On the day you were born . . .

    Happy 9th Birthday, Sarah!  Of course you were complaining last night because you wished you were turning ten today, rather than "just nine."   I've never understood why you're in such a hurry to do everything, but you've been that way since the day you were born.  In my first hazy memory of meeting you, you are laying on my chest and trying trying trying to lift up your head.  I was exhausted just from watching you persevere in the effort. Your arrival allowed us to include the words daughter, sister, granddaughter, and niece in our family conversations. We also added "brother", which is absolutely one of the sweetest words I know.  You've brought so much life and joy and energy to our family and every day that I've been your mom has been a blessing.  Every single one, all three-thousand two-hundred and eighty-five of them. 

DAY ONE

daughter   sister   brother

granddaughter   niece   goddaughter

Day 3,281

strong  creative  funny
energetic  athletic
artistic  determined  girl

Undertow

Orange Beach, Alabama

Thanksgiving 2012

     We spent Thanksgiving at the beach with Vic and Stacey and the nephews and niece.  It was a wonderful trip.  We stayed up too late, slept even later, napped whenever we wanted, ate well, drank some, and insisted that the children do absolutely positively nothing educational or productive over their Thanksgiving holiday. We did provide them with shovels and buckets so they spent most of their time on the beach digging trenches. On Saturday afternoon, we herded all the children down to the water at sunset in an attempt to take some photos of the five of them together, but our success was limited by the fact that poor Nephew Cooper was feeling decidedly under the weather so his stay on the beach was brief.  The photo above is the last shot I took of Owen and Sarah that evening.  The sun was disappearing fast at this point and they were both complaining that they were freezing (big babies - it was in the high 50s and only a little breezy) but they were laughing and having a great time. And then Sunday morning we woke up very early and drove back to Nashville and I kid you not, the whole way home I had this sense of dread that we were going back to "something."  I halfway expected us to be involved in an accident on the interstate or have a flat tire or some other malady on the drive home and Joel can attest to the fact that I was a lovely traveling companion for him that day. We made it home safe and sound and by late Sunday afternoon we were doing laundry and ordering dinner and getting ourselves organized for the week ahead.


Bright and way too early on Monday morning we all returned to work and school and then at 4pm my phone rang.  It was a call from school telling me that Sarah had fallen on the playground and they were requesting that we get there quickly.  We picked her up and took her to the ER hoping but not really expecting that she was more fine than not.  "Hoping" because as long as Joel was carrying her she said she was fine and that nothing hurt.  "Not really expecting" because she refused to put her foot on the ground and wouldn't/couldn't stand on the scale for the triage nurse to weigh her so she ended up sitting on the baby scale to be weighed.  We went back to "hoping" when she refused to take anything for pain because she said nothing was hurting really - she just didn't want to walk. The mind games we parents play when we want our kids to be fine and not injured.  After what seemed like forever, we were ushered to a "hallway room" where a very nice and very young doctor showed us the x-ray of Sarah's broken tibia, told us she'd be spending all of her upcoming free time in a cast that would stretch from her toes to way above her knee, then turned us over to two delightfully unconcerned orthopedic interns and one very wonderful nurse. The poor interns lost points in my book because they knew she hadn't had any pain medication but they started manipulating her foot and leg anyway and there was a moment there where I thought Sarah was going to pass out from the pain plus they had two packages of white fiberglass tape and two packages of black fiberglass tape and didn't think it was going to be a big deal if they mixed the two on her very long cast. And when I say "mixed" I don't mean in a fun stripey kind of way, but in a half and half kind of way. Um, no.  Bless the sweet nurse's heart who both listened to me and saw that Sarah was in a great deal of pain and had them stop casting her leg for a few minutes so that Sarah could take some very powerful medication and then made the effort to find two more packages of white fiberglass tape because she understood that no eight year old girl would want to be seen wearing a mismatched black and white cast.  And then we carried Sarah out of there and headed home.  The two biggest concerns I had leaving the ER that night were 1) will SG and her cast fit into the backseat of the car  (it was the first time I really missed the big blue minivan) and 2) how were we ever going to keep that white cast clean?  The answers turned out to be 1) she will fit in the backseat if you remove her car seat and have her sit sideways and 2)you can't keep a white cast clean.  You can, however, have it covered with a festive green layer and then have everybody in the universe sign it. And that was December and January. It was a long winter season at our house.

Big Green Cast

Hallway Room No. 3

First Steps, Part Deux

Sarah has been on the go almost since the day she was born.  She decided on Christmas Eve 2004 that she was ready to walk and no matter how much I tried to persuade her that at ten months and 12 days she was much much much too young to be a walker, she took off without me and never looked back. In the photo on the right she is moments away from taking her first steps.  She let go of the ottoman and took four steps toward the stairs which she then proceeded to climb.  The climbing - I'm pretty sure that's why I missed photographing her first steps. She was a fast and fearless climber long before she was an adventurous walker.  As a side note, we baby-proofed our house like crazy before Owen was born only to discover that we really didn't need to.  He was content playing with his toys or with us and never tried to do dangerous things like put his finger in a light socket or scale the cabinets to get into the prescription medications or open drawers and pull out sharp knives. By the time Sarah was born we had moved to a new house and after wasting all that time and money baby-proofing for our son, we assumed that we didn't need to baby proof the house for our daughter.  Oh sure, we put in the obligatory outlet covers, but baby gates and cabinet locks and bumpers? Not this time! We naively believed that those crazy safety precautions were for all those overprotective first time parents.  Yeah, we were wrong. See that photo below?  It was taken on Christmas morning.  Our sweet baby went from taking four steps on Christmas Eve to walking just about wherever she wanted to go on Christmas day.  It's not that she wasn't mobile before the walking - she was a crawling fiend - but the walking meant her hands were free to open cabinets and drawers more quickly and pull herself up on taller things and generally increase her range of mayhem. Mobility, thy name is Sarah.*

What's in here? 

Lucky for me I can 

walk over and find out for myself now.

Please don't offer to help me, 

it won't go well for you.

    Why am I waxing all nostalgic about Sarah's first steps this Christmas season? It's because at Sarah's orthopedic appointment on December 17th, the doctor told Sarah that with her new walking boot she could begin putting weight on her foot on December 24th - eight years to the day that she took her very first steps. It's made me more than a little bit sentimental.  And so it was on Christmas Eve, Sarah took her first crutch assisted steps on her left leg since "the incident" in late November.  She quickly went from slow tentative steps with her left leg to almost crutch running by Christmas Day.  She's now gotten so fast crutch walking that I have hustle to keep up with her when we're out and about.  A mobile Sarah is still a happy Sarah.

Christmas morning, climbing 

the steps with her 

American Girl Wheelchair

and broken legged McKenna doll in tow.

_________________________________________________________________________________
* I've been looking through my journals this holiday season and I came across the following entry from December 28, 2006: "We have decided to try to get her into a gymnastics class after the holidays.  She loves to do gymnastic-like things like flip upside down, hang from the kitchen table, walk on her toes, twirl around, launch herself off the furniture and climb up the outside of the stairs. She has no fear! And when she sits on the floor she always sits with her toes pointed - it's very cute.  She just seems like she would love it."

Elfed

It happened again this afternoon.  On our way home from school Sarah regaled me with amusing stories of her friends elves who have marsh mellow fights and grow candy canes and leave cute messages on kitchen countertops in powdered sugar. And then tonight she wrote this note card and left it laying where Santa would be sure to find it.  The photo quality isn't great, but I think you can make it out.  

She is killing me with lines like "If the elves g0t lost our address is . . . "!?!?!?  and "I think our Christmas letters are on the table near the couch without the lamp - dumbass!" I know, she didn't write "dumbass" but you can't read this note and not see that it's totally implied.  Seriously, we have the worst. elves. EVER!!  And I feel really bad about it.  The guilt is kinda giving me insomnia which is why I'm awake writing this after midnight. When she asked me again tonight when I thought the elves might get here, I casually mentioned that maybe they were waiting until after Thursday when she gets her new cast.  Any guess as to what she said? Well of course she said  "how fun will it be if they sign my new cast!"  So now the elves have to find their way here and then somehow figure out how to sign her cast without either waking her up or getting permanent marker on my new couch (because my sweet girl is sleeping on the couch because she can't walk upstairs to her bedroom because she has a GIANT cast on her leg. AAAHHH!!)!! I have totally elfed myself again this year.  I'm hoping the elves can manage to make an appearance tomorrow night. Or maybe Friday. Or sometime before Christmas.  It would be really helpful if Sarah could give me the elves address, you know - so I can find them.  Telling me that they are at the "North Pole" is about as helpful as saying they're "hidden somewhere in one of those Christmas boxes in the attic." Crossing my fingers that this story is going to have a happy ending. 

Cookies for Breakfast

   

  This is Sarah's first year participating on a competitive gymnastics team which means this is my first year watching my daughter compete on a competitive gymnastics team.  It's been a learning experience to say the least.  I spent the first few meets pacing and fretting, worrying over every unpointed toe and railing at the judges who clearly didn't see what I was seeing when I watched her routines (because seriously - 10.0 every time!).  Before SG's meet began yesterday I told Joel that I was going to do my absolute best to remain calm and collected throughout the whole entire meet.  It took a lot of effort, but if you asked Joel how it went yesterday, I think he would tell you that I was much less "ahhhhhh!!!!" and much more "well, let's see how this goes."  Sarah's first event was floor, followed by vault, then bars, then beam.  She was having a good meet and after three events she was on track to meet the goals she had set for herself before the meet began. Just one more event and we could call it a morning . . . 

Warning: Video has sound

If you watched the video you may have noticed that at the 1:08 mark the image gets jumpy - that's because my hands were shaking uncontrollably by that point.  Turns out I can only hold the angst at bay for so long then it just overwhelms me. All in all it was a pretty good meet. Sarah exceeded the goals she set for herself (one of which was to have a top three finish), I managed to remain mostly calm (at least on the outside), Owen supported his sister when it was appropriate to do so (and then returned to playing Star Wars Angry Birds), and Joel enjoyed the meet because his wife was a little less crazy than usual.

Back Seat Politician

     I was in the school lobby this afternoon when the results of the mock election were announced.  I posted the results on Facebook because I thought it might be interesting to see how predictive our school's election results might be.  According to the student body at our small (and apparently progressive) Catholic school, Obama received 51% of the votes, Romney received 43% percent, and Other received 6%.  On the way home Sarah told me that she voted for Mr. Obama, but after hearing the results of the election she wished that she had voted for Mr. Romney. Naturally, I asked her why.  "Well," she said, "you can be elected as president twice so if President Obama loses this election then he could run again in 2016 and Mr. Romney could run against him because he would already be president and then everybody could use the same campaign signs."  Apparently she's concerned about what's going to happen to all those Obama/Biden and Romney/Ryan yard signs when the election's over - because it's just wasteful to throw them all away. And just when I thought this election couldn't get any longer, my daughter has figured out a way to make the whole thing drag on for four more years.

School House Rocks

I'm Just A Bill

Green Lantern

Fan Page!

So, you know how at the end of a comic book there's always a page where they publish a few drawings that have been submitted by kids and right next to it there's an entry form that encourages you to submit your drawing for publication in a future edition?  And you know how you think to yourself that even if you took the time to draw a really good picture and you asked your parents for a stamp and an envelope and then you mailed it off to the comic book people there are probably so many other kids mailing in their very own best drawings that there's no way yours will ever get published?  So why bother?  Yeah, my eleven year old doesn't think this way.  He drew a picture.  He asked for a stamp and an envelope.  He mailed it to the folks at Green Lantern.  They published his drawing.  I can state with absolute certainty that if he'd told me what he was doing I would have discouraged his efforts - or at the very least told him not to get his hopes up because the odds of his picture being chosen were pretty small.  I guess it's a good thing he didn't ask me - look what he would have missed out on if he had.



The Green Lantern
by Owen