McCall Wedding - (Apparently not) streaming live at 7pm EST

UPDATE - Guess what! The interwebs didn't work. So sorry, friends. Rest assured it was a beautiful, beautiful wedding and Amie took lots of pictures. Use this post to wish them well and say a quick prayer for them.

There's a lot of love here tonight.

(See the bottom for a picture of the beautiful couple)

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John and Ellyn's wedding will stream starting in about 20 minutes at:

[There was a URL here before but you no longer need it.]

I plan on recording it and posting it here later as well. This is all assuming the interwebz stay put at the venue. I can make no promises, but John and Ellyn are about to again!

Much love,

Mandy

Live streaming the wedding!

So, Mandy is going to do her best to live stream my wedding tonight! So excited to share it with those of you who would like to see it. If you're interested it will be embedded here at 7 PM EST.

Oh happy day!!

Daddy's Helper

We've been fixing up a few things around the apartment to get ready for the influx of guests who will be staying with us for the wedding. Ava and Jace are camping with my mom and since we were short a couple of kids we decided to go out to brunch at a restaurant where kids six and under eat free. It felt like a great deal, especially considering just how much our three "little kids" can eat. It seemed much more simple eating out with five rather than seven, and after we were all stuffed we headed out to pick up a rug doctor to clean the carpets. John thought the kids would nap off brunch while we cleaned, and it almost worked. All three of them passed out in the van within minutes. When we got home, we managed to transfer Coen and Evany to their beds without waking them, but we weren't so lucky with Seth. He had caught a second wind and he was all about helping his dad out.

"Dad! The water! Put it here!" "Hey! That goes there!" He's a bossy kid, for sure, and he bossed John through every step of getting the rug doctor ready. But he wasn't just bossing John around...a minute later I heard "Mom, you sweeping? You done? Okay!"

He was convinced he was integral to the carpet cleaning process. John let him run the machine thinking he'd get tired of it, but no. We offered To let him watch his favorite show but he said no. "Mom," he protested, "I'm helping!" He would tell John "Right here, see? Ok, good, no more!"

A job John thought would take a couple of hours was shaping up I take triple that thanks to Seth's 'help', and I could see John calculating just how long this was going to take. I kept expecting him to ask me to take Seth away so he could work in peace, and eventually he did turn off the machine and look up at me. "Are you hearing all of these sentences he's using?!" John asked me. "He's doing so great!"

Seth shrugged. "I'm just helping dad!"

It's those moments when I see Seth thriving and being a normal kid who can hear just fine when the vacuum is running and boss us around verbally just like any of his siblings that just knock me over in gratitude. These experiences are what make all of it worth it. I can't believe Seth is almost four years old. It's been a roller coaster ride for sure but he's an amazing kid. I can't imagine life twithout him bossing us all around.

Checking In

We're alive! I know I sound like a broken record but as usual, things are crazy around here! I'm beginning to think this is the permanent state of our lives. The wedding is a week from Saturday and there are a million and one loose ends to tie up. Every time I knock something off my to-do list it feels like I add two more things.

I am so excited. The first time around, John and I eloped on the beach, which was beautiful, but we always regretted not having the whole shebang, if you will, so this is our do-over in more ways than one. When we started planning everything, John joked about how we'd need a "bride's side, a  groom's side, and a blog side" at the reception, and what I love about that is that it's actually true. There will be bloggers in attendance, bloggers standing up with me, and a blogger photographing my wedding. I love that some of these women have become my closest friends thanks to this little spot on the internet. Getting to have my family, my blog friends, and all my other friends together with me on this day makes me feel pretty great. It's so surreal to think about everything that has happened the past few years. It's been a lot of work on both our parts, but John and I are so blessed to have been able to put the pieces of our family back together. I just can't wait to make it official again with everyone!

The kids are enjoying their summer...they just came inside from having a big water balloon fight with the neighbors. We now officially have a Pre-K student, a first grader, and a third grader. They're growing up so fast! Last night we were at a cook out with some family and the kids were just running around and blowing bubbles and making us all laugh. It was just a really enjoyable evening and I always try to really soak those times up because as I'm sure you all know, taking a bunch of little kids out in public is almost never as fun as you think it will be. Hah! My mom just got into town for the boys' birthdays and the wedding and we've been having a blast with her too.

We've got some birthdays coming up...Coen will be a year old on Tuesday, which is just insane, and Seth will be four on the seventeenth. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was stressing out about whether Coen would stay put and wait to be born until after Seth's birthday. He didn't of course, but it all turned out perfectly. Every day now Seth tells me "First Coen turns one, then I turn four!" We are on birthday watch around here, for sure.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned thirty earlier this month. It hit me harder than I was expecting! John was great, though, and coordinated a couple of really fun outings with friends to keep my mind off of it. =) On my birthday Ava told me  "Mom, you don't look thirty. I think you're just pretending to be old!" I'm fairly certain it was meant as a compliment, but in any case it made me laugh!

I don't have any pictures handy right now because I've been lazy this summer and have yet to break out my good camera, but Mandy and Amie will be here a week from today and I have a feeling there will be many pictures I can post after that. I have big plans to get some one year pictures of Coen, so I'll hav to make that happen, too. I do have a short video to post of Seth reciting the alphabet, though. Letters are such a simple thing, but learning the correct pronunciation of all the parts of each letter can be tough, especially for a kid with cochlear implants. I love this video because he's being his regular goofy self that people outside our home don't always get to see because Seth is a little shy in public. (And yes, at the end, he says "We're done!" Hah! He cracks me up.)


Thanks so much for the comments and emails. I miss writing and talking with everyone. I hope you're all doing well!

Hello!

I'm supervising breakfast at home right now and taking a break from writing papers for school. I should keep doing schoolwork, but I miss it here. So I'm popping in to say hi.

This past month or so has been been big for us...Seth's ears turned three, and he received a software update with new sound processing strategies that dramatically improve his hearing in noise. Usually when I vacuum, Seth pulls his magnets off until I'm done because it's all too loud and he can't hear anything else. But the other day when I started sweeping, I noticed he still had his ears on.

"Hey Seth, is the vacuum too loud?" I asked.

"Nope! Quiet!" He answered.

How cool is that? ClearVoice, this sound processing software, takes away the sounds that don't matter so that speech is easier to hear. In fact, I quickly learned as Seth continued to talk to me in a conversational tone as I swept, he was actually hearing better than I could with the background noise of the television and vacuum. He ended up super annoyed at me because I kept asking him to repeat what he said. It's a pretty good problem to have!

A couple of weeks ago we volunteered at a 5K run called the Talk Walk Run. It was a fundraiser for HEAR Indiana and although the weather was freezing cold and wet, we were able to reconnect with some old friends and meet some new ones. Since we moved here, we have yet to see another kid with cochlear implants, so we've been feeling a little isolated. In Indianapolis, where the run took place, there are more CI Kids, and I was really excited to see what Seth though. Now that he's nearly four, he's noticing things a lot more. As we ate breakfast at our hotel before the race, Seth noticed another little boy coming into the room who had CIs. He literally gasped. "Hey!" He shouted. "Mom! MOM! He has EARS!" He then turned around backwards in his chair so that he could see the boy better and ate the rest of his breakfast that way. He was too shy to talk to him, but boy, did seeing another kid with "ears" like him make his day. Later, at the race, he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off pointing out all the people with CIs. "Ears! Ears!" It was really cool to see how excited he was to see other kids and adults who were just like him. Hopefully everyone realized that the kid running around pointing them out was doing it in a positive way!

All in all we're just in a really great stage right now. Coen is ten months old, and although he is a horrific, terrible, very bad sleeper, he is great during the day. He's quite charming and can hold his own with the bigger kids, and he has a pretty impressive sense of humor already. But the nights? Oh my. A few weeks ago I had to go take a PRAXIS test a few hours away and John suggested that I go the night before so that I would make sure to make it to the test on time (Yes, I am always late). I wasn't sure about it, since I'd never spent a night away from Coen, but he insisted that everything would be fine, so I went.

It was heaven. I never even opened my laptop. I got there, ate dinner, put my pajamas on, watched some of "A Cinderella Story", and fell asleep by nine o'clock. I woke up once around four A.M. searching frantically for Coen and worried because he hadn't woken me, but then I realized I was in Toledo and passed back out until seven. That night is easily on my top ten list of best nights ever, although I was thrilled to see all the kids when I got home after my test! And in a nice bit of validation for me, John said "I have no idea how you do this" when I got home.

The weather here is beautiful right now...it's one of the best times of year to live in Indiana, and we are doing a lot of playing outside. Ava and Jace seem to have acquired a little gang of friends in the neighborhood and our doorbell is ringing constantly. Evany and Seth have teamed up to create chaos whenever possible, and I can honestly say that I'm enjoying the ages of all of my kids right now. It's so fun to watch them build relationships with one another. As an only child, I really want my kids to have strong bonds within their family, and it's really nice seeing the foundations of those bonds being built.

I am turning thirty in less than a month and getting remarried in less than two. According to my children, thirty is quite old. Ancient, basically. So that's nice.

And that's what we're up to, pretty much. It's pretty great, in fact.

Happy 5th Birthday, Sweet Boy

Dear Eli

Five years.

You would be five years old today.

This seems impossible. I can still remember everything about you. The last time you kicked as I was standing in the shower. The days of labor starting and being stopped by the hospital over and over. The horror I felt when I realized you were gone. Then, you.

Delivering you. I'd never thought about its meaning before. But every mom delivers her baby to the world, hopefully safely. I didn't cry until the doctor caught you and I suddenly realized how empty I felt without you there with me.

Your curls, black as night. You pointy chin. Your nose. Your clown feet. The way you fit against my chest, under my chin. These are the things I will never forget.

Five years old. Five is a big year. You would be writing your name. Wrestling with you brothers. Idolizing your older sister, If you are anything like Jace ad Seth. Losing the dimples in your elbows and knees. Wearing holes in your jeans. I feel certain you would have impressive eyes.

Last night I cried and told your dad that it feels like after five years no one would remember a baby who died without takin a breath. I said I wished you had lived five minutes so I could have known you alive.

"But you did know him!" your Dad said. "You held him for almost nine months. You knew him better than anyone."

And I did. I knew you. And you were alive.

And what i said about people forgetting? I was wrong, as I often am when I judge other people. I woke up this morning to a bevy of texts and emails. Messages about you. You have not been forgotten. These wonderful people who go out of their way to remind me that they have not forgotten about a baby boy who died too soon will never know jut how much those messages mean to me.

Last year I found out that I have a blood clotting disorder that most likely caused your death. I am so sorry. I always knew you were healthy an we never understood why you died, and knowing now brings a bittersweet peace. It is good to know but it feels like a betrayal, that my body caused this.

I can't wait to see you one day. I love thinking of you, laughing, happy.

I love you more than more.

Mama

cvfhbcbvvcv vvvvv hhhhhhh

Thank You

Did you ever play the Sims back in the day? I did. I was obsessed with the game of keeping all those imaginary people content and well cared for, with the best houses and nicest furniture. I would play for hours sometimes, just trying to get them to make friends or get married. Now, for the record, I have no knowledge of the recent Sims games...I played the original Sims years and years ago.

The game started out nice and slow with a character or two and a house and you went along and added to it all. Better stuff, bigger house, more people. Everyone is happy and taken care of. As you go along more people come, more houses, more stuff. It gets harder to keep everyone happy. It gets harder to keep track of the stuff. Before I knew it, I was barely keeping them all alive.

Sometimes that's what real life feels like to me. Whenever I am in the moment with one thing, in the back of my mind I know what else I should be doing. There is always something else. John is so supportive but he is a fixer. When there is something wrong he wants to make it better and move on. He does not have a brain that forecasts possibilities the way mine does. I can start with one small decision and before I know it, the world has exploded in my brain and we are all dead thanks to the decision I chose.

Ava has a similar brain to mine, it seems. The other day Seth was on his second round of being tested for allergies and he was lying down after the nurses had injected the allergens into his arms. There were little spots of blood that had soaked through the tissue on his arms.

"Oh NO." Ava said. "I don't like blood. Blood makes me think of dying and dying makes me think of Eli and Eli makes me think of Nana and Nana makes me think of Indy and Indy makes me think of Florida and Florida makes me think of Ella and now my day is just ruined!"

I know, kid. I know.

The problem is, it isn't all in my head. Most days it feels like everything I do is taking away from something else. If I hang out with the kids and bake a frozen pizza for dinner I'm sacrificing their nutrition. If I leave them to their own devices while I clean the apartment I feel like I'm neglecting them. If I spend all my time after the kids are in bed at night on homework for school, then I'm not spending any time with John. If I lay on the couch and watch Bones with John all evening I'm neglecting my studies. Most days, I feel like I am barely maintaining; spending a little time with the kids, a little time on the house, a little time on John, and a little time on homework. And a little isn't enough to go around for any of those things.

Parenting, or mothering, really, is such a fine balance. Usually I feel like I am treading water, getting all of us by until things get easier and someone puts more hours in a day. It makes me sad. It's not the parent I want to be, but it's the parent I am.

It's funny; this is not the post that I meant to write today, but it's the post that my fingers have put on the page. It's the post that I've been writing and rewriting in my head for weeks. This blog has become something else I have to do, and that's not what I want it to be. For so long this place was my lifeline. It helped me survive some really tough times in my life.

Not many people get a second chance at this thing, our family, like John and I have. It's important for me to make the most of it. And that means that in this phase of our life, this blog just cannot be the priority that it used to be. I don't mean to be dramatic. I am not going to disappear off the face of the earth. But I need to remove the pressure of updating from my shoulders. I can't do it all, and I need to make sure that the things I'm doing are in my family's best interest. I've removed my ads to make sure that I'm not pressured to write because of ad revenue as well.

The blog won't disappear and I'm sure I will update occasionally. I want each of you readers to know how much you have all meant to me on this journey. I have loved sharing our family with each of you and they way you have all cared for us, a family of strangers on the internet, is amazing to me. From helping to raise money for Seth's surgery to supporting me during my stint as a single parent to being so gracious as we have gone through this reconciliation; I truly believe that I have been lucky enough to have some of the kindest readers on the internet.

Please, feel free to email me for anything at all or to friend me on facebook. My goal is not to sever any relationships I have built here but instead to help me focus more on my family as they are growing up entirely too quickly. I don't want their memories of me to be of a mom staring a a computer screen who is disengaged from them.

Lastly, I always, always, want to hear from anyone who could use a listening ear due to issues I've experienced. If I can do anything at all for others who have lost children, are going through a diagnosis of hearing loss or contemplating cochlear implants, or who are struggling through a separation or divorce, I want to do it. I know that those who reached out to me made me feel less alone in each of those situations, and I want to be able to help others in the same way. I am no expert but I will always listen!

I don't know how to end this post. It feels like the end of an era for sure. Thank you for making it a great one for me.