Dear Ruthie

Happy 6th Birthday sweet Ruthie! I can't believe how fast the time has flown. This year was a big year for you as you completed OIT for your peanut allergy and you started kindergarten.
You my sweet Roo are my little fighter. You are one of the toughest kids I know and you are incredibly brave. This past year we asked you to do something really scary. We asked you to eat peanuts after we had spent years teaching you not to eat them and to question every single thing you put in your mouth. My little warrior, you were a little nervous and unsure but you stepped up and trusted us. You were amazing through all of OIT. Even with OIT I was so incredibly nervous sending you off to kindergarten this year. Fortunately you have an amazing teacher who I knew was looking out for you and the first time I picked you up from school and you were telling me about who you ate lunch with and you made no mention of what anyone else was eating it made me so happy. I can already see you forgetting what life was like before OIT but I hope you always remember a little bit of what that anxiety felt like. I hope you can remember how you faced something scary and it changed your life forever!
Speaking of taking on scary things, you were pretty nervous about starting kindergarten this year. However, the first day came and I walked you to class and you walked right in and never looked back. You have two wonderful teachers and they always tell me how fabulous you are. They talk about what a hard worker you are and how focused you are on every assignment. They recently told me about how you there is a little boy who has been struggling and you have taken him under your wing. They said you always help him and you always pick him as your partner when you have partner assignments. I'm pretty sure you're just happy to have someone you can boss around but I am proud of you for looking out for those around you. I laugh every time I see you at school. You always seem to have some little boy by the arm and are dragging him around talking 90 miles an hour (no doubt telling him all the things he needs to be doing). You are a force to be reckoned with!
Ruthie I will never forget the day we brought you home from the hospital and set your carrier on the floor and your sisters ran over to look at you and your eyes just lit up. From that moment on you have wanted nothing more than to be one of the group. You are 4 years younger than Emmie and 2 1/2 years younger than Ellie but you are SURE that not only can you do anything they can do but I'm pretty sure you view yourself as the oldest (which occasionally causes some conflict with the actual oldest child)! Anyone who knew you as a toddler knows that you can do anything you put your mind to and I have seen this determination in so many ways. When you were 2 I went to change your diaper one day and you yelled "no diaper!" and that day you potty trained yourself. When you were learning to swim you said you refused to wear your float one day and that day you took off swimming. I also remember being so worried about how you would adjust when JP was born. After all we had always treated you like you were the baby of the family. You however slid right into the roll of big sister. You and JP are incredibly close and I love to watch you together. My favorite is those times when I come into your room in the morning and you are snuggled up in his bed whispering to each other. I am so glad that you have a buddy and that you get to be an actual big sister (instead of just pretending you are the biggest sister!).
You are so determined and so determined to be independent. You are always on the go and rarely want help with anything. I treasure the moments when you want me to hold you or you want to snuggle up beside me. Ruthie, I can't wait to see where life takes you. You are strong, courageous, determined and independent. You are small (although you have grown so much in the last year or two!) but you never let your size hold you back. There is a huge personality inside of your little body!You can do absolutely anything that you set your mind to and I hope you always believe in yourself the way you do now. Last night I read to you from the book On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman and there is a line in there that says "For never before in story or rhyme...has the world ever known a you, my friend, and it never will, not ever again." You are truly one of a kind sweet Roo and the world had better get ready because I have no doubt you will take it by storm!
Happy Birthday Ruthie Mitchell!

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I had to throw this picture in because I love the pictures of you with your fingers in your mouth. It is just so you. As much as I fuss at you to get your fingers out of your mouth something about it just tugs on my heart!

Polar Express

Today we headed up to Spencer, NC for a Polar Express train ride at the NC Transportation Museum. We had a great time and the kids were very excited!
We arrived early enough that we were able to do a craft and write letters to Santa before boarding the train.

We also grabbed a funnel cake and watched a performance by a bubbleologist with the Soap Bubble Circus. It was such unique entertainment and lots of fun for the kids and adults!

The kids also played in the "snow". JP especially LOVED it!

There was a little show before we boarded and then our train arrived!

They came by at the beginning and punched a "b" (for believe) on each of our tickets.

I had purposely picked a time when it would still be light outside at the beginning of our ride so that the kids could see out the window. 

After a short ride where we ate cookies, drank hot chocolate, and read The Polar Express, we arrived at the North Pole!

The North Pole!

We got off the train and watched the first gift of Christmas given! When we got back on the train Santa came and gave each of us a silver bell.

We had a short ride back to the station after that. We loved our time on the Polar Express!

Celebrating Emmie

It has been a fun week celebrating our sweet Emmie! On Monday her sweet ballet class sang to her, on Tuesday (her actual birthday) I picked the kids up from school and took them to Surge (a trampoline park) to play. Then Emmie requested Chick-fil-A for dinner and Marble Slab for dessert. Paul met us for dinner and ice cream!

Today we had Emmie's party. She had requested an Arts and Crafts party. So we invited a few friends over. We played a really fun game where you sit everyone at a table with a piece of paper and something to color the paper with. I used a combo of oil pastels, markers, crayons, and paint. You have 1 minute to draw something on your paper. Then everyone stands up and moves over one seat and you have 1 minute to draw on the paper that is now in front of you. You keep doing this until you get back to your original picture. It was fun to see how they started and how they ended up! The kids LOVED this game! We also made shinky dink ornaments (they could choose a turtle or a hydroflask..we're full on VSCO girl at our house) and we decorated cookies. Emmie had so much fun and I always love being around this sweet group of girls!

Dear Emmie

Dear Emmie, 

Happy 10th Birthday sweet girl! This is a big birthday milestone...double digits! These past 10 years have been full of laughter and tears and easy times and hard times and lots of memories. I treasure each and every minute with you (even the really hard minutes because they have made you and me stronger and better) and I am so proud of the person you are today.

As I look back on this year I have so, so many feelings. A year ago I could feel you slipping away from me and I was lost as to what to do to help you. I told someone that I felt like we were losing you. It is an absolutely gut wrenching feeling to feel like you are losing your child. In the space of just a few weeks last fall you went from being a sweet, sensitive girl who was maybe a bit hyper and tended to live a bit at the extremes emotionally to a child who didn't care about consequences, was mostly out of control behaviorally and had severe anxiety. I KNEW my Emmie was still in there I just couldn't figure out how to reach you. We were going through boxes of Band-Aids as you picked at the skin on your fingers until they bled, you were occasionally having what seemed to be panic attacks, you were miserable at school, and you were all over the place all the time. Everywhere you went you seemed to get in trouble and I felt like I was constantly getting calls and emails about your behavior. I knew this wasn't you and that something was wrong but nothing we did seemed to help. I honestly hope that as you grow up you don't remember much of this past year. It was hard and you spent a lot of time feeling sad and lonely and defeated. But I hope that if you remember anything you remember the good moments and the people who were there for you. I hope that you remember that dance made you happy and that your dance teacher, Ms. Bailey, was probably the one adult in your life, outside of family, who gave you the most love and support during this time. She loved on you so well and she seemed to be one of the few people you responded well to. I will forever be thankful to her for being able to pick out and praise the good while also not letting you get away with anything! I hope you remember your sweet group of friends who stood by you even as you changed so much. Friends like that are the kind you keep forever and in a year when you had so many "friend problems" friends that stick by you and love you no matter what are gold.

Somewhere over the winter we determined that it must be your new seizure med that was causing all the problems. The thing was that this was the third medicine we had tried and the first one to actually mostly control your seizures. We just thought if we could get through two years of the medicine controlling your seizures then we could wean off of it and get our Emmie back. 

When we saw the neurologist at the end of May he pushed hard to try a different medicine just to see if it helped the seizures and had less side effects. That medicine has become our miracle. Not only are you not having ANY seizures but by mid June we had our Emmie back. Sweet girl I can't tell you how much it breaks my heart to think about what you went through last year. I knew the whole time that somewhere inside of you was the real Emmie and it made me SO happy when we started seeing glimpses of her coming back. Your counselor, whom you started seeing about mid way through the school year, saw you in mid May and then didn't see you again until late August and he couldn't believe that we had brought him the same child! He was amazed at how much more focused and calm and happy you were in August. 

I am constantly amazed at how well you have rebounded this year. So far this has probably been your best school year, academically and emotionally, since the seizures started. I have loved watching your confidence, which was absolutely shattered last year, grow. I have watched you handle big disappointments with poise and grace. I have loved watching you work really hard to master a difficult concept. I have loved seeing how much your sense of responsibility has grown this year as I have stepped back and have counted on you to be more independent when it comes to school work and also with getting your chores done and taking your medicine. This year you picked tap back up at dance and though most of the other kids are older than you and you are pretty timid in class you have worked SO hard and when I watched you this week at open house I was so proud of all you had learned! 

Emmie you are one of the sweetest souls I know. You have a heart for helping others and I am incredibly proud of how giving and selfless you can be when you see someone who needs some extra love. I know that this trait will cause you to touch people's lives wherever you go in life. You may do big, great, important things and change the world or you may just change your little corner of the world but I know that wherever you go and whatever you do you will bring happiness to others.

Most of all I love seeing how happy you are this year. Sure it's not all roses and unicorns and there are days when you are for sure a tween but you have been through fire and you came out better for it. I hope that you don't remember all the nitty gritty awful moments this year but I do hope you remember that it was really, really hard and frustrating and that your brain felt like it was going in a million different directions at once but that there was a point where things got better. I hope you hold on to that lesson, that even in the worst of times there is hope. I hope you remember a little of the feelings you had this year and use those memories to show grace and compassion to others who may be struggling with similar things. I hope that you remember those poeple who stood by you through it all and loved you no matter what and that as you grow you surround yourself with those types of poeple and that you become that person to friends going through hard times. 

This year I have loved watching you grow as a dancer. I have loved seeing you pick back up reading, which had become so hard and stressful between the seizures and the adhd. I have loved seeing you develop a love for cooking and not only for cooking but for also plating your dish in an artistic way. Maybe we'll see you on a cooking show one day! Right now you are into all things VSCO girl and it makes me laugh when you rave over a scrunchie (you would be horrified if you knew how many I had thrown away back in the late 90s!). You are funny and loving and exuberant and kind and sometimes you are a full blown tween who makes me want to pull my hair out. But that's ok. That's how you're supposed to be right now!

Emmie, when I first held you in my arms 10 years ago I never dreamed of the challenges your first 10 years would hold. But I am so amazed at all you have overcome and the life lessons you have learned and I am incredibly proud of the girl you have become. I love that 10 years later you still want to snuggle with me and hold my hand and you still want me to read you a bedtime story.

Emerson Jane, you are an incredible gift from God and I am forever thankful that I have been chosen to be your mama.

Love, 

Mom

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