My life completely stopped. The 4 Webbs completely stopped. I am amazed by how much of daily life I haven't cared about in days. Not that I'm so depressed or overwhelmed that I can't manage things, but my mental focus and time are entirely focused on Kendra and her health.
Easton and Layla are on spring break, which is a good thing because they get a chance to hang out and relax. I'm glad they are so young that spring break doesn't have much meaning yet or else it would be considered lame by any measure. Even though Kendra's mom is here, we are not doing anything special like taking a trip up North to the snow or going adventuring. it's no big deal though and the twins are very understanding. We are just a family pulling together in a time of crisis and taking this one step at a time.
We don't have any family in town other than Kendra's brother and her wife. My church family is my family here. Our pastor and his wife came by before Kendra's surgery to spend the morning with us. I'm honored to be so deeply embedded in the church that when something like this comes up that we are immediately completely surrounded and flooded with people who genuinely care about us. I can't imagine going through this alone, but lucky for me I don't have to. We are grateful for the relationships we've built over the last 7 years.
The past few days have been surreal. To me that means it's like a twilight zone situation or Alice in Wonderland reality. It's just weird. I'm sleeping in my clothes on this thing:
At least it is by Kendra's side where we can talk and I can be there for her. Ouma and I rotated nights of staying with Kendra. Having her here is priceless. I took the twins to visit Kendra because there is a fine line balance between overloading them with hospital hang-out time and being away so much that they feel disconnected. Layla asked if she could dress up and I happily agreed to the idea. We went through her costume options and when she came to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz she said, "Mom would love this because Dorothy say, 'There's no place like home.'" She was exactly right... Easton wore his robot shirt with tools because he wanted to fix mommy by letting the robots take out what shouldn't be there.
We walked into the hospital with smiles and happy hearts to receive all the kind compliments for how awesome the twins are. At this point they still had no idea Ouma was here in town. I had them stand in front of me while we waited for Ouma to arrive.
here's a short video clip of the happy reunion. Layla turned around and saw Ouma before I had a chance to get the video rolling.
Mommy time was great as they had a chance to just be in her presence and talk about mundane things. It's amazing how quickly they refill their tanks from just being around her.
Kendra and I are powerful influences whether we choose to be or not. Our demeanor translates directly into Easton and Layla. We are peaceful, confident, positive, and believing through this time. Guess what Easton and Layla are like? You guessed it. They were not crying and falling apart and worried and whatever else could be possible responses to seeing their mommy bedridden in a hospital.
I especially enjoyed these brief moments where I could gently cuddle up with her in the tiny bed to love on her with hugs and kisses. My reassurance and affection was for Kendra alone, but because I do this in front of the twins there is a side-benefit that they see everything is OK in spite of the surrounding or issues we are going through.
Kendra was finally able to walk around her hospital floor unassisted! She wasn't in any more pain than normal (7 on a scale of 1-10) so that was great news. She did this to keep blood flow to her legs and maintain normal bodily functions. Apparently things shut down if a person is in bed for too many days in a row. Even in the middle of the pain and stress on her body she was spreading love throughout the floor with her smiles and encouraging words to all the staff. She complimented nurses on the pattern of their scrubs or their youthful looking skin or any number of visible attributes. I am continually amazed by how she will call out the gold in people she has never even talked to.
I'll post the rest of the updates straight from my facebook feed to catch up on the past few days. The blog has been neglected because this is such a one-way communication tool. I love to share about life with twins and how we are doing, but Facebook allowed me to get updates out to the majority of our friends and family in a timely manner.
Once this week is caught up i'll go back to the original purpose of this blog: adventures with twins.
See you soon!
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