Star Student: Love Being Little

Last week, We had a big assignment for Liz. She was Star Student. Each child gets to be Star Student for one week.

It's a big deal. That kid gets to bring in their favorite belongings, have their book read in class and bring snacks one day. They also need to make a poster listing their favorite things.

That was our project a week ago Saturday. I headed to New York on Sunday and knew we needed to do this poster and I also knew it was going to take awhile. Brian ended up doing the "Take a Mouse to the Movies" poster in December while I was in New York the last time. So, it wouldn't be fair to stick him with another poster.

These projects are really more family or "parent homework" because the instructions even say, "with Mom and Dads help." This poster took more than three hours to do. And, of course if you look at the finished product, it looks like it only took us 15 minutes. Ah, well. We're not that creative.

What I liked about it was she had to answer a series of questions for the poster. Her favorite food: Pizza, of course. Favorite activities: Swimming. Someone she admires: Her cousin Daniel.

When I asked: Favorite thing about yourself, she answered without a pause: Being little.

How cool, right? I was delightfully surprised and I hope that she continues to realize that she'll have a unique view of the world.

60 happy years

It's a big day for my Grandma and Grandpa Shidler. They celebrate 60 years of marriage today. Sixty years. Four children, 9 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren (with 2 more arriving in months).

Recently, I was talking with someone who is getting married in the fall and she said she was asked in pre-marriage counseling to discuss her marriage idols. The couple whose marriage she admires the most.

For me, my marriage idols are unequivocally Grandma and Grandpa. Despite all of the changes that have occurred in their lives and especially a number of health problems they've faced in the last year, they have always remained an amazing team.

It's fun to think back to when they were first married 60 years ago. Their family grew fast - perhaps faster than they ever expected.

They welcomed my dad on Jan. 1, 1951 - just days before their first anniversary. Later that same year, they welcomed my Aunt Barb into the family. Yep, you did the math right. Grandma had two babies in a year's time.

And, if you ask her about it now, she'll throw her head back laughing still not sure how they survived that crazy time. As a mom now to two young children - five years apart - I can't imagine having two in the same year. Grandma always says, it was basically like having twins.

My Aunt Dee and Uncle Wayne came later (not in the same year). That family of six went all over the country on family trips. Their children still laugh about those trips that include sibling squabbles and adventures with wildlife - at least one bear.

When their kids grew they got to enjoy their grandchildren and more had freetime together as a couple golfing and traveling.

Now, they're celebrating birthdays and milestones with the great-grand babies. They're also spending more time at home and have faced health challenges in the last year.

For a short period of time last year, Grandpa needed to stay at a nearby center for medical treatment and Grandma was at home by herself for the first time in decades.

Even though they were no more than one city block away from each other, it was difficult for them both. For the first time in their marriage, they were physically living apart from each other even if just for a brief period of time.

For the first time in nearly 60 years, Grandpa had to endure food prepared by someone other than Grandma. And Grandma couldn't get used to sleeping in her bed without Grandpa beside her.

Over the years, they've had some neat anniversary celebrations. For their 25th wedding anniversary they went to Jamaica. I was actually born while they were away, and my first postcard was from them welcoming me to the family. Grandma often joked I was her Jamaican Baby because I was born while they were in Jamaica.

Today, they'll have a low-key celebration - content to be together.

Grandma will make a nice lunch or dinner. Grandpa will likely read the newspaper while Grandma reads a book and they'll probably both catch Wheel of Fortune in between calls from relatives. They might even squeeze in an afternoon nap at some point.

And, the most important thing is they'll be together just as they have been for 60 years.


Here's a couple of pictures my cousin Debbie posted. This is Grandpa in Germany in 1946.




Here's Grandma in 1948.


Their wedding picture taking 60 years ago today.


This is their 25th wedding photo.


Grandma and Grandpa on their 50th wedding anniversary.



This is a great picture of the two of them looking at pictures Christmas 2008.



The two of them together at Christmas time 2008.

It's all about the hair!

Three days before Christmas, I finally understood why Liz so badly wanted a Barbie Repunzel this year. It was her No. 1 gift request and she mentioned it no fewer than about 20 times a day. She mentioned it in her letters to Santa and to every single person she saw - who she thought might have some ability to pursade the Big Man to give her a Barbie Repunzel.

Turns out, she's really in a hair phase. For those of you who don't know - Barbie Repunzel is a Barbie doll complete with an array of long hair, short hair, and even hair clippers to cut and trim Barbie's hair.

Again, I really should have known what was coming. But there it was, three days before Christmas and Liz walks into my room with this sheepish grin. Immediately from that grin I knew she had done something bad. I look carefully at her and see that a HUGE chunk of hair on her right side is missing. Yes, she cut her hair. In retrospect, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

But it still required an emergency hair-cut appointment two days before Christmas. And, oddly enough the mood at the salon was very tense. All of the stylists know Liz and chat and talk with her. Not this time. I had forewarned them of the major hair incident and the mood was eerily quiet.

We could have kept her hair long and used "short area" to frame the face, but she was ready to go short. So, the stylist cut about 5 inches off her length. I actually think it looks quite cute.

But it took a long time, as I expected - a full hour. At one point, Liz said: "It didn't take me this long to cut my hair."

At which point, both I and the stylist explained that it was quick for her because she's NOT a professional and didn't do it properly. Ah, another one of those teaching lessons.

I took a picture of her with my cell phone when she cut it, and Brian best describes it as a police mug shot. I texted it to my mom who promptly replied that she laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. In other words, I think you'll get a kick out of it.

Here's that mug shot...errrr picture of her when she cut her hair. Look on the right side.




Here's the new do, complete with a similar grumpy expression and of course, a chocolate mustache. Priceless.




Ah, yes, Christmas morning wouldn't be complete without her Barbie. At first, I thought this was Barbie Repunzel, but this was her 2nd most-requested gift the Barbie Musketeer. I wanted to post this one because it shows how cute her hair looks - and yes, we get a smile. Don't worry - she did get a Barbie Repunzel and we chatted for a long time about how she should not cut her hair until she receives proper taining.

Catching up in pictures

In celebration of my new laptop, which makes uploading pictures MUCH faster than the 6-year-old computer, I'll throw out some pictures from the last few months.


Here's a great photo of Liz and my dad when the three of us went camping this summer in Bremen, Ind.



Here are some really adorable pictures of Liz on her first day of Kindergarten.









Chance at about five weeks old.



Halloween is one of our favorite holidays and Brian is our expert carver.



Chance is snoozing during the pumpkin festivities.








Wait a minute... - He's awake...briefly...


On the Friday before Halloween, the Kindergartners got to dress up for school. I volunteered to help out with Liz's "Falloween" party. I kept trying to come up with a creative costume and ultimately gave up and decided to be a bag of leaves. She's a beautiful princess fairy.

Getting back to normal

Hard to believe but young Chance Hedger is a month old now. The past month has been a whirlwind. We've been thrown back into the world of sleepless nights, poopy diapers and of course adorable baby coos.

Actually, after a brief period of having his days and nights completely turned around, he's doing much better now. Liz still has a mild case of Chance-itis (as we call it), but she too is adjusting as well.

Chance seems very mellow to us, but in recent days has shown that he too has Liz's firecracker personality. He just may not show it as often as her...give him time...

The five year age difference is good because Liz is able to communicate her anxieties about having another sibling better than a kid who might be only two or three and can't chat as well. Liz has asked us if we love her as much as we love him. We have spent extra time reassuring her of our love and have done some special things with her too.

I took Liz to the apple orchard, to lunch and the mall one Saturday for some munch-needed mommy & Liz time that also seemed to help.

She tries to "help" with her baby brother and is very proud of him, but if he's crying a lot, she won't hesitate to say: "Will someone please take care of this crying baby!"

School is going very well for her. Not surprisingly, her chatty behavior has caused a few problems at school but overall she's doing great. We were so worried about her meeting friends and so far that's not a problem at all. She's becoming good pals with another kindergartner across the street. Yesterday, two third-graders who live down the road came over and wanted to play with Liz. So, a bunch of kids played outside for quite some time, which was loads of fun for Liz. Then, she played inside with her friends from across the street.

Overall, this experience with Chance has been so different compared with Liz - mostly because we haven't been going to the doctor multiple times each week. The only medical concerns so far were his being jaundice (Liz never was), and his weight. Liz never had problems with her weight. Chance was below his birth weight for almost three weeks - which is longer than doctors want. They want children to be at birth-weight by two weeks old. At a month old, he's probably 9 pounds, which is great.

He was sleeping so much the first few weeks and I had to wake him up to feed him. Now, he's eating quite well.

Our big excitement during the delivery was Brian passing out. Right after Chance was born, Brian held the baby and suddenly began to feel very warm and hot. As soon as he said he wasn't feeling well, he handed the baby over to an intern, and I told him to put his head between his knees. In the span of 15 seconds, he was out cold. Luckily, he didn't hit his head on the floor. Whew!

When he came too, he even managed to crack a joke, saying he felt like Robin Williams in one of those bad movies (I think it was 9 Months). The medical team had him crawl out and called over the emergency team from nearby Northwestern Memorial. The nurses kept urging him to go to the hospital for more tests to make sure there were no major problems. Brian said he wanted to talk to me before making a decision. However, they wouldn't let him in the surgery room again (wise decision).

Keep in mind I'm still being operated on in the surgical room. All of a sudden, the anesthesiologist hands me his cell phone and says: "Your husband wants to talk to you." So, here I am completely cut open and now talking on the cell phone to Brian.

One of the doctors says in a surprised voice, "Lisa are you on a cell phone?" There's a curtain over me and the doctors couldn't see the cell phone, but could hear me talking.

That might have been one of the first times a patient who was undergoing surgery was talking on a cell phone. It was wild. I explained that the nurses wanted Brian to go to the ER for further testing. And it was funny because everyone in the surgical room all said that this happens all of the time and he should be fine. A turkey-sandwich seemed to be the only cure he needed.

Oddly enough, he hadn't seen any part of the surgery because of that big curtain. The issues contributing to the Great Pass Out - were a warm room, a warmer baby, plus the fact that he hadn't slept well the night before because he was nervous and he hadn't eaten anything.

He stayed out of the surgical room and was eating a turkey sandwich when Chance and I arrived in recovery!

Here are some pictures taken by a professional photographer at the hospital when he was two days old.













Here's some photos we've taken.

This was from the hospital:







He finally decided to keep those eyes open for a shot in the hospital...but only for a few minutes. Being a baby is obviously very hard work!



Here's big sis Liz holding her baby brother at home. She also did visit him at the hospital. He was three days old here.



The whole family



Here's a nice picture of Liz sleeping...just to show that Chance isn't the only one getting some mid-day naps!




Here's Chance at a month old:



Chance with Aunt Helen.



He's really alert now.

Chance Hedger arrives!

It only took a couple of hours, and one passed out papa in the O.R., but Chance Curtis Hedger has officially joined our happy family. He was born at 9:11 a.m. Central, weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz., measured 20 inches long and has strawberry blonde hair -- which goes great with his Spartan green MSU hat.

Here are some pics from here at the hospital. I tried getting these up on Facebook, but alas it wouldn't let me post them. The O.R. nurses were kind enough to take a few shots of him in the O.R. for me, and didn't take any shots of me, laid out on the floor after the big passing out incident. Also, you will notice that it is rare to catch my son with his eyes open. He likes to sleep I think. He gets it from both of us.

Lisa is doing well in her recovery. Much more relaxed process than with Liz, but this one also wasn't an emergency C. Happy birthday, son. You're zero and counting, buddy.

Excitement

Talk about excitement.

Last week, Liz had her first day of Kindergarten and tomorrow we welcome the newest member of the Hedger family.

My c-section is schedule for early Monday and we hope to get pictures out sometime on Monday of Chance Curtis Hedger. He seems to be doing quite well and we're eager to meet him.

We've been lucky to have a lot of friends pass on boys' baby clothes so we feel very fortunate!

Our other excitement of course was Liz starting Kindergarten. This, as every parent knows, is always harder for the parents! Liz has been great at school. We walked the first few days and then she took the bus on Friday.

I was a bit nervous about her taking the bus with the first step being so tall. The bus system didn't impress me early on because they weren't returning my calls and weren't being proactive in coming up with a safe plan. Luckily, her principal Mr. D. is a tremendous advocate and even called the day before school to ask about the bus system's plan. When I told him what they had created - which was essentially nothing - he said: "that's not acceptable" and we chose to walk the first few days.

It was good to walk her because then we got to go to the classroom. On Thursday, Mr. D., her teacher Mrs. M, and someone from the bus system had Liz get on the bus several times to see if she needed a stool or other assistance. Turns out she didn't even need a stool.

Friday she took the bus both ways and didn't have any problems at all.

The bus situation is kind of funny because neither Brian nor I were huge fans of the bus as children, but this was important to Liz. So, we wanted to make sure that Liz had the same opportunity to use the bus as all other kids. And, of course she was quite proud of it and excited to do it.

Mr. D. also bought the stools for her classroom. Getting stools can be trial and error and a few of them didn't work, but they've gotten additional ones that are much better. We feel quite lucky that this principal realizes that Liz needs to do the same things as all other students and is making the necessary changes to ensure that happens. Of course, I realize that the law requires that school systems accommodate for all children, but I also realize that not all school officials are as on the ball and as helpful as Mr. D.

Her teacher, Mrs. M is also great, and we've met her several times. She's also e-mailed us and that's been a huge help to stay in touch with Liz's Kindergarten activities.

Next time I post, we'll have lots of information about the newest Hedger.

Kindergarten here we come

It is truly hard to believe that Liz will be starting Kindergarten on Aug. 19. The last weeks have remained crazy as we've tried to hurry and prepare the house for Baby Chance's arrival and prepare Liz for school.

She had registration last week and Brian took her and it went as well as can be expected with him describing it as a nightmare panic-inducing trip. As I said, it went as well as can be expected.

On Friday, we met with her principal and did the "walk-through" to discuss what types of adaptations we'd need for the school. This actually did go quite well. I know Liz is the first Little Person student to attend the elementary. So, I was worried about how they'd react, but the principal even had considered some issues I hadn't - such as a stool by the chalk board if the teacher has students write on the chalk board.

I'd gone to the LPA website beforehand and saw a check-list of accommodation issues and modified that list and gave it to the principal. I also wrote a one-page letter to the teacher which he said he'd pass around to all of her teachers (music, PE, etc..). And, finally I gave them a one-page fact-sheet that I'd modified from several achondroplasia fact sheets you can find on the web.

May seem like a lot of paperwork, but it's only 3 pages and I tried to make it very easy to read and focused on simple concepts.

Everything in the class can be accommodated quite easily with step stools. For now, she's fine letting her feet dangle from the chair, but I think that will likely change. When it does, we'll just get a stool for her feed. She can actually even reach a few of the drinking fountains in the hallway, which is great too!

Our only two issues are the cafeteria and the bus. The kids slide their trays along this long counter in the cafeteria to get food and it's way too high for Liz to reach. If we had a stool, it would have to be about 6-feet-long to reach the entire length of the cafeteria counter, plus very wide so that she could walk across it. So, for now we'll have someone in the cafeteria help her. I'd prefer her to be independent but for now, I think this will work.

Now, the bus is another issue too. I'm concerned about the HUGE first step on the bus. We're still debating and might walk her to school because it's only a few blocks. However, she does want to take the bus so I'd like to figure out a plan so she can take the bus. Brian or I can help her on the bus from our home, but then someone would need to help her off when she gets to school and help her on again at the end of the school day.

Liz is very excited about starting Kindergarten and our school did something new this year which was a HUGE help for incoming Kindergartners. They held a weekly summer program for 2 1/2 hours and split the children by age. So, Liz got to meet lots of other students as well as the teachers. She spent time in the school and got a great feel for the school. She's also quite comfortable with the school and by the second week, the principal knew her name.

The principal is very jovial and approachable to the students -giving them high-fives and joking with them a lot. He was also very candid in saying that we might have to make adjustments throughout the year and we agreed saying that could likely occur too.

Ideally, Baby Chance will wait until Aug. 24 so I can be there for Liz's first day of Kindergarten or if he decides to come early then we want it to be this week so I'll be back home for Kindergarten, but you just never know!

My doctor has essentially said that now since I'm 37 weeks pregnant, Baby can come any day. So, we'll see. As you can imagine, Liz is just so excited about being a big sister! I'm not sure what she's more excited about - Kindergarten or being a big sister - probably a close tie.