Stolen Gift

We are pretty much moved into our new home, and with very few misplaced items, most of which are hiding in the 20+ boxes we have left in our cellar.

However, while we were moving, we had 1 item stolen.

An expensive item. 

That didn't belong to us.

We don't know how it happened.  It was a baby item.  Sitting on the carport of our old home with many other baby and nonbaby items--and not a single other item was taken.

I had to spend $211 to replace it.

I'm not going to lie.  My mind went through the things I could have spent that money on.  A plane ticket to see Mamie, Christmas gifts, bills, groceries, etc, the list really goes on and on.

But I've decided to view it as a gift, not so much to the people that I replaced the item, but to the person(s) who stole from us.  Apparently they had a need so great that they turned to desprate measures.  They saw something we had out, took it, and are, hopefully, using it to protect their child.

Stream of Randomness

I "deactivated" from facebook last week. 

This morning I was thinking about what my facebook status would be, something along the lines of 30 Days of Thankfulness, Day 15, and I was thankful for snuggles with my kids, specifically for snuggle time with Bro.  We spent the morning snuggled up in an oversized chair, wrapped in blankets and reading books.  After a week of sickness, visits to the ped, the ER, a stomach virus, and a PICU stay, things that left me questioning what I had done to anger the gods, I have been able to really be thankful for all the blessings in my life.

That is the reason I "deactivated".  So much of my life was spent thinking of the next good facebook status I could put up.  I'd rather spend that time with my family, or writing on this blog, documenting our life so I can have something to look back on years from now, when the kids are teenagers and I am no longer a SAHM. 

As I look around our new home, our first ever home to own, I am struck by items I have grown up with.  Pieces from my Gram's home, pieces from Mamie & Puppa's home.  Pieces from my parent's homes.  Thi shouse feels more like home than anywhere I have ever lived.  Maybe because it is our very own home, but it some ways I think it is more than that.  The second we walked into this house, over 6 months ago, Daddy P and I loved it.  We looked at many homes after it, but always came back to this one.  It is us, it exudes us.  The people we bought it from are wonderful too.

I talked with Mamie this morning, after days of trying to reach her by cell and by the phone in her room, I finally got through.  She's fading.  Still there, still Mamie, but dementia and alshezimer's is slowly penetrating.  I wish I could close my eyes and be there with her.  I want to see her before she doesn't know me.  She has moments on the phone where she gets confused about who I am, but I just go with it.  I know she knows I'm a person who loves her, and that is what really matters.  I keep searching for  a decently priced plane fair, so I can get up there, but they are few and far between, and will be even more difficult to come by during the next month.  It's hard, I want to see her now, and I want to also be there with her as she dies.  She has a fear of dying alone, and I want to be there for her, with her.  Financially I can't be there multiple times.  The question that I've strugged with in the past hits  again, is it better to be there while she's alive and consious, or wait and go be with her at the end?  *sigh*  the cycle of life.

Bro was in the PICU last week.  A short stay, but a stay nonetheless.   Anytime I watch him struggle to breath and watch as the nurses, dr's and respiratory therapists work with him (thankfully he's never had to be intubated),  I am pushed to a place of direct pleading with God.  "Please God let him be ok", is usually my prayer, and once he is better (I can always tell this when the room is cleared back out) my mind goes to the parents of children who aren't going to be ok, parents who have children that are seriously ill and parents who have no resources to take care of their children.  Even in the midst of a storm, we are blessed.   One thing I've learned through bro's trips to the ER and the hospital is that, though it may not seem it at the time, it is better to have to wait.  When you are pushed through, when Dr's, nurses and other's are surrounding you there is more to fear.  Waiting means they aren't so worried.

 Bro is sleeping now, which means I should get back to the pile of boxes awaiting me in the cellar.  The house is put together for the most part, but there are many small things missing, hiding amid the chaos in the basement.

6 Years!!!

Dear Mr. Monk,

Today, (well Sunday, 2 days ago), marks 6 years of wedded bliss for us.  Many people in our society don’t use the word bliss to describe marriage, and while every moment may not be blissful, our life together certainly is.  This is a beyond hectic time in our lives right now, and I usually try to write you a meaningful letter of sorts on our anniversary.  With our upcoming move, Grammy out of town and Grampy working at church, you sick, me sick, K sick, laundry, packing, making dinners, making lunches, trips to Wal-Mart, trips to Kroger, trips to various stores to look for items for our new home, sleep(less) nights, work trips, trips to Atlanta, I’ve been exhausted.  So have you.  So this letter is a bit different.  Our marriage by the numbers:

15 Months Dating

7 months of engagement

6 years of Marriage

111 weeks of pregnancy, 3 kids

4 ½ years of breastfeeding (and still going)

7 Vehicles:

Your Blazer, Your little blue truck

My Camry

Our RAV 4, Our Town & Country

The Saturn

The Mazda

4 home rentals

1 Dream, FOREVER, Home!!!

100’s of great dinners…100’s of not so great dinners

1000’s of disagreements & 1000’s of the same fight

3 time’s that we have held a precious newborn baby and thought we could never love anything more.

3 deaths of Grandparent’s.

1,000,000’s of tears (mostly mine)

ZERO:  The number of times I’ve ever wanted to give up.

1,000,000,000:  The amount of kisses given and received.

50:  The amount of anniversaries I dream of celebrating with you!

Mr. Monk, Daddy P, I love you with every ounce of my soul.  I love that you change diapers, and clean poop off of carpet.  I love that you bring me home chocolate, Diet Coke and a gossip magazine when I’ve had a bad day.  I love how you play with our children, and that you love to snuggle with them at night.  I love that you don’t’ scowl when you come home and see piles of laundry, toys and dishes, and that you don’t ask me what I’ve done all day on those days!

Thank you, for being you, and for loving me just the way I am.

In case you don’t know it, or need a reminder, you are The Very Best Daddy (and Husband) of all.

 

2 Years

Dear Kenny,

I'm missing you right now.  I miss you everyday, but the selling of the house, seeing your furniture in my own house, and Mom's house, and Drew's house, and knowing I can't go back to Vernon St the way it was again, is like opening up a wound.  In some ways I want to go back in time.  Back to the old days.  When you were sitting in the rocking chair watching the news.  When you brought Mary up her morning cup of tea and toast, even back to our last trip with you and Mary living in the house, when I brought you tea and toast.  I know we can't go back, only forward, and if we went back I wouldn't have my sweet boy, whom I can't imagine life without., but I also want you here.  I want to take the kids and let them enjoy Bart's Ice-Cream and then go to Sweeties and buy them chocolate.  I want to take a picnic lunch to your bench at Look Park, and have you and Mamie sit there with us. 

It's been 2 years now.  2 years since I called your house, while I was outside pushing the girls on the swings, and Mamie told me you had fallen again, and were at the hospital.  I still feel a twinge out at the swing set sometimes, and think of that phone call.  2 years since Daddy P & I decided to pack our bags and drive up to see you, to bring your namesake to meet you.   K wasn't even 1.  They didn't want her in your hospital room, and told me if I brought her in, that you couldn't touch her.  I told them that wasn't going to happen.  There are some decisions that are made, ones you make in a split second, or even after months of planning, that you regret.  Our decision to pack and leave and go to you is one I will never regret, and in fact tell people it was one of the best decisions I ever made.  I loved being with you those days.  We delayed our return, and then delayed it again, just to have a little more time with you and with Mamie. 

I'd love a little more time now too.  We were more than blessed with a wonderful relationship and amazing times together, and for those years, really a lifetime of memories, I'm eternally thankful, greatful, etc..., but tonight I miss you.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

My Grandparent's house sold after being on the market for 3 days.  I never even wanted it to go on the market, and was filled with angst about it, so perhaps it was a blessing to go so quick.

I always said that I wanted to make one last trip to the house before it sold, and in a way I did.  Not the way I planned, but apparently God is a better planner than I, because in all honesty if I had known my last trip was my "last" trip I might not have left would have had a really hard time leaving.

I spent many, many, many days and night's at my Grandparent's house.  I remember the old back porch, kitchen and downstairs bedroom.  Even as a child I was sentimental.  I didn't want their house to change and campaigned against the updated look.  I knew it inside and out.  I knew right where ole Dibber the dog was buried, even though the exact spot is now under lots and lots of foliage.  When I was a little girl I knew where the best blackberries were, knew the best path down through the woods, over the creek and to the football field, figured out early on how to climb on the playhouse roof and how to peek through the fence at the pool next door.

I remember "helping" Mamie & Puppa in the garden.  The long stalks of rhubarb and the scent of the tomato plants. I remember Easter Egg hunts, and our visit the summer of Puppa's next to last birthday, though none of us knew it was his next to last at the time.  I remember the pictures of Puppa's football teams lining the staircase, and the first time I saw G, and then G & K climbing up and down those stairs.  My brother and I spent many nights fighting sleep in my Uncle's old bedroom, and broke a window at one point, by throwing something that shouldn't have been thrown.  I'm sure Mamie & Puppa were more than a little aggravated by that, and the time we broke a lamp by the stairs, and the time I sent Uncle D out onto the sunlight in the kitchen to "clean" it........and the list could go on and on.  If they were (and as an adult I can't imagine them not) aggravated by the endless list, we never knew it.  We were always welcomed back with open arms.  It was our home, and we knew it.  Over the bed in the room Uncle D and I shared when we were there was a cross stitch in a frame, done by my Great Grandmother.  "Come to our house for a week or a day, come to our house and don't go away"  My memories of Vernon St. cover all the decades of my life, and though the loss of our home is hard, the wonderful memories of a house filled with love sooths the loss. 

I flew up very suddenly a few months ago, and stayed there, right in Mamie & Puppa's old room.  Bro took a bath in the tub where I was bathed as a baby, and I breathed in the old familiar scent of the house.  I sat in Puppa's "cubby" and just looked at his things.  When it was time for me to go, to leave the house, and say goodbye to Mamie, my focus had to be on Bro, returning the rental car and surviving the flight home (I was sick with the flu, though I didn't know it at the time).  I had no time to think about anything other than my next step, and in a very odd sense feel this was all in God's plan.  If I had known it was my last time, it would have been difficult to walk out the door.

 Since shortly after the death of my Grandfather, the house has sat empty for the majority of the time. Mamie tried to live there after he was gone, but it just wasn't safe, and the time came for her to be moved.  I've been thinking about the saying, "Home is where the heart is", and Vernon St, though much loved by myself, had lost it's heart.  Our family was and is the heart of Vernon St and I can now I can see bits and pieces of it in my own home, in my parent's home, in my brother's home and even in my Aunt's and Uncle's home.

So long Vernon St.  It's been a good 30+ year run! (for me--the house itself was built in 1844)

Bro is 1!

Dear Bro,

I sit here nursing you tonight and wonder how a year can pass so quickly.  I remember the moments leading up to your birth with so much clarity, then remember seeing you for a moment and having you wisked away from me, finally getting to my room and waiting, waiting and waiting to hold you.  After your sister's were born I had them with me.  I had to wait, an agonizing wait, for you.  Six hours after you were born I was able to hold you.  My sweet baby boy.  Before you were born I didn't know what I would do with a boy, and once you got here I didn't ,and still don't,  know  what we would do without you. 

You were the smallest of my babies, weighing in at a mere 6 lbs and 5oz, but at 1 year you out weigh your sister's 1 year stats by at least 2 pounds. 

Weight:  Around 20lbs
Height:

• You wear a size 4 diaper.  Technically you can still wear a size 3 diaper, but K wears a 4, and it's easier if you guys have the same size ;)
• You have 6 teeth!  You have (MANY)  more teeth than either of your sister's did at this age.
• You wear size 12 month clothes.  18 month things are far to big, while most 9 month items are too small. 
• You are walking without any hesitation.  You took your first steps at 10 months, and can now run, climb and get anywhere you want to be.
• You are very verbal, and can say Mama, Dada, Dog, bark :). 
• You love to give kisses, but will only give them to girls or Cody!  Though I did see you give one to Daddy yesterday!
• You want to do everything your sister's do.  When they play out on the carport and I don't let you out with them, you get SO mad!
• You are all boy! You love to hammer, you love balls, you love when we roughhouse with you and you love cars.
• Some of your favorite foods are:  strawberries, blueberries, pasta, cherrio's, peanut butter crackers,  YoBaby Yogurt, chicken, rice.
• You are still nursing.
• I nurse you to sleep and then you sleep in a cosleeper until you get hungry and then you nurse.  I don't usually even wake up. 
• You have never taken a paci.
• You've never had a bottle. 
• You drink water out of a cup.
• You LOVE to take baths and take almost every bath with me.  At times you will take a bath with G&K, or a shower with Daddy.

Bro, my little hershey puff, the nickname given to you by G, there is so much I want to remember about your first year.  I wish I had documented each month, but life has been insanly busy and I've been so involved in living it that I haven't had time to write about it.  You are such an easy baby.  After your first few months of life and a few hospital visits and scares, you have been a healthy boy.  You don't cry much at all, and have an adorable smile and laugh. 

We all love you Hershey Puff, more than you will ever know.