Movin' on

Q is past pneumonia, as far as I can tell. Yippee! His eyes seem to me to be tracking less and less together, but perhaps it's just that I'm looking more. Thursday morning he'll be seen for the evaluation for neurodevelopmental therapy. Next week he's at the ophthalmologist and then I call to schedule the MRI.

On the upside, he seemed a wee bit dehydrated in the midst of the pneumonia, so I fed him whenever he was awake, about every hour or so. In two days, he gained four ounces! By the time he was getting the diagnosis and antibiotics, he weighed 16 lbs., 15 oz. What a little piggy. I'm pretty sure we're barreling on towards 18 lbs. now, because he's had evenings in which he eats every hour for three hours, afternoons in which he's hungry every two hours. If he were just messing around, I wouldn't leave him on the nipple, but the boy is honest to goodness chowing down. Besides (she tells herself), extra glucose seems to have been shown to be a good thing for brains in the midst of repairing themselves, so onward we forge.

Otherwise things are more or less on an even keel. G might have glasses soon and is today enjoying a hands on field trip about entrepreneurship. E has an attitude from heck (let's attribute it all to going to school, shall we?), but is otherwise thriving. K continues to learn more words--learning to read is so much fun! S is singing songs to baby brother and "reading" him his soft books. We get to enjoy magnificent made up stories about the baby chick's family and the mommy and daddy of the tiny sheep. What a hoot.

Right now, my very favorite time of the day is waking up with Q's tum pressed up tight to mine, his head thrown back, elbows up, fists tight under his chin, having nursed himself into oblivion. It won't last much longer, I'm sure, and this is the last time through this baby business for me, so I feel a little clingy about it all. This tiny baby stuff passes so quickly, I am relishing it compulsively.

I guess that's how I feel about all of them, even though they're capable of making me completely buggy. They are children, after all, not angels. But life seems fragile, temporary, wispy almost. So I'm trying to nonchalantly grasp at every moment we're living. I'm (hopefully) calmly reveling in and allowing to just wash over me every little thing they say and do.

Sigh.

I can't wait to reach the point where again I can turn my brain toward outside activities. I used to be involved in community stuff, church stuff, lots of field trip and hands on stuff. I used to cook fun and yummy stuff, do mounds of laundry, scrub stuff, put things away, without much thought of the effort or organization required to just do it, already. Being sick while pregnant, then having a new baby throws it all off, of course, but besides that part, I don't want to cook anymore. I miss folding certain items of laundry. And most of my time is spent hauling kids to appointments, organizing appointments, and working on the little daily things--keeping everything picked up and put away enough to keep us afloat while still getting to all those appointments. I have a hard time replacing the motivation that was, if you know what I mean. Given the requirements of the "new normal," I'm just happy to have everyone upright, eating (almost) anything from each of the food groups, warm, learning, more or less clean (depending on the fascination with mud on any given day) and being relatively kind to each other. I suppose lowering a person's expectations through the floor could have something to do with my appreciation for life's little things. With feeling so very blissed out at the way a certain little person breathes, is sweet with a sibling, or another's hair falls across her face, or the fact that G is oh so proud of the fuzz on his upper lip.

Maybe it's taken all this for me to get to the place where I can revel in the ubiquitous grace in spite of the obvious and equally ubiquitous pain. Or maybe this is who I always was, just now I'm feeling it urgently?

Baby's fussing. So much for getting a shower. Oh well--this too shall pass, and all too quickly.

Peace and blessings.