The Christmas Spirit, Part Three and The End of Stardate 30

My little lion, the point of all of this, from happiness to Santa Claus with spirituality sandwiched in between is that we have evolved as a family. It happened through spirit. It came to me at Christmastime. Who I have been has brought me to where I am today and yet, there are parts of me that I need to let go. I was ever so right that turning 30 would bring about life-altering changes, they just weren't the ones I thought they would be. I started this blog because I wanted a record of our journey to adopt you. But now, our life does not center around how you BECAME a part of our family, it's about us AS a family. When I come to this space I get caught in the past and end up writing the same things over and over. I hesitate to share this blog more publicly because in some ways it is so deeply personal.



So this will be the last entry in Stardate30.blogspot.com. We will borrow a genius idea from friends who turned their blog into a book. We will make a permanent copy for us to keep and then we will take it down.

The new chapter of our life will be reflected on my new business website, which will be active in the next few weeks. If I've learned anything from this journey it's that the only line that exists between being a momma and being a business woman is in our imagination. Believing that these two things can be, or should be, separated is nothing short of foolish. I found confidence in this theory within the pages of Motherhood is the New MBA by Shari Storm. Shari writes, "Once I recognized the parallels between raising children and managing people, I saw them everywhere." I do now too. I've also realized that whether a mother makes her career within her home our outside her home, the same principles apply.

Thank you Alexa, Daddy and dear readers alike for walking this journey with me. I couldn't be more ready to start this new chapter with my beloved family and friends by my side. I am so filled with delightful anticipation to see what adventures this new outlook on life and sharing it with the world will bring us. I could use 1,000 more words to sum this up, but I've prattled on far too long already. To end on a Star Trek note, I must say wherever life calls us....we will boldly go....

The Christmas Spirit, Part Two

When the thought "you are loved in this life" popped into my head one day, I felt a tremendous radiance and warmth. The words gently wrapped themselves, like a mother's hug, around the other uncomfortable thoughts that had been mulling and marinating in my mind. And I knew. I knew that I was going to start saying some of these things out loud. I won't say these things directly to you for many years, but I want to record them now so I can remember the space and time when I found comfort in my own being and place in the world.


This Christmas was so unique, because I felt like there was holiness in all the small moments we were together. That, my darling, is truly odd because I am more certain than ever that Christianity is not enough for me. I am deeply spiritual, in ways that I have only recently uncovered. But one religion, specifically organized religion, does not fit the life I see for us. I went nearly mad running my mind in circles knowing that this year you had started to grasp the concept of holidays and without Christ, Christmas is a vacuous holiday over-focused on the gratuitous giving of gifts. What I do believe is that God placed within us all a spark of divinity. When we discover our own spark of divinity, we can focus our lives on fulfilling our purpose - the reason that we are on this earth. I also told your Daddy to prepare himself for a very diverse celebration of holidays in 2011. As you grow, you will think it completely natural that we celebrate Shabbat, Easter, Christmas and Chinese Moon Festival, among many others. We will do this as a family because more than anything I want you to grow up knowing that if everyone has within them a spark of divinity, you simply cannot judge or hate. God is one, we are one, everything is oneness.


You were also officially visited by Santa Claus this year. While there were many adorable, heart-warming moments in this long beloved tradition, deep down it doesn't make me feel good. It seems so unnatural to me that I will spend so much time encouraging you to believe in Santa Claus, only to turn around and tell you he doesn't exist. We visited him at the mall and at school, left out the infamous cookies, sprinkled reindeer food on the lawn and wrapped your presents in special pink paper. I ate your cookie so you could walk down the stairs Christmas morning and see that Santa Claus had eaten your cookie. I did it mostly because it's tradition. But I wouldn't have, if I hadn't known deep inside how I would explain, when the time is right, that Santa Claus is a spirit within us all. It is the spirit of joy and giving and when you are old enough to know this, you will be old enough to have responsibility for beholding the spirit. I'm not sure how that will take form, but it will likely involve some form of helping those less fortunate.

*To be continued with a third and final chapter
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The Christmas Spirit, Part One

Dearest Alexa,

There is a book that I have read nearly 100 times. It is Romancing the Ordinary by Sarah Ban Breathnach and every time I pull it out to read again your Daddy says, without fail, "we can buy you more books." He doesn't understand how this book speaks to me. It whispers to my soul in a gentle, loving way that calls me to be a better woman and love myself just the way I am. Sarah writes, "Happiness is much more difficult to write about than sorrow, just as the longing for love is easier to describe than its fulfillment. Still, I suspect that many writers secretly wish they could write from a deep well of happiness, at least once, just to know what it feels like."

I have longed achingly for both the deep well of happiness and the creative spark to write about it. We have had some rough times over the past two years. All three of us have experienced sickness on a physical, mental and emotional level. Alexa, you and I found that we simply cannot be healthy if we spend too much time apart. Your daddy and I have found that while your arrival filled a deep void in our family, the road to you was so filled with potholes and pitfalls that we became jarred and jaded. Our souls needed mending and brought together in a way that would allow us to break negative, repetitive patterns and move forward to actualize the unconditional love that we truly have for each other.


I didn't realize how significant the changes in our lives had become until this Christmas. I looked at the snow and saw a soft, glistening blanket that beckoned our play. I started cooking and baking on a daily basis and found myself drifting away in dizzying array of aromas. My heart sung with the smell of cinnamon and vanilla wafting through the air. My mouth watered expectantly as a medley of onions and garlic potently filled the room. I felt a wonderful connectedness to my intuition. My heart leapt each day as though I was unexpectedly seeing a dearly loved friend who had been lost to me over time. My senses came alive and I realized I was in love. Love awakens your senses. It takes you beyond sight, sound, scent, taste and touch and reawakens your senses of knowing and wonder.


December 21 was the day that I knew for sure that I was in love, in love with our life. I have fallen madly, deeply, head-over-heels in love with both the family we are and the family we will become. I am experiencing a deep well of happiness unlike any other time in my life. I can only hope I have found the words to give it justice. So many times I haven't written because I so desperately wanted to find the right words, the right angle, the right perspective to share our journey with others. But honey, you'll learn this to be true as you grow up and see me as a person and your Mother, when I'm really honest about who I am - I can't avoid the fact that I see things differently than many people in the world. I joke about my uniqueness, but secretly I've lacked the confidence to put myself out there for fear that people wouldn't get it and I would lose my patience to explain it. I don't want to digress too far, so suffice it to say that your bold spirit has encouraged me to be exactly who I am and has allowed me to love myself to a place where I'm ready to give and receive unconditional love.

*To Be Continued

Momma's Guide to Keeping the Diva Peace

Alexa has a new obsession. Herself. She absolutely loves looking at pictures of herself and watching her own videos. If she catches her reflection in the mirror she stops for minutes to explore her face in detail. A few times she's watched herself cry. She loves her Dora eyes (sunglasses) and p sauce (lip gloss). She wants money to carry in her purse. Real money thank you very much. She'd like things to be her way. And please don't make mistakes. If she wants her snacks separated into two bowls, for heavens sakes please don't haphazardly lump it all into one bowl. She said two bowls thank you very much. Don't get me wrong. She asks politely. The first time. But don't second guess her. She wants it how she wants it. And finally, please don't make a mess or leave things lying around. She doesn't want to have to ask you to clean it up. But she will, repeatedly, until it's cleaned to her satisfaction. So there you go. Consider yourself in the know.


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Learning Gratitude

This year for Thanksgiving we are learning gratitude. I was worried that Thanksgiving would get lost between the Halloween and Christmas shuffle. It's a bit ambiguous to explain to a two-year-old. This age is all about understanding the tangible. At Halloween you dress up in a costume, knock on people's doors, say trick or treat and then they give you some candy. Alexa's translation, "I get candy? Where's my costume? Let's go!"

Thanksgiving explanations were initially met by blank stares. I would share with Alexa that Thanksgiving is about food and family and well, being grateful. Alexa's question, "Is there candy?" To help her understand being thankful and see it in a tangible way we have plastered our fireplace with multicolored post-it notes about what makes us thankful. Each day, we ask Alexa, "what made you happy today? What are you thankful for?"

Want to guess the number one response? "Daddy's muscles." It's a little game Daddy and Alexa play where they bend their arms up at the elbows and shout in monster voices, "Muscles!" The other things that make her most happy are the abc's, her friend Aidan, bless you's (what she calls sneezes and coughs), and saying rarrr. For awhile, I thought perhaps my message of gratitude was lost on her. I thought she was saying the first thing that came to mind and didn't understand the concept of being thankful. After all, Daddy and I are thankful for big things like his job, family time together, my recent business opportunities and visits to our families.

And then I realized I was the one who wasn't getting what gratitude means. Alexa experiences sheer joy when she is able to sing the abc song. It's her favorite along with row row. She never passes up the chance to tell someone bless you after they sneeze or cough. There's a lot to say about her friend Aidan. Alexa told us last Friday, "Aidan's hot!" I would like to say that she didn't know what she was saying, but she did. Obviously, Aidan makes her happy too.

Alexa is happy with the simplest moments of life. She is grateful for moments during the day that Alan and I quickly overlook. She is grateful to be. Through her gentle, joyful spirit we have learned, rather than taught, the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

Try, Try Again

Confession: I am a terrible blogger. I am an introvert. When times are tough, I don't reach out to friends and family to ask for advice, insight and feedback. I crave time alone. I think. I ponder. I journal. Once I have an internal sense of comfort and a firm grasp on my feelings, then I can share. It's who I am.

I've left you all wondering about Alexa. She is doing wonderful. In fact, she had her height and weight checked again last week and she has gained two pounds and grown 1.5 inches! The testing revealed that her acid reflux was quite severe and she is mildly lactose intolerant. Although the bacteria in her colon did not show up as inflammation on her pathology report I can tell you with Momma certainty that it was the Flagyl that turned things around for her. Flagyl is a prescription given when the bad bacteria outweigh good bacteria in the intestines and colon. After she finished that prescription her distended belly was gone. Initially, she looked even thinner. But then an amazing thing happened. She started the Prevacid for her acid reflux and started eating a few more bites at each meal. Slowly, her hiccups faded and we stopped hearing the acid fluctuate up and down, as though she was continually throwing up in her mouth. We put her on whole, organic cows milk (despite the lactose intolerance). And just like that, our little girl is thriving again.

Today, her cheeks are a bit chubby again. I think she may have back to back growth spurts. We're back on solid ground so I will try, try again to keep this blog current. Thank you for your prayers, thoughts and feedback on our parenthood journey.

Uncanny

Every time I think of today I find myself shaking my head from left to right in disbelief.

First, Alexa did not cry after having her procedure. She woke up, looked at me and Daddy and said "hungy". From the look on the nurses' faces I'm going to say a kid almost never wakes up and doesn't cry. Not only did she not cry, the little bottle rocket danced, tumbled and defiantly marched her way through the entire day. Mid-day she strapped her baby into her stroller and announced "I wanna go dodor. Baby dodor." Uhm....really? I hate to tell you kid, but nothing that happened today would make a normal kid want to go back. EVER. No stickers. No candy. Just a lot of strangers poking, prodding and trying to tame your wild mustang spirit into lying still. This kid is special. If birds of a feather flock together, she's going to need her own flock. I have never in my life known someone like this kid. Don't get me wrong she's a handful. A giant "I have my own mind and I don't plan on changing it soon" handful. But she does it all with a genuine, radiant full body smile.

Second, we essentially found out that Alexa is suffering from the same issues that have plagued me this last year. She has bacterial overgrowth in her intestines from too many antibiotics. She also has severe acid reflux that has caused her tonsils to swell up to a size that exceeds the scale. It's possible that she has some specific invasive bacteria and food sensitivities as well, we just won't know until the biopsies are processed. Her throat, esophagus and colon all showed signs of inflammation. However, the doctor felt that she could safely rule out Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis. Celiac disease and severe lactose intolerance are still on the table as possibilities.

I know I don't have to write this, and yet I do. Alexa and I share a deeply soulful Mommy daughter bond that is not at all based on genetics. It blows my mind how similar our conditions are. God works in mysterious ways. I'm insanely grateful that this little mystery has been entrusted to us.

The Joy

Tomorrow Alexa has her colonoscopy and endoscopy. I will get to be with her in the room during the procedure thank goodness. We're really hoping to get some immediate feedback. We won't get full results until September 21st though.

To maintain some level of sanity and not worry myself into the ground, I decided to list (and focus on) the top 5 ways that Alexa brings joy to our lives.

#5.....Her love of running - "Ready.....two.....weee!"

#4.....Her current obsession with all kinds of "flies" She insists on wearing a "fly" barrette in her hair every day. Daddy keeps trying to convince her to poke dead bugs with a stick but she insists on picking them up, laughing and saying "yucky bug!"

#3.....Her sense of humor and unbeatable spirit. Despite several pokes and prods from the doctor here she is making Mommy and Daddy laugh in her doctor hat giving herself a shot.

#2.....That smile.

#1.....Her beautiful little mind and love of music. I love her creative little songs. This is the tail end of a song. One song can last 4-5 minutes and usually includes mommy, daddy, ducks, doggies and water, among other things. (Sorry it's sideways - iphone glitch we need to fix.)