Family Moon

After the first week of recovery from Annea's birth, I have felt pretty darn good, considering. Calvin has been off of work (one week left of his "man-ternity leave") and catering to our every need. We have time together, Annea sleeps gobs and I am able to get things done. I'm playing Candyland with the girls, reading with them on the couch, and trying to organize the three different sizes of girl clothes we are now juggling. This is some precious time, where Calvin and I are relaxed and on top of our parenting game, where there aren't any pressing things to get done or plan or do, where we can hang out and figure out how to be a family of five, how to have three kids (though I'm sure this is just dipping our toe in, as Annea has been really easy so far), how to be a big or bigger sister. I'm calling it our "Family Moon" and it has been blissful. There is the added complication to this baby-newness time of my mom's cancer, which hangs over my days and makes tears flow at random times, but having a baby and a family of my own to worry about makes compartmentalizing what's going on with my mom easier. Not sure if that's healthy, but it makes it much more possible to cope. I have been able to see her every day-- which I love-- if even for a few minutes. I like knowing she's there.

Beloved friends from near and far, church and community have brought us (and are still going to bring us!) meals, which is the most amazing, wonderful, generous and thoughtful thing. I've said it before, I'll say it again: cooking is such a complex, mysterious, high-stress event for me under the best of circumstances, that having food brought to us is the most tremendous gift. I'm learning new recipes from the delicious dishes that people have brought to us, and... my darling and precious friend Amy, (with her one- year-old, Cassiel), flew up (from LA!) to visit me for the weekend to teach me some recipes and fill my fridge and freezer. Such a gift!! I feel empowered. I have a new list of recipes to make, ingredients to buy, directions for meal preparation, and it feels good. My favorite part of her stay (besides crying with her and the deep, endless, life-long conversations we continued), was when she said: "For a side dish tonight, I'll just look through what you have on hand and make something." Ha! Every day I do the very same thing, look at what I have on hand and... freak out that we have nothing to eat. Amy loves a culinary challenge, so when I told her this, she went through our pantry item by item to let me know what each separate food could be paired with for a dish. Amazing! Miraculous!! Thank you, Amy!!

I didn't get a single picture of Amy slaving away in my kitchen, but here she is providing another important service: painting the girls' nails.

Amy also got to visit with my mom, and snuggle Annea a bunch.

Calvin and I trying to pose me in such a way as to show how very little Annea is. Our peanut!

Baby sandwich!

Eliana helping to show that Annea was two weeks old.

Annea's three week old picture (yesterday was three weeks!). Just like...

Adessa's...

and Eliana's! Do our girls look alike, or what?

Eliana is Three Years Old!

Eliana is three! She will proudly show you how old she now is by bending down her errant fingers until there are only three stuck in the air. She is a self-proclaimed "big girl" and there are only a few things left for her to learn how to do, which she tells me she will learn when she's a grown up. Things like jumping rope, riding a bike to Disneyland, and snapping her fingers--which Adessa just learned how to do, (on one hand, only, and not loud enough to be "snappy", yet). Maybe Eliana considers Adessa a grown up?

Eliana is making strides of her own, though. She helps out so much with baby Annea: she loves to refill my water glass, throw things away or into the hamper for me, and is in charge of washing Annea's hands with a washcloth when we bathe her. And just a few days ago as she was hopping around, she learned how to skip, even!! Step, hop, step hop!

Calvin decided we must get into gear with outdoor games and bike riding, (our girls might be behind!) so we loaded up on soccer and base-balls and a bat and other catching and throwing games and prepared to be sporty. Next up are helmets so we can get the girls on bikes! And we both realized this emphasis on athletics is coming none-too-soon when Eliana and Adessa were trying to play baseball and Eliana kept shouting for her turn with the "hitting thing". Yes, we are finally on our way!

You know how people are most loveable when they are vulnerable? Eliana has been so loveable lately! She loves to dance and play dress up, and as people dropped off dinner for us the other night(THANK YOU, THANK YOU!) she came out to do a little number for them (I believe it was "Waltz of the Flowers" because its always "Waltz of the Flowers".) She had her fancy, frilly tutu on backwards! Her little nipples were showing through the criss-crossed back straps. Oh my goodness I just loved her then, her little embarrassed face when she realized why we were trying not to laugh. Painful, loving them this much, being embarrassed for them, feeling it when they're vulnerable. Eliana is a bit accident prone, she walks into walls and doors, doesn't look where she's going, falls and trips. Oh dear. She's also having a little bit of trouble finding her place in our new family, I think, being told to wait over and over again. Crying easily about so many little things. Asking to be held at the most terrible, inconvenient times when she knows my hands are full with the baby. Ach. It just really does break my heart. I want to be so careful with her, with all of them.

Eliana asked for and received a "Princess and the Frog" cake for the actual day of her birthday. We'll celebrate with a party for both girls (and Jayden, too!) later on, but for her special day, she got a big fluffy cake and a (used, don't tell her) Mermaid barbie doll-thingy and was completely happy. Adessa was another story, not at all okay with Eliana getting something she didn't get.

This picture is blurry, but it shows Eliana's magnificent cake and how she uses both hands to show how old she is.

It was, as you can see, delicious birthday cake!

She posed! When asked! With Eema in the loft at church.

Happily holding Annea.

Annea Elizabeth Lewis

Finally, at long last, (after one week of life!), here is the official blog post welcoming Annea (Uh-nay-uh) Elizabeth Lewis to our family. She was born on Sunday, April 29th, at 1:05 pm. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 10 oz, and was... either 19 or 20 inches long*.
She came at exactly the right time (read: I felt I couldn't have waited another minute!). My mom was going into intense figure-out-the-cancer mode starting Monday, April 30th, and needed to focus on herself and not be worried about being able to make it to my labor or not. April 29th was also my maternal grandma's birthday, born 93 years ago and passed away last year in early April. Auspicious day, all around. I was also dang tired of being pregnant, and tired of the suspense of waiting for labor and wondering if each little braxton hicks was the beginning of something more.

My water broke at 8:45 am Sunday morning, and we went to the hospital, met and were horrified by Nurse Marlene**, walked the halls at 12:00pm to see if we could get things going a little more, got things going, and badaboom badabing, Annea came out after an intense 30 minutes. I went from 7 to 10 centimeters from 12:30-1:00, and it only took one long push to deliver Annea to Planet Earth. Annea came shooting out, really. Nurse Marlene barely caught her, there was no doctor or neo-natal nurse in the room, and I think, finally, I got some credibility from the hospital staff. "Oh, I guess she is going to have the baby."

It is the very best feeling in the entire world that I know of so far to hold your new, wet, wriggling, crying, blue or purple (color doesn't matter as long as they're crying) baby to your chest, after 10 months of pregnancy and however many hours of labor. The relief, the joy, the... relief... the joy... really, that's it. Huge, unparalleled relief and amazing, euphoric joy. The baby is healthy and fine, and made the journey okay: relief beyond relief, joy beyond joy.

Here she is!!

The other piece to my relief and joy is my husband, Calvin. Each of our girls' births have been the most amazing, special, even romantic experiences of our life together. I love this man!! He is such a good daddy to my girls, and partner for me. Thank you, God, for Calvin! Thank you, Calvin! Look at his teary eyes! He was with me through it all, and he loves me and he loves our babies. This is a good man. Girls, you have a marvelous Daddy!

That my mom got to be there, with her heating pad for her back and lots of soup snuck into the delivery room, was a wonderful thing, as well. She felt well enough, and was again part of my "Crack Labor Team". Everyone assumed their duties perfectly, and I feel I could do anything with my mom, sister Laurel, and Calvin at my side. Especially if they were doing soft-touch massage on my arms and legs!

This picture, in light of the recent events regarding Mom's health, made me cry and cry when I saw it. There she is, such a key part of the major events of my life. There she is.

Auntie Laurel holding Annea for the first time.

The proud big sisters meeting Annea for the first time.

Our family of five! We'll work on portraiture as a family unit, but this was our first try.

Eliana taking a turn holding Annea.

Adessa's turn.

Abba's turn.

Grandpa's turn.

She finds her thumb, or assorted other fingers, often! Here, she's smiling about it.

Annea is very sweet and mellow. She sleeps a lot, which I forgot about, and is so puzzled looking when she's awake (which I remember). She is doing well! She is soft and kissable and smells like heaven. I got to bond a little extra with her in the hospital, since I had to stay for the whole two days instead of the one day I was planning on. Nurse Marlene was in no rush to give me the anti-biotics I needed when I got to the delivery room, which I needed since I was Group B Strep Positive. So I had only one dose instead of two, and therefore Annea was at risk of infection and needed to be observed a full 48 hours. After resigning myself to the idea, Annea and I had a great time at the hospital. We just chilled, watched TV, figured things out, gazed into each others eyes, ate pretty decent hospital food, and rested.





*The scatterbrained, very chatty, borderline inept labor and delivery nurse, Marlene, distractedly measured her at 19 inches. At Annea's first doctors appointment, our fabulous pediatrician's assistant, Fatima, measured her carefully and precisely at 20 inches. Could she have grown one inch in four days? Probably not. So her actual length is probably closer to 20 inches, no thanks whatever to Nurse Marlene.

**Nurse Marlene was oblivious to our focused, calm, peaceful approach to birthing. She was a distraction at her best and raunchy and inappropriate at her worst. As my mom said in the middle of it all: "Someday we'll laugh about her, right?" Right.

I'll do a more detailed labor account later, but first I have to hit Eliana's 3rd birthday!!

My Mom

Tuesday, 4/24, my mom went in for a CAT scan to see about what was going on with her gall bladder, the suspected source of pain and problems for her for the past three or more weeks. She had been diagnosed with diabetes about four months ago, and had diabetic symptoms on and off since about November. The CAT scan showed that her gall bladder is fine, and that the diabetic symptoms she's still having are due to tumors on her pancreas, liver, and maybe lungs, too. There was a biopsy yesterday, Friday. It looks bad. It is bad. It's non-operable cancer, probably of the pancreas. If it were the liver or lungs, tumors could be removed, but with the pancreas you can't, just chemo to prolong life and keep the cancer at bay for as long as possible.

So. We're reeling, we're scared, we're sad, we're in disbelief. We're crying a lot. We've been flooded with love and help and prayers and generosity and God's grace at the same time.

Tuesday afternoon, after all the local kids and spouses gathered and cried together, Laurel and mom went out to find a perfect recliner for her to sleep comfortably, something that lying down flat in bed didn't afford. They picked out a cushy beige leather beauty, which we all got to test ride, but then... Wednesday, I didn't see her out of the chair. I know she got out of the chair, she had a doctor's appointment (the one where the surgeon looked at her scans and told her the tumors were inoperable). But our normally unstoppable mom, up and down and in the kitchen, was only in her chair. Now it's kind of like she's holding court, and since I've seen her out of it lately (she's sewing stockings for our unborn children!) I'm feeling better about the recliner. It can be her throne, as she is the Queen of Beckdom. And our glue. And sounding board. She knows where everything is, or where to get it or how to make it. She runs our show. If she didn't impact so many people, starting with the ten of us kids who call her "Eema", this wouldn't be so hard. If she wasn't so wonderful and thereby have created so many "dependents", it might be easier. We depend on her. I depend on her: for advice and counsel, parenting help/commiseration and support, feedback. I depend on her to be there when I walk down the hill, to chat with me about this or that, to pass along books, to loan me ingredients, to watch my girls. She has been at all my big milestones, though, graduation, marriage, births (she plans to be at this birth any day now, though she is tired.) For the younger kids who haven't had these milestones, who haven't benefitted from her wisdom at tricky times in their lives, there is different, more piercing pain, the possibility that she won't be there.

Yes. Yes, be positive, be positive. I am wary about superstitious positivism. People die. From cancer. This kind of cancer. That my mom has pretty bad, wrapped up inside her. Would I love to eat these words, later? Yes. I don't have faith to move mountains. It's something I'll get working on, but I just don't have it. I am not going to set myself up for "If I think positive, all will be well." I have seen enough here on earth: all is not well. I am positive about cherishing each day with her, helping her have the best next few years or months as humanly possible. Yes, yes, there are stories about miraculous changes in diagnosis and prognosis and disappearance of terribleness and years gained from medical leaps and all of that. Yes. Yes. And God is sovereign even if I can't spell it on the first try, and He is with us and loves us and holds us in His hands, and cries with us. And He might have a plan of miraculous healing, and we will accept that joyfully, as we will accept anything else He has in store for our mom and for the rest of us. We will take each day as it comes. We will appreciate each moment that we have, with all of our loved ones, given this reminder that life is brief. We will take a lot more pictures and videos, and keep track, and record, and use this precious time to soak up all of her that we can.


On a practical note, a blog is going to be set up to give updates and missives, and ways that people can help. Mom is in good spirits in between being really sad, especially for Elijah and Jayden. At one point she started apologizing for having cancer, which was almost too much to bear. First thing Monday morning, she has an appointment with an oncologist to figure out her treatment plan, which should get started right away. As things get scheduled and fall into a rhythm, we will be able to take people up on their generous offers of time and service. And mostly, we appreciate the prayers!!

And on a personal note: In talking with my mom, who has a very specific, very serious kind of cancer, she is not finding it helpful to hear about people with other kinds of cancer who have gone into remission. This is not expected in her case, and while it is with such good intentions of being encouraging that people share theirs and others' stories of cures, the best thing you can say to encourage her is how much you love her.

At our wedding, 2005.

Pascha, 2012

The day before Easter, at one of our favorite services where the priests throw flower petals and bay leaves all over the church. Adessa is in the spirit, mugging here with her Nina, godmother Romina.



Pascha morning we got up early and went to breakfast and then West Cliff, all part of a plan to get the girls to nap earlier and be ready for the Pascha picnic. It worked!


Easter Baskets! The girls still haven't caught on to the fact that I've been recycling the Easter kitsch every year since Adessa's birth. Thanks to half off sales, I've added to it, so their bounty is getting a bit ridiculous.



Impromptu egg hunt at our house, trying to disperse the candy as much as possible to as many as possible.


The Pascha Picnic!

Thank you, Daddy, for BBQing for us!


The Easter Egg Hunt. Here's one!

Reach!

Hmm... here's another one!

Sweet sisters! Miss Katie and Miss Marylynn, the girls' Sunday School teachers were most attentive, and the girls loved it!

Checking out the loot with Elijah and Jayden. Adessa has become an excellent sharer when she wants to be. She got all kinds of candy and distributed it to all the kids or willing adults she could find. (Yay!) She still managed to come home with tons, but it's been great to see her share. She would whisper to me: "Jonah didn't get any of this kind of chocolate, so I'm going to give him some of mine. I don't need that much." I tried not to overdo my reaction and jinx anything--but inside I was dancing jigs!

Eliana hanging out with Auntie Lolo and her great friends.

Eating... more sweets. Nary a well balanced meal occurred on this most special day.


Christ is Risen! We had a lovely Lenten season, this year, making it to many more of the (many) services than years past. The girls did well in church, as long as we had steady supplies of Cheddar Bunnies, and stickers helped, too. The Pascha picnic was delightful, as the girls are at the age where they just roamed around and played with friends, aunts, uncles, godmothers, etc. They were pretty low maintenance as far as parenting goes, and it was a refreshing look at our distant future. They both cried when it was time to go, just too much fun.

Side not on Eliana: Eliana is doing some more development with her language, which I'm getting a total kick out of. Her vocabulary isn't changing as fast as it was, now it's her gestures and facial expressions that are getting worked over. She punctuates her stories with the appropriate sad, mad, or happy faces, and her chubby little arms wave around, shoulders shrug, hands on her hips sometimes to make her point. As I write this, it reminds me that she's been watching our expressions, too. The other day I was cutting an apple with my brow furrowed (my concentrating face, unfortunately for my forehead wrinkles), and she asked if I was mad at the apple. She's watching! Soaking it all up. Cute!

Mysterious Ways

And not so mysterious. I am greatly encouraged that I can make positive changes and that there are tools available to me as a mom and a wife. There is hope! There is love to cover a multitude of sins! There are lessons and small conversations and old wisdom heard again, and new breakthroughs and God is so good, so faithful to keep spoon feeding me in small bites tidbits that can transform me. There are people along the way who have things more figured out who can help. Thank God, there is hope!

Lots of things have transpired this Lent, this year, this life of mine to help me to feel this way. I see God's hand and am so thankful and encouraged. Most recently, it was a lenten retreat given by a family therapist, George Papageorge. He talked about living from the heart, and finding our true selves from within the roles we were raised with.


Key Points, in Bullets because I'm not feeling super eloquent, and neither are the notes I took from the retreat.

*In a Family System, all members are connected and affect each other. Hopefully all work together for the good of each individual. When something happens with one person in the family system and kids can't share their thoughts/feelings/wants, they shut down (experience mild afflictions. Larger traumas cause larger afflictions/scrambling/fragmenting, true self becomes confused about who individual is and who God is).

*Afflictions in our childhood (emotional ones) scramble us and separate us from our true self, and from our idea of God.

*True self is ourself, made in the image of God, becoming who God created us to be. We're meant to glorify God, by having Him shine through who we are. (The more fragmented we are, the more fragmented the lens and the less God shines through.)

*In families, we want our kids to have an internal locus of control, where ones' well being is up to them. The opposite is an external locus of control, where our emotions/happiness are outside of ourselves.

*When something is unstable in a family, all other members try to stabilize the family whole by putting their true self on hold and replace their sense of true self with a role. Some roles are:
-All Star: If I do things perfectly...
-Lost Child: acts invisible, no needs, no opinions
-Mascot- class clown, cute/darling, very perceptive and will try to alleviate tension with humor/antics.
-Rebel- scapegoat, warning light, the one who gets dropped off for therapy (and often saves the family)
-Enabler- enables dysfunctioning person to not experience consequences

*Dysfunction isn't about judgement, its about compassion and the need to address problems. In a dysfunctional family, there are unwritten rules: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. We find this family system everywhere, at work, church, the less recovered we are the more our roles show up. The less we face our story (and avoid our true self) the more we repeat it.

*For a functional family, the sense of each person's heart matters, and is on the radar of the parents. The hearts of the parents are fed, parents work on their own issues so that their hearts are available to the kids, and the kids are able to feel their own emotions and discover their own true self.

*Every person is born looking for the answer to "the value question"- Who am I?/What am I worth? That's what we're answering for our kids.

*Addictive Model: If the value question isn't properly answered and we have unmet needs, then we have internal insecurity. WIth no internal sense of value (no internal locus of control), there is a greater appetite for needs to be met and more need for outside approval. Addiction is: External source to solve an internal problem, a compulsion. (Can be food, work, drugs/alcohol, people pleasing, relationship dependency, etc.)

* The church can be a place to heal, if we face reality and are humble and compassionate with each other. We have to approach the church like a hospital, though, acknowledging that we need healing, otherwise it is a museum, where we are on display/put on a show of everything being fine.

*The more courageous we are to face reality, the more we will see God.

Parenting, specifically:
*Kids are wired to receive and maintain their value (answer to the value question, etc.) by connection, connection, connection.
*We can ask ourselves in our parenting: Is what I'm doing having a connecting effect or disconnecting?
*Kids who have "high risk behavior"= low connection.
*Price of Privilege (studies by Madeleine Levine): With a combo of parental performance pressure and material advantage, kids are shown to have an underdeveloped emotional life. Kid thinks- I'm valued by my parents because I jump through hoops and perform, and I'm valued by my peers because I have cool things. I am not valued for who I am-- sadness/depression/drugs.
*John Gottman (Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child): Most parents are either those who give their kids guidance about the world of emotion and those who don't. Ask ourselves; How can I participate in the world of emotion in the life of my child.

*Many parenting styles:
-Dismissive, treats child's feelings as trivial, wants child's emotions to disappear quickly (me so far),
-Disapproving Parent: judges/criticizes the child for emotional expression, distinct focus on child's obedience to authority.
-Laissez-Faire Parent: Freely accepts emotional expression from the child, but offers little guidance on behavior/is permissive
-Helicopter Parent: Feels & carries the pain of the child, overprotects child, unclear boundaries between parent and child.

*The Best Way to Parent: The Emotional Coach
- values child's negative emotions as an opportunity for closeness
-can tolerate spending time with a sad, angry, or fearful child; does not become impatient with emotion.
-is aware of and values his or her own emotions/is emotionally aware
-sees the world of negative emotions as an important arena for parenting
-is sensitive to the child's emotional states, even when they are subtle.
-respects child's emotions
-does not say how the child "should" feel
-does not feel they have to fix every problem for the child
-uses emotional moments to: listen to the child, help the child label the emotion, offer guidance on regulating emotions, set limits and teach acceptable(effective) expression of emotion, teach problem solving skills

Wow! Reading through the Emotional Coach part made me just cry and cry. I am sooooo not there, but there is hope!! There are guidelines! There are books I can read. There is work to be done, for sure. I do want to do that. I think that would help my conflicts with Adessa so very much. And I have so far to go.

*Behind negative emotion is the value question, asking "Who am I? What am I worth?". If child is dismissed for negative emotion, their value question gets an unsatisfactory/bad answer. Kids may escalate bad behavior, hide emotion, get sick, etc.

The other thing he said about kids' emotion was... that negative emotion most often reveals itself at bad times. That makes me laugh. Of course it happens at a bad time, that's what I'm always so mad about.

Okay, this is taking forever for me to post, and I have pictures of the girls that need to be uploaded. There was more. There was a marriage section about being responsible to our spouse but not responsible FOR our spouse's emotions or "stuff." It was a great retreat, I feel myself more patient and willing to give the girls a chance to have their feelings acknowledged. I have hope. Yayyyyy!

q`190-;'