Cheryl B Smith

My mama passed away on Friday, February 24th. I hate those words. I thought that I would hate the date, but I don't. She was so beautiful and there was a profound hush of peace throughout the house after she died. The date is the day she wasn't suffering anymore. For that, I am grateful.

I'm trying to embrace whatever emotion I have in an effort to feel this fully. I hadn't realize how actively I have avoided so much, until this last week with her.
I didn't want to see her suffering. I didn't want to see her body diminish. I didn't want to see her "gone", just a shell of who she was. I didn't want to see her after she died.

I saw all of that, and I'm still standing. I'm a little ashamed that I wasn't willing to see it through in the first place. The change after she died still just blows me away. She looked so incredibly beautiful. It felt like a gift to be able to see her that way at last.

I am so grateful for this blog and some of the memories it holds of my mom. I had my blog posts emailed to her for probably the last 2-3 years and she would often email a response to me after reading one of my posts. I read through several of those emails last night. She was always cheering me on, or giving sympathy for whatever I was dealing with, in those emails.

I have so much I hope to document and pontificate on, soon. For now, there's work to be done.

I turned the comments off on my last post because I struggle with feeling like I'm having a pity party. I know that wasn't very nice of me though. I'm leaving comments on, but I have a request in the comments. If you would like to leave one, leave a favorite story of my mom or a memory of her, if you know her in person. I love reading what people are writing on Facebook, or have told me in person. Her children have known well what an incredible woman she was in her life, but I don't think we'll ever tire of hearing about it from others.

I am going to cut and paste part of an old blog post from November of 2006, the first year I blogged. One of my favorite posts about my mom....

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Funny

As a child, in my home, being funny was the prize to be won. Being the funniest was the ultimate goal. There are some VERY funny people in my family. It wasn't until I was in my early 20's that I realized we got every ounce of our "Smith Humor" from my mother. My dad can't even tell a scripted joke to save his soul. And sometimes he'll try a pun and laugh and laugh before he can say it and when he does, you wish desperately that you could have gone the rest of your life never hearing it, it's so bad. One of the funniest things my brothers have done, is imitate my father telling a joke. Now, THAT'S funny. My mom was my mom. She wasn't funny. She was the one who told us to get to bed, do our homework, take out the trash, not go out of the house in dirty underwear, how no one likes an know-it-all, etc. It wasn't in her job description to be funny. So, I never noticed.

Well, a couple of days ago my friend Epsi sent me an email that made me laugh heartily. Of course, I immediately forwarded it to a dozen more people, as though I were the creative genius behind it.

The email read: ATTENTION: ALIENS ARE COMING TO ABDUCT ALL THE GOOD LOOKING AND SEXY PEOPLE. YOU WILL BE SAFE; I'M JUST EMAILING TO SAY GOODBYE.

The responses I have gotten have all made me laugh.

....

And then my mother. She's 71. Shouldn't she have a diminished capacity by now? Of any kind? I mean, she can still peel and chop a carrot faster than I can do the same with a cuisanart. She can whip through 17 loads of laundry in one day and make it look like she barely handwashed some delicates and hung them to dry. She can find anything you need at any time for any purpose. Usually in her purse or tied to a string in her kitchen. She can make a pair of SAS shoes, hot pink pants, hot pink turtle neck with purple cardigan, and 3 chained eyeglasses around her neck look way cuter than I could ever try to be.

Above all, she's still the cleverest of them all.

Her response to my email:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: THIS E-MAIL WAS UNDELIVERABLE. THE RECEIPIENT IS EVIDENTLY NO LONGER ON THIS PLANET. SORRY (YOU'RE LATE----ABDUCTIONS ARE OVER)

I made the mistake of telling my mom on the phone, "Your response took the cake, Mom." She gloated aloud and then bragged to my sister who was sitting nearby. I heard my sister swear and I knew my mom was in gloaters gloating heaven because she didn't even scold her.
But I will. S, watch your mouth. At least you have potential for when you're 71.

How It Is

I've been wanting/needing to post for some time now. I feel so much cognitive dissonance just in thinking about what to write. Life is hard right now. Part of me wants to blog about it, another part of me wants to guard it and keep it out of the spotlight. I don't want sympathy or pity or anything along those lines, so that deters me from writing. But I pride myself on keeping it real on this blog, and I love having the real documentation of my life. So, the result is conflicted silence. :)

Most of the things that really matter are just fine. I still have an awesome husband and great marriage, our kids are happy, healthy, thriving, and still make us laugh every day. We have a roof over our heads. We have good supportive friends. We actually are really quite blessed in our lives. But it is hard.

School is hard for me right now. I'm not used to struggling academically. I am being pushed and stretched and stripped of any arrogance I may have had going into the program. I think this is necessary and I'm glad for it ultimately, but it's painful right now.

My sister said to me the other day "You just never realize how much work a new baby is until they are here. Even if you've done it before." A. Men. I knew adding another child to the mix was going to be more work. I'm in grad school, I have three other children, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. Then she came along and she's such a good little baby; a good sleeper and not high maintenance when she's awake. How hard could it be?

It's about time management, at which I am lousy. And it's about the unpredictable nature of a newborn. I can't regulate when she's going to be hungry or sleep for long periods of time. I had forgotten how getting out the door with yourself takes 90 seconds and getting out the door with a baby takes 3 hours.

I'm interrupting this pity party for a sweet commercial break. Danyo just "rolled" up behind me and kissed my shoulder and said hi. He's pretty much the cutest thing that ever happened to me. He recently got glasses and has to wear a patch to strengthen a very weak, mostly blind eye. It's ridiculous how off-the-cute-charts he is now. I had to take a picture...
Am I right or am I right?

The biggest thing that has been on my heart and mind and consumes my every free thought and moment, and sometimes even un-free ones---is my mom.

In June she went to the hospital for a pain in her abdomen/side and they found several tumors throughout her body. They were advanced enough and numerous enough that her doctor said chemo wasn't really an option. She wouldn't have taken that option even if it was.

The following six months were spent experiencing a lot of things we never had before. My mom's a very private person so I want to honor that, even though most of the time it drove me crazy. Part of her "need" for privacy was driven by her belief that people didn't really care that much ("they have their own lives to lead"). If those are the kinds of things we discover in heaven, that woman is gonna pass out when she realizes how many, MANY people love her, and how much.

There were a couple of good months with my mom at the end of last year. She was more hilarious than ever and it felt like it could go on forever.

She went to church on New Years Day. She knew it would be the last time she'd be able to do that. She had a lot of pain and was getting considerably weaker. The woman should win an Oscar for her acting skills. No one at church even knew she was sick. That night my sister had to take her to the hospital, where she stayed for a week. She had to go on oxygen and a steady stream of morphine. These two things have steadily increased over the weeks since then, as her strength and overall health have drastically declined.

When I'm with my mom I feel so grateful for the life I've had as her daughter. I can't even put words to how blessed I have been to call her "Mom". She is an angel. She is kind, she is selfless, she is funnier than anyone I know, she is smart, she is hard-working, she takes the time to smell the roses. She watches a soap opera religiously, even though TV wasn't allowed in our home when I was a child. She still mends things for her adult daughters who should be mending our own children's clothes at this point. She has cans, bags, pens, scissors, tape, string, superglue, eyeglass repair kits, extra checkers, spare stuffed animals, scarves, sunflower seeds, and soy lecithin within arms reach, should you need any.

She is lovely through and through.

And she is dying. For some reason, that statement is hard for some people to hear or know. I guess I understand it, but I don't really understand some of the reactions to it. As if by saying it, I'm making it more likely to happen. As if by acknowledging it, I'm removing the chance of some miraculous recovery.

We've known since June it was coming to this. My heart broke in two in June. Some days it felt mended when I could sit with my mom and talk like nothing had changed. I could even feel at peace or accepting of it when she would say, "I'm not afraid of death, I wasn't ready seven years ago, but I've lived a lot since then and if it's my time, it's my time."

When I sit next to her bed and she is pale and weak and struggling for breath, my heart aches for her suffering. When tears slip down her cheek because she just doesn't want to go, I cry with her. She worries about her grandchildren, she worries about the 76 year old mentally disabled woman she is the guardian for, she worries about my dad.

In this scenario, I just want her to be at peace and be able to go. She wasn't made for lying in a bed, barely able to even swallow water.

Then, in my dreams at night, I see her as I've known her my whole life. Her hair done perfectly, bright pink lipstick, makeup done impeccably. She's dressed, and smiling, and talking animatedly with her hands. She says something sassy with a completely straight face, and I'm completely taken in by the reality of it. It's the waking up that is a nightmare.

I don't know how to process this. I can't even think about life without her---that is a hurdle I'm not willing to face just yet.

Right now my sister is caring for her 24/7. She has been at my mom's side since the diagnosis in June. I'm not saying that figuratively either. She has stepped in and given my mom the care that she needed before any of us even knew she needed it. There are no words to describe the love and selflessness my sister has shown for the last 8 months. I know it is spent on no better person and I'm grateful every day that my mom has her.

She meets my mom with her wit, she catches her before she falls, she tenderly pulls her through the sorrow, she confidently assures her through the doubts, she beats back the pain, she scolds, comforts, laughs, teases, pushes, encourages, and loves, every second of the day. If this was a person's only job and they were getting paid for it, they couldn't do as well as my sister. She amazes me.

So yeah, that's where I'm at in life. Now that I've put this out there, I feel like I can blog more honestly. If write about something crazy my kids have done, or something hilarious, I won't feel like a hypocrite who acts like nothing is wrong and life is always happy and funny. I'll just be remembering the beautiful distractions that my children are.

Maybe if you are lucky I'll even get back to making fun of the general public.

Much Overdue!

Baby AJ came the day after my last post. She was born 5 minutes before midnight. I got to the hospital around 10:30 and an hour later when my midwife said, "You're having this baby today!" I thought she was crazy and didn't believe her. I think she was crazy. But now I believe her.

My sister rolled into town around midnight on the 20th-21st. Y'see, she was in Texas for Danyo's birth. It wasn't planned for her to be here, but it worked out, and the same thing happened this time! Her visit was technically to come see my week old baby. Not to actually get her to be born! She took her self-imposed call to get that baby outta me, very seriously. Traipsed me all over the mall (I don't go to malls---people get shot at malls), kept making me go walk, yelled at me for sitting down for more than 5 minutes. It was annoying. And very effective.

Around 9 pm contractions came on, but no different than ones I'd been experiencing for the last 8 or 9 days. In fact, the week prior, I came home from my last class and began contracting. For SIX HOURS. But they never got painful enough to really get worked up about, and when I fell asleep, they went away. That was really disappointing.

So when they started this time, I didn't get too worked up, but I was hopeful, as ever. Mostly because we realized that Bo was born on a Thursday, and on the 22nd. AND my niece, who was here, was born on the 22nd, on a Thursday. We thought it would be cool to let her join those ranks!

Around 9:20 I said aloud, "If these are still going at 10:00, I'll go to the hospital." My sister was sitting across from me playing on her I-touch and completely ignoring my motions. She didn't think I was hurting enough to get any attention. My niece was on the couch and silent as well. Probably thinking, "this isn't how it is in the movies..."

Well, they didn't get much worse, but also didn't go away, so at 10:00, I got up to call my midwife. She said, "Well, if you think you are in labor, go ahead and go to the hospital, I'm headed there myself right now." It was a midwife I hadn't met yet. I wondered what part of "this is my fourth child and the last one came in 4 hours" made her think there was an "if" in the equation.

I definitely progressed in the 2 minute drive to the hospital. I made my sister go a longer route to avoid a brick road between my house and the hospital. Yeah, my sister took me to the hospital. Why you ask? Because my husband was sitting at McDonalds with my BIL, shooting the breeze, ignoring his phone. I'm not bitter.

At 10:45 I was checked and dilated to a 4. I didn't think that was such a big deal, kind of thought I'd be a bit further along. I immediately started asking for an epidural. I'm kind of a badass like that.

I had to have IV fluids for at least half an hour before the anesthesiologist could come, and they couldn't get a good stick on me. Had to call in the IV cavalry or something so I think I finally got an IV around 11:15 or 11:20. At 11:30 my sweet little midwife sat on the end of my bed and said, "I think you might not have time for an epidural." And then later said the baby would be coming before the day was over. I did not handle the news well. At this point, I kind of like hearing my sister and J's recount of things because I was not in a good state of mind and don't really remember much. But stuff was said. And it's kind of funny to hear.

I did not get my epidural. She was born before midnight. It got real ugly real fast. But I survived, she's perfect, and I can happily say I am done.done.done.DONE. I think that may have been the first thing out of my mouth---"I am never doing that again!"

You should never say never. Truly.

She has blonde blonde BLONDE hair and it's terribly cute. She looks like a boy. She has a new look, definitely one of ours, but not a carbon copy of any of the other three. Her temperament reminds me a bit of Bo. She's pretty easy going. She has a ridiculously strong neck and head control. She starts making weird noises and roots around when she's hungry, only cries if I ignore that for far too long. Bo was like that. I'd wake up in the middle of the night to sounds of a little baby pig rootin' around for some grub. Avee and Danyo---not so much. It was 0-60 in 4.3 on the scream scale when they were hungry. That's so interesting Nobody, thank you for sharing! You're welcome.

My recovery was quite slow, in my opinion. I can remember being able to get up and do simple things and ambulate quite easily after Avee and Danyo were born. However, I remember when Bo was born, there was a one day gap between when my mom was there for 10 days, and when my cousin came to. I had to make myself a sandwich and I broke out into a sweat halfway through the process and had to lean on the counter after the mustard, before the cheese. His delivery was brutal, and since he was my first, I didn't know any differently. It took 10 days for me to be able to go without pain meds and do very basic things. Up and down the stairs was even too much on most days. Fortunately, J was there for my every need. Despite his being at McDonald's and not answering his phone when I was in labor... Just kidding.

One morning J brought me breakfast in bed and Danyo started begging for breakfast in bed. J, not really thinking it mattered that much, told him no. Danyo sobbed. I told J he had been asking for a couple of months for breakfast in bed, I just always forgot. So J made three plates and all three kids sat on my bed and ate breakfast...on bed. It was really very cute.

Well, there's lots going on, and lots I could blog about, but I knew I needed to get this written before AJ turned 27. Poor fourth born...

Tomorrow when the baby isn't fussing for me to feed her and it's not 11:30pm, I'll add the picture of me in the hospital with Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Sparky the Fire Dog. Totally worth coming back for, if you read this before then.

The "One Last Post" Post

For the last two weeks I've thought, "I should do just one last post for good measure" and as each day has passed I've thought, "Fyoosh, I'm sure glad I didn't do that too soon!" It's been two weeks and one day since I last posted. Still no baby.

It has been driving me crazy not to be in control as much as I'd like to be, and as much as I like to think I am in life. I am learning about myself in this process, and it's good. At this point, I haven't really given up hope on being in control and predicting a date (even though, with each passing day, the odds are in my favor of being right) but I finally have conceded that I don't get to pick the "when". In fact, not even guaranteed the where and how, just hoping I have control over that!

I have become the regular, grumpy, overdue pregnant lady. Everything everyone says to me annoys me. If I hear the word "trampoline" again in the next 6 months, it will be too soon. I just want to say, "You aren't funny" to people. But I refrain. I'm mostly nice like that.

My kids think it's hilarious that my belly smashes up against the steering wheel when I'm driving them to school. I'd back up, but I have relatively short legs for someone my height, so I can't really. I think that right there should be proof enough that I'm done!

Every day Avee dashes off to school saying, "Goodbye, I love you, I hope you aren't here when I get home from school today!" This waiting is driving her crazy. I love that. I love how excited she is about having a new baby. It makes me SO happy that she is getting a sister.

Okay, let's see if I can talk about anything else...

Bo got a lead part in the school musical. He brought the script home yesterday and it's quite a big undertaking. What thrills me is that he got the part based on his ability to sing and perform, and his music teacher has no idea what extraordinary memorization skills he has. I'm mostly excited that now his memorization skills will go toward memorizing lines and songs, and less on learning every word that Weird Al has ever uttered.

His part is big and I am SO excited to help him learn it and ultimately to see it performed. I am so proud of him for putting himself out there and auditioning for a lead like that. He's just a little guy and he's gotten little to no encouragement from us on the matter. We didn't even know he'd auditioned until he told us he got a callback. Then we basically prepped him for not getting the part since he was the youngest in the group and would have 2 more years to play the part if he didn't get it this year. I think his teacher was a little put off by my incredulity when she called to tell us he got the part and make sure we had his support on getting him to school early FIVE DAYS A WEEK. I happily committed for J. I'll be busy with a newborn...

I don't know if I've put it on here, Bo wants to be an actor. He's said that for about a year now. Being an actor and a karate expert were two of his New Years resolutions this past year. He takes it quite seriously. The other day he told me he'd like to be a substitute teacher and an actor. I told him the combination was excellent since neither of them guaranteed full-time employment. I would sure love to know what goes on in that brain of his sometimes. He had complained that he didn't like "guest teachers" and I explained to him how hard it was to be a substitute teacher when you don't know the kids, or the routine, and kids tend to be naughty for subs, even if they aren't naughty usually (ie, 8 year old Nobody), etc, etc. I don't know how he went from complaining about substitutes to wanting to be one. S'all good. That's my boy.

He also told me yesterday that he was pretty sure pomegranates evolved from blueberries because of their similarities in shape. I wrote it on Flacebook, but I should probably record it here too because it's just too good. After he found out he got the part for the play he commented, "This must be how Superman felt when he got the part for Superman." I loved his statement so much, I didn't dare dissect it, like my brain wanted to. I really wanted to know if he meant the actor or if he really thought Superman was Superman. I just didn't want to ruin the goodness of his statement.

Later, about 3 hours after we'd heard the news, he casually said, "Ever since I found out I got the part, I've just been under so much pressure of happiness." I seriously wanted to pick him up and throw him for how cute that statement was. Maybe I have emotional expression issues, I don't know. He sure doesn't!

My sister is coming up here today. Initially it was to see the baby. I haven't got the heart to tell her there's no baby to see yet. Heh. I just can't believe she's getting here before I have the baby. She's bringing me my little, (okay, she's not little) college Freshman niece, Erica. I'm pretty excited to see her. Even though she has lived in England for the past 11 years, she chose a stateside college and I couldn't be more thrilled about the easier access to her. I will be rewarding her decision to go to college in the states, with a lot of chocolate and a newborn baby to squish and love. I don't think it's easy to go that far from home for college. Everything she does, she makes it look easy though. Actually, now that I think about it, all of my nieces are kind of amazing like that. You know, for having such a wacky family (and I do) my siblings sure have amazing kids. They probably all get it from me....

Yesterday at Danyo's little Catholic Preschool they had a birthday party for baby Jesus. I love that he goes to a church preschool. Every time he referred to it, I thought of the prayer scene from Talladega Nights. I don't know why a birthday party for baby Jesus is so funny to me. But it is.

I am so looking forward to this Christmas Break and having the kids home for a couple of weeks. They are long overdue for a break. I hope my grouchiness dissipates once I'm not a disgruntled 9+ months pregnant mama. I feel bad for my kids how grouchy I am to them, but I seriously can't stop myself even when I try. The other night I apologized to Bo for being such a grouch to him all evening (the dude whistles constantly and I yelled at him at least 5 times to stop, plus he persists in eating ALL foods with his hands---seriously, even stew---and he got his knuckles rapped with a fork for it, and, and....I was not nice). He answered, "It's okay, you're always like that." He knows he's funny---that's his problem.

I feel like I need to say something about Avee or Omar is going to call me out on the inequity. Holy crap, you know how ridiculously long these posts will be once Baby #4 stops being a squishy red blob and actually gives me blog fodder? Ay yi yi.

Avee. A million things I could write. Her latest thing is to try and give us an unanswerable question. It's totally obnoxious and funny at the same time. Yesterday J was taking her seriously and answering how electricity works and she was just waiting for his last sentence so she could ask another question beyond that. It's really quite brilliant, but after listening to half of J's mind-numbing explanation, I had to break the news to him that she didn't care and was just trying to trap him into saying, "I don't know." I think he might have been sad if he didn't have another kid who was eating up every word of the explanation.

She told me last night she wants to be a cheerleader. Basically she wants to wear a cute uniform and shake her butt with purpose. I'm sure of it. I don't even know what her exposure to cheerleading is, I have actively kept it to a minimum. Ah, well. Story of our lives with Avee.

Okay, I've killed some serious time. One less hour of waiting to have this baby.

Merry Christmas!

Procrastination Post

This is obligatory. I'm doing it because I have to. I have a major assignment due in T-6 hours and 12 minutes. You see why I have to blog?

Baby is due in 9 days. There are no indications she will come early. I'm glad for this for more reasons than the discomfort of being 9 months pregnant. This is my first winter baby and I want her to come out as big as a 3 month old---having a baby in an Iowa winter just makes me nervous. Probably working in an ER doesn't help that fear...

Also, school has been kicking my butt up one side and down the other (I'm a big girl, that's a lot of ground to cover) in the last couple of weeks. Going into labor and/or having a newborn before today would really have made things difficult. After today, all I have left is one final. To take on my due date. I'm hoping for a good story on this one.

Today is our first snow. It's not sticking to the streets but powdering the ground. Danyo thinks because the snow is here, we can open "prezzies". Have I mentioned his tendency to "babify" pretty much any word he says? It's really funny and J imitates it regularly. I love it. Recently he has become obsessed with Beyblades (in a normal, 4-year-old obsessed kind of way, nothing like what Bo manages to do with a topic of his choice). On the cartoon, there is a character named "Jenga" and another little character (I've never watched the show, just hear it in the background) calls him "Jengy". Which is exactly what Danyo does with just about every noun he can think of. However, whenever this character says "Jengy" Danyo yells loudly at the TV, "HIS NAME IS JENGA, NOT JENGY!" His yelling is mean and loud, and it makes me laugh every time he does it. He's a hypocrite!

Lately Bo has been making similar complaints about school that he made in Kindergarten. If I could have done Kindergarten over again, I would have pulled him out and "home schooled" or found some other alternative. Full day was WAY too long for him, and he was not being taught anything at all. I didn't know this until after the fact though. His complaints were about being tired, or he was wetting his pants, or he talked about school being "too long". He actually learned to write incorrectly while in Kindergarten. You should see the crazy strokes that boy makes to form an "h" or an "a". It defies logic! Anyway, he's been complaining again, very similar complaints. It's hard for me to determine if he's just ready for a break, or if there are similar problems and I need to get proactive. His teacher works hard to keep him stimulated, but she has at least 4 "high need" kids in her class, that I'm aware of, and I just don't know how one person can do it all in a setting like that.

I don't really know what the answer is, but I don't want his little spirit getting squashed again because I'm not clued in or don't know what I'm doing.

I'm so glad I got to grow up and worry about crap like this. We really should have been warned about adulthood. :)

Danyo just told me I'm awesome, but he's awesomer. His logic worked like this: There's snow outside, time to open presents, mom clearly doesn't make this obvious connection even though I deliberately pointed out the stuff falling onto the ground, I can't call her a bad name because I'm trying to earn a Beyblade, I'm awesomer.

He's been earning 3 X's a day in an effort to earn a new Beyblade. I realized that it's time to get a little more proactive about his short-temper and mean mouth. He's been working really hard. First thing he said to me this morning was, "I'm probably not going to get all my X's today because I'm going to say the word poopy. Poopy!" I let "poopy" run it's course with Bo and Avee. It's not even one of the words Danyo says that I object to. My kids love that word. Avee stretched it out over about 2 years. She still loves that word and hides herself in the bathroom to say it with wild abandon. Weirdo. Anyway, Danyo's trick is brilliant. He absolutely has to say some words---the day cannot pass without him saying them. So, he's socialized himself and says, "Oh man Mom, I almost said butt cheek just now. Good sing I didn't, huh?" He knows what he's doing, he ain't no fool.

If I had a quarter for every time he did that, combined with every time I've caught him going commando, I'd be a rich woman. F'real.

Bo said something last week that has made me chuckle through out the week. He was watching a documentary on Pearl Harbor. He's been interested in military/war/soldiers/etc for some time now. I sat down for a minute to watch it with him and he casually stated: "They should make bumper stickers for the old people that says, 'I dropped the bomb on Pearl Harbor'."

I couldn't stop laughing. Methinks he may have missed a point or two. Of course, I was a good mom and explained why perhaps that might not be the best idea.

Uh-oh, I'm running out of fodder. That means I have to get back to work! So sad...

I doubt very many people read this with any regularity anymore, but if you read this in the next week, give me your two cents on the Bo/School issue and throw in a name guess/suggestion just for fun. We don't have a name picked, but we have lots of ideas. By the way, it is a girl. :)

Happy Thanksgiving

My kids love the song "Tonight Tonight" by Hot Chelle Ray. This summer when we were in Utah visiting my friend Jen, she cranked it up one day and everyone danced around the house wildly. Except me. Mama don't dance. Anyway. Bo, who started piano lessons a couple of months ago, has been trying to figure out the tune to this song on the piano. He's got the "tonight, tonight" part and Avee had almost nailed the "Whoa, oh-oh, whoa-oh-oh" part. J was helping them and asked me to put the song on so he could prove he was right and they were wrong. Bo heard the line, "it kinda looks just like you, mixed with Zach Galifianakis" and wanted to know what a Zachgalifianakis was. So, I googled his name to show his picture and it took me to his website. Where there was a nice nude sketching of "him".

J laughed out loud at my fumble and I quickly closed the page. Thank you Zach G. Now my 8 year old knows what you and your sketched junk look like.

Today is Thanksgiving morning. This is my favorite holiday of all. I love that it is simply about having gratitude. I love spending it with family and friends. I love how the weather is cold, but not unbearable yet. I love the bare trees and the ground covered in dead, crunchy, leaves, but some still colorful. I like turkey okay, but I love the tradition of having turkey. J learned to brine turkey a few years ago and we'll never go back. It's amazing.

This morning Avee asked where the turkeys were and I pointed out to a Rubbermaid on the back deck, where they were brining, peacefully. She exclaimed, "What!? They are out there in the cold!? Naked...and...dead? Oh never mind, they're dead."

I can remember when Bo was like 3-4 I just really didn't want him to know that the fish we ate at dinner was a close relative of the fish he loved seeing in the aquarium. Or that the nuggets he ate at McDonald's came from some part of the chicken he loved to sing about at O' Macdonohd's Fahm. Now, Avee's connection of the two things, a real turkey and the plucked, dead thing on our counter cracks me up. I've advanced quite a bit in this motherhood gig.

I am thankful for so many things every day. Here are some of them for today:
*My own good health and a healthy, active, baby growing inside me.
*The chance to watch my children learn and grow and experience life with them.
*Family that I can take or leave most days, but always have, so I take--and I love.
*A sister who can say one word or one phrase that can send us both into laughing hysterics. Or a raging vent. Someone who I don't have to explain any background to.
*A husband who does so much to make my life easier and better. Every day.
*The opportunity to be in Graduate School and the difference it is already making in me.
*Our home.
*Good friends who support me, make me feel loved, laugh with me, set me straight, and sing on my answering machine.
*My bed. I love my bed so much.
*Clean, folded, and put away laundry.
* My mom. She's awesome.

Yesterday Bo said to me out of nowhere, "Mom, you always laugh. I always see you laughing, I've never seen you cry. Well, except that one time. But you always laugh." I told him he was my favorite kid for the next 20 minutes so to go make the most of it. It did my heart good to hear him say that. It's okay to cry. I do. I definitely hide it from my kids because they don't need to be burdened with some of that stuff. But I'm glad they are growing up with a mom that laughs a lot. It helps that they give me a lot of reasons to laugh. I hope they grow up and laugh a lot too.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Because I Don't Have Class This Week

Yesterday at church Danyo kept trying to maul crawl all over me almost the entire hour and I just kept repeatedly pushing him away. I've just gotten to the point in pregnancy where I can't take it, even for a minute. After about the 23rd time, he just kind of whined pathetically in protest. I whispered, "I'm sorry, I just don't have enough room on my lap to hold you, it hurts for you to climb on me like this." J reached over and swept Danyo into his arms warmly, "I know buddy, I know exactly how you feel right now, I feel your pain." I elbowed J in the ribs. Hard. But it certainly made Danyo feel better.

I've been reviewing old posts working to compile my blog into a hard copy. Or rather, hard copies. Holy moly I was prolific, back in the day. Reading some of the stories has really done me some good. I'm realizing that Danyo isn't quite as crazy as I thought he was---Bo and Avee both had some similar behaviors that they obviously grew out of. Also, the kids LOVE hearing stories of things they did when they were younger. They particularly like the stories of Avee being a bossy know-it-all when she was two or three. I'm so glad I recorded this stuff!

One of the things I recorded a lot was how Bo said things, when he couldn't say his R's. I still miss that little speech impediment. It was particularly funny with him because, content-wise, he didn't talk like a normal 5 year old. But he couldn't say his R's and sometimes L's, so it was particularly funny to hear him talk that way about grown-up things. He said to me just the other day, "I think I might need to have my ears checked." (By the way, my overly-active hypochondria has not escaped my children---it's awesome---they are regularly reporting some major ailment---Avee is practically blind and probably anemic...)

I asked Bo why he thought his ears were bad. He answered, "Because all those years I thought I was saying my R's just like everyone else, but I wasn't. I really think my ears should have noticed that!" It is my duty as a loving mother, I told him it wasn't his ears that did things wrong, it was his brain, and perhaps we should have his brain checked. Just kidding. I didn't tell him that. He would have laughed though---that kid has a wicked sense of humor. It amazes me actually--how different he and Avee are on the teasing/sense of humor front. In fact, now that I think about it, I think Avee was meant to belong to my parents.

She has my dad's sense of humor. Which is to say, it's terrible. It's okay to not have a very good sense of humor. But it's terrible to not have a good sense of humor, and to think you do. My brothers can have everyone in stitches, recreating how terribly my dad tells jokes. That's how Avee's jokes go. She told a joke the other day that was actually more like a short story and the "punchline" was "Ha! I don't have a heart!" but it didn't make any sense. And if it did make sense, it certainly wasn't funny. J encouraged her to tell me, just so he could watch me not know when the punchline came. She delivered the punchline with gusto and I was sure there had to be more. J, behind Avee, nodded and mouthed, "That's the joke."

She also has my mom's love for makeup, pink and purple, and accessorizing. All of those things completely skipped me. I am frumpy, wear a lot of blue and black, and I'm really funny. That's why I'm certain Avee was meant to be my parent's child.

But oh how I'm glad she's mine. :)

Saturday I ran a few errands by myself in the afternoon. One of them was to get a simple trim and my hair thinned out. I have a massive head of hair, and with it long right now, it's kind of ridiculous if I don't keep it thinned. I went to Great Clips because I really think a trim and thin are pretty hard to mess up. I've been telling myself that lie for about 15 years now. My mom has said to me at least 5 times on the matter, "You get what you pay for, find someone good!" Every time I get a fouled up haircut, I resolve to never do it again. But the lack of planning and the $12.95 lure me back time and again. I watched as she butchered it and even I, who knows nothing of haircutting, knew she was doing a horrible job as she did it. Not even the worst of it, she cut my bangs like a half an inch above my eyebrows, when they were wet. I looked ridiculous when I left. Whatever though, I'm confident, I can pull it off.

I stepped outside the Great Clips and rushed to my car. I didn't have the remote access keychain, so I was in the drizzling rain with my Dumb and Dumber haircut, trying to manually unlock the car. It didn't really work so I just pulled on the handle in hopes that I had forgotten to lock it. I had! I jumped inside and reached to put my key in the ignition. I looked down and something seemed awry. I suddenly realized someone had broken into my car and stolen all the trash, McDonald's toys, empty water bottles, broken car chargers, expired insurance cards, and my cheap makeup bag that were piled into the console area. I was shocked! Then I noticed that they had taken all that, cleaned out the crumbs and spilled coke stickies and replaced it all with a pair of men's glasses.

Then I thought there was a chance I was in the wrong car. I looked out the window, over to my left and saw my green makeup bag perched on top of a loaf of Jimmy John's day old bread, next to 2 and a half Puss-in-Boots figurines, in the console of the car next to me.

I burst out laughing and quickly scrambled out of not-my-car. I stumbled onto the sidewalk to take a look to see if they were even the same KIND of car or if I had just blindly walked toward the first red thing I'd seen. They were the exact same car. Probably even the same year. I turned to a couple hovering under an awning and laughing loudly, exclaimed, "I just got into the wrong car! Look, they are exactly the same. On the outside." Then I took my awesome haircutted self and got into my own car.

I also scored three baskets from Michael's for 1 penny each. Not even lying. I spent 35 minutes in the basket aisle which was totally disorganized and over-run with baskets. I had dreams of having good taste and picking something that would magically transform the baby's room into a darling nursery. Um, except that it's painted a putrid tan color AND houses the washer and dryer. I am not painting the room and the washer and dryer have nowhere else to go. So, why am I trying to find the perfect cute basket? I don't know. I finally settled for three that I liked and have absolutely no way of matching anything I already have in there. So, in the end, I stayed true to myself.

When the girl rang me up it was a good $30 less than I anticipated and I said, "Um, that's too low..." and she said, "Oops, I forgot to ring up this big basket!" So, I waited for her to ring it up and we both stared incredulously as it rang up for 1 cent. She said, "Oh, I guess I did ring it up, it's only one penny though." So I made sure she took off the 4th penny so I wasn't overpaying for those baskets.

Paying 3 pennies for those baskets felt like winning the lottery.

Now all I have left to get for my baby is clothes to bring her home from the hospital. Well, and clothes to wear when she gets here. But other than that, I'm TOTALLY prepared. Oh, minus a name. Don't have that either. We'll manage.