Wow, How Time Flies

Wow, time is just zooming past these days. Having a little baby is awesome and fun and exciting, but you sure do start to lose track of different things! Let's see, quick update on everything. My Mom is doing okay. She is stable right now. Chemo doesn't seem to be helping with the cancer, but we have found a steroid that keeps her symptoms at bay. Now, it is a quality of life thing - this steroid keeps her headaches away and eases the confusion and gives her energy and a appetite. So I am glad that she feels better. Little Marley is four months old now as of tomorrow, and I can't believe it has already been four months. We saw a dad in the grocery store last night with a new baby, and I can't believe that Marley was that small! It is really mind-blowing. She's well and she's happy and she just got her pavlik brace off her legs last week. For anyone who didn't know, Marley's hip sockets were a little loose when she was born and she had to wear a canvas/velcro brace for three months. She is doing much better now and only has a brace on at night when she sleeps. I'm back at work in my clay, even though I am not getting nearly as much time to work as I would like. I have a show coming up in Charlotte next week that I am very much looking forward to. It is with the American Craft Council and is a very nice show. I will not have all the inventory I would have like to have had, but with everything going on, there was just no way I could make more time for pottery. Between moving, my mother being sick, and the new baby, our lives have been a little out of whack this entire year. But we are slowly finding our way in this crazy new world. That is a photo of Marley in the studio with me while I'm prepping for glazing! So right now, things are good, they are stable, and now I just need some more sleep...

Happy 3 Months to Little Marley!

Today, Marley is three months old. I can't believe it. This time, three months ago, I was getting prepped for surgery. Marley was a planned (sort of) c-section. They prepped me and at 11:45, I walked down and into the surgery room to have a baby. It was a wild sensation to submit to surgery like that, but knowing that when it was all done, I'd have a baby. None of the contractions, none of the birthing pains, just surgery. (All my pain came after the surgery!)But she was worth it! I mean, look at that smile! Not only are we celebrating Marley's birthday today, but we are also celebrating our new house! Yes, we have moved in, thanks to all of our friends helping us out. They came over one Saturday and helped us move all the big stuff. Furniture, mattresses, anything heavy. We still have stuff over at the old house, but we keep working at it and we are getting there. One day, we will have all of it over here at the new house!

Tolerance

This morning I'm thinking about tolerance. At what point does a person lose their tolerance? Does it happen all at once or a little at a time? I'm specifically thinking about nurses and their tolerances. It seems like the ones who have been around for 30 years have lost their tolerance for any kind of bad behavior. But then there are the angels who nothing fazes them and they just take it all in stride. Those are the ones that really make a difference. I'm trying to increase my tolerance for others and their problems and perhaps the world would be a little nicer if we could all find just a little more tolerance for things.

Back to the Hospital

It is almost 3:00 am and I am here at the hospital with my mother. Her cancer is still having its way with her body, and now her brain is getting involved. She is terribly confused and is having a hard time finding her words. The doctors think that it is the brain tumors that are causing the confusion, but they are not yet sure. So many tests, so little information. As I watch her squirm in bed and try to get comfortable, I can't help but think of the similarities between her and my 2 month old daughter. It absolutely kills me. Everything always seems harder in the middle of the night, for some reason. I sit here, listening to the beeping medical equipment and hope for a better day tomorrow. My aunt and my grandfather are coming to town to help me with Mom, but I have to be hopeful that tomorrow will bring me my mother back. At least a little. Please keep us in your thoughts and I thank all of you for your support. Love to you all, Kelly

Locks of Love

I did it! I chopped all my hair off! I had ten inches whacked off and donated to Locks of Love. I wanted to do that in light of my mother's diagnosis. I am glad to be able to donate all my hair to people who really need it. After all, it will grow back! I think the ponytail on the table looks a bit strange. Like a dead critter or something! Pantene is another company that takes hair donations and you only need 8 inches for them. They give their wigs to people under the age of 18 who lose their hair due to cancer or other conditions. There is too much cancer in this world and I really hope they find a cure one day. At least maybe they will continue to improve the treatments so that there is hope for these patients. My mom's cancer is not responding to the chemo like the doctor had hoped, and the chemo is just wearing her down. It is so hard on her and the side effects are really hard. Maybe one day, patients with cancer won't have to go through all of this. Let's hope for the best.

A Great Opportunity

I have news! I have been accepted into a great retail show, put on by the American Craft Council in Charlotte, NC. It is the first time I have applied to this show, and I can't believe that I actually got in! Yippee! This is such a great opportunity for me and it has given me new energy and drive for my pottery. I haven't worked in clay in over four months, but now I am working again. With my mother's sickness and a new baby, clay just didn't have priority in my life. One of my concerns with having a baby was that I would lose myself and my creativity in taking care of little Marley. So I have decided to go forward with this show and keep my creativity alive. I am so glad and I think it is the right decision. We have hired a baby sitter, who is actually the mother of a close friend of mine (Hi Sheri!), and she comes a couple of times a week to babysit while I get some work done. My husband and I have also worked out a schedule that allows me 3-4 hours on some days to work on my clay. I couldn't do this without his help. He and I are both trying to maintain our businesses with this little one, and we both work out of the house, so it is a bit of a challenge. But I am working and here is a photo of some pieces that I have thrown. They are drying and waiting to go into the kiln. It will be a while before they are glazed, and in the meantime, I am working on some new urn designs. I want to have a lot of new work for this show and I have a little bit of time - the show isn't until the end of October and beginning of November. I am so looking forward to it!

She Sleeps

It is almost too good to be true - little Marley slept for 9 hours last night! It is the beginning of a new era! She will be 8 weeks on Wednesday, Aug 20th, and it is a miracle that she slept so much last night. In the beginning, she didn't really settle down very easily. Charlie, my other half, and I would take 3 hour shifts and take turns with the baby. That was rough. He and I were like ships passing in the night - we never really saw each other. You'd get about 2.5 hours sleep, if that, and just hope the baby would sleep after you fed her. She didn't always go back to sleep and you would have to stay awake with her and bide your time until your shift was over. This madness lasted for about 5 weeks. At the end of this cycle, she started sleeping, but only on your chest. You could lie down on the couch, and with her on your chest, you could sleep for a little while. It's totally against the rules these days due to SIDS, but at this point, Charlie and I were so exhausted, we would do almost anything to get a couple hours of sleep. This is when Charlie was about to leave the country to photograph a wedding in Antigua. How in the world was I going to manage by myself?? And then I stumbled onto something. I put Marley in the bed with me, snuggled up nice and close, so she could feel the body heat, and we slept together in the bed, with her at my side. This was a milestone for us. I could actually sleep on my side instead of flat on my back with a baby on top of me. At this point, she actually began to sleep more in between feedings - about 4 hours in between. I could handle this! Yay! This is how I made it through the nights with Charlie gone. Then we bought a "sleep positioner" for babies, which is a thing with two bolster pillows (one on each side) that is supposed to keep babies on their backs for sleeping. We used it for keeping Marley on her side, which is where she wanted to be. We put this in our bed, between the two pillows (with plenty of room) and Marley seemed to like this. We slept like this for maybe a week and a half, and then the sleep positioner (and baby) got transitioned to the bassinet. And that is where she sleeps now! It is so nice to have my bed back and to be able to snuggle with my husband! And then for the real miracle - she slept nine hours last night in the bassinet. It is an amazing thing!!! Here's to getting a good nights sleep! (This is where you clink glasses, or coffee mugs or whatever...)