Santa came early!

Santa came to see Maggie Rose a little early this year. She seemed excited about her gift, but I think she’s hoping the jolly man will return with more tricycles, unicorn pillow pets, and peanut brittle on the 25th.

What do y’all think of her gift?

Can you read her t-shirt? Kids always love getting clothes for Christmas, right?

Well, she’s gonna BEE a BIG sister!

In June, we hope.

Keep your fingers crossed. Like Maggie, Baby 2 has NAIT — neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia.

Unlike Maggie, we know ahead of time.

In a nutshell, I won’t be joining Honeydew in California this year. I’ll soon be headed to the hospital once a week to receive infusions of an amazing substance called IVIG. Shortly after her birth, Maggie Rose received several infusions of IVIG before she received her donor platelets. Together, the IVIG and the platelets, combined with the care of our amazing doctors and nurses, especially Dr. Ribgy, saved Maggie’s life.

Now, our doctors hope that by giving me big doses of IVIG, we’ll avoid the NICU entirely for Baby 2. If you’ve been affected by NAIT, leave a comment, will you? It’s pretty rare, and we’d love to talk to someone who’s had a second NAIT baby, especially if you’ve undergone the IVIG therapy.

No cause for undue alarm, though. All pregnancies are fragile, and we are in very good hands.

We think a sibling will be the greatest gift we ever give Maggie Rose, and hopefully, one day she will agree.

Merry Christmas to our own brothers and sisters, who know why we are the way that we are, even when we wish they did not.

If you’d like more information on donating platelets, click here.

2012. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.

 

August 5, 2012: What We Saw in Glacier National Park

We try to take Sundays off this time of year, and when we do, Honeydew and I trade choices – this past Sunday, I decided that we should take Maggie Rose to Iceberg Lake, the easiest 10 miles in the park, and generally overrun with people for that reason.  In my pre-baby life, I would have avoided Iceberg Lake on August 5 like the plague, but I suppose this is the new norm.  Maggie loved gawking/waving at every person we passed, anyway, and I always love meeting ghosts of myself and my loved ones in the Many Glacier valley, particularly along the Iceberg Lake trail.

This is the trail to Iceberg Lake – Mt. Wilbur is the tallest mountain to the far left, and below it hangs a shelf keeping Shangri La secret from most of the world.  Behind the shelf, tucked between Mt. Wilbur and the beautiful castle-like wall, is Iceberg Lake.

Maggie Rose first went hiking in the Many Glacier valley when she was three weeks old, and her affection for it hasn’t changed.  Especially now that she’s discovered that hiking means eating snacks reserved only for hiking – like Lay’s potato chips.  Mmmm!

4.9 miles from the trailhead, we reached the lake, still nearly fully encased in ice.  I love this shot of Maggie Rose and Honeydew – back in Honeydew’s trail crew days, he spent a lovely afternoon widening the trail they’re standing on, and digging the water ditches you see on either side.  He says they used jackhammers, to the consternation of most who were there.

Requisite family shot.

Looking at the lake, you might think there’s just a thin layer of ice and snow covering it, but if you look at the middle of this picture, perhaps you can get a better perspective on just how thick the layer is – I was zoomed in 20x when I took this!

Maggie Rose is our water baby, and the temperatures of the liquid-snow-lake did not deter her.

Wearing my old sunbonnet, playing with a chunk of ice.

My favorite shot – 14 month old Maggie is so independent, so unafraid of the world.  As her parents, this is a little bit frightening — but then, we can relate to her perfectly.  Never be afraid of the world, baby girl – your curiosity will bring you so many choices, and so much joy.

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

happy FIRST birthday, Maggie Rose!

Honeydew and I rolled over in the gray, predawn light and beamed at each other this morning.  We’ve managed to keep our firstborn alive for an entire year.

And what a year it has been.  Today, I’m using the blog to capture a few details of Maggie’s arrival, because everyone knows that I can barely remember my own name from week to week, and if I don’t write these down Maggie Rose might never know that despite her adoration of Daddy, she was a Mama’s girl in the beginning, resisting three separate rounds of inducement and electing to remain in the womb far beyond her due date of Friday, May 13.

Eventually, her amniotic fluid levels plummeted, and I was admitted to the hospital for the inducements.  I paced the halls restlessly for almost three days before her arrival, admiring the sparkling May sunshine beyond the windows and wishing It’ll, as we called her then, were there to enjoy it with me.  When she did finally deign to begin the journey to oxygen and double cheeseburgers, I bounced on an oversize yoga ball and then floated in a warm tub, fascinated by the strength of the contractions, confident in my body’s abilities.

Hours slipped by, and it was time to push, the most instinctual, primal feeling I have ever known. I closed my eyes and pictured myself step-step-breathing up Mt. Siyeh, finally grasping the legal concept of the Rule Against Perpetuities  at 2:30am during finals, recovering from a miniature panic attack on a open ledge on Mt. Clements and continuing to the top.  I knew I had the grit, the determination, the strength.  Honeydew and Dr. Bowden announced they could see Maggie’s head, and I glanced at the clock and realized that the morning sunlight had turned to inky darkness.

But still she did not come.

And then, just before midnight, Dr. Bowden took my hand and looked at me with her quiet confidence, letting the silence speak for itself.  ”Are we out of options?” I asked with a hitch in my voice.  And she said yes, that I had labored long enough that she was concerned for It’ll and for me, that It’ll’s head was just too big, and that she wanted to perform a c-section, the one possibility of labor that I had feared and dreaded.

Twenty minutes later, Maggie was pulled from my lower abdomen, and under the weight of the anesthesia pinning my lungs to the icy operating table, I struggled to put all the conviction I had left in me into my voice.  ”What is it?”

“It’s a … it’s a … it’s a girl!”  Honeydew exclaimed, in sheer wonder, gazing over the blue sheet separating me from my lower body, and my baby.

And so you were, Maggie Rose.

You have made this past year the most exhausting, magical year of my life.  Daddy and I would not trade you for all the coffee in South America, even on days that you are teething.

Happy first birthday, Maggie Rose!

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

on hairstyles

In years past, I’ve spent the first part of March racing around getting ready for the Made in Montana Marketplace, a fair held each year in Great Falls that allows members of the Made in Montana program to connect with wholesalers and the public prior to Montana’s insane summer/tourist season.  We’ve loved being exhibitors, and right now I’m missing pouring hundreds of candles and labeling endless one pounders of honey in preparation.  We hope to exhibit again in 2013!

But we’re not sitting around in California twiddling our thumbs.  Honeydew, as in every March, is running around like a crazy person – the bees are out of the almonds and back into the holding yards – and I promise if I ever get a strong internet connection again I’ll do a big blog post on this topic!.  So, every morning, Keith and Honeydew head out to these yards to catch queens and prepare the hives for requeening.

And every morning, after I clean up the mess from a hot breakfast and packed lunches, I load Maggie Rose into my car and we head to the gym.  Another beekeeper in the Redding area recommended this particular gym to me, and I love belonging there.  It provides a very nice break from pouring candles, and I am finally seeing the baby weight come off.  Hurrah!  But the best part about this gym is that it offers childcare, and so Maggie gets to experience an hour or so of daycare every day, which I’m sure is how she picked up her horrible illness back in February, but on the whole, I am so happy that she gets to interact with lots of young children, without me.  I think this is very, very good for her.  And an hour to lose myself in earblasting rock through my headphones, as I push myself in the weight room and on the cardio machines, is also very, very good for me.

When I picked Maggie Rose up from this daycare yesterday, my heart lurched.  My little mullet baby was sporting the two most darling pigtails that have ever graced the planet, the first pigtails she’d ever worn, the first time her hair was in any way styled.

I’ve never even put her hair in a headband or a bow.  I don’t know why.  She has plenty of them, and I know she would look precious in them.  I think in some silly way my subconscious realizes that all too soon, she will be doing recklessly horrible things to her beautiful hair – like dyeing it dark, dyeing it with Kool Aid, dyeing it to cover up her grays.  Not that I’ve ever done those things.  And so I suppose my subconscious has whispered to me, “Plenty of time for hairstyles, in any way, shape, or form.”

But I do think it’s time for pigtails.

And maybe barrettes and headbands, too.

Once she’s at least ten months old.

Which is next week.

Oh, Time, please, please slow down.

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

an ode

Yesterday, we finally took Sick Baby to a clinic in Redding.

She still wasn’t running a high fever or exhibiting any of the classic we-need-to-go-to-the-doctor-NOW symptoms, but for Maggie, she was acting pretty darn unlike herself for the fourth day in a row. The Hoglette wouldn’t eat, for one thing. For days on end. And since she’s never been sick, Honeydew and I figured we didn’t really know what we were “observing” anyhow. So, off we went.

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During our visit to the clinic, we experienced Scary Crying for the first time. I would not wish Scary Crying on anyone, but if you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about, and if you’re not, be glad you don’t. Scary Crying resulted from the doc’s examination of Maggie Rose’s perfect, seashell-esque ears. Which are both mightily infected. She has croup, too, which produces a bronchitis-like coughing that wears you down and makes you miserable. Bless her heart.

But, twenty hours after the first dose of antibiotics, Maggie Rose has sucked down eight ounces of Similac’s finest and another five of apple juice — her first juice! — and is currently on the floor reuniting with all her toys, much neglected since Saturday. And so I would like to offer an ode to antibiotics:

Antibiotics, much abused and maligned,

You have become as underappreciated as watermelon rind.

But to Maggie Rose, you have been so kind.

Thank you so much for getting her ears out of this bind.

Love, The Beekeepers

2012. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.

 

holding Maggie Rose

Our baby is sick.

All things being relative, she is in no way clinging to that shimmery, blurred line between life and death, as she did the day after she was born.  She is not even running a high fever.  So far, her Montana pediatrician advises that we simply stay home, and hydrate, and rest.

And so we are.  Which is very unlike us.  I am not prone to sitting at home and resting.  Oh, I’m home plenty, because I work out of our home, but it is not often that I simply sit and observe Maggie, and hold her.

And hold her I did yesterday, for hours and hours.  The baby who usually plays by herself for an hour or so in the morning required a playmate on the floor, and I happily obliged, holding her in my lap and building block towers and reading about chameleons and singing songs about friendly black spiders.  Towards mid morning, the baby who usually requests a bottle and then settles in for a long nap had no interest in the bottle or her crib.  And so we sat on the couch, and I held her for hours while she slept.  I watched her lungs inflate and deflate and cursed the wheezing, coughing fits that drug her from under sleep’s comforter every so often.  I inspected her tiny hands, hands that have learned to grab Cheerios, books, and bears in the last nearly-nine months.  I marveled over her porcelain skin, so unlike my own, and the little marks that learning to cruise have inflicted upon it.  I dug my phone out of my pocket and tried to preserve the moment.

And then we repeated this routine in the afternoon.

I had not held Maggie Rose for such an extended length of time since she was in the NICU, and though I wished fervently that I could absorb her miserable-ness into my skin, I enjoyed the hours, even after my arms fell asleep from the strain of holding her.  I projected into the future and wondered  about the last time I will hold Maggie’s whole body in my arms, a moment I will not know until much later, if ever, and I wondered if she will be 5 or 10 or 12, if she will be hurt or come to me just because.  I wondered if I will be able to look back and pinpoint that moment, and I thought about how beautiful life’s uncertainties are, and how cruel.

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

on growing bees, growing babies, and wildly inappropriate cakes

All the bees are in the almonds!  Whooooooooooooosh.  Exhaling deeply.

For now, it’s back to scraping frames and preparing for the end of pollination season, when we requeen colonies, split colonies, and in general try to increase the number and strength of our hives.

While the bees are growing, here are a few shots of how Maggie Rose is growing, for those of you who are into that sort of thing:

Wishing she were old enough for ski lessons on Big Mountain, last month.

Learning to read.

Making one last appearance as miniature Queen of Winter.  Then we drove to California, baby!

This morning, enjoying the age old delights of kitchen spoons and empty boxes.

Hard to believe she’ll be 9 months old on the 21st.  Pseudo Sista, my perpetual party planning partner, and I are already talking about her 1st Birthday Partay.  Mostly because we’ll have an excuse to make a cake!  And knowing us, it will probably be a rum cake …. mmmm.  Is that wildly inappropriate for a 1 year old’s birthday or what?  ’Cause we thrive on wildly inappropriate near Babb …

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

settling in

California has startled me all week, delighting me with its produce and pockets of sixty-degrees-on-the-deck sunshine, frightening me with its aggressive traffic and lack of eye contact.  However, my good experiences are definitely outweighing the bad, and between our cozy house and kind beekeeper friends, California has quickly felt like home.  Or maybe I just missed closets, windows, and drawers – who knows?

Maggie Rose has been a trooper through the ups and downs and endless red lights.   She seems startled, too.  Who is this mother who doesn’t disappear for hours at a time to pour hot beeswax and honey?  Hmmm.  I wonder, too, Maggie, but I’m enjoying so much time with you.

Mmmmm, avocado!

Sushi with Uncle Brother Dear!  This place – Yama Sushi in Redding – is so fun – you can order whatever you like, but the chefs also send boats filled with tempting sushi choices and if you like what you see, you just grab the plate off the boat!  Maggie was beyond fascinated.  Me, too.

Shopping is fun! 

LET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Out for a walk!  Maggie loves non-fifty-degrees-below-zero wind chill values.

And one we posted to our Facebook page earlier this week, in case you missed it – our Honey Bunny.

Happy Thursday!

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

eight months

Maggie Rose is eight months old as of yesterday, when this picture was taken.  Honeydew and I are trying to get her to laugh in this picture, and I think we look pretty certifiable as a result.

Adorable outfit courtesy of Maggie’s Sissy.  Mini Frye boots courtesy of Catherine Harcus.  I can’t believe my eight month old owns the boots I’ve always coveted!  Ridiculous!

On a different note – any tips readers might have on convincing an eight month old that solid foods are fun is welcomed in the comments – somehow, the child of two parents who talk of nothing but their next meal is not interested in homemade baby food, purchased baby food, table scraps, or anything but Similac’s finest and Baby Mum Mums, essentially rice crackers.  Hmmm.  What do y’all think?

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

Co-pilot

Maggie Rose is invaluable as we make our way to California.

To say nothing of Roy and Buck, our pups. Y’all keep your fingers crossed for clear weather over the last pass!

2012. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.