She Gave The Perfect Answer

A memory from childhood is me riding on the back of my Dad’s bike in an attached seat. Our house in Phoenix was not far from a canal that we could get to from the alley off our backyard. I remember going for family bike rides and screaming my guts out or crying the whole way because I was sure that I would fall into the canal. In my minds eye we were teetering on the edge of the canal and I was sure I had dozens of near entry’s into the murky brown water. In reality it was no where close to that and a very neat and fun act of parental awesomeness on my parents part, but at the time I didn’t see it that way.

Now, as parents with some kids who are old enough to be proficient on their own bikes, Frank and I have visions of similar adventures on our neighborhood canal path. I asked Maelee what she thought about riding with me on the canal on her bike. She had absolutely no reservations and answered that she would love to do that with me. Then, because of my own terror as a kid, I asked her “aren’t you afraid you might fall in.” Without missing a beat in her response she said, “Mom I can swim.”

She gave the perfect answer. I thought it was anyway. No fear, no worrying about saying what she thought I wanted to hear, just a moment of perfect wit and clarity of idea right on the spot.

I wish I could have carried that same clarity and wit with me yesterday. Yesterday we had the chance to attend a CF Family Education day at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. I was asked to participate in the last part of the day when there would be a panel. I was nervited (nervous and excited) and also scared. I knew that the people who I would be sitting in front of for the panel would mostly have more knowledge and experience than me with Cystic Fibrosis.

I have written before about the “cringe of comparison” in the sphere of a world like Cystic Fibrosis. At diagnosis you ask yourself and then others constantly ask you “how bad is your CF.” So as you try to find out the answer to that question you realize that there is no scale or number to give, but a very wide pendulum of complications that the disease can cause for a person and that while similarities in symptoms and treatments from patient to patient of course exist each CF person lives out a very different experience.

Of course when you get a group of parents together with this glaring similarity in their children (aka same disease name) of course you want to hear each other’s stories so you can maybe unlock some of the mystery to that original question “how bad is our CF.”

So here I am sitting in the panel and I have already given my introduction and I have tried to speak confidently and from the heart and then I get a question that makes me cringe. Really it’s the one I began asking 8 years ago when we ever thought of having another baby. The question was in essence, “how do you keep your kids safe from each other in regards to the CF to CF contamination concerns.”

My answer was fine. But in my haste and fear of looking another CF parent in the eye who wants to know really what kind of person would continue to have children knowing that those kids could someday play catch with with lung damaging bacteria I may have mistakenly came off as apologetic. So in an attempt to boost confidence and bravery for myself and to prepare myself to give a better answer with confidence and clarity in the future here is my future answer to that question:

      “Yes, we are definitely concerned with and aware of CF to CF person contamination issues. However besides using the hum drum methods of diligent hand washing, doing our best to keep a clean home, and giving a sick person more space like any family would we have no other tricks or methods. Our belief is that while clinically our kids should never be in the same room, this is our family. We believe It is more important for us to be the best family that we can be and spend the most quality time together that we can learning how to love and forgive and work rather than to obsess over who might be contaminating who. We do not believe that the God we worship and love will protect us from all sickness and suffering, but we 100% believe that the God we worship and love is guiding each member of our family through this earthly existence and helping us through all things.”    

That is kind of a long answer, and I may have had to take a breath our two between sentences but if I could go back and say that I would love to do it. Or a much shorter answer would have been, Mathew 19:26 – “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

The Valentine's Day I Almost Became A 19 Year Old Widow

Our first married Valentine’s day was about a month before our first wedding anniversary. My husband Frank is way better at being thoughtful in regards to gifting than I am and can be sneaky while doing it. So when I got a call directly to my desk at the bank I was working at from a man claiming to be a police officer and asking for the wife of Frank Adams I thought it was a joke.

The officer assured me it was not a joke and let me know that my husband had just been in a car wreck. The officer said that he did not know anything in regards to the extent of my husbands injuries except that it was bad enough that they had taken my husband away in a helicopter to the hospital. Completely shocked my mind began inventing all sorts of reasons why a helicopter would have taken him away.

I ran into my new boss’ office and emotionally told her about the call. Totally reeling, I remember telling her that I had no clue how to get to the hospital he was taken to. Also she knew that I was very afraid of driving on the freeway (so much so that I was choosing to go 17 miles on the surface streets to and from work instead of driving on the freeway). She knew right where to tell me to go on the freeway and gave me a pep talk before I left her office doorway muttering the repeated freeway directions over and over again and I shakily walking to the car.

My parents both were unreachable at work, and my husband’s parents were both 150 miles away so I called my husband’s sister. She said she would absolutely meet me at the hospital. Then my phone started ringing.

The first call was from Frank’s boss. Frank was a plumber at the time and worked in new housing developments. His boss had not been too far away from the location of Frank’s accident and was there before the helicopter came. His boss told me that he didn’t know more about Frank’s injuries or really what happened except that Frank kept saying that his back hurt before they put him on the chopper, and that he also would meet me at the hospital.

My minds eye saw Frank like the opening scene of a tv hospital drama being wheeled into the hospital surrounded by EMT’s and hospital staff and him covered in blood and barely alive. Would I even recognize him? How badly was he hurt? What would I do without him? Would he die before I got there?

Driving now (and as I am continuing to mutter the freeway directions that my boss gave me while white knuckling the steering wheel) my phone rings again. This time it is a man who says he is the Chaplain at the hospital Frank is at. Of course from my years watching MASH I knew that this religious representative calling me before I even stepped into the hospital was not good. I don’t even remember what he said or asked me except that my mind kept screaming, “HE IS GOING TO BE DEAD BEFORE I GET THERE!” “WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN MARRIED A YEAR YET AND HE IS DEAD.”

I get there and they usher me into a little waiting room. Two seconds later Frank’s sister and her family walk in. The chaplain comes and talks to me again and then they say that I can see Frank. I am terrified to walk into his room, but so thankful to be there.

His pelvis had been shattered and he was scraped up pretty good but coherent and alright! I remember being so completely relieved my husband was alive and feeling very thankful for him.

Frank’s boss was a member of the same church that we are and came right in with his boss as well who also was (yeah surprise all the boss’ came and Frank got a lot of undesired attention from “upper management” that day). Both men along with my brother in law gave Frank a priesthood blessing right there in his hospital room. I was so thankful that they were able to do that and it provided a great comfort and calm that I needed.

The rest of the story about Frank’s accident gave me even more reason to thank my Heavenly Father. As the small plumbing truck that Frank was driving got t-boned by another truck about the size of a tow truck, Frank’s truck flipped onto the driver’s side and was pushed quite a ways before it stopped. Frank’s window, the window the truck flipped onto and one can assume Frank was slammed into despite his seat belt being buckled did not break. Had it broken, or had Frank not been wearing his seat belt like the guy in the passenger seat clearly the outcome would have been much grimmer.

The accident and how Frank was protected was a major reality check to my 19 year old mind. Now more than a decade later it still drops a bomb on my heart. If he had died that day I wouldn’t have any of the sunshine I have because of him. He helped me survive my twenties and graduate from college, which took a lot of doing. He put/puts up with my nonsense and helped/helps straighten me out when I am going nuts. And best of all he has walked through 4 kids with me, and carried me when I felt like quitting and then nudged me along with his foot when his arms were full of kids. Charles and Orson wouldn’t be here let alone have their sparkly blue eyes. I could go on and one and on. So every Valentine’s Day we think of the anniversary of “Frank’s accident,” and the miracle of the day and the ripple effect through all of the years after.

  

45 Hours & 2,000 Pieces Of Marriage

We got it to start with as a project to do together as a family during winter break. That foolish dream ended when we opened the box and saw the magnitude of the 2,000 piece Star Wars cast puzzle. But determined to finish we began to work on the puzzle at night together while the kids were sleeping. With our favorite watch together tv show as background noise we would work on the puzzle, usually from 8pm to 11:30pm. Then we would say we were going to bed and shut down the tv and then stand at the puzzle together again for another hour or so helping each other find certain pieces that we had been stuck on.

All in all we took about 45 hours to complete the puzzle over a period of one months’ time. These stats are probably pretty laughable compared to other puzzlers out there, but I give them for reference only. We found out some interesting things about each other as we worked on this complicated but very centrally focused project. It was similar to our personality and patterns established in our relationship over the past 13 years being played out in 2,000 cardboard pieces.

I wish I would have taken more pictures along the way to better show what happened.

We started with the edge pieces of course, separating them out from the non-edge pieces. Completing the frame of edge together was easy we did it in one night. Then it got interesting. We picked our own corner to work in. Really it seemed not working together at all. Frank went for the lines and pattern of the stairs at the bottom of the puzzle and I was drawn to the crazy color of the explosions against the sky at the top of the puzzle.

Soon I began to get bored with the section I was working on and would jump to another little section that would catch my eye as I was sifting through the 6 trays we had the pieces separated into. Frank however did not stop on the stairs until he had four even rows of the puzzle put together from the bottom up horizontally.

And so it went. I jumped around and flited all over the puzzle and Frank found a section and would not move on or deviate from that until it was complete. Eventually our sections would merge. Then we would be made to work together. Frank would look for his pieces by shape alone (because he is color blind) and have huge success. I would find my pieces based color alone and do well that way.

We got to the end and had one tray of pieces left. We both started sweating because the math of exactly 2,000 pieces of anything around 4 kids over a months period of time it seemed sure we were bound to lose a couple of pieces. We held our breath as we placed the last piece on the puzzle that we thought would be much easier than it turned out to be for us.

It has been revelatory to compare how we worked on the puzzle together to how we work together in non-cardboard ways. Professionally, cleaning, food preparation, home improvement projects, organization, child care methods, personal goals, etc. I feel like I am a shot gun that keeps shooting at my target over and over again until there are eventually enough holes that the target disintegrates, while my husband is more of a look through the sight type of guy waiting for the wind direction to be just right (no matter how long it takes) and getting it done in one clean accurate first shot.

But as far as targets and puzzle go working together we can get the job done (although I must admit I have never actually shot a shot gun).

The Nice Lady in the Yoga Pants

Even the dog was worried about Orson

It is easy for me to get self absorbed when the kids are sick. I especially feel like its every mom for herself when I go to the doctor’s office with sick kids, or even for a well check. I am paranoid (absolutely positive really) about every chair arm and touchable surface and person in the doctors office being covered with all sorts of raging contagious nasty’s. The kids get a reminder lecture every time we pull up to our pediatrician’s office. It goes something like this,

“No, you cannot play with the toys. Don’t touch anything. Just sit there and watch the movie they have on the TV. I brought fruit snacks for good listeners, and yes if you have to get a shot we can get an ice cream cone (we get steroid shots frequently so its always on their minds).”

I know that I am not alone in this maternal doctors office waiting room quest in regards to the avoidance of getting even more germs. I also know that most places we go outside our front door are the same or worse in regards to touching germs that can make us sick, but in my mind it just seems heightened at any medical facility (don’t even get me started about how I feel about lab work offices, barf – they are like the DVM of the medical world).

Like all kids and all times parents lecture, sometimes they listen, often they don’t. So I hover and squirt sanitizer frequently, while loudly whispering reminders about not touching this or that surface, and oh yeah threatening with fruit snack denial.

Recently Orson dipped from being his regular normal cheerful self to being a stumbling high fever ridden sleep all morning kind of guy. So I get him and the baby in the car and head over to have him seen by our pediatrician. His fever kept climbing higher all morning and I should have guessed he was going to start puking next. I had to coax him out of the car because he was so out of it, normally I would have carried him but I had the baby on my hip so he had to walk. As he takes his first step into the doctor’s office he starts to yak. I pull him back outside in time for the puke to only get on the doorstep and not all the way into the lobby of the waiting room. I am directing him to puke into the flowers next to the front door and he is stumbling around coughing, crying, and puking all at once. All this is happening while the front door to the doctors office is being held open and all the other doctors office waiters are politely trying not to stare.

The puke (thankfully it wasn’t much because I couldn’t get him to eat all morning) needed to be cleaned up. Orson was huddled in a sobbing ball of boy next to my diaper bag on the sidewalk outside the doctors office. I was holding the baby and had no place to put her as I attempted to clean up the puke and get Orson settled down and into the office.

As my quick thinking skills are working as fast as they can to solve this problem, (I am making a plan to run to the bathroom and grab a wad of paper towels but feeling bad about leaving my kid outside on the street crying while I run to the bathroom and also thinking about how I am not going to get Ruby in the mess), a stranger steps into my brain cloud and shines her light of kindness. She asks if she can hold baby Ruby while I help Orson.

WHAT? Really? You really want to help me? I am not sure if I would be willing to do that for you if the situation was reversed. I would be too worried about getting the “germs” you had brought with you to the doctor’s office. Handing my baby over to a complete stranger not something I would normally do EVER of course, but this solved all of the problems to my plan.

So the kind fellow mother in yoga pants held Ruby who immediately started screaming while I ran as fast as I could to the bathroom for paper towels to clean up Orson and the doorstep as best as I could. After I trashed the towels and washed my hands and after I got settled with the kids on the “sick child” side of the waiting room (the red sea parted for us as we walked through the lobby and to the chairs) I had a chance to observe my rescuer.

She had an infant in a car seat and a toddler with her as well waiting for her turn. I was shocked and so grateful that she helped me. She had in my opinion great reasons to simply watch my scene and silently cheer for me, as I would have done. But instead she stepped into my gross moment of the day and helped me to get through it. I am happy that I did get a chance to sincerely thank her before we left the office. The nice lady in the yoga pants is my new momspiration and a great Christ like example for me to remember.

The Adrenaline of Accomplishment

Scene : Mike Teevee’s mom from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original movie) climbs aboard the strange Wonka car. Unbeknownst to her she is sitting directly in front of a horn that will blow massive amounts of mysterious looking sudsy bubbles all over her. At first the bubbles shock her, then to no avail she try's to hold them back with her hands, finally she sits in her seat as the obnoxious foam just completely covers her from head to toe. She cannot stop it. Did she look cute and have good intentions of staying that way while she rode the Wonka car to the next stop in the creepy factory? Yes! She had a labor intensive 70’s roller set, pantyhose, and kitten heels on when she started her day – all plans pointed to awesome – not what really happened (a spooky candy factory tour, being insulted, and having her son shrunk to a purse size boy).

Next scene : End of the Pirate of the Caribbean series when the head guy of the East Indian Trading Company is walking elegantly down the stairs on his fantastic ship while in amazing slow motion effects the ship and very railing he is holding onto is being blown to smithereens. Literally splintering to pieces all around him. He does not look panicked, he does not run down the stairs away from the cannon and gun fire but continues to walk with dignity through the chaos with his head held high.

These scenes often come to my mind during the two most crazy town parts of my day, getting the kids off the school and then getting the kids home from school and getting dinner ready. Most days are one or the other of these scenes, but sometimes, SOMETIMES it feels like Heavenly Father throws you a bone and you have this magical day when things you never thought would or could be accomplished get accomplished and you can sit back and say like old Murdock from the A-team “I love it when a plan comes together.”

I had a day like that last week. To prove the extent of the magical blessed morning I had I stopped and took this little video. All 3 vesters doing theirs vests at the same time. Ruby got her Pulmozyme done FIRST THING IN THE MORNING BEFORE THE BIG KIDS WERE GONE! Gasp, shocking, unheard of! Then to top it off Charles the only non vester says to me “Mom can I hold Ruby while she does her vest.” And he did, and she loved it, and he loved it and felt likes such a special helper and has begged to hold her during her vest ever since.

So I had to stop and give Heavenly Father not only a big high 5, but a high 10 and say a prayer of gratitude. Then as I was continuing to realize what this accomplishment would mean for my guilt level and “self worth tank” for the rest of the day I knew it was not a day to be wasted. The adrenaline of accomplishment was pumping and I went outside and lifted my car! Well I didn’t really lift the car but I did get a lot done that day and did move a few pieces of furniture. Days like that give a girl something to recreate and aspire to. Something to look back on and say, “yeah that happened!” So once again I thank my Father in Heaven for giving me hope and encouragement through accomplishment and inspiration to strive for awesomeness for those days when I am totally covered in mysterious bubbly foam and the very stair railing I am holding onto is splintering and exploding around me!

  

One Gram at a Time

I sat down with a GI doctor and a nutritionist this week in regards to Orson and his weight gain. Initially the visit started with vitals and weight check. I was disappointed to see it hadn’t increased more than an ounce or two if even at all. Then the microscope of nutrition was pulled out and my eyes were opened.

It was explained to me that from July to December, since they had seen Orson last at that particular office he had only gained 0.1 grams a day (keeping in mind that google says that a gram is about 1/6 of a teaspoon surely 0.1 of that amount isn’t even visible to eye). But then they calculated how much he had gained from his December 1^st appointment until 2 weeks later at the GI appointment and he had jumped to 26 grams per day! So if he can sustain this “catch up” phase that he is doing now with 2 full cans of “milkshake” at night then we will go nuts!

It was fantastic to see that even though the “pounds” number that I can see and am familiar with in regards to weight isn’t moving like I assumed it would, that his body is indeed growing and making progress now that he has been able to work up to the two full cans at night. We are excited by this information and know that Orson is being helped along the way by us, but most importantly by an aware Heavenly Father who knows how Orson needs to grow best!

Also it gives a girl hope when you see that changing things one gram at a time, or one mess at a time in my case and at my house, can eventually make a dent!

PS - Also as a random side note we had a cool opportunity to see Florida State play here in Arizona! It was nice to see other people with Seminole gear on!

I Know What Your Thinking

I know what you are thinking. Whoa that Adams family looks fancy in those expensive looking upscale sweaters right? Let me explain.

 

Six months ago when I was leaving the house to go to what would become one of my last OB appointments before Ruby was born my always supportive mother called out as I was shutting the door "go to any stores or do any errands you need to while you are out." After a very hopeful but then uneventful "check" of my progress in regards to delivery I was in the dumps. 

 

So remembering my Mom's suggestion I went on a depressed walk around Old Navy. My first stop is of course the clearance section (I used to feel like I had to do a lap around the store before I went straight to clearance but now apparently my pride is out the window in that regard). These red sweaters were nothing that would normally catch my eye or something that I would buy BUT then I saw the price tag of NINETY SEVEN CENTS my heart began to sing.

 

The wheels of happy planning began to turn and the moment I was in (being huge and pregnant and feeling physically lousy) was forgotten. What were my happy planning plans? Matching family sweaters of course. Now the sweaters were all women's sizes but I was sure that somehow I could find a way to make them small enough to fit my kids. Plus thinking of the time when it would be weather appropriate to wear these matching sweaters made me extra happy. 

 

So here we are six months and a baby birth later. Lots of exciting things have happened. Last week when my kids had "ugly sweater day" or "Christmas clothes" spirit day at their school I knew the time to bust out these ninety seven cent beauties had arrived.

 

So the wearing of these matching sweaters (won't happen much because how I tucked up Orson's sleeves and sewed them made him angry because it made him look like he had "funny arm muscles") is not only an amazing photo opportunity but a milestone reached. Six months past the day in the dumps. Almost six months of being the mother of 4 kids and 1 new fantastic baby girl. Plus Charles likes his and wore it all weekend, so at least I have one buddy in the foreseeable future of the matching sweater club!  

Caption : An exciting and practical use of the timer on the camera

Caption : Charles looking fabulous ready to go to line up for school.

Caption : Me showing just how awesome it feels to pull off getting all 4 kids to wear matching sweaters