There and Back Again

It has been an exhausting 24 hours. And has proved to me that I'd be a terrible single parent so Austin better not die or leave me anytime soon. Kudos to you single parents, you're awesome. You deserve the beverage and treat of your choice EVERY DAY.

Eden't first appointment with the eye surgeon was today in Dallas. Which meant that she and I had a girls' trip and stayed in a hotel overnight. She was so excited about it. There were promises of hotel pool swimming, room service, and movies. Plus no brothers around to muck things up.

Things started to go downhill almost immediately when I got into Austin's car after church (which ran late due to a guest preacher) and discovered that when he got the oil changed on Saturday, they'd somehow switched it from MPH to KPH. And since I don't do metric, that was alarming to see that I was driving 90 in a 55 zone. I pulled over and called Austin and after another stop and both of us googling and checking the manual, I still couldn't figure out how to change it. It's like that part has been deleted from the menu. So I googled the conversion and stuck to that as close as I could. I made it there and back with no tickets, so I call that a win.

About 60 miles from our destination, just over halfway there, Eden threw up. She'd fallen asleep before we got on 20 and woke up long enough to throw up. She stayed awake while I pulled over at the first station and ran in to get wipes and napkins, saying in a sad voice "I throwed up." Luckily it was mostly on her and her seat so I was able to clean it up fairly quickly. She hadn't eaten lunch so there wasn't more. She fell back asleep about 5 minutes after we got back on the road.

At that point, I swear I'd been driving for 3 days.

We got to the hotel ok, and after checking in, Eden took a bath to clean up from the vomit. She enjoyed splashing around and I tried to find a restaurant with mac and cheese close by because that's what she was demanding. Eventually, we decided to check out the hotel restaurant and were pleased to see they had it, so we sat down. Then she declared she wanted chicken. Whatever, man. Her meal was free, which was good because she ate about 1/3 of her fries and like, 1/2 of a chicken strip before declaring she was full.

It was so humid and cool, I didn't want to swim. I tried telling her it was too cold, that the pool was closed, that her floatie was broken, but she was having none of it. So we put on our suits and got into the water. Which was super cold. She hung on to me because it was deeper than she was comfortable with and her floatie really WOULDN'T air up. I told her only 10 minutes but talked her into going inside after about 6 with promises of ice cream. She decided on a chocolate bar instead and we went upstairs.

Changing BACK into pjs and eating our treats, we tried to find something on tv to watch but the guide wasn't working and the remote was sketchy too. She took it from me and banged it on everything in the room, then declared it fixed. It was not. She decided she needed another bath after eating her chocolate (and she did) so she got it. I had a headache so around 930, we turned everything off and tried to go to sleep.

I say tried because I was successful, but she kept getting up and walking around. She pulled her food out of the fridge and had a little to eat, then put it away and tried to go visit other people. Every noise got a gasp and a "what's that noise?" I have no idea when she fell asleep but she woke up screaming at 4 am because Roby (her robot) was missing. I didn't get up but she apparently found him/her (it changes) because s/he was there in the morning. She laid there for a little while and just as I was about to go back to sleep she started crying and saying she wanted to go home. I told her it was just a little longer, that we'd have pancakes, then see the doctor, then go home. She repeated this a few times, then we both fell asleep again.

I woke up again around 6 with my headache intact so I took a shower and some medicine and started packing up. Eden woke up during this and was eager to get dressed and go get pancakes. Which she then refused to touch because they weren't from the Flipping Egg. And she cried when she dropped her strawberry on the floor but then decided she hates strawberries after taking a bite of mine.

We had time before the appointment so we went back to the room and watched some PBS, which she loved, while I finished packing and loaded up the car.

Austin's car doesn't have gps so I was using maps on my phone. Since I couldn't see it, I kept making wrong turns on the way to the office. Which was frustrating. We still got there about 20 minutes early. And then proceeded to wait until about half an hour past her scheduled appointment time. And then more waiting in the exam room. They decided to dilate her eyes to see if she needs glasses, which seemed odd since they measured her vision at 20/20 and 20/25. I think it's a standard thing, though, so I didn't argue. Thirty minutes of waiting for the dilation, then another fifteen for the glasses check, then waiting again for the surgery scheduler....it all added up to a three hour visit. Eden was honestly good the whole time, but she was getting antsy and I was losing my patience with her. I didn't get a good night's sleep and still had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of me, so her dancing around wasn't amusing to me.

She fell asleep almost immediately in the car and slept the whole way home. I stopped in Arlington for gas and to grab food and was dismayed when I realized Panda Express didn't put a fork in my bag. So I ate orange chicken and rice with my fingers while driving on the highway. Not the best idea, but I didn't make a mess or have any problems. I won't do it again, though.

The general feeling was we don't HAVE to do surgery now, we could continue to patch. Her vision is improving and her eyes are doing fine. She doesn't need glasses and she doesn't object to the patches as much as she used to, but both Austin and I feel like let's just do it already. She's young enough that if we do it now, she likely won't remember, or will only have vague memories of it. So we have a tentative date for the surgery. Because of her heart issues, we have to have the surgery at the main campus, not at the satellite surgery center across the street, so that means cardiac anesthesiologists and the ophthalmic surgeon and everyone else have to coordinate schedules. It's an out patient procedure, though because of her age they'll put her under general anesthesia so we'll be there for a little longer. I'm not sure if they'll want us to stay overnight, but they seemed to think we wouldn't need to. I'll get all those certain details later to help with figuring out everything with the other three for that time. They also said they'd want to see her a week and a month after, but if we can get our local eye doctor to do that, I'd much prefer that. And her local pediatrician will do the pre-op physical about 2 weeks before. I have to wait for a definite surgery date to schedule that. Plus on top of all that, she'll be due her annual cardio appointment in December. In Dallas.

So we're home again, she's in a good mood (ish) and Feta and Rebekah seem to have missed me and we've got more immediate things on the agenda, like Austin and Elijah's birthdays and various other smaller things. We survived the trip. *I* survived the trip.

Hitting the road Sunday afternoon

Bringing her suitcase in with her. And dragging it upside down.

Playing with her dinner rather than eating it 

Eating AND playing with her chocolate bar. 

Reading the "story" on her breakfast menu

Waiting at Children's. 

In the exam room

In the second waiting room while her eye dilated

Asleep in the car on the way home. It was a long 24 hours for her too. 

Shut up, fortune cookie!

Dragging

Summer of 2018 is dragging itself to a close and I, for one, could not be more ready.

We definitely have had a lazy summer this year. Asher had two weeks of Threshold and a week of AISD technology camp, all of which he enjoyed, and the littles had 7 weeks of one day a week MDO and Elijah had two days of art camp at the Grace, which they all enjoyed. All told, the longest amount of time I had to myself during the day for any appointments or just breathing room was maybe 2-3 hours three times, and it was always on a Wednesday when the house was cleaned. So basically never.

There are some women who are just meant to be moms. They're great with kids, they come up with interesting and fun activities for their children, they keep art supplies on hand. They're not overwhelmed by the prospect of taking a car full of children anywhere. Those moms are fantastic. I'm not one of them. I don't like taking my kids to the grocery store. So we stayed home and did a lot of nothing all summer.

I don't regret that. They will have years and years of constant activity once they're adults. It'll start before that, I'm sure, as summer jobs become a thing, as they get interested in activities that require their attention in the summer, as they get more friends and more independence. I call myself a free range parent and this summer, they were free to range this big, new house we've got. Did we have lots of screen time? Yes. Did we also play in the water and have movie/pizza nights on a regular basis and go see movies in theaters? Also yes. We did educational stuff and art stuff and semi-athletic stuff and it was all great. I hope the kids will tell teachers this fall they had a good summer. And if not, they've all got tons more ahead of them.

I've been helping the boys' new school get set up and organized, since they had tubs and tubs of art supplies that needed organizing. I spent hours at the school sorting and throwing away and putting in containers. It was hot sweaty work but also kind of nice because I got to be alone for it.

We couldn't really afford to take a vacation this year because of the move, and we are ok with that. It's been a priority to me that we at least take some time to be together as a family every year, so this year we planned it for what we thought would be the last week of summer before school started. Then the first day of school got pushed back a few days so it was the second to last week. We didn't even consider changing, because why would we, and that turned out to be a huge thing.

We started our "staycation" with a murder mystery party for the adults and a babysitter for the kids. The next day we rented an inflatable water slide for a few hours and invited our friends to come play. That was tons of fun until the bees showed up. Luckily, no one buy Austin got stung, and he only got stung once. Rain kind of pooh-poohed our activities for Sunday and Monday, but Tuesday we went to the zoo, Wednesday was the "new" water park, Adventure Cove, Thursday was the trampoline park, and Friday was the new splash pad at Sears Park. Saturday we capped it all off with a movie at the Paramount and a birthday party at the Grace. One big activity a day, one meal out a day, lots of downtime to hang out with each other. That seems to be the perfect recipe for a Mullins Family Vacation.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine went into the hospital for pregnancy complications. I won't go into details, because it's not my story to share, but she was there for two and a half weeks. I went several evenings and just sat and kept her company, working on my "travel" cross-stitch while we chatted with HGTV in the background. She was cleared to go home the Monday of our staycation, which I was thrilled for her and also pleased that our staycation could proceed for just us. I absolutely will be there for my friends when they need me, but I was looking forward to time with my family, too.

Then Thursday I got a heartbreaking text. I was stunned as I drove up to the hospital to sit and wait, hoping against hope that I'd read it wrong, that this was some kind of horrible, sick joke. And it wasn't. Baby Colt had been delivered early in an attempt to save his life and hadn't made it.

Because Austin was already home and off the next two days, I was able to be there in the hospital with her, holding and loving on that sweet, perfect baby. I cried with her, snuggled him, kissed his sweet head, and grieved for this child who everyone fought so hard for. I was there most of Thursday, leaving for a little while so Austin could take the bigs to the trampoline park they'd been promised. And I went back Friday at some point (I really can't remember when I was there, I think afternoon/early evening?) though we did take the kids to the splash pad and had dinner at home. It all blurs together after a while. I took her clothes to wear home on Saturday and walked with her to her car, pushing the cart of her belongings and fighting not to cry as we walked out without a baby. I held it together until we walked away from the entrance of the hospital and then I broke down. I may have startled some people walking past me.

I'm not even going to pretend that I understand what she's going through. I lost my dad, yes, but he was nearly 65. He had lived a full life. I feel like he was way too young, but he at least lived. Colt never got that chance. Its different grieving for a life not lived.

This pain will be part of her for the rest of her life. In a much much lesser way, it will mine, too. We had so many plans for this sweet boy. I was going to keep him a few hours a week while she worked until he was old enough for MDO, and I was looking forward to that. I absolutely am done expanding my family, but that doesn't mean I don't love holding new babies and snuggling their sweet necks and kissing their downy heads. We were talking about where different baby things were going to be, how long he'd be here, what days I'd have him.

I've been sitting with her some evenings since she went home because none of us want her to be alone, and she doesn't really, either. Sometimes she's on the phone and I pull mine out and read either a book or articles online or scroll through facebook. After the last couple of weeks where my kids have made choices that may have resulted in them being sold for magic beans, it was nice to be somewhere quiet where nothing was getting broken and no one was tattling or peeing on the floor.

I've still got the last little bit of organizing to do, and school is starting Monday so we're trying to get to a school schedule around here, and Rebekah is at the age where she likes to check in on me periodically to make sure I haven't vanished, so the days are hard sometimes, but the evenings are for her for as long as she needs me. This is a horrific season of her life and if I can be there, I will. My kids have their dad around to keep things running around here, doling out discipline as needed, playing with them, keeping them alive. She has empty arms.

I'm not trying to make myself out to be some amazing friend or person. I debated even writing much about her. But if you see me in the next few days or weeks and I seem tired or sad or I start crying randomly, this is why. I'm missing a sweet perfect baby with the best head of hair I've ever seen on a baby and I'm aching for my friend. I hate that this happened and I hate that I can't fix it and I hate this reality.

Jesus, fix it.

Summer Sloth

It's been a minute. At the same time, we've been busy and lazy. Plus I've had some computer issues. It's been a relatively ok summer thus far.

We're settled into the house. We were 95% unpacked after two weeks, which is amazing. There are areas that I'm just now getting around to finishing up, but it's nearly all cosmetic and functional at this point. Now that we've lived here for two months, we have a better idea of what will work for us in different areas of the house. There's still lots of blank walls in the kids' rooms but I've decided to let that be for the most part so that as they grow up and figure out what they like, we can decorate to their tastes. The way Elijah is going, he'll be Mario for life, so that may not change much. The girls are still deciding who they are so not having much decor in their rooms is ok for now.

I think I've finally figured out a lay out for the sitting room that works for me. I've moved shelves and changed out curtains and rearranged things a few times and now I feel like I've got it. I've taken things out of cardboard boxes and invested in clear plastic tubs to store my craft stuff in and I'm loving that. I want to eventually get a second armchair in there so that if I have company and we want to retreat from the rest of the family to watch a movie or chat, we can both sit comfortably. The library works for that function currently, but the sitting room is much more private.

We got our first electric bill and whoa. We knew coming in we needed to invest about $1000 in some insulation to help the units Mom installed in December function better, but we didn't prioritize it. We may need to. On the upside, our winter heating bills should be much better since it's a gas heater. The gas bill is next to nothing currently.

The Mulberry house is being rented out for the next year, which is a huge relief for us. We're excited to have these renters in place and look forward to the next year with them. I've seen a couple of the things they're doing and it looks great.

Elijah is ready for kindergarten, though he will tell you he's not that excited about it. I suspect he'll get more excited the closer we get and when he really truly realizes his best friend from MDO is there. He and this boy yell across the parking lot "I love you! Bye!" about 57 times every pick up. Hopefully they still feel that way after spending all day every day together next school year.

Asher has spent the summer doing semi-educational stuff. He went to AISD's technology camp that was some kind of Lego animation thing and enjoyed that and then spent two weeks at Threshold where he learned about Ancient Egypt. This camp is so cool, I wish I'd gone when I was a kid. The first week they wrote a presentation about something to do with Ancient Egypt (Asher chose the Sphinx) and the second week they had to create their own ancient civilization. Asher's was vegetarian thespian traders. He doesn't like to admit it, but I think he really enjoys it.

He's been arguing hard to go back to the charter school instead of Moore House, but I can't get a straight answer why out of him. I think he feels like TLCA would be up to the challenge of him since Moore House was. I've tried explaining to him the reasons why we chose Moore House for 2nd grade and I don't think it's computing. For such a smart kid, sometimes he does things that remind us that yes, he definitely IS a child.

Eden is doing really well with her eye patch and her newest venture, potty training. Well, at least with her eye patch. Potty training has its ups and downs. I'm glad we have about 2 dozen pairs of panties because I wash them frequently. Every trip to the bathroom warrants a new pair, even if the old pair is still clean.

We have an appointment with the surgeon in Dallas on September 24, a Monday, in the morning, so she and I will get to take a girls' trip to Dallas on that Sunday. I'm hoping she'll enjoy the hotel and room service. I'll have to double check on their pool situation, but she would probably be super excited to go swimming with just me. Hopefully on that trip, the doctor will be able to give us a time frame for surgery. In the meantime, we continue to patch 14 hours a week, though some weeks we're more on it than others. She'll wear it for 10 hours in a day some days and others she won't wear it for more than 5 minutes. It just depends on her mood.

Rebekah is finally walking! She took her first few steps in late June at MDO and refused to walk for or to me for the next week and a half. Then one day she just stood up and started stomping around and hasn't looked back. She's so proud of herself, too. She can get farther faster and take things with her much more easily. Her siblings aren't as thrilled with that last bit. Neither am I, to be honest. I have to turn my nightstand towards the bed or she'll raid it and carry things around the upstairs.

She still avoids the stairs, but will stand at the top or bottom and yell at whoever is on the other side until they come get her. She doesn't like to be alone (fourth child problem) but tolerates it much better if she's alone upstairs where all the toys are.

We can't really afford a vacation away this year, so we're doing a "staycation" which I've managed to get everyone excited about. We're going to see Abilene and do things around here we haven't in a while or ever. Splash pads and movies and video games are the highlights of the week for just about everyone. I had the boys describe their perfect days and when we relayed them to Austin, he said those were his perfect days, too. They were mostly eating and playing video games, which surprises no one. I've yet to sit down and actually give it a little more detail, but I intend to do that this weekend.

Church has been an interesting change for us. The weekend we moved, the church went to two services instead of one, and it seems to be working fairly well for the church as a whole. For us, it just....wasn't. Before, Austin would be able to help me get the kids dressed and to the church, where he would then go to practice and I would take them to eat at the coffee shop ministry we have called Holy Grounds. I'd have time to feed them, then deliver them to the Children's Building before Sunday school. Now, Austin has to be at the church about 30-45 minutes before we do, so I'm on my own to get them up and dressed and for whatever reason, we just. can't. do it. We tried for a month and I was almost always 15-20 or even 30 minutes late to the service, which is about a 45 minute service. At that point, what the point of trying for service? Then we had the discussion of whether or not it was worth getting everyone up and out for just Sunday school. The kids weren't enjoying Sunday school for whatever reason (I could never get a straight answer out of them) so we just decided not to try for the rest of the summer. Maybe in the fall, once we're back into a routine, we'll try again. It may go better then. Summer heat and laziness have just taken their toll on me for sure. I've missed Sunday school and seeing people for sure, but I've also really enjoyed getting to sleep in on Sundays. Not that I can't other days of the week when the kids let me, but there's something about a Sunday that just makes me want to sleep all day.

There are lots of things ahead of us: Eden's eye surgery, Elijah starting kindergarten, helping out a friend, parties, trips, school shopping, and more. We're keeping cool in the heat by staying in and counting down until school starts. 26 days, y'all.

Home Again

I've been meaning to write a blog post for a while now, but things have been busy.

First off, Eden's still waiting for an appointment with an eye surgeon in Dallas. She's doing well with her eye patch wearing, though she still resists it quite a bit. We're bribing her with water color painting and tv shows.

We moved into the Orange street house on May 18, so we've been here for ten days now. We got everything into the house in 2.5 trips and about 6 hours. We got the kids' rooms set up as much as we could that night, though of course a lot more work was done over the next few days. Our bedroom took a while because Austin couldn't find the bolts to put the bed together, resulting in our being up until about 11pm while he searched for, located, and assembled our bed. That doesn't seem TOO late but I'd been awake since 5am and we'd moved so I was exhausted. My body definitely didn't appreciate it and I was sickish for the next several days. I'm still recovering.

In spite of all that, though, I'd say we're about 95% done unpacking. There are filled boxes in the garage, sure, but those are things in long term storage. We're passing along our empty boxes and once we've got those down to a manageable number, we'll (I'll) work on organizing the storage areas a little better. There are still things around that need a permanent home, but we'll figure that out as we go. We've turned the dining room into a temporary gathering place for everything that's left, just to help me keep my sanity. After two months of living surrounded by boxes, I'm really glad to have the majority of the boxes confined to one room, and it's a room I can avoid easily.

The kitchen is unpacked and usable. We've cooked quite a few meals, though we've also ordered in and picked up a few times because hey, we just moved and we're still unpacking and we're tired.

The last room started was the first room finished. The library has books on the shelves or in the cabinets, art on the walls (made by me), comfy chairs for reading, and a desk chair at the desk. Not all the books would fit because of course not, but each kid has shelves in their room with books on them and my Book of the Month books are in my sitting room. Of course those shelves are almost full with the ones I've already got so that's definitely not a long term solution. I'll likely be donating more of the books Mom left behind (there's already about 11 boxes of books she left that we're not keeping) to make space for our books. We'll need to get a library ladder because we can't reach the top two shelves without one, and even then it's tricky. Needless to say, the books we don't use much (or ever) are up there.

I'm absolutely loving how some of the rooms look, namely the girls' rooms and the library. I'm taking pictures as we go and I'll eventually post some before and afters. I'm just waiting until rooms are done before I take pictures of them, and since only a couple of rooms are actually completely done (or as done as they're going to get for now) that's slow going. The family dining room is done but my kids are super messy eaters so I'd have to clean and sweep to get a decent picture. Maybe after the next time the house is cleaned I'll snap a picture before the kids come in. It doesn't look all that different from how Mom had it, it's just got our stuff in it.

Mom and I went on Friday and did the official signing and transfer of Orange street, so the Caldwell House is officially, legally mine. I did have to pay for it, but it was a reasonable amount. I don't even have to sell a kid. The last step to get Mom free of this house is June 1 when the bills go into our name instead of hers.

It's interesting to live in my childhood home as the parent. Walking into the rooms, they're so different because of paint and use, I kind of feel like I'm living in two worlds at once. I can see how the rooms were when I was a kid and how they are now. I can remember the things that happened in those rooms and imagine the things that will happen in the years to come. Eden is in my childhood bedroom and Asher is in Caleb's room. Rebekah is in what was Dad's office and Elijah is in the craft room. Austin's office is the music room where I spent hours practicing the piano as a kid and once in a while when I'm in there, I remember Dad making faces at me through the double glass doors. I'm remembering the quirks of the house and learning new ones.

The kids seem to love being here. The only complaint I've heard is from Elijah who said this house is so big. He still likes being here. He's torn between wanting to still be in the Mulberry house and being here where there's so much more space and he's got his own big room. Asher is enjoying having his own room, his only complaint has been that it's "small" which is silly because it's a large room. Though in his defense, it is the smallest bedroom in the house. That's what he gets for having a bedroom on the first floor away from everyone else.

Rebekah mostly stays away from the stairs, though she likes to pull up at the top of the stairs and give me a big grin as she bounces. She's very cautious, though, carefully sitting down and backing up. I'll eventually get around to bringing a gate upstairs to put at the top when we're all upstairs relaxing and she's roaming free. She's loving having so much space to explore. She was let loose in the downstairs on Thursday while I did some unpacking in the dining room and she managed to find a paperclip, two screws, and two plastic pegs from a game. She was very unhappy when I fished them out of her mouth. If you want to find things that shouldn't be on the floor, get a baby and she'll find them for you.

So things are going well as far as the move goes. There's a few little tweaks that need to be done. Austin's still unpacking because he hasn't been home as much as I have plus he's been doing things for me around the house, like hanging things up and taking empty boxes out to the garage. When he gets done with the things I've asked him to do, he's usually tired and ready to sit and do nothing for a while.

Elijah asked me last week how long we'd have boxes all over our house. I told him to give me two weeks. I feel like I can safely say that after 10 days, we're pretty much out of boxes. This is my superpower.

Things are Looking Up

It's been a rough couple of weeks, y'all. Moving is at a weird point where we're moving boxes over but we weren't unpacking anything or even putting them where they would go because the rooms had Mom's furniture in them or were being painted or something. Keeping an eye patch on an opinionated 3 yo who doesn't want to wear it was also super fun. We went through about 70 eye patches in three weeks. That's a lot of eye patches.

BUT! Things are getting better. Mom has been going to Orange to get the last of her things as she's been able, adding the the monstrous pile in the dining room of things she's donating. She hired some people to come move furniture downstairs last Thursday and the same day, a woman came and took all the antiques to sell, even a couple things I thought were being left for us, lol. We'll have way more space than we thought. It'll be great.

So Saturday, a friend and I spent a couple hours at the house moving boxes around the house and unpacking a bit in the kitchen. My housekeeper went over and cleaned the kitchen for me on Wednesday and I'm hoping that tomorrow, they can get a couple more rooms cleaned for unpacking.

It's so weird. The house has an echo that I don't remember it ever having before. There were a couple hours on Saturday I was alone in the house and I'm going to have to reacquaint myself with it's creaks and moans and sounds, because it did feel a little creepy on a sunny Saturday morning...lol

The painting is trucking along and looks so good. Austin and I are really pleased with how it's looking and it's making the house feel like it's actually going to be ours, instead of my mom's. Our stuff is not going to fill it up by any means, but it'll help with the echo. I hope.

We still have a lot of packing to do, but now that there are empty rooms, we can actually move stuff over and not be surrounded by boxes. It was getting claustrophobic over here.

In other news, Eden had her follow up appointment to her first follow up appointment three weeks ago. She's been wearing an eye patch for the past three weeks and everyone has beenn so supportive with helping us keep it on her. It's been rough, because she hates it, but it's all worth it because we were successful! Her vision three weeks ago was measured at 20/80 and today he measured it at 20/30, a huge improvement. She still needs to be patched part time, but we're looking at 14 hours a week, which I think will be much more doable. She still needs to have surgery, but hopefully after she won't need any additional patching.

We were supposed to go see a doctor in Dallas tomorrow, but it turned out he didn't actually have operating privileges at Children's, so that appointment has been cancelled and they're looking for a doctor who can. Hopefully we'll get that appointment soon and we can get this done quickly. In the meantime, we'll be back to see our local doctor in 4 months.

So, things are turning around for us from our brief down turn for the year. We're looking forward to all the good stuff coming soon.

Then I got pelted with shoes.

Mom moved on Saturday. Five burly bikers and two young men and me all showed up early to help Mom and Bob with the big moving of furniture and remaining boxes. We worked for 12 hours (I left after 11) and the end result is that Mom and Bob have a house full of furniture and boxes...and there's still some that got left behind because we ran out of time.

I think the job was bigger than anticipated. Certain things weren't as well communicated as they could have been, so there's still quite a bit to move and do, which makes everything interesting. Since Mom's not fully out, and won't be for a while, our move has been postponed to a date to be determined. First, Mom needs to make arrangements for what's left, and she's pretty busy most of the week so that'll take a little time to do. After that, we can proceed.

The hope was for our family to be in before the end of the school year so I'd have a few days with no kids underfoot to work on unpacking and settling in and decorating. I'm thinking it'll be sometime in the summer before we're actually moved, so I'll have to get creative with child distractions. Hopefully we can have a safe room with a tv and toys for them.

Then, yesterday, Caleb had to have surgery to remove a ruptured appendix. He was in pain starting early in the afternoon on Sunday and it just lingered until he ended up in the ER (for the second time in two days) yesterday morning and in surgery last night at 7. He's doing better and will be there for a couple of days recuperating.

Then today, I called the doctor in Dallas to confirm a couple of things before the appointment in a week and they told me that he does NOT have privileges at Children's. So now I'm trying to work that out and figure out what happened.

I'm tired.

Then the other shoe drops

The last few weeks/months have been pretty good around here. We've had some illness, but a house full of young children goes through that periodically. We've had more ups than downs lately.

Then Monday happened.

For those who forgot, or maybe didn't know, on top of Eden's heart issues, she's also got ptosis, a droopy eyelid, on her left eye. She's been seeing a pediatric ophthalmologist since she was 6 months old since it's so low it obstructs the top of her pupil. Put your hand over the top of your eye and look around....that's her whole life. Back in December, her doctor went out of network so we had to find a new one. We saw him in February for a vision check, more than the eye exams we'd been having. Three is about as young as you can check vision.

She did great with her right eye, but was very uncooperative with her left. He managed to get enough of a check done that he estimated her vision at about 20/60. He sent us home with instructions to play "pirate" to get her used to covering her dominant eye for another exam in April. She got pretty good at it and had fun teasing us with how long she could do it.

Monday was that follow up exam. She, again, did great on the right eye but when it came time to check the left, she wasn't really working with us. When the doctor finally came in to do his part, he tested her using a card and said she's not being uncooperative, because she answered just fine when it was her right eye, she just couldn't see. He estimates her current vision in her left eye to be about 20/80. That much deterioration in two months leads him to believe that her brain has started to ignore her left eye.

People with ptosis usually adapt. Think about Forrest Whitaker. He's got it pretty severely and he does fine. I'm not sure if his vision is affected, but it's pretty likely. Eden should have begun to tilt her head back to see better under the eyelid. Her eye seems to be perfectly fine, it's just not being utilized.

So her doctor wants to move her ptosis surgery from summer of 2020 to .... now, essentially.

Not tomorrow, or even next week (thank god for small favors), but sooner rather than later. He sent us home with instructions to patch her for three weeks. We have a follow up appointment with him on May 7.

Because of her heart, this surgery has risks and can't be done in Abilene. She has to go to Dallas to have it done at Children's. So when I got home Monday afternoon, I emailed her cardiologist to fill her in and ask about next steps. She doesn't have an eye surgeon in mind, so our doctor here agreed (and even offered at the appointment) to find one for us. Wednesday we got a call that we have an appointment in Dallas with a pediatric eye plastic surgeon on May 8.

Because I want to do ALL THE THINGS the week after we move. Sounds fantastic.

That's why, if you've seen Eden this week, she's wearing an eye patch. She hates them, but at least she's quit pulling them off. It's a struggle to get them on, but once it's on she generally leaves it alone. Monday was rough, she kept pulling them off, but if we can get her distracted with tv or her tablet, she forgets she's wearing it. I got some pretty ones on Amazon with ladybugs, mermaids, stars, teddy bears, and mouse princesses on them. Amazon seriously has everything, you guys.

I did a little googling of what her surgery will probably be and it looks like it's a 45 minute to 2 hour procedure and we likely won't have to have a stay in the hospital. I'd love if we didn't have to stay overnight at all, but if we do, I'd rather stay in a hotel. Granted, what I read was about a normal pediatric ptosis surgery, not a cardiac patient.

I have every confidence this will go well and she'll regain her vision. We've caught it as early as we could and we're doing what we can. She's my and Austin's child, and no one in our families has good eyes, so it's a given our kids will need glasses at some point. 20/80 isn't terrible (I'm sure mine is worse since I can't even tell if there's a chart on the wall, let alone read any letters) so if it even stalls there, that would be ok with me. That's correctable. We just have to get her brain to use that eye.

And I think it is. She's been watching tv one eyed all week and she's tilting her head back and correctly answering questions the Bubble Guppies and UmiZoomi ask. She gets pretty close to things, but she IS seeing. So that's a relief.

No one likes hearing their child needs surgery, or for that surgery to be complicated. I did cry on Monday, even as I was telling myself it would be fine, that this was nothing, a routine, simple thing for these doctors. The tricky part is the anesthesia, and that's why she's going to Children's. And if anything were to go sideways, she's there at a fantastic hospital that is fully equipped to handle her special case.

But she's still my baby and she's having surgery. Possibly in as little as a month or so.

So, prayers, healing thoughts, etc, all are welcome. She's a fighter and she's strong and willful. She won't let this keep her down.

Her eye is as open as it ever gets. Her first eye patch. She didn't know what was happening so she didn't fight it. 

We bought this one but it wouldn't stay in place very well and was constantly slipping over her left eye, so we quit that. It was soft, though, so she prefers it. 

Watching tv with a mermaid eye patch. Apparently this is comfortable?