Weig’s reclaim the day

6 / 25 / 15

Last weekend was our Reclaim the Date party and it was everything I hoped it would be. Lots of family, so many friends, and we threw in Pistol Pete for good measure. Everyone who came mattered to me: our families, friends who drove in from different cities and states, Shep’s swim teacher and his nurse from Tulsa…everyone there contributed in making this year move forward for us. We had a blast seeing them all in one place, meeting each other, making connections, and enjoying life.

I felt like I was at a wedding, I couldn’t move around fast enough, greeting, hugging, catching up. I was in heaven. Erron and I agreed, it was a perfect day.

The next morning, Father’s Day, and the actual one-year anniversary of Shepherd’s accident, the four of us drove down to Great Wolf Lodge and spent the rest of the weekend playing in the water. I’d like to say it was just as dreamy as our party, but reality kicked in and that actual day was a little more…complicated. Erron and I let the kids go down one of the big slides. In a last minute change-up, I went first, Erron sent down the littles one by one, then was to follow behind. As soon as I got to my feet I turned and prepared to catch Charlotte, who was “iffy” about going down in the first place. Looking up, I saw Erron gesturing from the top of the slide, clearly pointing down, but I second guessed, and thought maybe he needed me to come get a terrified Char from the top of the stairs. I moved a few feet away from the slide, and missed her. I turned around to check the slide again just in time to see a stranger helping her out of the chute; she was scared and confused, caught near the jets. My heart sank and I rushed to get to her. Erron was frustrated; without telling me, he’d foreseen a similar scenario play out in his head and wanted to be the first to go down. He also couldn’t comprehend how I miss-read his cues when they were so obvious. I was….how shall I say… I was not pleased. I felt like I’d repeated a really bad day all over again on a much smaller scale and to say I was ticked would be underselling it a bit. However, we recovered…we worked it out, moved on and enjoyed the rest of our time there. Great Wolf did not disappoint.

And that’s how it goes. Erron and I aren’t perfect and neither is life, but this weekend served its purpose. We had fun in the water, we gave thanks, and we showed June 21st who’s in charge. We survived one hell of a year, thanks to incredibly supportive families, rock star friends, and some amazing people we’d never known before this journey started. Our faith that God is as good as He says He is has been tested, and proven true. Hitting the one-year mark doesn’t magically make all hard feelings about what happened go away, our slide experience is proof of that. But it has brought lots of perspective…we are all together, we have everything to be thankful for and we believe we can handle whatever life has to offer. It’s time to just enjoy the ride.

Shep and Pete — Pistol Pete arrives on the scene. If you were 8 or under, this party just became legit.

Parents meeting swim teacher — My family meeting Megan, the fabulous swim teacher.

Party- babies — Prayer group girls…all the babies and their crazy “look over here” mommas in the mirror.

Journey of Sarah: The Choose Joy Project

6 / 18 / 156 / 18 / 15

In a few days we will hit the one-year mark of the day we found Shep in the pool and thought we would loose him. To mark the date, we are having ourselves a little party to re-claim that day for good. Might sound like a weird thing to do, but to me it’s necessary. If I didn’t have something fun to look forward to this weekend, something to remind me to celebrate and feel grateful, I might go dark. So we are choosing joy. Which is exactly what my friend Sarah is doing next month to mark the second anniversary of her husband, Joel’s, last day on Earth. This post is about her and her gift for choosing light over dark and finding ways to celebrate life in the midst of great sorrow.

Sarah and I have never met in person but I count her as a friend. She and I connected after we were both initiated into the “Our Child Should Not Have Lived” club in the same year. Sarah has been on a wild ride the last couple years and she writes all about it over at journeyofsarah.com. To make a long story short, before loosing Joel to cancer two years ago, he told her, with 100% certainty; they would have one more child, a girl. And they would name her Ellis. After Joel passed, Sara decided to use their last two remaining embryos from an earlier IVF treatment and was blessed with sweet baby girl Ellis. Just like Joel said it would be. But weeks after Ellis was born she contracted bacterial meningitis. Sarah and I have mutual acquaintances, and Sarah’s petition for prayer was all over my Facebook feed last December. I remember being glued to her updates, agonizing with her, begging for a miracle, clearly the only way Ellis would survive. Doctors took Ellis off her ventilator and a broken Sarah prepared herself to say goodbye to someone she loved, again. But survive Ellis did, in the most incredible way…. you can read about here, if you haven’t already heard that part of Sara’s story. It’s astounding.

Sarah has gotten really good at choosing joy instead of sorrow. In fact, she has created a whole movement out it with her Choose Joy Project, which will take place July 23^rd. It’s the perfect way to honor Joel’s life and the type of man he was. The concept is simple. On Thursday, July 23, choose to do a random act of kindness, big or small, in honor of Joel. Buy someone a meal, leave an encouraging note for a friend…you get to decide the “who” and “how.” But that’s not all. Before June ends, email Sarah at choosejoy@journeyofsarah.com to get your Choose Joy cards. (Your email info is confidential and will ONLY be used for the Choose Joy Project.) Include your card (which has a link directing recipients to Sarah’s family story) in your random act of kindness. If you can, email a picture of your random act of kindness to Sarah, or post it on your social media using the hashtag #choosejoyproject. Sarah will be posting all the pictures she receives that day on her blog. Last year Sarah had 80 families participate in the Choose Joy Project. Her goal this year is 100. The message you will be spreading is that hope and faith can shine light and joy into hard things. And let’s face it….if you don’t choose to find joy in the middle of hard, what other options are you left with? Choose joy friends, and pass it on.

Check out Sarah’s Choose Joy Project here.

Anticipating one year

6 / 12 / 15

We are 10 days away from the one year anniversary of Shepherd’s pool accident. I’m not sure how I really feel about it. June burst on the scene with Aunt B’s wedding and hasn’t seemed to stop sprinting yet…maybe I should be grateful. Less time to stew, less free moments for my mind to wander down the dark alley leading back to that day, the worst day of all our lives. We got big plans for the weekend of June 21st. As a couple and a family, Erron and I have made plans to re-claim that date for joy, re-branding it as a day to celebrate what was returned to us, the love that was shown to us, and recognizing how far we’ve come this year.

I’m at a loss to describe the emotions I feel towards hitting the one year mark. I suppose thankfulness triumphs over the other, more complicated feelings. Thank you God, our sweet Shepherd lives, and he is thriving. Thank you God, my marriage is still in-tact….thankfulness for our friends, supportive families….there so much to be grateful for. But underneath that gratefulness, the pain still smolders a bit…the anxiety still pressing in on me when I wish it would just go away forever.

In one afternoon, everything I knew about myself and my life seemed to be stripped from me, and though I’m proud of who I am today, I like who I’ve become, the simpler version of me is morned. I cannot go back, even if I wanted to.

As for Shepherd, that boy seems to be doing great despite what happened to him. He’s still bright, still astoundingly creative and captivating, still complicated. He’s still Shepherd, the one I knew before June 21st, 2014. But as parents, Erron and I continue to worry…Shepherd made his entrance into the world 2 months early which means I was born into motherhood with anxiety strapped to me like a dead-weight. It’s hard to untie the knots of worry, which have since been intertwined with threads of guilt, much more so now than before. I wrestle with this feeling, this anxiety that causes me (and Erron) to stress over Shepherd’s impossibly short attention span, his seemingly intense emotions, and his struggle to retain facts he’s not interested in. When I worry, I feel a bit like I’m cheating on faith. Like I’m failing to recognize the miracle every doctor has told us he is. I remember, trust me, I remember…but I’m human too.

Writing this post has made me realize there is a part of me that is still so, so sad Shepherd fell in the pool. I’m still heartbroken it happened. But that’s ok. It’s not unfaithful to suffer, it’s not weak to feel pain, and today I’m going to let myself be sad. Because the weekend of June 21st, I will have none of it. I will spend it rejoicing over our miracle, and the beauty that was born out of our ashes. I said it last June, and I’ll say it again…God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Let’s All Swim: Our Experience

6 / 3 / 156 / 3 / 15

Going into spring I knew I wanted to get both kids into a swim lessons or I would just not be able to handle a new summer swim season and keep my sanity. I’d done the whole “mommy-and-me” group swimming lessons with Shepherd before. Twice. Before Shep ‘s drowning, my idea of swimming lessons was getting Shepherd comfortable with water, with a mild focus on safety once he reached age two. I hate to sound blunt, but all those lessons counted for nothing last summer. I just didn’t have a clue what survival swim techniques looked like, and the whole idea of it kind of overwhelmed me. Going into this summer, I obviously had a different perspective. I wanted both my kids, ages 2 and 4, to learn how to react in any body of water if they ever fell in. I also knew that I needed a very specific type of method teaching, because watching Shep feel terrified in the water while learning, even for a good cause, would be unbearable for both of us. So, I started asking around. Overwhelmingly, the word on the street was: Let’s All Swim. Our experience there has been so immensely positive, I have to share it with you, should any of you be hunting for a place where your little people can learn how to survive a fall into water, and ultimately become comfortable, confident swimmers.

Ms. Megan with the littles. They love her.

Let’s All Swim is owned and run by Megan Bachman and her husband. Fun fact, Megan’s mom is also an instructor. They offer lessons at two locations: The OKC one is located inside The Lighthouse Fitness Center off Hefner Road and a new Edmond location at Key Health Institute off North Kelley Ave.

Let’s All Swim uses the Infant Aquatics method of teaching. Basically, depending on your child’s age, your child will learn how to roll to their back and perform a survival float, and if the child is 2 or older, the life-saving sequence of swim-float-swim until they reach the wall or the stairs. This sequence can be performed for any length of time, which is critical in accidents like ours. When I called Megan about her program before we started, she explained her program involved one-one-one instruction, each lesson being 15 minutes long, with some built in time for teacher feedback. It’s a 20-lesson commitment, minimum of 5 weeks. After 20 lessons, most parents do a phase-out plan where they gradually reduce lessons week by week. In her 15 years of experience, Megan has learned that somewhere between lessons 20 and 25 is the sweet spot for little swimmers. For optimal results, she recommends committing to at least three lessons a week so that your child doesn’t loose confidence or momentum. (However, they’re flexible and will work with your schedule if needed.) It’s a time commitment on the front end, but by the end of my conversation with Megan I was 100% in. She is passionate about helping kids feel safe and confident in the water and she believes whole-heartedly in her methods and her staff. (Each staff member undergoes 100 hours of training before they teach on his/her own.)

Shep is a not an easy student by any means. He is emotional, moody, and his success in the water depends greatly on how confident he is feeling that day. Megan innately understands this. She has a unique ability to know when to push and when to spend a day “confidence building” in a child. This is what sets Let’s All Swim apart from other swim schools. Megan explained, “All my teachers must understand that occasionally, we might spend a day just building up a child’s confidence in the water. On the flip side, if a child is over confident, we’ll spend a day reminding a student that a respect for water is critical to maintain safe swimming habits.” This philosophy may mean that it takes a few extra lessons for your child to really get down the swim-float-swim sequence, but it also means your child will walk away with the necessary survival skills AND a love for the water. For me, that was everything. Both Shepherd and I needed a place to heal and re-learn how to enjoy swimming again. Let’s All Swim has done that for us and we could not be more grateful.

Not long after 20 lessons Shep could perform the swim-float-swim sequence across a large pool in deep water. It isn’t pretty, but that kid can float like nobody’s business. Char is on lesson 18, has her float down, and is currently putting the swim-float-swim sequence together. She is having the time of her life in the water. Over coffee, and out of a swimsuit, I asked Megan what her goal is for each child who goes through Let’s All Swim’s program. “I want to build strong, confident, capable swimmers who just love the water.” Megan says. Well Megan, my kids now treat each bath as if it’s a pool and have thrown out the bath toys to make room for practicing their safe floats and roll-backs. I’d say mission accomplished.

Shep transitioning from his back float to a short 5 second swim to help him get across the pool.

It’s Worth Noting….
*Let’s All Swim provides infant survival programs, mommy-and-me classes, as well as stroke-development lessons for more advanced swimmers. They can also teach adults.

*Megan and her staff have experience teaching to a variety of special needs such as students with traumatic water experiences, and students with disabilities.

*There can be a bit of a wait to get on the schedule during peak seasons (May-August) but with the new Edmond location and an increase in staff, the wait should shrink.