Experiment #6: Faux Canvas Print (in honor of Madeline)

Our little “Meg-Peg” turned one last week. For those of you who know Madeline, you know what a big deal that is. I will eventually get to my experiment, which was using one of our favorite pictures of 7-month-old Madeline to remedy the fact that we have not put up one single picture of Madeline all year. But first, I felt it was odd that it took a whole year to hang a picture of Madeline and I wanted to examine why.

Before I start, I will apologize for the lengthy discourse that follows. It was time to process all the stuff that happened this year and, lucky you, this blog is my medium for downloading. It gets a little philosophical, a little theological and, if I’m honest, a little sappy. Writing this was extremely cathartic, so just consider yourself forewarned.

One Year Ago...

Madeline was born a healthy little girl. Her first night out of the womb, she slept 8 hours straight and could not be awoken to eat. We were a little freaked, but everyone said she was just recovering from the “trauma” of being born. Her amazing sleep abilities continued when we got home. She slept ALL the time and for LONG periods of time. Before she was a month, she was sleeping through the night. After Nora, our extremely high maintenance sleeper (who only just started sleeping through the night a month ago after starting asthma treatments), we thought we had created a super baby (well, she is pretty super). 

A week before her CHD was discovered

It’s funny now looking back at all the little clues that something was wrong. It seems ridiculous that we didn’t pick anything up earlier. To his credit, Nick was really worried about how much she was sleeping. “It just can’t be this easy,” he kept saying. The doctors told us to enjoy the extra sleep. We joked about her having a blue skin tone. Over the next 6 weeks, her eating times got shorter and her sleeping times got longer. She was always cold and needed to be wrapped up in several blankets. She’d sweat when she’d eat. I compulsively felt her fontanel, convinced that it was constantly a little sunken.

It’s also humbling when I look back and see God’s hand in the process to healing and the sheer number of people who had to be at the top of their game and responsive to that little nagging feeling that something was just not right.

Experiment #3: Puffy Fingerpaint

I love shopping with my dad.

I think I just heard an audible gasp from everyone who has ever met either my dad or me. I am pretty sure that the only time the words “love” and “shopping” are uttered together in a sentence by either of us is to say, “I love it when the stores are closed and there is no possible way I can go shopping.” I just really hate shopping and so does my dad.

 

But shopping with my dad is awesome for two reasons:

1. We have the same attention span for shopping (30 minutes max).
2. We shop by feel.

The three times I have gone shopping with my dad, he would come back to the dressing room with a small pile of clothes - none of them matching (or even distantly coordinating), but all soft, smooth or silky. I like my clothes to look good, but I really like them to feel good.

I'm just a highly tactile person.  I like to knead dough, work with clay, walk barefoot, twirl my hair, wiggle in the sand, and play in the dirt. I have apparently passed this obsession on to my daughter. So at our house, we try to do lots of "hands-on" activitites.

Tactile stimulation is more than just a way to occupy a preschooler's time. It is now being recognized as a legitimate therapeutic treatment with exceptional benefits for everyone from preemies to Alzheimer patients. Modeling letters out of clay is used as a treatment for dyslexia. It has even been suggested that since serotonin, a brain chemical linked to depression, is more present when an individual is active, even fine motor movements can improve mood and combat depression (B.L. Jacobs, Princeton University).