Children Grow Up

Can Hoo get more awesome?

Three years old already.

Where does the time go.

The Chef, The Professor and Bart the biofuel guy.
3 of my children.

Now the big boys.

Yesterday they were kicking each others legos over and fighting like crazy midgets.

Now Chef is a daddy. Professor is soon to be a daddy and Bart is getting married come summer 2013.

Whew it was a long haul with those three plus the girls.

I don’t miss those years.

But being a grandma is quite precious.

I am grateful for every crayoned sticky wrinkled work of art Hoo presents and I hang it proudly on the refrigerator door.

This is gmom,

peace out

Let Go And Let God

Demolition of a small hut in our backyard.

It was a hard job.

Husband told me to leave it be.

But it was a fair Sunday,  and baby Hoo was sleeping.

So I took up a hammer.

Being unfamiliar with demolition I circled the hut a few times just swinging the hammer and thinking ,

“How do I do this?  How do I do anything?  I just do it.

Piece by piece.  Board by board.

Husband came home surprised to see the hut gone.

“You did that ? You couldn’t take down the hut!”

I could and I did!

It’s like my big sis taught me years ago when we got a rejection letter from a private school for one of my boys. She said,”What are you crying about, grow up, no does not mean no.”

Really?

She was right. I fought for an acceptance for my son and he went to that school.

Don’t tell me what I can’t do.

Oh but the  seismic challenges of the last few months.

A son losing his way.

A daughter walking into a relationship that was so very wrong.

The evil pain creeping from my back to my leg and settling in my foot.

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Let go and let God.

That I have learned, and this I know.

Challenges?

Get out of my f**king way.

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Son.  My beating heart.  Keep your head up.

Love and service, baby. Keep saying it.

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Pretty little girl will one day see that love knows no bounds. Only time and distance lets children scope the scene of their sad day when parent wrenched their sorry behind away from trouble.

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My personal enemy? The creeping fire.  Pain.

I will walk through it to drop to my knees so baby boy Hoo can reach me,  and I him.

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It was a fair Sunday.

The hut needed demolition.

I took up the hammer and brought the hut down.

Just let me pull nails, and crack wood.

Let me struggle under the weight of heavy wood.

This is gmom,

peace out.

I Need You Mom. No I Don’t. Yes I do.

Rose. Age 21. Daughter number 3, sixth child.

Fell off a moped during the final afternoon of labor day  beach vacation.

Broke both right forearm bones.

” Road Rash” up and down her legs.

Drove her back to Baltimore to Union Memorial Hospital and the best upper extremity surgeons on the East Coast.

Now she has some hardware in her arm. A plate, pins and screws pulling the broken pieces all together. It’s been a long couple of weeks.

Before her surgery, she cried. I spoke softly to her and said the prayers from her childhood to comfort her.

After her surgery I slept by her. Gave her the pain medications, help her with all her needs, took her to the doctor and made repeated calls to him when she had questions.

I wiped her tears as she saw the track surgical scar run down her arm and the new shape of the back of her hand.

I handled the insurance company, her school medical leave letters and hooked her up with a decent physical therapist.

Now it’s 3 weeks post-op and the girl is back to normal.

Offended if I ask her if she wants me to cut a tag off the back of her shirt.

The cuddle-muffin who lay in my bed night after night is angry that I appeared at her PT appointment.

Miss Independent is back and I am left wondering if that momentary bond we shared when she was in pain and scared ever really happened.

Montessori Daycare For Hoo

 

Hoo started to attend a Montessori daycare program.

Can you say “Baby Yoga”?

It’s a step up from his earlier daycare to be sure.

Great facility, well run with trained staff.

Could we ask for more? Uh uh.

His late afternoon caregiver is a very serious Russian woman who takes her responsibilities very seriously.

Each day I get a “poop-report”.

How Hoo napped, what and with whom he played with and his general disposition.

Today when I picked him up she gravely intoned in her deep Russian accented voice,

“Hoo deed not eet hees lunch. Hoo only eht hees rahzohns.”

She somberly shook her head.

He only ate his raisins?

(Yikes!)

I’m not quite sure what to do with this information,

but it sounds like Hoo is off to the gulag if he doesn’t get his noon chow down.

 

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong. Charles Wadsworth

When China was a little bug, (my daughter not the country), her sleeve caught fire. We were lighting Hannukah candles when she reached over the burning flames. I slapped the burning sleeve out. Husband and I examined her burned sleeve and her arm amazed that the flames never touched her skin.

Something similar happened to Egg, (my second daughter not chicken fetus). We do a lot of candle lighting in our religion. She wanted to blow out the Sabbath candles when her hair caught on fire. My mother standing nearby and I brushed the fire out as fast as it started. Egg was fine.

She turned her 3-year-old self around and smiled at us wondering why we were patting her head. She never knew how close she came to setting herself on fire.

If you are a parent then you know what I’m talking about.

You’ve swept food out of little mouths before they choked. You’ve caught your child mid-fall in the playground and set them on their feet to run and play.

For older kids. We fill the gas tank when we know they are going out. We check the tires. Twice.

The 17-year-old boy that comes to pick up your 14-year-old daughter for a date!?

That boy never makes it in the house! You know what I’m saying?

We watch out for the foreseeable problems our children are headed toward and run interference.

Kids, they are like the quarterbacks running with the ball. They may not see their teammates (parents) behind them tackling the opposing players, but they are there.

Funny. If a touchdown is made they dance around like monkeys. If an opposing team member takes them down they are just as likely to look around at their own team(again,it’s us,parents)  and say, “Where were you guys?”

It’s often a thankless job parenting. Until our kids have children of their own they may never understand why we do what we do.

“I’d catch a grenade for ya, put my hand on a blade for ya..”.  Heard that song?  It shouldn’t be a boyfriend singing to a girl.

It should be the parent’s anthem.

This is gmom.

peace out.

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I Found My Happy Place! He Wears Diapers!

 

The organic baby made his first project in daycare!

Marshmallow Fluff smeared on a paper plate with Fruit Loops stuck on it!

 

And he’s a cheap date!

Ya gotta love that!

Next time I go looking for my happy place I’ll start looking while on my knees but this time…

I’ll open my eyes.

Love to all.

This is gmom,

peace out.

Where Is My Happy Place? Can I Borrow Yours?

Have you ever been told to go to your happy place?

Go in your mind to the one place on earth that you most want to be,

A beautiful beach.

A mountain meadow.

A rolling hillside in Ireland.

A holy place you once visited and never forgot.

So many times I’ve coaxed women, who in the clutches of labor pain to envision their happy place and go there.

I’ve spent hours whispering to them words of encouragement, that they can endure, that they can breathe through the most intense pain, and most often they do. I leave them holding their perfect beautiful infant at the breast.

In the last few weeks, so many people have told me to go to my happy place.

I’ve searched for it. I’ve even tried physically to go there.

What a crock.

I’ve gone through 6 labors unmedicated.

I’ve had my spinal nerves ablated.

I’ve done it before, I’ve found the strength to go …somewhere.

But now…I’m lost.

My happy place must have gone with the recession.

I can’t feel my strength, my breath.

How can I find my happy place if I can’t find myself.

Where did  I go ?

Down The Rabbit Hole

For all  of you following my blog husband is still away overseas.

Here is what has changed at  home while the man who holds the string of your kite is gone.

Number one: You might accidentally kill one or  2 of your children.

Normally, in the night Bart comes in, he drives ones of the biofuel trucks and comes in at 3 or 4 a.m. I’ll half wake up and hear him kick off his shoes, shuffle into the shower, scrounge around the kitchen and go to bed.

But without husband here, I immediately reach for the gun.

I go up the stairs gun poised, ready to defend against any intruder. It never dawns on me that Cujo is upstairs happily bopping around.

Bart turns and sees me. Without a word he takes the gun out of my hands, removes the clip and tells me to go back to bed before I hurt myself.

Okay,sorry.

Number 2: You might let your guard dog sleep on your husband’s $200 Brooks Brother’s robe, maybe even on the bed.Everyone needs to be special sometimes.

Number 3: You might stop taking showers  often. I mean what’s the point? This goes for changing into nighties as well.

Number 4: You may suddenly realize that a plate of french fries makes a perfectly good dinner, even better while eaten in front of the TV.

Number 5: You may realize that you don’t have to water the “effing lawn everyday, or pick up your dog’s  poop. I mean who made these rules anyway? Poop is organic..it’s like compost.

Number 6: Turns out you don’t have to go and check on your neighbor just because it’s 103F outside. Just a big “ole, hope you’re still alive Edna!  Yelled out an open window does just fine.

Number 7: You have the opportunity to go though all husband’s secret guy stuff. Unfortunately this has yielded nothing! Nothing!

I hope this give you some good ideas for the next time your superhero flies off.

This is gmom.

Down the rabbit hole.

peace out.

The Artful Dodger’s Weekend: Hoo At Home

Hoo peering through the peep hole of the high chair.

Hoo’s Momma went away for a few days.

Gmom, Rose and Grandpa took over.

We are having a busy but awesome time.

We bought a Hoo- size motorcycle to amuse him so if he had a meltdown we had a good distraction handy.But the boy is doing fine, so we just gave it to him.

He did take one spill off of it which required a band- aid,several kisses and quick application of one dum-dum lollipop.

The toe scrape was from chasing Cujo with a handful of  sand from the sandbox.

For a special treat we let Hoo use a real screwdriver to meddle in the workings of a broken fan. It’s his current mechanical obsession. Anytime he started walking away with the screwdriver I say, Hoo get back to fixing that fan or give me the tool. He would give me his blue eyed grin and get straight back to work on the fan. I expect with all the banging it will be be working again in due time.

We have watched a fair bit of Baby Einstein videos both in English and Spanish.

The English versions are quite lovely with Pachelbel Canon in D Minor playing beautifully while a soft female voice recites barnyard animal names. The pictures show sweet images of baby cows, chicks and horses.

The Spanish version has the theme to Mama Mia playing with a child reciting animal names.

Rat, snake, iguana and turtle.

I don’t know what to make of that.

Hoo watching Baby Einstein vids

It’s been busy. But a lot of fun.

Hope your weekend was good.

This is gmom.

Wiping the sticky from the keyboard.

Peace out from Hooville.

T’ank You, T’ank You.

(On the anniversary of my brother’s passing I am grateful for the small miracles of today. Hey Jeff, miss you bud, you would have loved this story, you would have loved Hoo)

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Baby boy Hoo was mad rushed into the house by his momma Eggs on Friday. “Mom! The daycare called me, he is burning up with fever!!!” My daughter was panicked, struggling to hold a hysterical Hoo.

Undress him, let’s check his temperature.

I watched the mercury rise in the thermometer tube as Eggs pinned Hoo across her lap.

103….103.6……104….104.2……105….

Okay let’s get him into the bath, get the tylenol and call his doctor.

I poured cool water over his shaking body. It was controlled chaos.

We wrapped him in a sheet and rushed him to the pediatrician who saw him immediately.

Hoo sat on Eggs lap as the doctor examined him. He cried continuously.

The doctor did a strep test with the looong q-tips swirled down his throat.

Poor Hoo, he gagged hard, when he could draw breath he cried out “T’ank you, t’ank you.”

That is a Hooism for “thank you”. The doctor was charmed by our little darling. The we waited until a nurse came in to draw

blood. Hoo cried and cried and when she finished he cried “T’ank you, t’ank you.” She also was

touched by this tiny tot. She said that was the first time a 23 month old thanked her for poking them.

The doctor came back in and listened to Hoo’s chest again and pronounced him to have

pneumonia. Of course Hoo turns red-eyed and says, “T’ank you, t’ank you.”

Eggs and I shared a secret smile over Hoo’s head.

You see dear reader, whenever Hoo wants someone to leave he says “Thank you.”

Today Sunday he is better. Bouncing around as recovering children do.

Watching Sesame Street and eating jelly toast.

T’ank you God, really T’ank you!