Rolling the dice

4 / 27 / 154 / 27 / 15

Last week was not our best. Shep is going through a fun phase where he is needy and whiney. Char hasn’t felt great and Erron needed to work late and go out of town. On more than one occasion, the little people and I struggled to get out of the house on time for school, physical therapy, or swim and we all ended up in up in tears, which isn’t the norm. (The tears part. We’re always running late.) With the one year mark quickly approaching, Erron and I find ourselves feeling more fragile these days, with strong emotions simmering just beneath the surface, ready to knock us off our game if we don’t keep our minds busy. Add to that swim lessons. Watching Shep in the pool 4 days a week learning how to float and swim so he can get to the side of the pool should he ever fall in….It pretty much fries my nerve endings, and causes the scars on my heart to throb a little more than usual. Like many kids, during the first lesson Shepherd cried when he had to go under water. (While his teacher held him.) “I couldn’t see you mom!” He said to me with weepy eyes when the lesson was over. I wanted to crawl under the table and curl up in a ball. Erron banned me from being in the pool area and I spent the next few lessons watching behind the glass in the hallway. Mercifully, the tears were minimal and I have a friend whose kids have swim at the same time so she keeps me distracted. By day three Shep was begging to take a dip all the way under. I adore his teacher, I’m thrilled he’s doing so well in the water… but I still have to look away several times during each lesson because I’m so sad and angry with myself that he didn’t have those skills when he needed them.

It makes me feel like I failed, like I didn’t do enough to protect, or at least, prepare him for what happened.

That guilt…it’s a lot like Charlotte’s bed time routine. I put her down. She gets back up. I put her down again, remind her that this is the last time. When I think I’ve finally bested her, I give my attention to other things, but when I least expect it, she’s crept out of her bed and is standing in her doorway, waiting for me to come tend to her. (And yes, I’m aware Char’s bedtime routine sounds flawed…It’s a work in progress.)

Back in ICU, I remember scanning the other rooms, wondering if it felt any different to be a parent of a child who wasn’t in there due to a preventable accident. Perhaps not, but I hated that Shep was in there for drowning. Child Protective Services came to our hospital room, took pictures of an unconscious Shep and sat us down for interviews. They were doing their job, it was obvious they hated to add to our pain, but I can no longer casually joke about them coming to my house after my kids have popcorn for dinner one too many times or because they never wear shoes. After we got home from the hospital we got our scheduled visit when they came to my door and politely checked my fridge, running water, and Shep’s room.

Parenting is gamble on the grandest scale. The little ones we tuck in tonight are our greatest treasure on Earth. But we cannot lock them away in padded rooms and guarantee their safety. We can be careful, and intentional to be sure…but I listen to friends of much older children and some of the experiences they’ve had take my breath away. These are great mommas that I look up to. They’ve just lived longer…so it hits me, again. Just because we survived this accident with an incredible outcome, doesn’t mean we are done with our scary moments and heartache.

I’m aware this is not a healthy place to sit, and this ache in my heart was brought on by watching Shep in the pool. I also know most momma’s have had moments like mine where things just happened…because you can’t be everywhere, all the time and life is full of risks that you never see coming. I know that. But last week my heart forgot it, and it hurts.

Letting your heart walk around outside your body certainly puts you in jeopardy, you’re all in, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Anything that happens to them, happens to you. But then there are lots of days I look at the two tiny towheads running around my house…. and I swear I’ve hit the jackpot.

NYC Recap

4 / 22 / 15

Andrea, Tamara, and me on our last night in the big city.

Well, NYC was fast and furious, but after visiting there several times, I’ve decided that’s just how trips to New York City are. Andrea and I flew in on Thursday, met up with Tamara, then headed out to drinks and a rowdy Jamaican dinner. Tam is one of the original Dallas prayer group girls who now spends most of her time styling models for photo shoots and runway shows in NYC. Tamara is humble, with a loyal heart of gold even though I think she’s a pretty big deal at what she does. Plus, she let me borrow her boots with the fur, (no lie) so I felt like a super star walking to dinner. The three of us did not stop running around till Sunday morning when it was time to go home. By then, Andrea and I were so whipped, we could barley muster up the energy to walk around the corner for coffee before we left for the airport. Also, on this trip I learned “walk” means different things to people depending on where they live. For me, a walk to a destination means 5, maybe 10 minutes. I’m driving if it’s any further. For Tamara, it means 10 blocks. In heels. Like it’s no big deal. Andrea and I were totally the girls with flats stashed in our purses by day two.

We crammed as much in as we could. We did a broadway show, the MOMA, Central Park, and walked The Highline with a Texas friend we picked up along the way. We shopped Zara’s, walked around SoHo, and ate a cupcake in West Village. Surprisingly, one of my favorite things was this psycho spin class we took called SoulCycle. After realizing I could secretly never turn up the resistance on my bike, I quit worrying I would pass out, and loved every minute of it. You are literally doing push ups while you’re spinning on the bike, it’s insane. The instructor was part biking rockstar, part DJ…..It was like being in nightclub at the gym, which made the fact that I was burning roughly 10,000 calories even more exciting. Which was great, because the food……

Tamara knows how to eat well in NYC. The places she took us to were so different from anything in Oklahoma and the food was just ridiculous. So. Good. The grand finale was Del Posto…an Italian restaurant that was so delicious, and so upscale I couldn’t pronounce the majority of the menu and I had to mentally block out images of spilling my aerated wine or dropping my fork. My purse had it’s very own leather ottoman to sit on, so it didn’t have to touch the floor. Huge step up from Ted’s Cafe Escondido, just saying.

We got to stay with Tamara which made us feel like the real-deal and because of her we saw places in NYC we would have never known to visit. Spending quality time with these girls was such a treat and getting out of my everyday routine was exciting. I loved seeing Tam in her element and Andrea taking it all in for the first time. But by Sunday morning I was dying to get back to Erron, the littles and my small town that moves at a much slower pace. Tamara does NYC like a boss, but I’m not cut out for it full time. If it weren’t for her, Andrea and I would still be waiting for the cross walk light to change on the street corners…..

The view from Tam's apartment! — The view from Tam’s apartment!

Escape to Old Navy

4 / 9 / 15

The face I've been making in my head the last 48 hours. — The face I’ve been making in my head the last 48 hours.

So, my kids ate granola bars for dinner yesterday. I didn’t even feed the bars to them, Shep did. We spent the evening in the backyard and when he figured out dinner wasn’t going to happen, he got in the pantry, grabbed an unopened box of bars and brought them out to me. I told him, “Good thinking kid, here’s one for Sis.” And they ate their crumbly dinner on the tramp. I don’t even know if Erron ate dinner…did I eat dinner? That pretty much sums up the last couple days. Two steps forward, 6 steps back. Floors vacuumed, dog pees on the carpet, then the bed for good measure. Toys picked up, Char wrecks my closet. And both littles asking questions loudly on repeat allllll day at the same time, so I never really understood what either of them said, ever. I answered with a lot of “I don’t know baby, that’s a great question, maybe Daddy knows, and why are you guys so loud all the time?!” Shep finally responded to my complaining, “We talk loud Momma, God just made us that way.” Noted. The evening progressed with me fussing at Erron, then fleeing to Starbucks and hiding in an Old Navy dressing room, trying on workout tops and comparing sub-par parenting notes with Abbey over the phone. She did not feed her kids granola bars, for the record.

Finally, I came home, apologized to Erron and together we decided my parenting melt-downs weren’t really related to anything new going on, the above paragraph pretty much sums up an average week in my house. Except this week I was handling the usual craziness with unusual hysteria due to the girls’ trip I was preparing to leave for.

Shep started swim lessons 4 days a week, and I’m gearing up to leave for NYC for 4 days. It’s the longest I’ve been away from the littles and the first time I’ve been on a plane in almost three years. I’m so excited for this get-away, I know the minute I’m dropped off at the airport I will relax, and I’ll come back a better Momma, but the combined anxiety of leaving town and seeing Shep in a pool for the first time since last summer has kicked my butt.

This cutie after swim. Every day he gains confidence and his teacher is my new favorite person.

Hours later in bed, I texted a plea for help to my old Dallas prayer group asking for late night prayers as I struggled to calm down enough to sleep. I got some encouraging responses and an answer to prayer just two minutes later when a sleepy Shep crept into our room and crawled in bed with us. I was asleep in five minutes. And I’m taking my new workout top to NYC.