Cooking School by Gavin

This post written by Gavin:

One fine day in January I was learning to cook. I was making some fish sticks for dinner. I put them in the microwave. The first time they were good, but the second time smoke came out of the microwave and the fish sticks were burned. The fire alarm went off and Mom came running in. We turned on the fan and the breeze took the smoke away. It was because I accidentally put them in for 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds so they burned in the middle of cooking. I won't do that next time.

Birthdays!

It's birthday season! We have 6 birthdays in 9 weeks in our family. It keeps the dreary Chicago winters full of fun. Gavin, Abe and Ella have all had their birthdays in the last month, so I thought it was time for an update.

Ella at 3:

Ella is our free-spirited, party girl. She loves people. We are always amazed by her ability to engage people in conversation and keep their attention. She can sit and chat up just about anyone. If she is not getting the attention she needs she is making a mess. She loves to rip up papers, smear food around, color on the walls, unravel the toilet paper or pull all the clothes out of her dresser. Anything she can do that will cause me to react. Her bedroom always looks like the most shocking episode of "Hoarders", despite the fact that I clean it every-single-morning. But, she is always cute while she does it. I will catch her doing something so naughty and she'll look up with her adorably big eyes and say "Don't you just love me Mommy? Are you so happy to see me Mommy?" It makes it really hard to punish her! She is just so darn charming! She has also mastered the art of acting just ditzy enough to get away with things. I can tell her over and over not to do something, but she'll just continue doing it and saying "Oh, I'm so sorry Mommy. I didn't know that Mommy." She is a very convincing airhead, but I know she's outsmarting me at every turn. She keeps our house light-hearted even on the hardest of days.

Abe at 6:

Our little Abe is now in Kindergarten. He loves school. I am shocked by how quickly he has made friends. It has always been such a struggle for Gavin. It is just fascinating for us to watch Abe. He gets phone calls from the girls and notes from the boys. It makes us laugh. He played on a soccer team for the first time this year. He loved that too, but I think he liked the socializing the best. At the end of the season the coach handed out awards to each player and he got the "Captain Chatty" award. He spent most of his game time trying to make his teammates laugh at him. He still loves art and has real style. At parent teacher conferences his teacher was actually asking if she could have some of his drawings to keep because she loved them so much. It's not that he creates the most accurate depictions of things, but he has a real creative voice. I am always surprised by how well he can compose a picture and give life to his drawings. I am not at all artistic, so I really enjoy watching him develop that talent. He's so great!

Gavin at 8:

Gavin is in 2nd grade and this school year has by far been the hardest. We are just entering the age where teasing begins. He has struggled with teasing and bullying this year for the first time. It is really hard to watch. There are days when I get so frustrated that I just want to pull him out and home school him, but I know that he needs to learn some coping strategies at some point and it is probably better to learn them young. He has wonderful social workers and therapists at school that do their best to look out for him. I am also so grateful that he has Abe, who is a constant tease, but does it with love. I think it is good practice for Gavin, believe it or not. Abe is also helping Gavin to develop some age-appropriate interests like legos, Star Wars, Batman and Wii. Just yesterday Gavin came home to tell me that one of the kids who teases him the most had started talking with him about a video game they both like to play and saying they should get together and play it some time. It's a small thing, but it made Gavin feel so good. Gavin still loves to read his non-fiction books. Presidential biographies are a favorite, but he has slowed down a bit with those. We have even convinced him to start reading some fiction, which is a major victory for us. It feels like with each hurdle we jump over two more pop up, but we are learning together, slowly but surely. I am so grateful to have him. He teaches me so much about myself and how I can become better. He has such an innocent spirit about him and tries so hard to always do the right thing. A family friend who has an autistic child once commented to me that one of the greatest blessings of this disability is that it helps them to see the good in humanity. That has been so true for us. There are truly angels among us. People reach out to him in ways that surprise us everyday and he can melt even the coldest heart. God has given us such a gift in allowing us to raise this little boy.

Meet Ashlyn Rose

Well, things still are chaotic around the West household. Ella is in bed with pneumonia as I write this, but I'm starting to think that this chaos is just my new reality. When I was pregnant with Ashlyn I kept telling myself "We are already outnumbered by our children, four can't be that much harder than three". Well, folks I'm here to tell you it is that. much. harder.....like, A LOT harder. But, I really want to update the blog before I forget all the details of Ashlyn's first weeks (which will happen really soon with my mushy mommy brain).

Ashlyn Rose was born November 18, 2009 at 2:01pm at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, IL. The last few weeks of my pregnancy were horrendous (like any good pregnancy should be). I felt like my skin was going to rip open at any moment, like her little feet were going to break my ribs and like I had to go to the bathroom all day, every day. At my Nov. 17th Dr. appointment, my doctor told me she'd take pity on me and induce me early the next morning... an offer I could not refuse! We got to the hospital at 7am the next morning and they broke my water and started me on pitocin. Everything went pretty smoothly. I got my epidural before the pain got too intense and it only took about 6 hours for me to dilate to 10cm. At around 1:45pm, just as I was getting ready to push, my cell phone rang. We weren't going to answer it at first, but Matt read the number to me and it was the kids' school nurse. Uh oh! They were calling to tell us Gavin was at school with a fever and I needed to come in to get him. Sorry, not gonna happen! Luckily, my parents were only 20 minutes away and they were able to run over and pick him up. We all had a good laugh about that. Ashlyn came out healthy and FEISTY! All the nurses were shocked at what a good scream she had from the get go. I think Matt and I had a little panic attack thinking "what did we get ourselves into?", but she eventually calmed down and was an angel the rest of our hospital stay and that whole first week. When she was about 7 days old I started to feel pains in my lower abdomen at night. The first couple times it happened I thought they were just really bad afterpains and threw on a heating pad. On the 10th day after she was born I woke up around 1am with a terrible pain in my lower right side. I still thought it was afterpains, so I got out the heating pad and tried to go back to sleep. By 2am the pain was so bad I started vomiting and thinking maybe this was something more than just cramps. Matt woke up and called our next door neighbor (she is a saint!) to come sleep on our couch while we headed off to the ER. We had to wake up poor Ashlyn and drag her out into the cold because she was still nursing and had no other options for food. I sat in the ER vomiting and trying to nurse Ashlyn with a morphine drip in my arm for about an hour before they figured out I had a kidney stone in my right side. They loaded me up with prescriptions, sent me home and told me to come back if I hadn't passed it in a week. That was a long week! It took me a full week to pass the stone. The medication they had me on was strong. It made me totally loopy and Ashlyn totally miserable. She cried for a week straight. I am grateful that we have so many loving family members and friends who helped us by bringing us dinner, watching our kids and driving them where they needed to go.

The last few weeks with Ashlyn have been a roller coaster. We have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, a kidney stone, 3 kids' birthdays, a birthday party, a baby blessing, a baptism and the flu (3 times). I feel like we haven't even had time to sit back and reflect on all the changes in our lives. Ashlyn is a bit high maintenance at the moment. I spend most of my time nursing her, trying to put her to sleep or trying to keep her asleep, which is no easy task with 3 other kids around. The other kids ADORE her. Ella is especially drawn to her. I have to be very careful where I leave her to sleep because Ella cannot resist the temptation to pinch her cheeks and kiss her and sing to her. It is really cute. Ashlyn is starting to coo and smile at us pretty regularly. She has the cutest little smile that makes her beautiful blue eyes twinkle. Abe loves to sit and talk to her whenever he gets a chance. He swears he was the first one to get her to smile. Gavin loves to hold her as often as I'll let him. He has always been so sweet to Ella and I am excited to watch him bond with Ashlyn as well. We feel so blessed to have her in our lives.