Monday, March 7, 2011

It's a Boy!

Yesterday my youngest son turned eleven! This alone makes me feel ancient but to add in that he weighs more then I and he is almost as tall, only five inches shorter then I, makes me feel very old.
This little boy named Isaiah Mark Lee, is what everyone would call a miracle. If you know me, you know the miraculous beginnings of all my sons and the fact they are all miracles given from heaven; and Isaiah's story isn't as phenomenal as say Caleb's or Aaron's but all the same he is a miraculous child. Slowly I will tell the story of all of my sons and how they came to be but as Isaiah turns eleven it is time to tell his.
This little red headed boy with his Daddies gray eyes and a smattering of freckles across his nose is very hard to dislike. He is such a solitary child, he loves playing alone and to pretend. His favorite toys are those animals and knights from Schleich Company. He will have them all out all over his floor and make castles or boats for them out of Lincoln Logs or Lego's, you must always watch your step when entering Isaiah's room because you may very well step in a moat or onto of a castle not to mention those things are sharp and can do damage to bare feet! Isaiah is shy, he really doesn't like to go many places and is a homebody, but if you can get past his little rough exterior and he smiles at you just once you will be hooked. It is hard to look away from a smile that encompasses ones whole face and eyes, not to mention it is always a bit devious and full of mischief. There is something very compelling about Isaiah and his quiet ways, but just wait until something makes him angry there is something to that too! He has a red headed fire of a temper, it doesn't show often with anyone else but his brothers but they can set him off with just a look most of the time, they don't have to even speak. Around here we call it "brotherly love" because he can say he hates them and tell us he wants to shoot them and in the next minute he can be crying because he misses one or the other when they are not here. We have yet to get Isaiah to calm his temper and watch what he says, he just says exactly what he is thinking and sees nothing wrong with that, but some people maybe taken aback at the vehemency in his tone or the fact he often tells us he'd like to shoot this brother or that. You have to realize it concerned us and still does as we try to temper our youngest son but then we look at things from his point of view and realize being the bottom of four boys is not an easy place to be. The testosterone runs rampant in our house and everything is a competition. They all love each other with a devotion that warms a mothers heart but in the next instant they can haul off and slug one another with a punch that rattles my teeth and I am not the one that got hit. It never lasts long and the best of friends comes back after one or another has asserted their dominance once again. I must tell you in the beginning I happened upon a nature show about wolves and this gave me incredible insight to my pack of sons, but this is another story for another time. Raising sons especially ALL sons has its own particulate set of rules, but life is never dull!
Isaiah Mark Lee was born March 6, 2000. He was born a red head but was the most relaxed and even tempered baby I had. He could sleep through anything and often did, including his brothers playing football  over the top of him. Isaiah is not supposed to be, the doctors swore to me I would never have another child, my hormones were to messed up and to carry another child after the 3 c-sections and the toil it had taken on my body was not something that was supposed to be possible. Paul and I had taken precautions as we had heard this all before we had Aaron.  Now just so you know, we know how to use birth control even use double precaution, BOTH of us using a form of birth control but I am here to tell you when a child is supposed to be and God has a plan there in no birth control on this earth that will work. It was July and we lived in Huron, SD at the time. We had just held a huge garage sale, moving Aaron into a big boy bed and getting rid of ALL the baby stuff, Cribs, Walker, Stroller, changing Table, I mean EVERYTHING had sold. I had a friend, Amy, her and I were close because she had a daughter the same age as Caleb and we spent many afternoons letting the kids play while we hung out being both stay at home Mom's. Amy had just found out she was pregnant with her second child and being a boy she helped me with the garage sale for the chance to go through everything first and take what she wanted. The sale was over and her and I had just finished cleaning everything up, I was exhausted for some reason and had been feeling queasy all day but assumed I just hadn't taken the time to eat decently and take care of myself. This queasy feeling went on for about a week and Amy started laughing at me daily, one day she asked me "hey, your not prego are you" I laughed this off as a huge joke saying, no that was impossible. She asked me to humor her, she had a left over test from her box it had come with two and she said its just going to waste just humor her and take it for a joke. I said sure why not I would prove it to her. She ran home 4 blocks and got the test bringing it back to the house, it was the middle of the day not the ideal time to take a pregnancy test but I knew the results so took it anyway. Came out and laid it on the table on a paper towel laughing the whole time over this silly idea. I got a cup of tea and we sat down, we had been talking for a couple minutes and she glanced down at the test both of us had even kind of forgotten about it since we knew what it was going to say, all the sudden she stopped in mid sentence and stared at the test. I was surprised so looked at the test too. There in the middle of my dinning room table with kids running through the room, was one HUGE bright blue positive sign. I was shocked and Amy, well Amy started laughing at me hysterically and got her daughter saying she had to leave before Paul got home from work as she wanted no part of the conversation about to take place. For the next 40 minutes until my husband walked in the door I stared at that stupid piece of plastic laying of all places on my dinning room table! It was supposed to be this big joke and here instead I was the one not laughing. I got up and went to start supper when I heard Paul pull into the garage from work.
Now Paul always arrived home the same way, he kissed me hello, takes his boots off and then chased the boys around the living room until I called them for supper. As the boys got older this tradition changed to setting the table with them and asking questions about their day, sometimes throwing a ball around the back yard, but for many years its mostly the same. On this day when he asked me how I was I told him to go look on the dinning room table. This quiet reserved man did as I had asked and came back carrying a piece of plastic, he laughed at me and said, " very funny, Amy brought this over you two are playing a joke on me" at this point I had to laugh because this is exactly what it had started out to be, not a joke on him but I had thought of this as one big joke. Slowly I shook my head and said no... this is no joke Paul, she dared me because I had been feeling so crappy to take her left over test so I did. The results are mine and this isn't so funny any more. My quiet husband looked at me and calmly turned around with a very white face, walked out of the kitchen setting the piece of plastic back on the dinning room table and walked past the boys playing and out the door. That night I fed the boys and bathed them and put them to bed, alone. Now you all must understand my sweet husband had a reason for doing this, during two of the three pregnancies he almost lost his wife, I was legally flat lined on the table and in the third he almost lost his child. This man had been through so much considering he was told by more then one doctor he would never have children because of a bout of measles when he was a child. I do not hold a grudge or even wonder what my husband did that night, I know he and God walked and talked for hours. When he came back he was ready to accept whatever was in store for us.
That just happened to be a pregnancy including bed rest and the loss of Isaiah's twin, then a trip to MN for my c-section and a stay for the two weeks after Isaiah's birth with my parents. This pregnancy was not an easy one but it was easier then all but one of my other ones. The delivery of Isaiah went smoothly and he was born and I was released in three days. Having my doctors from the other boys was a plus they knew I hated hospitals and released us as soon as Isaiah could leave knowing Paul would take care of me and I would recover just fine under his care. Another plus is they didn't not use a morphine drip like most c-sections they let me control my own pain meds and I never took one hit off that stupid morphine IV pump, as soon as the epidural (also different they did an epidural instead of a spinal, since I had had a very bad reaction to the spinal the two times I had one, almost losing me on the table both times) from the surgery wore off I was up walking and ready to go. I got to meet Isaiah within an hour of the surgery and hold and nurse my son. Isaiah was by far my favorite birth just because of that.
Isaiah Mark Lee was born a little man, he looked so old and wise from the day of his birth. He looks more child like now at eleven then he ever did at birth or for the first five years. Isaiah was a wonderful baby he rarely cried and slept through the night at four months old. He was a good eater and he loved his brothers. He has always been and Momma and Daddies boy though, and still is. Isaiah shocked us all with his arrival but now eleven years later, we wouldn't have a clue what to do without him. I am so blessed that God chose to entrust this little boy to us for his time here.

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