The Fish Pond

Circle of Life

We interrupt the reminiscing for a moment to bring things full circle:  Liz, Tammie, and Christina are having babies.  Soon, especially Tammie, for whom we are praying everything goes well and her little one arrives safely.

Having a baby brings out the best and worst in other people.  As the mom to four, I've heard all kinds of craziness:  A little bourbon on the gums helps ease teething pain (and you should put some on the baby, too), picking up the baby will spoil her, you can't breastfeed if you have small boobs, just open up the door and let them out like the dogs and tell them to be home for dinner, never mind that lake at the bottom of the hill.  Road trip?  Give them a bunch of benadryl before you leave so they will sleep the whole way.  Rest when the baby naps, never mind those other toddlers in the house, can't they take care of themselves?  And these were just from family members.

You'll get all kinds of assvice coming your way (as I'm sure you already have), but I'm only going to offer this one bit of advice:

Trust yourself.

Mom's instincts trump all.  Never mind what everyone thinks, says, or does with their kids, whether they have one or seventeen.  You'll know in your gut what makes the most sense for you, your baby, and your family.  Bottle, breast; co-sleep, crib; circumcise, or not; it doesn't matter what decision you make, you all already have the most important ingredient: love. 

And it truly does go by in a flash.  Last week I was bringing my brand new baby home, petrified that they left me alone with this person and I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  This week, that baby is a first grader, and her brother is getting ready to start kindergarten, and our second girl is wreaking the havoc that three year olds wreak, and a new baby is scooting along the floor, finding his way, and I still don't have a clue what I'm doing.

But I love them, and I'm doing alright.

May all three of you have quick labors, healthy babies, and the grace to love in the moment, even when the moment is a poop painting at naptime (a little nip of that bourbon helps at these times).

Check out the virtual baby shower for all kinds of fun.

Treasure

For Christmas in 2002 I gave each of the living grandparents, either my children's or my husband's and mine, a decorated composition notebook and a list of a little over 100 questions pertaining to their lives.  None of my children's grandparents have done anything with theirs.  My grandmother answered about ten of the questions without much detail - it seemed like it was awkward and somehow the woman who talked constantly otherwise couldn't come up with what to say, even though I implored her to write from her heart, simply as though she were talking to me, but she never did do anything else beyond those 10 questions.

In winter of 2003, my grandfather was snowed in at the Denver Airport for three days.  He completed his book, and returned it to me.  He understood why I valued such a thing; indeed, one of the things that drove him toward the end of his life was his desire to complete his autobiography.  Fortunately, most of what his autobiography covered is in that book.

It is one of my most beloved possessions.

This book is written evidence of the kind of man my grandfather was: honest, hardworking, witty, tenacious (some would call this stubborn, especially if they knew us), kind, and loving.  He had an incredible strength of character, a man of integrity with a strong faith.  He knew what was important in life, and how to live a good life.  His family was always most important to him.

I will be reading from this book during his memorial service this weekend, and I will be looking to get the completed autobiography published - if I can't find someone else to do it, I will publish it on cafe press.  Over the course of the next month or so, I may share a few of these stories with you. 

What follows is one of those stories, in my grandfather's own words.  To give a little bit of background, my grandfather was from a ridiculously small town in Illinois, where everyone knew each other.  His father owned the local general store, and my grandfather went to school in a one room schoolhouse.  He didn't have indoor plumbing or electricity until sometime in the 60s.  It was very much like the life lead by Laura in the Little House on the Prairie books.

Almost all of the social life in [small town] Illinois, where we lived, evolved around the church and our family store.

At Christmas time, my dad always bought the large bags of peanuts in the shell and one of my earliest jobs was to put the peanuts in small paper sacks and we gave a sack of peanuts to all the children in the neighborhood. I ate almost as many as I bagged.

The church always had a program on Christmas eve where all of us children participated.  When that was over, we all went home.  I am not sure how other people observed Christmas but our family went home.  We kept the store open for about an hour for those who came to town and needed to buy something.

We then went home, which was the second floor of the store building.

We always opened our presents on Christmas Eve and then spent the Christmas Day in some forms of relaxation.  Our winters were usually very cold so most of what we did was inside.

We had a Christmas tree which was decorated usually with hand made popcorn ropes and hand made ornaments.  We used real candles which we held to the tree with spring clips.  We only lighted the candles when we were in the room.  This was very dangerous because of fire.  We learned very early in life to be very careful.

The country was very poor during my early years so we did not get many presents.  I was luckier than most of the kids in our neighborhood.  Some of them got nothing but the peanuts.

For Christmas every year for as far back as I can remember, we in the family always received a card with a little bit of money for us to buy whatever we wanted or needed, and a can, wrapped, of some kind of nuts.  I only learned why when he wrote this book.

Crossing Over

In the movie Secondhand Lions, there is a saying that "They died with their boots on." (Great movie, by the way)  That meant that the people they referred to died doing what they loved. 

Once it became clear that cancer wasn't going to let my grandfather die with his boots on, he decided to meet death on his own terms.  He lived with his boots on, and when he couldn't anymore, he couldn't bear living.

Last night, at 9 pm, my uncle, Nemo, and I were at my grandfather's bedside, the Orioles game on TV, my uncle and I deep in discussion about nothing in particular, family memories I think, and I glanced over at my grandfather and saw that he was gone.  Gently, peacefully gone.  His breathing simply became more and more shallow and then ceased altogether.  Four generations together, oldest and youngest in the family.

A good way to go, I think.

I love my grandfather tremendously, and will miss him intensely.  I will be sharing memories of him for a little while as I work to process this.  Thank you all for your continued love, support, and prayers.  They mean the world to me.

Going Gentle

My grandfather's retirement community has officially moved him to the nursing home, and he has had a bad week, even before the official decision.  He has been growing weaker and weaker.  Saturday morning he had an unresponsive episode; they got him into bed and he woke up, and then he asked to go to the hospital.  The hospital gave him some percoset and sent him back to the nursing home.  He kept saying "I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to do."  He told us he was ready to go.  Dolts that we are, we finally realized he was asking how to go about leaving.  He's been refusing to eat and take his supplement for about a week now.  We told him all we could do is make him comfortable, and he could stop fighting if he wanted.

Saturday night he refused to take any of his medication, and again this morning.  He'll only take the morphine and the oxygen.  Multiple myeloma is one of the more painful kinds of cancer, and he had been refusing the pain medicine.  The nurse told us that was actually counter productive to his wishes, because then the body is tense and fighting, rather than relaxing into death.  When he was telling us "I don't know what to do" we told him to take the pain medicine and just relax, to rest, and let go.

It won't be long now.

Peace Be With Them

My friend J called to tell me that her mother passed from this earth peacefully this morning.  She said she was there with her and it was "actually quite a beautiful thing."  Her words.  May we all be so blessed.

After the horrible events of yesterday, I'm feeling like I don't know what to do, that my children will never be safe anywhere, and I'm struggling with how to talk to them about it, how to help them process it so that they don't end up not feeling safe ever.  What do I say to them?  How can I even talk to them when my heart is breaking with grief for those parents, when I keep picturing what if it had been one of my kids?  Well, I keep saying them, but mostly it's Trout.  How do I raise her to have the grace and strength to deal with my eventual death (or anyones, for that matter) in such a way that she can see it as a "beautiful thing"?  How, with stuff like what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday coloring her perception of the world?

Peace, and strength, be with all of their families.  J's, too.

Getting By With a Little Help from My Friends (and Family) OR Gratitude

This is an amazingly stressful time for me right now.  Nemo is back to not sleeping through the night again.  Sunny has entered the Age of Destruction and no one can keep up with her efforts to completely dismantle the house.  Little Man is entering kindergarten in the fall and I have to do a mountain of paperwork for the Socialist Bureaocracy of Montgomery County and then take him to school for orientation on Friday.  Trout has been great at picking up a lot of my slack but she needs time with her mom.  I end up spending so much time up with my grandfather or on the phone dealing with that situation that I don't have enough time for them, BigDaddyFish, or me.

Enter friends and family.

Like my in-laws.  Who are quirky and eccentric and unable to do too much but what little they do goes a long way to making my life easier.  They came and watched the kids last weekend and BDF and I got to go out to dinner by ourselves.  My FIL comes on the nights Trout has school of religion and takes her, waits in the parking lot during her class, and brings her home, thus making it so I don't have to shlep all three other kids into the small lobby of the school where SOR is held along with about 200 students plus their parents all at the same time because for some unknown reason we are no longer allowed to pickup outside the classroom like we did last year (this makes it sound so tame but really, this is a weekly disaster).

Like one of the mothers at Little Man's preschool, who takes turns with me watching the little ones in the parking lot while one of us runs in to pick up the bigger kids.

And Uncle Orca, our part-time Manny.  Yup.  You read that right.  Manny.

We've known Uncle Orca forever, it seems.  In fact, Uncle Orca introduced BigDaddyFish and me.  In fact, I dated Uncle Orca first.  Nope, it never gets awkward.  Really.  Much.

Uncle Orca is a professional musician by trade.  He plays a mean trombone, and he sings great, too, but doesn't like to admit it.  Since most work of professional musicians is at night, that makes him available to babysit during the day, if you catch him reasonably ahead of time to make sure he sleeps at night and doesn't keep vampire hours.  If you click the link and check out his blog and aren't a professional musician, then only about a half of what he says on his blog will make sense.  But that's his life.

Anyway, he is a great friend, and a great caregiver to my kids.  I've called on him countless times for various emergencies and he is usually able to come to the rescue.  Emergencies as big as trips to the hospital for various family members or as small as I am losing it and need a shower and need someone to watch the kids to make sure they don't burn down the house or kill each other while I do it.  He watches the kids while BDF and I go on dates.  He moved in here for the weekend for the only trip that BDF and I have taken alone since we've had kids and lived to tell about it.  The kids love him and he loves them.  He is great with them and the kids get the chance to learn that a man can be just as nurturing and caring as a woman, even if he isn't a family member.  I am very grateful that he is in our lives.  This situation with my grandfather is so trying, but it is a blessing that Uncle Orca is able to come be with the kids so I can take care of my grandfather.

Uncle Orca is also a composer and arranger, and he has a CD out, which you can get here.  I think its genre is called something like ambient electronica, but I like to call it bathtub music, as in, this is what you listen to in the bathtub when you are trying to relax and escape it all.  If you are at all musically inclined and you like jazz, it's a lot like Keith Jarrett, only minus the jazz slant and the whole saxophone thing.  The little snippets you can hear on the cafepress site do not do it justice.

Help me pay him back for all the short notice babysitting.  Go, listen, buy his CD, and spread the word.  Also!  I am giving away a free copy of the CD, so if you want one, leave me a comment and I'll pick a winner at random, say on friday.

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This past weekend my grandfather took a turn for the worse.  His oxygen levels dropped again, so now he has to be on oxygen all the time, and he was in enough pain that he finally accepted the morphine he's allowed to have.  This is a huge thing for him because he has always maintained that he doesn't need pain medicine.  He is a whole lot more confused and aggravated with the whole situation.  He doesn't really understand where he is a lot of the time, and this weekend, a couple of times he didn't know who I was.  Today he told me he was going home today, and I asked him where he thought he was, and he said the hospital.  He's not at the hospital, he's in the nursing home portion of his retirement community.  He's probably not ever going home.

I spent a huge chunk of time up there yesterday with him, just talking to him and helping him and trying to show him that we love him and aren't casting him aside.  He kept getting up out of bed and when I asked him what he needed or where he was going he'd say "I don't know, I just don't know."  He'd move to the chair for a while, then get right back in bed and lay down again.  I went with him down to the dining room for dinner; he ate about 5 bites of food and took one sip of milk.  That's all.  They are making him drink a supplement with his medicine because he isn't eating much.  I am uncertain how that fits in with his wishes to not prolong his life beyond its natural course.  I don't know whether or not to fight them on it.

There are a couple of bright spots.  He enjoys seeing Nemo even if he can't remember his name or even hold him much because Nemo weighs too much for my grandfather.  In fact, many of the residents that live there get a kick out of Nemo - it takes me forever to walk anywhere in that place because so many people stop me to exclaim over him and I don't have the heart not to stop and talk to them.  I rarely see other visitors there.  My grandfather has a funny neighbor who is the epitome of the Grumpy Old Man.  The first night I went up to see my grandfather there I was walking down the hall with Nemo in the stroller and this man saw me and says "What kinda of damn junk do you got?"  Another time he was being pushed down the hall by a family member (I think) and I was walking back from the nurses station and he saw me and groused "Whatre you smiling about?"  I shared a look with his caregiver and answered his question, but he continued to grump.  Some people would be put off by him, I think, because he means it, he's grumpy, but I just find him amusing.

I came back home exhaused and emotionally fried.  I called home to ask if they wanted me to pick up carryout for dinner, and while I was on the phone BDF told me that he needed my patience when I got home.  I explained that I was just stretched so thin if plucked I would snap, and he said he understood that and it was a complicated situation but he really needed my help so we could get to bed on time (he had a meeting this morning and had to get up early).  I walked in the door to a Completely.  Clean.  Living room. and all the kids sitting on the couch or in chairs and grinning like cats.

Our life is in the living room (or family room, same thing - we only have the one).  The one TV we own and all the DVDs.  All the kids' toys.  We usually eat in that room.  It usually looks like our house has been ransacked and a pantry emptied into that room.  It is next to impossible to stay on top of the mess when there is an infant in the house - I've been fighting a losing battle with it ever since I've had more than one kid, and it's become worse with each kid we've added.  He marshalled the kids and spent FIVE HOURS taking the room apart and cleaning it.  I asked where all the toys were and they said "We put them away, mommy."   I cried.

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My friend J's mother is in a coma from which she will not return, otherwise known as a persistent vegetative state (a la Terry Schiavo).  She did have a living will.  Today she was transferred to palliative care (hospice) so that her wishes can be carried out.  Please pray for peace and strength for their family.

Trying Something New

I got tired of all the damn whining around here lately and Little Man's bad attitude and Sunny's constant need for attention and Nemo's teething (I change his clothes 4 times a day for drool) and decided to do something completely different.

I made rice krispy treats.  For the Very First Time!  Except, they aren't Rice Krispy treats, because I am allergic to rice and am selfish and I was damned if I was gonna get all icky sticky gooey without being able to eat the icky sticky gooeyness, so I used Honey Nut Cheerios and Kix, since I didn't have enough of each to do the whole recipe.

And!  The kids had to go to bed early because of the aforementioned whining, so I got to eat the first treat.  Myself.

Yum!

I Blame it on Friday the 13th

Today Little Man had school, so I only had the two littles at home (Trout has school every day, Little Man only 3 days/week), and since we are out of soap I decided I could handle Target with two, so we went out in the cold wind to get soap.

Believe me, I did rethink the priorities when I was getting Nemo out of the car and the wind went straight through us and made him do the funny "You blew in my face" face.  Anyway, since we were going out anyway and Target is near Kohl's and my sister had given Sunny a gift card to Kohl's for her birthday, I decided to be "efficient" and "kill-two-birds-with-one-stone" and stuff so we went to both.

Sunny has been bugging me the past couple of days because she wants a Tasha from Backyardigans.  She has a stuffed Uniqua and a singing Pablo with no volume control and a repertoire of only one song whose batteries won't die fast enough (also a gift from my sister - can you tell she has no kids?) but who she loves, but of course her life won't be complete without Tasha, so I told her we could look for a Tasha at Kohl's.  We looked.  No Tasha.  But she had her gift card to use anyway, so she picked something else out.

A gigantic Doodle Bear with a mat that folds into a carrying bag, complete with three markers.  And I temporarily lost my mind and Let. Her. Get. It.  I blame it on Friday the 13th, because I can come up with no other good reason.  I know her track record with these things.

We've had them home and open 2 1/2 hours.  She's already colored the bear, the mat, her hands and feet, and the wood frame of the couch (which at least I discovered while it was still wet, so a wipe took care of it).  I have confiscated the markers.

I am my own worst enemy, you know.  Good thing we also made it to Target and got the soap.

Trout FishFamily, First Grader

Kindergarten isn't what it was when I was a kid.  When I was in Kindergarten, we learned how to share, our colors, and the alphabet.  When our school system went to full day kindergarten in 2004-2005, I expected it to be tough, but I still thought it would be more of the same, with nap time and maybe an extra story thrown in or something.  Clearly I was way delusional.  Since Trout has a late birthday, we made the decision to hold her back for a year, sending her to a private, half-day kindergarten one year and then moving on to the full-day kindergarten last year.  Oh, was I glad we did.

These days in Kindergarten, if you don't start school knowing all of your ABCs, in and out of sequence, upper and lower case; counting to about 30 or so; some basic set theory; how to write your first and last name; your phone number and address, you are already behind the day you start.  Knowing this, and knowing that Little Man is going from preschool to kindergarten without the benefit of the extra time Trout got, when the Parent Bloggers Network asked for signups for Let's Get Ready For.... I tried to sign up for the Kindergarten book.  Alas, the slots were full, and I didn't think too much more about it until they asked a second time for First Grade students to review Let's Get Ready for First Grade.  I told them Trout is currently in first grade, and since the books are supposed to be for entering first graders and Trout is a bit ahead in school I wasn't sure if we fit the bill, but I was willing to take a look anyway.  I expected that she'd know everything in the book already.  I was delighted to learn I was wrong.

Let's Get Ready for First Grade, available from Cedar Valley Publishing, is a neat little book that introduces the concepts that students should know by the time they complete first grade.  It is laminated so students can use a dry erase marker to answer questions and work on concepts over and over again.  Inside the front cover is a list of concepts that students need to know coming in to first grade, and based on our experience they are spot-on.

Like the current county curriculum, the book emphasizes reading and math skills, and I wasn't surprised that Trout knew all those concepts, given the amount of drilling that goes on every day in school.  What did surprise me was the information on science and social studies that the book covered, like the food pyramid (the new one, not the one we learned as kids), the major organs in the body, the concept of day/night caused by the earth's rotation, the planets in the solar system, and the names of the three branches of government.  Thus far none of those concepts has been covered by our school curriculum, and it was nice for Trout to be able to work on them.  The book did a good job, I think, in providing a good, high-level review of concepts needed by the end of the year.

So if you want a set of these books, go to www.parentbloggers.com and leave a comment as to why you need them in the announcement for the Let's Get Ready For.... campaign or mid-way through the campaign, and a winner will be picked at random at the end of the campaign.

Open Door Policy

The kids have been in and out all afternoon since Trout got home from school (spring NOT break is over.  finally.), and each time I have had to holler like the redneck woman I am for them to come back and shut the damn door because it's too cold for Nemo and do you think you live in a barn???  Still, it felt really cold and drafty, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.

Earlier, Trout had taken her bike out the back door from our basement, and I asked her if she locked up.  Note again how I totally have not learned my lesson with this child.  She said she hadn't, but since she had to take the bike back in again the same way in less than an hour I didn't make her go lock it up.  I am a moron.

I just went down to move the laundry though the machines and I took two steps down and was met with a wall of frigid air.  Seriously.  Frozen-ass cold.  I wasn't even halfway down the steps when I started shouting at her to get her ass down there and fix it.

My slider was standing wide open.  Not just unlocked, mind you, standing.  wide.  open.  Where any animal, two footed or four footed, could have come in and done whatever they wanted.  Guess the bins of crap in our basement and the 27 loads of laundry just weren't that enticing, since a quick search revealed nothing.  But I think it'll take me at least an hour to warm myself back up.

Since I'm trying to work on this procrastination problem I have, here are some upcoming posts - please yell at me when I don't get them done in a timely fashion:

• Review of Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know for the BlogHer Virtual Book Tour
• A long-long overdue post about Uncle Orca
• Review of Let's Get Ready for First Grade for the Parent Bloggers (this will be done on time, on Thursday)
• More fun and excitement from the nursing home
• Potty training regression

P.S.  I'm over here today - check it out!!