Even If Only For a Short While...

"In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here."

- "Angel" Sarah McLachlan

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for our family/friends yesterday. Baby Arrayah arrived on this earth at 6:10 am this morning and had three amazing hours with her family to say hello and then goodbye, which is more than that the doctors had ever expected.

I got to hold her today, after she had already left this earth. She was truly beautiful.

"We shall find peace. We shall hear angels,

we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds."

-Chekov

Do You Pray?

I know I'm full of empty blogging promises, but I have my reasons. None of which are relevant to my post today. Today I'm going to ask you something. Something very personal.

Do you pray?

Because I have a family  in need of your prayers, and they just happen to be a part of our family whom we love dearly. Pray on your own, add them to your church's prayer chain, share this blog entry. Anything. Please.

Rob's cousin Cadie and her husband Jamal are two of our closest friends. Their sweet daughter Sahara is only 6 months younger than Lucy, and they are the best of friends (even though Lucy told me today that Sahara is not allowed to play with her My Little Ponies).

 (How sweet are our girls? The best of friends!)

Cadie found out she was pregnant three months after I became pregnant with Zoe. We were thrilled that they were going to have another baby around the same time. Devastatingly, during Christmastime at their gender ultrasound, they received the news that their baby, a girl, had a fatal kidney disease. The doctors told the family that she would not likely survive for long after that.

Arrayah, the name they gave her as soon as they found out she was a girl, is a fighter. Now, months later and a month away from her due date, she is still holding on. The doctors have given her no chance of survivial outside the womb due to her lungs not being able to fully develop, they have told the family since it appears she will carry Arrayah to term that once the umbilical cord is cut that their time with Arrayah will end. But this family believes in miracles. They believe in the power of prayer, the power of hope and the power of grace. They are fighters too.

I cannot imagine being told that the child you are carrying is not going to survive. I cannot imagine having to go through the day, feeling each tumble and kick, knowing that the chances  of bringing this sweet baby home is deemed medically impossible. The strength of this family, this mother, leaves me awestruck.

Please, please, I know you don't know them from Adam, but we love them so and even though we know the different ways that this family's journey may end, we want as many people hoping and praying for this family and  sweet baby Arrayah as possible as her due date gets closer. Please. You can follow their journey at Cadie's blog One Step Closer and you can "Like" Pray for Baby Arrayah on Facebook.

Thank you.

She has arrived!

Miss Zoe Josephine Menillo arrived at 11:26 pm on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 after about 6 hours of labor (so much easier this time around!). She weighed 6 lbs, 10 ounces and was 18 inches long. She is beautiful and apparently is the spitting image of her daddy when he was born! Lucy just adores her and is adjusting really well to being a family of four.

Birth story to come tomorrow (or the next day). Even a week later I'm still soaking this all in.

Meanwhile...pictures:

“Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.”

-William MacNeil Dixon

"Why are you so fat around your stomach?"...

Lucy and I ventured out to the library today. It's one of her favorite places to go because first we go feed the ducks at the pond and then go get books (which is basically all she does all day long, read books and dance to "Little Bunny Foo Foo").

So, even though I was exhausted from doing nothing all day, I thought that we needed to get out of the house so the five minute away library trip was perfect (and I just could not take any more Bunny Foo Foo). The car the entire trip Lucy will say "Hold your horses ducks, we're coming!" which is cute, no? Not so cute she also likes to rhyme a very unfortunate word with ducky, over and over again whilst on our way to feed the ducks. We try to suggest every other rhyming word under the sun: ducky lucky, ducky mucky, ducky bucky, ducky zucky...but to no avail, she insists on ducky f- well, you know. Something to work on.

After the ducks were fed to the library we went. We had just started perusing the kids section when a 8/9ish year old girl came over to me. She stood in front of me and said:

"Why are you so fat around your stomach?" and POKED me, repeatedly, in the stomach.

I said, as shortly as possible and starting to walk away, "Because I have a baby in my belly." 

The child follows me and, still attempting to poke, says "I came out of my mom's belly". 

I said, still walking away, "Yes, we all do"

To which she replied, "But yours is REALLY HUGE!" and gave me another poke.

I was just about give this child a piece of my mind when her mother waltzed up and said "Ohhhh, I hope she's not bothering you." She must have seen the look on my face because she ushered the child away quickly without looking back.

Now, I probably should have said something, because can you imagine how a person would feel if that child went up to them and THEY WERE NOT PREGNANT? But I think I was so shocked that I didn't say a thing!

Someone did suggest that I should have said, "Why is my belly so fat? Because I just ate a small child... that reminds me, I'm hungry". Ha...wish I had thought of that one at the time! Or maybe just poked her back.

Lesson: it's one thing for your two year old to rhyme ducky with an inappropriate word (and hey, she'll be broken of that WAY before she's 8) but its a whole new ballgame when your 8 year old has no clue whatsoever regarding personal space and cannot grasp the most basic manners! Terrible!

 "Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners."

-Author Unknown

:: Dusting Off Blog Page ::...

Oh hello, you may remember me as the blogger formerly know as "A Baby? Maybe...".

I don't know if you know this, but several months back, right around the time I found out I was pregnant with soon-to-arrive Zoe, I received a new position at work. A promotion? Well, no that's being a little generous. It was more like:

"Dear B, 

We're going to give you the job formerly done by multiple people and ask you to fix all the major problems and inconsistencies in by managing two major corporate-wide programs that set our multi-million dollar, international tech company up for huge lawsuits...all by yourself. Congratulations and good luck...

PS. You're really not going to receive any training for this.

PPS. You're not going to make that much more money either. 

PPPS. Be careful for the individual liability states, because there, people can just sue you personally instead of us. 

xoxo - Work"

So, that's about the time I dropped off the face of the (blog and regular) earth. Through my pregnancy I worked like a dog, traveled almost every month away from my family, routinely worked 60+ hours per week. I lamely attempted blog posts here and there but...it was the first to go in order of importance. Every night that I was online, I was working...and that was pretty much every single night after Lucy went to bed.

BUT, I'm happy to announce that as of today I'm OFFICIALLY ON MATERNITY LEAVE. You have no idea how good that feels. I feel like I've just been barely keeping my head above water the past couple months. Trying to continue some semblance of a normal life with the demands of working motherhood, working pregnant motherhood...er working like a madwoman, being a mother to an extremely bright 1 year old (I'm not kidding, the kid is a genius, which in turn makes her too smart for her own good, and for my own good) and being pregnant, and sick, all the time - yes, it was too fun for words I tell you!

But now, I'm free. Free, free FREE for THREE glorious months. How do I celebrate my first day? Well, we woke up late, (as Lucy regularly sleeps until 8:00 am), ate cinnamon rolls, read a good book until noon while Lucy played, Lucy went down for a nap and I actually just washed and blow dried my hair for the first time in months (the blow-drying part, not the washing... I'm not that gross). Amazing. I feel like a new person. I look like a new person. I'm 38 weeks pregnant and feel better than I have in months, in a matter of one day. It's incredible. So now here I am, hoping to catch up on the writing that was something I enjoyed pre-new job (that and hair-blowdrying apparently).

In these catch-up posts I'll be sharing some of of the past couple months of photos while I've been incommunicado, here are out Fall Family Photo Shoot (photo credit to my awesome coworker Jennifer Komp Photography, Portland).

“There's nothing half so pleasant as coming home again.”

 - Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

I'm not perfect...

Shocking I know. My 30 Days of Thankfulness fell terribly short, but that doesn't mean I'm not incredibly thankful for all that I have...it just means that my life gets in the way of blogging sometimes. Imagine that. I mother. I wife. I grow life. I work like a dog and, if I have a spare minute at the end of the day, I blog (or I used to). But honestly, in the past months those spare moments are few and far between. Ah, well. So goes life.

Someday maybe I will be back with regularly scheduled posting, but for now, I just try and get through the day in one piece. I don't know how you blogging moms out there do it!

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see."

-John Burroughs

30 Days of Thankfulness

I missed three days of thankfulness due to travelling for work-- I'm home now and ever so thankful for the health and happiness of the ones around me whom I love the most.

Thinking of those who have lost their battles, and of their family and friends during this difficult time. Cinn - this one was for you. ::Raising a ribbon wand::

For some moments in life there are no words. 

-David Seltzer, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory