02.28.2006 | 9:02 pm | Uncategorized
Everytime I listen to “Beautiful Day” by U2, I’m struck by the poignancy of these simple, yet elegant lines:
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me, Lord
I know I’m not a hopeless case
I’m trying to make them my creed, my prayer, every day. I just want to be a better person, and I’m not happy with who I have become at this stage in my life. I want to go back to “that other place”, a place I tasted for a few sweet months several years ago. I’ve ventured so far off the path, sometimes it seems as if I won’t be able to find my way back.
I love to be reminded that even me, even I’m not a hopeless case. I just have go to the right source for help. In the meantime, I’m enjoying a lot of U2 these days…such brilliant songwriting and performing talent, I can hardly grasp it.
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02.22.2006 | 10:18 pm | Uncategorized, Daily Life, Ranting
It was so warm today…80 degrees, and I actually got a bit sunburned on my walk/jog. And I got very sweaty. I was peeling off my clothes until I got down to only the most necessary coverage, and I was still hot and miserable. My iPod got all slippery from all the sweat.
I know I was recently complaining because it was unusually cold here, but I don’t like to bake, either. At least, not in February!
It’s time for another “if I were God” moment. Please no one comment and be all mad if you don’t like my judgement. I know I’m not God and I really don’t want to be. K?
But if I were God, the temperature would never dip below 60 degrees, year-round — the only exception being for a few days around Christmas. And the temperature would never go above 80, and that would only be in the summer. And there would always be a cool breeze blowing when the temp is above 70. Likewise, there’d be no breeze when the temp is below 70.
Imagine a world where the temperature was always pleasantly between 60-80 degrees.
Wouldn’t that be perfect?
And all the ice caps would melt, and we’d all be underwater within a couple of years.
That’s probably one good reason (out of many) why God has never let me run things! 
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02.22.2006 | 11:35 am | Daily Life, Gray Matters
I couldn’t stand his hair the way it was. So I attacked him again last night with the scissors, and chopped 3-4 inches off, all the way around his head. It’s shoulder-length now, with little bangs that graduate into the rest.
I never wanted to go that short, but my screw-up required it. Funny thing is, I ended up really happy with how it turned out! It’s all clean-looking and his curls are much more defined now.
Whew. I feel so much better.
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02.17.2006 | 9:10 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters
Tonight Gray got his first haircut ever. He is 2 years, 2 months, and 1 week old today, and until now his hair has been untouched. The front had gotten so long that it was always hanging in his face, so it was time for that to be trimmed. So, I put him in the kitchen sink for his bath, and while he was occupied with his cars and filling a jar with water, I took the scissors and went to work.
I cried after the first snip. It was very emotional. He has the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen on a boy, and I’ve always been greatly attached to it. After I cried, I continued snipping, wrapping each curly little lock in tape, to be saved forever. I didn’t touch the overall length; I only trimmed up the heavy front parts that always hang in his face. It’s all I can bear to part with for now.
I don’t like it. I cut it too short. I thought I was making sure to keep it long, but somehow, I still managed to cut too much off. I’m so angry at myself! So now I’m crying because I’ve ruined his beautiful hair. I’m going to have to go at it again when I get my nerve back up, and try to blend it in better.
I knew it would be a mistake, but I also knew it had to be trimmed, and I didn’t want anyone else doing it. ::sigh::
Hopefully it will grow back quickly.
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02.13.2006 | 9:48 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters
I’ve been slacking. Gray loves to color with crayons, colored pencils, and even ball point pens. He does it often, but that’s been the extent of our artistic explorations. Until today.
Last week I got to talking with my mom friends, and realized that there’s so much more I can be doing with Gray when it comes to art and other crafty things. I could kick myself, because both Philip and I are “artists” (I hate that word). Him MUCH moreso than me, but we both have talent and training in all different types of art. Both of us have always loved to paint, although I’m nowhere near as good as Philip — he’s a skilled painter in most mediums, while I never really mastered any of them, but did okay. So why have I never introduced Gray to painting?? I have no idea. I think I assumed he’s too young to “get it” and to not make a huge mess. Shame on me.
I got down our box of art supplies today, which is stocked with all types of paints, brushes, different types of paper, etc. I found some non-toxic watercolor paints that would work as Grayson-paint for the time being, until I can buy him some kids’ watercolors & other paints. I also managed to find a couple of craptastic brushes that would be okay for him to mess up. Philip is very protective of his “real” brushes…LOL.
I sat him down with a sheet of real watercolor paper, and showed him how to dip his brush first into the water, and then the paint tin to load up. He took his loaded brush and stroked the paper with it, causing a deep green line to appear.
His eyes got big and he looked up at me and said, “Wowwwww”!
It was a beautiful moment to witness.
I showed him how to rinse his brush out before changing colors, and to my amazement, he caught on immediately. He dipped, loaded, painted, and rinsed like a pro. He had a ball, filling up the paper with all kinds of brush strokes and designs. He even got all creative toward the end by making a “wash”, which is when you brush a bunch of water on the paper first, and then add paint so that it swirls around and takes on its own personality.
He painted for half an hour, which blew me away because he never sits still for that long, unless there’s PlayDoh or food involved. The time passed quickly for me, too, just watching him create. He’s an amazing kid. I had to upset him by closing up the paints, because it was lunchtime and we had to hurry and eat so he could get his nap.
When he woke up from his nap a few hours later, he was sitting on the potty and suddenly said, “Paint! Paint!” while pointing toward the kitchen.
All afternoon & evening we heard him asking to “paint!” again & again.
I’m so glad I let him do it. I can’t wait to get him some kids’ paint and see where he takes it. I need to sew him a smock, though, because he’s a messy little artist!
On a final note…people are freaks! I’m positive that every single person in this town was out at WalMart tonight buying last-minute crap for V-day tomorrow. And I mean crap in a very literal sense.
I’m baking Philip some chocolate muffins w/peanut butter chips. I also baked peanut butter cookies. These are his V-day gifts from me.
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02.12.2006 | 4:50 pm | Uncategorized, Daily Life, Gray Matters
It’s Sunday. Since it’s been much too cold out to do much of anything else, it’s been a reading weekend here. I love being lost in a good book (an understatement, but I’m not feeling elaborative right now). The sequel to GOL is not disappointing; so far it’s been compelling and enjoyable.
Watched some Olympic excitement last night and looking forward to some more tonight. I love watching the Olympics & rooting for the U.S. We rock, as always.
I wish our church had a sunday school class for 2-year olds. Our only choices are to put him in the nursery, which is useless at best, or to put him in a class with 3 & 4 year olds, which is out of the question. You can’t teach 2-year olds in a class full of 3- and especially 4-year olds. He needs teaching and activities that are going to be geared for a 2-yr-old’s learning capacity and attention span.
I hate for G not to be in SS right now, with all the learning he’s opened up to in the past months. This is the age for him to be introduced to Jesus. When he can absorb the concept so freely and without prejudice. We’re trying to decide what to do; changing churches seems inevitable, but at the same time it’s not what I want to do. But in my opinion, the fact that they won’t do a class for 2-yr olds, EVEN if there’s only one child in the class, says that it’s not a church we need to be sticking with. It certainly feels like both we and our child are being overlooked…or worse, that we don’t matter.
LOL - G has been in a funny, high-charged mood all day. He’s been annoying the daylights out of P (this just came straight out of P’s mouth, which is why I’m chuckling). P keeps asking him if he got into the caffeine pills (that we don’t have).
I’m going to go try to read a few more chapters of my book, before the weekend comes to a close.
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02.10.2006 | 12:27 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters
Today’s lineup du jour is a little unnerving. LOL
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I’ve decided to start posting some of Gray’s “line-ups”. He spends literally half of his day lining up his toys and all kinds of household items. He’s done this more & more frequently over the past few months. I started taking pictures because I want a collection to show his pediatrician. It cracks me up, but it also makes me nervous since this is a prime characteristic of autism. He has none of the other signs of autism (he was slow to talk, but is catching up really fast lately), but his lining things up is starting to get a little obsessive.
He likes to find like things and line them up, and he’s very particular how he does it. He’ll spend 5 minutes making a line of books (for example), adjusting them meticulously until they’re all just the same distance apart, same angle, etc. Then he’ll walk away and do something else, but he wants them left just how he put them. He gets upset if I go and move them later. It’s to the point that it’s making me nervous, but I try not to worry about it too much right now and just focus on the humor of it. Last week his pedi said to keep an eye on it, but that she thinks he’s just very attuned to spacial properties & relationships, and that it’s even a sign of probable high intelligence. I hope she’s right.
But I’m taking pictures of every line-up, and if this continues for more than a month or two longer, I’m going to push for an evaluation.
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02.8.2006 | 8:45 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters
For the past few weeks, Gray’s been sleeping with his favorite teddy bear, Darryl.
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He asked for him one day out of the blue before his nap, and since then he’s asked for him before each naptime, as well as before bedtime at night. He even holds him while we do our prayers, and Darryl is on our list of “people” that we thank God for.
Tonight Philip couldn’t find Darryl before G’s bedtime. I told him to just not say anything and maybe G wouldn’t notice his absence. (ya, right!) I thought I was going to be right, because we made it through our prayer without a hitch. After prayer, I usually hold & rock G for a couple of minutes before Philip puts him into bed…it’s just our winding-down routine, something that evolved from back when he was nursed before bed. Neither of us wanted to give up those few minutes of cuddle time once he weaned. G usually holds & cuddles Darryl at this time, as well. When I first started rocking, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and looked up at me as always. But then I heard the “pop” of his thumb coming out, and his soft little voice asked, “Dee-ule?”
Uh-oh.
“Do you want Darryl?” I asked (while thinking, “oh crap!”).
“Dee-ule.”
I told him okay, but that Darryl was temporarily misplaced and that Daddy was looking for him at the moment. I asked would it be okay if he waited till Daddy came back in to put him in bed.
“O-kay,” he said, and popped his thumb back in.
Philip came in and told me Darryl was nowhere to be found, as he took G and laid him in bed. I went out and started searching. In a minute, Philip joined me and I asked him if G was going to sleep okay. Philip said no, that G was in his crib asking for Darryl.
DOH! This transitional object thing is great and all, but ONLY IF YOU DON’T LOSE SAID OBJECT!
We searched each room of the house, getting rather nervous that Darryl was seriously MIA, while all the while, G’s sleepy little voice was calling out from his bed,
“Dee-ule!”
I was still searching, all the while wondering what was going to happen if we couldn’t find Darryl, and making a mental note that when we DID find him, we should probably check into getting him microchipped with a GPS.
“Aha!” Philip said from the living room. I looked in to see Philip hanging over the back of the couch, and he came back up with Darryl in hand. Apparently G had dropped Darryl and a few of his other stuffed buddies back behind the couch sometime during the evening. We rolled our eyes and sighed a collective sigh of relief.
Philip went in and gave G his Darryl, and came back out to tell me that as soon as he gave it to him, G snuggled him to his chest and closed his eyes. He went right to sleep.
Disaster averted.
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02.6.2006 | 6:38 pm | Uncategorized
Last week was the suckiest I’ve had in a while, not counting the zoo trip of course. The weekend was a welcome break and we did a lot of resting and just enjoying life.
Yet in the midst of a crappy week, there was a ray of sunshine.
We’re going to see the Aerosmith / Cheap Trick concert in March! Compliments of our friend, Lee. He surprised us with an offer to buy us a couple of good seats for the show. Woohoo! I anticipate a night of good, loud musical fun, sans the tittie-cam. Both groups are ones each of us has liked for years. Well, minus the past several years, during which Aerosmith became a pop band rather than the hard rockers they used to be, but hopefully they’ll leave the teeny-bopper stuff out of the concert and stick to the good old-school set.
“The Flame” by Cheap Trick is a Philipandcam song. It dates all the way back to 1988, when the flame began burning between us.
Speaking of Philipandcam, and our songs, and all that sweet stuff, tomorrow (2/7), we’ll be celebrating EIGHT years of marriage. I would say “wedded bliss”, and it would be mostly true, but anyone who has kids knows that it becomes not exactly so blissful anymore, once the two of you become parents as well as partners. At least, that’s how it’s worked for us. I think it’s much more pronounced for couples who have children later in life, especially when they’ve had several years of child-free marriage beforehand. A huge weight of duty & responsibility gets dropped into your self-absorbed life when the first baby comes. It changes everything, including your relationship. But I also don’t want to give the wrong impression. We know we’re blessed to have this beautiful responsibility in our lives. It’s just that most people aren’t honest enough to admit that for two people used to being “just the two of us” for so many years, becoming parents can really be a tough adjustment.
But happy? Yeah, we’re happy. Very much so. Neither of us would change a thing, other than maybe having a bit more alone time than we typically get. But then again, I have myself to blame for that because I rarely can bring myself to leave Gray so that Philip & I can have that time. I feel sad when we’re without him. So…maybe it boils down to you just can’t have everything! It’s give & take no matter what side you look to. That made sense to me, but I’m sure it didn’t to anyone else reading this. But that’s okay. LOL.
My main point is this: when tomorrow rolls around, I’ll be thinking how lucky I am that we ended up together and how wonderful it’s been being his wife for the past eight years. I can’t imagine having anyone else but him by my side. Time sure flies!
You’ll always be the one
You were the first, you’ll be the last
Wherever you go, I’ll be with you
Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you
Whenever you need someone to lay your heart and head upon
Remember,
After the fire, after all the rain,
I will be the flame
I will be the flame
Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.
Wherever you go, I’ll be with you.
And whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.
— Cheap Trick
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02.2.2006 | 7:35 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters
I made it through the day! I am so tired, though. Gray had his 2-year well check this morning. I got up much earlier than I even intended because we had an hour’s worth of severe thunderstorms that rolled through from 6-7am. I was awakened by the loudest clap of thunder, and never was able to get back to sleep because it kept on & on until after 7:00. I was surprised it didn’t wake Gray, but somehow he’s always slept through even the worst of thunderstorms.
The appointment went pretty well. He’s incredibly tall, at 38 1/4 inches. His height was off the charts, as it has been for over a year now. The doctor said he ranks in the 110th percentile, maybe higher. She plotted his height for different ages, and said his height is 75th percentile for 3-year olds (!), and 50th percentile for 4-year olds (!). So, he’s the height of the average 4-year old. That would be about right, since he wears size 4T.
His weight is 35 1/4 lbs, which is 100th percentile. He’s up from the 90th percentile on weight, so his weight is increasing. She said it’s very normal in her opinion, and she would expect his weight to be up there based on his height. She said to keep feeding him as we always do (mostly fruits & veggies, whole grains, limited meat, no sweets, and no juice unless it’s watered down half & half), and keep giving him whole milk. She said he needs extra calories to fuel his body, which she again said is very muscular and not “fat” at all. That made me feel better, because it’s always a concern for me because he has an insatiable appetite. But we eat healthy, and he certainly does. I still don’t allow sweets or anything fattening, other than his weekly french fries (we do fast-food once a week. It’s one of the secrets to my successful weight loss: treat yourself once a week to something “bad”, and it’s easy to be “good” all week long).
It’s funny, since I’ve never let him eat cookies, candy, or anything with added sugar at home, he actually prefers less-sweetened foods. If you put sugar on his Cheerios, he won’t eat them–he loves them plain. If you offer him a piece of candy, he’ll eat it for a few seconds and then spits it out. He will eat a bite or two of a cookie or cake (we do have them on special occasions), but he ends up refusing it after the first few bites. But give the boy ANY kind of fruit, and he’ll eat it hand over fist until it’s gone. He thinks it’s dessert. And I’m not telling him any different! I think, other than him having been breastfed, that it’s one of the main reasons he doesn’t ever pick up any bugs, even when he’s been exposed to something. He’s so loaded up on fruits and veggies, it keeps him super-healthy. I wish I’d ended up that way, but I’ve determined to raise him up to actually prefer eating healthy (with some “bad” stuff once a week or so). It’s working so far.
I guess I got sidetracked…
The only thing she said she wants to keep an eye on is the fact that he can’t/won’t jump, which he should’ve been able to do a long time ago; his vocabulary, which is on the weak side; and his “lining-up” tendency. He spends around half of his day lining up his toys in various patterns, and he also does it with other like objects around the house (I’m always finding rows of paper, ponytail holders, hair clips, shoes, bits of cereal/dog food from my unswept floor, etc). She said that by itself, his lining-up habit isn’t much of an issue, but that if he starts exhibiting other ritualistic behaviors, we need to let her know. She said most likely, he’s very attuned to spatial relationships, which shows he has excellent cognitive skills. But his excessive attention to it is something for us to keep an eye on, while at the same time, to not be too worried about it unless he starts other behaviors.
I have to cut it short because it’s bedtime for the boy. I think that’s the rundown, anyway.
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