Insights to me

My husband and I were watching a movie tonight , P.S.I Love You...great movie by the way, and while watching this woman try to find herself again after the loss of her husband, I began thinking. I would NEVER EVER want to know what that's like, first of all...but the part about finding herself again....I can totally relate to that.

I don't know about the rest of the moms around here, but once I was married and became a mother, there were parts of me that seemed to slowly vanish. My love for certain things, my fears, my dreams...everything changed, and somewhere between wife and mom, I lost "Jeanne". For example, I LOVE to read!!! One of my most favorite things growing up was to get lost in a great book, covered up in a warm blanket on my bed just before bed, so I had something wonderful to imagine and dream about. Now I'm lucky if I can read through 2 pages before my eyes blur out and I fall asleep from exhaustion.

I love movies about the past, such as Pride and Prejudice (yes I know it was a book first, but I loved the movie because I could get more involved with the characters.) I watch it all the time till I fall asleep on nights when Quincy has to go out of town, or when I was healing form my last c-section. I admire the things that they taught their daughters back then. They learned foreign languages (because they wanted to, not merely to pass high school) , they played an instrument, they sewed, cooked, and did some form of art anything from painting to sculpting. They were well read, strong, intelligent women.....now we're taught to be better than men at what we do, or treated like we are unemployed because we choose to be "just a house wife and a stay at home mom".

I love to write! I was once a very good story teller, and had a very vivid imagination. I have stories up the ying yang that I'd love to share about the kids and our lives, but when would I have the time to write it? I can barely keep up with email and a blog page!

I love music. I can play the clarinet and the alto sax, but my passion was always singing. I love to sing and make people happy. It releases my stress like nothing else I've ever known, but now I don't really do it that much or I try to do it softly so no one else hears me. No , I'm not horrible, I just do it for myself. I once wanted to sing professionally, but then I decided that I REALLY wanted to be a wife and a good mother, and a life on the road wouldn't work...so I let that dream escape me. Though I still to this day can not go to a concert and not wish to know what it felt like to be up there!

I am a total romantic! What woman isn't, right? But seriously, I have been trying for years to make our room a special haven for us, and just somewhere where we could be intimate without all "that" stuff...but when you are fishing through baby clothes, bottles, cries and whines, and diapers (yes, in my room!!) it just doesn't quite work out the way you hoped. Yes, I was always a sucker for the guy with the right words...thankfully I was smart enough to know "stuff" when I smelled it!!

I love the outdoors....fishing especially. I used to go camping and fishing every summer when I was younger. My dad and I got closer to each other without really having to talk to each other. We'd find a lake, a good spot, throw our lines out and wait together....not saying hardly anything to each other all day, and would come home feeling like we'd accomplished something together. Weird, I know, but I was once a daddy's girl.

Now, I love my family! I love my husband with all I have! We bicker and such, but in the end, I couldn't handle life without him. Our children are my world!! I literally revolve around them on a daily basis! I couldn't imagine not one day without them. I can't leave overnight without checking on them , talking about them, buying something for them...I live for them all!

So there you have it....this is me....and hopefully one day the "wife and mother" will collide with "Jeanne" and we'll all get to see the full package!

Dirty Little Thieves

So, I'm on my bedroom getting dressed for my day thinking I'm doing good to actually be up and functioning this morning after 2 nights of restless sleep, right. It's Friday, pay day, which means when Trianna comes then I get to go grocery shopping for the household (yeah....it comes in an d goes out within hours...the paycheck I mean!)

The kids are being good, sitting quietly watching Dragon Tales while waiting for Mama to get ready to take big brother to school. Only, it's too quiet. So naturally, being the mother that I am and knowing my children the way that I do, I hurry to finish up so I can get back to the other room.

About 5 minutes later, just as I'm finishing up, my little one (Jocelyn) comes in, "Mama, food! Mama Look food!" So I come down the hall only to find three little bandits, raiding my pantry and taking turns with who gets a bite of what! And of course, here's Kiki on top of an empty otter pop box, handing everyone a pretzel, one at a time of course (I'm sure she was trying to make sure they weren't eating too quickly, right?) Then she catches a glimpse of Mom out of the corner of her eye, throws her food, and runs to the recliner to sit down before I can tag her rear end for being naughty! I let it slide, without a spanking this time....

Then I go down the hall to go potty, and I hear the cupboards again, and the refrigerator door...they're doing it in teams now!! I rush down the hall to find Jocelyn and Ashlynn, just browsing the cupboards, and of course Kiki in her recliner with her hands in the air "what? what Mom? nothing.." She was right, she didn't have anything, because she left the milk cartoon sitting on the floor behind the recliner with a blanket around it....not over it, so I could see the top! I think they're trying to tell me it's time for breakfast and I've taken long enough to get dressed and take care of myself this morning. So if you see me around town today....don't ask about the hair day!!!

stressin out

I'm struggling inside myself today thinking about Kiki's surgery. It's supposed to be simple, but I don't care who you are, as a mom, surgery for your 5 year old child (child period for that matter) is never "simple". It's anything but. The last "simple" procedure she had landed her an airlift trip and a 4 day stay in the ICU at UCLA. It was no one's fault, it was just her body. She's been sick for so long that when the doctor's did something to try and relieve her body of some stress, it freaked out! It was so used to being one way for so long, it just reacted horribly to the surgery.

Don't think this morbid of me, but here is the last time I saw my daughter in the hospital.... On a ventilator, strapped to her bed, barely coherent

3 days later after having the vent taken off, and realizing mama was there with her instead of some strangers sweet voice telling her to "hold still it'll be OK."



Trying to wake up enough to smile for Daddy, but not quite able to get over her surroundings.




Now like most multiple moms, my kids were really premature and really little, so we are no beginners to the whole "ICU and tubes" thing. But That was 5 years ago that she was all wired up to machines.

I can not begin to tell you how scared I was to see her that way. No one is ever prepared to see your child turn blue and stop being able to breathe on their own. She was retracting so badly that you could hear her chest "pop" when she'd breathe out. One minute we were in a ped's room talking to nurses, I took a friend home and left Quincy there with her, only to come back 10 minutes later and find an ER response team in her room surrounding her. They hooked her up to a machine that was not a ventilator but did about the same thing, it forced air into her lungs and caused her lungs to stay open at all times. The poked her several times to get blood gases from her. They gave her breathing treatments, and nothing seemed to work. So they decided to airlift her to UCLA to the ICU. Unfortunately, being that she has the neurological issues that she does...she's sensitive to "humming or buzzing" sounds and to being lifted in the air. Needless to say she panicked and they had to land back at AV and inti bate her before transporting her. She pulled her oxygen off, her iv loose, took off her safety straps and began kicking the window of the helicopter in the air! All while telling the nurse on board "you shut up!!" (sorry, I giggled at that because to her "shut up" is a cuss word, so she thought she was being this little tough girl) When they pulled her out of the helicopter, she was so worked up that she started losing oxygen fast and was becoming tachycardic and ended up having to be inti bated. Her oxygen levels were below 20 at some points.

They finally got her to UCLA where we sat and waited for her to be able to breathe on her own again. It was horrible. She would wake up, and her hands were strapped to the bed to keep her from pulling anything out. She would just cry if she recognized us, and would just keep saying "I want you mommy"...how do you explain to a 5 year old that mama can't hold you or fix it right now? I can't stop your pain, I can't even hold you yet. But I'm standing right here watching them poke you and change you, and give you loopy medicine. I was absolutely helpless and I hated it!! I am the "go to " person at home, as are most mommies....I'm not looking forward to another possible torturous time for her. I cringe at the thought of anything harming her again. But she has to have this surgery to help reduce some of the pain she deals with on a daily basis. It's better for her in the long run, but mentally draining for me for now.

I've been on here a lot today, but today is one of those weird days when you think about all kinds of stuff, but can't really talk about it...so you blog about it. I never really know who reads these anyway unless someone leaves me a comment,so really sometimes it's just like writing something to the great abyss just for the sake of getting it out of my head and some where else.

photos

This is my crew!

Gracey (triplet "c") Hannah (triplet "b") Kirsten (triplet "a") Hunter












Sophia (twin "a") playing dress up

Ashlynn (middle child)

Jocelyn (twin "b")

Aniessa (our newest addition)







Hannah (struttin' her stuff")

Aniessa laughing at mama's
funny faces












And this is what becomes of you after 10 years together, 8 years of marriage, 8 children, and hardly any sleep in between!!!! This is my wonderful better half, Quincy! He's the proud "diddy" of all these beautiful monkeys! and of course there's me, the high strung, ready for a nap, mama!

Here we go again

I took Kiki to the surgeon at UCLA yesterday, and once again my baby girl (I not a baby, I a big girl mama is ringing in my head) will undergo another surgery. She has a hernia under her belly button that must be fixed and her gall bladder will need to be removed as well. It's supposed to be a simple procedure, however, so was the tonsillectomy that went sour the next day! She aspirated and ended up with pneumonia and was airlifted to UCLA where she was on a ventilator for 4 days...needless to say, I'm not looking forward to this at all.

When we heard from other parents that kids with autism don't just have autism...I thought what else could happen? It's just her learning abilities, right? OMG so much more goes along with this. They typically have gastrointestinal problems ( the poo poo tells stories...it's gross, but true!) Some, like our daughter have major food allergies that affect EVERYTHING about them, their mood, their attention span, their skin, their speech, their cognitive understanding...oh gosh! and my most insane issue...their sleep patterns!!! (this is where my issues come in....every mom waits for the moment that all her 8 kids are sound asleep so she can have a moment to herself, or get something done she couldn't do during the day....doesn't hardly ever happen here!!!) It is amazing to me how much diet can affect these little ones.

Though I must say with diet change, additional supplements, and some time, she has improved vastly! Her speech has cleared up a bit. Her attention span is improving, slowly. Her hyperactivity is controllable. Her tantrums are less (though lately with her pain and things, she's having tantrums more than I'd like to see, but mostly out of frustration). She pretends now with more than one toy together. She attempts to play games with her siblings like hide and seek or matching cards. She doesn't play long, but the interaction itself is a wonderful accomplishment. She was never non-verbal just not clearly understood, and rarely comprehended what others would say. Now we've found that a simple broken down sentence, such as "kiki no eating play dough", when asked to repeat what she heard mama say comes back, "Kiki no put play dough in mouth". So we are now trying to find a way to keep this pattern going. If she can get all of that out of 4 words.....she CAN be taught!!!

I'm sure to some of you out there in "mommy land" this is all kind of trivial, but to those of us who live in this world, where autism is a major roll player in our homes....these little mile stones are actually viewed as boulders of progress! I am no expert in this, I'm just a mom who's learning day by day, and with 7 other children in my life you can imagine how much this puts on a person each day. I just pray that I can learn enough, be helpful enough, and that my entire family can grow from all of this.

SO there you have it...my thoughts for today.

My six word memoir.

My six word memoir.

Ok I stole this from Tammie, but I liked it so I'm in!!

The Meme originated over an idea that was prompted by the book written by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. It's a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words.His words were- For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the rules:
1. Write your own six word memoir.

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.

4 .Tag five more blogs with links.

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!


Mine was pretty easy to determine, since, well regardless of how many ups and downs we have..I could never see myself doing anything else.

Wouldn't Change It For The World!!