Laelia Sky Wesley

This has been a week of babies! Laelia got to hold a newborn for the first time this week. Here is little Jane Anne Marie in Laelia’s lap giving her a well-deserved raspberry.

Mommy always tells me my face will stick that way.

Tell me I have more hair… right?!

When I set baby Jane Anne gently onto Laelia’s legs, Laelie started to arch her back to try and swing her arm over the baby. It was so cute. Of course if I had allowed it the next thing she would have done would have been to grab whatever she could in a fist and then swing her arm again and again beating the stuffing out of poor Jane Anne. Believe me, I’ve seen this little one with our cats.

Next we visited Megan and John on Sunday (Megan’s due date) to see if her baby was coming. Even though there were contractions all day, they were never consistently closer than about six to ten minutes apart. Laelia is still waiting for her tummy friend to come out and play. We did see some tummy acrobatics, but no baby.

Hanging with the girls…

Whoa! Where did you come from?

Then Cara and Paul came over and we got to see baby Isaac again. This time, though, Laelie got to see him up close. Actually she started to head butt him! Click here to see the video of some loving headbutts. The only difference between headbutting Isaac and headbutting her teddy bears is that the teddy bears don’t try to grab your face when you’re headbutting them. When we first got there, Laelie was making those “I want it!” cries that she does when she sees a kitty. But this time she wanted the baby. We did put their hands together at one point. That seemed to make her happy.

Then Tammi and Rodney showed up with their tummy baby who is not due until October 4th (day after Laelie’s birthday). I think with a room full of people it was nice for Laelie to see Tammi since she spends lots of time with her. She seemed to be thinking, “Phew, a familiar face,” when she saw Tammi, and then went noiselessly into her arms.

As far as I’m doing, it’s weird to be surrounded by all these babies and knowing not one of them will be like mine. Actually I could spend a month in a hospital full of babies and not one would be like mine. Sometimes I forget what normal movement looks like and am amazed at what my friend’s newborns can do that Laelie will never be able to do. She will move, but she will use technology to help. Of course by the same token, there are a lot of things that Laelie will do that none of her new friends will be able to do. Like move a wheelchair with her head or have cool gadgets or get to go play at a therapist’s office once a week. It reminds me of when my friends had braces, and even though braces are not fun, I sure was jealous! They looked cool and I wanted them too. Maybe it will be like that.

I did notice myself taken aback when I walked into Sarah’s hospital room and people were celebrating instead of grieving. It was amazing! But at the same time, I had not realized that I was subconsciously gearing myself up to comfort instead of cheer. I’m chalking it up to not having been in a hospital room since my experience. The smells and sights were the same. There was even a white board and one of those portable bassinets and the IVs, etc. like my room had. At one point when talking about the C-section incision and how it’s hard to laugh, I mentioned how it was hard to sob, but immediately retracted that and changed it to “sneeze” when I realized just how depressing that sounded. But that’s all I did in my hospital room was hold a pillow tight over my stomach while sobbing. And darn it that hurt! And I wasn’t able to blow my nose because of the incision so I mopped my face with washcloths. So now I’m thankful that I have some good hospital/C section memories even if they are vicarious ones. Yeay! That means a great deal to me.

One great thing about support groups is that you meet people in your situation and you feel like this is normal. It happens that the people who find my website have just found out their baby has some long unpronounceable condition so they google it and find me. So a lot of my new mom friends have special babies who don’t move much. Now I have my San Diego friends all having babies and it’s weird that they are all so wiggly. But I wouldn’t want them any other way. It’s just a jolt, like remembering again oh yeah we’re special.

But I have deeply enjoyed holding and cuddling Laelie’s new friends. It brings me so much joy. I love it! It makes me want another one. (Note the terrified look on Charley’s face. :)) Knowing I can feel a pull of love for some little one who is not even related to me makes me certain that I could deeply love an adopted baby. It makes me excited again for the family God will give me, no matter what it will look like.

Oh and speaking of babies, we thought Laelia was a little chunky because she lacked the muscles to “work off” the weight, right? Well we were wrong. Grandma just unearthed this picture of me at Laelia’s age. Now we know whose genes to blame.

Click on this picture for the video!

My little darling is in love with every bear. It’s adorable! She also loves her duckie. We do have to help her cuddle them, but this child loves her stuffies! I have to remind Puppy to stop stealing them from her. *rolls eyes* It’s becoming a problem. I set the baby up with a stuffy and then go to the kitchen and by the time I get back Puppy has the stuffy in her mouth across the room while baby is just staring at her totally bewildered. I wish I could catch it on video. (Puppy is our tabby cat by the way. :))

We had a hard weekend, but we’re all doing better. This week we’re going to be doing some long term plans and budgets and talks about daycare and adoption and the future and stuff. All of that. We also have to discuss when we want to do that test that will determine if I can have more kids. Well I can have more kids, but this will let us know if I have good odds to have kids who are healthy and physically whole. We have to figure out if we want it done earlier (so we know earlier and can make some long term plans now), or much later with her surgery which will be easier on her. The later is what we’re leaning towards, but we had no idea how upset we would be at the prospect of not having more kids. So now I just want to know for sure so I can start working through that information. And of course we still have to meet with our geneticist on this issue as well. We already picked him out (he was the one who diagnosed our daughter). Also at the end of this week we will hopefully have Laelia’s new shoes. They are going to be pink! I can’t wait. No more sore little feet! Okay, that’s all the updating I have for now. Here’s more bear photos … just in case I haven’t crashed Phyllis’ computer yet.

As you can see, we work hard here at DSP. Even if it’s the Friday before a three day weekend. Nothing stops our work ethic. Yeah.

Tammi is still sick and Charley had a work presentation this morning, so Laelia got to come to my work for an hour and a half and play on the floor while I worked. But everybody had to stop by and say hi… which *of course* led to dance parties.

She really is such a good baby. I had her in my lap while taking business calls and no one was the wiser. Of course if I had been doing the exact same things at home, she would have driven me nuts. I think the novelty of being somewhere new helped.

Okay, so Ms. Dawn from Early Start comes over once a week, and sometimes she’ll leave a toy for Laelia. This week Laelie got to borrow a toy called “Little Smart First Words.” I had wedged it in her lap, but she didn’t seem that interested. Then Charley comes home from work and had just walked in the door when his daughter starts to wiggle in excitement. I picked up the camera immediately to capture baby’s joyous *electronic* exclamations!

This is totally America’s Funniest Video material!

Grandpa thought I made a good car model.

We went to the beach and to the car museum. We ate our first veggie and played puzzle quest for hours. We went on walks and went to the doctor’s office. We had lots of fun with grandma and grandpa!

While I was at work, the grandparents kidnapped baby and took her to the car museum. I just finished going through a little over 100 of their pictures of cars to find the one I used at the top of this blog. Grandpa was distracted by car heaven.

When I went to pick them up after work, Laelie gave me this big goofy grin. Sometimes Laelia looks wise beyond her years, so it’s grins like these that let me know there’s an average, goofy baby lurking beneath those typically wide, intelligent eyes. The grin did not go unnoticed by the ticket lady at the museum. She commented, “Look how that baby lights up when she sees her mommy!” I can’t tell you how good that felt. It makes me feel like I’m queen mommy! I walked out of there with a huge grin on my face too. :)   

Laelie’s orthopedic appointment was another outing we had. It was something I set up a month in advance so it fell during the grandparents’ visit. This appointment was the one where Scope (who makes the braces) and our orthopedic doctor (who prescribes the braces) could get together and hash out what we’re doing with Laelia’s poor feet. Well I had to wait an hour and a half because our doctor was booked up and Jesus from Scope couldn’t wait that long. Laelie’s grandma and I set up Laelia’s play gym replete with PVC piping, arm restraints and toys right on the floor in the waiting room. If we had to wait, we’d wait in style! :) We also made friends with a mom and her teenage son who were also waiting for the same doctor. The mom was so nice. She cooed over baby and when their time came to go in, she offered me her spot! That never happens. Last time we were in this waiting room I overheard a daughter say to her mom, “But mom that’s lying!” Her mom then dragged her to the corner and reprimanded, “Do you want us to have to wait for the doctor?!” It’s people like that raising people like that who make my experiences with doctors’ offices harder. So to be offered someone’s spot…! I can’t tell you how great that is.

Laelia’s shoes don’t work right. They slip every time you pick Laelie up and they leave giant red marks. We’re trying to get some AFOs with a Dennis-brown bar, but even though the prescription was written for them, they weren’t sure they could be built with a removable bar. We’ll see.

It was nice to have visitors. I already miss them. I told my friend that I had kicked out the grandparents yesterday, to which all she had to do was raise an eyebrow before I admitted, “Okay, so I begged and whined for them to stay.”

Here are some random videos and pictures taken from grandma Christina’s camera of baby doing baby-type things. Enjoy.

Throwing sand at grandma.

Goofing off with grandpa. (More like watching grandpa goof off. :))

Squash! Mommy skinned it, boiled it, cooled it, stuck it through the grinder and then forced it down her daughter’s throat. After all that Laelie Bug only got a tiny little bit in her mouth. Where did the rest end up? Right down her shirt! She did better the second time. I had her practice with an empty spoon and cheered every time I could put it in her mouth correctly. Then I added a little squash and it worked a lot more smoothly. But for a look at our first attempt, see dad’s (grandpa’s) video documentary below. It’s a little long, but you get the gist of how the experience went in the first few seconds. Enjoy!

Forced to move by a window after mommy just finished buckling me down, a little annoying. Having to plug my ears with a blanket since the engines made me cry, not comfortable. Having my braces set off the airport metal detectors… priceless.

I spent all morning Friday downtown at the social security building. I got lost on foot trying to find it, was ten minutes late to my interview then ended up sitting between one crazy lady talking to herself and one foul-smelling man who announced he had ring worm. When I was called in for my interview, two women complained loudly that “that girl” somehow cut in line. And, after all that, I was denied in less than ten minutes! I asked the lady what I could do and she said my last chance was iHSS. I tried to get this interview with SSI done over the phone but that was not an option when I set it up. Then when I get there I find out that I could have absolutely done it over the phone! Accch! Then we’re in a total rush to get to the airport with baby on time. Charley got off work ten minutes before we had to leave. We arrived late at night after our flight was delayed and were totally exhausted.  

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When family members would ask where baby and Charley were, I would go into the back bedroom and take another adorable shot of the two of them to show whoever asked me. Baby got to fall asleep in many new, exciting places. She fell asleep on her Auntie Em several times.

My Auntie Em

Laelie also got to meet her cousin, Abby. The last time they met was when Laelie was still in my tummy. Abby showed her affection by smacking Laelie every chance she got. Laelie just stared at Abby adoringly. At one point Job and I switched babies and I got the wiggly one and he got the still one. We were both amazed by the other. I can’t tell you which one is more work! Abby was not guaranteed to live past a few months old. Just one more evidence that doctors don’t know everything.

This is my *ouch* favorite *ow* cousin, Abby!

It was also fun to watch my dad play grandpa. He spent lots of time interacting with his favorite grandchild. Okay, well, his *only* grandchild.

And finally Gram was back in Placerville, where she belonged! She was buried in my favorite cemetery. It’s the perfect cemetery because it’s totally overgrown and wild. If not for the gate, you would walk through and trip over a stone in the brush and then realize you were in a grave yard. Gram would have loved to do gardening on this place! I can see her with those gloves of hers breaking her back here. My grandma, Wynema, spent some time the day before clearing out enough weeds so we could stand near the grave. Some of us even stood on graves, the names on them had eroded with time. Then we went to the memorial at Gram’s church. Laelia laughed and cooed and fussed and made every kind of noise you can imagine through the whole thing.

Then on Monday, baby, Charley and I went to antique stores like Gram and I used to every Sunday before we’d go volunteer at the rest home. She would walk me through and point out things I’d never heard of that were staples of her existence once upon a time. I was looking down at Laelia and considering how amazing it is to celebrate new life while at the same time grieving life lost.  I enjoyed our trip, but I wish I didn’t miss Gram so much.

Picking up Christmas wrapping paper with Gram.

Since I won’t be able to blog while in Placerville, I couldn’t leave without passing along this video. This is Puppy our kitty helping Laelie with her occupational therapy. I call it, “Free babysitting.” Enjoy!

No, baby you do it like this. No, like this. Here I’ll show you. Here I’ll show you all of them. Just… out of my way.

Laelia uses her tongue to say, “I want that!” as we already knew. But she also uses it to express herself in other ways. Here are some of the things I think she’s trying to say with her tongue:

I love this!

I’m having fun with my grandma!

I’m bored!

I love talking with my mommy!

I think I may be hungry!

I’m talking to grandpa!

My Easter dress and friends. 

Just to start off, we haven’t met with anyone from the Regional Center yet. I thought they would come Monday, but we’ll try to see someone next Monday. We were told it is a long process once it actually gets started so we are certain it will take too long when you figure in MediCal’s wait period. We’ll be looking for someone to help watch Laelia this summer while we continue to try to work it out. You know since we don’t want to quit our jobs, move or get divorced. :) 

Miserable process.

Anywho, this was a busy week. We had Saint Patrick’s Day followed by a Baby Shower for Laelie followed by Easter. All three of us have been battling sickness too.

Saturday was the shower lovingly thrown together by Lisa. There were plates that looked like onesies that said “Love Bug” on them piled high with lemon bars. :) It was great. Laelie got lots of love and attention and so did Mommy for that matter. It was a very fun and encouraging party.

The next day was Easter Sunday where Laelie hung out in the nursery with her friends. (See the picture above.) Once I hand her off to the nursery worker with instructions that include typical things such as, “Make sure her feet don’t turn purple,” I always get this crazy desire afterwards to run down the street screaming, “Sweet freedom!” The desire became so strong that even though it was Easter, I suggested to Charley that we use our baby-free time to go for a walk (or make out in the car–I’m not picky), :) but Charley always makes sure I get safely across the grass and into church.

After that we went to a potluck with the same baby shower crowd (plus the husbands) and got to relax. It was hard to go back to work on Monday after all that excitement. Laelie started to get sick around that time too. In hindsight I did let a lot of cute little kids touch the baby. Bad Mommy! I stayed home with her Tuesday and she’s doing better now. Of course I found a large lump in my breast today and figure it may be round three mastitis. Does it ever end?

After baby and I got back from her baby shower on Saturday, Daddy spent the rest of the afternoon teaching baby how to play Mass Effect. I included the video. Enjoy! :)