolden
Wife, mother, friend
"It is what it is"

Wow, that's depressing.  Maybe i should keep working on that one :)  I'll be back tomorrow.  With something hopefully not depressing to say!  thanks for listening, world wide web :)