The first year L was in daycare, we had a rough start to December that meant lots of holiday preparation ended up delayed, and then we were out of town the weekend before Christmas, spent all of Monday in the ER with a stubbornly clotted off central line, I had a crucial job interview on Tuesday followed by dinner guests (for whom we had had a lovely menu planned but instead ended up ordering pizza), and on Wednesday, just two days before Christmas and the last day of school before winter break, we went back to the OR to have a new line placed. We very nearly didn’t even have a Christmas tree that year, let alone finding time to purchase supplies for, make, and package up gifts for several teachers in the midst of all that. So the teacher gifts that I had intended to deliver pre-holiday break turned into New Year’s gifts instead, the homemade Christmas candy I had planned to include was more than two weeks old, and I decided to toss the stale chocolate and whip up some healthy treats.

“They’ll love it!” I thought to myself around 5 pm as I planned out a treat bag of pumpkin chia banana bread, all-natural energy bites, and homemade zucchini chips. After all, everyone is burnt out on sugar by the time January rolls around, and the last thing most of us need is another bag of sweets to immediately throw our resolutions off track.

By 9 pm I realized that zucchini chips take a heck of a lot longer to make than I had thought. Around 11 pm I became aware that we had no food-appropriate bags in the house, and just after midnight I finished assembling what I hoped everyone would perceive as carefully-planned hand-folded envelopes made of waxed paper (you poorly-prepared procrastinator crafty over-achiever, you!). At 7 am we realized zucchini chips are actually kind of weird the next day, and around 7:30 am Z made an emergency Starbucks run for a handful of gift cards as a sort of apology to stick in with a set of healthful edible gifts that I imagine mostly wound up in the trash.

Last year I was determined to do better. There are lots of ideas floating around out there on the interwebs; this list put together by a teacher has some great ideas, and there are always homemade go-tos like hot chocolate in a jar or this adorable snow day survival kit. But those are all peppered with sugar; and since I wanted to make sure L was included in putting together gifts for his teachers this time around, and because we have to carefully limit L’s sugar intake, I was once again tasked with finding a non-sugary gift. I also wanted to find something that would be appropriate for 3-year-old hands to help with, but that would actually look nice and ideally have some kind of usefulness. The thought certainly counts a great deal, but as the child of two teachers, I am well aware how appreciated it is to receive a gift that’s not just another addition to the box(es) of things you feel obligated to not throw away.

So I spent some time browsing and thinking, and came up with a list of non-sugary, homemade or some-assembly-required, preschooler-appropriate, likely-to-be-appreciated gifts. And since that criteria seems like it might not be so very specific to our family, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ideas:

A bundle of stovetop potpourri ingredients. Easy peasy for small hands to drop in a pretty bag, and it makes the whole house smell sooooo good (don’t forget to keep enough to make some for yourself!). Pair it with homemade Winter Warmers if you’re really feeling crafty.Photo credit: Mommypotamus

Homemade candles, sugar scrubs, or whipped body butter. Ok, so there’s some sugar in this one – but it’s not for eating! Alternately, you could easily buy these things and have your kiddo help you package them up in a pretty little mini-spa bundle. 

A handmade coffee cozy paired with coffee beans, a gift card to a coffee shop, or an edible treat if you’re not trying to avoid sugar. A seasoned teacher likely already has plenty of mugs, so give them a coffee-centric gift that won’t add to that collection! I’m whipping out a few of these crocheted cozies (pictured at right) this year because I can make them pretty quickly while holding a sleeping baby, but there’s also a no-sew version that may be a little easier to get the kids involved in.

Savory edible treats. If you love gifting homemade edibles but want to cut the sugar a bit, here’s a list of ideas that are not zucchini chips.

Handmade ornaments. This is a tricky one. It can be hard for a 3- or 4-year-old to make something that looks nice (sorry, L’s art box!), and the teacher’s suggestions linked above actually lists ornaments as something to avoid. But my teacher mother suggested this as one of her favorite kinds of gifts, because she put up a small tree in her classroom each year and could continue honoring her students gifts in that way each year without having to actually bring them home. So this might be one to tread carefully on, and may vary based on how your child’s school approaches holiday decor. If it sounds like an idea you’re interested in, you might check out these button ornaments (pictured below), which we’re planning to try our hands at on Christmas Eve this year.

Donate to a community organization that supports children. Donating on someone’s behalf can be a bit risky when it comes to gift-giving, but a teacher is almost sure to love a gift in his or her honor to a non-profit that supports local schools or promotes school readiness. To get the kids involved, have them make a card or draw a picture explaining the donation – and this will give them a chance to better understand charitable giving as well.

Or, you know, you can always pick up a few Starbucks cards. I have it on good authority that teachers love coffee, and also that it takes quite a bit of caffeine to keep up with my little monster!

What are your go-to teacher gifts? Teachers, what are your favorite things to receive?  Leave a comment below to help me add to this list!

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We’ve recently had our anatomy scan for #2, and apparently there’s this thing people do after anatomy scans that often involves a filled cupcake as the centerpiece of a big reveal. So, here we go, with much fanfare and drumroll and yada yada yada.

Dun da da dunnnnnnnnnn:

That’s right, that’s a filled cupcake with all the filling on the inside where it’s supposed to be.

That’s what this cupcake thing is about, right? No? Hmmm….

Due to our history, we also had genetic screening at 12 weeks and an ultrasound at 14 weeks to check on abdominal development, all of which looked great, so we went into the 20-week scan feeling pretty good and hoping the keep the streak going.

Of course, we couldn’t make things too easy on ourselves, so our results did come with an “Everything looks great! Except –,” at which point I think I died about 12 times in the span of half a second.

The “except” is that while most umbilical cords have two arteries and one vein, #2’s cord has only one artery and one vein. This is relatively common and happens in about 1% of pregnancies (so naturally it would occur in mine), and it occasionally correlates with some scarier chromosomal or cardiac or renal abnormalities — but thanks to the genetic testing we opted for, we’ve got a green light in the chromosome department, and all other organs checked out at the anatomy scan, so odds are high that this is one of those random things that just happen sometimes, and is unlikely to affect anything else.

It’s like my body is saying, “Heyyyyy, I know last time I effed up and made the umbilical opening too big — that’s my bad. I’mma go ahead and make this one a little extra small to make up for it, m’kay? That makes us even?”

No, body, not exactly. But keep the rest of your shit together this time and I might let it slide.

There is a chance that this two-vessel cord could impair growth as the pregnancy progresses, so we’ll be doing monthly ultrasounds from here on out to check #2’s growth and development. If all goes well, we’ll proceed as usual with the added bonus of a few extra chances to wave hello to our little. If anything worrisome appears on those scans, we may end up inducing a little early – but at the very least we should have a little more than two hours warning this time around!

I’m not going to pretend that I took this completely in stride – I’ve already spent plenty of time imagining all the sinister things that could be lurking beneath this seemingly-simple semi-complication, particularly given the fact that we received a completely clean report after L’s anatomy scan and look where that got us.

But I’ve also had the opportunity recently to spend a lot of time at work thinking and talking about the importance of being in the present; and I think this may be a reminder to me to embrace the present and save my worry for a time when it’s useful. Nothing is ever guaranteed; we were given some breathing room after that early round of testing, but here is a gentle reminder that we will never be completely in the clear because that’s not how life works – I imagine we know that better than most. But things are looking incredibly good for us right now; we know we can handle far more than we used to think we could, if things should take a turn for the worse; and it serves us best to focus on the fact that right now, I am pregnant and my baby is healthy, and to take each month as it comes.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the filling is brown. Delicious, glorious fudge. But #2 is a girl.

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I’ve heard a lot of special needs parents say, “I’d do it all again.”

I had a hard time believing them in some of our early months. I knew with every fiber of my being that I would go to the ends of the earth for my son, and I have never once questioned whether L is worth everything we’ve gone through for him, but if I had a choice — would I choose to do it again?

That question certainly complicates the fact that I’ve never imagined myself as the mother of an only child. For the longest time, we had our hands so full keeping our first child alive that we couldn’t even contemplate the added responsibility of a second child. As things gradually grew easier, as we learned to better navigate this medical life, a brother or sister for L began to seem more attainable – but that choice was clouded with what-ifs. In theory, we have no increased risk with a second pregnancy because gastroschisis is spontaneous and randomly occurring; but our eyes have been opened to medical realities we had never imagined before L was born, both our own and those of others, and some far more intense and all-consuming than what our family has experienced. And we know better than to expect we will never have any more bumps in the road with L.

And so, contemplating number two, we found ourselves faced with the real-life version of what has been only a hypothetical before. We knew exactly how difficult it could be if an unexpected complication arose, and we perfectly understood the potential threat to the current balance in our lives — and this time we weighed all those overwhelming negatives with the very real possibility of opting out before we ever got started.

It was never a matter of whether or not we could handle it; we have learned all too sharply over the years that you handle what you are given, because what other choice do you have? No, the real question was: Did we want to?

After much soul-searching, lengthy debate, and repeated decisions to delay just a little longer, and a little longer, and a little longer still, we ultimately decided that we did not want to let our decisions be guided by fear.

Number Two is due Nov. 3.