Welcome!

Tristan Scott Reno, my great nephew, joined the world by way of c-section at 11:16pm 9/7/06. He was 9lbs 11.8ozs and 22" long... yes those numbers are accurate, and completely explain the c-section, eh? Nearly 10 lbs, and April isn't exactly a big girl!

He is beautiful, such flawless skin, so alert already, so calm and content. Congratulations April and Chris! and congratulations Grammy Sheryl and Grampa Jerry on your first grandchild!

OK, last night when Chris (the new dad) came out of OR when the baby was born, he was a little bit excited and had the time of birth wrong. Tristan was born at 11:16 not 11:09, so there went the numbers! ;) And then I screwed up and put the wrong middle name - so the above info has been corrected by the goofball aunt who got it all wrong.

stuff

Trish's youngest son Ryan took his first few all-by-himself steps yesterday. I'm sure I've said so before, but Ryan is just about a month older than Nova would be, and so a lot of the things he is doing are the things that Nova would be doing. Trish and I were on the phone yesterday when he did it, and I tried to picture Nova walking. I couldn't quite do it. He probably wouldn't be yet anyway. Sometimes I have to remind myself that if he'd lived, he wouldn't necessarily have been "normal" developmentally. Wish I'd been given the opportunity to find out. I've have relished every minute of any specialized care he needed, and been thankful for each one we'd have had. I hear a lot of parents of heart kids complain about the rigors of life with a child with special needs. It makes me angry. I'd like to think I'd have been like Michael and his wife Patty with Sophia. Their love and patience and pride in her every acheivment is so obvious. Or even like Trish with her daughter Shelby who has Cerebral Palsy - she's forever in therapy of some sort, in home or out, plus there are feeding issues and sensory issues... I know it isn't easy, but they handle it with such grace. I hope I'd have been the same way.

My niece is in the hospital as we speak, enjoying a cocktail of cervidil, oxytocin, and nubain and they've told her that she might not have this baby till the weekend. My labors have always been short (sometimes too short) and easy, and I can't imagine how horrible it would be to hear them tell me that I might have to labor for days. You guys could send some nice warm quick-easy-labor-and-healthy-baby vibes her way, and it sure wouldn't hurt our feelings any.

I'm in the early planning stages for so many things for next year, brainstorming some big ideas. I have some exciting ideas. But there's a whole year to think about all that. Of course I hope that I'll get your support again next year, but I don't feel like it would be fair to expect it in the heaping doses I've gotten this year. Besides, I might just shoot for that $10,000 you all thought I should have aimed for this year! Shit, maybe even more. Like I said, I have exciting ideas, and time to plan them. Big plans.

So I have some other posts to make on my other blogs. Bye.

$653

(click image to view full size)
$653! This is the check for the money that goes into Kassi's donations, from her school's hat day. How amazing is that!?

9/5/06

Got a letter from the Beta Club leader at Kassi's school today. Not sure what the exact amount was, she just said "over $500." Pretty friggin' awesome.

Ten days left till the walk. I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself after that. Work maybe. Hopefully. I put in an application at Ross... I love that store, and employees get 20% off.

Remember me saying we had a fish tank given to us? We finally got it together and set up, we lost the first 6 fish within an hour or so. We've restocked, lost a couple more but we have a lot of fish left. 1 Angelfish (there were 2, 1 died. There's a story behind them... Remind me to tell it sometime) 1 algae eater, 2 frogs, 2 snails, 3 bleeding hearts, 4 tiny goldfish (there were 6) 1 sword tail something or other (there were 2, 1 died) and two dalmation something or others.

The snails are my favorite. It's amazing how much I love that stupid fish tank, Scott and I both check on the fish every few hours, and we sit and just look at it, watch the lil fishies swim around. Weird, I'm not what I'd consider a 'fish person' but whatever.

My niece is going in to the hospital tomorrow night, they're giving her some sort of medication to make her start effacing, then they'll induce on Thursday morning. She's measuring 43 weeks. I've seriously never seen a woman (who was only having one baby) so big.

I've spent the last couple of hours going through all of our pictures of Nova, picking the ones I want for the memory book. Trish asked if she could put it together for me. Looking back through those 4 months in pictures has been so hard. Good lord I miss him.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
- ee cummings

I'm afraid I've wasted the better part of Labor day then.

Tshirts and Worms

These are the final graphics for the Team Nova shirts. The first one is the front, the 2nd one is the rear, with all the sponsor graphics. I don't make many purchases that require triple digits, seriously, and I have never spent in excess of $200 on tshirts. I am fully aware of the fact that the majority of the money came from the sponsors with the express purpose of this purchase, but I'm telling you, I stared at that button for a good 20 minutes before I could make myself actually click it. Afterwards, I was a sweaty mess, my heart was pounding, and Scott was laughing at me. No, I'm really not exaggerating.

I do not know how to spend money people. I don't know how people get into the habit of spending large amounts of money without thinking about it. It makes me a nervous wreck. Seriously. So I have finally ordered them, and they should be here in a week or so, and now, all that's left is for me to worry that they'll be screwed up and come in too late to have them fixed.

So there's that. Done and out of my hands, and now I wait.

I guess you guys have probably noticed I've been pretty quiet. Seems like my guts have become this writhing mass and it's been too hard to sort things out enough to really put words to them. All I get are little bits here and there, bits that don't make much sense and certainly wouldn't be much of a blog post. I'm feeling really restless, like there's something I'm supposed to be doing and I can't remember what it is. You know, Nova's been gone nearly 5 months now, and last night I caught myself about to yell at the boys for being too loud in the hallway near my bedroom. For a split second I forgot, for a fraction of an instant, I thought Nova was asleep in the bedroom and I was worried that they'd wake him up. I realized that it's mothering that I'm supposed to be doing, that's the restlessness.

My neice is going to be induced on Wednesday. She'll be doing the mothering soon. I want to go to the hospital and be there for her, but I don't know if I'll be strong enough. The numbers will be at work again. Wednesday is the 6th. 5 months to the day of Nova's death.

I am raw, again. More raw than I was for the first few months. You'd think it got easier, and it does, but this is that period during which the reality becomes undeniable, when everyone has gone on about their lives and I've run out of things to do to avoid the truth. Not only that, I'm having to really face, and in some ways relive, the experience by way of newspaper interviews. Do you know that I can't remember the details of Nova's surgery? I don't remember exactly what they did to his heart. I think I knew at the time, but the human brain has its own set of defense mechanisms, and forgetting is the first. Things get hazy, or disappear all together. So much so that I realize in retrospect that I've been incorrect with my answers to some of the questions that the reporter has asked. Like the day we found out that Nova's heart was broken. I didn't remember Scott being there. I suppose I was in shock more than I realized. At the time, it didn't seem like such a surprise. It felt like the world fell out from beneath me, but not really surprising. Guess my mind was protecting itself again. When I told you guys, did I seem shocked? I don't remember. There is so much I don't remember.

I got an email from one of the nurses from CVRU tonight, one of my favorites, one who came to Nova's funeral. Some of them have started a Heart Walk team. I think it's wonderful, and I'm glad it's what they've decided to do. I would have felt badly if they'd done anything major for Team Nova once I found out that Mika had formed a team. She's so involved with CVRU, it would have made me feel badly if they'd have supported us more than her. I won't put them in such a position next year, it was wrong of me to do so this year. It sure makes me look like a selfish ass.

By a Stingray Barb! WTF!?

Crikey!


R.I.P. Steve Irwin
a.k.a. The Crocodile Hunter
Feb 22, 1962 - Sep 4, 2006

The accident happened while Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.

[Link]

The 44-year-old is believed to have been killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest while he was diving.

[link]

Irwin had a puncture wound to the left side of his chest and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

[link]

Wish me luck

So the new total is $2385. With Gretchen's yarn raffle, it'll be $2698. I'm only $302 short of the goal! Surely I can make that last $302, right?

Kassi's school had hat day on Friday, but the principal is evil (haha I love her!) and wouldn't tell Kassi how much actually came in. She sent in a check for it, which will be applied to Kassi's donation page. It should show up by Wednesday I think, maybe even Tuesday. The curiosity and anticipation is driving she and I nuts! Obviously, Kassi's $200 goal will be met and I'll probably be able to spread the rest around and get each kid $100 for the t-shirt.

I've got a little more info about the other sponsor. I did actually lose one because the guy had a death in the family and obviously isn't thinking much about anything else (and who can blame him!) so, Mecklenburg Bail Bonds Association is donating $200 to go towards the purchase of our team shirts, plus the $34 that was collected from the Photography Raffle, so I'm only having to fork out $56 bucks out of pocket to order the shirts. I plan to order them tomorrow, as soon as that $200 actually hits the paypal account. I have to hurry! I'm running out of time for shipping!

I've already been planning different things for next year's Heart Walk. There have been several ideas and suggestions made this year that there just wasn't enough time to plan and put into action for this year. Like the skate party. I definitely want to do that, but I didn't have the idea until the kids were out of school, and there wasn't enough time after school started this year to be able to get it planned and set up and scheduled and invitations out to all the other students. But I can do that after the first of the year, when the Heart Walk page opens back up for the 2007 Walk.

The photographer came and took pictures of us doing the balloon release yesterday. I was really nervous, but she made it easy. She also let it slip that the planned print date for the story is Sunday Sept. 24th. A week after the Walk. Awesomeness.

In unrelated, but oddly related, news, my oldest son has a new girlfriend that he goes to school with. She's cute as a button and he's just so sweet with her. But yesterday we found out that she was born with a CHD - TGV (Also called TGA) and VSD - and has had 3 open heart surgeries. This is a strange development on several levels. Tommy has never really shown any reaction much to Alexis or Nova's death, and appeared outwardly unaffected by it all. This is, perhaps, a way for him to learn and understand what CHD is all about in a way that he's been pretty uninterested in doing before now. It also, on a not necessarily such a good level, makes me concerned. Tommy already has a family history of CHD, so his chances of having a CHD baby are slightly elevated from the norm, but a woman who has a CHD has a much greater chance of having a heart baby. Put the two of them together and, though I wouldn't know the exact ratios, the chance of a CHD baby would be much higher than general population. I'm trying to do the math, and if I'm not completely off-base, it believe that if they had a child together, the chance of the baby having a CHD would be something like 7.5%, as opposed to the 1% the rest of the world has. They'd be 7.5 times as likely as anyone else. That scares me. Now I know he's only 17, and it isn't likely that he'll end up having a family with this girl, but I can't help but worry, considering this whole thing with that other girl.

Anyway, I'm off to figure out how I'm going to get another $300 or so for the Heart Walk. Wish me luck.

TTHT #80

Heard the Word of Blog?

The 80th edition of The Tarheel Tavern is at 2 Sides 2 Ron. He's done an awesome job, no ifs and or buts about it!

Get your ass on over there and join the fun, and -as always- if you think hosting looks like fun, we're always looking for volunteers to host future editions, just drop me a note at erin@poeticacceptance.com. You can take a look at the schedule here.