My baby turned two. I'm fine though. I'll be fine.

Somehow, Levi turned two.

It's the worst. And the best.

It's particularly painful to think that this (as far as we know) concludes our life with a baby. The thought of not having a baby to hold and tickle and snuggle and kiss a million times a day is physically heartbreaking to me. It overwhelms me with dread and sadness.

And the fact that Levi is two years old right now is the best. Because two year olds rule supremely. I mean, it can at times be inconvenient because they actually think they rule in a real "I'm the actual boss" sort of way, so setting them straight 14 times a day can be tiresome. But I just adore this stage wholeheartedly. Levi, bless his heart, has been perhaps the most challenging to this point in his life. He hasn't been a good sleeper. And there have been a whole lot of months when he was grumpy and cried more than his allotment of toddler tears. I knew he had a susceptibility to ear infections, but I didn't realize to what extent. Finally, this summer he had tubes put in and his adenoids taken out. And since then he's been sleeping at night. He's been a joy all day (unless you're holding his favorite car. Which is all of them. Every color, every model. Seriously, just stay away from every single car. Also tractors. And frequently monster trucks. He's bad at sharing. We're working on it). I feel awful that he has suffered so much in his life to this point, with what I can now tell was almost constant ear infections.

He is so much fun. He talks in full sentences with better manners than half his siblings.
He is BUSY. He is nonstop. He will not be still so don't try to make him (read: good luck in church. If I didn't need Jesus on the way in, I REALLY need Him by the time I've battled my way through sacrament meeting with Levi).
He is all boy. He loves to wrestle. He loves every kind of vehicle. He loves to talk in a scary growly voice. He loves dirt and digging and he loves to slide.
 He is delighted to be a part of his sibling group and takes great pleasure in playing with any one of them. He particularly likes when Anabelles friends come over and considers himself to be an important member of the group. He's been flirting with a few of her cutest friends since he was a fresh one year old. He is social and friendly and doesn't look back when you drop him off at nursery.
He is obsessed with his crocheted "Bapey" and will tote it around if there's any chance you'll let him take it out of his bed.
 He does like to be read to and his favorite books are "Pout Pout Fish" and the puppet Elmo book that has been well loved by every kid.

He insists on hearing "lullabye" before you tuck him in. Except I think he's figured our that I'm a bad singer so he doesn't want me to sing all of it anymore, he just wants me to start singing it, then he waves, permitting my exit, and I must sing it on my way out as I close the door.

Common phrases include:

"No, I'll show you" as he drags you to something he's built/made/ripped/pooped on.

"I have saaa-prise for you!!" as he quickly finds a scrap of paper or picks a blade of grass for me.

His transition to food from breastmilk has been....unorthodox. Let me explain.

When we started trying to give him baby food, he refused. When I tried giving him normal table foods, he was a bit more accepting. As long as it was brazilian black beans or meat. Because those demands are difficult to accommodate on the daily, he fills in with non food items. Dirt, rocks, dust balls- all acceptable options. Just please don't ask him to eat a banana. 

I recently walked into my room to see that he has the eaten the drywall off my windowsill, all the way down to the metal mesh inside the wall. The entire length of both my windows were a series of tiny teeth marks. In frustration, I yelled for the resident beaver to present himself immediately. Upon hearing his name, he toddled into my room asking what I wanted. But I couldn't really understand him because his cheeks were full. I pried open his chubby cheeks to reveal a mouth full of dryer lint. 

I'm mildly obsessed with his ginger, curly hair and his bright blue eyes. He showed up with bucket loads of personality, opinions, and is so much fun. I love this little boy more than I could ever hope to express. 

"

My breast friends

Twelve and a half years ago I brought Anabelle home from the hospital when she didn't know how to nurse. And I didn't know how to nurse her. She had been fed with a syringe her first week in the NICU and wasn't accustomed to working for the milk, I think. We made a freeloader in under seven days, our first parenting act. I tried every contraption, device and method known to anyone who cares about breastfeeding, to no avail. She wouldn't do it. Finally, I resigned myself to pumping and bottle feeding her. My Mom kept commenting on how sad it was that she wouldn't actually nurse because it was a totally different experience. I felt so frustrated at that because I really had tried and I couldn't make it work. And she was getting the benefits of the milk itself, just the same. I didn't understand her mourning (but I did want it to stop). I experienced the first of many bouts of mastitis and experienced the true misery that it is to live through. I pumped for nine months before my milk dried up completely.

I was full of hope that the next breastfeeding experience would be gloriously different. And then Lila spent the first 5 or 6 weeks in the NICU. I did nurse her in that period. But as I recall she had a difficult time eating well and the nurses insisted she eat a certain amount every three hours around the clock and so to comply with these demands, I pumped every three hours, with nursing attempts sometimes thrown in between. I remember exactly where I was when she really nursed for the first time. We were in Seattle for Cody & Jess's wedding. She was 2 months old. I was absolutely thrilled. Lila slept often in a swing, to help with her reflux. I would wake to the faint sound of her smacking her lips. I would nurse her, burp and change her, she would smile HUGE at me, and then go right back to sleep. It was amazing every night. I was so ecstatic to be able to nurse her, especially at having overcome an extended NICU stay and so much time apart. It took so many attempts and trying to make it work. Two months is a lot of feedings for a newborn. She was four months old before my nipples had stopped bleeding, blistering, and pussing. And then I nursed her for four months until she weaned herself. I remember how happy I was at having had that experience with her. It brought healing to me to be able to nurture and nourish her in this way when we had experienced so much separation at the beginning. It still causes me pain to remember how it tore me up to have her lying alone in a plastic bin in the hospital. Those nursing sessions were precious to me.

When we were expecting our third daughter I again was hopeful that things would be different this time. And it was. Within 24 hours of her being born, we were home. She was nursing right away. I had done so much work to keep my milk up with the previous girls that I decided I would nurse both sides every time. Maisey ate every two and a half hours all through the night as a young baby. Even as a bigger baby I was still nursing in the night far more than I had with the other two. But I had plenty of milk, and the sweetest relationship with her. She would gently tickle my sides while I nursed her, smiling up at me. There aren't words for how sweet our nursing relationship was. I understood why my Mom wanted so much for me to have this experience. There really isn't anything like it.

When Elise came along I was the busy mother of three little girls and Braden was gone for several months of her infanthood. I struggled mightily with milk production. I was exhausted and alone and couldn't recover from a stomach infection. I recall fighting through that to maintain my milk. It caused me epic amounts of stress because Elise was always hungry. She was five or six months old before I rounded that corner and then we nursed until she was 15 months. This too proved to be a magical bonding experience for us.

I never expected to nurse a boy. I never expected to mother a boy. For some reason this was different. Not better or worse. Just different. I knew the back of Emmett's misshapen head like the back of my hand. I would nurse him, and tell him what a good man he was going to be. That I knew he would do powerful things for Heavenly Father, I could just feel it. I walked out of his room every night feeling like my heart might burst with love, and feeling like I just fed a mighty warrior.

Both boys were easier to establish nursing with, although I have always had to be so vigilant in building and protecting my milk supply. I'm sure by that time the experience I had gained decreased my stress and increased my confidence. But it was never easy. I had blisters and blood for months with each one of them. I had mastitis a few times with most of them. I had clogged ducts that I had to remove myself. through so many tears, on more occasions than I can count. I've spent countless midnight hours, completely exhausted, propped up somewhere, nursing a baby. I have cried when they cried, knowing that I had to feed them, and knowing how bad it was going to hurt. 

 I've spent 7 or 8 years of my life in this pattern. It's been a monumental part of my life. Like all hard things that require sacrifice, I wouldn't trade even a single feed. Those quiet moments with each of my babies have been nothing short of amazing. I've loved the feeling of accomplishment the first time you hear them swallowing your milk. I love the "milk drunk" smile after a feeding session. I love nursing them to sleep while I stroke their cheeks and hair and tell them what they mean to me. I love that when they are sick I have the ultimate consolation and medicine.

And now Levi is 15 months old and he wanted to be done. He's too busy and there's not enough milk to justify the stillness it requires. And my heart is just broken. To never hold and feed a baby in this way again is so painful for me. I have suffered so mightily in all of this. There has been more excruciating pain associated with breastfeeding for me than I can adequately describe. But the sweet sweet experiences have been so worth it. I am grateful to every crack and crevice of my soul for the opportunity to bear and feed six children. To have cared for them and loved them in this way has been an honor and a blessing to me.

Closing this door is heavy and emotional and just so very sad. I left Levi's room the other night, just knowing that that had been it, our last feed together. I went back to bed and just cried. Braden woke up to my sniffling and thought someone had died. I told him I had just nursed a baby for the last time and I was heartbroken. He held me and comforted me, and I couldn't help but think of all the times he did this when I was in pain and exhausted from breastfeeding. We had come full circle it seemed. It felt triumphant and also like a giant black hole of loss.

And now I'm left with a body that has borne six children. And nourished six children. And it looks like it. It sags and bears scars and stretch marks. It's compromised in some ways because of the trauma. Things aren't quite where they should be. And sometimes that's hard for me. It's hard to look in the mirror and embrace that. But when I really stop and think about what my body has done, what's it's given me, I don't stay there very long. I stand in awe of womanhood and the incredible gift it is to bear life. To sustain life. In that privilege, yes even in that suffering, is found, I believe, the deepest and purest love. It defies description or comprehension to someone who has not experienced it. I am beyond grateful that I know love in this way.

My week summed up by my Google searches:

DRY HACKING COUGH AT NIGHT: Lila, Elise, Anabelle, and sometimes Emmett and Levi, have all been hacking for weeks now. Mostly Lila. It has kept me up for weeks and it sounds like she's dying and I just keep asking the internet to reassure me that she's not going to die. I'm not sure if our bodies hate Utah's blooms or if we have an eternal virus that took permanent resident in our lungs, but we're going through cough syrup just a little bit slower than we go through milk.

I live in a sleep torture chamber

I've been living under the illusion that once all my children had grown to the point of "sleeping through the night" as they say, that I too would be able to do this. There are not words for how wrong I was. No words, only a look. That look is one of bags the size of peanuts under your eyes, a baseball hat covering unwashed hair, and yoga pants-regardless of whether or not exercise happened.

Levi, at 18 months sleeps through the night only on rare occasions. Sometimes if you get him a "baa", or a bottle of milk, he will go back to sleep. Far too often, he will cry and cry and not snuggle or lay down or be reasonable by any human standards. I think his frequent ear infections are to blame. Also teething. Also, he's really into horses and he knows that if he screams for long enough I will turn on funny YouTube clips of horses dancing.

Emmett, bless his heart, often comes out of his room for a variety of reasons. Sometimes he's not tired anymore-likely because he fell asleep somewhere absolutely ridiculous for 3 hours earlier that day. Sometimes, he wants to sleep by me. Sometimes, it's too dark in his room. Sometimes, his back itches. Sometimes, he needs a drink. Sometimes, he needs to pee. Always when he pees, he slams the toilet lid closed. One night this week he told me there were ants in his bed. There weren't.

Oftentimes, when he does this, it wakes up Levi. Who upon waking, wants to eat black beans and watch dancing horses.

Elise is currently trying to night train. Which means at 2:30 she comes in and tells me she wet the bed. By the time we take care of that, I'm wide awake.

So I lay there and listen to poor Lila hacking and coughing relentlessly. It's been going on at night for weeks and nothing I've given her has made any difference. She coughs and coughs throughout the entire night and then sometimes chatters because she is then wide awake.

Anabelle usually wakes up somewhere in the five o clock hour, always rushing to the bathroom which is next to my room. If I have managed to fall back asleep, this always takes care of it in a jiffy.

Maisey never wakes me up.

She gets the tallest wedding cake and the prettiest prom dress.

In between all of this ruckus, there lies next to me a dear and wonderful snoring man who I love. Who snores. So much. And I love him. So much. But the snoring. Is hard. So much hard. I am so tired. Sentences are also hard.

Tell me when. Somebody please tell me when I will sleep again in decent amounts of time. Will I be forty but look sixty when this happens? Because that's just five years away. And if it's just five years, then I can take it, I just need to know so I can schedule my Amazon deliveries of Nutella and Diet Coke appropriately.

course correction

Our lives are so very busy. These are perhaps the busiest days we've known as a family. Braden's school has him gone all day and he doesn't return until around bedtime, and then he has more homework to do. I thought that in the absence of homeschool I would have more time and less frenzy. And it has changed, for sure. There is less mental stress, no doubt about that. But I still feel like I can't keep up with the pace of our lives. I've tried to move into the doula and birth world and that has taken a lot of time. It's stealing peace and time from me that I need to dedicate to the family. I've recently decided that as much as I love it and want to be involved in it, it has to wait for another season. I'm committed to teaching a childbirth class on base in a week and I'll fulfill that and the birth to which I'm already contracted, but then I'm putting it on a shelf.

I feel there are things which require all of me.

I need time to study the Come Follow Me manual in a way that translates to meaningful family discussion.

I need to resurrect this blog. I want to record our growing faith and our growing children.

I need time to do puzzles and read more books and throw tea parties in the afternoons.

I need more quiet in my mind, so that when I pick the kids up from school I'm ready to really listen.

I need to carve out space in my heart to give to the young women and serve to my highest capacity for the time I'm here.

Remembering Irma and doing something about it

I made a goal this year to go to the temple once a week. All of a sudden it was Saturday and I realized I hadn't gone yet and needed to. I left the house around dinner time, telling Braden that I was just going to do initiatories and then pick up some things for our lesson. Once I started driving I returned my Mom's call from earlier that day. In the course of our conversation she asked if I had seen the changes to the temple. I had not and didn't know what they were. She urged me to go and although I told her I didn't bring my temple bag, she repeated a few more times that I should still just do a session, I told her that I planned on going weekly and I would do a session on Tuesday. Once in, I realized that differently from the Oklahoma temple, you have to bring your own clothes, even for iniatories. I went to rent, still sort of tossing around the idea of doing a session, and the matron told me that it would be double the cost for session clothes and that the session was about to start. I paid for just my dress and shoes and went to change. While dressing, my mind could not feel at ease. I was going back and forth about what I should do. As I left the locker room I was thinking about how it wouldn't work because I really needed to use the bathroom and I had just locked my purse up and wouldn't have time to go back and pay for the additional necessary items. All at once I knew I needed to do a session. I quickly made my way back to the rental matron, explained what I was feeling, and asked her if I could pay her after the session for the items I needed. She agreed and I quickly made my way to the name booth. I asked the matron working there if I would make the session she looked at her watch and said, "The Spanish session, right"? I told her that, no, I did not want to go to the Spanish session. She said that they would give me a headset and it would be fine, and sort of ushered me along in the process, even though it was clear that I wasn't interested in doing that. I was doing the session to be able to take in the new changes and I wanted it to be a cool experience, unhindered by the fact that headsets are annoying. When I reached the chapel I was in line and the temple worker turned away people behind me because the session was full. I told him that maybe I would just wait the half hour for the next session, thinking that I could catch up on my scripture reading. He said the next session didn't start for an hour. I resigned myself to the experience of the headset and took a seat. Throughout the session I tried to concentrate on the words in my headset and not be distracted by the Spanish recording playing louder then my headset could. I noticed several changes and loved them, immediately feeling the need to come back soon so I could take them all in. As I sat in this large session and waited for my turn to approach the veil, I had quite a while to think. Being surrounded by Spanish and sitting with a room full of Latina women, combined with the fact that I had just had a conversation with Jess about Irma, got me thinking about her. I sat trying to remember if I had done her endowment. I did her iniatory work the first year we were married and it was a beautiful experience. I felt strongly that she finally had the blessings to her body that she needed in this life but didn't have. This combination of being in the temple, in a Spanish session, and having recently talked about her, created the perfect situation for me to spend a few minutes contemplating her work. I began to feel the tingly feeling I get when I know that the Spirit is directing me to do something. I got excited as I began to know that I should do her temple work. Anabelle came to this earth with genealogy in her heart and we haven't been able to encourage her very much because it seems that both of our sides have experts who have taken our lines farther than we know what to do with. I gained a knowledge that I should pursue her line and try to focus my temple work towards her family. As I neared the veil I began rehearsing in my mind the things I would be required to say, as it has been a while since I've done a session. There was a long row of veil workers, most of them young white returned missionaries I presume. I was directed to the end where I couldn't see the matron who was waiting for me. Once there I briefly took in that she was an older Spanish woman. We immediately began our work there and I was focused on saying my parts. Once I had finished and was being ushered through, I looked over at her, for the first time really, and all I saw was Irma. I looked into her eyes, for the briefest of moments, and I instantly errupted into tears. It hit me so instantly. The only word in my brain was 'Irma', and I was completely overcome. I was so unprepared for that experience. I was directed to the celestial room but I didn't want to go just yet. I wanted to look at her face. I wanted to take her in. I wanted to hug her and tell her that she looks so much like my dear friend, Irma. And then I wondered if she really actually looked like Irma or if the Spirit had helped me to see that image. I sat in the celestial room, catching up on scripture reading, and hoping the matron who helped me would come in. I waited until it seemed that all of the matrons had come through and no one else was entering the room. All the while I had a prayer in my heart that I would see her. I wanted to tell her what she meant to me and thank her for being there. I was very aware that I needed to see her in order to fully receive the message I was being sent. I finally decided to go change as the room emptied out. Back in my clothes and leaving the locker room, in walked my matron. I chased her down and called out to her. When she turned around I suddenly decided I shouldn't tell her the whole story as I had planned to. I simply choked out, "Thank you for being here today. I think you needed to be here just for me". Tears sprang to her eyes as well and she said that she could tell I was a very spiritual person and could feel of my spirit as I stood next to her. I walked out of the temple so grateful. I could see how all those details came together to allow me to gain the direction that I needed to work on Irma's family. My Mom urging me to go repeatedly, the Spanish session being the only one available, even the session being as full as it was and where I was sitting in it. The temple is a place of revelation and a place of peace. And above all, a place of love. 

When the most wonderful boy turns FOUR

Last night as we were driving home from our St. George trip, I told Emmett that tomorrow is his birthday and asked him what he wanted to do. After thinking about it for a minute, he grinned and shouted, "Put more ornaments on the Christmas tree!". I informed him that I actually planned on taking down the Christmas tree. He asked so sweetly, "Please Mama, Can we leave it up for one more day?".

When asked what he wanted to eat he said Mac n cheese. When asked where he wanted to go he said, "I don't care. You can decide whatever we do". When asked what kind of cake he wanted he said, "Strawberry. Actually Mama, I don't care. Whatever kind of cake is fine with me".

He came down the stairs this morning to find some green ribbon that I had curled and taped to the ceiling, and his birthday banner hung. He ran to me and squeezed me tight, thanking me and declaring me to be THE BEST.

He is so grateful and low maintenance that it tempts me to spoil him. 

When we went around at dinner and had everyone say what they love about the birthday boy:

elise: he is funny

anabelle: he is sweet

lila: 

Maisey: he is brave, for example jumped off the high point at the ball pit.

Dad: so tender hearted

Mom: is such a happy helper with a great attitude and is happy with whatever he gets.

Songs: thunder, eye died the tiger, havana oohh na na

Braden and I took the three youngest to a Lego store (after checking his best friend Elise out of school), where we built legos cars and then raced them down a track.Then we took them to Krispy Kreme to pick out a donut. When the kids got home we took them to Provo Beach and played a wicked game of tag in the tunnels and playland. He had Mac for dinner, along with his favorite beverage-muscle juice. 

I never felt a void in my life when I just had the four girls. I never spent one moment wishing for a son. But Emmett has brought me so much joy in the last four years. I just absolutely adore this sweet sweet boy and his tender loving heart. May it always be so.