It’s the last day in 2007. This year has brought a lot of change to my life. Just shortly after ringing in 2007 I found out I was pregnant for the third time. I started having dreams about the pregnancy almost immediately, dreams that said I had two babies in my belly. Every dream ended with me giving birth to first a boy followed by a girl. I thought it was just me feeling anxious
about adding to our family. Then at my first prenatal check up clear as the sun were two little peanuts with little hearts blinking away. Twins don’t run in our family and we conceived naturally so this was a shock to say the least. A year later and I’m still pretty much in shock. It was a long 20 weeks waiting to find out the sex and I was convinced we were having a boy and a girl (all those dreams). That part of my dream was wrong; God blessed us with two beautiful girls. I had an easy twin pregnancy and went into labor a few days before 38 weeks. The girls were delivered via c-section September 16th, thus ending the child bearing part of my life. Four kids are more then enough, so we are done.
Having twins changed a lot of plans we made for the near future and gave us the kick in the butt we needed to move. We left a two bedroom duplex and moved into an awesome 4 bedroom house. A whole free standing house, with a fire place, yard, and even in a great part of town. Moving while pregnant is never a good idea-if you are pregnant and considering moving-DON’T! But then again it probably would have been harder – I mean impossible after the girls were born, so who knows. Regardless I’m glad we did and I love the house.
While pregnant I was also working on getting Lennox into preschool. I had to find one that was excellent and affordable. I lucked out in a serious way. We happened to have two co-op preschools in our town that are excellent in their own ways. We chose to go the more structured route and entered Lennox into a lottery. In the spring we got our acceptance letter – thank goodness! Wonderful teachers, excellent reputation, and extremely affordable. Parents have to work about twice a month, which I was really excited about. Three and half months down and it’s even better then I could have imagined. Lennox has lots of friends and loves to go. The way things have worked out with the girls, Evan has been the working parent. I’m jealous, but he likes doing it and it works out better that way. I feel really lucky that he’s able to swing it with his work. This opportunity helped us identify Lennox’s speech problem, which he is now getting help for.
Lennox has Developmental Apraxia of Speech. This was hard news to hear and I wasn’t sure I wanted to share. So many emotions come along with finding out your child will have to struggle in some way. Telling people is sometimes the last thing you want to do. I’ve decided it’s better as something we talk openly about and reaffirm that it is nothing to be embarrassed about. This will affect the person he becomes so I want to make it as positive as possible. We are lucky, Lennox is very smart kid. He has loads of patience and can charm the socks off just about any one. He is still so self assured and open and we want to keep him that way. For now he goes to speech therapy twice a week and we work with him at home. He’s made big improvements since school started so I feel very positive, he’s going to be just fine.
In all this I’ve worked hard to not let Aidan get lost in the mix. He’s had a big year too. His brother is gone for a few hours every day so for a while it was just he and I. We don’t get much time a lone so that was an awesome time. He also became a big brother and our middle child. Some where during this yeah my baby boy turned into a rough and tumble boy. I have two pretty wonderful boys.
So this year I went from mom of two to mom of four. I took over a much bigger house. My oldest child started to build a life away from me. I also gained a bunch of weight, had a c-section, and no longer consume dairy. It’s been busy. I don’t think I could have made it to this point with out Evan. All the things I’ve written so far also happened to him and then some. He still all ways managed to be supportive when I act/am insane. If we ran into a problem he fixed it or if we needed something he made it happen. My last thoughts of 2007 are of him and the beautiful family we’ve created. I’m going into 2008 grateful with a full heart. Happy New Year!
The Eckard Clan Christmas morning