What This Picture Says

Sometimes you capture a picture that tells a lot about who you are.  Here's what this picture tells you.  My daughter loves her grandpa. Her grandpa loves to grill...even when it is freezing.  My daughter hates clothing...even when it is freezing.  I'm the kind of mom who will take this picture rather then put pants on her....The End

A Growing Love of Animals

Gigi has always had an interest in animals but she has been a little about them.  This week though she's had so much exposure that I've really seen her interest blossom into love.  It started at Grandpa Bryant's house.  Grandpa has a puppy at his house.  When we walked in the door she was nervous but when Grandma Deb showed her all the tricks he do G bear was hooked!  By the time we left they were best of friends.  Then we went to aunt Cheri's house.  Cheri has a horse who lives in her back yard...in her back yard.  When G bear saw that horse she was in LOVE, IN LOVE!  She walked right our and started patting away.  Then she was feeding the horse apples off the apple tree that her uncle Doug was collecting.  Can I just say there is nothing more beautiful than my daughter and a horse.  I asked her later if she was scared at all.  She told me no.  I said, "but a horse is so big." "But it is so beautiful she told me.  I had to touch it.". I need to get this girl lessons.  I just need to.  Then we went to my moms house where there are two cats. For years G has told me that she hated cats, just despises them. But a fee hours of being there and she was chasing Willow around to pet her.  Yesterday I took my daughter to see my sister.  Her boxer mix Troy has been part of our family for the last ten years.  Gigi loved him.  Every five minutes G would come out of the room she was drawing in to hug Troy.  It was adorable!  So glad this girl is getting over her fear of animals, and finding the joy they offer!

The Biggest Ice Cream

I took my kids to Macy's (the local grocery store) for ice cream last night.  What we really wanted to do was go to a girls soccer game but after driving around for an hour and not finding it, we gave up.  They had five sizes of cone and while the responsible part of myself wanted to insist they get a reasonable size the part that belongs to my father took over and told them to get whatever size they wanted.  My father left when I was seven and to be honest was often about as absent as you could be, but when we did occasionally get together, he was the man of grand gestures.  I remember being seven and him buying me the biggest blizzard size they sell at DQ.  When we got home, I got out of the car, tripped on the curb and spilled out the entire thing.  He bundled me back in the car drove back to DQ and bought another gigantic blizzard.  There is a part of me that realizes an entire life of that would have turned me into a nightmare....but the occasional spoiling, well that just made me feel special.  So last night when I let my kids pick and my son asked for the gigantic cone, I silenced the part of myself that wanted to say, there is no possible way you can finish that, and I let him order.  I hope someday it is a memory he cherishes like I cherish my double blizzard night. By the way Gigi picked the daddy Kong.  When it came out she was mad it was bigger than the picture.

Halloween

Something happened last month.  I packed up my van and me and my hubby drove two days to bring our kids home to the place of his birth and the place where most of our family still lives, Utah.  Then after three days of fun, I dropped him off at the airport so he could fly home and work for 30 days before flying back Thanksgiving week to do the whole thing again in reverse.  It is totally nuts, and with still 24 days to go I miss him but we had not brought our kids home in over years and we needed them to see their family.  Because we have so much family here and J only gets 7 day off vacation chunks, our trips are usually hurried to the point of being frantic.  This time thanks to the sacrifice of my mother in law who is letting us live in her basement for a month we have plenty of time to enjoy everyone's company.  Yesterday my sister in law brought her kids to my in-laws house so they could trick or treat with us.  It was lovely!  First off the weather was perfect.  Utah has had its share of snow Halloweens but this year it was 65 degrees easy.  None of my kids needed a jacket.  Meanwhile at home the temps were in the high 30s with rain and sleet...ouch!  High lights of the night included, being with cousins, having my brother, mom, and sister in law to help carry Cheetah, the house that had hot chocolate, donuts, and candy for kids and parents (let this be me someday when we have crawled out from under our debt), the Elsa who walked passed us and said to my Anna, "Anna I got nerds, what did you get?".

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day - October 15th

I'd never heard of this until I joined MOPs almost four years ago.  I was pregnant with Cheetah and I went to this mops  meeting in October...it had to be the 14th, because two days later my water broke on my birthday.  A lady got up and shared the story of losing an infant daughter.  Then they put on the saddest song I've ever heard and anyone in the group who had suffered a pregnancy or infant loss or had a loved one who had went up and lit a candle for that person.  I don't think there was a dry eye in the house although being that I was 27 weeks along it put me in sort of a nervous mood.  The irony that just two days later my water would break and I'd suddenly find myself not knowing completely how safe my little baby would be is never lost on me.  The two following years when the day came around again I was always rushed with the flood of negative emotions I felt in those first early weeks of Cheetahs life, the fear, the anger, the anxiety for her well being, but I was also hit with the realization and relief that everything had been OK.  That I lived in a time and a place where she made it and has not only meet every expectation placed upon her but exceeded it with tornado speed and cheetah cunning.

Last year in October I'd just found out I was pregnant again.  I was tired, sick, and worried about what was going to happen that summer when Dr. J left for Kenya.  I felt the weight of Cheetah's birth but I was so overwhelmed with my summer worries I had little time to think about it.  I did cry through my Infant Loss Mops meeting and I did light a candle that night at 7pm in remembrance of my neighbor Leslie's baby Karalyn that had died just a little bit before on the day of her birth.  Then a few weeks later I loss the pregnancy.  It was horrible, but with time I finally started to clear a little from the fog and while the stress and anger of that moment started to not rule ever moment, it was replaced with stress of planning a trip for six to Kenya for the summer.  I still felt sadness though.  I remember when we were celebrating Captain G and Peach's birthdays with a bunch of people in the compound and I thought, I would be having a baby today.  One year later I can tell you that for the most part I'm ok but every once in a while I'll see something that will remind me and I get sad.  Last week it was Dr. J's grandpa's book sitting on the shelf of books I was dusting.  We were going to give the baby his grandpa's middle name.

This week it came up in conversation with Dr. J.  We were talking about our Kenya trip and Dr. J asked me if I'd rather gone on the trip or had the baby.  I turned quickly toward him and stared at him with all the intensity a mother of four can muster at 10:30 at night while folding laundry.  There was about six very awkward seconds of silence which he completely misread and said, "It's a hard choice right?"  And then I gave him a look of utter disbelief and I saw the realization dawn on him before I'd even said through a choked voice, "Not in the least, not a hard choice at all, but it's not a choice I got to make."  Don't get me wrong, I had a great summer, a once in a life time experience, but if I'd been allowed to choose even with all the stress and the sleepless nights, and the being left behind for the summer, I would have chosen the baby.  It is the miracle not lost on me that God gave me love for my children while they were just a small group of cells in my womb.  When I'm puking and tired, when my boobs hurt and I'm so exhausted I can't make it until noon without a nap, when I just feel like garbage my life is buoyed with "A Heart Full of Love".

I think it is something hard for my husband to grasp and I think it's why when faced with the sadness of a miscarriage there is a sanctity in the relationships you have with other woman, many who have felt some kind of loss related to reproduction.  Whether it be the loss of a child or infant, a miscarriage, a birth experience that left them feeling bruised and broken, infertility, or a child running away, we are joined by our love and we are also joined by our loss.  This morning before the kids got up while my house was quiet and my mind was empty of any of the stresses that come with the day, I lit a candle for that little lost baby of mine and I also lit a candle for Karalyn.  I said their names aloud and I had a cry as I thought of all the heartache these losses bring us.  I thought of the sisterhood of my woman friends and family, the comfort they brought me when I was in such a dark place, and I thought on any sadness they might be experiencing themselves right now.  I said a little prayer for us all, then I wiped my eyes, blew out the candles, and got ready for the day.
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Sia

A few years ago I found the show Six Feet Under and binged watched the entire five seasons in just a few weeks.  It is a dark difficult adult drama but there were so many mirrors to my own life that I felt physically attached to all the characters and I mourned and celebrated with them.  Then I got to the last episode.  I always morn the end of a series that I adored.  I feel like I'm about to lose some friends and then there is always this moment where I'm like, "What if I've finished watching the last television show I'm ever going to enjoy."  Isn't that hilarious, sad, a little pathetic?  Who even thinks like that?  But here I was at the last episode of Six Feet Under and I was a little stressed about how it was going to end and then in the final four minutes it had the best ending that I have ever seen on any movie or TV show.  I cried like a baby.  Then I re-watched it again, and again, and then I got out my iTunes and I immediately bought the song Breathe Me, by the artist Sia.  I'd never heard of her before that moment and suddenly I was obsessed.  I mentioned this to my sister-in-law last year when I was telling her how lucky I thought she was to live in Vegas where everyone comes to do concerts and I was giving her a list of people I wanted to see.  She told me her cousins wife Aja plays Sia to put her baby to sleep...this Aja happens to be Aja Volkman, of Nico Vega and the child she is putting to sleep at night is the daughter she had with her husband Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragon.  I figure if Sia is good enough to put their baby to bed then she's good enough for my babies as well and so while I feel a little shame about my pop music obsession I never feel guilty about Sia.

Today I'm feeling a little down.  I don't really have a reason, I just am.  It might be slightly related to the fact that my latest binge show has been Bones, and I finally caught up to the current season.  Then I watched the season opener of season 10.   It's put me in sort of a mood.  Or it might be that my birthday is in ten days and Dr. J is still playing his RPG game that he has been playing since two of my birthday ago.  To date that game has ruined two birthdays, two Thanksgivings, two Christmases and whole lot of my free time.  Nothing like looking back at your Christmas pictures and seeing your husband on his phone in every single one.  Look I love my husband and he has a lot of great traits but RPG's are of the devil.  Anytime you are willing to pass up just about anything because you feel an obligation to your guild (people you've never met in real life whose lives have no real baring on yours)...well it should be a sign you have a problem.  Maybe it is because while I'm super excited about a little life change I have coming up this week I'm also a little nervous.  Maybe it just has to do with dreading the 27 hour drive it is going to take to get me to my family.  I'm super excited to go and see them but 27 hours in the car is a long time!  Plus if I want to see my sister I need to throw another 14 hours each way on top of that, and people I want to see my sister.  I've seen her second daughter exactly twice and have never seen her baby who will be a year at Thanksgiving.  I should exercise but I just don't feel like it and so I've been self medicating with candy and bits of salted pork.  I wish I was kidding.  I'm not.  Since I'm in a little funk I decided to do some Sia love.  My marathon started with Breathe Me and ended with her current hit Chandelier.  Man this lady is amazing, her voice, her tempos, her lyrics, her instrument choices, everything, it just squeezes my heart.  Maybe not the best pick me up but definitely makes me feel.  I read somewhere that she suffers from depression so severe that she's considered suicide at times.  That makes me seriously sad and I wish her better days ahead but there is no denying that she is able to capture a wealth of emotion and push it into pop music and that people respond.  Sia is definitely someone I want to see in concert.

No Spend September in Review

So we are in October now.  My husband made a comment that he noticed the 1st of October I jumped out of the house and ran to the nearest store...which honestly was sort of true...I'd been planning Halloween costumes all month and I wanted to get to Joann's and get started.  If I'm completely honest I did cheat twice.  At the very end of August we'd bought new phones from Wireless Republic.  They got to our house in October and it became pretty obvious to me pretty fast that while they weren't as delicate as the IPhones we'd previously owned that I should probably put a cover on them.  I got these super cheap covers off ebay.  The two covers cost me less than $12.  They have been great.  They are a lot less bulky than our previous otter boxes but seem to work about as good.  I have dropped my phone at least six times and my phone has been perfectly safe.  At the end of the month I also broke down and bought Halloween Costumes for Peach and Cheetah.  I had a 40% off cartwheel that was going to expire and I knew I would lose money by waiting.  If you ignore those two splurges though the month went great.  Overall I saved $300.  It might not sound like a ton, but that's over $3000 a year I spend on going out and impulse buys.  Would it be possible to save all that money...probably not, because occasionally our kids actually do need something new (Like the coat I had to buy Captain E this week.  I guess I can't feel too bad about it.  He's fit into the same winter coat for the last three years.  He was eventually going to have to grow out of it.)  But the thing I did like about the month was it really did make me consider my purchases, especially since being stuck at home left a lot of time on my hands to do things like clean I was a little horrified by how full our house is of stuff we never use.  I realize we live in a consumption economy, I mean literally.  The frightening thing is that if we (The population of the US) don't spend money we don't have on stuff we don't need the economy literally crashes out.  It is seriously scary, so I realize this is bad for the economy advice but for my personal economy I think being a little more thoughtful about my purchases would serve me well.  I want to point out it's not like I'm some crazy spender, spender.  Dr. J and I lived for 9 years making almost no money at all so I know how to not spend but since we started making money I buy a little here and there and I realize now that stuff really adds up.  I would totally do this again.  In fact I've been Dr. J that we should do a no spend November :)