Cherish the Moments

Last night I read a very sad story on a blog my friend Carrie directed me to. This tragic accident happened here locally and just about a week ago. This mom tells her story of how her son drowned in the bathtub (read her whole story here), thankfully he survived after a long fight for his life. I know we hear these awful stories of how parents neglect to watch their kids. And we most likely think to ourselves, that would NEVER happen to me, I would never do that. Her story could have easily happened to me, or any one of us. I'm reminded of the mistakes I've made in the past, and thank GOD that nothing seriously bad happened to my babies.
A few months ago, my son at about 6 months fell off the bed. No matter how many times I have heard, DO NOT leave your baby on the couch or bed, I still managed to let it happen. I placed my son on my bed, put a pillow next to him, thought that would KEEP him from rolling off. I remembered I needed something downstairs, ran down there, got distracted with something, then heard the THUMP. My heart skipped, and I flew upstairs to rescue my poor baby as he's crying hysterically on the floor. I was almost in tears because I was SO mad at myself for letting this happen, even when I KNEW better. For the next couple of hours after this happened I was so nervous about his health, hoping he didn't brake anything, or bump his head too hard.
Just a few months before this my sister in law had taken her 3 year old son to the ER in the middle of the night because he rolled off of his little twin bed, and broke his collar bone. These little babies are just so fragile.
When my daughter was about a year old, she was playing with a little spoon. I thought, a spoon is harmless, right?, well, not exactly. She had put it in her mouth and was playing on her car seat, I wasn't paying attention at the time, although I was right THERE. The next thing I knew, the car seat tipped, and she landed right on her face with the spoon in her mouth. As a result she was left with a huge gouge in the back of her throat. She was in so much pain that she barely ate or drank for a week. Another one of those moments where you think, WHY did I LET this happen. WHY did I not see that coming?

I think we all need constant reminders of how short life is, and how these kinds of things can easily happen to any one of us. We NEED to be more attentive, and AWARE of our children.

Last night when my son woke up crying, like he still sometimes does, I went and got him out of his crib, instead of just laying him back down and giving him his Binky. I felt the urge to just HOLD him. I sat in the rocker and just cradled him as I inhaled his little baby smell, kissing his forehead over and over, while saying a silent prayer, thanking GOD for this precious little life.

Later my daughter came to kiss me goodnight, she said, "I love you mom, you're my best

mommy, and I don't EVER want to get runned over by a car or get lost". Wow, it's amazing what kids pick up on. I hadn't said anything about what I was thinking, or worrying about.

I don't want to live my life in FEAR, rather, AWARENESS!
We need to cherish the moments we have with our little ones. Life is short, and so VERY fragile. I hope that we can all learn from each others mistakes, to keep these tragedies from happening to us.

We invested in a camera baby monitor before we had Olly.

I would highly recommend it too. I've heard so many sad stories of baby's suffocating, or getting strangled by a cord while in their cribs. I remember when Lily was a baby, I was trying to put her down for a nap, and was letting her cry it out a bit. Little did I know she was crying because the blanket was wrapped around her head. From then on I just never let her cry in her crib, I was so paranoid and constantly checking on her, which interfered with my plans of getting her in her crib. We all know that doesn't go over well. When baby SEES you...baby WANTS you. She ended up sleeping in our bed until she was 3. This camera has been a lifesaver. I am still constantly checking on Oliver, but at least now, he can't see me, so he doesn't cry for me to get him out.

My husband will absolutely not let Lily walk down our lane on her own, we've argued about it

in the past. I said he needs to let her grow up, and allow her to do big girl things. I have taught her about the dangers of cars, and she's been so good about it, looking both ways, walking on the side of the lane and not in the middle. Anytime she sees a car coming, she instantly runs as far away from the road as possible. Then I came across this, and I humbly admitted to my husband that he was right :)

Research has shown that children under the age of ten have not yet fully developed their depth perception, meaning they may underestimate the distance and speed of an approaching car. Because of this they are likely to dart into the streets even after they have looked both ways.

Well, since I'm already airing out all my dirty laundry and confessing my many screw ups as a mom, why not just tell it all. Hopefully, you won't be as stupid as me, and can just learn from my omissions.

So when Lily was a baby and the pediatrician gave us the okay on giving her juice, I thought okay, I know there is a lot of sugar in apple juice, so I'll just add a little bit of it to some water, just to make it taste better for her. She really had no interest in water, or formula for that matter. So, this seemed to be the answer for getting the fluids in her. I've heard before that giving babies juice and milk at night could rot their teeth, and in fact this very thing happened to my own nephew. So you'd think I would have avoided this all together. I simply thought that adding a little juice to the water was harmless. This is the result of my ignorance.

One day she was complaining about her lip hurting, then that night was up all night crying about her lip. We couldn't figure it out.....I didn't see anything wrong with her lip. We put chap stick on, gave her tylenol, nothing seemed to be working. So after a sleepless night, the next morning her lip looked like this.

It was then that we realized it was her tooth this whole time. We took her to the dentist. He put her on antibiotics and said that if it got any worse he'd have to pull them. We waited as long as possible for the meds to kick in, but her pain and the swelling only seemed to get worse. I took the above picture with my phone and sent it to our dentist. He said we needed to get those teeth out immediately. So, there we were, 10:00 at night, getting poor little Lily's teeth pulled.