Let's Cheer for the 100th Day of School!

Ahh, the 100th day of school. In the 80s, there was nothing especially exciting about the 100th day of school. We celebrated the first day and the 180th (last) day, but everything else was a day of school. Fast forward to 2016 and it is a really big deal. Like, a big enough deal that every kid at school is supposed to make and wear a shirt with 100 items on it.

We started out by going to Pinterest because my creative space in my brain has been smothered by the overflow from the responsibility space in my brain. At least with Pinterest I can look like a mom who wanted to put some creative effort into this little project. Mistake #1? I let this kid hang out with me while I Pinterested. Browsed Pinterest. There really should be a word for that. Anyway, I let this kid help me, and she obviously loves extravagance and thinks she is a very fancy girl. 

We searched and searched and we both had our favorites. I wanted to do the gumball machine design that kept popping up while Lily was set on 100 hearts with a message about loving school. We set out to buy materials and then had yet another creative disagreement. Do we cut felt hearts, use sparkly heart stones, or use some other little object to form a heart? There was some eye rolling from both sides and  then a new idea popped into my brain. Lily liked it, so we moved ahead with our new idea. Lily loves the idea of cheerleading, so we decided to use 100 little pom-poms to make...you guessed it, pom-poms.

Execution was easy enough. We started with a white shirt, 100 little pom-pom balls (1/2 inch), a tiny bow, a glue gun, iron and some of those handy t-shirt transfers that run through an ink jet printer. 

We printed a cheerleader on the transfer as well as some verbiage about the 100th day. Next, we ironed on the cheerleader and words.

Once the transfer cooled and the backing was peeled off, we added heated up the glue gun our embellishments. We glued the bow on top of the head of our cheerleader since bows are our thing. Then we added 25 blue poms and 25 red poms on each of the two pom-poms for a grand total of 100! 

Once the hot glue was dry we sat back and looked at our creation. Lily loved it, so I call it success! 

I sat and looked at our masterpiece for a few more minutes, while Lily used the remaining 150 pom-poms to let it snow on her toys.

Nice.

And here we are, ready for day 100! 

Pray, Love: We're still working on #2, but hopefully not #2, #3, #4, #5, #6...you get the point.

It has been about 7 months since I blogged about infertility or urine in my fridge or pituitary tumors, but here we are, ready to start working on making baby #2 happen.  Back in August I had finally received some real answers about the amenorrhea I have experienced for 15 years and a reason for the difficulty we have had in trying to conceive a second child. Then things got busy. We decided to take a little break from all the appointments and decisions and let the craziness of the fall and winter holidays and birthdays take us over. Even with the break from the decisions and the appointments, we did not get to take a break from the reality of secondary infertility. You never forget that, more than almost anything in the world at this moment, you want another child. People won’t let you forget, either.

“So do you not want more children?”

“You better hurry up and have another baby or your little girl is going to be a brat!” (That ship has sailed, my friend)

“So good to see you! So you still haven’t had another baby? You better hurry up before you have too much space between your kids.”

Lily and the naked, filthy, brilliant Baby Rowie

Whew! No pressure or anything. I think Lily just got tired of waiting. She has invented a huge family of brothers and sisters and likes them come along with us. Her favorite imaginary older brother is named Belie or B’lai or Buh-lie. She has never actually spelled it for me. He goes lots of places; he went to Chuck E. Cheese with Lily and her grandparents and they actually had to use tokens for him to ride the rides. Alone. While they stood and watched an empty ride move for 90 seconds. Sometimes she prefers a smaller family, but no matter what she has her Baby Rowie. She tells people all about her baby brother named Rowie and right now she is working on teaching him how to say talk and walk. His first words were a full sentence. He said, according to Lily, “I just said my first words.” He’s a remarkable child. Very dirty and usually naked, but remarkable.

We had decided to take a break from infertility treatment options until my second pituitary gland MRI drew closer. We didn’t want to be in the middle of fertility treatments if the MRI happened to show growth, which is, by the way, extremely unlikely. The MRI is coming up in the next couple of weeks, so last week I went to see my reproductive endocrinologist (RE). He is the one who diagnosed my pituitary adenoma just from studying my labs.  Last week we sat down to discuss our course of action.

I went in with some knowledge of what he felt would work from out discussions in August. Basically, my reproductive system seems to be perfectly healthy and ready to go. My follicle count is higher than normal for a “woman my age”, as hitting 35 puts you in the “a woman your age” bracket. Everything is ready to go, but my pituitary gland sends absolutely no signal to my reproductive organs. Since we are only missing the signal, my RE initially suggested we do injectable gonadotropins. Basically we would be injecting the hormone that would normally be sent by my pituitary gland. His only concern for me was over-stimulation of the ovaries, leading to an over-production of eggs. That was 7 months ago.

Even though we were taking a break from decisions, treatments and appointments, my mind never did take a break. Instead, I found myself obsessively googling fertility treatment in the wee hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping. I didn’t do it every night over 7 months, but I lost plenty of sleep. As my RE appointment drew nearer, I lost sleep every night for a couple of weeks. My heart and mind were in a tailspin because, although I know without a doubt that we want a baby more than almost anything, we were entering a realm where our beliefs about life would be challenged. 

There is a word in the infertility world that is used often by many of the experts. The word is “reduction”, as in selective reduction of embryos. I went in to my appointment late this past week with a list of questions, all relating back to our firm stance that reduction is not an option for us. I presented that to our RE in our meeting and tried to do so without seeming preachy or judgmental. He had already casually mentioned reduction as a way to ensure we didn’t carry too many babies. Basically, without leaving reduction on the table, he would not do the injectables with us. Instead, he would want us to make the leap to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He feels the IVF process would give him a little more control over the number of embryos, but that prompted more discussion about our stance on extra embryos and frozen embryos and what would be done with them. He presented a plan that would allow us to pursue IVF while only creating embryos that would be transferred. No life would be left behind, but he made a huge leap (and cost increase) to IVF in a matter of seconds.

For now, we have decided to seek a second opinion. I will be meeting with a physician from a different fertility center here in town to discuss the injectables and some methods for controlling the number of mature follicles. I have done a lot of research on methods such as follicle reduction, and that was not something the RE I have been seeing was willing to discuss.

We are prayerful about the next step in our journey. We don’t want six babies and a reality show, but we do want to have another child and we want Lily to have a brother or sister.  We know we want to take advantage of medical advances that our Creator has given us the opportunity to explore, but we want to do so with respect for life and His creation. We don’t know if our next child will grow in my body or in the body of a woman we may never know, but we know we want to shower another child with love and attention. We want to bring up a second child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Oh, and we think some soul deserves to have Lily as their big sister, because she will totally rock it!

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”

Jeremiah 1:5

Pray, Love: Birthdays, Control Issues and Dogs

As of the stroke of midnight, we are two months away from Lily’s 4^th birthday. She is chomping at the bit, I am excited about planning and Doug is looking forward to a cute little party while praying we don’t get too carried away. I come from a family of birthday people, where we make a big deal every year and sit around and comment on each gift as we open them all one by one. Birthdays are a big deal whether you are eight or 88, but there is a special kind of excitement in those single digit years. 

For the past three birthdays, I have had the luxury of controlling Lily’s birthdays. 

The first year, of course, she had no opinion. She was just pleasantly surprised when she had new toys wrapped up in paper and completely ecstatic when we plopped a giant hunk of cake in front of her face. 

The second year she had preferences, but at almost two her concept of time was not unlike that of an armadillo. I wanted to celebrate her love for Minnie Mouse and make it fun for me, too. She showed up for the party and, for the most part, she liked it. Always a bit eccentric, she hated opening gifts, but was totally on board for the cake.  

The third birthday brought a little more of her involvement, but I was still making the big decisions. I knew I wanted a circus theme, so I spent lots of time playing up the circus we attended and crafting a party around the thing she had been trained to love. I spent the months leading up to these birthdays making one-of-a-kind invitations and decorations, having more fun planning the parties than an adult really deserves.

Four is different. Four is really different. I spent the latter part of the summer up to my old tricks, working on convincing my very strong-willed child that her favorite things just happened to match the things I had pinned on my Pinterest board. Some may call it manipulation and I am really okay with that. I had a great idea for a train birthday party after she fell in love with the trackless train ride at her end of school party. I had grand dreams of train whistle favors tied with pretty ribbon, a little bit tomboy with a touch of femininity, little sandwiches shaped like trains and birthday pictures on an old caboose. I even spent time in the hot Texas summer riding around with her on local trains and she loved them, but not enough to trump her idea of a dream birthday party.

My daughter, you see, has fallen madly in love with “Tangled”, the Disney movie telling the story of a very tough Rapunzel who knocks people out with a frying pan and swings through the air using her hair. What little girl wouldn’t love that? She wants a princess castle moonwalk, a tower cake and lots of friends there to help her celebrate. She also wants to release floating lanterns into the sky and, although I am reasonably sure my explanation of drought conditions and the danger of setting the town on fire are above her head, she seems to understand that the lantern release is not part of the plan.  I think it’s going to be a great party and I guess it’s now time that I get on board with what Lily wants; it is her birthday, after all. I mean, I did the hard part of actually giving birth, but I have no 19-hour labor story to use for leverage. Easy C-sections don’t count.

Letting go of party planning is not easy for a control freak like me. Thinking about the control I will be relinquishing over the rest of her childhood and adolescence is even more overwhelming. I love being a mom and I love having things just so, but I have to remind myself that the object of this whole raising kids thing is to have a mature child who can leave the nest as a confident, independent adult. It’s a daunting task, but I will just keep relinquishing a little control at a time and setting the boundaries where they matter.

I can let her have a Tangled birthday party while drawing the line at releasing lanterns containing actual fire into the skies of drought-stricken Central Texas.

I can let her choose her clothing while teaching her it is entirely inappropriate to wear pajamas and cleats to church or school. Note: I do reserve the right to drop certain pieces of clothing off at Goodwill at 3 am if the teaching becomes too challenging.

I can let her choose her favorite flavors of juice at the store while teaching her that the artificially fruit-flavored drinks are a waste of calories.

I look back at the best memories of my childhood, and many of them involved my parents setting boundaries while allowing me to make decisions and feel independent and strong. Quite honestly, it was a lot like the invisible fence where the dog wears the special collar and won’t go past the invisible boundary while not fully understanding why. Then one day I did not need my special collar anymore. I knew the boundaries and I appreciated them. Sure, I forgot my training a few times and nearly was hit by a car or two, but the training was always there. I hope I can do the same for Lily.

And only after midnight can we jump from birthdays to control issues to the numerous ways humans are like dogs. You’re welcome.

Love, Work: Treasure

It is Monday morning, 1 AM, the annoying alarm on my iPhone set to 5:45 AM, my adorable husband sleeping like a rock.

I can't sleep.

I could blame it on the relaxing Sunday spent with my family as Doug and I celebrated our 6th anniversary; he gave me some really sweet material gifts, but that afternoon nap was the best of all.

I could blame it on the hormonal craziness that is raging in my brain courtesy of the pills I am taking to ready my body for treatment for infertility.

I could blame on the action packed Monday coming my way. I would ordinarily be lying awake making a to-do list in my brain and looking forward to the challenges.

I could blame it on the late-afternoon coffee that followed my afternoon nap, but let's be real; I drink late-afternoon coffee on a fairly regular basis.

I think I will go ahead and blame it on the actual culprit. A four-day weekend is drawing to a close and I am not quite ready to get back to reality. We celebrated the 4th with cooking out, eating watermelon, watching fireworks and spending time together as a family.  I enjoyed a wonderful holiday weekend. In my pre-mommy days, these long weekends left me refreshed and ready to conquer the world.

I had a little taste of life at home, with leisurely summer days spent with Lily. We read books. We ate outside. I slammed this big ol' 34 year-old body down onto a slip 'n slide and possibly sustained internal injuries. I made delicious meals without any temptation to open a convenience food. It was everything working moms dream of in their stay-at-home fantasies.

Sure, I realize that staying at home full-time is VERY different from a long weekend spent playing, but I don't want to let go of the joy of those days. The beauty of it is that I don't have to let go of the joy. As my mind races with memories of a great long weekend, I am reminded of  scriptures that never took on their full meaning until I became a mother. I remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her memories of his childhood.

"But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart."

Luke 2:19

 

What would the joyful moments of life be without our memories? The smiles and giggles are always with me and I treasure them, pondering them in my heart.

 

And now I can sleep....

 

 

Pray, Love: Just One More...

I was blessed with an idyllic childhood in a Christian home in a small town with a wonderful family. One of the greatest blessings of time spent growing up was my brother, Kyle. I was three weeks shy of my second birthday when Kyle was born and, since he was walking at 9 months, he was part of nearly every childhood adventure in my memory. We were siblings, but best of all we were friends. Our personalities were as different as night and day, but we loved being together. We fought a lot and could argue about almost anything, but we never stayed mad at one another for more than a few minutes. He helped me be a tomboy and I helped him be kind and sensitive. We were (and still are) quite a pair.

When I visualized the family I would someday have, I always visualized a kind, caring husband and two children just close enough in age to be close friends. I hit the jackpot in the husband department (oh, yeah!) and I have an amazing little girl who keeps me on my toes and rolling on the floor in laughter. The only problem? I just want one more.

Doug and I had been married almost a year and a half when we decided we wanted a baby. A few months later we were pregnant and so excited about being parents. We fell in love with Lily the moment we found out she was on her way and feel blessed every day to have such a happy, healthy child. We also knew we wanted at least one more and, not long after Lily’s first birthday, we decided we were ready for another child whenever God felt like we needed one. We hoped we could have our children two or three years apart so they could be close in age and play together. Time passed, and we realized we were not going have children two years apart. We tried to look on the bright side; maybe our kids would be three years apart and Lily would be old enough to be a helper and understand more about having a sibling. More time has passed, and now is Lily is three and a half. We are still looking on the bright side; it looks like we won’t be paying college tuition for two kids at once.

Sometimes it makes us sad, but in ways that are a bit unexpected. I find myself very sad as I long for a family of four, but I don’t find myself sharing that with others. I feel guilty for feeling sad. Every time I begin to dwell on our secondary infertility (the term for infertility experienced by couples who already have a child), I feel like I should count my blessings and treasure the extraordinary child I have. I think of friends who are still struggling to become parents for the first time and I think of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who pleaded with God for just one child. I find my sadness is mixed with twinges of guilt, as if I am not fully appreciating the gift I have been given with the child I am watching grow before my eyes. I find myself on the verge of grief, but do not feel I deserve the right to grieve. After all, I have one really awesome kid.

Secondary infertility is fairly common, but still not well understood by most folks.  Many people just assume that if you have been able to have one child, then it makes sense that you would be able to have another. Some people assume you only had a desire for a single child. A few people make snide comments about parenting a single child, insinuating that you really don’t know what real parenting is about until you have two. Everyone seems to want to know when we are going to have another one. We’d like to know the answer to that question, too.

I managed to bury the sadness deep inside for a long time. I would tell myself how blessed we were to have Lily and that someday, when the time was right, we would blessed with #2. The defining moment when I recognized my own sadness over the situation occurred when I was reading Lily her bedtime stories and, out of nowhere, she said, “Mommy, I want a sister!” She thought about it a second and said, “Or I want a brother.” It was obvious she didn’t care which; she just wanted a sibling and I, more than anything, wanted to be able to provide her with that.

Until recently, I had once again managed to bury the sadness and the desire. We still had that desire to have a second child, but had only dabbled in fertility treatment. We decided to put our house on the market, forcing us to make the third bedroom an appealing space. Until that point, it was the storage room for all things baby. When Lily would outgrow something, it would go in that room. We had her nursery furniture, clothing, toys and everything else a couple would need to completely spoil their baby. I insisted we set the room up as a nursery to show the house so it would showcase the size of the bedroom. Somewhere inside, though, I made that decision because I could not bear the thought of moving the nursery furniture to storage. The crib and changing table and rocking chair mean so much more to me than showcasing a spacious room; to me, they represent a hope and a dream that we pray for daily. They represent just one more.

Pray, Love: Being Still

Still. Quiet. It's that special time of day when my husband and daughter are in bed and it is just me, reflecting on the day. I am so tired after a long day, but this quiet time is something I will gladly take advantage of in lieu of sleep. I spent years running from the quiet, but now I savor it.

This by no means makes me an introvert. I have taken the Meyers-Briggs personality type indicator many times beteween trainings for work and college classes. I have experienced some changes in some of my ratings, but I am always off the charts on the "E". The first indicator rates you as either an extrovert or introvert and my sky-high score as an extrovert leaves no doubt that I love people. I get my energy from being with others, my husband and daughter included, and I am a person who really needs people.

That being said, I am so thankful to sit in this quiet house and spend time in reflection and thought. I will give thanks for a Godly, hardworking husband. I will give thanks for an adorable child with a giant smile and sweet personality. I will give thanks for the caring family with which I have been blessed. I will give thanks for the faithful congregation of the Lord's church where we worship. I will give thanks a job I love, where my hard work is rewarded with a fullfilment in the work we do. I will be thankful for the quiet, a quiet that I have spent the better part of my life taking for granted, even hating at times. I will give thanks for God's word, for the wisdom it holds, and for the recollection God gives me of his word so that in times like these I can think on the things that matter.

"Be still, and know that I am God."

Psalm 46:10

 

 

Being a mother has brought me so many blessings. My heart has grown larger than I ever knew possible. My time has grown more valuable than I ever expected. My plate is more full than I ever imagined it could be. My life has more moments of joy than I realized could be fit in to a day. For me, motherhood has taught me to appreciate the "be still" part of that scripture. When I am still, I know God's blessings, providence and guidance. When I am still, I remember the blessings. When I am still, I know He is here in our midst. When I am still, I know that nothing in this world is as important as my relationship with Him, and that everything will fall into place when I am still and I know God.

 

 

My quiet time ends and I head off to bed with a clear mind and a full heart, ready to start a new day after a little bit of rest. I peek my head in for one last reminder of why those hectic days mean as much as the still and quiet and say one last prayer of thanksgiving for a full life. 



PCOS: Let's do this!

Hi, my name is Alison and I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). There, I said it.  I have PCOS.

Until recently, only my husband, mother and maybe 2 close friends had any idea that I struggled with PCOS. It's not that I am ashamed to have PCOS, but stories of cyst-covered ovaries and infertility elicit sympathy and I have a serious complex about sympathy directed toward me. Perhaps I have a psychological problem or some childhood trauma buried deep inside, but I doubt it; it feels more like good, old-fashioned pride. I hate for someone to feel sorry for me. Oh, sure I like to feel sorry for others. After all, I grew up in a little corner of the world where Texas and the South collide head-on and I love to feel sorry for other people. "Oh, bless her heart," and "I sure do hate to hear that" roll off my tongue with such ease. I just don't want to have any heart blessing directed at me. My life is, for the most part, an open book, but only a handful of people know about my struggle with PCOS.

I started my period at age 13 and vividly remember the mixed emotions that came along with that. On one hand, I was excited to grow up. On another hand, I was moody and did not yet understand why. On yet another hand (I get as many hands as I want because I am talking about female hormonal issues), I was pretty upset because the night before my womanhood began I had talked my mom into this really cute Guess skirt and had plans to wear it church the next morning and I was extremely paranoid about this whole period thing. Everything seemed to go by the book, but 28 days later I was without a period. My periods came when they pleased, but I don't think I ever had more 4 in a year. I was in great shape, very athletic, but not so lean and muscular that amenorrhea should be a problem.

At 16 I took my first trip to the OB/GYN. Before long I was having ultrasounds and labs done to see just what was causing the irregular periods. I remember hearing something about polycystic ovaries, but I was not particularly worried. After all, I was not sexually active and only having to deal with periods and all that comes with them only a few times a year seemed like a winning idea. When I went to college, I began gaining weight. Along with the weight came a new PCOS symptom. I suddenly had acne, a problem I had managed to avoid in my high school years. I went on birth control pills throughout my 20s to trick my body and keep these symptoms in check and did not think much about it at all. My OB/GYN made it sound so simple. He told me to take the pills to keep things going, then some day when I was ready for a baby he could give me another handful of pills and we would be good.

I married my husband, Doug, when I was 28 on 07.07.07 and we did not want a child right away. I went on birth control for nearly a year and a half and stopped taking the pill in October 2008. I had my "period" from the last pack of pills during the first week of November and then waited for another period to creep up. By early February, I had still not started and decided to see my OB/GYN to ask for an injection or pills to induce a period. She told me we would need to wait 6 months following the last course of birth control to induce a period and sent me on my way.

On the morning of March 20, 2009, I rolled over in bed and my breasts were very sore. I decided to take a home pregnancy test and received a positive result. I drank about a gallon of water and took another test an hour later. It was still positive. I remember calling my doctor's office to get in for a blood test and answering that awkward question about my last period. Um, November? I was about six weeks along when we found out and on November 18, after a very uneventful pregnancy, I gave birth to Lily.

I packed on weight VERY easily when pregnant. I was unable to produce much milk (another PCOS symptom I later found) and was not able to exclusively breastfeed, so I hoped I would manage to have a period. I did not so we induced one with pills when Lily was 4 months old. I dieted, exercised and couldn't see to shed any weight.  When Lily was a little over a year, I stopped the pill and continued to try to lose weight with no success. I am writing this blog post two years later and I have not had a natural period since giving birth. In fact, in the 5 1/2 years I have been married, I have only ovulated once. On the positive side, our success rate on fertilization is 100%!

After about 6 months of dealing with infertility after Lily, I found a fabulous new doctor who helped me work on getting to the bottom of my problem. He showed me ultrasounds of my ovaries covered in "string of pearl" cysts and studied my labs carefully.  He referred me to an endocrinologist and I have learned so much about PCOS since then. I was prescribed Metformin, a drug generally used to treat diabetes and spent about a year and a half on Metformin and was actually able to drop a little weight with the help of that drug. Just recently, I started more in depth research about PCOS, hormonal imbalance and the processes of the body and have decided to take a more natural approach. This is where I will share my journey.

Doug and I would like to add another child to our family and I would like to do so as naturally as possible. I will combining exercise, nutrition and natural supplements in an attempt gently coerce my body to have a regular ovulatory cycle. If you are reading this, I hope it can help you in some way. All I ask of you is to pray with me as I embark on this journey!

Eat, Pray: heart-shaped sandwiches and love

Anytime my daughter carries a packed lunch, you can be sure of two things. It will contain a sandwich made with whole grain bread and said sandwich will be shaped like a heart...or a flower...or a fish. I can't stand the thought of sending her off with a square or circular sandwich or even a square slice of cheese. Sometimes I build an entire theme, like a fish shaped sandwich swimming in a blueberry sea. I've even done 2am searches on Pinterest for the coolest bento boxes for kids; while my Southern upbringing and Future Homemakers of America days fully prepared me for pound cakes and dumplings, those Mickey Mouse bentos look like they would require at least a year of culinary training. Since I have trouble finding time to paint my toenails, the year of culinary training is definitely out.

I know it is just lunch, but I come from a long line of people who express love through food. My own working mother would get up in the morning and pack me a lunch of turkey and mustard on saltine crackers. I didn't eat bread, and after finding a big hunk of a buttery cheese substance in my spaghetti I had sworn off the tray lunch in the cafeteria. I took my lunches for granted then; you tend to take a lot of things for granted when you are raises by Super Mom. Now I look back and can feel the love my own mother had for me and I think of it every time I am wasting bread edges and cutting out that sandwich with a cookie cutter.

It sounds sweet, right? Does my child really care? Probably not. So why do I care so much? Since I became a working mom, I have become obsessed with doing all I can to make every day special and to ensure that, while someone else is actually sitting next to her during lunch, there is some sign of "Mama" at the lunch table. It has become my coping mechanism. The daycare deposit pales in comparison to the start up costs I brought on myself. She needed a mat? I wanted to make sure she had a coordinating pillow, blanket and nap mat cover with her name embroidered somewhere on it. She had to have her name on her water bottle. Sure, a Sharpie makes sense, but instead I was drawn to these personalized bands that wrap around the bottle. I stressed about every last detail before her first day and I don't really think she cares. I do.

I don't have time for therapy, but after hours spent on the road for my job I have finally determined the reason for my obsession with heart-shaped sandwiches and personalized nap mat covers. It is the same reason I come home tired from work but drags self to the park or to blow bubbles in the back yard, the reason I want every second I am with Lily to be quality. It's the same reason I forget the quiet moments are important, too. I absolutely hate missing that time during the day and I grasping at ways to make the most of the time I do have. It's how I cope.

In the end, does it make me a better mom? No. Could I put away the heart cookie cutter tomorrow without Lily even taking notice? Probably. Will I do that? No way. I need it, and I hope one day she looks at that sandwich and realizes that I made it just for her, just the way she likes it, with sun butter, jelly and a mother's love. Like the turkey and mustard crackers.