Easter 2014

I hope you had a very happy Easter weekend! I was able to snap a few pictures of Preston hunting eggs after church. Getting pictures of him has gotten increasingly difficult for me because he wants to come and grab my camera from me and point it around saying "Cheese! Cheese!" So the eggs were a good distraction — and a big hit, too! When we walked out the front door, he squeezed his little fists together in excitement and squealed, "Ay-ggs!" He kept shouting that to Scott, "Daddy! Eggs!" And while he understood the concept of finding the eggs, he didn't get the "put them in your basket" part. He would just pick them up and set them back down.

We were also able to celebrate a huge milestone in Preston's eating this weekend. I put some Annie's graham bunnies in Preston's Easter basket, and with much cheering and fist pumping, he actually ate them — chewing, swallowing and even asking for more! He's making such progress with therapy, and Scott and I were so proud of him. It was an Easter miracle!

I'm always a little sad that, because of Scott's job and how busy this weekend for the university, we're never able to visit family and have to stay in town. But, over the years, I've come to enjoy a holiday that's just ours. We get to make some new traditions and memories while carrying over pieces from our past. I always make my mom's hash brown casserole because it has always been a staple on Easter Sunday for as long as I can remember. And watching Preston hunt eggs was a fun first that I look forward to doing in years to come.

I loved the day with our little family and look forward to many more Easters that we can make our own.

P.S. I just had to include this picture. Scott was coaching Preston to pose by leaning against the tree, and this was Preston's translation.

My writing process: A blog tour

A week or two ago, my dear, sweet friend Alex asked me if I wanted to participate in a blog tour sharing about my writing process. Now, while I have a blog, I don't tend to do a lot of those communal, bloggy things. I used to do "What I'm Loving Wednesday," but that's about as close as I got. But this one seemed different, and I liked the topic at hand, so I went for it.

As a side note, if you don't know Alex or don't read her blog already, you are missing out. Alex is a beautiful person, inside and out, and I love her dearly. God is working through her in an incredibly difficult time in her life, and to see His glory shine through her is incredible to witness.

With that being said, on to the questions!

1. What am I working on?

I'm a writer professionally, which, even after almost six years of doing so, sounds incredibly strange to say. I work at the university I attended and write for the alumni magazine and various other university publications. I'm also the copy editor, so I get to mark up text and make it better. Right now, our spring magazine is in the building stages, where the copy is complete and being edited and placed into the magazine layout. One of the less glamorous things I do is the commencement program editing, and this May the university is transitioning from two to three ceremonies because of the large number of graduates. So, I have more than 900 names to comb through and compile, complete with hometowns, honors and majors.

As far as my blog is concerned, I use this as an outlet to write about whatever I want and don't tend to work too far into the future. If it strikes me as something I'd like to write about, I write it and publish it, so I don't have a whole lot waiting in the wings.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

From the perspective of my blog, it's different because I'm different (which is basically what Alex said but totally spot on, so I have to agree). While there are millions of blogs out there written by women, some of whom who are Christians, some of whom have a husband and kids, some of whom have jobs, some of whom like to talk about clothes, at the end of the day they aren't me.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I began this blog mainly as a way to keep Scott's and my families informed as to what we were up to. It was also nice to have a place to write recreationally rather than professionally. It slowly evolved to a place where I could record memories, reflect on what I'm feeling, talk about things I liked or that interested me, and just serve as a map of where life was taking me. Lately, I've really appreciated having chronicled my pregnancy with Preston because I've looked back on it to help me remember what's to come this time around, like approximately how big I was at 20 weeks so I know what to look forward to at the beach this year.

4. How does your writing process work?

When I blog, it's pretty much coming straight from my head to the keyboard to the world. Sometimes I take a little more time to "craft" a post, but usually they are ideas I've been batting around in my head for a little bit or something that's been weighing on my heart. I tend to write it all out the night before I post it, look over it the next morning, and publish it at some point that day. Sometimes, I open a draft, type one phrase, sentence or paragraph that I've been formulating for a while, then come back and build around that.

In addition to visiting Alex's blog, you should check out these three women and their blogs. They'll be posting their writing process next week!

Katie 

from Kate + Nate

Taylor 

from Tea With Mrs. Kee

and Charlene

from From Bisons to Buckeyes

What a difference a decade makes

As a kid, I always had a journal. And while I enjoyed writing as a way to sift through my thoughts and emotions at the present moment, I always journaled with a sense of future. I imagined myself older, stumbling upon a tattered spiral notebook and being transported back to that 12-year-old girl and her tweenaged problems. I wanted my kids to read them at some point, to see what their mom was like way back then and to see that maybe they aren't the only ones to have ever felt a certain way. Granted, I'm no Anne Frank, but capturing the present moment in a journal to read about after several years had passed always appealed to me.

When we were in Nashville for spring break a few weeks back, my dad tasked me with going through some of the stuff in my room and decide whether I wanted to keep it or not. One of the things I found was the journal my high school English teacher had each of us keep during senior year. With my 10 year high school reunion coming up this October, it seemed like a fitting time to read through it.

One entry caught my eye especially. It was about where I thought I would be in 10 years — what 18-year-old me, while sitting in a metal chair with half desk in a room with cinderblock walls and educational posters, thought I'd be doing right now.

April 19, 2004
Where do I see myself in 10 years? Well, I'll most likely be out of pharmacy school, working at Walgreens or something similar (hopefully here [Nashville]). I'll be 28, so I think I'll be married. I hope I'll be married. Kids? Perhaps, most likely given the fact I'll be 24 when I get out of school and don't plan on getting married while in school. Sometimes that interferes with scholarship, and if I want to go to Samford, then I'll need all the money I can get. 

After reading it, I couldn't help but laugh. My plan 10 years ago is quite a bit different from where I've ended up.

For those who don't know, my original college major was pre-pharmacy. I was never a good science student, but I also never tried to be one, so I thought if I really tried in college it would be different. It turns out there are just somethings, regardless of effort, you just can't do if you're not meant to. Science, chemistry especially, is that for me. My second semester my freshman year, I switched to an English major and never looked back.

I don't live in Nashville or work at Walgreens, got married at 22 while I was still in college, have one kid and one on the way, and never went to Samford, not even for a visit. And, despite the fact that my plans and my reality don't match up, I'm not the least bit upset. In fact, it's amazing that the things that seemed important then aren't that important now. I didn't even know then most of the people who mean to the most to me now.

It provided a neat perspective, to think about the things that I worry about or want now and how they'll seem so small through a 10-year lens. I'm interested to see what the next 10 hold!

Image via Flickr

Making room for Baby #2

Yes, we're making room for baby #2 who is expected to arrive in late October. My sweet friend Cassie took this picture (as she usually does) to help us share our exciting news with the world. As a couple of side notes: 1. Who has ever looked that happy to be reading What to Expect When You're Expecting? and 2. Preston's look of concern is for Cassie. He really wanted her to sit on the bed with us and show him the back of her camera.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I was pretty shocked. While we planned and prepared for Preston a few months before I ever got a positive test result, this one wasn't so planned in that it wasn't at all, and all those things I felt we had a little time to think about pre-Preston came rushing forward that early Friday morning because I had to think about them — now! It was a little overwhelming. Poor Scott, I woke him up before 6 a.m., and before he had time to become fully conscious, I dropped the "I'm pregnant" bomb on him. "You've got to let someone wake up before you say that!" was his response.

Now, if you know Scott, you know his plan of one child. As an only child himself, he liked the idea of continuing that tradition. But he actually handled the news much better than I initially did (at first I was crying because, oh my goodness, we're having another baby and then I was crying because I felt bad for crying about the baby). He said there were a lot of things we didn't know about becoming parents the first time, and that God worked it all out. He'd do that for us this time, too.

Having had some time to adjust, we're all very excited about what's to come. We never made a big to-do about telling Preston because, at not quite 2-years-old, he still doesn't quite get it. But we talk about the baby, and at dinner in his roll call of people he thinks we should pray for, he'll mention "Baby Tummy" (because, in my attempts to explain the baby is in my tummy, he thinks the baby is in everyone's tummy), which melts me into a puddle every time.

I've noticed some similarities and some differences between this pregnancy and my last. With Preston, the nausea came in waves. When it hit, it hit hard, but it didn't last long. With this one, I feel perpetually queasy. Food helps some, but overall I feel blah a lot of the time. My earliest craving with Preston was lemon and carbs, and in keeping with the acidic theme, this go-around all I want is tomatoes and carbs. Both times, sweets sounded disgusting. With Preston, that went away in the second trimester as I formed a deep love for milkshakes and Cocoa Puffs. So, we'll see if these are any indication of another little boy in our future soon enough.

Thank you all for your congratulations and well-wishes. We are excited about what the future holds for our growing family and appreciate your prayers and encouragement along the way!

Preston and Build-a-Bear

There are certain things that, once you have a kid, you get super excited to get to relive through them. To see your child's eyes light up at their first Christmas tree, their first trip to the beach, their first time to  go to the zoo — these moments of childhood wonder are one of the magical parts of parenthood. So, when we went to Nashville for spring break, my mom and I were both eager to take Preston to Build-a-Bear Workshop. It would be great! He could pick out his own little buddy and see the process through from start to finish. What's not to love?

Well, apparently a lot. Build-a-Bear has changed a little since my last time in the store. There are a lot more touch screens involved in the bear building process, and those are like catnip to Preston. So, forget picking an animal; Pres much preferred touching and tapping the screens set up to help you select the bear's personality, clean him up, or give him a name. 

I was a little bummed that he didn't love it as much as I wanted him to love it. My mom and I had to prod him along the process. I would try to get him to one side of the store to pick his animal only to have him dash off to one of the other screen. In the above picture, I had to snap it quickly because Preston would throw his newly created dog (which we later named "Bud") in the floor to play with the touch screen tub. 

In the end, I think his favorite part of the whole event was the video screen at the store's front that played music and showed a little Irish-dancing bear. He would run out of the store to dance along with it. I realized I had snapped a cute little flip-book of his dance, complete with finger wag, before we left. 

Preston's feeding story

A little over a year ago, I bought some of those Gerber puffs at the grocery store and scattered them across the tray of Preston's highchair. At this point, he was still nursing, and we had begun introducing cereal and homemade pureed fruits and vegetables into his diet. Now it was time to work on self-feeding, a seemingly easy milestone on the path of growing up. After all, that Cheerios commercial where the mom gives her baby one, saying how it was her first food, too, made it look like something that would happen successfully in less than 30 seconds. (And I base all of my core truths on commercials.)

Well, like most things I think about parenting, I was proven wrong. Preston would pick up and play with the puff but wouldn't put them in his mouth. But this is the kid who never put anything weird in his mouth. Sure, he'd chew on toys and of course his beloved paci, but I never had to watch him to make sure he wasn't eating leaves, coins or other choking hazards. I knew this wasn't typical of his age at the time, but thought little else about it. Besides, Preston is my cautious, deliberate, thoughtful child. From a young age, he wouldn't do anything he wasn't completely comfortable with, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't walk until he was 17 months old. But when he started, he hardly ever fell or stumbled.

After letting him play with the puffs, I finally stuck one in his mouth for him to eat to show him it was food and not a scary, foreign object. He moved it around in his mouth for a bit, but the second it started to move to the back of his mouth, he panicked, gagged, and spit it all up. Tears ensued, so I cleaned him off and canceled the lesson for the day. Next time.

Well, there were a lot of "next times," but never any successes. There was a lot of cleaning up throw up, though. So, I called it quits. The kid didn't have any teeth anyway, so we'd try again when he got some. Once a few teeth popped in, we tried again, but he wouldn't have it. The gag-filled lessons had scared off my cautious boy. Scott and I would show him how we did it, putting the food in our mouths and over-acting our chewing until it was all gone. All that taught Preston was to make really loud "Om-nom-nom" sounds. I tried ways of tricking him into it: making his pureed foods chunkier (on which he gagged), crumbling up graham crackers and putting that in his purees (on which he gagged), getting him quick-desolving yogurt drops (on which he gagged) … nothing seemed to work.

So, again, I called it quits. When he showed an interest in our foods, we'd try again. But as he got closer to 18 months old and was still not eating anything he had to chew, I got worried, egged on by the fact that he's in the third percentile for weight and height. Preston's doctor didn't seem concerned. He said to just keep at it. But wiping spit up and tears off my child's face (and fighting tears of my own) night after night didn't feel like it was helping. It just left both Preston and me frustrated and frazzled.

I felt like I'd failed my child. Eating is so basic; why wasn't I able to teach him how to? I was at a loss for what to do next.

About this time, I learned that speech therapy could actually help Preston. I had always thought speech therapy was for speech only, working with kids who have lisps or can't say the letter "T," but it covers a lot more than that. Feeding and eating actually play a huge part in speech development, and the act of chewing builds muscles that help the mouth form consonants later on.

I was so relieved to learn that there was an outside source I could go to. So much of the stress I felt and that Scott felt was that this was all on us, and now we would have someone else showing us some ideas and techniques that would help and who would also be an encouragement to Preston as well as us. Making it all the better was that there is a speech clinic at the university where I work, run by communication sciences and disorders undergraduate and graduate students along with their speech-pathologist professors, that could help us.

For the past three months, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Preston has been going to his feeding therapy with one of the sweetest graduate students who his helping him become more and more comfortable with food. When I ask Preston what he does with Mrs. Erin, he says, "Bubbles!" but they actually do a lot more. He's to the point now where he will ask for certain foods, actually put them in his mouth (which, on its own, is SO HUGE for him), and take bites. Sometimes he chews that bite, but he still spits out the food, never swallowing it. But he's progressing, slowly but surely, and I am so incredibly thankful for his therapist, for his progress, and for finally feeling like we've found something to help Preston along.

I say all this because there were times where I thought he'd grow out of it, times where it was a struggle, and times where I felt like I had a weird kid whom I didn't understand. There were even more times where I didn't want to say anything to anyone else for fear they would think I had a weird kid, too. I worried about him and cried about him and wanted nothing more than to be able to automatically fix what was wrong with him.

But now I don't feel so hopeless. His progress makes me so proud, and I think that this will be the year he'll want to and be able to eat a piece of cake for his birthday. He's come a long way!

How we spent our snow days

We were gifted an extra long weekend thanks to Sunday night's ice storm. I was most excited to get the phone call that campus was closed early in the evening so I could stay up late watching the Oscars (11 is very late for me) and not feel like morning Jennifer was going to hate me later.

Sure, there were things that needed to be done around the house and, with those two extra days off, we could've been very productive people. But Preston had been sick over the weekend, so he was still recovering from that. And I would much rather stay in my pajamas watching Netflix cuddling a sickly boy than any other "productive" activity. That's the true gift right there.

Preston has been stuck on his sunglasses for a little while now, and he started requesting the pairing of "gasses" and hat for around the house. Sometimes the glasses end up on his belly. March to your own drummer, little man.

Poor Scott had to venture out briefly on Monday, so Preston and I colored and worked on color recognition. I was completely surprised when he was able to name most of the colors he saw, something he'd been working on with his sitter. Anything with stickers is a hit with him, so he enjoyed it. Most of the stickers ended up on his face or my hand toward the end.

Thanks to Netflix, I was able to introduce Preston to the wonderful world of Disney and the word "movie." He was enrapt in "Lilo and Stitch," especially the musical stylings of Elvis, doing the finger guns dance he learned from Aunt Coco. (Please note the Guy Fieri-way of wearing his sunglasses he's sporting here.) I hadn't seen him sit still for that long in quite sometime. Later, Scott and I took advantage of nap time and watched some "House of Cards" (we're up to episode 6 in season 2).

While I'm incredibly ready for much warmer temperatures and much less ice, I was thankful for the days off and the time we got to spend together. Pajamas are always preferable to work attire.