Monthly Archives: July 2013

My Girl & Me

Mommy & Me1Mommy&Me2Lydia and I went to Mother-Daughter camp this past weekend with our church. It’s the same camp I went to as a child and although there are new buildings and new cabins (thank goodness!) most things hadn’t really changed. There were, of course, new people and new songs. But there were also some of the same songs and the same people. Nurse Judy is still there and she still greets each cabin with a rousing rendition of the little birdies song. And the chapel is still beautiful in its simplicity.

We walked around the lake (and got our feet ridiculously muddy because it’s been raining there like it’s been raining here) and she found a giant snail. She couldn’t wait to tell Carter all about it!Mommy&Me4.jpg

I loved laughing with her and watching her laugh and seeing her step outside of her comfort zone a time or two.
We found a leaf on the road that had been crushed over and over by cars and she carefully peeled it from the street and we brought it home. I’m trying to figure out how to preserve it. Frame it maybe?

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We spent a bit of our quiet time on the swings by the lake. Talking about bits of this and that, I tried to memorize the sound of her voice. It won’t be this small for much longer. We stood on the dock and watched raindrops fall onto the water, like diamonds splashing down, and stood amazed at how sparkly it was.
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We took a walk and took pictures and talked about photography. I taught her about lens flare and I’m fairly certain she will be taking thousands of pictures with lens flare. All of the pictures immediately above and below were taken by her except the black and white one (obviously).

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The last night while we were making s’mores and singing camp songs, I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky. It went from this to this in about 30 seconds. No filter on either of these. Isn’t that wild?

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Oh, I know you’ve probably seen enough of the Mommy & me selfies, but I’m going to keep on taking them as long as she’ll let me.

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Gosh, I surely do love this girl of mine! And I loved being alone with her, no brothers or sister to steal my attention away. Nothing but the two of us, each having a chance to revel in the moments of only mother and daughter, not sister or friend or wife or anything else. Just us. And I loved it. She did, too. She’s already asked if we could go back next year. You bet, my love! Absolutely!

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I hope that I can remember to stop and see her more. Really see her. Just her. To see her world, to see her find her place in this world, and to see our world through her eyes.

 

His Special Foot

If you ask Carter to show you his “special foot” he’ll rush over and pull of his shoe and slide his right foot close to you. It doesn’t take long to see what makes his foot “special”. It’s skinny and bony and it only has 3 toes. We don’t know why it’s like that, but (so far) it doesn’t seem to be connected with any other anomalies or syndromes.

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When he was still in utero, we saw 10 perfect little fingers on the ultrasound. And 5 perfect little toes on a perfect little foot, but the other foot was folded up under his behind and we couldn’t see it. No big deal, we thought.

After he was born and they were cleaning him up, a nurse noticed that he only had 3 toes. They called the pediatric nurse practitioner in and she brought him to my bedside all clean and swaddled. She started talking, “Well…blahblahblah…the nurses called me in to take a look at something and…blahblahblah…there seems to be a small abnormality and…blahblahblah…he only has three toes on this one little foot.” It seemed like she talked for 10 minutes and when she showed me his adorable little foot, do you know what I did? I laughed. I laughed! And then she looked at me like I was nuts. “Ha! That’s kinda funny!” I remember saying. But I said that because she had built it up to be so huge and scary that I honest-to-goodness thought that he had an extra head growing out of his neck. (I have an active and odd imagination).

Off and on for the next few months, we spent time talking to orthopedic specialists. They looked around to see if they could find any reason for this to have happened, trying to make sure there were no other associated problems that hadn’t surfaced yet. They watched the leg growth and did x-rays and watched it grow some more. They told us when he was little that there wouldn’t be much to do about the foot. Apparently it’s not very easy to add toes to a foot. I don’t know why! But the problem that they did foresee was that the leg with the special foot was also shorter. For a long time the length difference was negligible. But recently we began to notice that the long leg had gotten a lot longer. His gait changed and he was standing sideways and the worry is that he could injure his hip and/or spine. So we go today to visit the orthopedist again.

When he was little they told us that the plan was to wait until he was older and hit a big growth spurt and at that point they’d do surgery to staple the growth plate of the long leg and give the short leg a chance to catch up. I’m not sure if they’ve had any advances in medicine in the past 8 years that would change that plan or not. I guess we’ll find that out today. Either way, I’m oddly not nervous about it. I’ve talked to him about it and he seems so okay with whatever might happen. (I think if I were more nervous, he would be more nervous). Maybe it’s naive of me; I don’t know. But I do have a peace about it that I can’t quite explain, and I am grateful for that! I find myself humming “Que sera, sera” every time I think about it because it is true: what will be, will be. And we’ll figure out one step at a time and trust that in the end it’ll all be okay. (But I won’t turn down a prayer or two if you have one to spare).

Growing Up Ivey

There was this sweater that Carter loved when he was little.  I swore that I’d take pictures of Asa in the same sweater when he was the same age. That should have happened this past winter, but I’m a slacker and it never happened. When packed up all the winter clothes, I kept out that sweater and jeans and promised myself I’d get it done. Winter turned to spring and I still didn’t get it done. So earlier this week it was cool(ish) thanks to the absurd amount of rain we’ve been having and I popped everyone in the car and we took the shots I’d been meaning to get.

See Carter, circa 2009:
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And Asa now:
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And for Lydia there was this dress. I was way behind on getting pictures of Alden in it but I finally got them – even if the sleeves were a little bit short by the time I got it done. And Alden had already lost a lot of that baby-face look. Oh, well.  I’m glad I got what I got anyway. 🙂

Lydia circa 2008:
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And Alden now:
(Shockingly, Little Miss Bossy Pants wasn’t interested in letting me get matching shots).
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