Quinn is stubborn. Overall, I think that's a good thing. He wouldn't be here if he weren't, plain and simple. But to watch him get around so agilely but still refuse to walk is a little bit frustrating. His physical therapist came to see him on Friday and spent a lot of time scratching her head saying "He's perfectly capable. Why won't he do it?" Here's an example. He's a very good climber, and seems to me to have phenomenal strength to be able to haul himself up on this chair and dance around. So why does he choose not to walk? Maybe some day he'll tell us.

By the way, that's Penn State versus Michigan in the background. We love football season.

Dorian is still adjusting to school. After yet another meeting with his teacher and company, we've agreed to a new protocol that includes his getting occupational and physical therapy, in addition to speech therapy, and he will also have his own aide. I really hope this is what will make everyone happy. What he tells us about school when he comes home doesn't always match the picture that his teacher gives us. He doesn't tell us about how stressed he is, while she has told us about several instances when he has been sad or frustrated trying to figure out what is going on. All he tells us about is the fun he is having. On the one hand, that's a good thing, because he is focusing on what's going right. On the other hand, it would be nice to know if he really does feel the stress that he shows when he's there. Either way, I hope we're really finding an answer to all this.

And then there is Faith, the girl, sandwiched between her two special needs brothers. For her part, she is still enjoying life. She still like the "school" that she and I do together, and she looks forward to Dorian coming home everyday. They are still best friends. The last two Saturdays, they have spent all day playing with each other. They came up for food, but other than that, they were off together. It's great to see the love they have for each other.

Quinn went to nursery for the first time today. He's technically 18 months old, so he is old enough, but we had planned to wait until he was solidly walking at least before we took that step. That was the plan. Then today after sacrament meeting, I took Faith to the nursery, holding Quinn. She went in, and he caught a glimpse of it, and dove out of my arms. I held on and the door closed, so he started crying. I opened it again, and he scrambled to get down and go play. He never looked back. I was stunned. Kurt and I went and enjoyed Sunday School together, and I came for him after Relief Society, just like everything was normal. He was happy to see me, but he had enjoyed himself, from all accounts. He's definitely growing up. He's even getting involved in the bigger kids' play. Here's an example of first-class daddy torture. All three kids wanted in on the action.
We're looking forward to Halloween and enjoying the gorgeous fall. It's a great year for color.

Quinn still isn't walking...but we're making progress. It's completely in his head. He is physically capable, but I don't think he believes in himself. Each time he has successfully walked, it's because we tricked him into it. I keep thinking that one of these days he'll look down and see what he's doing, gain the confidence, and that will be the end of it. Maybe that will still happen, but I'm still waiting. He's officially 18 months old now. It seems unbelievable all that has happened in that amount of time.

We had a visit from my parents this week. We had fun doing a little local touring, especially to see the fall colors. They don't get much of that where they come from and it's quite a novelty.

I was so hoping for this picture to turn out well, so we could put it on our Christmas card. No such luck. A combination of just not being set up well, and having a cloudy day so you can't even tell how beautiful the hills are with the fall colors, and we have what could have been good and just isn't. But it's proof we were there.

We're looking forward to Columbus Day. I appreciate school holidays now.

We've finished our second full week of school. Dorian still seems to be enjoying things, and is telling me more details when he comes home. I take that as a good sign. One day this week, as soon as he came home, he had to re-enact what the class did for P.E that day, going on a bear hunt. We have our Meet the Teacher night this week, and we'll see if his teacher agrees that there is improvement. Faith is enjoying her school experience as well, and we're all settling into a routine.

Quinn needs to go to walking boot camp. I had made a goal to get him walking within the week, and didn't accomplish it. I'll reset it for this week. He can walk. He has walked. He won't walk. He doesn't even want to walk while holding my hand anymore. His physical therapist said we'd have to trick him into it, and she was right. I'm anxious for him to move onto the next phase. Part of my motivation is purely selfish, I admit. I'm tired of all of his pants having dirty knees. And once he does start walking, he'll look much closer to the 18 month old he actually is, than to the 12 month old he appears to be. Just standing upright seems to add several months to his age. I've tried to explain that to him, and guess how well that took. So here it is: this blog will be my accountability. Quinn will walk by next week. I will work with him everyday to help accomplish this goal. I so decree it.

Well, what a liar I turned out to be. Just when I'm saying I'm signing off until further notice, I'm finding that maybe journaling our life isn't such a bad idea after all.

Dorian finished his first full week of school. I couldn't get very many details out of him, but he seemed happy and was excited to go each morning, so I didn't worry too much. Until his teacher called me on day three and said "We need to talk." Uh oh. She detailed to me for 20 minutes how difficult he is in class, with his wandering and non participation. I went on overload within minutes, so those details are a little fuzzy. We ended up having a meeting with her, the speech therapist, the special ed teacher, and the school psychologist. We decided to have Dorian evaluated for occupational therapy as an additional help for him. Kurt and I tried to emphasize that this was still the second week of school and that we knew he would adjust eventually. We also reiterated that he is in no distress over this, and we would definitely know if he were. The supremely frustrating thing is that most of the issues going on would be eased or eliminated if the school district hadn't decided to go to full-day instead of their transitional program. We thought that transitional program was exactly what Dorian needed. Instead, he gets to be among the guinea pigs. And our options aren't great. There are no charter schools nearby, private schools aren't a good option for multiple reasons, and that leaves homeschooling and moving. I did want to homeschool at one point, but it never felt completely right. And moving presents its own problems, so we're working with what we have and praying for improvement.

Speaking of my sons' therapists, Quinn had a visit from his physical therapist this week. It went really well. She said there is no reason for him not to be walking now, that it's all in his head, and we have to build up his confidence. She then lured him away from the couch with toys, and he successfully took several steps before he realized what was going on and crawled the rest of the way. That was on Thursday and I have yet to duplicate that. But I agree with her, it's time for him to walk. He's an excellent climber.
He used to just sit at the piano and pound on the keys. But that's not good enough anymore. It's time to move on.

Faith continues to be herself. She enjoyed her first week of "preschool," although it seems like her favorite part is the special snack each day. We're looking forward to more time with just the two of us, since we've done it during Quinn's naps this week, except for our field trip to visit the cows in the neighborhood. That has worked well. I'm glad I can do something well enough.

I've taken quite a leave of absence. I doubt anyone is still reading, but on the off chance, I'll update.

Here's the deal. I'm really feeling like this blog has served its purpose. For the last year or so, since Quinn came home, I've felt somewhat obligated to keep up with it. I appreciate those who enjoy reading it. But in all honesty, keeping it up is a reminder of a very difficult time in my life, one I'm glad I'm moving away from. So I'm not even going to pretend that I'm going to update on any sort of regular basis. I tried once a week, and that lengthened into every two weeks, then every month, and now it's just become burdensome. In theory, I'm glad I have a record of our NICU experience, but I can't picture a time when I'll be willing to go back and read it. It's still too painful. So thank you to all those who read along last year, and who have checked up on us since then. I'll still be around, but not regularly. I've taken to Facebook, along with the rest of the world it seems. That's where most of my keeping up with people has been.

Quick updates: Quinn took his first step August 29. He's since taken another step and stood on his own, but has yet to officially begin walking. I've never seen a kid so thoroughly master the arts of crawling and cruising.


Dorian started school on Friday. So far, so good. I'd been dreading it for the last year, largely made more vivid by my experience with Quinn. The idea of handing my child over to an institution just did not feel good. Add to that our district's recent decision to begin full-day kindergarten, and I was a wreck over the whole situation. So I spent a lot of the summer with a feeling of impending doom. But Friday came, the bus came and picked up Dorian along with our two neighbors who are also starting kindergarten, and off they went. I waited anxiously for 3:30 when he would come home, hoping and praying for a good experience. When the bus finally came back, Dorian bounded off with a big smile on his face. I couldn't pull too many details out of him, but he says he wants to go back. That right there lifted an enormous burden from me. Let's hope we continue after that great start.


Faith and I will begin a preschool curriculum this week. I did this 2 years ago with Dorian, and we had a lot of fun with it. Faith is anxious to do something herself. She was disappointed to be left behind, wanting to go to school herself. All too soon, Faith. All too soon.

We just got back from a Celtic Faire. Aside from the Welsh cookies, the only souvenirs we brought home had very little to do with Celtic culture.
We're looking forward to summer, whenever that decides to get here. It's been cloudy and rainy, with the occasional thunderstorm and even a hail storm. Where is the sunshine?

Quinn continues to learn how to cruise.
He loves the piano. I can't blame him.
I took him to a cardiologist a couple of weeks ago. It was a follow up from the NICU. All babies in utero have an open shunt between their atria, and many babies are even born with it still open. Quinn was no exception. And since we know it's there, it must be followed. So we went downtown and Quinn got an EKG and an echocardiogram. The EKG took 30 seconds, but for the echo, he needed to lie still for 10 minutes. Ha. The tech said he could have his bottle or his pacifier. Ha again. He takes neither. So that was slow going, with a lot of changes of position to keep him happy, but we eventually got it done. Then we saw a doctor whose first name was Harm. I didn't discover that until we were leaving, thankfully. Anyway, he said the shunt is still open, but there's still a very good chance it will close on it's own, and we won't see a difference anyway. It won't affect his health or his activity level at all. You can't even hear it. You have to see it, hence the ultrasound. I asked what the risk was, since we wouldn't notice whether it was there or not. Apparently, it will pose no problem in childhood, but if it hasn't closed by adulthood, it can create problems. So we'll check it again when he's 3. I didn't think to ask until later what happens to kids who have this and don't spend months in the NICU. How would you know? It reminded me of when I asked an optometrist why he was checking me for cataracts and glaucoma and what happens to the majority of population who don't need glasses and don't get these checks. His response was that everyone should see an optometrist. Alrighty then. I'll tell that to my husband who has better than 20/20 vision and therefore would never see an optometrist.

For those who are bored by technicalities, you can stop reading now. I may have come to a conclusion about what went wrong with Quinn's pregnancy. About time, after a year and change. I have spent quite a bit of time over the last year researching various possibilities and narrowed down to two theories, one I had a lot more confidence in than the other. The less likely of the two was that I might have a blood clotting disorder. I finally went and got the blood work for that done about 6 weeks ago, and as I suspected, it was normal. I can rule out that option. My other theory was basically that Quinn never stuck well to begin with. I don't think my body was ready to conceive. Just because you ovulate, doesn't mean you are fertile. I was ovulating, but the luteal phase, between ovulation and your period, wasn't long enough to allow implantation. A normal luteal phase is 12-14 days long. I was nursing Faith, who was a year and a half old, and charting my cycles, so I knew what was going on. I had my first post partum cycle when Faith was 16 month, and had a 6 day luteal phase. Waaaaaaay too short. My next cycle, I had what I thought was an 8 day luteal phase, but it turns out I was pregnant. It tried to implant anyway but it didn't work and I miscarried. Incidentally, that's the miscarriage whose due date was two days after Quinn was born. So I tried a progesterone supplement with my next cycle, and Quinn stuck, but still not very well. Of the 26 weeks of that pregnancy, there were about 6 in the middle where I wasn't bleeding to some degree. And this theory was more or less confirmed by the pathology report on the placenta. I had to hound a bunch of people to get it, and it took nearly a month, but I finally got it earlier this month. Basically, the placenta never attached deeply enough, and so was malformed. Parts of it were dying, and it was more than 60% detached. So not only did I pretty much confirm that theory, I laid two other questions to rest: 1. How much better off things might have been if I'd held off labor a bit longer. They wouldn't have. The placenta was completely deteriorating, and wouldn't have lasted much longer. And 2. Whether the c-section was truly warranted. I think it was. With an abrupting placenta, and the cord inserted so that it could easily become detached, I think c-section was the best course of action. It's nice to not worry about those anymore.

Compare these two photos.

Need I say more? We love spring!
We had our first really hot day last week, so out came the pool. It was glorious.



Then Dorian got the brilliant idea to go "fishing."
We're looking forward to summer.

Meanwhile, Quinn continues to bowl his way toward independence.
He's so happy now that he can get around by himself. Not that he was ever very cranky, but he's even happier than he was before. I can't wait to see what he grows into.