November 2007 Archives
We finally scanned Maddie's letter to Santa. Click on the picture to see the notes on Flickr.
Front of letter
Back of letter
When you are making out your holiday card list this year, please include one to the following:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001
Also, Xerox is doing something great this year. If you go to this web site, www.letssaythanks.com, you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and send it to a soldier that is currently serving our Armed Forces. You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to someone in need of a "pick me up" during the holidays. It's free and it only takes a second.
A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids' Table
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I'm having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let's talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won't tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren't.
MOM: I'm angry! I'm angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I'm angry, too! We're angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I'm crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don't tell the kids.
For my friends and family back in the South Bend/Mishawaka/Granger area:
And here's some more...
The Onion: U.S. Military Wasting All Its Victories On Notre Dame
As the countdown to Thanksgiving starts (how many days left to do all that baking?) I've been thinking a lot about the topic of being grateful and giving thanks for all the things I have in my life. Then I heard this and it put it all into focus for me:
Our happiness is in direct proportion to our gratitude,
not to our current circumstances.
And that's one of the reasons I started doing Grateful Friday. Times are good. Times are bad. But if we can take just one moment out of each week to list the things we're grateful for at that moment, then we can actively work towards our own happiness. And isn't that all anyone really wants anyway? To be happy?
That being said, here are the things for which I'm grateful this week:
- The general good health of our families.
- Being able to spend two more months with Sindri after he was diagnosed with cancer. I wish it could have been longer, but I'm happy to have been able to spend some time with him and pamper him a little. I have friends who had to put their dogs to sleep immediately after they were diagnosed. In a way, we were lucky.
- Pulling off my mom's surprise 50th birthday party last weekend. My brother and sister and I have been planning it for a couple of months and we were SURE she would find out about it beforehand. You have to know that my mom is the one who still secretly unwraps her gifts under the Christmas tree to see what she's getting. She then secretly wraps them up again and acts surprised Christmas morning. We had to hide our presents to her every year. She's a hard one to fool. This time, though, I think we did it. We gathered about 40 family members, even distant ones, in a room and surprised her when she walked in the door. I know she was surprised because she turned bright red and couldn't speak for a few minutes. The biggest surprise, though, was seeing all three of her kids together. We flew my brother down to Atlanta and then we all went straight to the party on Sunday. My mom had no idea I was in town, much less Rob. It was having all of us together again and I think that meant more than the party itself.
- The fact that Bill has a job that makes him happy, and allows me to stay home with the kids during the day. There are times when I jokingly complain about being a frazzled mommy, but in truth I do realize how lucky I am to be able to spend each day with the girls and see each and every little milestone and funny thing they do.
- Blackberry jam. Mmmmm.
- The fact that Maddie likes pumpkin pie/muffins/cake just like I do. She thinks it's great to point it out every time. "We're like each other!" It's great for me because she'll each pumpkin muffins all day long -- a wonderful thing when your 4 year old refuses to eat any vegetables at all. (Although I've been sneaking them in as an ingredient lately and she has no idea.)
- Watching the girls with their Uncle Rob. They only see my brother about once a year, so I was surprised at how excited they were when he was in town last weekend. In fact, they were fighting with one another over who was going to sit next to him at dinner. It's nice knowing that they remember him, even at this young age, when they see him so rarely.
- "Sweater weather" in Atlanta.
- Doing fun, wacky projects with the girls. Today we made construction paper handprint turkeys, and alien hats out of tin foil. It's fun to watch their little imaginations run wild when they're drawing or dressing up. Josie makes the funniest alien too.
- The holiday season. It's my favorite time of year.
- Hearing the girls sing Lollipop by Mika in the car for the 10,000th time.
- Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Lattes
- That feeling you get when you stand back and look at your house after you've spent an entire Saturday doing yard work. Pure pride.
- A really good, and easy, fudge recipe. I took some to my mom's party and people kept coming up and asking me about it. That was a new experience for me.
- Blake's birthday. Happy Birthday! We love you!! :)
We took Sindri in this morning and had him put to sleep. Hard, hard morning.
He had gotten quickly worse over the last few days. What started as a hacking cough turned into a shortness of breath, then a rasping, growling sound when he breathed. He hadn't eaten a thing for three or four days, and could no longer sleep at night. Because it was harder for him when he was lying down, he would wander the halls into the late hours, shoulders slumped and wheezing, occasionally letting out a shrill bark at nothing. He didn't want to go out, didn't want to play, wouldn't even eat a piece of cheese, one of his favorite snacks. Alecia and I knew what needed to be done, but that didn't make it any easier.
We called our vet this morning to see if there was anything we could do for his pain or discomfort. As we suspected, there wasn't. So we set an appointment.
It was heartbreaking. We left the kids at the neighbors and brought Sindri in. They inserted a catheter, then administered a sedative. Next came the solution that stopped his heart. He didn't seem to feel anything, but it wasn't like falling asleep, either. He never closed his eyes or seemed to settle in, he just stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating, while his whiskers continued to twitch for a few minutes.
The whole thing only took about a half hour. The rapid pace of it all almost made it worse. It felt like there should have been more ceremony to the whole thing. On the way home, all I could think is that we should've at least spent the day at the park first, should've tried to give him some other foods he might like, should've done anything to send him out with more love and attention. Instead, it was too quick, too clinical.
The girls are fine with the whole thing, mainly because they don't understand. They know Sindri's not coming back, that he was sick and hurting--and now he's dead, and his pain is gone. But do they understand any of that? Of course not. I fully expect to get the question in a day or two: "Daddy, when's Sindri coming home?" We did the best we could to explain things without lying to them, but it all went right over their heads, and that's probably a good thing.
I knew it would be emotional, but I didn't expect the guilt I'm feeling, just the sadness and loss. It's harder than even I thought it would be, but at least it's all done. We can get on with things now. Focus on the holidays, focus on getting Mallory to lose some weight, focus on everything else going on. Hard day, but things will get better.
Thanks to everyone who's supported us through this difficult time.
All of a sudden, Maddie starts belting out,
What's love got to do,
got to do with it
What's love got to do,
got to do with it...
I was completely shocked. I had no idea she was even paying attention to the song, much less learning the words. She started singing really loud and dancing too. I could hear people chuckling and a few came around the corner to see her. It was a hilarious sight seeing a little four year old girl sing a Tina Turner song with all her heart.
Josie set about drawing pictures of what she wants, but Maddie decided she was going to actually write a letter to Santa. I helped her spell the first few words ("Dear Santa, I want..."), but then I left her on her own with the rest. Here's what she wrote:
A TTETE BAR
Do you know what that says? A Teddy Bear! She then drew a bear with dots (she said it has to have polka dots). On the back she drew a robot and his giant worm friend. (Hmm. Gonna have to check ToysRUs for that toy.)
Forgive me for my proud mom moment, but Maddie is reading! It started out a few months ago as "c-a-t" and "d-o-g" but it's now progressed to even more words. She'll read things to me when we're in the car or if we see a sign in the store. I bought her some Nora Gaydos books to see if they interested her, and she absolutely loves them. We've almost finished the entire set. At night we'll sit down together and she'll read one of the stories to Bill and Josie and I. You should see the look on her face once she's done. She is SO proud of herself. Whenever she reads a full story without any help, she gets to put a sticker on the inside cover of that book. She works so hard to get that sticker and it absolutely makes her day when she does. I've walked into the playroom a few times to find her reading the little stories to Josie. I'm glad it makes her so happy and that she's so excited about it.
On Sunday, we took a trip up to North Georgia to Burt's Pumpkin Patch. It's a little over an hour away, but it's gorgeous there and we go every year. Amicalola Falls are right across the road. We went with my mom and sister this year. We had fresh pumpkin pie and apple cider. Maddie loves pumpkin pie, just like her mommy. It's surprising because she hardly likes anything these days. I even made pumpkin muffins the other day and we had to cut her off because she just kept eating so many! The girls had picked out some medium-sized pumpkins until they saw the really tiny, miniature ones and then they were decided. Bill and I each pick out ours -- pumpkin carving is pretty intense and competitive in our house so this is a big deal.
Aunt Mic and Nana also got a chance to attend the Smyrna Fall Festival with us. We walked there and took Sindri with us so he could get a little exercise and see people (he's a very social dog.) Nana and Mic met us there with... Mic's new potbellied pig, Percy. My sister got it as a birthday present from her husband and coworkers. She's only 7 weeks old and so very tiny.
We were quite the spectacle with a three-legged dog and a pig. At one point we were standing and had people coming up to us constantly to pet both animals. We were the local petting zoo. The girls loved playing with Percy at home too. Once she got used to us, she walked around and tackled some Barbies and explored. Bill was very stoic about the whole situation. He kept saying, "What's the big deal? It's a pig!" Well, guess who got down on the floor cuddling with Percy by the end of the night? Her favorite spot was, um, sitting with Bill.
Monday evening was the Halloween Party at Turner. They host a party for Turner employees and their families every year. I say party, but it's really more of a festival. They had games and prizes and a DJ and a haunted house, a magician, and the like. The girls got to practice their trick-or-treating skills and had already collected quite a bit of candy well before Halloween. Their favorite part, though, seemed to be the DJ. They spent a long time dancing on the front steps of one of the buildings. Here's a little video clip of the girls' latest dance moves. The ones at the beginning were at Turner:
By the time Halloween came around, Maddie and Josie were already pros at the whole trick-or-treating thing. Uncle Todd came over and we pulled the girls around in their little wagon until we got to each house. Sindri got to go in his Halloween costume too. See if you can guess what he was this year:
If you guessed a tripod, you're right! He was such a great sport and did his best to get around, even though he was pretty tired by the end of the evening. Josie got through about 3 houses and decided she was too tired and just wanted to sit in the wagon and eat candy. We took the girls up our street and down the next one parallel to our house, passing our neighbors' Haunted House decorations on the way. Each year they put up some really elaborate decorations, including zombies coming out of the ground, tombstones, a giant casket, zombie bunnies and various figures, most of which you're not sure if they're real or not and will jump out at you.
The only bad thing about the evening is that only one out of every five houses was passing out candy. All the rest were dark. We live in an older neighborhood and a lot of the elderly residents don't hand out candy. The good thing, though? A lot of the houses with candy were owned by young couples, some with babies, who had just moved in. It's great seeing our neighborhood go from tired to new. A lot of the houses are being used as starter homes, like ours. Plus the location so close to all the construction in downtown Smyrna Village is an added benefit.
Thursday and Friday of this week were pretty low-key compared to earlier in the week, but that was nice too. Today we spent most of the day doing yard work. The weather is perfect. I wish it would stay like this for the next few months. Starting next weekend, we'll be busy almost every weekend until Christmas. It's crazy, but I still love this time of year more than any other.
