December '14

Drew's birthday was at the beginning of December. He requested beef stroganoff for dinner as he had never had it before and wanted to try it. I made dinner and Susie made his cake.

 Good thing he had lots of nieces and a nephew to help lick all the candles!

We didn't do Christmas cookies. Again. Everything that isn't essential has dropped out of our lives because of my heart. I really hope that someday we can start adding some of it back in. Jojo invited the kids over to decorate cookies, which really meant a lot to me as I miss being able to do things like that with them. She made two cookies per person (one star and one gingerbread person) and had a table full of decorations for them.

Megan went for realism with her person and candy overload with her star. 

Jack started eating his before I could even take a picture of him with his cookies. 

Laura was in heaven with all the candies she was allowed to eat.

True to form, Beth's were perfectly and precisely decorated.

Kylie loved experimenting with different frosting colors.

Eva was the last to finish. She kept wanting to add more sprinkles or frosting or candy. 

Christmas Photos

Betsy helped me pick out outfits for the kids this year. We couldn't find ones that matched in everyone's size, so we went with red and silver. Laura and Eva came with us to buy the outfits. We stopped at Arby's on the way home. Apparently we wore Laura out. She ate a bit, then turned around in the booth, curled up next to me, and conked out. 

We only took pictures of the kids this year.

After the group picture, I took individual pictures of each child. They got to pick their own poses. I love how much of their personalities came out in their pictures!

Laura

This is a really hard thing for me to write about. 

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Laura climbed on top of the counter next to the fridge and got into my purse. She discovered the small container I keep OTC meds in and ate most of the Imodium pills and a few allergy pills. Both Rob and I thought Imodium was similar to tums and although we got upset that she had been able to get into them and no one had noticed, we didn't worry much about it.

Betsy had a math test the following week that I told her I would help her study for. Laura asked to come, so I took her along. It was Laura's naptime, so I wasn't surprised that she fell asleep shortly after we got to Betsy's house. I was a bit surprised that she was still asleep five hours later when Betsy and I finished. It was also a bit odd that she kept falling back asleep again when I picked her up, carried her to the car, and put her in her car seat. Usually once something wakes Laura up, she is up for good, even if she's only been asleep for a few minutes.

Laura asked me to take a picture of her on the way over to Betsy's house -

Rob and I were supposed to go on a date that night, so he was making sure the kids were bathed and had eaten dinner when I got home. I tried to have Laura eat something, but she kept falling asleep on my lap. At that point, we started wondering if something was wrong. Rob took her upstairs to give her a bath and I decided to call poison control just to check and see if the allergy pills might affect her like this.

Poison control asked how many of each pill she had eaten. I hadn't added them up and was surprised to realize that she had probably eaten about 40 Imodium pills. I kept them in the small pill container specifically so I wouldn't have many in my purse. They are small enough that a lot fit in those small containers. The lady from poison control told me it wasn't the allergy pills she was worried about - it was the Imodium. We needed to get Laura to the closest ER ASAP; we didn't even have time to drive her to Cooks in Fort Worth.

I ran upstairs and grabbed her out of the bath. Rob tried to quickly grab anything we'd need as I buckled her up. She threw up. I yelled to Rob that we were leaving. As we drove to the hospital, I tried contacting Christy or Susie or Betsy to watch the other five kids. Christy texted back that she would be right there and not to worry about them.

(I found out later that she and Dan were walking into a holiday party and she turned around and walked out when she got my text and they spent their evening taking care of our kids instead. I am so grateful for a friend and sister like her. She is always there when I need her and that means so much to me.)

At the ER, we were told that Imodium is actually an opiate, and considering how many Laura ate, it was significantly affecting her body by slowing down each system - including her lungs. They put in an IV and gave her a dose of Narcan, a medication used for drug overdoses. It pulls people out of drug induced comas in minutes, but it sends them to the opposite extreme. Within a minute of the small dose they gave her, Laura was awake and crying.

She settled back down again and we were told they were sending us by ambulance to Cooks (the children's hospital). Rob ran home while we were waiting for the ambulance and grabbed things like a cell phone charger. He made it back as they were moving her into the ambulance, then he headed home to spend the night with the other five kids. I rode in the ambulance with Laura. 

Laura and I waited in Cooks ER for an hour or so until they had a room for her. She seemed much better after getting the bag of IV fluids in the ambulance.

When we got up to the room, they hooked her up to all sorts of monitors. Laura is not big for her age - she is 25 pounds and looks very delicate. She looked even tinier in the middle of her huge bed with wires coming out everywhere. They monitored her breathing to see if she started struggling again. One of the nurses turned on "Frozen" for her - that is her very favorite movie.

She finally fell asleep around midnight. The nurses came in and sat with Laura and sent me down to the cafeteria to eat something since I hadn't eaten since lunchtime.

A children's hospital is a horrible place to be. Children should not be sick enough to be in a hospital. I looked around the cafeteria and saw all the other parents, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, hair unbrushed, clothes wrinkled, looking lost and trying not to fall apart. I have so much respect for people who work there. I couldn't do it.

Not long after I got back, her breathing slowed down again. They had told me that she'd be in trouble if it dropped below 12 breaths per minute. Several times the alarms went off signalling that it had reached that. The room would fill with nurses and they'd wake her up and try to get her breathing again. An hour or two later, it dropped to 8-9 breaths per minute and I overheard the doctor in the hall tell the nurse to go get more Narcan. The nurse asked "0.5?". He said "No. Two." Shocked, she verified the amount. I'm guessing it is a much higher dose than they usually give 25 pound babies.

It took a minute to get into her system, then she was up and screaming and writhing in pain. She kept screaming and screaming. I climbed into the bed with her and held her. We turned on a movie with images of kittens set to classical music and I stroked her hair as she screamed for what felt like hours. She finally fell asleep and I drifted off.

She woke up a few hours later, around 6am, perky and bouncy and cheerful. The Imodium was finally completely out of her system. I called Rob and he came and picked us up.

I try not to play the "what if" game in my head, but . . .
What if I hadn't stayed with Betsy for five hours? Megan wouldn't have questioned Laura taking a long nap.
What if I hadn't taken the one pill for my heart that I had kept in my purse for emergencies out of my purse a few weeks earlier? I mentioned that to the doctor and he said she would have ended up in the ICU - at best - if she had taken that pill.
What if Rob and I had gone out that night and just assumed Laura was tired?

Ugh. That little girl is one of the most precious things in my life. We try so hard to protect our children, but no matter how hard we try, things happen. The doctor and nurses at Cooks told me that only having this happen once in 12 years with six kids is amazing, but once is more than enough for us. I have to think that she was kept safe through divine intervention because there are too many realistic "what ifs" for this situation that would have ended really, really badly. So thank you to the guardian angels who kept my baby safe.

November '14

We started off November by making turkeys. They were supposed to be for the front window, which we used to decorate every month, but they never made it to the window. All the tape had been used up making art projects and performing "experiments". The price of having creative children I guess :)

Megan's is the brown one at the top. She went for a realistic look. The next row is Eva's and Beth's (Beth did a cheerleader turkey). The bottom row has Laura's turkey, then Kylie's Mexican ninja turkey complete with a sombrero, and finally Jack's rainbow ninja turkey.

Facebook statuses from November -

Rob, age 39, ate a bean burrito for lunch. Apparently there are some results of such actions that remain hilarious to males of all ages. *Sigh*

Benefits to having 5 older siblings - at the age of 2 years 3 months, you have the vocabulary to tell your mom she's mean and it's not fair that she rolled up the car window when you tried throwing things out of it.

Laura asked Rob if she could brush his hair. He agreed. She climbed up behind him and brushed and brushed, telling him with each stroke of the brush "Oh, you're so pretty! You're beautiful, Daddy!" :) I love that Rob let her do that and I love that she's heard those types of phrases enough, even at the age of two, that she's repeating them :)

4 pads of post-it notes cover a surprisingly large area (Mark's office) -

My now-four-year-old requested a French picnic for her birthday dinner. Christine pointed out that it's funny that my four year old wanted a French picnic, while our 23 year old sister, Susie, wanted mac & cheese with hot dogs on her birthday a few months ago.

(I'll post about Eva's birthday in just a minute)

One of the best things about being a parent is being able to surprise your kids with trips to Sonic for ice cream and getting to listen to them sing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in a very unprofessional, but amusing, harmony all the way home

How you know you've married a nerd - when the new Star Wars trailer teaser is watched, he not only notices that the Millennium Falcon has a new, different shaped, radar dish, but he also recounts the scene in which the old one was torn off. This coming from the man who still doesn't know all of the birthdays of his children.

*******

We had Beth's friend, Caitlin, and her family over for dinner. Beth and Caitlin have been best friends since last year, but we had never met her family. Beth asked that we take a picture of the two of them.

Eva turned four! We had two birthday parties for her. The first was with Christy, Dan, Susie, and Drew.

Eva got a set of four crowns (she got four more crowns - and two tutus - from Jojo and Dan), a toy make up kit, and a set of "high heels" (which broke within 24 hours). 

She picked out a cake from Kroger with lots of ribbon curls.

Christy, Susie, and Drew took her to Build-a-bear for her birthday a few days later. She wore one of her pink crowns and the pink tutu from Jojo and Dan. She picked out an Olaf doll . . . and dressed him in pink and sparkles. I'd bet Olaf would have been fine with it :) 

She even got to ride the carousel in the food court!

Betsy's birthday is very close to Eva's, so we had a party for the two of them.

Betsy got bath salts and a foot massager.

Betsy got Eva a rainbow tutu. My friends know Eva very well - she got 8 crowns and 3 tutus total. Eva picked out the cake for her and Betsy to share. She thought Betsy would like the flower. 

Betsy's birthday was actually a few days later, so Eva, Laura and I took her out to lunch at Cheddar's. Laura proved the existence of genetics by ignoring her chicken fingers and eating her ranch dressing with a spoon, just like her great grandpa K would have done :) 

Thanksgiving was low key. We did an early Thanksgiving-y dinner with Christy, Dan, Susie, and Drew as Christy and Dan went to Houston for the holiday. Susie and Drew joined us for Thanksgiving. I loved having the kids home for a week :)

Favorite quote from Thanksgiving -

Susie used a bottle opener to open a bottle of sparkling juice.
Beth (age 8 - very excited to see the bottle opener in use): Is that a lever?
Susie: Ummm yes?
Beth: Does it have a fulcrum?
Susie: . . . .

Parenting should require a PhD.

Megan and Kylie's recycled robot and his dog -

 

Playing Catch Up - Halloween '14

Sorry I've gotten so far behind!

We paint pumpkins each year instead of carving them. It's just easier and safer when you have a million young children :) We always buy our little pumpkins at the pumpkin patch. Each child gets to pick three paint colors and gets their own paint plate.

Megan made two extra colors by combining paints. 

Beth finished first. She decorated her baby wipe as well and wanted to be sure it was included in her photo. 

Kylie with her pumpkin

We stripped Laura down as it's easier to wash paint off her tummy than get it out of cloths. She had a blast mixing all her paints together and smearing them all over the pumpkin and her tummy. 

Eva went with purple. We didn't have pink. 

Megan painted designs all over her pumpkin.

Somehow I missed getting a picture of Jack and his pumpkin.

Our theme for Halloween this year was Harry Potter. This was the first year that I didn't go to trunk or treat - I worked. I took the afternoon off and Susie came over and helped me finish all the costumes, but I had evening appointments that would have been difficult to reschedule, so I got the costumes done and the kids dressed up and then Rob and the kids drove off to church and I left for work.

It's interesting to see Rob and I switching roles. We really need two jobs in order to support ourselves and up until the past few years, Rob has always worked both jobs. He has sacrificed being able to be there for holidays and school concerts and special moments so that our kids could have a full-time stay-at-home parent. I am so grateful for his willingness to do this, but I am also grateful that I can take some of that on my shoulders now and give him the chance to be there for things he missed out on.

Anyway . . .

We voted on our theme for the year and Harry Potter won hands down. We let the kids pick which character they each wanted to be. Megan picked Luna Lovegood. Kylie really wanted to be a Quittage player, so she decided on Ginny. Beth appropriately picked Hermione. Jack choose Harry. Eva insisted on being the owl, Hedwig. We decided Laura got to be Dobby.  

2014 Christmas Letter

Laura turned two in September. She is amazingly sweet and spunky. She has been speaking in complete sentences for almost a year and already cracks jokes and attempts to argue her way out of things. Her favorite color is yellow and she loves wearing fancy dresses. She looks just like Megan with her big brown eyes and blonde hair. She loves to cuddle and Mom is her favorite person, followed closely by May-nay (Megan). She loves watching tv (Bo on the Go is her favorite show), playing Barbies with Eva, and singing.

Eva just turned four. She loves tutus and makeup and everything pink. Rob says she takes cuteness to a whole new level – and she definitely knows it and uses it to her benefit. She loves being a big sister and taking care of Laura and does an amazing job at it. She can usually get Laura to go down for her nap even when Laura doesn’t want to. She loves playing Barbies and dressing up and singing. She knows how to write her name and loves playing school with either Beth or Megan.

Jack is seven and is in second grade. His favorite things are mostly computer games – minecraft, club penguin, and animal jam are top on his list. He also loves Pokemon. He is super active and manages to hold his own even with five sisters. He reminds us a lot of Rob as a child. He loves telling jokes and making noise. He is a wonderful big brother to both Eva and Laura and does an especially good job at taking care of Laura.

Beth is almost nine (her birthday is in two weeks). She is in third grade this year and is an amazing student. She tested into the Gifted and Talented program at school and got the highest score in the whole third grade on the most recent grade-wide test. She loves reading and art and the color purple. She loves sharing a room with Eva and has sent up a bed for them on the closet floor as it is much cozier than the bed. She still wants to be a doctor, a goal she’s had since the age of two.

Kylie is ten and is a complete tomboy. She hates girly clothes and buys all her clothes and shoes from the “boy” section, which is a blessing as she is very active and hard on clothes, and boy clothes are much more sturdy. She is amazing at computer games and is almost as good as Rob at playing “Rift”, an online computer game. She loves jokes and Pokemon and ninjas. Her favorite color is blue. She loves helping Megan babysit and keeps asking us when she’ll get to babysit on her own.

Megan is twelve and in seventh grade. She loves makeup and jewelry and all things girly, but also loves bugs and dinosaurs and dirt. She has started babysitting for us this year and we love having a child old enough to babysit! She does an awesome job at it. She loves cooking; her macaroni and cheese and sugar cookies are as good as mine. She continues to love reading and writing and art. She’s been walking to and from school with friends instead of having us take her, which makes us nervous, but proud that she’s growing up.

Rob continues to work for Fidelity and celebrated ten years there last May. They have been a wonderful company to work for and we are so grateful for them. His latest hobby is playing “Rift”, an online computer game, which he plays with the kids. He runs the house and takes care of the kids at night on his own. He does an amazing job at being the primary caregiver and really loves getting to fill that role. He’s learning to cook and is getting pretty good at it. He also enjoys going out with his friends to watch UFCs a couple times a month.

I (Laney) graduated in June with my Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. (This is the first time in our seventeen years of marriage that neither of us is in school.) I managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA through the whole five years. I took the MFT exam in May and then waited three months to find out that I passed it. I received my license in August and am now a LMFTA (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Associate). I am working as an independent contractor for the private practice that I did my internships at (Healing & Recovery). I love being a therapist and run the only group in the DFW area for females dealing with intimacy disorders and sexual addictions. I love that I can set my own hours and work in the afternoons and evenings so I can spend the mornings with my babies.

Update on my heart – I spent 7 weeks doing EECP treatments in February and March, which was really hard on all of us and completely wiped me out. We waited for six months after the treatments and my doctor retested me and found that I hadn’t improved at all. He told us the next step was a referral to a specialist in Dallas that does heart transplants. Rob and I didn’t like that option, so we decided to throw everything we could at the problem. I started twice-weekly acupuncture treatments, weekly chiropractic visits, and consulted a master herbalist. Within a week, my ejection fraction (the percentage of blood pumped out with each heartbeat) had improved by 10%! We now need to wait for another six months (until this coming February) to find out if the improvements are permanent and to see if I improve more.

I’m feeling much better and starting to realize just how much this has affected us over the past two years. If I make it to this coming March, which we’re pretty positive about at this point, I will officially be in the 50% that survive longer than two years past the diagnosis of postpartum cardiomyopathy, and the 20% that survive longer than two years past a general cardiomyopathy diagnosis. This has absolutely been one of the very hardest things we’ve ever gone through. It has completely changed us. Even though it has been hell, we are grateful for the experience. It really helped us to put our priorities in order and to learn and grow in ways that I don’t know that we would have otherwise.

We hope you are doing well! Happy Holidays!

Love,

Rob, Laney, Megan, Kylie, Beth, Jack, Eva, and Laura