Anxiety

 I've battled anxiety for as long as I can remember. Like, literally, when I was 4 years old I was anxious.

Now why this is true is not clear.  Every kid has challenges in their early life and I was no exception, of course.  I am inclined to think that my anxiety is a mix of life experiences and brain dysfunction.

The latter sounds pretty intimidating!  Brain dysfunction!  :-)

Basically, my brain chemistry is off because my seratonin levels are a little low.  I spent many decades, starting in my mid 20's, working to manage my anxiety better.  I prayed, I worked through childhood struggles, I read the Bible, I asked God for healing.

Everything I did helped. God brought tremendous power into my life and there is no doubt I was far less anxious at age 40 than I was at age 25.

Having said all that, when some of our older kids starting dealing with depression and anxiety, we finally considered medicine.  It helped my kids so, when I was sure I was done having children (since I was nervous about taking meds while pregnant) I tried Lexapro, an anti anxiety medication.

It was incredible.  It was the missing piece.  Within a few weeks, my anxiety levels dropped to nearly zero. It was crazy in an awesome way.

Since then, I've been trucking along happily at 10 mg of Lexapro a day. There was one time when I tried dropping down to 5 mg and wow, I got whacked with anxiety.

Just in the last few weeks, my anxiety rose again.  It was really irritating.  Anxiety is hard to describe; in my case, it isn't necessarily fear of something bad happening. I did have that kind of anxiety when I was younger, but have managed to work through it pretty well.

Anxiety for me is like an itch under my skin. It says: you have so much to do, Laraba, and not enough time to do it. You are going to fail your husband, your kids, your God.  My eyes are constantly picking out things in the house that aren't in good shape. My brain is running through lists of things that should be done.

A week or so ago, I upped my Lexapro dose to 15 mg a day.  Now my anxiety is down again.

So why am I having trouble?  I think mostly it is life.  We are pretty busy right now; Kevin's job is intense, I have two kids taking college classes on line, kittens, dealing with medical appointments, etc.

The thing is, I am not as good a wife and mother when I am anxious. Part of being a good mother is being able to cope with kids wailing and crying and quarreling. When I am anxious, it is way harder to handle those things well.

So I am thankful for Lexapro.

More Kittens

 

The kittens continue to be a huge hit. It is interesting watching them develop.  A human baby moves through milestones slowly, but kittens are on warp speed. When Lydia and Naomi found them outside their apartment, they were still wobbly when they walked.  Now they are jumping and running and attacking and clawing at one another in mock playing. They are also eating wet and dry food, and using the litter box like pros.

They are very adorable.

Kitten Update: So far so good

 

I took them to the vet on Monday as they weren't pooping. The vet checked them out and said everything was fine. You will be glad to know that now they ARE pooping. Not only that, they are using the litter box!

Vet estimated that they are about 4 weeks old, which makes them a couple of weeks younger than the kittens we rescued last year.  Those weeks are important; last year's kittens lapped formula but I am having to hand feed these two, at least for now. They will lap a little but then get tired of it.  They have already matured quite a bit in the last week so they will get it in time.

For now, I am up once a night to feed the babies, which makes me tired, but they are worth it.

The black and white one adores Kevin and likes to tuck up under his chin.

Both of them adore my fuzzy robe. They knead it with their little paws and suck it and squeak with joy.

So far so good!

Kittens

 Naomi and Lydia found two kittens near their apartment a couple of nights ago.  They were very small and very alone and the girls watched for a couple of hours and no Mama cat showed up, so of course they rescued them.

But of course our big girls are hampered by the sad reality that they work full time so they brought them to us, because the kittens are very small indeed and need a lot of care.

I think it is obvious they are tiny; indeed, they are smaller than any other kittens we have rescued. They still can't lap milk well so we are having to feed them using droppers of formula.

They also don't seem to be able to go the bathroom by themselves, so we have to help them with that too!

We're guessing they are between 3 and 4 weeks old.  We have no idea what happened to their Mom; was she feral and got hit or something?  Were they dumped?  Horrible idea, but possible.

Anyway, we will see how they do. Of course we are all in love with them already, but Kevin and I are also aware that with such tiny babies, something might go wrong and they might die.  So far they seem good and even in the two days we have had them, they are walking around better. They also think I am their mother now and greet me with squeaks of enthusiasm.  I am the one that usually feeds them.

I am getting up once at night to feed them.  If they live, they should be able to eat by themselves within a week so this isn't a long term thing. Reminds me of my own newborns a little, except of course with my babies, the "waking up at night" thing wasn't a one week thing!

 

Siblings

 

It does not take much imagination to realize that some 7 years ago, life in our house was pretty crazy.  I had 8 children ages 15 and under, two of them ages 2 and 3, and I was pregnant with Rose.  I was super busy. Life was kind of chaotic. There was a fair amount of fighting between the kids because...siblings fight.

Fast forward to today.  We are still pretty busy though we only have seven under our roof now, and the youngest is 7.

One thing I hoped for, but wasn't confident of, was that our kids would be good friends. That has, by the grace of God, happened.  Here is a picture of our current teenagers marching up and down the driveway together (which they did for a full hour) discussing computer games and presumably other random topics.

I love that my kids are so tight!  I felt badly sometimes that I was stretched so thin when I had so many littles, but they have had each other for all those years, and with age and maturity has come deep friendship, which is awesome.

Reading Rose

 

I have mentioned before that Rose is not a particularly early reader, like some of my kids were. She is also not super late. She turned 7 in June and while she doesn't read well, she is making steady progress. One of her problems is she gets frustrated easily when she cannot figure out how to sound something out.  Another problem is that she often would rather be doing something else than work with me on reading.

This week I took 3 kids to the orthodontist and had to run by Goodwill on the way home to drop off some stuff, and we were going right by Five Below, a store where everything is cheap, and I decided to hop in there to buy some bribes for the three littles ones. Bribes in the form of plush toys because they all three of them adore plushies.

I came home and showed them to the three youngest, and told Rose that if she read 15 little books, word for word, with no help from me, she would get to choose a plush toy.

She could only do 4 books a day, and she has worked hard and tomorrow has to do one book and will get her plush toy.

She actually reads better than I thought. Now these are EASY books -- short vowel sounds, but she does know some sight words and when she is really working at it, she can figure out a lot.

The truth is that my darling is often not really motivated to work hard. So yeah, she's doing well with a plush toy dangling in the near future!

I bought five or six plushies and while Sarah and Daniel can also earn plushies (by doing other academic things) I will have at least a few remaining for Rose to try another 15 books. They will be progressively harder and so it'll be more of a challenge BUT I think she'll do well. She really is pretty good at it. She just needs to be motivated properly!