Extreme

I feel like (at least I hope) that I come across as fairly normal, and almost maybe a little laid back.  This is not usually what the inside of me looks like though.  When day three of parenting brings jaundice followed by a seizure and a stroke, you kind of kiss laid back parenting goodbye.  After a week in the hospital we continued on as almost normal parents right up until #2 was born and on the day she was to be baptized, #1, now 2 1/2, had another major seizure and a blood glucose reading of 21.  (there had been one other incident of 19, but no seizure that time).  We still managed to be almost normal parents with all of this except for the part about hounding the poor little boy to eat all the time (finish that cookie, eat some more ice cream) and waking up of every night in the middle of the night to give him a sippy cup of chocolate milk until he was about 5 years old.  Speaking of five years old, when #2 approached that age, in spite of never having a sick visit to the pediatrician in all her life, she threw us for a loop when she developed an auto immune scary condition that necessitated an ambulance ride and two nights in the big city hospital.   This was all before the scariest of all of which my husband was the culprit.  You can go all the way back to the beginning of this blog in 2007 to read about that one, I don't want to talk about it. 

In the last year Madi has twice had a freaky hives, vomiting, allergic reaction thing that we cannot figure out the cause of.  The only thing in common about the two incidents was that she was doing something completely new and was a little nervous.  This girl can sing and act in front of hundreds of people without even a flutter of butterflies.  As part of operation enter public school, she had to go to said school this morning to take a really annoying Algebra test.  This girl who doesn't get nervous was a little nervous, this mom who does get nervous was freaking out!  I was convinced that she was going to end up with hives and vomiting (part of me imagines anaphylactic shock).  The text that said "I feel a little sick, but I'll be ok" didn't help me.  Long story short, she was ok, she is done, and now back at theatre where nerves don't ever enter into the equation.  And I feel such relief.  I am used to this relief.  In the days of toddler Jonathan when I expected every second that something horrible was going to happen.  I would get myself so worked up that then when he'd wake up from a nap just fine, I'd celebrate an unbelievable feeling of relief.  I am weird and a little bit like the movie What about Bob?  Bob fakes turret's syndrome and other neurosis because "if you can fake it you don't have it".  My version is if I expect my kid to have some crazy weird illness, then they probably won't.  I might be sharing too much of my messy insides here, but since only about 3 people read this anyway, I think I'll take my chances.  Plus I'm not really as crazy and I'm making this sound, and I know that prayer is much more helpful than expecting something bad to happen.  Believe me I utilize prayer ALL THE TIME!!  Here's another part of it though, I have learned that sometimes bad things happen because they happen to us, but like that without darkness we wouldn't appreciate light kind of thing, I am so genuinely happy, when we jump another hurdle and nothing bad ended up happening.  With Jonathan driving everyday and Madi eager to drive as much as possible too, I get to practice this kind of thing all the time.  I pray, partly knowing everything will be fine, and partly preparing for the absolute worst case scenario, and then when I get that "I'm here" text or see the car pull in the driveway, I am so happy and celebrate the relief.  Without nervousness, we couldn't celebrate relief.