Our (Neurodiverse) Family

Today, my former violin teacher, Mr. Edward Lawrence, died from cancer. Mr. Lawrence was not just my violin teacher. He was my older brother's cello teacher and my younger brother's violin/viola teacher. On top of that, he was also an exquisite pianist. Yes, he was indeed a man of many talents. My dad met him in 1998 when they were in the Rice University Campanile orchestra (a non-music major orchestra)--my dad was in the violin section and Mr. Lawrence was in the cello section. I don't know the events of how they got to know each other and how my dad found out that Mr. Lawrence also played the violin, but somehow it happened. I also don't remember why my dad decided to start taking violin lessons again, but he did and he enlisted Mr. Lawrence as his teacher. I was almost twelve years old when Mr. Lawrence started coming to our house every Friday night to give Dad his lessons. All I knew about him was that he played and taught several instruments, he was a larg...

Hello 2016 Good-bye 2015 As I mentioned on Facebook, 2015 is best described as "the best of times, the worst of times". While there were great parts of the year, there were also some very difficult parts. The best of 2015 Stephan's new job. While it was an adjustment at first (longer commute, longer hours, and different atmosphere), he is genuinely enjoying it now. We thought we were going to move closer, but decided that we needed to stay put, especially since... We found out we were having baby #2! Admittedly, it was a wee bit of a surprise, mostly at how quickly it happened after Stephan started his new job. Thank you for waiting until Daddy had a new job, baby ;) Finding out that baby #2 was going to be another little girl! I grew up with brothers and Stephan's sisters are about 12 years and three boys apart in age, so most bets were on me having a boy. Kate kept insisting she was getting a baby sister, and lo and behold, she was right. We were thr...

Other than her birth story, Livia hasn't had a post dedicated to her. (1) She's three months old now. (2) We call her our little butterfly because she has a birthmark on back of her head (hidden by her hair) that looks like a butterfly. We like to think it's a butterfly kiss from her grandpa in heaven. (3) When Livia was born, the general consensus was that she looked just like Stephan did as a baby. Nowadays, strangers say she looks just like me. Currently, the agreement is that she looks like a brunette Kate. (4) Had I made it to my due date, she would have been just about the exact same weight Stephan was when he was born (on his due date, incidentally). At birth, he was a half-ounce shy of nine pounds. Yeah, I think I'm glad she came early. (5) Whereas her sister was always long and lean, she seems to be going the short and chubby route. (6) Snuggles. She loooves to be snuggled. (7) She has my lips. Take that people who like to say she didn't ge...

...it's me.... Hello from the mother SIIIIIIDE!!!!! Check it out, I'm being relevant. I think? Yes, it's been almost three months since I last updated. I've been a bit busy. (1) Two kids. Need I say more? (2) Okay fine, I'll elaborate. My days are spent nursing the baby, changing diapers (only for the baby, thankfully. Yay for Kate being potty trained), taking Kate to and from preschool, and keeping Kate from destroying the house and/or killing the baby. (3) Between all of that, I have to figure out how to keep the household running and put dinner on the table when Stephan comes home from work. Needless to say, we've ordered a lot of pizza these last few months. Or I've done breakfast for dinner. Yeah, we've eaten a lot of breakfast for dinner. (4) Despite me saying that I have to keep Kate from killing Livia, Kate really does love her baby sister. She just doesn't know how to be gentle, and well it's hard going from having all ...

The Friday before I was induced, I went in for my twice-weekly NST. I had my blood drawn a few days before to check my Bile Acid and Liver Function a few days before and I asked the nurse who did my NST if she could check on that. She found my test results, and my BA level was 45--five points above "severe". This was with me being medicated. I was rushed into an appointment with one of the midwives--she consulted with two of the OBs and it was decided that we would still go forward with the plan to induce the following Wednesday. On Labor Day, I found out that I was #5 on the hospital's induction call list. Somehow the next day, I moved up to the #2 slot so I woke up extra early (not that I slept much the night before anyway, because I had THE WORST itching that night) to wait for the call. At 7:30, my phone rang and the nurse said that my induction was scheduled for 9 a.m. So, we got Kate out of bed, loaded up the car, took her to my mother-in-law's house...

As if this pregnancy wasn't throwing me enough curveballs. Spotting in the first weeks, not finding little baby on ultrasound, holy food aversions and nausea Batman, subchorionic hematoma...and then being diagnosed with cholestasis at 28 weeks. In all of this, Stephan's dad was going through his last months, which brought emotional upheaval of its own. I thought I just had to deal with a few more weeks of itching hell, get induced at 37 weeks, and be done with it. My gallbladder had other ideas. I hit 35 weeks yesterday, and to celebrate, my gallbladder decided it had a death wish. Admittedly, I've been eating a lot of junk recently (sleep deprivation and stress does that), and my gallbladder must have decided that it couldn't take it anymore. At around three-something yesterday, I had a snack that I probably shouldn't have had because I really wasn't hungry (stress eating not a good idea). At first, I just felt really, really full. Then, the Right Upper Qua...

Things have been a bit crazy lately. Just a few weeks ago, Stephan's dad passed away after a long battle with leiomyosarcoma Wait, what?! We had known for some time that my father-in-law was dying, but I kept quiet about it here and on social media in general out of respect for my family's privacy and because he lived with the cancer for much longer than the experts expected, we had no idea when he would go. The last several months have been some of the hardest we've experienced as a family. We pretty much put our lives on hold so we could say good-bye when the time came. Kate started to become scared of Grandpa because of the pain drugs he was taking and the equipment he needed to function. First it was a walker, then a wheelchair, then he needed a morphine pump, oxygen, and finally a hospital bed. Some people have told us, "Oh, Kate is old enough that she'll remember her grandfather!" I'm not sure how I feel about her remembering her grandpa bein...