To Aunt T, With Love

 

Dear Aunt T,

 

Right now, you're somewhere between North Carolina and Arkansas, making your way back to the west coast.  The house felt different without you here this morning. A little more chaotic for certain, as I juggled getting all three of us ready and out the door. We miss you already. I talked to Tennyson again and told her you had to go bye bye, but we would see you again soon. I know she will be sad when she gets home from school and you aren't here.

 

There a handful of people that I can truly trust with my girls. You are one of them. Aside from your brother, you are the closest anyone has come to being completely interchangeable with me. I am forever grateful you re-arranged your life to come and help us. Nothing you helped me with went unnoticed.

 

Thank you for getting Tennyson out of bed each morning when she was in her full leg casts. Thank you for helping me change her bandages and diapers. Thank you for going to her countless doctor and therapy appointments with me. Thank you for holding her hand as she had her casts removed. Thank you for always finding a way to get Kipper the Dog to play on your phone when she had lost her patience.

 

 

 

Thank you for learning how to work her chair, stander, leg and foot braces, and feeding pump. Thank you for picking her up from school when I needed you to. Thank you for watching her so that I could run errands or grocery shop. Thank you for watching her when I had doctors appointments. Thank you for making sure she had all her medicines and feedings when I was in the hospital when Harlynn was born. Thank you for the thousands of diapers you changed. Thank you for giving Tenn a bath every night at 6:30pm (and making it fun by rapping Justin Bieber to her).

 

 

 

 

More importantly though, thank you for loving my girls. Thank you for simply holding them and giving them attention. Thank you for playing your guitar to Tenn and letting her try to play with you. Thank you for taking her on walks. Thank you for taking her running with you. Thank you for spending your time with her. Thank you for taking the cutest pictures of her. Thank you for making her smile.

 

 

Thank you for spending Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentines Day, and Easter with us. Thank you for celebrating my birthday with me. Thank you for giving me flowers on Mother's Day.

 

Thank you for getting up each morning to sit with Harlynn while I took Tenn to school. Having another adult to have dinner with and watch T.V. with and laugh with made each day go by easier. Thank you for sharing the weight of a deployment with me. You not only made this deployment manageable, you allowed me to be a happy Mom to my kids.

 

 

Every child deserves to have an Aunt like you. And every woman deserves a sister-in-law like you.

 

We love you. Drive safely.

Home

He's home!

 

 

A New Direction

Raise your hand if you're sick of checking the blog only to see that I STILL haven't posted in two months. (I'm raising my hand, too).

I promise I'm not going to apologize for not posting, overload you with a bunch of updates, and then disappear for two more months.

The truth is, when I started this blog I was in a different frame of mind than I am now. I was just reaching a point of acceptance in terms of Tennyson's cerebral palsy, her birth and the extreme guilt that I felt over it, and finally feeling ready to share about it all. I can honestly say back then, "special needs" felt like the focus of our time and lives. That's just not the case anymore.

We're just not feeling "special" anymore. And that's a good thing.

Therapies and doctors appointments are a weekly occurrence for us, and that's just our normal. It's not going to change anytime soon, and that's okay.

I also have a little secret I've been keeping.

Last August, just as I finished up my first trimester of my pregnancy, Tennyson's Dad was deployed. This is no secret if you know us personally, but I chose not to share it on the blog for a number of reasons. It's been hard for all of us to have him gone. That's why Aunt T moved in with us.

Aunt T and Tenn on a walk

 

Being a military family on top of having a child with special needs and a newborn is no walk in the park. This is our third deployment, but my first one with children. And there is already another deployment in the distance.

But we're about to get Dad back! We can't wait! He was able to come home briefly for Harlynn's birth, but had to leave when she was two weeks old. He's missed some cute firsts (smiles, laughs, rolling, cooing). He's ready to finally get to know her adorable personality, and to be reunited with Tennyson. We're ready to see what being a family of four is really like.

Harlynn is 3 months old already!

So, you can see that our family is in a different place than we were when we started the blog. The blog will still be focused around Tennyson, but will not focus so much on her special needs. We've evolved and the blog will also. Hopefully I can share with you how we adapt our activities, vacations, and everyday life to include Tennyson completely. She is more work, but she is not hard work. It is not hard to love her or hard to do things with her. She takes more time, but it is most definitely time well spent. We're learning to balance these two worlds of typical and "special needs"; teaching Tennyson to cheer for Harlynn when she does something new, and teaching Harlynn to cheer for Tennyson when she is working hard to learn something new.

We are working on new therapies and assistive technology for Tennyson. We have chosen some new equipment for her, and most recently we have had to fight a few battles to keep her respite nursing care. We are also preparing for a trip to Europe with both the girls. We've been busy!

So don't give up on us - I will be sharing more regularly. Promise!

My sweet, happy girls