The Older Three – Keirnan

It’s been awhile since I last wrote and I had promised that I would do the final one of these posts. I’ve introduced you to the other two of “The Older Three”, Kaeidyn and Kenzie and now it’s time that I introduce you to final one of that group, Keirnan or as we affectionately call him, Monkey.

Keirnan Cahlen

Keirnan was a weird experience in terms of pregnancy. First, we didn’t tell anybody I was pregnant with him until much later on in my pregnancy – so it didn’t feel like a real pregnancy until we were almost near the end of it. We were also moving around a lot and there was a lot of stress in our lives at the time.

With both Kaeidyn and Kenzie, I had had my water broken for me. With Keirnan, seven weeks premature, my water broke naturally as I rolled over in my bed at the hotel we were staying at. I called my sister bright and early in the morning, “Pikachu, what’s it like when your water breaks?”, not truly believing that that was what was happening to me.

We got me up to the hospital and the whole thing passed by in a whir of almost absolute calm. After a few hours of mild contractions and no real progression, Keirnan’s heartrate dropped dangerously low and they gave me drugs to speed up the process. Within minutes I was ready to begin pushing and three pushed later, he was out and just barely crying.

Because he was premature and we weren’t expecting it, they quickly whisked him off to get him on all the necessary equipment, like heating lamps and a tube was put up his nose for feeding. He stayed in the hospital the longest out of all the kids and for about the first two weeks, we weren’t allowed to hold him for longer than 15 minutes.

He was pretty jaundiced in the beginning and was constantly under lights because of it. He had the cutest little fabric glasses. His skin was translucent and yellow and they were concerned that he might have a heart murmor, which resulted in a couple trips to the children’s hospital – although it was concluded that it was an innocent murmor. I pumped breastmilk for as long as I could with him, but not getting to hold him for long lengths of time in the beginning and an inability to pump effectively resulted in him switching to formula.

Keirnan’s always had a speech impetement that makes it difficult for him to talk to other people, so he’s always been a pretty quiet child – which means that he gets away with a lot of stuff, and he knows it. He is best known for being the sneakiest of all the kids.

Keirnan’s also the only kid with no hard and fast interests. He kind of floats between what everyone else is interested in and often forgets about what it is that he does actually like, until it’s staring him in the face. He enjoys watching Power Rangers and gets quite upset because no one else likes it.

When it comes to toys, he’ll play with anything, but he especially loves small things that he can organize. When it comes to cars, they’re all lined up in neat little rows or with legos, he likes to put all the same colors together and make patterns.

Well, that’s basically all I can think of for Keirnan. So now, you’ve been introduced to all the members of my family – or at least the family that I live with and will be most likely to rant on about. Now maybe we can get into the real bulk of the posts 😉

The Older Three – Kenzie

I’ve said it a few times on The Rantings now, “The Older Three“. Whenever I say this, I’m referring to the older three kids – or as I often think of them, my first set of kids.

First, I say that because the gap between when each of the first three kids were born and when the fourth was born, seemed much much shorter. Also, because the three older ones have the same Dad and the fourth has a different one.

It’s only appropriate that I finally introduce you to The Older Three. We started with Kaeidyn, so it only makes sense to travel down the ages and go next to Kenzie.

Kenzie Clayton

Kenzie was born sometime during a muggy day in late April. Pregnancy with him wasn’t nearly as bad as with Kaeidyn, but came with a few wollops of it’s own. That gallbladder issue I had before, flared up bad with Kenzie and I ended up in the emergency room many times because of it.

Due to the fact that it hadn’t been that long since I had had my c-section and because as my belly expanded, I often complained of pain in that area, we had originally planned to just do another c-section. However, on that final visit to schedule the c-section, it was discovered that I was already in active labor.

Dialated and effaced more than I had ever gotten to with Kaeidyn, we were scheduled to go up to the hospital the next morning. After a few hours, my water was broken and in no time, I was ready and willing to push.

Alfie and I had broken up before I had even known about the pregancy and my Mom was definitely my biggest supporter through the whole thing. She was with me on the day Kenzie was born, holding my hand as I whined that we should’ve just done another c-section.

I had been given a shot of fentanyl when the contractions had started getting intense and then through the whole pushing experience was fiercfully gripping the people standing beside me. By the time Kenzie finally came out, my arms were so exhausted that my Mom had to hold him on my chest for me.

He was an incredibly healthy baby and we got to go home shortly after he was born. For quite awhile after he was born, I was full of energy, always wanting to go for walks to show him off, and overall pretty darn happy.

Now, Kenzie is 8-years-old and he is nothing like he was when he was a baby. First and foremost, he is constantly on an emotional rollercoaster ride. One minute he’s happy as can be and the next minute, he’s in shambles. He flip-flops so often with his emotional state that we often sit and stare at him in utter confusion, unsure of how to respond at any given moment.

He’s quite a rambunctious child as well and finds it quite hard to sit still for long lengths of time, unless it’s to play video games. That, is just about his favorite thing in the whole world. All of my kids are huge gamers, but Kenzie really puts the rest of them to shame. And he’s kinda awesome at a lot of games and often can be found kicking The Boyfriend’s butt in Halo or Call of Duty.

He’s smart as heck and often surprises us with what he knows, especially where math is concerned. His teachers are often impressed with the interesting ways he comes up with to solve a problem and the fact that he’s so good at working with larger numbers. I’m always shocked when he takes two or three digit numbers and just adds them up with no pen or paper or anything!

In terms of toys, he’s a pretty hard guy to buy for. He really only wants games and if it doesn’t involve games, he’s often lost on what’s available. Sometimes he’ll play with cars or legos or whatever the other boys are playing with, but for the most part, he wants to be playing games or watching other people play games. And when it comes to Christmas or birthdays, you can almost be sure that he’s going to ask for a game.

They’re still all at their Dad’s, and I am officially starting to miss them. I keep arguing with myself about when I want them to come home. Next, we’ll do Keirnan…

The Older Three – Kaeidyn

I’ve said it a few times on The Rantings now, “The Older Three“. Whenever I say this, I’m referring to the older three kids – or as I often think of them, my first set of kids.

First, I say that because the gap between when each of the first three kids were born and when the fourth was born, seemed much much shorter. Also, because the three older ones have the same Dad and the fourth has a different one.

It’s only appropriate that I finally introduce you to The Older Three. Today, we’ll start with Kaeidyn…

Kaeidyn Ember

Kaeidyn was born just after midnight in September by emergency c-section. Pregnancy with her was an absolute terror after I began having issues with my gallbladder. This resulted in a lot of false pre-term labor scares from the fifth month onward.

On my 6th ultrasound (4 more than the average woman has during pregnancy), they were concerned that Kaeidyn wasn’t moving enough. I was rushed up to an obstetrician who scheduled an induction for the next morning – only a few hours away. We thought we still had over a month left…

The next day, they gave me a new type of medicine and I reacted badly to it, very badly. First, I had what they dubbed a “hyper-contraction”. I dubbed it “Hell!”. After dealing with the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, all over my body, for at least (it had to be…) 5 hours, I begged for something to take the edge off – even though I had gone into planning on au natural.

By this point, the doctors were quite concerned about how long I had been in pain and suggested a walking epidural. When it only helped half of my body, they rolled me to my side to “help the medicine get to the other side” and as they put a wedge behind my back, my blood pressure plummeted and Kaeidyn’s heart rate flattened on the fetal monitor.

The next few moments passed by in a whir of confusion. An internal fetal monitor was positioned (and let me tell you, that feels really weird!), a huge slew of people came rushing into the room, more drugs were pumped into the needle in my back, Alfie was white as a ghost and then the bed was moving. I was being rushed down for an emergency c-section.

The surgery itself lasted less than 20 minutes. Kaeidyn was whisked off to the NICU the moment she was pulled out, I was rushed off to recovery where I proceeded to go into shock (never been so cold in my entire life) and where everyone else was, I couldn’t tell you because I was too drugged up to notice if anyone was even there.

There was a series of things that happened that resulted in me suffering from severe post-partum depression when she was first born. I got an infection in my botched c-section incision, which infected my breastmilk, so I wasn’t able to breastfeed like I had planned. I also couldn’t support her in my arms, so the only time I got to hold her in the beginning was if I was laying down. I had already been institutionalized once by this point, so everyone was on high alert for my mental instability – which just happened to get my doctor calling child services on me before I had even popped the kid out! Needless to say, what was supposed to be this beautiful experience was quickly deteriorating into stress and disappointment.

We got through it though. After about 6 months, I was good to go, Kaeidyn was crazy healthy and all was good. Soon after, she began to walk and then the talking began. The second that kid learnt her first word, she never stopped talking.

She’s a strong, caring, compassionate and very gorgeous 9 (almost 10) year-old now. She’s got an attitude that makes me dread teenagehood and she wears the pre-teen badge with pride. She is a huge social butterfly and attracts friends, especially of the boy gender, like bees to honey.

She is too smart for her own good sometimes and can be the most curious kid you’ve ever met somedays. She loves to write and is always coming up with new stories, often creating elaborate scenes with outlandish story lines. She is also a bit of a diva, changing her clothes at least three times a day, always wearing high heels when she’s going to be seen in public and walking with a sway in her hips that she just shouldn’t know how to do…

Her favorite toy, if you could say that she had one, would be her doll – although really, Kaeidyn’s never been one much for toys. She’s happier if you put on music and give her a colored pen and some paper. That, or send her outside to be with her friends…

She is a great big sister and often forgets that she’s not the mom, although sometimes, I forget too. She takes charge on a lot of different levels, often instigating room cleanings, scheduling daily chores and keeping her brothers in line. We get in arguments all the time, because she doesn’t need to be the mom, but she insists and persists.

Next, we’ll do Kenzie…

Crazy/Beautiful

So, I’ve introduced you to The Boyfriend and Carter, I’ve told you about my years long hiatus and I alluded to the older three kids twice now. I guess it’s time to start getting down to them. However, we should probably start at the beginning… Their Dad.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

When I was 16, we made a huge inter-province move from BC to Alberta. What was huge about this move was a lot of things – we weren’t moving to Alberta because we wanted to leave BC, I was in my final year of school, I had just gotten out of a long-term (and my first) relationship and we were living closer to more family than we had in many many years.

A few weeks after starting school, I met Alfie, who was at the time imprisoned by a wheelchair after a drunken night resulted in him passing out a little too close to a campfire… Then, I discovered that due to some of the recent transfers of schools and things that had gone down, I was not going to have enough credits to graduate from high school this year or next year or the year after that.

Soon after, I dropped out of school and Alfie and I began seeing each other, at the encouragement of all his friends – not necessarily because either of us really wanted to. I always referred to Alfie and I’s relationship as “the one night stand that just wouldn’t end”, because that’s exactly what we agreed to. We said, “it’s just going to be this one night, this one time” and 6 years, 3 kids and 2 stays at a mental institution is exactly how long it lasted…

I look back on that time now with a great deal of shame, embarrassment, and not regret – because I learnt so many valuable lessons that I couldn’t have learnt any other way – but something akin to regret. The me now doesn’t recognize the me of then and I’m sure Alfie often feels the same way. Together, we were toxic.

Whenever I picture Alfie and I during those years, I think about the movie Crazy, Beautiful. Not necessarily the actual movie or the characters in it, but in the sense that it was an absolutely crazy time and yet somehow there was something beautiful about being in it – and that’s probably why it was so hard for Alfie and I to officially end it.

I remember when we first did end it, the hardest adjustment I had to make was that life didn’t have to be endless drama and arguments, people didn’t have to yell to get their point across, chaos didn’t have to be surrounding you at every moment. To this day, it’s harder for me to deal with the silent treatment than it ever was for me to deal with the verbal abuse.

All that being said, even with the tragedy that was Alfie and I, we made 3 of the most beautiful kids you have ever seen and it’s not always easy and it’s not always the best of the best, but we are still friendly with one another and are determined to raise our kids together.

It took a few years, but here we are now, 6 years later, and between Alfie and The Boyfriend, these kids couldn’t possibly have a better set of Dads!

Just the Three of Us

The three older kids have gone to stay with their Dad for what is currently an undetermined length of time and I’m officially at the point of starting to miss them. It’s been awhile since they got to go to their Dad’s and they longest they’ve stayed before is about 4 days. Today marks their first whole week there.

They keep calling me day after day bugging me about staying for this many weeks longer or this many days longer, and I keep telling them that when I want them to come home, I’ll tell them. Honestly, I’m still at the point of enjoying this break – it’s not very often a mom gets to take any sort of vacation and this is the longest I’ve only been with one kid in a very long time.

So for the past week, I’ve spent every waking moment of every day with my man and my baby, The Boyfriend and Carter. I figure it’s the perfect place to start those introductions I was talking about in my last post.

Mommy, Daddy and Carter

The Boyfriend and I have been together for 6 years and have known each other for about 10. We met through my ex, Alfie, also the Dad of the older three kids. The Boyfriend and I didn’t experience any attraction or interest at all in each other until after Alfie and I had already separated and then suddenly wham! We were on the couch holding hands.

The first four months of our relationship was a complicated time and we are both surprised, to this day, that we survived the beginning. The Boyfriend was very patient with me and my situation at that time, and we made it through that rocky beginning and now, 6 years later, are still as much in love as we were that first time we said it to each other and every single day, he gives me a reason to fall in love with him all over again.

The Boyfriend

He was born and raised in Alberta with his sister and his mom, both of whom I absolutely love! I whine at him all the time that he doesn’t take me to see his family enough. As a kid, he loved being in school plays and writing. As a teenager, he was all into wrestling (backyard wrestling and then he attended pro wrestling school until he wrecked his knee in a car accident) and becoming as bulky as he could. This is right around the time we met, and I hated his muscles!

Fast forward a few years and he was now a much skinnier manager at a department store in town, working graveyards during the night and playing Warcraft during the day. This is right around when we start dating. Now, in the present, the job is the same except it’s now in the day and the games have changed, but he’s always on them!

Carter Drayke

Carter, my youngest baby and The Boyfriend’s first, was born later at night in October. He was my healthiest pregnancy yet and both The Boyfriend and I were incredibly excited. I had Carter rather hurriedly standing in the hospital bathroom. I walked out, holding him in my arms, and The Boyfriend and I got to take many wonderful pictures.

Carter has always been the biggest one of our kids and at 4, he is very tall and built like a brick wall. He’s a tough, energetic, rambunctious kid. He’s full of energy and absolutely loves to play video games. His favorite TV show in the world is Spongebob Squarepants and he has this quirky habit of taking on the name of his favorite character from whatever movie or game is currently his favorite. For example, after he watched The LEGO Movie, he insisted his name was Emmet, or after Daddy started playing GTA 5, he decided he should be called Franklin.

When it comes to toys, he can always be found fighting over the cars with everyone and has recently really gotten into lego. You can also catch him every once and awhile flipping through the pages of books, especially if there’s a spider on the page!

Who knows when I’ll officially get to the point of absolutely desiring the other kids home, but for now, I’ll relish in the quality time I’m spending with my two boys 😉

I’m Back!!!

Well, it’s been over a year since I last wrote anything blog related. After succumbing to extreme amounts of stress and an overwhelmed feeling that I just couldn’t shake, I had to step away from the computer and internet for quite awhile. And while I haven’t totally conquered the stress or gotten over the fact that my life can sometimes be incredibly overwhelming, I have realized that not blogging can no longer be an option.

So finally, I’m back… This time is going to be a little bit different though.

First of all, I’m not going to bite off more than I can chew. It’s often the downfall of my time on the internet. I think I can do it all, I want to do it all. Be on every social network actively, put all my ideas out there, write everyday, blah blah blah – and that’s not why I started blogging in the first place. I didn’t start blogging to become marketable or to reach some target audience or to get a certain amount of likes and shares.

I plan to not make any plans and I plan to let my writing and blogging happen naturally and organically. I also plan to not take on so many projects online or at the very least, give each project it’s time to settle in. That way, when I get in front of my computer, I don’t immediately feel like giving up.

So for now, it’s The Rantings and The Erotic Writers Group, and that’s it!

Over the next few days, you’ll most likely get a few introductory posts and then we’ll get into the real good stuff. For now though, I’d love for you to check out my latest writing, a submission for The Erotic Writers Group: Challenge Central and if you’re on Google+, that’s the best place to get updates from me!

Thank you so much for reading my first post back after my year long hiatus and I look forward to many more rantings. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave your comments.