Dear Very Very Sweet Meaning lady who works the counter at a large sporting store, please keep your suckers to yourself. I really do appreciate your kind gesture to my two year old (not very responsible with candies on a stick) daughter. BUT now I have to spend the next thirty minutes explaining to her why we don’t have suckers in the van.

I get that people are just trying to be nice, but do me a solid Sugar Giving Cashier and ask me first before you hand over the sweetness to my child. It’s a long walk to the van, we still need to get coats on, kids in and out of strollers, groceries in the back seat AND take the twenty minutes drive home….before I would even consider letting her open the thing.

Sigh, but now your kind ten calories of sweetness gesture is bringing the three of us to tears. Lela is upset, I’m heart broken, and Siah keeps tossing in his ba ba ba ahhhh two cents. I do my best to focus on the road as Lela yells (louder each time) “I want my sucker!”….When I all I want to do it toss it out the window.

This Sucks, I thought to myself, I feel old (er)- I feel like a mother. All because of a little dum-dum.

It started with potty training and the immense freedom of taking off her pants to use the potty. Now as I write, she sits in our sunny living room at 2pm smashing her brother’s cars, all the while in her whitey tighties & pig tails.

The running in underwear habit doesn’t happen every day, but each night we put her to bed, we tuck her. in. and. wait. Some nights it’s just her pj top, some nights top and bottoms, and a few a nights she manages to get all the way down to her birthday suit before rolling over to sleep. I consider it a win for me if the pull-up remains on and she’s sleeping, and a point for Lela if she is able to get naked and return to the living room….graced with a smile, wide awake.

There’s no chance she got this habit from me, I wear a multitude of layers everywhere, I despise being cold and sleep with a heated blanket. I assume she’s warm blooded like her father.

When my two year does these things its comical, at times even cute, but when we grow up….aka turn Three, its no longer as entertaining, why is that?

Farting “I tooted mom”
Pooping “yeah I made a poop turd”
Burbing  “Excuse me, I burp”
Swearing “Dammit, dammit, dammit”
Chewing with her mouth open & then showing it off
Eating things off the floor
Running around naked

Our son was set to arrive via c-section the following Monday, when I arrived mid morning to the doctor for my Wednesday maternity check up. Despite having elevated blood pressure, a tummy ache and feeling a bit under the weather, the nurse ended my appointment by saying “see you Monday”.

That evening we attended the 7pm Hosanna worship service. Feeling esp pregnant that evening I hesitated to go, but made it into the church lobby with my husband and my daughter. As Luke prepared to play guitar for service, I concluded I didn’t feel well enough to stay and packed up Lela to head home. (Luke would find a ride home after service)

The pain in my stomach was gaining intensity as I struggled to carry Lela in her carrier to the vehicle. When she was secure in the van, life got fuzzy fast. I got sick in the church parking lot, and my head exploded in pain. Knowing I was suddenly in no state to drive, I called Luke and mumbled something emergency like & then hung up on him.

Seconds later Luke was speeding through red lights on Victory, confirming we were going to the ER only a few blocks away. For the only time in my life….I thought I was dying. I couldn’t open my eyes because my brain was pushing on them, I held my head out the window into the February chill in attempt to ease the  pain. Migraine x 500% pain.

The pounding was endless, the hospital lobby so invasively bright, “My head hurts so bad” I remember saying over and over again. “No its not a migraine, can I have an ice pack, can I have another or drugs, make it stop!” Luke was doing his best to keep me calm, but I could see color fading from his face.

Once on the maternity floor I was swarmed. We would deliver baby Schultze before the Pre Eclampsia got worse. I kept my eyes closed majority of the time, unless signing a document, I held the ice packs to my eyes, and asked for something, anything, to make it stop.

Organized chaos was in our room. No one was smiling, everyone was moving, moving quickly. Two hours after we arrived, our 5.13oz boy was born. I don’t remember much from the surgery except my mounting anticipation to hear him cry, “dear God, please let him cry.” When he did, the staff reassured me it was certainly meant to be his birthday and his umbilical chord was very weak.

Recovering from pre-eclampsia was miserable. For the first hour I shivered uncontrollably, while Luke introduced our son to the world. For the next 24 hours I was bed ridden while entertaining a constant flow of magnesium in my IV. I concluded it was much like being very drunk and having a hangover to boot. No food, no visitors & not functional enough to hold my new baby, made for a long day. To end the day I became faint while walking again and had to be caught from falling by two nurses. Recovering from pre-eclampsia was miserable.

But, I am alive.

I am alive to be a better mother then before, a better wife and a better advocate for mothers to be.

Today I look at my one year old son and know I would do it again, to know he would be at the end of all the suffering. Many miracles happened that day. It was completely God’s will we were only blocks from the hospital that evening and that Luke was able to be by my side. I am forever grateful and indebted to the staff at ISJ Mankato who delivered my precious little Siah-man and saved. my. life.

When Lela looked out at the snow falling last week, she asked “what happening momma?” Her concern looked on her face encourage me to comfort her. So I proceeded to explain to her that this is snow, and normal, and the weather we had been having prior was not normal. She seemed uninterested in what I had to say, and continued ” but I want to see the road, what is happening? Where did the road go?”

Over-prepared I thought, for the first time in all of my winters, I’ve over prepared. I started by making a list in the Fall of how to better winterize our home and prepare fot the masses of snow (I was thinking feet) we were certain to get.

We,
Gassed up the snowblower,
Insulated the deck door and boarded it with plywood to surely keep out the cold south wind,
Wrapped our little sapling pear trees to protect them,
Stocked up on ice melt salt for the sidewalks around our home,
Searched aimlessly for tiny boy snowboots, in which my first trip actually ended up buying faux fur boots, assuming they were boys, Luke reassured me there were certainly not,
I even made a special trip in to town to buy snow boots for myself(which I have not purchased since 1999).

Any other winter=prepared. This year=over-prepared.

My snow boots are still in the box collecting dust at the bottom of my closet and my son hasn’t even tried his hard earned boots on.

“No snow-mans this year” I told Lela,
I decided to save my global warning speech for a later date, but I reassured her, that this is no normal weather for Minnesota, and in all my 31 short years I had not seen one like this.

“I kiss it mommy?” Lela me asked this morning, as I complained of a back ache. “It better now?” she quickly followed up, nodding her head with hope gleaming in her eyes.

“Yes, of course, much better” I reassured her, wishing all those kisses really suppressed pain. The kiss warmed my heart.

Compassion, I wonder, how do toddlers learn to be positive during painful times and compassionate? Lela certainly believes in the healing power of kisses as she covers her brothers head with them whenever she has mistreated him. “Sorry Si”, kiss, kiss.

Maybe it’s not just time that heals all wounds. Her positive attitude for those suffering around her is one of the best medicines I’ve witnessed.

In struggles we offer help when we can, even when we have nothing else we can have compassion. In times when there are no medicines, or acceptable answers, no pain relief strong enough or quick fixes; we simple show love by being available. My little bouncing toddler doesn’t have to know why I am hurting, or when the pain will end, her tender heart just wants to be near me when I hurt. Offering her endless kisses as a blanket of hope.

She silently reassures me, that all healing begins with positive thinking, and the willingness to accept the littlest kiss.