The Luckiest No Matter What!

Dear Preston, HAPPY FIFTH BIRTHDAY! You are so excited to be five. It’s been very important that people around you have known you are 4.5. I can imagine being able to tell people you’re five is going to be quite exciting. You have much to look forward to: likely being tall enough to climb the St. Augustine lighthouse the next time we visit, being able to ride more rides at amusement parks, being able to go to summer camps and bible school, starting kindergarten. A big time in your life- this five-year-old birthday. You Are My True Sidekick For me, as your mom, this birthday has been making me quite a puddle of tears. Like it or not, you’re last. I can’t IMAGINE letting you go to kindergarten even though it’s only a few months away. I can’t IMAGINE you being gone all day. I can’t IMAGINE not having my grocery store partner, not having you still be in your pjs at 9:00am and us getting ready for the day after your brothers are at school. It’s funny, you being the baby. In some ways you’ve...

Dear Preston, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! This birthday seems really special, I think, because it’s the first one you’ve really been talking about and looking forward to. We even have a countdown on the wipe board near our calendar. This will likely be the first birthday you will remember and your understanding of getting older and getting bigger is more for this birthday than any other one you’ve had.  GOODBYE THREE! B eing three is often very hard for both the kid and the parents and you were no exception my sweet boy. I think you were our hardest three-year-old, which is actually saying a lot ;) This last year or two have been filled with a lot of big emotions, tantrums, destruction, and many unkind words. We have ALL (this includes your brothers) been very patient with you and have really been trying to teach you how to label your feelings and be able to handle them in a way that doesn’t hurt people or things with your words or your body. It surely hasn’t been easy. I say all of this not t...

Dear Preston, HAPPY THIRD BIRTHDAY!!! My last baby is three! The other day, at Great Grandma Hundt’s funeral, I saw a few of Daddy’s cousins with baby bellies and it was so strange to me that I’m done with having a brand new baby in the house. You are it. What a beautiful ending to the baby stage, though, as you have been a radiant light; bringing more joy wherever it is that you are. This last year you learned to truly speak, jump incredibly well on the trampoline, go down slides, swing, dig in the sand, have books that you can read by heart, sing all kinds of songs, say prayers, and confirm for Daddy and I that we created no shy or quiet children. Hearing you find your voice and seeing you learn of things you love has been an awesome part of your two-year-old life!  You are certainly finding your own way and doing things your own way too. S ometimes you’ll eat anything like sushi or soup or all kinds of salads. Other times you don’t feel like eating a banana anymore after you wer...

 In January 2020, I finally made the phone call I knew had been coming.  Preston was doing very little talking. At his 18 month appointment, his pediatrician wasn't terribly concerned yet, but did warn me he had some things against him: he's a sibling meaning that his older brothers would likely do a lot of the talking for him, he's a boy, and he wasn't in daycare. Because I was home with him, I knew what he wanted most of the time so he didn't NEED to work on his verbal skills. Here we were, a few months later, with little to no progress in his speech development since that appointment. I felt like it was time to get EarlyOn involved and get him some help and us some tools.  Speech Development Preston had a very small handful of words- a mama and dada here or there, a couple animal noises and that was basically it. The thing that was interesting about him was he was ZERO percent frustrated. It never bothered him if we didn't know what he was trying to communica...

Dear Baby of the Family, I miss you terribly right now.  As a parent, when you know your littlest is also your last, you hold onto everything with a firm love grip. You know it's the last crawl, the last middle of the night feedings, the last first smile or laugh or word. Babyhood and toddler life slip farther away with every passing day. There is no next time around.  The last baby gets a few perks that maybe other siblings don't get- more alone time, more one-on-one, and the attention from a parent who is watching everything with eyes wide open as if not to miss a single thing. Oldest children get all the shock and awe- everything is new, often times surprising. With the youngest, you anticipate, you get ready, you don't want anything to pass by without you taking in every part of it.  If things were BC (before Covid), my littlest would have his mama to himself for some blocks of time- while one older brother was at preschool for a couple of hours and other two brothe...

Dear Preston, HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY! In some ways it feels like I just brought you home from the hospital, our final boy, our littlest little guy. In others, I don’t remember a single second without you. You fit so seamlessly well into the family that I can’t imagine a time when you weren’t there. I need you to know, right now, that things are super weird around here. There is a virus in our country and in our world called the Corona Virus and it is so contagious and dangerous and new that we’ve had to drastically change our daily life. All six of us have been at home, together, for the last 7 weeks. Schools are closed, we have to go grocery shopping with a mask and gloves on, and we are not allowed to see our family. Daddy is working upstairs and the rest of us have been together. This has been very hard for everyone. You though, my sweet boy, will have no recollection of this at all- you won’t remember anything about it and that is so strange. I’d say you love this quarantine th...

I didn't really know what to write about this week. Other weeks, I've had epiphanies or meltdowns or rocking successes or some real thoughtful reflections... This one was, honestly, much of the same... teaching, learning, playing, fighting monotony, fighting anarchy, some days good, some days not.  The weather has really been getting to me here in Michigan. It's been mostly crap and that makes everything that is already hard even harder. I'm to the point now where I am sick of being cold, sick of blizzard-feeling winds, sick of clouds to the point where I don't even want to go outside if it's below my expectations.  All four of my boys have birthdays the first week of May. Back when the first stay at home order went through, in mid March, I was certain beyond belief that we'd be back at it by their birthdays. I never questioned their family birthday party having to be postponed. As the weeks have went by, it's sunk in more and more, for me and for...

Admitting you need help is hard.  Asking for help is hard.  Accepting help is hard.  This week I cracked. I was impatient, snappy, and on the brink of tears throughout most of the beginning of the week. I tried to fix it by making sure I went to bed a bit earlier, by trying to start each day with a fresh clean slate, by trying to look for positives where I could, but by Wednesday I was feeling like none of it was helping enough to pull myself out. I had lost my temper multiple times and everything was annoying me and frustrating me. I clearly needed some help.   I went and told Josh, through tears, that I needed him to look at his calendar over the next few weeks and clear some hours or take a day off if possible so that I could not be with the kids. I had been wearing this mom, teacher, and United Nations Peacekeeper hat for almost five weeks straight every minute of every day with no escape, with no break, with no end in sight. I wasn't expecti...

Thursday. A day I won't soon forget. I began the day as I have been lately, journaling and watching the news. I happened to catch a story of a 30 year old teacher and coach from New Jersey who died of the Corona Virus. The journalist was speaking with his wife and tears were just streaming down my face. This person had already been treated at the hospital and was responding well to oxygen treatments and meds. He was sick and uncomfortable, but managing. He went to bed and never woke up. He had no preexisting conditions and was healthy. There are stories like these as well as stories about the population this is affecting the most, but this story stuck with me huge. Our 'school' or whatever you want to call it started at 8:30 with our usual community meeting where we greet each other, talk about the upcoming day, and read a picture book together. Even though I maintained my composure despite my shook-ness from earlier, I knew this day was going to be a memorable one. How...