If I could can a memory

I was cuddling with Matthew this evening after stories , which he read to me, (he's getting so big so fast).  He likes to lift up his jammie shirt and put his Thomas blanket directly onto his tummy.  He asks for his blanket while lifting up his jammie shirt and I lay the blanket on his tummy.  Then he tells me that I need to have some blanket too.  I tell him "Thank you, Matthew.  You take such good care of me."

He replies " I have to take care of you Mommy.  I don't want a T-Rex to eat you." Meanwhile he has his still slightly chubby arms wrapped tightly around my neck and he has his pudgy face squished up against my face, a position that he has liked since he was an infant.  I do my good -Mommy- job and I remind him that there aren't any T-Rexes anymore and that we are safe.  All the while wishing there was some way I could can this moment like you could applesauce, so that I could open it up when he is refusing to even talk to me at 15. 

50 Fillings

One of Matthew's favorite books is "The Tooth Book" by Dr. Seuss.  One of the characters in the book is Billy Billings.  The only passage about Billy Billings is "Don't gobble junk like Billy Billings.  They say his teeth have fifty filling!!" Those 13 words have made quite an impression on Matthew for some reason.  In his mind "50 fillings" is a very bad boy. 

When he is trying to figure out if something is OK, he will ask me "does 50 fillings do this?"  It started out making sense why he would ask.  He'd ask "does 50 fillings eat cookies?" and I would explain that 50 fillings ate lots of junk food, and yes cookies are junk food.  Well this line of thought is out of control now. Matthew will ask "does 50 fillings take naps, use the potty, take baths, clean up his room...." any thing that Matthew knows he SHOULD do, but doesn't enjoy doing.

I love his innocence.  

Listen to your body

Sometimes I think I have a really good idea when dealing with a situation with my little man.  However, often times these great ideas end up back firing beyond my expectations.  One example of this is teaching Matthew to "listen to his body".

Potty training Matthew was pretty easy in the beginning.  This child really likes having control so once we introduced the idea that he didn't need to use his diaper anymore he was all for it.  However, in the past few months he has decided that he does not wish to use the potty EITHER.  He has a tendency to hold it, especially if I even suggest that maybe he needs to go.  There have been many times that everyone in the room knows that Matthew has to go and he is so darn stubborn that he will refuse to take care of business because he "doesn't want to."

I thought I had a wonderful idea of explaining that it's not about what we want to do, but what our body needs for us to do.  I told him that he needed to  "listen to his body."  That idea has never really gotten us anywhere towards a solution for the potty issue, that situation gets better the more we let it be his idea.   It has however,  provided us with some pretty amusing conversations. 

Matthew likes to use the "listening to your body" idea again me.  He will tell me that his body is telling him  "Matthew you need to watch Elmo (or eat cookies or play with a favorite toy)".  What makes the situations even more difficult to keep a straight face is that he uses a deep voice which I refer to as 'the voice of God'.  Why do our children have to learn to outsmart us at such a young age?  And if he is already outsmarting me this often at 3 what am I going to do when he's 13?  I guess I'll just do my best, enjoy, and know that although it's not always funny at the time I WILL laugh about it later..... potentially when I'm telling his girlfriends.  :)

My Sweet Little Miracle

      I have always wanted to be a mommy.  I remember how thrilled I was when I was able to hold a baby for the first time.  The baby’s name was Melissa and I was about 4 years old.  Somewhere I have a picture of the moment and you can see from the expression on my face that I was about to explode with joy.  When I was old enough I started babysitting and would have done it for free just to be able to take care of kids.  When it came time for college I had no idea what field was a perfect fit, but knew I wanted to work with children.

       Sometime during high school I started becoming concerned that something wasn’t quite right and that having children may not be easy for me (I won’t bore you with all the details).  In college I talked to a doctor and found that my concerns were justified.  About a month after graduating college my fiancé, Kirk, and I got married.  I really wanted to just be married for about 5 years before starting a family but my possible fertility problems encouraged us to get started early.  I read every book I could find on fertility issues and lost the weight the doctors suggested and my body did not cooperate.  We tried for a few years without any medical help since we couldn’t afford what our insurance wouldn’t pay of the treatment.  Then we decided that my husband would join the military and two of the biggest reasons were for financial stability and medical insurance to help us start a family. 

      About a year after arriving in our first duty station I started fertility treatment.  I hated it.  I was so miserable.  Month after month I tried treatments that my doctor suggested and month after month my body did nothing.  I felt like a failure, like less of a woman.  I didn’t understand why I had to have such a strong desire to be a mom and then have my body fail me.  Why couldn’t I have been one of those women (whom I have a lot of respect for) that have high career aspirations?  All I really wanted out of life was a family:  a husband, a few kids, soccer practice, Church, and family BBQ's on Saturdays.

     After about a year of going through all of this medical help I found myself at the last month of the last step of treatment that I thought I could handle.  I was on the last dose of Clomid that my doctor would prescribe and my body hadn’t responded to any of the smaller doses at all, so I really didn’t have any hope that my body would respond that month.  The next step was that I would have to do the self injections. I really didn’t think I could do this.  I was going to listen more to the doctor, if it came to that, but I thought that I would be getting into something that I was really uncomfortable with.  My concern was the high order multiples that are sometimess associated with the more aggressive forms of fertility treatments.  I desperately wanted a family but I didn’t think I could live with myself if I ended up with 6 babies in me that could possibly have compromised health from not being able to develop long enough.  I have always liked the idea of adoption….. We had not looked into it but it seemed like something I could do. 

     Ok so here I was in what I now call my last month of fertility treatment and I really didn’t think anything was going to happen.  I had been trying to “get a life” for a few months.  What I mean by that is that for 4 years I had been in this state that my life was all about getting pregnant.  If you asked me how I was I thought you were asking “ Did you ovulate this month?” or “ what are the doctor’s wanting you to do now?” .  My life was really one dimensional:  “I must have a baby.” I was starting to feel that maybe I wasn’t going to have a baby, maybe that wasn’t God’s will for my life and I tried to find other things that would make me happy.  I got my first (and so far only) manicure, starting reading again, and got really into going to the gym.  I was starting to learn to have a good time again and was coming to a peace that it could be possible for me to have a good life and not have a biological child.   

      Then the unexpected happened and my body started to cooperate.  I knew something was going on because of information that I read out of one of the books about fertility that a doctor suggested I read (God bless that doctor).  After so many times of hoping that I was pregnant and finding out that I wasn’t, I was determined to not get my hopes up this time.  I actually did not think that I was pregnant and wouldn’t have taken a test if it wasn’t for a very good friend who insisted and even bought and dropped a pregnancy test on my doorstep.  I took the test so that I could prove to her that I wasn’t pregnant and she would quit telling me that I was (Thank you April). 

     I was so shocked when that line showed up that all I could do was screamed.  I had so many daydreams of how I would tell Kirk if/when I found out I was pregnant.  None of that happened, he found out because I was screaming and pretty hysterical.  That was one of the most nerve wrecking and exciting days of my life.  I was able to tell everyone I was pregnant in a different way and got such a thrill out of sharing such wonderful news.  All I wanted to do was be happy after so many years of being so unhappy. 

     I know that I romanticized motherhood but even on the worst day I am able to see what a wonderful blessing my little guy is and am able to see that he was an answer to my prayers even though God’s answer was “not yet” for many years.  And by the way my original plan was to have our first child after we had been married about 5 years.  We started trying after 1 year of marriage however Matthew was born about 5 ½ years into our marriage.  So I got exactly what I had hoped for.  GOD IS GOOD!! 

Matthew preparing to be a big brother

      Matthew is very interested in everything that the baby is going to do when he/she is born.  We talk a lot about what the baby will be able to do and what the baby won't be able to do.  A friend let us borrow a baby doll so Matthew can practice.  The first night home with the practice baby Matthew insisted that the baby needed a place to sleep.  He did not want it sleeping with him but wanted it in a crib.  That progressed to the baby needed a blanket and then the baby needed "night night" music. He really understood the concept of practicing apparently. 
      Matthew loves driving over speed bumps.  Whenever we go to someone's house that lives in a neighborhood that has speed bumps he counts the number of the "bumpies" so he can count them on the way out of the neighborhood.  I tell him how the baby is sometimes awake and is sometimes asleep.  The last time we went over "bumpies"he said "Mommy we can't go over "bumpies" we will wake up my baby."
     Matthew sometimes asks if the baby is kicking me.  One day I answer him that the baby is sleeping and he said " I will go get my music so baby can hear some night night music."  He played a few songs and then ask if the baby was awake yet.  When I told him the baby was still asleep he said "Ok well it's time to wake up" and he started to play "wake up" music.  I love his sweet tender little heart!!!  I also love his desire to figure everything out.