Thanks Sam

Sam has been really concerned about his Dad. He wanted to go and buy Pete a remote control car so they went this morning and got one. He also thought it would be a good idea to buy him a light saber. He chose green because his Dad is "one of the good guys". He also wanted him and his Dad to wear their Superman shirts today. Thanks Sam, now I think your Dad has everything he needs to be the best fighter he can be. :)

-Arin (jen's sister)

Update

I am blogging in behalf of Jen right now. She just informed me that Pete has woken up for a small moment. She does not any one to have a sense of false hope. It is a good sign, but not any sign of being out of the woods. His body temp is at 33 degrees until 11:00 tonight (it has been since 11:00 last night) in order to preserve the cells in the brain and other reasons I don't completely understand. At 11:00 tonight they will slowely begin to warm him up, which will then tell more of the future. For Pete to open his eyes, and squeeze the nurses hand is huge in my book. Not knowing the future, at least she was able to look in his eyes.

The nurse asked him to move his feet and give a thumbs up, neither of which he was able to do. BUT, considering his body is 33 degrees and he is sedated....this is amazing. They have now sedated him again, as they don't want him awake that cold. So again, time will tell. I will update again tonight.

FIGHT PETE!

Roxey

please hope for this

if we can please any form of this wonderful person back we will be satisfied for lifetimes. please continue to hope that this wonderful person is not gone yet.

i can do hard things

this was recently the subject of a post i read on a friend's blog. i read it over and over again and pondered if i had been asked to do hard things in my life, and i concluded that i had not. that is no longer the case. i have spent the last 24 hours enduring something harder than i ever imagined i would be expected to do.
last night pete had a major cardiac arrest in his sleep. he is alive and not conscious, and the outcome is looking bleak. they are still saying that he has a 2-5 % survival rate right now. he is very sick. the best things he has going for him is that he is young, strong, and healthy. the other thing is that it was a witnessed cardiac arrest and that everything happened as quickly and exactly as it could have. i was the one who witnessed the arrest. i called 911 immediately and began administering cpr the second he stopped breathing. the attending officer and first paramedic to arrive were people who knew pete and who loved him. that certainly added to the intensity of his care by no coincidence.
my brain is really full, and my heart is really empty. i have so many emotions that i may be sharing here; i need them out. so many memories, too. i didn't know a human heart could hurt this much; i didn't know i would be so lost without him.
i keep wondering if i can do hard things. in my wondering i have had overwhelming confirmation that i can do hard things, but i don't want to. i don't want to do anything without him. i would do any hard thing if i could just have him back.




i know many of you will be very concerned by this news. there is nothing that can be done right now, and everything that can be done is being done. this blog will try to be maintained with updates. please feel free to contact me through the comment section or through email, but i will probably be too distracted to respond in a timely manner.
if you are one of my clients, then please consider any scheduled hair appts. canceled. i know i will be taking a long break from doing hair. plus, my flat iron broke, and pete was going to fix it yesterday; that was the plan. but please don't get too comfortable somewhere else. i will need your support back at some unspecified time.

the older sibling reactions

sam & will have been quite interested in the new baby. sam started asking when his baby sister would be here before i even knew i was pregnant. he never wavered; he always thought we were having a girl. will's guesses were funny; if i ever asked him in private what we were having he would always say a girl. however, anytime he heard sam say a girl he would quickly fire back that it was a boy. he's a bit of an antagonizer. :) their reactions after seeing the ultrasound pictures...

sam... "i didn't know there was really a baby in your tummy; i thought you were just eating a lot of food!" thanks, sam, glad to clear that up. after looking at the pictures he said, "where's maggie's curly hair?"

will... he didn't say much; he just started carrying around his baby doll again when we got home. he did tell pete tonight that "i baby."

it will certainly change the dynamics of our family to add a 3rd child, but i am excited to feel like a full-fledged family. for crying out loud, we will have 3 kids now!!

the big reveal

a thousand thoughts have been going through my brain.
the emotions were overwhelming at times as i saw that precious baby on the screen.
the miracle of it all is more than i have words to express.
the other amazing part was discovering that my instincts were right.
we are have a baby girl.

thankful

i'm thankful in a lot of ways that i moved here almost 11 years ago and was able to create the life i had always dreamed about up to that point. i'm thankful my family followed and that we live close enough and are still close enough to want to get together as often as we can. i'm thankful that we had our children so close and that they love each other. i am so grateful to watch their natural ability to love each other. i hope these things will always be able to be on my "thankful" list.

TN

pete gave me a new nickname this morning. the nickname was "TN". it stands for "TV Nazi". it's fitting. perhaps i should've nicknamed myself this as a pre-adolescent. i've always been a "TV Nazi" in a way. i remember never loving the feeling of just sitting and watching tv; i always thought it was boring. i even tried to force myself to get into the show "Beverly Hills 90210", but after a few episodes i realized it wasn't me and was really just a waste of my time.

i apparently have not lost this attribute; it has carried over with my children, and i am trying desperately to not use the tv as an entertainment staple. i can't help it, almost every time i turn on the tv for them i feel like i'm depriving them of an opportunity to create, play, or imagine, and that's just not a good feeling for me. if my children are constantly entertained with tv when they get bored, how will they learn to entertain themselves with their brains? i believe they won't if they have the entertainment world fulfilling that boredom with just a push of a button. don't misread me, i don't think tv is all bad; there are some very educational and entertaining shows to watch on occasion. i just dislike how tv can creep right in and start controlling the quality of family life, not just with our children. pete and i have a horrible habit of turning on the tv as soon as we get our kids in bed and most of the time falling asleep in front of some mind numbing show which means a lot of time we don't go to bed together. this is certainly an interference to our relationship. the time could be so much better spent talking, reading together, creating, or just being together and awake.

it's not just the wasted time that bothers me. i recently read that toy manufacturers spend $16 billion per year on advertising directly to children. that disturbs me. i know that no one can be completely immune to marketing forces, but i do believe that the less exposure a child has to media, especially television, the less vulnerable they will be to advertising messages. as long as i'm the parent i want the message in my home to be that we have enough; i don't want some manufacturer's dollar to influence my family that we always need more useless STUFF. that is a message that is immensely important to me, and if i can't send it now, then what makes me think i can send it later.

i had a good little breakdown about it today and decided it was time to for action in my family. we are nominating a "no tv week". i'm not throwing it out forever; however, i'm hoping to just throw out the bad habits that we have fallen into and start fresh to establish better habits later. a detox if you will. if you believe in this purpose, then i encourage you to designate this as a "no tv week". this would be a great time; some of your younger kids will have older siblings home from school for thanksgiving break. what a perfect time to pull out all the family games you've been accumulating with the best of intentions of spending time together? what about getting outside together? going to the library? cook something? playing with family that may be around for the holiday? or better yet... why not let your kids spend their time figuring out how to entertain themselves? if you get too desperate for a shower without a visitor in the bathroom, then check out some books on tape from the library and let your children listen to a story instead of turning on the tv. it can be done, and i'm certain you will be more than satisfied with the results.

i was satisfied with our results today. sam asked to watch "a bug's life". i explained we were taking a break from watching tv and that he would need to find something else to do. i was more than impressed with what he came up with. he spent about 45 minutes doing these things all of his own thinking.... drawing pictures for his cousin emily then cutting them into a puzzle and stuffing them into a homemade envelope, laying out maps all over the floor and charting courses to all the places he wants to go, playing with matching cards, and sorting buttons into his own patterns (big, bigger, and small). without a doubt i know that fed his brain far more than "a bug's life" would have, and that's my hope for my children.



try it, i know you can do it, too. it may be overwhelming at first, and i can guarantee that there will be far more messes for you and children to clean up. i am convinced it will be worth it. make the pledge and do it with us. if you want to spread the message, then post it on your blog, too. post your experience, too. i will be anxious to see how it goes for you. check back for our progress, too. and here's to a "no tv week"!!

thankful

i'm thankful for my blog. yes, my blog; i know, it's not super cool and is only of interest to me and maybe my grandma. however, i've recently been digging through the archives and can't help but be grateful for all the little things i've written about my family and children. without this blog so many of my moments would be completely forgotten. i'm thankful i have so much written down somewhere.

thankful

i'm so fortunate and thankful to work from home on my terms. i'm mostly thankful for the long-standing relationships that i've had with many clients who have chosen to sit in my chair year after year. their friendship and confidence in me means far more to me than the paycheck. i LOVE my job and am so grateful to have it.

thankful

i love that i have a husband who comes home early everyday, normally by 4:00, and that he is so willing to relieve me from the stresses of a long day of not feeling good and not being as patient as i should. after much needed down time, listening to him snuggle and entertain the boys, i'm thankful i want to join the family again. thank you, pete.

thankful

i love thanksgiving; the whole season of it. i think of lots of things that i have to be thankful for all the time. in anticipation of the big thanksgiving day, i thought i would share a few of those things.

i'm thankful for a 2-year-old who will take a nap if i rock him to sleep. i'm so grateful he will still take a nap all while allowing this tired pregnant momma 20 minutes of my own resting time.

just another phase

life really seems to be organized in many phases; with the passing of one, there is always another. some are big and really memorable but most seem to be smaller and less significant. obviously going to junior high, graduating from high school, going to college, living on your own for the 1st time, getting married and living with a new person, being a newlywed, being married with more experience, having a baby and then having another, and on and on are all phases i would consider pretty monumental.

the phase that seems to be upon me is far less memorable in the grand scheme of things, but it feels big right now. big for me and big for sam. his whole life he has had so much one on one time with me; i think 1st born children can't help it. it must be part of their birthright or at least just how it works out. even after will was born sam still got a lot of time because will has always taken 2-3 hour naps everyday, and i would always make it a priority to do something with sam during that time besides just clean the whole time. will is ending his nap phase; he's about an every other day taker now. i've just realized that the phase of sam having one-on-one time will be over once the nap is over. we will continue to sew, play games, bake bread, paint, snuggle in bed and read stories, etc.; we will just all being doing it together now. that's certainly not a negative thing. with the passing of one stage there is always another. sam is closing the phase of that firstborn one-on-one time, and he is entering the stage of being a full-blown sibling, sharing everything especially time. i must re-iterate, this is NOT a negative. just like the phase of newlywed to experienced is not a negative thing. it simply just marks the closing of one phase and the beginning a new one. we are transitioning right now, and i have a hard time recalling how the closing and beginning of a new phase has been so obvious to me.

a dream come true

well, it's finally official. we will be spending a month of our upcoming summer away in this beach house on the oregon coast. this is the kind of experience i dream of having, and thankfully pete now has a job that can accommodate these kind of dreams. i can't wait. checking out these views, relaxing on the beach, exploring the beautiful dense forest, being with my precious little family including a newborn day after day with no commitments or responsibilities.... i honestly can't think of anything better. i'm so excited about this i find moments where i can't catch my breath. wow. this is really going to happen; it's not just a dream anymore.

better late than never

sam had quite the birthday last week. as of now, he's an easy kid to please. the only thing he wanted for his birthday was...

a dinosaur cape



a dinosaur cake


and for his cousin rachel to come to his party

he even told me that at his party he didn't want any extra games; he said he likes just playing around with his "friends". however, i did plan a dinosaur hunt where i decorated part of our house like a jungle and gave the kids a scavenger hunt list of dino things to find in the jungle. it was a great party with all of our family and yummy tostadas (his favorite right now) for dinner.

he really seems so much older now that he's 4, even though i know he really can't be that much older than he was 2 weeks ago. he woke the next morning and said he felt so much better now that he was four; i'm glad.