Calm Amongst the Chaos

Mama of 5 seeking calm in the chaos

Mother of the Year!

Kim Nothdurft

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January 14, 2010

Oliver started having cold symptoms on Monday, just when Lily and I were getting better. I didn’t think too much of it since well it is rare that someone doesn’t have a cold in our house. Then Monday evening I was at Target with Andi and she was a bit whiney, I looked at her eyes and said, “Oh my, you are sick” she said her throat hurt. Well it wasn’t an hour later we were home and she was running 101 fever. That poor child, her eyes tell me more than her mouth ever can so she will not get away with much as a teen unless she can fix that. I still think nothing of it, Andi always runs a fever whenever anything is wrong with her. I’m sure in a few years a math test will put her at 104. So Tuesday I keep her home from school and take both kids into the office. Oliver has been very clingy and whiney but he never had a fever so I just figured the cold bothered him. Then yesterday Wed, I keep Andi home again since she was still running around 100, not high but high enough to keep her home. I did take them to the gym with me. I figure everyone has colds, mama needs to get her work out on. Besides Andi seemed totally fine. We do some running, probably pushing my luck with Oliver, then we get in the car on the way home and Andi says, “my ear hurts”, I tell her we’ll go home and get some bubble gum medicine (motrin, healer of all) and then starts getting more hysterical. At home I put Oliver in his crib and Andi and I sit in the rocking chair and she is screaming about her ear. I give her Motrin, I put ear ache drops in her ears, she just screams and screams. I call the Dr. they say come right in, I explain I have a sleeping baby so we push it about 90 min later. She cries and cries on my lap, I rub her back and she falls asleep. For Andi, that is a sign something is seriously wrong. Andi does not nap. An hour later I take the kids to the Dr. and he looks at Andi’s ear and says it is moderately infected in her right ear. Then he says let me peak in Oliver’s ear and he says “ok raging infection in right, moderate in left.” Then he says “pink eye as well”. All he said he had to do was look in his eyes and knew he had an ear infection. Ouch to my mommy heart. Here I am dragging around this baby all around town, putting him in daycare at the gym. Complaining that he is whining and I am worried about Andi who I could tell by looking in her eyes that something wasn’t right. Sigh.
Of course we are in a 72 hour transition of an insurance swap so we’re not covered for rx. I tell the Dr. Andi refuses Augmenten so he rx something else that taste like strawberry milk. Guess how much the GENERIC costs? $215. Per kid! Target was very kind and worked with me and all I have to prove is I have insurance in 5 days and we’ll get reimbursed, and she figured something out to get the total down to $150, so if we don’t get that proof of insurance in time although I will be out a buck fifty, that is a lot better than a truck payment. Sigh. Insurance crap.
So yeah. I am worried about one kid who is not near as sick as the other whom I wasn’t worried about. Mother of the Year.
Tomorrow we are headed up north to go snowboarding. Lily and Oliver will be in the child care center there, they said they will have a one on one staff member with Lily, cool right? Andi will do lessons again and I will get back on a snowboard for the first time since Lily was a baby. Oh brother. Don’t be surprised if I am posting from a hospital bed next update.
Go Cards!

Big boy!!

Kim Nothdurft

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January 7, 2010

My baby turned 11 months yesterday, ok our baby, but ahhh he is my little cuddly lovie boy. And he turned 11 months yesterday. I really thought his babyhood would have lasted longer. I thought if I appreciated his infancy, reveled in it all, he would have stayed a baby longer. But nope. He’s almost a year. And he took 3 steps to me today! We were loosing hope in him walking, he has been crawling since the day he turned 5 months. He was pulling up at 6 months and cruising at 7 months. We were sure he’d be walking at 9 months. 10 for sure. I mean the child climbs up the couch, but walking he says no way. He stands for at least 10 seconds, claps for himself then goes down and crawls. And he crawls fast! So tonight in the kitchen we couldn’t believe our eyes when he went from Andrew and took 3 steps to me!
And today he cut his 7th tooth. Lily’s loosing the teeth and Oliver’s getting them. And Andi Jane is pretending hers are loose.
Oh and who watches Modern Family? That show is hilarious!!! I love it!

My co-pilot

Kim Nothdurft

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January 4, 2010

Andrew decided at almost 5 years old, Andi Jane was ready for her first snowboarding trip. I was a bit nervous, but Andrew is very skilled at snowboarding and he is a good father so I let go a bit and tried to relax not thinking about my baby girl flying down a hill of ice on one board. One small little board that happens to go really fast down hills of ice.
It’s amazing how much you take for granted when you have it with you at all times. I rarely give my husbands shout outs because in my eyes I think it goes with out saying, but maybe it shouldn’t.
This weekend it was Lily, Oliver and me. When I am home bound with the two non walkers I don’t get out much. It is way too much work. I did try to return some shoes at the mall while Lily spent time with her hab worker. That didn’t go to well. The gal at ALDO was an idiot or their return policy is idiotic, whatever the case all that ended up happening was I yelled at a stranger and then had to go back home. With my shoes that are too big for me. With two receipts in hand btw.
We managed a couple walks because the weather here is freaking awesome but that was about it. I got to sit and feed two mouths by spoon three meals a day, not to mention snacks and drinks. I had to bathe two people, dress two people, put two people to bed. I did get to spend some time mastering my Wii golf and tennis skills after they went to bed but all in all it was pretty boring. Don’t get me wrong here, let me throw in my disclaimer, I love Lily and Oliver. Of course I do. But they aren’t much for conversation and with Andrew and Andi Jane both gone it is very quiet in the house. Well except for when Jake on the challenging team in tennis was kicking my booty. Then I got a little riled up. But that doesn’t count.
Now they are back. Apparently Andi Jane is an old pro at snowboarding and her and Andrew had a great time also Andrew thinks you will be seeing AJ at the X Games in a few years, he dreams such small dreams. I am now trying to write while Andi keeps picking up Oliver while he screams at her. Lily is rolling on the floor and Andrew is playing my Wii and I feel so much more comfortable now. The loudness feels like home. Lifetime has been shut off and football is on, but that is ok, that means my husband is home. There is yelling in my ear and that is ok because it means my rambunctious girl is back where she belongs.
When I went back in my journey I failed to mention who was by my side the entire time. I don’t really think I was leaving him out because he isn’t there; I left him out because he is always there. We are yin and yang. There is no me with out him. I am not the mother I am with out him being the father he is. He is the full glass to my not so full glass. And when he is gone, even when he is doing something with his child, being all he can be as a father, I miss him and want him home. I want him at the table with me, feeding the baby while I feed Lily. I want him telling me funny stories about his friends. I want him telling me about his new favorite song, because it will be the number one song on the countdowns not much after he tells me about it. He is a music nostradamus.
So if he is not mentioned, it doesn’t mean he is far from my heart, actually quite the opposite. He is quietly steering the wheel on this road of life. Sometimes I wish he’d share his feelings on Lily here and how he got to the place of acceptance with her, but his story is so simple. She was born and he accepted her. She had her first seizure and he accepted her. She never hit those typical milestones, he accepted her.
It is me who has to psychoanalyze it all. The one who has to write out her feelings to the world to figure out why and how I feel the way I feel. He is a true rock star and I simply adore him for the man he is.
Now if you’ll excuse me I am off to kick his ass in tennis on the Wii.
And they said we wouldn’t last… no really they did.

Journey #3 The Light

Kim Nothdurft

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January 2, 2010

Anger has to fade. At least for me it does. This must be a personality trait of mine. I don’t have the ability to hold a grudge and being angry doesn’t suit me well, so it had to fade.
To quote one of my favorite movies “Stop feeling sorry for yourself! It’s bad for your complexion!” What movie?
But how to free oneself of that anger? Looking back now it seems like there was a light bulb moment, but really there wasn’t, I’m sure there wasn’t. But you know hindsight.
There were a series of events that all worked together to help turn the light back on in my life.
One was reading a little book called Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. During the reading of that a lot of things seemed to make a little more sense. I started to realize maybe I was praying for the wrong things. Maybe being on my knees praying to make Lily “normal” was not what I needed to be praying for. I needed to pray for myself. Pray that I could accept Lily for who she is and pray that I do what I need to do to be her mom.
Now, easier said than done, absolutely, but I was on the right track. It took a lot to start praying again, it was a slow process but when I finally prayed that prayer the one that said “Lord help me”, I felt a weight come off my shoulder.
Having Andi Jane helped a lot a lot (I purposely wrote a lot twice to make a point). After I realized Andi was ok, and that wasn’t easy to finally realize, I was able to enjoy those typical milestones with her and enjoy Lily for the sweet cuddly girl she was. I’ve said it a million times; having both those girls is like having the best of both worlds.
And time. Time heals all they say, right? Well sometimes clichés are made because they are right. Over time I started to see who Lily was and who Lily was meant to be and I just started to accept her and all that came along with being her mom. And acceptance doesn’t mean I lost hope, it just means my sights were set more realistically. Some can believe that things will be how they imagine it to be, but not me. I am more of the hope for the best and plan for the worst because having your heart crushed on broken hopes hurts way too much.
None of this goes with out saying I still wish to see Lily run, laugh and talk. Oh to hear her voice. To hear her tell me about her day…that is the hardest thing about all this. Never hearing her voice. Having to be her voice. What if everything I think she likes isn’t what I think it is? I would love for Lily to say, mom actually I hate pink. Although picking the blue wheelchair kind of told me that. But yes my heart still breaks for that little girl I never got. But I have to remember to thank God for the little girl I did get. There were times (before Andi) I used to wish Lily would throw herself on the floor at Target because she didn’t get what she wanted. Then I had Andi Jane do that exact thing and I said, thank God Lily doesn’t do that. But no matter how accepting I am I can’t pretend that raising a special needs child, especially a severely affected special needs child, is easy peasy and I always have a great attitude because that is a lie. But staying angry at God and the world in general isn’t fair for me. Being angry only hurts me and my marriage and my family. So I really only had two choices, be angry or get over it. I chose to get over it. Some days I want to be angry and some days I just let myself be. But other days I fight with myself. And other days I wake up just excited to see Lily and revel in all that is Lily.

Christmas 2009

Kim Nothdurft

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December 30, 2009

Christmas 2009 will be remembered by Lily missing her two front teeth. Andi Jane exclaiming “this is a dream come true” when she was riding the princess bike Grandma and Grandpa D got for her and taking advantage of my love bug baby boy having no clue what Christmas was and only getting him 3 little gifts.
He got gifts from all our family members as well so I shouldn’t have gotten him anything 🙂
He was so cute though with these little soft cars he got from his aunt and uncle. He crawls around and he rolls the cars with him. Amazing how boys are just ingrained to love cars and girls to love baby dolls.
Relying on construction for your paycheck during this recession is not fun business and it was the littlest we had to work with this year regarding gifts, but no one cared or noticed. The kids were happy, Santa even managed to find the dumb zue zue pet hamster, I’m pretty sure he found it via Ebay 😉 But we were all happy and I am pretty certain we have made memories for our kids (well the ones who can remember) and that is most certainly what matters.
Happy New Year my friends. Let’s hope 2010 is far better than 2009. Although getting my love bug baby boy outta 2009 was really the sweetest thing to have happened, there were some sad losses this year and life changing decisions made. It was not a year we look back and say that was a great year, but it was an important one and we are better people for having bad years and taking better notice of the good years. I am certain good things are to come 2010.
Tons of December pix uploading on flickr 🙂

Merry Christmas

Kim Nothdurft

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December 24, 2009

Turn the music up, it’s Christmas.
I love Christmas time. I love the music, the chill in the air (note AZ chill, not that ridiculous weather most of you deal with), getting the perfect gift…I don’t think I have done as good of a job at it as I typically do, I blame this solely on Oliver and intend on being back in the swing of things hopefully by next year. But regardless of being ready or not, I love the whole month of December. I have a birthday 6 days prior to Christmas so it really feels like it is one fun thing on top of the next and it doesn’t end until Jan 1st, so no I don’t just like Christmas, I love December.
One of my favorite things is Christmas music. I know it is corny, but I have never claimed to be anything but corny. I can only get away with it about a week leading up to Christmas with Andrew in the car, but if you are riding with me and it is December buckle up and turn it up…fa la la la la la la la la. Or for you Christmas Story fans (and who isn’t?) Far ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra.
With this Christmas post I am sharing with you my three favorite songs of this season.
In no particular order, these are the three songs I will indefinitely listen to either just going to the store or going to the mountains. These songs Andi can sing and I’m sure Lily and Oliver know them too; they just can’t sing them along….yet.
These are as follows and of course in no particular order:
1.) Santa Baby. And only the original will do, by Eartha Kitt. If Madonna’s version shows up on the radio with that Brooklyn accent she is turned right off. What song is more fun for us girls to sing? Who doesn’t want to karaoke that in a sexy santa dress. You know you all WANT to do it, this I know. “Slip a sable under the tree, for me” “Been an angel all year”
2.) Baby, it’s cold outside. There are several versions of this song I enjoy. The original is probably the best, but I will always still hold a candle for Nick and Jessica and I still think they will get back together, because they really ought to. So because I probably was the only human who really enjoyed their Christmas special they did many years ago, I choose the duet they did to Baby it’s cold outside. The banter back and forth is really very cute.
3.) Mary did you know just about any version will do. I’ve always enjoyed the Wynonna Judd and Kenny Rogers version, but lately I’ve really been liking the Clay Aiken one. The song was just a song until Christmas 2002 when I was holding my own sleeping child in my arms and I listened to those words, really listened to those words, it hit me. I could feel what I could only imagine what Mary felt. Loving this tiny creature with a love you have never imagined before. Every mom thinks my baby can be anything he/she wants, and Mary was no different. She knew what the angels told her, she knew that her baby would save our world. But in that moment, the moment he was in her arms as she sat there and held him, watched him breath those tiny baby breaths, marveled in his sweet smell amongst the other smells that weren’t as sweet in that stable, as she kissed his sweet head she wasn’t thinking this is the son of God, she thought this is my son. Yet as the song so eloquently puts it, “when you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God. Oh Mary did you know.” Do I think Mary knew? No. I think Mary just knew what all we new moms know. This baby right here in my arms will save my life. And she was right. .
Merry Christmas my friends and family! I pray we never forget why we celebrate this blessed day. I too get caught up in the excitement, the gifts, Santa and it is all fun, but if we ignore the whole reason this holiday was set upon we will be missing out on the most important gift of all.
Much love from our family to yours.

Jouney 2 Anger

Kim Nothdurft

2 comments

December 17, 2009

There is a movie that will always be one of my all time favorites. I think I was 10 or 11 and I saw it in the theater with my mom, aunt and sister, which is funny since they are who I often still see movies with, and it was the first time a human death made me cry. Sure I cried when Harry had to go back where he was from and when Benji had to leave those baby cubs… sob…. But when Sally Field yelled “I’m FIIIIIINNNNEEEE!!!!!!!” I was in tears. At 10 I really didn’t understand much about loss. Hell, much about life. But I knew that was sad.
As I got older I rented the movie often and I could relate to more and more. The movie is a celebration of women. The deep relationships we need to function. An honest picture of how seasons and relationships change. I doubt anyone needs to know what I am talking about “the colors and blush and bashful” “the colors are pink and pink”. Steal Magnolias.
I still watch the movie and I sob. I know I am not the only one. There is that scene, THE scene where Sally Field had just buried her only daughter and she yells “I’m FIIINNEE! I could run to Texas and back, but my daughter can’t she never could.” Then sob. After that your heart aches. You believe that Sally Field has really just lost her daughter, because she is just that amazing (yes we really do like you!), but your heart feels trampled for her. You ache for her. Thankfully she had the group of friends she had to pull her out even if just for a moment to laugh, to break the tension. “Here hit her”.
But that moment, the one before the laugh, the one where Sally is yelling I’m FIIIINNNEE, you can feel her anger. An anger that is so deep from within if consumes your entire soul.
Anger is where I spent about 2 years of my life.
With a smile on my face and attending church weekly, I hated God. Who else could I blame? He was the one I spent my entire life praying to. Talking to. Confessing to. And he hands me this broken child for my first born? I can’t tell you how in the beginning I begged him. I pleaded with him. I got on my knees until the bruised. Yet when I got up, my daughter was still having seizures. She was still just laying there with no head control. I pretended that this was all ok, and honestly sometimes it was ok. I didn’t have as much of a problem with the physical handicaps Lily was showing, it was the seizures. I felt that the seizures were why she couldn’t see, why she couldn’t roll over, why she couldn’t ever just look me in the eye. I just thought if we could just stop these seizures life will change for her, but they never stopped.
Medication after medication, crazy ketogenic diet, VNS implant and when worse can to worse, brain surgery. All things I put all my hope in and all things that just crashed and burned. How many times can a person fall and get back up? One time Lily was in a large grand mal seizure and I was swiping her with the VNS magnet trying to make it stop but it wouldn’t, she just continued to seize, so I took that magnet and threw it across the room with all my might and said F-you God. F-you. Anger. So. Much. Anger.
I remember going to the mall with Lily, (because retail therapy is my friend) she was about a year, and we walk past a little girl in her stroller about the same age and the mom smiled at me and her little girl was holding a toy and looked up and smiled at me and I didn’t smile back. Who doesn’t smile at a mom and her baby? An angry person that’s who. I was so angry that my baby was reclining in her chair because she couldn’t sit up and she couldn’t hold a toy if I taped it in her hand. Anger. Anger consumed me.

**Leaving this like this is killing me; you readers know I tend to end light. Usually little words of wisdom, some cliché, or something ridiculous that has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I really want to continue my story, but I am not going to. I am doing this in stages and this was the ugliest one. The one I look back the most ashamed of, but you cannot appreciate the good without experiencing the bad. (ha I did it anyway….)**

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