Oh, take me back.

You’re ONE baby.

This year flew by so fast and somehow I feel like I just brought you home from the hospital yesterday. Jude was our surprise gender baby, so we always called him ‘baby Lyon.’ So we followed that theme throughout his first year and it was fun when he turned out a boy because our little ‘Lyon’ sure is fierce!

Happy Birthday to our Jude Wilder Lee Lyon!

I still can’t believe this is my last babe. As a mother you always hear ‘you’ll know when you are done…’ and I kind of feel that now with this one. But there is just something about knowing that it is your last one and your last time being pregnant and going through all of the motions that gets to you somehow. At least that’s how it’s been for me. I know it’s going to take some time to get used to, especially not feeling the best, but in these days I’ve been trying to enjoy every little bit that I can of this last pregnancy.

We are a blended family with now 6 children and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us.

With our last babe, it was a surprise until birth (which is a surprise that I highly recommend if you are wanting to do that with your own - what a moment!) But since this is our last and we wanted to be a little prepared in other ways, we chose to find out and be able to celebrate the whole pregnancy.

I didn’t feel the best on this morning of the gender reveal, my hair wasn’t done perfect but I threw on my blush colored wedding dress to add a little pink within all the boys’ blue we had and felt happy and that’s all that mattered to me that day.

Thank you for celebrating this moment, this special day and our last baby with us!

And I absolutely still can’t believe it, but……..

IT’S A GIRL!!!!!!

Welcome to our MPS Family Day at Brookfield Zoo this year! It’s been 3 years since we were here last, we had one less little family member and it didn’t rain on us this time.

If you are new here to our blog or to our story, our son Owen has MPSIIIA, also known as Sanfilippo Syndrome which is a childhood Alzheimers. It is a degenerative and terminal genetic disease. There is no treatment for his diagnosis and there is no cure. They host an event here yearly and have created this day for MPS families to gather and meet as well as listen to/meet doctors and pharmaceutical companies etc. We are blessed to have this event within a few hours of us and for this opportunity to share Owen’s Story with others.

This trip is special to us because we try and be all together and make family time out of it. This year we were blessed to have all the kids together with us and thankful that Nana and Aunt Haley came alone to learn more about MPS and experience the fun zoo day with us!

As a mama living through this journey I try my best to always capture our story through photos as they are truly a moment in time that I never want to forget. I hope you can enjoy these memories with us through these pictures and others I share through other blog posts and our story.

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So, here we go!

Jude’s birth story.

Ah, it has brought such a sense of peace to my heart that I have been so excited to share with you all. It was so perfect for me in so many ways and I feel comfortable enough to say that I truly got what I envisioned in this birth, even if things didn’t go as we ‘planned.’ And for those who don’t already know, we didn’t find out the gender of our babe until birth. Some say that we’re crazy, others said that they wouldn’t have been able to do it… but honestly, it was the best thing ever. You only get very few surprises in life and this is definitely one of those moments. I don’t regret the wait one bit. And for the two of us, it was so much fun.

My ‘plan’ for this birth was to try for a VBAC, which is a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean. Since things didn’t quite go as I would have liked trying for a natural birth the first time around with an urgent c-section, and the complications were not due to me personally, I wanted to try again. I still had the mentality that I could do it and I had the inner strength and knowledge behind knowing the basics of what it took to breathe through the waves up until the very end from my past experience.

Oh, how I will miss this bump. We are waiting for Baby Lyon now any single day now as we know that we won’t be going past our due date.

You guys.
There are so many emotions that are arising knowing that the 6 of us will shortly turn into the number 7! It’s been the 6 of us for so long and it’s what was created in our original story in which we live together as a blended family. Adding another sweet baby to the bunch opens my heart to only adding more special memories and bonding between each of us.

I’m so grateful we got some last minute bump moments in before babe comes with everyone’s schedule, even if it’s just a few. And just to think, this evening’s cookout from last Sunday with biggest brother here could have very well been the last time we’re all together as “us” before the new love! It’s so bittersweet.

I’m just in absolute awe as to where we are, how far we’ve come and know that we are right where we are supposed to be. When I sit back and look at the overall picture of our life, it is what I’ve always dreamed to have.

For now, enjoy the babe’s sweet bump with us from this session.
Thanks to my sister for snapping the handful in our backyard during our cookout and to a best friend who came to spend the day with us from 4 hours away and snap a few more on a different day so we can have these moments.

I will forever cherish these.

We are ready to hold you, love you and bring you earth side with us Baby Lyon!

Welcome to a peek into Baby Lyon’s Baby Shower!

We are so blessed that Aunt Haley and Nana helped to create this space to celebrate the new joy in our lives and we absolutely can’t thank you all who were a part of this day with us. Ran and I said so many times to each other, ‘this is such an amazing day.’ From the weather, to the intimate company of family and friends during this time and just a comforting atmosphere filled with all the sweet baby things, we were just elated.

We chose to have our guests bring a signed baby book to add to the babe’s bookshelves instead of purchasing a card, we had a little Photo Booth area setup to help us remember our guests and some fun moments and it was fun to see what everyone’s guesses were: he or she?

So enjoy reliving this day with us as we are on our official countdown and GUESS with us!

Boy or girl? When will the birthday be? What will the baby’s weight be?

Now that time is passing quick, we are already into the third trimester and we have had a lot of questions, I thought that we should share some gender reveal news with you all! We are not having a party, we are not doing a photoshoot, we are not playing any games, etc. We are excited to announce that ….

BABY LYON IS A…………..

Trying to find the exact words in certain situations through our journey is hard when you are tossed into so many directions and emotions. And just when I think the wave is settling down, another one comes and hits us again. We have to yet again, grieve a situation, adapt, learn another lesson and somehow keep moving on.

In this case, we are sad to announce that we lost our beloved therapy horse ‘Mac’ right before awareness day this year. It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that our Mac has crossed the rainbow bridge to greener pastures. We can find comfort knowing Mac is no longer in pain.

If you know me, then you know that I would rather be writing my heart out rather than being in front of a screen talking on video all of the time. Actually, I wouldn’t mind it as much, but I just don’t have the extra hands or time if I’m being honest. So thank you to everyone who reads our blog, our posts, and my heart string posts whenever I’m able to sit down long enough to concentrate on something I’ve wanted to write about.

As much as I thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for being by our side and showing your support through Owen’s Story, not only daily, but especially on awareness day, there is a part of me that feels I need to write about something a little more as this month is almost over.

With MPS Awareness Day 2020 now in the books, we are thankful for another year - another year with answers, guidance from other families and help in direction for the future, another year with doctors working beside us and our tribe supporting us. And most of all, we are thankful for another year celebrating Owen.

We are blessed to be where we are at in our journey and to us, this day isn’t just another day. We live ‘one day at a time’ here, we concentrate every single day on what needs to be done and try our best to focus and live in the now. This is the day we yell a little louder as a family to ensure we are giving Owen the best life that we can in his future by simply spreading awareness of the horrible disease that he has been chosen as an earth angel to bravely live with. We are truly grateful to you all who help us do just that.

I have another post on some other feelings of this day that will follow this one, so this one is to concentrate on the day itself and what it entailed this year. Living through this pandemic, I know that we are all going through a lot and we appreciate you all for taking the time with us to spread awareness with us on this day, whether you showed up physically, lit a candle or simply wore purple. Sharing Owen’s Story with even just one person that you know means the world to us! We are grateful for all of you.