bethysmalls

From Hoagey

And, Hoagey claims, Bruno.

"It was all his idea," he says.

first pour!

Those guys, too cute.

Thanks Hoagey and Bruno! I love love love it!

I’m in the midst of a crisis. Professional crisis. My personal life is great as ever. Wonderful husband, beautiful baby boy, stupid cats. Oh HEY! Remember our cats?!

Those guys. I'm telling you.

Let’s just pretend that I’ve dazzled you with my wit and vim and vigor. I will hopefully be back tomorrow. With vim and vigor.

I'm distracting you with my adorable faceplant!

We are just too precious!

That is all. Good day.

This post wasn’t written by me but I support it 100% and miss Maddie’s face. This post is free to copy and paste to your own blog. No link-backs needed. Just spread the word if you’re so inclined.

In memory of Maddie’s second birthday…

I don’t think there are too many people reading this who didn’t have their heart broken on April 7th of this year. That’s the day we learned that Madeline Alice Spohr, whom we all knew as Maddie from The Spohrs Are Multiplying, was suddenly taken from her parents, Heather and Mike, when a respiratory infection coupled with a collapsed lung was more than her 17-month-old body could fight. Thousands of people across the country mourned with Heather and Mike, and thousands came to their support by donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie’s memory.

Since then, the Spohrs, along with family and friends, have created Friends of Maddie, a fund dedicated to supporting families of critically ill or prematurely-born infants during their stay in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with supplies, help finding temporary lodging (because the NICU isn’t always within commuting distance of home), and by creating a network of support.

Friends of Maddie uses your donation to put together Support Packs for families who find themselves overwhelmed with the care of an at-risk newborn. The packs include items such as reusable water bottles, snack bars, tissues, mints, and most importantly, a tri-fold binder with a note pad and accordion file to keep track of paperwork.

“We’re hopeful it will make it at a little easier for parents to keep track of everything,” Heather says. “You get SO many papers, business cards, etc., every day, and it’s hard to keep track of everything.”

She should know. She lived the experience. Maddie’s sixty-eight-day stay in the NICU is chronicled on Heather’s blog and her husband Mike’s blog as well. Readers across the country followed every setback and every victory. What message would she like to pass on to parents in the same situation?

“Patience. Take things a day at a time and live in the moment. Don’t look down the road or things will get REALLY scary and overwhelming,” shared Heather.

The reaction to the packs has been terrific, according to Heather, “We’ve been getting a fantastic response from everyone! We weren’t expecting such a big response so we are really behind in getting back to everyone, but it’s a good problem to have!”

By now, you are all wondering how you can help, right? I knew it. You people rock. What you can do:

Donate. I know, the economy is bad right now, but every little bit helps. Or…

Let your local NICU know about Friends of Maddie, or…

Do you work for a company that might bring a valuable service to NICU parents? Contact FoM. Or…

Just spread the word. Write a blog post. Copy this one. Send out a tweet.

Mike and Heather’s loss is unimaginable. In spite of their grief, they have found a way to pay forward all the love poured out from thousands of hearts across the internet. Tell others about Friends of Maddie as we remember and celebrate Maddie’s birthday today.

Maddie ~ Forever in our hearts.

The last night on our trip was in Providence, RI. A new hotel room to get the baby accustomed to, new crib, new layout. Same old story though. He didn’t do as badly as night one but also not as well as night two. Hoagey and I finally got him down for the night at 8:30 or so and we ended up turning in at 8:47 so that we wouldn’t wake him. Turns out we needed the rest because I don’t remember much after that.

Until 2:30 when Bruno was WIDE awake demanding to be fed again and then ready to play.

All in all it wasn’t the worst trip sleep-wise. San Antonio, Summer ’09 firmly holds that title with both hands. We’re all anxious for a good night’s sleep tonight and a normal day of naps tomorrow. I most likely won’t shower with all the napping I’ll be doing. But that’s prolly more that you care to know.

We had a game last night and the boys stayed in to hopefully get Bruno back on a bedtime routine.

I was understandably nervous as sleepless nights are bad enough one at a time AT HOME. Factor in that this would be the third one in a row, second in a building filled with other people and my desire to be never inconveniencing anyone and I’m even more of a mess than usual. I had full faith in Hoagey or at least I should have because at 6:49 I get a message: He’s down.

“How’d you do it??” I replied. “Just got lucky.” he said.

So when I got home we ate dinner on the hotel room floor in hushed voices and then snuggled in for a night of (mostly*) uninterrupted sleeeeeeep.

We leave for Providence, RI later today and will sleep in a different room tonight. Keep us all in your soporific thoughts.

*Bruno woke up once at 1:30 but fussed very little when I put him back down.

So the flight yesterday was awesome! Bruno fell asleep 15 minute in and stayed asleep through the 50 minute bus ride WITH Love and Basketball on. Loudly. We made it to the hotel room. Got all his sleep accessories in place. Took him out of the stroller, swaddled him, moved him to the crib… I think it was the combination of the weird room, light in his face, suspended in air a leeeetle too long as we tried to get him in the crib at an awkward angle. Anyway he woke up. I nursed him on 3 separate occasions last night. Needless to say I’m exhausted and very, VERY sore. Bruno just woke up from his second nap of the day. A 2 hour block of sleep that allowed Hoagey and I the opportunity to discuss my next career move.

But since he has robbed me of 2 nights of sleep SO FAR I’m posting this picture of his ridiculous bed head.

Today is the day we travel to New England for my job so Hoagey has the day off of work. Because we’d both be home today and not have to be up at any certain time, I pressed our luck last night and decided to watch an extra episode of The West Wing on DVD (we’re in the middle of Season 7 and just about to get to the Josh and Donna sex. I’m sort of obsessed with it.). So on the night that I decide to stay up late (like 11:30. Jealous?) Bruno’s 5th tooth is making its descent which means he slept until 2am and would not go back to sleep on his own and despite the fact that we’ve been through this at least 3 times before (one tooth showed up without a sleepless night) we still tried and tried and tried to get him to go back to sleep before resorting to nursing him.  By this time it was 4am (This was actually on the second attempt because I thought he might actually be hungry. Because I’m exceedingly stupid.) and Bruno finally fell asleep and I slept as comfortably as one can when a small person is cutting a new tooth on her nipple. Until 6:23 when Bruno’s internal clock went off and Hoagey took him to get some errands done while I caught an hour and a half of a sleep cycle. All this when we’re about to travel with this baby who doesn’t have the best track record for Sleeping in Different Places. Not to mention the fact that the flight tonight is after Bruno’s bedtime which adds another element to the Fuxin With Our Sleep Tour.

The West Wing, you’ll be the death of me.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard of more and more cases of H1N1 within 3 degrees of separation. On Tuesday someone I work with called in sick and the day before that I was helping him with his resumé and cover letter. I have been freaking out about this damned disease since it showed up in Mexico this summer and now it’s knocking on my office door.

Bruno got a vaccine a week and a half ago and that one action gave me such relief that I actually experienced a decrease in physical pain. The next day on NPR I heard that there have been conflicting recommendations between national and global health organizations as to how many doses of vaccine are needed in children. One or two. The pediatrician didn’t mention anything about a second dose but I’ve heard from at least one person that her child needs a second.

When it first became a thing, the swine flu, I expressed my concern to a co-worker who told me that his children were born in time for SARS and the Avian Flu. His kids are fine by the way and so I felt much better. But then I thought about it more, cause that’s what I do. I over think. And there were certain things one could do to avoid catching those terrible plagues. Don’t travel to Toronto or Japan. Don’t handle birds. This time it’s catching on like a Miley Cyrus song and I’m shaking my head like, yeah…er like, please don’t come near me with your germs, sick person. I mentioned before how we’re going to New England this weekend. On a PLANE where people will be BREATHING and likely TRYING TO TOUCH MY ADORABLE CHILD WHO ONLY HAD ONE DOSE OF VACCINE!!!!!!

I hate this. WTF, Swine flu? you should be ashamed of yourself. Attacking children and pregnant women. I’m disgusted with you. Good day.

We painted our walls!! Did I tell you? By ‘we’ I mean ‘my in-laws’ and by !! I mean ‘finally!’

Here is a picture to show it off. Grey on 3 walls. Red on the key wall.

(I wrote this post on Plinky.com but am having trouble getting my entries there to post here. so. here you go)

Some time ago, when my then boyfriend and I were looking to buy a house, I came across an area of South Philly that was everything I could ever want in a city neighborhood. It had nice big double-houses, each one a little different than the one next to it, tree-lined streets, a big park in the middle of the neighborhood. I didn’t know much about it at the time and when we met with the realtor, I hadn’t even looked that closely a the houses. Just absorbed the ambiance of the area as we drove through every now and again. I mentioned the area to her and she said, “Girard estates?” That didn’t sound like someplace we could afford in our situation. Estates. Not so much.

At some point, I was telling someone at work about it. I decided to look it up and found this website:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=149003
I decided to put it on my quick links so I could look at it when the daily grind got me down. It’s not so much that the homes are what motivates me, it’s what the homes represent. Enough room for a family; security, shade and serenity of trees; a park and library near by; the sense of a neighborhood in the city; nice big sidewalks in front for sidewalk chalk and unstructured play. Right now, at this point of my life, Girard Estates is why I work. I want to be able to have a place like that for my family and me. Some day.