A Gift...

…from the God of the Universe. That’s what occurred to me while I sat in the darkness cradling my sleeping baby boy--his pudgy hands clasped over his round belly that gently rose and fell with soft baby breaths, and his angelic face illuminated in the dimness of the nightlight. My heart ached as I thought of how we hadn’t really planned him, but the laws of nature and God’s sovereign plan came together despite ourselves. We flirted with the odds that single solitary time, knowing where babies come from, knowing that someday we wanted another child, knowing that we didn’t think we were ready for it just yet.

Then I wondered for the next couple weeks. Dear Hubby dismissed me when I pointed out the possibility. I tested at the first possible opportunity. Negative. I was relieved. Dear Hubby was unfazed, unconcerned. He didn’t believe in the first place that it was a concern. I resumed drinking Diet Coke. I scrubbed the kitchen floor with ammonia and other assorted chemicals. I dyed my hair. I wished I’d gone ahead and taken the Sudafed I had wanted a week or so earlier when I was fighting off a miserable cold. But despite the negative test result, there was still a nagging “perhaps?” in the back of my mind. I waited another week, counting the minutes, impatiently waiting for the next opportunity to test again. This time it was positive. There were definitely two lines. I didn’t know how to respond. I handed the test stick to Dear Hubby and waited for his response, which was something like, “Hmm” as in—“Well whadda ya know?” We didn’t say much else about it, but went on about our workdays while it began to soak in. And I tested again the following week for good measure.

We wanted to try for a girl whenever we were ready. There’s some science behind it. It worked when we conceived Dear Daughter. I counted the days of my cycle and factored in the day we conceived and I knew we had “blown it.” I hoped and hoped for the next 20 weeks that the ultrasound would show a girl. It showed a boy. It became clear that none of this was going the way we would have planned it.

“Thank God none of this went the way we would have planned it,” I thought to myself as I sat in the dark holding my beautiful, perfect baby boy and contemplating how he came to be…amazed at how God often blesses us with so much more than that for which we ask (Ephesians 3:20)…amazed at how God knows us so much better than we even know ourselves…that His ways are Perfect. Amazed at the beautiful gift that is my son…a gift that no “accident” or simple force of nature could produce…a gift from the God of the Universe who somehow saw fit to create this child and place him in my arms in the midst of it.

Dear Daughter is Smarter Than I Am

Dear Daughter: "A New Moon is when you can't see it"

Me: "huh?"...as in duh?

Dear Daughter: "A New Moon is when you can't see it, and a full moon is when it is all the way round, and a crescent moon is when you see just part of it."

Me: silently wondering to myself if she was right about the "new moon" thing; I never was a science buff and they didn't teach me this in grad school. I knew Dear Daughter knew how to identify full moons and crescent moons, but I'd never heard her talk about a "new moon" since I'd not taught her that.

Dear Daughter repeats herself more loudly as I sit in a stupor thinking all these thoughts

Me: "Where did you learn that stuff?"

Dear Daughter: "From my Leap Frog book!"

Me: thinking to myself that my daughter is an amazing sponge of knowledge and is either a really really smart just-turned-three-year-old or else I am a really really stupid thirty-something-year-old...or perhaps both

Next thing I know, she'll start talking about a "Waning Gibbous." I better go back to pre-school.

Precious Moments

Dear Daughter had her first experience eating at McDonald’s this weekend, and she thought it was pretty neat. Yes, it’s true that my just-turned-three-year-old had never stepped foot into a fast food restaurant until last weekend. You may think that’s “un-American,” but I say that in spite of loving what my country is about, there are more than a few “American ways” that I don’t love.

Nevertheless, we were out doing errands, and as I’ve mentioned before, Dear Daughter LOVES to go places. We were having fun lollygagging a bit as we shopped like girls do (I’m enjoying that part of Dear Daughter being three years old). Our errands ran into lunch, and we were getting hungry. I suggested we get some lunch, and of course she wanted to go to Applebee’s, which is just about the only restaurant she’s been to except TGI Friday’s once for her last birthday.

I didn’t want to spend that much time and money on lunch, so I suggested McDonald’s. Dear Daughter replied, “McDonald’s? What’s McDonald’s?” And that’s when I realized that Dear Daughter had never been there, nor had she been to ANY fast food restaurant yet. So told her they have chicken fingers like Applebee’s, and she was excited to go to a new place. After I placed our order I heard a little voice at my side timidly say, “…and a drink!” I think her favorite part of eating out is that we let her have Sprite, so she wanted to be sure I didn’t forget about that part. As I was grabbing napkins and ketchup at the condiment bar, she was visibly excited as she eyed the tray of food on the counter above her head. “Oh boy!” she squealed. “We are having a FEAST!” I laughed out loud and resisted an urge to grab her up in my arms and squeeze her.

We headed to a booth and scooted to together on one side of it. I sat part of the time with my arm cradled around her side, holding her close to me. She sat like a “big girl” on the bench, without a booster chair, and she seemed so tiny and lost at the big table. I was savoring the sweetness of the moment, and the image of the two of us pressed together on the bench bumping hands in the French fry box and sharing soda pop from the same straw made me feel a little like a love-struck teenager. I pondered the analogy of being in love with my little girl with all the intensity of a love-struck teenager at times, but with a love that goes so much deeper and is much more mature…and forever. Then I kissed her chubby little cheek and whispered in her ear half-teasing, but more than a little serious, “Please don’t ever grow up and leave me!” She looked in my eyes with all the reassurance a carefree, almost-preschooler is capable of mustering, and replied with the words I’ve said to her so many times, “It’s okay, Mommy. I’ll always come back!” And my heart hurt with that familiar bittersweet ache once again.

Goodbye, My Friend

Typically I reserve the main topics of my posts for the wee ones in the family. Tonight, however, the eldest and feeblest of the household gets the place of honor. Tonight I had to follow through with something that I have dreaded for a very very long time. I prayed many times that Geriatric Cat would just go to sleep one night or day and not wake up. I hoped, against the odds, that when his time was up, he would just go peacefully and that I would never have to find myself in the position of deciding when is the right time for him to die. After all, I believe God is the author of life, and it seems that if He is the one who breathed life in my lifetime furry best friend, then He is the only one with the authority to end it. *sigh* I also know that God gives humans charge over the animals.

So, in the midst of this struggle, I gave into what seemed was the only humane way out for Geriatric Cat. I think he would have held on for a very long time, because he’s just got that kind of determination. But the reality is that he was blind, or nearly so, with one eye completely obscured by a glaring red internal cyst and the other one cloudy—probably due to cataracts. We suspected he was deaf or nearly so, as he often seemed unresponsive to audible sounds and our voices. He was suspected by our dear veterinarian to have lymphoma. He had what we all guessed was some nerve damage due to the probable cancer. This led him to paw at his mouth viscously after eating. He was skin and bones, having dropped from 13+ pounds in his prime of life to 7lbs and 15 oz. He no longer groomed himself much, and did very little but sleep on his favorite couch. Often he would have jitters and shakes in his sleep that would get so violent at times that he would fall off the back of the couch with a thud, and sometimes not even wake up. More than once I watched this happen and thought the old man had died. Each time I tiptoed to have a closer look, I could see his sides rising and falling with breath and I felt both relief and sorrow. While I didn’t want him to die, I also wanted him to go on his own. But he didn’t. I held on only as long as I could before I began to question what was more humane: to be allowed to live or to die.

He continued to have his good moments all the way to the end. He still got his occasional “all is well with the world” look about him at times while he perched on his couch. He still became animated and pranced across the vinyl kitchen floor when he heard the telltale sounds of the refrigerator opening and a can of his food being opened. And he still frequently joined the hubbub that happens constantly on the floor with a just-turned-three-year-old and a crawler. He loved to sit right in the middle of the activity, and he always put up with chubby little fingers poking and patting him. Just a couple days ago he was right in the middle of our floor activity and Dear Son got his chubby little fists wrapped around his neck in a death grip. Geriatric Cat just sat stone still--eyes a bit wild with anxiety—but patiently waited to be released. He never nipped at the kids or acted cross at them in spite of their raucous loving.

I can’t remember life without Frederick, and that is because I’ve lived more years of my life with him than I have without him. I spent more than twice as many years sharing my bed with him than I have with my husband. He came into my life before I even had a driver’s license. He traveled cross-country with me at least twice. He saw me through every fleeting teenage and adolescent romance and the heartbreak that came along with them. He came with me on and every move. He was my best friend at my lowest points in life, seeing me through times that I didn’t believe I had a single human friend in the world.

In the peak of his life, he was full of personality. He greeted people at the door and loved to “talk.” Sometimes he started the conversations, and sometimes he just went along with the ones others started, but he always had something to say. While he never cared much for being held, he loved to be right next to his humans. Sometimes he loved to sit in a human lap, as long as he was the one who initiated it. I can’t count the number of people who told me they had never met a cat like Frederick. People who professed to be “cat haters” ended up falling in love with Frederick. He was just charming and charismatic like that.

But tonight he gets to rest. He doesn’t have to be blind or deaf anymore. He doesn’t have to fall off the back of the couch anymore. He doesn’t have to paw at his mouth anymore or have any more pain. I don’t know if animals go to Heaven, but I’m soothed by believing that at least some of them do. And I imagine Frederick in Heaven, young and plump again with two big green shining eyes, chasing butterflies on green grassy hills. Maybe somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge Frederick is experiencing Heaven, and when I get there one day, we will find each other and he will chat me up something fierce and sleep on my pillow again just like old days.

I miss you, Old Man!

Motherhood IS a Mental Disorder!

A year goes fast these days, and the impending change from summer to fall seems to be triggering lots of memories of life one short year ago. The weather has been hot hot hot this summer. Yet, while people around me complain of this being one of the hottest summers that they can remember, my own memories are a bit different. Bertha the Beluga Whale was looming large a year ago, and while we may well have not hit the century mark on the thermometers last year, as we frequently have this year, the sheer mass of my body and the amount of energy it took to create another person made it feel much hotter to me last summer. Not to mention that the 90 degree days hung on well into October as my mass continued to increase rapidly.

During our weekly field trip to the library this morning, I was pondering the unfathomable metamorphosis that turned my two year old toddler into a three year old preschooler and estimated that it was roughly a year ago when we began these weekly library outings. Sure enough, when we brought our materials to the checkout desk, the librarian requested to verify my contact information. "We have to do it once per year,"€ she said. Apparently the anniversary date was just a few days ago. The thought of a year going so fast nearly triggered a panic attack. I then had multiple flashbacks of last fall when I took Dear Daughter to the library and struggled to get up and down off the floor while digging for books on the children's shelves. And then the traumatic flashbacks got worse as I remembered those awful sensations of never being able to keep my pants up while pregnant. Why in the world can't someone create maternity clothes that don'™t have to be either too tight or too loose? I spent the last three months of pregnancy wavering between the dilemmas of drawing attention to my big ole€™ caboose busting out of my pants seams or dealing with the crotch of my pants hanging down to my knees.

On the topic of triggering memories, I was taking inventory last night of my stash of unisex baby clothing when I found a pair of blue jeans that Dear Daughter was wearing when she started walking. They are sized 12-18 months, the size that Dear Son is currently pushing into. And then I had a mind-warp-moment thinking of a picture in our scrapbooks of Dear Daughter wearing those particular jeans as she strutted around the cul-de-sac in front of our house, excited over her newly learned skill of walking. It was late fall, there was a chill in the air, and the leaves were at their peak of color. I considered our current weather, teasing just a bit about fall being near again, and then I let my mind go there--for a split second I imagined Dear Son repeating this scene in the same blue-jeans, and I wanted to scream, "STOP!"€

Apparently, in addition to losing brain cells, motherhood also causes time to race and mental illness to set in--especially that type of mental illness characterized by panic attacks, racing thoughts, and traumatic flashbacks. And let us not forget about the voices in my head.

Note to self: when assessing for an anxiety disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or Schizophrenia, consider the differential diagnosis of "Motherhood." Perhaps "€œMotherhood" should just be added to the DSM-IV and be granted the mental disorder labeling it most certainly deserves. *sigh*

Here'€™s some new pics from the loony bin. Dear Son is sprouting a new tooth and a second tooth is following close behind. We broke out the teething biscuits. As I watched him practicing aiming for his mouth, I had more flashbacks of Dear Daughter at this stage. So here'€™s a picture of each of them at this stage of life. Dear Daughter was actually only 6 ½ months old in her picture while Dear Son is 8 ½ months old. While he's been slow to get teeth, he's not been slow with his motor skills.



Here are some pics of the Demolition Man plowing into his big sister's train set. He's just GOT to check EVERYTHING out, and don'€™t even THINK about stopping him! He is much bolder than his big sister was at this stage. He will GI Joe his way out of the room and around the corner with all the courage of an army man in the midst of war, on a mission to check out his surroundings. I've had to chase him into the office to get him out from under the computer desk (power cords galore!) when he slithered his way out of his bedroom and around the corner, and I've had to chase him out of the bathrooms and kitchen many times as he finds his way around the entire house. He likes vinyl flooring because he can get some real tummy speed going. I caught him just in time the other day when he made it around the corner of the living room all the way across the kitchen and under the table on a mission to snack on the leftovers under big sister's chair. This one is definitely going to keep me busy, and I have no doubt life is going to get quite interesting when he figures out how to walk and run!

Photo Galleries

In case you hadn't noticed, I finally got a "Photo Galleries" link in the right sidebar. That makes life easier, huh? At any rate, I am still working on organizing the galleries, but they will get organized and updated little by little, so feel free to keep checking in on the progress. Also, I discovered that I am only allowed a maximum of 15 galleries. Fortunately I decided to continue the organizing from the most recent and go backwards and had not gotten around to organizing all the very old photos when I realized this. I will have to delete the oldest galleries as I create newer ones. But you can always view any or all the photos from my zoto home page as you would have had to do before. I just hate the chaotic look of it. Also, I learned by accident a few months ago that if I edit my photos prior to publishing them to Zoto, the date of the photo will not be retained. That is why you see so many photos that say "unknown date." Once I realized this, I stopped editing them before posting them whenever that was possible.

That's all my time for now. Dear Son awoke from his nap and is chattering away for me to come get him, and Dear Daughter is singing songs in her bed instead of napping, and I just finished clearing up some insurance billing problems for my work, AND I am simultaneously cooking potatoes for Dear Son. I will have to carry him on my hip while I throw the potatoes in the food processor for his evening meal and I made plenty to put away in the food cubes to go in the freezer for future meals. Dear Son loves to ride on my hip while I work on these things. When he was 5 months old I turned him from the sideways lying down position in the sling to the front-facing "baby kangaroo" style position--he loved watching the world like a baby joey. Now that he's getting bigger and heavier I think I will figure out how to adjust the sling hold to help support him on my hip and free up my arms and hands better. Guess I better go get busy!

Teeth!

I guess I spoke too soon on the teeth issue! Yesterday I thought I felt something sharp on Dear Son's lower gum, but then I couldn't seem to feel it again. This morning he was doiing more of his angry biting on things, and when I felt his lower gum there was definitely a tooth poking through. When I looked closely, I could barely see it. Maybe he will have teeth in his head by the time he's a year old after all. But as far as hair goes...well, that's another story.