It's a Miracle!

One week ago today a miracle occurred. First, the story. (Before you read this story you must realize that I am journaling about the journey we have been on for a year and a half. I am also wordy, ask my mom and Steve, so this story is quite lengthy. I mostly wrote it so that one day Olivia could look back, read and enjoy it. So if you become bored with it, I'm sorry, you don't have to read it. It's probably more for our family to remember this time in our lives but I would still like to share it with you all. So, grab a snack, a drink, a pillow, and enjoy.) Oh yea, the pictures are of her with her blankies, they are in order from the first one we took to the most recent one we had of her.

You see, it all began on June 22, 2005 when Olivia Amber Lee was 5 months old, my mom laid a blanket on her in her crib and when we went to check on her this is what we discovered....
she was sucking on the blanket. Steve's mom gave her this blanket as a gift when she was born, it has four corners. One corner is an elephant's head and the other three are little balls of fluff or I guess the elephant's feet. We thought, "Oh, how cute, she's sucking on the blanket." So, we put it in her crib again and again and what do you know, again and again she put it in her mouth. Many of you know, that she has become inseparable with this what she calls "bankie" or "blankie" and has not been without it for over 1 1/2 years!!!!!!!!!!! This blankie has saved our lives in a sense. She has always hated the car and this blanket calms her down in the car, she never has trouble falling asleep at naps or bedtime as long as the blankie is in her mouth. Ask anyone that has been around her a lot, they will tell you, life is better if we have the blankie nearby. We have left them places and had to go back to get them, we have thought we had lost one and panicked, we have been late to things because we have been looking for them and couldn't leave the house without them. Also, she began sucking on the three feet corners so much that the blankie was coming apart from us washing and drying it so much. Steve's mom, or Mamoose as she is known to Olivia, came up with an idea that she needed to find more blankies for Olivia so that we would not have to ever be without one and so that one could be in the washer while she had another one. After searching every Wal-mart near her in Oklahoma, she found one more and sent it right away. Then she discovered they had been discontinued. So what else do you do but go on Ebay. She searched forever on Ebay until she discovered 3 more. Thanks to Mamoose we have 5 pink blankies. The only problem was that Olivia would only suck on 2 of them. She had gotten used to 2 and the others were too new and fluffy and she was a little older when she got them and didn't like the taste of them. I even tried to wet them, iron them, suck on them myself, just so that she would try it, but no, she liked her 1st two.

At the hospital at the onset of diabetes 8/21/2005

At first when she was little, she wouldn't get them very wet, but as she got bigger she started sucking on them longer and more throughout the day. Then one day she decided that she didn't like them when they got really wet and so we would put them in the dryer and give them back to her. OH, what have we got ourselves into. We were CONSTANTLY switching these blankets out in the dryer so that she could have a "dry blankie". What a PAIN this became for us. All day long! Our dryer was going constantly. We even had to replace the dryer element after only having the dryer for a year because it was used so much. Whenever we went to someone's house we had to ask them if we could put her blankies in their dryer. I told my mom today, those blankies have been in so many people's dryers, it's crazy. Many of you reading this right now, the blankies have been in your dryers. (Thank you by the way.) Even in the car, if one blankie was wet, we had to figure out how to dry it so we either turned the heat up full blast and held the ends of the blankie in front of the vents while we sweat to death from the heat OR we put the ends of the blankie out the window and rolled the window up so that the feet were dangling in the wind. The last part only worked well in the summer when it was warmer outside. Boy did we look funny driving down the road with her blankie flapping everywhere. I often wondered what people were thinking as they drove by us. Oh well, it made Olivia happy and kept her content as long as she had her dry blankie. A common phrase for her that we have heard every day since she learned to talk is "I want a dry blankie". If she was really fussy and upset and yelling for her blankie, the second I gave it to her she would start laughing with excitement. It reminded me of when someone is addicted to something and they haven't had it and are craving it real bad and then they get it they are like, "Ahhhhhhhh, I'm so happy." This is how she was.

O.k., o.k. is this story ever going to end? Well, yes it will.
Here's the miracle.....
We are going on our trip to the Caribbean in a few weeks and all Steve and I have thought about since we found out that we were going and that the girls were going with us is, "HOW are we going to make it in the plane all day without being able to dry these blankets?" See, if they aren't dry fast enough for her, she has a tantrum. We can tell her that we are trying to dry them and all she does is scream, "I WANT MY DRY BLANKIE!!!!!!!!!!" Well, we will be on three different planes to get there and our total flying time will be almost 8 hours. 8 hours on planes, all day without a nap probably, and in airports, and around strangers, and in tight quarters, and on and on and on with nowhere to dry the blankies. We racked our brains, what were we going to do. Steve mentioned more than once that maybe we should just cancel the trip because there is no way we are going to get there in one piece unless we both drink heavily all the way there. Then, a few weeks ago at a play date, I was explaining our situation to a friend of mine and she said, "You have a month until you leave, why don't you try and wean her from the blankies." I was thinking, "No way, are you kidding me, do you know what it will be like if I try to take her life support away from her. She will die. You don't understand what these blankies mean to her. They have been with her every single day, for every single nap and bedtime for over 1 1/2 years. She can't function without her blankies. I can't function without her blankies. NO WAY. Maybe when she's older, but not now. She's too little to wean her already from them." When she got diabetes when she was 7 months old, that blankie was right there with her the whole time, and it soothed her, and it calmed her down. I know it was really God was right there but I think He may have used that blankie to help her get through a rough time. Another friend at the play date said, "Oh you don't want to wean her unless you want to have many sleepless nights with her crying for her blankie." I knew she was right. Plus, I don't think Steve or I were ready to let go of her having her blankies. A part of us felt like we didn't want to lose our baby and that if we took away her blankies that means she's growing up and she's a big girl and I don't think we were ready for that. So I put weaning her way out of my head and was still stressed about what we were going to do about the trip. Then one day, after I talked to my mom about it, I decided what the heck, I'm just going to see what Olivia will do if we can't find her blankie. My mom's idea was to just pretend they are missing and to have Olivia help me look for them. So last Tuesday, March 20th, after she woke up in the morning I hid both her blankies. When she finally asked me about them I was like, "I don't know where they are, let's go look for them." I had her help me look everywhere for them. Then every time she mentioned them I said, "Remember, we looked for them and couldn't find them." She actually accepted that and was o.k. for the time being. I just distracted her with other things. Then came naptime, I thought there is no way she will sleep without her blankies. Well, she went to bed o.k. without them but then she wouldn't fall asleep and she did cry but she really never asked for them. So no nap the first day. Then came bedtime. O.k. here we go, we may have to give in. She did fine at first and then she started crying. We just let her cry for awhile and then Steve and I talked about it and said, O.k. maybe we should just try and give her the blankies ONLY at naptime and bedtime. I decided to try and talk to her one more time. I went upstairs and talked in a very calm, sweet voice and told her that her cousins Faith and Sara, (she just saw them not long before this), they are big girls and they sleep in big girl beds just like Olivia, and they don't sleep with blankies. So Olivia should sleep in her big girl bed like Faith and Sara and just snuggle with her stuffed animals. I didn't think she would buy it, but she did. I left the room and didn't hear from her the rest of the night. WOWWWW!!!!!!! Steve and I were shocked. How did she get through the whole night without blankie? Thank you God so much. I am still in amazement, she continues to take naps and sleep through the night without her blankies. Throughout this past week she has mentioned wanting them a few times but hasn't made a big deal of it. I am still in shock. How could weaning her from her blankies have been that easy? Thank you, thank you, thank you God for making it that easy on us. I think I am more sad that she is weaned than she is. I think I miss her blankies. But not bad enough to find them again. It was funny because after she slept through the first night without them I told my mom that I wish I would have taken a recent picture of her with her blankies and that maybe I should give them back so I could get a picture. She was like, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, don't give them back now, you should have thought of that before, she's doing so well, you can't give them back now, she thinks they are gone. I was seriously sad about the picture and thought that I just had to have one last picture for keepsakes. Oh well, mom's right. It's too late. Boy will that trip to St. Marteens be much easier for us now that we don't have to fight with her that we can't dry her blankies on the plane or at the resort unless we stand with a hairdryer in the room all day. Uh, no thanks. O.k. I know that's the longest story in the world but I just had to get it out there. These blankets have been a huge part of our lives and I had to document about them. Thank you Lord for the blankies, for the memories they created for us, and thank you now that they are gone and that it was so easy getting rid of them. And thank you to my friend who mentioned that we should try to wean her, I thought you must be crazy at first to mention that as an idea, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. You inspired me to at least try it, and WE DID IT!!! We are blankie free!!