My abililty to write this blog, courtesy of a bunch of awesome teachers

I've been very fortunate in my life to have some really amazing teachers.  Last night while perusing Facebook, I came across one of my favorite and most influential teachers.  I have no doubt that she is a favorite of many of her hundreds of former students.  Nonetheless, I dropped her a friend request, hoping that she'd remember me by name, if not face.  There's certainly benefits to growing up with an unusual name.  People might not remember your name, or ever spell it correctly, but at least they remember that you're the tall, lanky kid with the weird moniker. 

I lay awake bed thinking about what I'd like to tell her; about how well I remember her 8th grade English class; about how important she was to me at a very challenging and formative time in my life; about how her ability to teach me translated into the basis for a love of writing that has benefited me throughout my academic, personal, and professional life.  Writing, (however poorly I do it in this blog or lazily I've done it for school), has always been an important form of expression for me.  I remember being at my grandmother's house, trying to write poetry in my early elementary years.  I later remember that a creative writing assignment I was given in third grade, got me promoted to the upper level language arts class.  But it was Ms. Hoehner's 8th grade English class that taught me to love writing.  Taught me methods for pushing through blocks, how to keep my brain moving.  Just keep writing, even if you have nothing to say, and it will come.  I learned to write poetry, and to journal, and the fundamentals of style and form.  Writing is communication, and the lessons I learned in that class a million years ago are ones I need to continue to grow from, practice and apply.

Really, I could write this post about so many teachers.  Despite my public school education, I've been blessed with many teachers who've inspired me to do more than I thought I could, who've pushed me take risks, and who've given me a solid foundation for critical thinking and self-discipline.   I can remember specific skills, or moments of empowerment bestowed upon me by teachers like Ms. Hoehner, Mrs. Powers, Mr. Roach, Mr. Schenck, Mr. Johnston, Mr. Karsner, and on and on through college and graduate school.

My own ambitions are usually closely tied to academia.  Perhaps because of these teachers, I see myself as a student always.  I'd like to complete a PhD in some field.  Although my undergraduate work showed me the grueling day to day challenge of being a high school teacher, I still see myself also with the potential to be an educator.  I am, after all, actually trained to be a public health educator.  In any event, these experiences have led me to a place where I find it difficult to imagine being outside the realm of education.

I sit here now, as a parent, waiting to send my first-born off to Kindergarten in a few months.  I worry endlessly about whether he will be properly challenged, nurtured, supported.  Whether he'll be at the right school for his needs and intelligence.  Whether he will be as fortunate as I have been in finding leadership among his teachers.  Whether he will one day be looking back, as I am now, finding friendship among some of those who've helped him along the way.  We should all be so lucky.

It's all fun and games till somebody cracks their head on a post

Just some pictures of our recent fun playing outside.  We got about 2 inches early in January, then another 4-5 about a week later.  I surprised the kids with some saucer style sleds, and the fun started!  The first couple of times we stuck to the side yard by our neighbor's driveway, which results in crashing into an overgrown shrub at the bottom.  The kids didn't really care.  The deeper snow afforded us the opportunity to sled down our driveway, which was great fun till Ethan slid off the path he was on, bumped the recycling cart, then hit his head on the deck post!  Poor kid.  He was fine after some dry clothes and hot chocolate.  We had fun, but it can be Spring now.  Enjoy!

December I'll Remember: Part II

The chaos of birthdays, illness, and whirlwind of Goodwills behind us, we started to prepare for the many Christmas happenings.

My mother in law, Sandy came in the day after the Goodwills departed and stayed with us through Christmas Eve.  We went out to dinner Wednesday night, the 23rd, at Mi Mexico.  Mexican food is a favorite among the kids and adults in our family, so the meal was uneventful.  Shortly before it was time to leave the restaurant, Ethan began asking when we were going home.  This struck me as unusual, but I wrote it off as him being tired from a busy day.  On the way home he asked again, "When will be home?".  After arriving home by myself with the kids, while Ben and Sandy went to run some errands, Ethan started to complain that he head and stomach were hurting.  I suggested that he take some Tylenol for his headache, and didn't think much of the stomach complaint, as Ethan has some digestive issues that are still being explored.

Ben and Sandy arrived back at the house, and Ethan began to decline very rapidly.  Complaining about severe pain in his head, and crying loudly.  He was clearly in very sudden and severe pain.  I gave him some Tylenol, and he went off to brush his teeth to prepare for bed.  Ben was taking care of him, then he started to vomit.  Yee haw, here we go!

I started trying to decide how to rearrange our holiday celebration planned for Christmas eve with Sandy, my parents, brother and his kids.  We got Ethan taken care of, and let him watch some cartoons while we monitored him.  He vomited again later, so we set him up to sleep in Raina's toddler bed which is at the foot of our bed.  He passed out, and awoke the next morning fine.  It was clear that he'd gotten some sort of food poisoning, we think from sour milk.  No matter what caused it, I don't plan to return to Mi Mexico.  (Jalapenos is better anyway!)

My intent for Christmas eve was not to make a big deal out of the meal.  There's nothing like spending a day or two in the kitchen to have it all wolfed down in 15 minutes and tons of cleanup.  I planned to make my grandmother's yeast rolls,  some gluten free rolls for Ben (partly from a mix), cook a country ham, throw together some mashed potatoes, and another veggie or two.  Sounds simple right?  How is it that I still ended up in the kitchen all day?  Well, for one, it turns out that you're supposed to soak a country ham in water for 12 to oh, 48 hours in advance of cooking it.  Oy.  Perhaps I should have planned ahead a little better?  How was I supposed to know this?

As it turns out, the main reason for soaking is to decrease the briney-ness of the ham.  So, it turned out okay with 5 or 6 hours of soaking, it was just REALLY salty!  Also, you supposed to cut off the hock, which includes cutting through the VERY thick neck bone.  Turns out that my electric knife isn't sharp enough to do this.  So what does one do in this situation?  Ask the hubby of course.  He, after all, has all the power tools.  A saws-all works wonders, if a little messy.  True story.

The kids got loaded up with gifts, and we all ate yummy food.  I was, of course, exhausted, but happy.  Christmas eve was so big that it almost seemed like too much to give the kids MORE gifts the next day, but alas...that is another ideological rant.  Ben and I stayed up late putting out presents, filling stockings, and playing Santa.  We nearly had a major crisis when, while assembling Ethan's hot wheels track, we realized that the motor didn't work.  Ben has to take the silly thing apart and solder some of the wiring.  It was disappointing how poorly made it was, but as it turned out, Ethan loved it, played with it for at least two hours Christmas morning, and has gotten tons of use out of it since then, with and without the motor.  (Thanks to Daren for the suggestion to set it up on the stairs.  Gravity works great...who would've thunk it!)

 Raina's favorite gift, her "My first dollhouse".

Ethan with his Gran.  He made the house she's holding.  He loves his Transformer.

Raina with her "brella".

My niece Anne, an aspiring hippie chick.  We're so proud!

Papaw tickles Carson into oblivion.

Mom, amusing herself with an oven mitt.

Me and kiddos.

The holidays make me a little crazy.

 

We love Christmas morning with the kids.  We come down the stairs and take photos of their expressions and let them take their time playing with their gifts.  We eat chocolate, and drink coffee.  It's very relaxing and lots of fun.  Raina's favorite gift this year was the dollhouse she received from Sandy (aka Gran) Christmas eve.  She's played with it non-stop.  Ethan has loved the race track, hands down.

Ben with Ethan and the race track Christmas morning.

Raina loves on her new bear from Santa.

She knew exactly what this gift was for!

After our morning at home with the kids, we got ready to head up to Louisville for the afternoon and evening for dinner and gifts with Ted, Susan, and Susan's family.  Much fun and good company was had by all.  Ethan disappeared with Susan's nephew and nieces, Aaron, Katherine, and Erica.  This is my favorite part of any get together that includes other kids, mine just disappear and wear themselves out!

 My beautiful boy next to the avalanche of gifts.

Our gracious hostess, Susan.

Lovin' on Grandaddy.

Cheetos in a party dress.

The weekend after Christmas included a dessert party at my brother's house.  We got to visit with lots of great friends, and meet BJ's baby Kade Bear.  Lots of photos of that cutie, for sure.  Ethan and Raina weren't seen for several hours at my brother's house.  There were many other kiddos there, and of course tons of toys and fun stuff to get into.  The disappearing kid thing always works at my brother's house, but it didn't hurt that there were at least four or five extra kids!

Melanie gets a look from Kade Bear.

My bro.

Cute shot of my hubby and Mel.

Some of the kids at the party.

Time to snuggle with Anne.

BJ and Kade.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things over the course of the next few days.  Ethan started a Space Explorer's class for preschoolers at our local Explorium (think Children's Museum).  Ben injured his ankel playing basketball, so it seemed like the perfect time to put him to work on the house!  Har.

New Year's eve we started in on a project that's been eating at me for some time, painting the living room and hallway!  This project was not the most ideal thing to start since the Goodwill family was slated to make their way back through our neck of the woods on New Year's Day.  I had very low expectations for how much work would be accomplished.  The most basic prep took me most of the day, and I didn't anticipate starting on the painting till after our guests had come and gone.  I also figured on doing most of the work myself since Ben was hurting.  Boy was I wrong (see a theme here?).

Ben and I got the walls painted and edged, and the window and trim taping underway that night.  In fact, we were working as the clock struck midnight.  We paused for a kiss and champagne toast, and got back to work!

The Goodwill family arrived around lunch time on New Year's day, and much to my shock, offered to start helping us work in the living room!  Tim and Ben got all the carpet ripped up and Cindy and started in painting base boards and windows.  The kids did an amazing job entertaining themselves, and we got tons done.  Those Goodwills really live up to that name, and we are endlessly grateful for their hard work and help!

That evening, we welcomed the Morrow family over to have dinner with us and the Goodwills.  Chris is a police officer here in Lexington (with some hysterical stories!) and another friend Tim hoped to have time with on their brief visit on their way back up to Rochester.  We had, count them, NINE children in our house that night.  Nine.  Oh yes, nine.  It's the most I think, ever at once.  We threw together a taco bar, and Cindy created what can only be described as a dessert bar with three types of ice cream, toppings, and cake.  Might I suggest that you always let the pregnant woman go to the store to pick up dessert?   We had a great time visiting with Chris and getting to know his wife Amy and their kids.

The destruction was epic...I can't even begin to describe it.  I wish I'd taken a picture, but found myself instead, wading through it, trying to reassemble games and various toy sets.  It's really inconvenient to be so anal retentive so much of the time.  On the flip side of this, throwing dinner together for 15 people on the fly was significantly less stressful than planning it for days beforehand...much to my shock!

So that gets us through New Years.  Sorry if I left anyone or anything out.  It's been a crazy busy few weeks.  I'll post pics of the living room which was completed the following weekend!

December, I'll remember: Part I

December rivals June as the busiest month of the year in our house. Aside from the holidays, we also have Ethan's birthday, my birthday, my mom's birthday, numerous parties, Ben's time "off work" (in which I typically put him to work), illnesses, and so on.

So, I feel bad about not getting the cards the kids painted out to family, nor the new family photos we had taken right after New Years. I'll get to it, around March probably. Let's not forget Thanksgiving, which has also been absorbed by December, and neglected on this electronic memoir.  Turkey day fun included dinner with our friends Clay, Staci, and Olivia Maney, several bottles of wine, and too much Rock Band.  My mother in law dropped in on her return visit from Florida and started the avalanche of Ethan's birthday gifts with an awesome/hard to find/no long made Batmobile for his Superfriends action figures.

If I can get through it, the intent of this post is to skim over the highlights of December, though lacking the anal-retentive attention to detail that I feel it deserves. It is this need to detail which has prevented me from writing this post, or the individual posts I feel are deserved. So here goes, my attempt at a chronological recounting of December.

Ethan's birthday and mine are only three days apart. As such, his party weekend typically overlaps my birthday. Also, as such, we've found that it's impractical to have all the kids he wants to invite, and the family invading our house at the same time joining us in joyous celebration.

This year, we had planned for family to come on Saturday the 12th, and to have his friends over Sunday the 13th. Batman banner hung, Raina came down with a fever the preceding Thursday night. She ran a fever from Thursday night through the weekend between 99 and 102 degrees, and puked a couple of times Friday night and Saturday. My kids, like me, rarely run fevers or vomit unless they're on their deathbed. Thinking that she had some viral funk, with her snotty little nose, I sat with her, day after day, waiting her for her recover.

Not knowing what was wrong with Raina, we opted to cancel the family gathering that included my niece and nephew, who've had their own share of illness, and didn't need what might be a stomach bug, or something else. Ted and Susan came up to shower Ethan and I with gifts, and the family, less Raina and I, went out to dinner. It easily goes down in history as one of my two most craptastic birthdays (not the visit from the in-laws, but the sitting under pitiful baby for endless hours)...let me tell you.

I spent part of my couch time Raina/birthday scrambling to figure out what to do about Ethan's friend party the next day (that is, when I wasn't streaming documentaries on Netflix.  Sidebar: "Jesus Camp" is disturbing). We didn't have a big crowd coming, but thinking that Raina might be infectious, I didn't want to expose lots of other people's kids. After making a few calls, we opted to move the party to one of the local bowling alleys. You should have heard the response of EVERY SINGLE person I spoke to on the phone when I said, "I need to schedule a birthday party for tomorrow"...It was like, "Um, tomorrow?!"

To my utter surprise, throwing a birthday party together that didn't include being in my house, was not terribly stressful. The worst part was that Ben had to stay home with Raina, and missed Ethan's 5th birthday party. A great time was had by all, here's some photographic evidence:

He's kind of into Batman

Nearly everybody

Ethan and his buddy Jonah.  They've really missed each other!

 All the kids are being super creapy and chanting, "Pinata, pinata, pinata" here.

The next day was Monday. That morning, Raina's fever broke and she played, and laughed, and sang like her usual happy little self. I figured the virus had passed and didn't bother calling the doctor. Well, that was a mistake. Somewhere around 3 or 4 PM, my friend Staci called me to see if I was planning to go with her and her daughter to take the kids to the movies. That's when I realized that I'd been sitting on couch with a feverish baby for a couple of hours again, and ought to call the doc. They got Raina in with about an hour, just enough time to pack her up, let Staci (who saves my butt more often than I can count) take Ethan to her house, and get out the door.

All signs pointed to a urinary tract infection, and they had to draw some blood, and do the most horrible of all, catheterize my poor, miserable, baby girl. The tests were immediately positive for the UTI. They gave her a shot of antibiotics that night, and scheduled us to come back the next day (Ethan's actual birthday, and including another gifting by mommy and daddy). On a side note, it was about 7pm by the time we left. This willingness to stay late, and see kids on the weekends (Saturday and Sunday!) is one of the things I like most about my pediatricians' office. I leave my complaints for a future post.

It took Raina a few days on oral antibiotics to really perk up and start acting like herself. She was truly pitiful for a while, but finally regained her appetite and spunk.

The kids and traveled to Frankfort on Friday the 18th to take my mom out for a birthday lunch. I managed to do a little Christmas shopping, though still had several gifts outstanding at this point. We followed this journey up with a trip to Ethan's old school, VMS, for their holiday program, and so that Ethan could visit with his teachers and friends he'd been missing. This was particularly bittersweet because it was clear that Ethan didn't fully grasp that he isn't part of the school currently. He attended for one year, and we pulled him out when we decided that I would stay home with the kids. He hasn't attended there since they let out in May of '09, but he was still asking questions like, "Am I going to sing?" and "Is Cali going to give me a bell?" (as she handed out bells to the primary kids for Jingle Bells), and the one that brought me to tears, "Why isn't my picture on the wall?" (along with every other kid at the school). Nonetheless, it was lovely to visit with everyone, and I felt nothing but welcome. I swear, that place is like home, and it felt just like we'd never left.

That weekend was spent preparing for our dear friend Tim Goodwill and his family to blow through on their way to Atlanta. Tim's family consists of him, his wife Cindy, Nia (6), Hoyt (4), Liliana (3), Sanoma (20 months), and Cindy is expecting #5. Their visit was brief, but joyful. Last time we saw Tim and Cindy, they had only two year old Nia, and baby Hoyt. They have the greatest kids with an awesome group dynamic that sucked my kids right in! They were all nice enough to entertain themselves while the grown ups caught up a little. Here's some photos of the fun, including breakfast the next morning:

The fun was just getting started!  Here's everybody but Hoyt on or near Ethan's bed.

 Super cutie, Sanoma Ann.  Better known by Raina as "Noma".

 Yum breakfast.  That's Sanoma, Liliana, Cindy, Tim, Nia, and Raina's messy little bed-head.

 And the boys, Hoyt and Ethan at the little table.

Part II to come. Will throw in all the Christmas who ha, and leave you with our rocking New Year's Eve of home remodeling.