The Beginning

Shane and I started a family with the highest of hopes and expectations. It was gonna be great. Two kids (notice I said two), a house paid off (okay, that was MY idea), and dreamy bliss every day of the week.

We were supposed to be teachers, eventually ending up at the same high school (the one we both graduated from). We'd walk to school together every morning, have the best classrooms (we actually had them picked out), have lunch together in the afternoons, and walk home at day's end to our sweet little house that was built in 1917, complete with hardwood floors, original unpainted woodwork, and white hexagon shaped tile in the bathroom.

We'd ride antique bikes down to the farmer's market in the summer time, buy organic produce, and spend quiet evenings on the front porch sipping tea and waving at the neighbors. Our TWO children would eventually become architects or designers. They would NOT spend summer evenings in tall grass, smoking dope and playing the guitar like their parents once did (whether or not they'd be "normal" didn't occur to us at all). The perfect dream.

Needless to say, we are really really really far away from this now. God, the universe, Yahweh, or whatever you wanna call it, had other plans. We did both become teachers. We both had really good connections within the school we wanted to end up at and it definitely looked like we'd end up there eventually. We had the house. It was almost paid off at one point. We even had the antique bikes. I mean, it was ALL there. So, family planning began.

I did EVERYTHING perfectly. I quit smoking for six months, took pre-natal vitamins and went to the doctor BEFORE getting pregnant, got the doctor's ok to start trying, ate broccoli (blahc). I got pregnant immediately and the baby was due on 3-3-03.

Something went wrong however, and on August 3d of 2002, pregnancy number one ended in a miscarriage. To put it more accurately, my heart was torn out by it's very strings. Shane, the most wonderful man that ever lived, was an unbelievable comfort to me. Physically, I recovered quickly. My mentor (and spiritual guide of sorts) tells me that psychological recovery was much slower. It came out sideways all over the place for a long time.

After a not quite as perfect beginning, Alden came along. I had my boy. Next, Isabel and a slightly bigger 1917 Bungalow came along. I had my girl. We were teaching. We lived four blocks from the school we'd end up at. All was well.

Then all of a sudden (okay, not so suddenly) Shane started growing a new dream (okay, it wasn't such a new dream). One I had not anticipated (okay, I saw it coming for a few years) and one that I shushed for quite a while. He wanted to see the world. Shhh. No, no honey. Quiet little life, remember? He went to China on a Fulbright scholarship and came back with hopes of international teaching positions and living in, well, who knows where! I carefully swept all that under the rug for a few more months and then....no!!

I actually threw the stick at him (good thing the urine cover was on it). I was pregnant with number three. Three? Three? This was NOT in the plan. Money was tight and the slightly bigger bungalow was costing more than we were comfortable with in the first place. At least it destroyed all that silly talk of teaching over seas (they'll only send you to teach over seas if you don't have more than one dependent each). At least, I thought it killed the dream. Nope. It just changed it a little, and now (money tight and baby number three on the way) there was a need for more.

"Sweetie?"
"Yes," I was in bed with swollen ankles, eating pistachios, and getting comfortable with the idea of Alden sharing a room with the new baby when he asked.
"What would you think of moving to Phoenix and letting me go to Thunderbird School of International Management? I could get my MBA and make more money than the two of us together teaching. You wouldn't have to work all day every day. We could have all three kids and be still be comfortable and maybe even end up living over seas one day!

Shit. "Well," I said, acting better than I felt, "look in to it. Nothing's nothing until it's something." He flipped through the G-mat book a couple of times before bed and then went in and aced the test. Then, they gave him a scholarship (that paid for half of his over all tuition). Our house sold three days after we put it on the market. "Hmm." I thought, "I wonder if this is meant to be." I was eight months pregnant when we moved to Phoenix, Arizona in the middle of July. It was 117 degrees out the day we arrived and there were two serial killers on the loose. "Fantastic," I told him, "you've moved us to hell."

Shane is an incredible man. He got his MBA through sleepless nights up with a newborn, a frightened and misplaced wife, and really REALLY hard tests and projects. Not only that. He did it all with passion and love and an unwavering gratitude that I'd never seen in him before. He came back to life. I'd never really realized how stifled he'd been in that perfect little dream of mine.

Isabel started to have problems before we moved to Phoenix. At four months old she was hospitalized for constipation. She hadn't pooped in two weeks. Considering that she was strictly breast fed, the doctors wouldn't blame it on her diet and they were very confused. They ran every test they could think of. One doctor stayed up until 4:00 that morning trying to figure her out. I honestly couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. It was constipation for Pete's sake. Give her an enema and call it a day, right? But he knew something was wrong. Still, they released her without finding anything.

She was always an awkward baby physically. Babies learn how to move with your body. For example, when you pick them up quickly and start to walk, they curl their little arms and legs around your body and let themselves be carried. It's second nature. Isabel didn't have this second nature thing. She would stiffen at the wrong moment and it was just a bit difficult to get her onto your hip. She would always straighten her legs and waver with a disturbed look on her face, like she thought she might be dropped.

By eighteen months old, she still didn't walk. She saw a developmental pediatrician for this who watched her for over an hour. I could tell this doctor was wrestling with something but didn't know what. Finally, she pronounced her normal and sent us on our way. Isabel started to walk just before we left for Phoenix. She was nineteen months old. Two months later, just after Cale was born, Isabel became a different child.

Honestly, I thought she was just jealous of the new baby. And she may have been but that still didn't explain the extent of it. She started to scream and bang her head on the floor. She wouldn't do it on the carpet. No. She'd go over to the tile and bang her head on the floor for every little thing. "Be careful sweetie." SCREAM. Bang bang. "No, no." Bang. It was scary so we learned very quickly to not confront her in any way unless we were prepared to get up and stop her from banging. She'd do it EVERY time I sat down and started nursing Cale. Pretty soon the banging became slamming her head on the floor repeatedly with no confrontation of any kind. I'd have to put the baby down and go stop her. And she'd start it so quickly and slam it so hard so fast that I'm simply amazed she never split her skull open before I could get over to her. It was absolutely terrifying.

I took her to the pediatrician and told him about it. He smiled like it was cute and said, "Yeah. Two year olds do that." "Umm, Alden didn't," not wanting to question his professionalism. "Girls are harder," was the standard response. When I asked friends and family about it, people said things like, "Oh yeah, so and so had a tantrum and knocked herself out once when she was two." Our family didn't seem surprised or worried about it either so I figured it must be a stage. Still, I prayed every day for God to protect her head long enough for me to get over to her. We had a lot of very hard ceramic tile.

I stopped showering before Shane got home because I didn't know if she'd survive it. I heard every possible suggestion. "Put hot sauce on her tongue when she does that." Yes, but that requires getting to a bottle of hot sauce AND getting over to her before she breaks her skull. One lady told me to spray her with water when she did it. You know? Like a cat. I had to try that one for posterity. I started nursing Cale with a spray bottle full of water by my side. Sure enough, she started screaming and banging her head on the floor. So, I squirted her in the face. She stopped and looked at me then started to scream and bang again. I squirted her in the face again. She screamed louder and louder and I squirted and squirted. Pretty soon she was soaked and screaming so loud her whole face turned red and water was dripping out of her hair and off of her big red screaming dripping wet face. It didn't do her any good, but I sure felt better.

It feels so good to write about all this. What a release. But for now, I have to sleep.