I'm proud of my mom, but I still miss the churros.

A few weeks ago I had to take my baby brother for a checkup. The fool had broken his nose playing football, and since mom and dad were working it fell to big sister to accompany him to the ENT.

I call him my baby brother because, well, he is. There is just a touch less than 16 years between us, and I spent most of my teenage years getting some subtle and not-so-subtle judgments from people who assumed I was a teenage mother. Whatever. The truth is that—for all intents and purposes—I am his 2nd momma.

Kind of.

I yell at him for driving too fast, counsel his choice of girls, tell him he’s being an idiot for continuing to play football after he broke his nose (twice). But we’re still brother and sister. Which means when we go to the ENT and the doctor comes in wearing one of those cartoon doctor head things that are like a headband with a big mirror and light on them, we look at each other and giggle. And when he examines Casey and says that he has “a significant deformity,” well then we flat out crack up. Loudly and inappropriately.

For what it’s worth—like many families—we’re too loud. We talk too loud, laugh too loud, make jokes and poke fun. Loudly. What can I say? We’re a rather odd mix of German, Italian and Jewish. Like I said, loud. Oy.

our attempt at a “then me/now me” photo.

Two brothers, one sister-in-law and my parents—who have been together for over 40 years, married for 38. ::coughcough no nieces or nephews coughcough::

So no matter how we may annoy each other or fight, the truth is we love each other. I’m proud of my brothers—who they are, the men they are. I’m not ashamed to be associated with them…errr, most of the time. Of course, I’ve always been “daddy’s girl”. I’m the oldest and only girl.
But, I’m the only girl. I’m my mom’s only daughter. And, uh, she’s my only mom. ;) The mother/daughter relationship…literally thousands of books have been written on that subject. And you’ll never cover it all. It’s complex and tricky, and OH MAN I HAVE FOUR DAUGHTERS WHAT HAVE I DONE???
I’ve become a woman, a wife, a mother myself—and I know she’s proud of me. But becoming a woman, a wife, a mother has given me a new perspective. And guess what? I’m just as proud of her.

My mom started working when she was 16. She was a waitress—and a good one. As kids we would go eat dinner at Chi-Chi’s on Wednesday nights when she waited tables. Jesse and I fought over who would get to use the push vac to clean up the crumbs under her empty tables (he usually won. humph).

It’s hard and very unglamorous work. My mom worked as a waitress for decades, because her family needed it. After she had my youngest brother she decided to branch out. She trained as a Bradley teacher—it’s a natural childbirth method for the unfamiliar. Think Lamaze minus the “hee-hee-hoo”. She had a love for the medical field and, for a while, teaching groups of expectant parents in our living room was enough for her.


                                                                                                       mom-mom and Ava
For a while.
I remember exactly what year it was. She signed up for school and it started just after I gave birth to Ava in 2004. I was married and out of the house, my brothers were older and not so dependent. And she decided to become a nurse.

My mom enrolled in college at the age of…..no. I won’t go there. Let’s just say “the age of Old Enough To Be A Grandmother.” She studied and did homework. She attended class after class and did clinical and followed and learned and after a while…she graduated. I don’t want to minimize how hard it was. Because it certainly wasn’t easy. She wanted to give up. She cried. She got angry.


But she did it.

My mom became a nurse. No-- My Mom became a Nurse at a time when many woman are taking up quilting. My Mom became a Nurse at a time when many woman are eyeing up the bedrooms of soon-to-be-gone children as potential craft rooms. My Mom became a Nurse and didn’t care that she wasn’t the age of your typical college student.

My Mom had bigger fish to fry. She did something she had wanted to do for years, and when she graduated I was there with flowers and my kiddos, cheering on My Mom who became a Nurse. She worked as a waitress for almost 30 years. But now she’s doing something she loves, and she does it well.

And it’s cool, because guess who still remembers how to make fried ice cream for family dinners? #winning

 

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more words i don’t know how to say.

well. it’s been quite a couple of weeks. it’s been quiet here on the blog, and for good reason. i talked about the stomach bug that went through—3 of the 5 succumbed in the end. that was tag-teamed with the googiedaddy coming down with a massive flu and possible infection on top of it. dude, he was so sick. dude, i just said dude.

it was not a pleasant week. i lost track of how many times i changed sheets, how many loads of laundry i did, how many cups of tea and ginger ale i poured.

and then you think I AM SO OVER THIS and your dad texts you and says mom is really sick not sure if should go to hospital. so i drove over to find my poor momma curled in a ball on the bathroom floor with waves of pain. dad and i got her in bed, and after conferencing for a few minutes decided it was off to the hospital.

eventually i instagrammed a pic of my #DAREcember challenge from the room we were in…when we thought it was just a nasty stomach bug and she’d be home after some fluids. HA.

that was last sunday, she just got out of the hospital yesterday. it wasn’t a nasty stomach bug. actually they’re not really definitive on what it was, all the tests came back negative and ruled out e-coli and other bacterial nasties. but she was—and is—really sick.

so then you’re basically like I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE AND SO HELP ME I WILL CRY IF YOU LOOK AT ME CROSS-EYED. you know, your basic threat level orange or whatever.
and you know, in the best foreshadowing fashion, that this is where it really gets fun.

wednesday morning i jumped into the shower and called for gigi to come in with me. she’d been congested and i wanted her to try and clear out in a steamy shower. as soon as she took off her clothes and jumped in with me i noticed three dark bruises—two on her arms, one on her right hipbone.

here’s the thing: i can’t tell you why i knew they weren’t right. i have five children. i’ve probably seen 6.4 billion bruises in my mothering career so far. these were…off. they weren’t very large, but they were dark purple and in very odd places.

she doesn’t attend preschool and is rarely not with me, but i still looked in her eyes and asked if anyone hit her. she said no.

so we got out of the shower and i lotioned her up, taking that time to give her a good lookover. i noticed that she had little red dots on her neck, as if she had scratched it and broken tiny blood vessels. she also had a severely chapped lip—her bottom lip looked like she had chewed the snot out of it and was scabby and bloody. she had woken up with that a few days prior.

fortunately i have that honorary doctorate from google, which comes in super handy at times like this. i was simultaneously googling “dark bruises + chapped lips” while texting jeremy “please tell me i’m crazy right now, mmkay?”
he’s a good guy, so he complied.
”you’re crazy, calm down, she’s fine. she’s klutzy.”
but he wasn’t quite fast enough because i’d already found my answer: ITP. Immune or Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura.
winner winner chicken dinner.

ITP is basically your immune system going haywire. it begins attacking your platelets—the cells in your blood that are “sticky”—the ones responsible for clotting. when your immune system attacks your platelets they die off faster than new ones can be made in your bone marrow and your numbers plummet. normal platelet count is 150,000-350,000.
symptoms: bruises, bleeding of the mucosal membranes (i.e. lips), petechiae (the little red dots all over her skin).

it was too close. the symptoms fit too well. i was most definitely edging toward threat level red.

jeremy texted me back. i read about that thing. i think you should call the doctor.
so i did.
we were there by 11:40. the PA we saw (who i will never, ever see again) initially downplayed.
well kids get bruises.
eyeroll from me. okay thanks i guess i’m an idiot. listen to me: these are different.
then i showed her the neck dots. that got a response.
we headed off for bloodwork—which means wrapping my legs and arms around my baby while she screams and begs for this NOT to happen. ever done it? it’s not pleasant.

you know that feeling when you just KNOW? every fiber of your being just knows? i spent thursday alternately eating all my fingernails off and trying not to cry or puke and calling the doctor’s office to pressure them a little more. they finally called back at 11:30.
everything came back normal. RBC, WBC, all perfectly normal. oh—but her platelets clumped so we didn’t get a count on them. so we’ll put in an order for more labs.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? the one number we needed was the one number we didn’t have. and now i have to go through the holding my baby down process again.

by thursday night she had a lot more bruises.

friday morning. i said to jeremy “do you think they check all the labs that come in and see if anything is really bad and they call them right away?”
our phone rang at 8:50.

gigi’s platelet levels were 23,000.

the PA was completely nonchalant about it. i’m going to have you make an appointment with a hematologist for followup.

i was like uhhh…wait. what? because i don’t know about you but i’ve googled this and i’m thinking 23,000 is a little more serious than “call a hemotologist for an appointment”. so she said if i wanted she could call too.
then i punched her in the neck.
okay no i didn’t but i said thanks but no thanks i’ll make my own phone calls.

we called a few different resources and hospitals. the PA called back.
uhhh…i spoke with the hematology department at CHOP and they’re working on an appointment for gisele but if they can’t get you in today you’ll probably have to take her to the ER.

NO KIDDING.

we packed for an overnight stay. we dressed. we were waiting for a last call back from a hospital in NJ. a nurse from the ped’s office called again: umm, **** (the PA) heard back from CHOP and they said you need to take Gisele to the ER right now. are you going?

saying that i was angry is a little bit of an understatement.

we got in the car and drove to the ER. we’re fortunate to be a 1/2 hour drive from some of the best hospitals in the U.S., but that doesn’t help at all when you’re taking one of your babies there.

gigi was cool with the hospital idea. we told her that her blood was sick, and she needed to go to the big hospital so they could help her. yes, she’s going to have to have more bloodwork. we explained an IV as best we could. she was less cool with that.

and from that point it basically went as expected: our nurse was awesome. like really, really awesome. she placed an IV, then took more blood for labs. we waited.
her platelets were up to 43,000.
the hematologist came down and talked with us. at that point it was basically confirmed for us: gisele has ITP.
her platelets had gone up and that was a good sign, but it didn’t change things too much. her risk of bleeding remained basically the same. what’s the treatment? well there’s a few different things they can try. but the bottom line is her body has to do this on it’s own. the treatments are just temporary stopgap measures, and with a level of 43,000 we can wait and watch and see if her body can figure it out on it’s own. there are children walking around with much lower numbers.
meanwhile: no wrestling, no jumping off things. if she bangs her head, immediately back to the ER. if she has a nosebleed or bleeding from anywhere that’s excessive or we can’t control after 1/2 hr, back to the ER. car accident or any major trauma, back to the ER.

ITP in children has a very good chance of spontaneous remission—it will go away and that’s it. it can take up to 9 months, it can happen in a couple of weeks. there is a chance it could become chronic. but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. 

gigi goes in monday morning to the hematology clinic. she’ll have bloodwork again to check her levels. driving 95 with her…ugh. i asked jeremy if it was insane to make her wear a helmet in the car? honestly, it’s not—the hematologist offered to send us home with one if it made us more comfortable.

so this is our new normal. i’m going to be 34 this month, and i didn’t really have any grey hairs. but everyone knows—these little rugrats will give ‘em to ya. a 5 year old with a platelet count of 43,000 who is trying to ride her new scooter through the house? i could feel them sprouting in my head.

in truth though, this, right now—knowing what we’re dealing with--is 1000x better than the not knowing of wednesday and thursday. it’s another thing to roll in to our life and keep on going.

as soon as we can remember how to say it.

perfectly imperfect: simple sewing book review (+ giveaway!)

in typical social media tangled web fashion, i can’t even remember how i first came across katie of the red kitchen. i know it was on instagram, where i followed the writing and development of her book like i was watching updates on the development of a baby. and i think, for her, it was.

so when she sent out the call for some bloggers who would be willing to review her book after it’s birth (!) i volunteered right away. i had watched this thing from it’s infancy, i kind of feel like a grandmom. or at least a really cool but distant aunt.



meet katie’s adorable bouncing baby book: SIMPLE SEWING: 30 Fast and Easy Projects for Beginners.

here’s the thing: i can’t even begin to count the amount of times people have said to me “i wish i could sew” or “you need to teach me to sew”. the truth is sewing isn’t rocket science. and if you have the ability to read and the desire to learn then this book is exactly what you need—a primer for learning the basics. learning your way around fabric and notions and a machine and pumping out a couple decent projects to build your confidence and get you excited.

let’s dive in, shall we?



the beginning of the book gives you an illustrated overview of the tools—both big and small—you’ll need, why you’ll need them, what kind to look for, and how to use them. everything from needles to irons.



next up is a detailed explanation of the techniques you’re going to need for all the book’s projects: how to pin, how to stitch…all the basics.



then the book is broken up into (very logical) groupings of projects, which makes it easy to find the one you’re looking for.



and here’s where the book really shines—not only are there gorgeous full-color and full-page illustrations throughout…



each step of each project has a corresponding photo showing you exactly what to do. if you’re a visual learner this is priceless. even as an experienced sewer there are times i simply do not understand a written instruction in a pattern. it is quite true: a picture is worth a thousand words.

and at the back of the book you’ll find all the patterns for your projects, which can be traced or copied. or cut right out if you’re a rebel.



so what did i do with my book?

my girls are some of the people who have asked me countless times “will you teach me to sew?” they want to Make Things. i even bought them their own machine. but i know my limits and a big one is that i am just NOT a teacher. i don’t have the patience, the organizational skills…i want to jump in and fix the mistakes myself, make it perfect, make it right the way i would do it.
this is tough to admit--but i even seriously entertained the thought of putting the girls in a sewing class at joann’s. how dumb is that? i feel strongly that they should learn to sew, but i convinced myself i lacked the ability to be their teacher.

this book serves as the perfect buffer. i realize now it was just what i needed. even the best of teachers uses a textbook as the basis for what they’re teaching.
this is our sewing class book.

i set ava loose on it first, and she picked the toy camera project.



i let her pick fabrics, and helped her cut her pieces. i gave her some little tips, showed her how to organize everything and how to follow the step-by-step directions. i was there to guide and lend a helping hand, but she did it.



at first she waited for my guidance between steps, but by the end she was off and running on her own. i’ve given her basic sewing machine instruction, so with the illustrated instructions in the book she could easily proceed without my help.



and in the end she had a toy camera.



an actual for real project that she made herself. are the stitches wonky? the circles less circle-y and more octagon-y? yup.



and that’s what makes it perfect.
but we didn’t stop there. that’s the fun of a house full of kiddos. when word spreads that there’s “projects” happening…



gigi wanted in. and the book was awesome yet again: she picked a project and fabric and we got to work. i was a little more involved this time, but we learned how to follow directions, how to measure and cut and pin…



she sat on my lap for the sewing—official Pin Puller and Presser Foot Lifter.



then we pushed out corners and filled our warmers with rice…



and voila. two hand warmers. also perfectly imperfect.



she was nervous about how hot they were (not very)



so she donned some protective…socks.
and there you have it.



these two little projects represent together about an hour and a half of my time and a monetary investment of $0.
but more importantly—they represent the first time we have successfully done sewing projects from start to finish together. they show me that i can teach my girls to sew, and watch it happen without frustration on any of our parts. i didn’t realize what i was missing all along was direction for me, not them. (yes yes, there’s a “priceless” joke in here somewhere. i’ll spare you.)

so, now that i’ve touched your hearts so deeply you can’t wait to have such memory-making moments with your own offspring (or you want to learn yourself)…



you can purchase a copy of katie’s SIMPLE SEWING book from any of these retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books & Things

you can also check out some other projects from/reviews of katie's book by visiting her website.
and be sure and swing by today's other reviewer--the incredible delia creates--and see what she did!

AND you also have a chance to win a copy of SIMPLE SEWING here by entering below!

before i go i just want to say again that this book is seriously awesome—i honestly mean it. if you want to teach someone—whether an adult or a child to sew, or you want to teach yourself you sew, this book is a must-have place to start. thanks, katie, for letting me be a part of your virtual baby shower book tour!

*please note this contest is open to US shipping addresses only. 

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