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It’s so hard to believe its been three years since we welcomed our first little boy into the world.  We were so scared and so naive for how our own worlds would be rocked when Asher joined our family.  God has used Asher to both challenge and humble us, and at the same time ignite us with love and compassion.  He is such a blessing to us!  Happy Birthday Ash-man, we love you, and we are so thankful to call you ours!

We celebrated Asher’s birthday at Mother Nature’s Farm with a bunch of friends and family.  Asher had such a great time playing with his friends, opening all his new gifts (the last few days have been awesome with all the new gifts in our home, by the way!), and listening to everyone sing Happy Birthday to him…he had been making me sing to him all week in preparation.  We had a bounce house for the kiddos, decorated some pumpkins, had some pizza and cake, opened gifts, and ended with a ghetto hayride.  It was a great time celebrating our big boy, and we were so thankful to have so many friends and family join us for the party.  I wouldn’t have any pictures from the party if not for my friends Leah and Kristina, thank you!!!

I’m way behind in putting up some fun pictures from our time with friends at another pumpkin patch.  Krista and I took the kids to Vertuccio Farms for the morning and had a fun time building more memories with the kids.  Asher loves his buds!  Anytime I say we’re going with Chase and Carter, he immediately yells, “Ms. Krista and Baby Hannah too!”

We also got to spend a morning with Shannon and Micah at the Phoenix Children’s Museum.  We’ve been to a lot of places around town, and this place is for sure one of our favorites.  It’s a kids paradise.  Asher cracks me up in the grocery store/kitchen area.  I think he could spend all day in there.  He was filling up his cart and looked to me and said, “Oops!  Mommy, I forgot, we need milk!”

We carved our big pumpkin this week, and of course Jeremy, the artist, made a masterpiece.  A big pumpkin, eating a little pumpkin.  It’s pretty great.  If I were in charge it would have had three circles and one oval.  I’m so excited for the holidays this year, Asher is getting so big, talking up a storm and really enjoying things now.

So, after our last ultrasound seeing Paxon, and his little wave to us, we left there feeling more hopeful.  It’s amazing how one little thing like that can change your perspective.  It felt like he was saying, “Hi Daddy and Mommy, I’ll see you soon.”  I think this has been one of the hardest parts about dealing with what’s going on with Paxon.  Balancing being hopeful and realistic with what we’re facing.  It’s incredibly difficult and a bit of a roller coaster ride.  But, right now, we’re hopeful we’re bringing him home, and we want him to have a place of his own.  So, here’s the bedding and paint we’re going with.  Isn’t it cute!  We’re going to go with a tree animal theme (I think we made that up) and have baby birds and owls in there for him :).

Grandpa and Grandma Olimb came in for a quick weekend!  While Grandpa Olimb and Jeremy went backpacking, Grandma Olimb, Asher, and me were buzzing around the city soaking in lots of fun.

We took Asher to Mickey’s Magic Show in Phoenix.  He was so excited that Mickey was making the trip from Disneyland to Phoenix to come and see him…funny story…last week we were at the park and I was talking with this really sweet 7 year old boy.  He was telling me about his friend named Nick, and Asher pipes up in the middle of the conversation in this very confident tone and says, “No, Mickey lives at Disneyland!!”  LOL!  Anyways, Asher did so great sitting through the show munching on popcorn, and checking things out through his Mickey binoculars – which he insists on using backwards…he’s very confident he has a lot of things figured out in life, ha!

We also went to Desert Breeze for a morning to ride the train, carousel and had an impromptu run through the splash pad.  Thanks for coming to visit us Grandma and Grandpa!!

Meet Super Asher…

He whizzes throughout the house beeshing bad guys all day long, proclaiming, “I’m Super Asher!” and “To Infinity and Beyond!”  pppsssssshhhhh pppsssssshhhh (flying noises).  You could say he’s just a little bit in love with his new cape.

This cape…this cape that was so lovingly handmade for him…that I would so desperately like to thank someone for…and have them teach me how to sew…BUT I CAN’T!!!  Sigh…this cape is a perfect example of the types of gifts and things that are STILL being left for us every day.  The amount of love and support we’re receiving is overwhelming, and it’s driving me absolutely crazy that I can’t thank all of you personally!  It makes me start sweating to think about all the money and time that so many of you are putting into these gifts!  There is so much hurt and pain going on, and the fact that you all have chosen to bless our family is incredibly humbling.  You’ve blessed us financially (Jeremy is bringing home dinner for us from Pei Wei :)), you’ve blessed us with laughter (someone made us a puppet show, and Asher has become quite attached, maybe too much so, to Mr. Chicken), you’ve blessed us with scripture (I’m making a book with every scripture card to bring to the hospital with us), and you’ve blessed us with feeling so loved.  I don’t know what to do or how to let you (whoever you are!!!) know how much we appreciate everything.  So here’s hoping this note finds you somehow.  We thank God for you.

Meet Super Paxon…

We had another appointment for Pax this morning.  This mainly included some unimportant paperwork and some more meetings, but the highlight was again getting to see our boy.  He wasn’t cooperating for awhile (shocker, he has our stubborn genes) but we did finally get a few images that brought tears to my eyes.  First of all, he has chubby cheeks…I can’t wait to kiss and pinch those things.  We did see his cleft palette again, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that whole idea.  I think I’m still in denial about that.  But the absolute best part of the whole ultrasound was seeing his right hand.  We’ve always seen his middle three fingers locked down, and his pinkie and his thumb sticking out like in a hang loose Hawaii pose.  They told us they weren’t sure if this meant that his fingers were webbed, or if he is missing bones in the tops of his fingers.  Well, this morning he opened his little hand and waved at us!!!  It was so wonderful.  The ultrasound tech said there are definitely bones in his hand, which mean that it’s probably webbed.  Big whoop.  We can handle that.  That’s an easy fix.  We were so thankful for some good news.

Dear Paxon,

Your daddy and I love you.  We prayed for you so much even before we knew your name or saw your little face.  You are truly a gift and a blessing from the Lord, and we’re so thankful He chose us to be your Mommy and Daddy.  You’ve already changed our lives, and we haven’t even held you in our arms.  We’re not sure how much time we’re going to have with you, but however long that may be we’ll be right by your side loving you.  Thanks for waking up and waving to us today, you’re timing was perfect, and we’ll never forget it.  Until we see you again…

Shannon and I took Asher and Micah to Tolmachoff Farms this week, and we had a great time!  It’s the cutest little place, we’ll for sure be going back there!  We’ve been to Schnepf a few times, and it’s ok, but there’s something not so magical about all the pumpkins just thrown out on the dirt, ha!  Oh, and the corn maze was legit!  We totally got lost in there, and once we finally found our way out we noticed that there was a separate maze for the little tikes which I’m assuming is a lot less intimidating than our adventure!

We got back from our trip and had one day before life and appointments overtook our schedule.  I haven’t had a chance to post pictures from our time with our family in the big, bad state of ND.  We had a great time with everyone!  Asher loved playing with a bunch of cousins and running around outside (we’ve been cooped up for awhile!).  We went to a cute little farmer’s market and painted some pumpkins, ran around and adventured at Grandma and Grandpa’s, spent some time at a state park which was really gorgeous, ran around and played some sports at the church gym, but mainly just enjoyed a lot of great company.  We’re not big fans of the state of North Dakota, but we sure love our family that lives there!

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We had a couple of appointments this week for our little Paxon.  Both of them lasted practically all morning and we just want to thank our friend, Melissa, for taking care of Asher so we could both be freed up to go to these appointments together.  Melissa has been our babysitter savior and we’re so thankful for her love for our family!

Our first appointment was pretty hard.  We met with our Neonatologist, who will be taking care of Paxon when he comes.  She described herself as being our “contractor” and will make sure that Paxon is getting the best care for whatever he may need.  I wish we would have started our time out with the ultrasound, because I always feel a little hopeful when I see him wiggling around.  Instead we started with her sitting us down and again running through the clinical diagnosis.  She kept shaking her head saying, “I don’t know what to tell you.”  She acted like this was the first time we had either heard the news, or we didn’t understand the severity of it before.  She said, “Unfortunately, you’re 26 weeks along and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”  Sigh…thankfully Jeremy handled this whole conversation with her because I wasn’t able to control my tears and she wasn’t helping the situation.  She recommended that we call and setup a tour at the NICU so that we can see where we’ll be staying when Paxon comes.  I know we need to, but the thought of walking around there seeing all those babies hurting and hooked up to machines makes me well up right now.

Then we got to see our boy.  He was sucking on his little toes and I swear I could have watched him do that for hours, it was so precious.  They showed us his cleft palette, which to me looked like it took over the whole right side of his mouth.  The ultrasound tech said it’s about 7 mm.  Seems big to me for an itty bitty mouth.  This whole topic is still terrifying me.  I just have so many concerns about how he’s going to be able to eat…and what he’s going to look like when we see him…Jeremy said I really need to start preparing myself for this…

We met with another doctor after our ultrasound and he said that Paxon’s growth overall is looking good.  He said that his head size is in the normal range – this is great news.  Smaller heads is one of the markers for this chromosome deletion, and with that comes a whole slew of problems.  A small jaw is also a marker and can cause a lot of eating problems, and the neonatologist said this may lead to difficulties if they have to intubate him.  They weren’t able to clearly see his jaw in this ultrasound, so we’re really praying that is growing at a normal size as well.

The doctor told Jeremy and me that he wanted us to start thinking about how extreme we want to be in monitoring our baby now, as well as the care we want him to have when he comes, or if we’ll be letting things happen the way they happen.  And here lies pretty much what we’ve been thinking about since our appointment.  How are we supposed to make these decisions?  We’re talking about emergency c-sections and aggressive care to keep Paxon alive.  Decisions like these would be easy if we were talking about a little baby with a hopeful future.  We’re just not sure what Paxon’s quality of life will look like and whether our little boy has much of a future.  We don’t want to give up on our boy, but we don’t want to cause him unnecessary pain and procedures if we’re just delaying him in spending eternity with our Father in heaven.  Our minds are reeling and we feel so burdened by all these decisions.  Please pray for us.

Then we went to a neonatal pediatric cardiologist to have him get a better look at Paxon’s heart.  We left there kind of encouraged.  The doctor said that right now he doesn’t see anything that would requite him to need immediate surgery, or require us to deliver at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.  He said that Paxon’s heart has as a whole developed well, everything is connected and he doesn’t see any holes.  This is encouraging.  What he did see he called a mild dilated cardiomyopothy meaning that his right ventricle is slightly enlarged, and his valves between his ventricles are thicker than they should be which is causing some leaking of the blood back into the ventricles, and he said his heart as a whole isn’t pumping quite as strongly as it should be.  We need to go back in 4 weeks to see how, if at all, these things have changed.  Unfortunately he said things can get worse, but right now there’s nothing too major going on.  The stuff he was seeing at this point should be able to be fixed with medications.  And, since we’re a drug happy home already, this is no big deal to us.

So that’s how our little boy is doing.  He still needs a lot of prayer.  He’s 26 weeks along right now, and weighing in at 2 lbs…even though I look like I’m ready to deliver now, ha!  When we were in ND Jeremy took a few belly shots of me, and I thought I would share one with you so you can see that he’s growing :).  Love you all.  We cannot thank you enough for all your love for our family.  We definitely don’t feel like we’re walking this path all alone and that’s such a blessing!!!!

Manvel.  Manvel is where it all began for us.  Jeremy and I will always hold a special place in our hearts for that little town, because that’s where we met.  I wish I could say it was love at first sight, but that would be pretty far from the truth.  We were incredibly annoyed with each other at first sight…but things got better :).  When we were back visiting Jeremy’s family we had to take a trip up to Manvel Public School to see our old 6th grade classroom where we met for the first time, and of course had to have a picture.  We even got to see our Principal and 8th grade teacher, which was pretty neat.

I have to say, I had to work really hard at holding back the tears while we were there.  It just struck me when we were walking down the hall (not plural – just a little image at the size of school we’re talking about, ha!) that God knew when we first met each other in 6th grade that we would be married one day.  That together we would be sharing in all the joys and hardships we’re going through right now.  And, mainly that we would need each other.  That’s pretty amazing to think about.

Jeremy and I became pretty inseparable after we were about 14 years old.  We each dated a few other people, but we were always together, and we were always best friends.  Even when I went away to college (about 1.15 hours away) I drove back to spend weekends with Jeremy.  Even at a young age he was my man, and I was his girl.  When we were about 20 years old I couldn’t take it anymore, I knew I loved Jeremy, and I wrote him this really long email confessing my love and asking him if he thought we could try dating.  We came across the letter I wrote to him, and his response letter about a month ago and it was so sweet to see and read how the beginning happened for us.  At the time, Jeremy was totally shocked by my email because he had done about the same thing when we were 15 years old, and I shot him down (still feel bad about that!), so he had resigned to the fact that we would only be friends.  Little did he know he had me on a leash for years :).  I think we dated for about a month and we both knew we wanted to marry each other.

It’s incredible being married to your best friend, and sharing so many childhood memories together.  We have so much to laugh about, and endless ways to tease one another.  We’ve grown up together, we’ve watched one another fall deeper in love with our Savior, and we’ve both gladly transformed our lives into our new roles as wife and husband, and now mommy and daddy.  The history and the love that Jeremy and I share is such a blessing, and completely orchestrated by God himself.  God knew all along that we would be together, and that our friendship and our love for one another would be invaluable in helping us walk through the valleys of life together.

We’ve been having a lot of fun spending time with family in North Dakota, and I’m way behind on posting pics from our time together, but I just wanted to make note of something that happened when we got here because I can’t stop thinking about it.

When we first got here we had to get Asher’s treatment started.  His two 2.5 year old cousins, Micah and Mason, were in the same room when we started pulling out all the equipment and getting Asher hooked up.  When the mask came out and the machine started, the boys got pretty hysterical and needed to leave the room.  I totally understand why everything would scare them.  It still scares me sometimes, and it’s certainly not fun to watch him all hooked up and shaking all around.  I get that.

The thing that made me start crying was after the boys left.  I was sitting on the couch next to Asher and he was watching his show for a couple of minutes, then turned to me with his mask on, smoke rolling out of the mask, and his little vibrating voice and said, “Micah and Mason scared.  My mask scare ’em.”  I said, “Oh buddy, they just don’t understand that your treatment is good for you.”  He kept watching his show, and I just sat there crying.  I felt really overwhelmed at that moment.  This is the beginning.  This is the beginning of all the questions I’ve been dreading.  This is the beginning of Asher realizing he is different than other children.  This is the beginning of all things I’m completely not equipped to explain to my son.

I’m not sure how we be honest with Asher in explaining what Cystic Fibrosis is so he understands the importance of all his treatments and meds, but not overwhelm him.  I’m not sure how we continue to fundraise and create awareness about CF, but not make him feel like he’s fighting a loosing battle with this fatal disease.  I’m not sure how we encourage him and help him to not be bitter when there will be parties or activities that he’ll miss from being sick or in the hospital.  And, I’m not sure how we explain to him that God is completely in control of every aspect of our lives and that He allowed Asher to have CF, but we hate CF.

I know we’ll figure it out as we go, and I know we won’t have all of these thrown at us at one time, but it’s coming…and this is the beginning.  And, I can’t help but think how many times over my life I’ve majorly stuck my foot in my mouth, said something hurtful or stupid that I don’t mean, or have just flat out communicated something that’s incorrect.  I feel like Asher is going to hang on to every word we speak to him about this disease, and that’s a lot of pressure.  I know that Asher’s attitude about CF is greatly going to be effected by our attitudes, and that’s a lot of pressure.  It’s just a lot to handle and think about.  Certainly not the conversations I’ve dreamed about having with my son.  We pray for God’s direction and His wisdom in explaining things to Asher.  We pray He would give us the words to build him up and encourage him.  And, holy cow, we PRAY for that cure!!!!!

Fishin’, hikin’ in your dino camo jammies, turtles, Go Fish, what more could a boy want!

On the fishin’ note…I was really looking forward to teaching Asher how to fish, and even more specifically, how to fish with my Snoopy fishing pole.  I cannot even tell you how many hours of fishing and how many fish I caught with my good ol’ friend.  Ohhhh, how special that would have been to share the memories and my fishing pole with my son…except that it has mysteriously disappeared!!!  Mom and dad swear they didn’t throw it away, and I believe that about as much as they can believe that I’m not bitter at all – LOL!  I think I’ll get over it, but it is their fault that we didn’t catch any fish :).  Asher was pretty cute though, every time I would cast out and he started reeling in he would proclaim, “I got a fish!!!”