Our sixth Santa Lucia Day

Our St. Lucy's day this year was a test of stamina.  My usual helper is dealing with a cough and the asthma issues that brings with it, so I was on my own when I hopped out of bed at a quarter to five to start the dough rising for St. Lucy's crown. Our lussekatters were yet again a product of the refrigerated dough section of the store, but I did manage to make our braided bread from scratch (thank goodness for this really easy recipe!)

Because Anni needed to be to school early for her class' recitation of The Night Before Christmas, she wore the rather floppy crown (I've got to figure out how to fix that!) but no traditional white dress and red sash this year. I am looking forward to 2020 (yes, I looked it up) when we can have a weekend St. Lucy's day to throw another tea party! 

Daniel is actually the first one of us up usually, so this was a rare chance to let him "sleep in" a little. (I still refuse to refer to 6:30 as sleeping in, but it *is* a lot later that his usual 5:45!)

Then, because we had heard Mlada start to stir anyway, we headed into the little girls' room, where Mlada immediately burst into tears and Colette jumped up to blow out the candles and asked, "Is it my birthday?!"

Here's to a very sweet St. Lucy's day to you all. My she ask Christ to bring light to your darkness.

October

I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. 

- Lucy Maud Montgomery

October was a month of adventure for us. We welcomed friends whenever possible, and we flew across the country to see another dear friend marry her beloved. Our trip to New Jersey was filled with, well, lots of praying Daniel would make it on flights (he was flying standby), entertaining our darling third wheel, and soaking in time with my college roommates. We are so lucky to get time with almost all of them (one of our honorary roommates lives many countries away). We've all changed, but stayed the same even more.

Then came our first snow of the year! It was heavy and wet, and Mlada refuses to wear gloves. We had 95% of the necessary snow gear... so really not too bad! 

In the proper Colorado way, the weather almost immediately became lovely again... at least lovely enough to go wandering out in the almost-melted snow in jammies.

Our reading and snuggling time has also ramped up in a perfectly wonderful way. Emílie's quilt gets pulled off the back of the couch a hundred times a day, and I love it. 

 Oh, and of course: dance parties. Mlada has been breaking out the moves. The time change and lack of light in our day puts us all in a mood at least a few times a day, so books and music are our go-to mood lifters. If all else fails, it's naptime or an episode of Little Bear.

We also said good-bye, or rather, see you as soon as physically possible, to one of our favorite families. As hard as it always is to see friends move away, they are going somewhere so wonderful that makes it a bit easier. 

We attempted the traditional pumpkin patch visit, but oh my, it was cold! We waited a bit too late in the month, our early freeze had destroyed most of the poor pumpkins, and the wind went right through these little sweeties. We came home with one lovely misshapen guy and a little one for each kiddo.

Anni had a two day "autumn intermission", so Daniel took the same days off to give us some extra family time. We made it to the zoo and it was really the best time I've had there in a long time! We explored some areas we hadn't been to, and with Mlada's newfound recognition of animals, it was just all joy. 

And finally, the month closed out with Halloween. Anni gets to dress up for school as anything they had studied, so she was autumn. The tattoos were probably a poor choice since we are still trying to scrub them off a week later, but it was such fun at the time!

Miss Mlada spent the day dressed up as her Aunt Tinie in one of  her namesake's shirts from her own toddlerhood, which was just fun.

The crowning jewel! Our little Moana (dressed for a chilly evening in Colorado rather than a tropical climate), a wee little elephant, and our very own Space Cadette Colette. 

And that. is that. Here's to the next month of adventure!

Due date

Today was Emílie's due date, and if she had survived, I imagine I would be sitting around hoping to go into labor (although, if she followed in her previous two sisters' footsteps, there would be plenty of waiting left). The morning was spent snuggling under her quilt with the two little girls dragging theirs from their rooms to pile on top. A few moments ago the cheeriest bouquet of flowers arrived at my doorstep from two friends who wanted me know they remembered. I cried, mostly just because I was grateful that someone else remembered. We will hopefully visit her resting place this afternoon, and then, in many ways, it will feel more over than it has.

The "Gravestone Guy" at the cemetery has been strangely elusive, but we finally have a meeting set for Monday, so I am hopeful that our little lady's final resting place will be officially marked soon (it does have a temporary marker, but a strong storm could easily pull it from the ground).

Quotables #8

(C) "Daddy, last night my dream came true!"
(D) "What was your dream?"
(C) "That I would go on a trip... into my own dream!"

(A) "I love my Colette's imagination, her lovely imagination."

(D)"It's important to be careful about the person you're going to marry."
(A)"Yeah, I should be very careful, and sneak into their house to make sure there are no swords."

(C) “I have to wipe my oatmeal up off the table to earn money for a convertible."

(D) "Why are you trying to get that penny?"
(A) "So you have more money and Daddy can retire sooner."

Emílie Josephine

This is the only photo we have of  Emílie while alive. All they could really see was her itty bitty heart beat, but I'm so glad to have it. We thought we had lost it (we gave it to the girls when we found out we were pregnant), and the doctor's office had no copies left. Yesterday, lo and behold, it fluttered down at my feet while I was fixing up the prayer table. 

The other three girls have their birth stories written here, so it only feels write that  Emílie should as well.

We found out we were pregnant at the tail end of January.  This little lady was most certainly a surprise (I've never been able to get pregnant while nursing before!), but I quickly decided I like surprises, and we started dreaming of our autumn baby. The pregnancy was different from the beginning, with a scare at what we thought was 6 weeks, and then a sigh of relief with a heart beat on the ultrasound only a week later.

While I had several weeks of feeling exhausted, and a few days of nausea/vomiting, I was, overall, feeling pretty amazing compared to my previous pregnancies. Because of how different I felt, we were sure this meant that this baby was a boy, and we both thought the name Emil Joseph already fit him. The name Emil was after Servant of God Emil Kapaun, and Joseph is after Daniel('s middle name), as well as St. Joseph, obviously, though I later found out Emil Kapaun's middle name was Joseph as well, and Daniel's great-grandfather's name was the italian Emile.

I was having weekly HCG tests due to the early scare, as well as progesterone shots, though my progesterone was pretty low throughout. My HCG rose steadily, and the week before our next appointment, my doctor told me I could stop having that tested.

At my 13 week appointment, the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat, and he struggled to see much of anything on his old ultrasound machine. This didn't bother me too much at first, as my other three had each played hide-and-seek around this age, and I knew the ultrasound machine was new to the office, but older in years. The next morning, a more sophisticated ultrasound confirmed that our little one had passed away several weeks before, and for some reason I had not started to naturally miscarry.

The loss of our baby, and the hopes and dreams surrounding her has been exhausting and devastating. I am a slow processor of most thing, and I imagine this is going to take a long time to work through. While we continued to refer to her as Emil even through her burial, we did find out afterwards that our Emil was actually Emílie. With my surgery having been on April 20th (Emil Kapaun's birthday) and her burial on St. Joseph's feast day, we still felt that those were the patrons we wanted to watch over her, and she was named  Emílie Josephine ( Emílie is the Czech version of Emily and pronounced much like Amelia, just with an "Eh" sound at the beginning).

I cannot claim to be at peace, because there are so many questions I have left, and will continue to have until I can ask Christ Himself, but we are living life, all while enlarging it to include this sixth member in a different way than we expected. We stop by her grave, the girls continue to debate her name (while we called her Pip in pregnancy and beyond, the girls have also nicknamed her Lollipop, Isabella, and a host of other creative names), and we include her in our prayers. When I pack away the girls' outgrown clothes, it strikes me that she would have worn them. When I rearrange our plans for the year, I realize how centered around her they had become in such as short time. My girls easily accepted their fourth sister, and chat about their grief, but also tell their stories about who they think she might have been, and what they think she is doing now.

I am navigating a world I didn't expect to be a part of, but am only now realizing how many women have been in it the whole time.

WE SHALL FIND OUR LITTLE ONES AGAIN UP ABOVE
-St. zelie martin