Collin's 2nd Birthday

I have six pictures of Collin's second birthday party, and one of them is of the desserts. We probably took 600 his first Easter, and then just six for the first birthday he has some awareness of being about him!

I sat back and relaxed most of his birthday party - quite literally because I had overdone it post miscarriage surgery the weekend before and knew being on my feet just slowed my recovery. So Cas, my parents, Libero and Elida got everything ready from cleaning the house to preparing the food while I sat around delegating.

We hosted our first kid party and it was more fun than I expected. The only cute factor came from decorations my mom bought, but it was low-key with good burgers, great guacamole, delicious petit fours and a huge bounce house to burn some energy. It had been a drizzly morning and we were concerned we'd have 12 kids and their parents stuck in our home, but it dried up enough to be outside for all but the cake.

Do you notice the three candles below? I caught it right before we started singing. In my defense, my family always does three candles no matter the age for yesterday, today and tomorrow - but that mostly applies to the 30+ candles needed to represent our ages!
Enjoying the icing -
Sugar rush in full effect. We had a week's worth of petit fours leftover, and pretty much gave Collin one each night as dessert. Then we'd enjoy listening to his sugar-crazed babbling when he was supposed to be sleeping.
Some of Collin's friend chowing down -
Cutie Caraline with her mom Jill. We've know Jill and her husband Luke since high school, Cas was roommates with Luke at A&M, now they work in the same industry, and our firstborns are 3 months apart.
Picture number 6 of the petit fours. I would like to say they were so rich, you could only handle one, but I'm pretty sure I ate at least 10 in the week following his birthday. Luckily, my boys are vanilla fans and I got sole claim to the chocolate ones.

Wrapping up 2011

We enjoyed time with Alex and Coady after Christmas, dragging them once again to one of Collin's favorite spots, the Children's Museum.

As soon as we make it to the Tot Spot, Collin makes a bee-line to milk the cow and imitate its sound:

Alex, Collin and Coady read some books and explored all the sections of the museum. While Collin napped, they went to Jewell Rae's for a lunchtime visit -

Then Bob, Carla, Daniel and Jackson joined us for dinner. Collin loved playing with puzzles and trains with his second cousins -

And delayed his bedtime with hugs for everyone -

A few days later, we met my mom, Amber and her 3 kids at the Houston zoo. Her boys are so sweet, playing along with Collin on the drums -

Holden takes Collin's hand after we leave the very busy sea lion show, and all four check out the monkeys. Since the kids outnumbered the adults, my hands were normally too busy to take photos, but we had a great time.

Back home, as I cleaned up one area of the kitchen, Collin was busy creating an even bigger mess, emptying out our spice drawer and proudly stacking the bottles on top of each other -

Later that night, our super hero posed for a few last pictures in 2011 and headed to bed for his beauty rest before another day saving the planet -

Christmas Day 2011

Christmas Day started off with pajamas and the Luke 2 Christmas story, with some creative positioning at the manger thanks to our block-loving child -
After we opened a few presents (like a wrapped up coloring book since he was inundated with gifts from family) and ate a huge, wonderful breakfast Cas prepared, we went to Grammy and Brownie's. Collin was shouting at full volume, "Merry Christmas" as we approached the house, but had a bit of stage fright when asked to repeat his line on cue. It didn't take him too long to warm up, and he was ready to greet the rest of the family when they arrived for lunch.
Cas, in non-Christmas colors, and me -
Because he clashed, Cas was delegated to the photographer role (Collin was napping here). Here's our small, relaxed Christmas crowd - my parents, brother and sister-in-law, me, my grandma and uncle all in holiday red -
Alex and Grandma Betty -
My mom, grandma and uncle -
The newlyweds celebrating their first Christmas as husband and wife -
Collin had plenty of attention and games while we attempted a very distracted lunch -
Feeling victorious with the promise of four layer delight dessert on the way -
Playing the "uh oh" kiss game my dad accidentally started ages ago. And how can you resist giving your grandson a kiss on request -

Hope your Christmas celebrations were filled with love and joy!

Christmas Eve 2011

Six weeks and a working hard drive later, I'll try to remember what happened over Christmas. We started out Christmas Eve at B's house for her birthday lunch, Alex and Coady having just arrived from the airport.

Collin hugging the birthday girl -
Then that afternoon, we went to Grandma Libia's house to celebrate with Libero, Elida, Lita and Libia. Collin with his grandma -
Hurry up with my Christmas present construction, Dad, I've got places to go -
Happy boy on his new trike -
For the last two years, we've given the grandparents photo books of Collin. After last year's reactions, I now expect tears of joy every Christmas!

Learning that God is good

I have sets of pictures from Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Collin's second birthday. But they are all on a sick external hard drive that Cas instructed me not to turn on for fear we may lose the 8600 pictures (seriously!) that we've taken in the first 24 months of Collin's life.

So while I have no photos to upload, I thought I'd journal about what God has been teaching me lately, namely that He has a good plan. This is a typical church answer and one which I probably gave as unsolicited advice to people going through hard times, but it has been much more difficult for me to believe when I'm not getting my way.

When we didn't get pregnant in September like I thought we would, I really began to question God's plan. I told Cas that I believed in my head that God had a good plan for us, but I didn't believe it in my heart. I told God that it was not good that our children would be most likely spaced 3 years apart in school. It was not good that Collin would be spaced further out than I wanted from a younger sibling and therefore, likely not be as close, especially when they are young. It was not good that my second pregnancy, which I had hoped to use as a stepping stone into a part time work schedule, was being delayed.

I remember praying about it on a bus ride from the rainforest to Quito on our trip to Ecuador and feeling like God spoke Isaiah 55 over me - "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

And then God began to take my eyes off myself. He showed me hurting kids in Quito's orphanages and let me follow on facebook and in emails the work Oswaldo and Denise continue to do for the children of Ganas. He let me read stories from Compassion bloggers in Ecuador like this one. He blew me away with blogs like this from Kisses from Katie.

And God helped me to believe that His plan really is good, even when it's different from what I wanted. He showed me stories like this from Nicole Whiteacre who is adopting orphans from Ethiopia, ages 2 and 6, fitting in beautfully with her 8-year-old Jack and 4-year-old Tori:
We called Jack and Tori to join us, and they were thrilled to finally see their new brother and sister. We couldn't have planned their ages more perfectly if we tried: eight, six, four, and two. All the waiting to get pregnant after Jack and Tori was God making space in our family for these precious children.

God took me on this journey of belief, and then He let us get pregnant again. There were signs from the beginning that this pregnancy was not on the right track. And God chose to let this pregnancy end in miscarriage. Even though it wasn't a surprise, it was still sad. And so I'll be fighting for joy and fighting to trust God over fearing infertility.

In the midst of my sadness and doubts, I'm thankful that God ensured I really believed Him before he took me through another miscarriage. I know that God can get more glory out of lives that don't go according to our plans. And I'm excited to look back at this season ten years from now and see how God worked through our lives to bring about deeper faith and a firmer foundation for our family.

Erin and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Monday afternoon my boss and VP come into my office at 4:32 as I’m clicking down programs to leave for the day. And they sit and start in on this complicated issue. I finally packed up at 5:20 and left them in my office talking. I drive through an unusually, frustrating amount of traffic and get to Collin’s school a few minutes before 6pm (with 6pm being the pick-up deadline). And I go get Collin and it’s just he and one other boy and they’re looking out the window. So then I add a lot of mom guilt to my frustration.

We get home, go to open the door, and our maid had hand locked the garage door. And that’s when I dropped the first f-bomb in my son’s presence, much to the surprise (and I think secret delight) of my family, I was the first to introduce that classy word to him. Thankfully he didn’t immediately start repeating it! A locked door wouldn’t be a problem for a responsible adult, except that somehow neither Cas nor I have keys to our house. Not that it would have mattered if Cas had a key since he was in Florida at a work conference. So we’re locked out.

I head to find our very well-hidden spare key. So well hidden that the last two times we’ve locked ourselves out (when someone other than Cas or me hand locks one of our doors), we’ve been unable to find the spare. And as I search for it, I’m on the phone with my aunt Debbie who I would have sworn had a spare to our house but she’s quite sure she doesn’t. I start reviewing my options – break a window, drive 40+ miles in traffic over Collin’s dinnertime to our maid’s house to get hers. And I find the spare – hallelujah!

So we go inside, I grab a beer with dinner, and have a normal rest of the night. I go to bed thinking, what a day and in retrospect, a funny story to email my friends tomorrow.

[Three side notes: it is super rare for me to cuss. I'm the type that my co-workers apologize to when they cuss in front of me. Clearly need to continue to guard my mouth, especially in front of Collin, but it's quite ironic that I'm the one to use the first really bad word in front of Collin. Two - we have remedied the key situation thanks to my wonderful Aunt Debbie who made multiple copies for us. Three - while I felt bad for getting Collin so late from school, on the way home he was asking to go back to school, so it's not like he was crying waiting for his parents.]

Around 11pm I get into bed with the dogs, Bruno burrows under the covers, and I’m reading a little to wind down. And then suddenly Bruno gets out of the bed, shaking, falls to the floor in a seizure, foaming at the mouth. I’m screaming, Fergie is freaking out, Bruno is uncontrollable, and Collin is fast asleep. Thankfully it ends and I call Debbie, who rushes over so I can take Bruno to the emergency vet.

Poor Bruno couldn’t walk so I carry him to my car and we drive the 3 minutes. And he has another seizure in the back of my car and I’m telling him all the family members that love him, worried he’s dying in the back of my car but hurrying to the vet in case it’s something he ate that is poisoning him. I’m running red lights and carry him out – he couldn’t even stand up while I opened the door.

They take him back, get him on an IV to medicate him and stop the seizures, and I wait. They ask me if I give them permission to perform doggie CPR – for a cost of course – and I don’t know if that even works. Cas is on the phone reviewing our “how much money we’ll spend to save Bruno’s life” budget – which has doubled since we got him, but it’s not in the 5-figures range. At 1am they tell me to go home, that he’s stable, and they’ll call if anything major happens.

It takes me forever to stop shaking and calm down, and then they call at 5am to say he had another “grand mal” seizure but he’s stable again. After I hang up I start to think of questions, my brain wasn’t yet functioning. In the morning he's able to walk out of the emergency vet and we take him to my vet where he was fine all day. They send him home but leave in his IV stint in case he has another seizure Tuesday night.

Tuesday evening I'm getting Collin's bath started and I walk out to the living room to grab Collin. I see a dog saliva area on the floor and so I ask:

Erin: Collin, was Bruno shaking?
Collin: yes
Erin: Was Bruno lying on the floor shaking?
Collin: yes
Erin: Was Bruno standing up shaking?
Collin: yes

Two year olds are not the best eye witnesses! I guessed later that he had a little face seizure, not a full blown one while I was starting to fill the bathtub.

We get everyone to bed and then at midnight, Bruno has another big seizure. Debbie once again comes to the rescue, I go to the emergency clinic, and Bruno gets back on epileptic medicine. I get home at 2am, settle down, and then at 3am our power goes out and the alarm system beeps every 10 seconds to notify me that it is not working. At 5am our power comes back on, more beeping, but by then I can re-set the alarm and get 2 uninterrupted hours of sleep. I wake up and get the Bruno report from the clinic - that over night he had another seizure, but they're hoping with regular medicine, they'll get him stabilized.

As a recap, Cas was out of town when we found out I had an ectopic pregnancy, when Collin got a rock impaled in his forehead, and now when my dog was diagnosed with epilepsy. What a week!

B's Surprise 85th Birthday

A week before her 85th birthday, we gathered 40+ people in my grandma Betty's living room for a surprise party. My mom ordered 50 invitations to the party and ran out - a testament to the wonderful-ness of my grandma (known by Collin as "B") in that she has so many people that love her enough to drive across Houston during the Christmas season to celebrate her bithday!

The birthday girl -

The surprise party planners - my Uncle Dick and my mom -

Collin was briefly introduced to all of my grandmother's friends and then quickly herded outside to burn some energy in our mid-December fall. He was entertained by family and a pile of leaves for over an hour. Uncle Bob and Aunt Carla, Stella and Leo raked up the pile of leaves countless times -

Anticipation before the jump -

Then the cousins buried one another - Stella buried with Leo posing like a typical younger brother and Stella and Annie posing by buried Leo -

Collin claimed a nook in the tree as his supervisory position while the family re-raked the leaf pile. He is such a spoiled little guy by our loving family, as whenever he had thoroughly destroyed the pile of leaves, he just headed to his tree spot and quickly, wordlessly, everyone knew it was time to rebuild for Collin!

Collin had a great day playing in the leaves with family and celebrating B's birthday.

We are SO grateful that Collin has three great grandmas in the latter half of their 8th decade and he is crazy about all of them!