Changes, adventures, and awarenesses...

Time has slipped past again.  What a wild awareness of how priorities can be switched, rearranged, and completely forgotten.  The last couple of weeks, my evenings have been spent fighting Liam to go to sleep.  He has been getting 90% asleep and then waking himself up or getting uncomfortable somehow leading to his eyes popping open and we start the dance all over.  A thought came to me the other night, a friend once shared she had read or heard that a child starts to break away from a connected consciousness and starts to become sovereign around two.  Liam is turning two next month and I am curious if we are getting to witness this in action.  Plus, there is another heart beat in our home now, and change is brewing.  What a gift to have this little being remind me to ground, breathe, and relax, if I get wired, he feeds on that and we end up with pinches, tears, and a fussiness that is usually not present.  I laugh because each time I think I am getting a hang of this mommy thing, the rules change, and I am at square one again, thank goodness, I am always up for an adventure!

The last month has been an adventure in gathering information, collaborating with doctors and health care teams, passing information to coordinators, and taking time to allow for guidance to unfold.
There hasn't been much movement in getting Liam into the feeding therapy other than we have 3 letters of medical necessity that have been given to the DDD coordinator and we have requested his primary care provider to refer Liam back to the feeding evaluation.  Each time I think we are done with this feeding therapy, another door opens and in we go!

With this new little being, we are wanting to gather information about how this little one is doing.  I was confused with a blood test thinking that I was receiving a full panel of screens but in reality it was just for Down Syndrome.  As I wrote before, the fear of a child having Down Syndrome is minimal since we know the joy that Liam has brought us and we already have connections to support a child with Down Syndrome so this screen wasn't exactly what we thought.  And then there has been so much information about how Iceland has almost a 0% Down Syndrome population due to genetic testing and terminating positive pregnancies and my heart drops.  All the false positives that were terminated and all the joy that is not present in our world.  I also understand there are huge burdens for some children with Down Syndrome, and isn't that a possibility for any child?  Being at Phoenix Children's Hospital I met mothers with 'typical' children diagnosed with terminal cancer who had been there for months, other conditions for frequent visits for testing or follow ups, therapies to be rehabilitated or habilitated.  I guess what comes to me is that there are no guarantees.  And why would one diagnosis be singled out to be terminated?  A friend shared, the fear of difference, could be a reason, and that makes so much sense to me.  My desire for adventure puts me in situations to meet differences, to stay curious, open minded, and open hearted, but some do not have that same thirst.  So with all of this news, I am trying to stay curious, not take the decisions of others personally and to truly enjoy the absolute joy we have in our home!

Oh and the joy we are experiencing right now!  Liam is growing by leaps and bounds.  His personality is blossoming each day and what a personality!  He is letting us know his likes and dislikes with laughs, pinches, signs, snubbing his nose, and faces.  His walking is getting steadier, he is starting to navigate thresholds going down, he has about 20 signs that he uses to communicate and each day there seems to be another one added.  Going out to public places, Liam has yet to meet a stranger, he loves high fives, 'knuckle bumps', and waves to any one and EVERYONE, even if the gesture is not reciprocated.  We are excited to find out how he does having a baby brother in January.

This week also marks a new journey for me personally.  I have been part of ASIS Massage Education as a teacher and today I had the privilege of graduating my last class.  Being pregnant, wanting to experience Liam's joys everyday, and being present for Sean, I have chosen to step away from ASIS.  This is one of multiple ways that an external identity has been sluffed away so that there can be more space for an authenticity to be present of 'being' instead of 'doing'.  The last 20 years, I have identified myself with what I do, and I would much rather have an identity of 'being' instead of 'doing'.  And after writing that I have to giggle, I will still continue to 'do' massage through this pregnancy until my body lets me know I need to rest.  I feel so grateful for the experience of working with new massage therapists, guiding them through personal explorations and learning so much about myself in the process.  I am excited to put all that I have taught others into practice in my own daily practice.  And the adventures continue!

  

Learning, teaching, building

I teach Communications, Ethics, some Business, and Thai massage at the local massage school.  The last couple weeks I have had the opportunity to be in class more and have been reflecting on the journey of learning.  Liam has been in the classroom since he was 7 weeks old.  When the schedule was being made for the session Liam was to be born in, I told the director my due date.  The last class I taught was Friday, September 11, and Liam was born Monday, September 14, I don't know if I could have planned that any better!

The Communication class is spread out throughout the whole program so sometimes there are big gaps when I won't be with the students.  My maternity leave happened to be during one of these gaps, I wasn't scheduled to comeback to class until the end of October so Liam was ready to join me as my assistant.  When Liam is with Sean or someone else, students will ask where he is, when he is at the school, students will stop to smile, wave, and acknowledge Liam.  He has become a mascot of sorts for the school.  One of the concerns I had when we first found out that Liam may have Down Syndrome was that the public may not know how to handle his diagnosis and I wouldn't be able to handle the public.  I was concerned that we would be pitied, that he would be treated different, that he wouldn't be accepted.  My concerns have been proven false, thank goodness!  More than anything, I think by having him so involved with school, he has learned to be quiet while others are talking (for the most part), to be at ease in large groups of people, and to interact with anyone and everyone.

I have to laugh, when I was in college, the principal of the high school I graduated from bet me a steak dinner I would become a teacher.  At the time I couldn't fathom being stuck in a classroom with a bunch of punk kids trying to teach some subject that the students felt was a waste of time.  I also remember thinking he was probably right, I would end up teaching at some point.  I come from a line of teachers, my mom was an elementary/middle school teacher, my dad ran many trainings in his field, my maternal grandfather was an English teacher, my paternal grandmother went to school to be a teacher, my paternal grandfather was a mechanic teacher, an aunt teaches music lessons, an uncle is a professor, and a distant cousin is a teacher in a foreign country.  Plus, one of my first jobs in high school was teaching ski and snowboard lessons.  What I realize now is that I didn't really enjoy the traditional classroom, the distance that teachers had to maintain because the student-teacher ratio was so high, the lessons that didn't seem to fit into what was happening in real time, and the pain of growing up.
Today the class size is less than 20, the subject matter is all about relationships... with self and others. We sit in a circle so there is no chance for students to hide, there is an air of equality in the room, there is meditation and body movement, there is sharing about experiences, we are all there to learn and teach.  I know I learn from each class, sometimes the lessons are about some weakness in my own belief system, sometimes the lesson is how far I have come in my own journey.

Mom's eyes use to light up when she would talk about her students.  She loved her classes, sometimes not all the students won her heart, but I knew that she cared about each and every one of her classes.  I was baffled by how she could spend so many hours prepping for class, grading papers, dealing with discipline challenges, and teaching the same thing over and over each year.  I couldn't connect with her pure desire to make a space for these punk kids to explore their individuality.  I didn't understand why she had such a difficult time deciding to retire.  Now I understand.  Each of the classes I have had the opportunity to be with has held my heart, they have captured a moment in time.  Some of the students I don't have as easy of a time remembering their story, the class as a whole, however, I remember their story.  Time becomes obsolete when I am in the classroom with the students.  As the students get the ah-ha's there is a welling up that happens, sometime tears will form.  When students are in the middle of the program and they are about to burst because of the pressures from the demands put on them, and I have that feeling they are just about to burst through some bind that holds them back, I get giddy and hold that sacred space for them.  I understand now why Mom couldn't just walk away from decades of teaching, teaching had transformed her as well.  I do wish I could have her here to check in with, to bounce ideas off of, to share student stories.  I am grateful we had some time to be teachers together, I just wish there was more time.

At her memorial there was a message that Mom did many little things that added up to great things.  Like walking every night with a friend added up to thousands of miles.  Showing up daily for work influenced hundreds of kids... and adults.  Driving to Flagstaff each week to capture her dream and finish her teaching degree gave her kids a role model to reach for their dreams- Engineer, Ecologist Guide, and Healer/Teacher.  As Liam explores his world and individuality Mom reminds me that the best lesson I can teach Liam is that when he falls and gets a bump, like today, I will be near to soothe and will help him to reach for his dream, or the top of the stairs.  I guess, I better pay up my end of the bet.