billandcorrie.com

Please keep my family in your thoughts tomorrow as my mom undergoes surgery.  She is strong and resilient, and I know she will do well.  The power of prayer is proven, and I would sure appreciate a few more coming our way!  She will begin chemo again before she leaves the hospital.  It sucks, but this is what we have to do.

I will probably not write much about this here, as it is not wholly my story to tell, and I may choose to journal my feelings privately.  But I knew my friends would want to know, and I know they will be a source of love and support during this journey.

This was Lily on Christmas Day, on our way to visit my grandma. We actually had a white Christmas this year, which seems to be rare around here — I guess we get most of our snow in January and February. Anyway, I was glad to get this shot of Lily with the snow in the background, because today it was long gone with a high of around 68 degrees. Weird.

Despite my best efforts to get an early start on Christmas so that I could spend the last week or two relaxing and enjoying the season, I was still shopping/wrapping/baking up until the last minute. Therefore the blog suffered abandonment for a few weeks. A quick recap of the events leading up to Christmas:

We enjoyed our annual trek to ye olde Christmas tree parking lot at the end of our block to pick out our Christmas tree and carry it home.  We went with our neighbors again this year, then had them over for chili and mulled wine to warm up. 

Lily showed little interest in the tree for the first few weeks, so we sort of relaxed about her being near it and the ornaments until one day last week when she grabbed one of the glass ball ornaments within her reach and broke it in her hand, requiring four stitches.  It was Bill’s and my first ER visit as parents, and I think we handled it quite well.  Lily is now pleased to show anyone with or without a passing interest the “owwwie” on her thumb.

I made some delicious holiday treats inspired by an internet find, a blog called Bakerella.  The first is a creation called Red Velvet Cake Balls, which involves a few basic steps:  Bake a boxed red velvet cake, cool, and crumble into fine crumbs in a bowl.  Stir in a can of cream cheese frosting, which results in a “mold-able” consistency.  Roll into 1″ balls, then dip in melted milk or white chocolate.  These were a huge hit at our church’s Christmas cantata.  The second treat, Oreo Truffles, are very similar in preparation — just crumble a package of Oreos in the food processor (or, if you are doing it during naptime like I was, place cookies in a Ziploc bag and roll with a rolling pin until crushed fine), and stir in a brick of softened cream cheese.  Roll into balls, chill, then dip in melted white chocolate.  These are sure to please at any holiday (or other) gathering.

I learned that my days of shopping with Lily have come to a close, or at least a break.  I think this realization came around the time that I was carrying my kicking, screaming toddler out of JC Penney amidst a crowd of holiday shoppers, to spend the next 10 minutes in the parking lot, in the biting wind, trying to coax, cajole, bribe, threaten, and eventually physically force said toddler into her car seat.  This was our first and only outing of the day, and the last of my attempts to shop with Lily this holiday season.  Internet shopping is my friend.

Lily visited Santa, which was basically a fiasco from beginning to end.  See, we had decided to skip the visit this year, knowing that Lily is fearful of strangers with facial hair, and figuring she was too young to know much about Santa anyway.  But then, two days before Christmas, I awoke in the night, awash in regret that I would never have the quintessential Christmas keepsake photo of my daughter at age one on Santa’s lap.  So, Bill and I synced our schedules and found a little bit of time late on the afternoon of the 23rd.  We hustled off to the mall at 4:00, aware we would face a monstrous line, to find not only the line but also a sign at the front reading, “Santa will return at 5:00.”  What??  Santa needs a whole hour break at prime lap time two days before Christmas?  “Forget it,” I told Bill, but he knows me too well.  I had a home visit for work at 5:30, so I knew I couldn’t stay until Lily’s turn, but Bill faithfully and fearlessly stayed on.  (Seriously, I would not consider trying to wrangle Lily by myself at that time of day, without getting out of line, for what ended up being two solid hours, but Bill is nuts.)  This all culminated in, of course, a crying toddler on Santa’s lap:

It may sound cruel, but I love this photo.  Don’t worry, she was soon placated by a candy cane and all was again right with her world.

All this before the main event, and — oh yeah — I guess I had a birthday in there somewhere, which Bill made very special by baking me a cake and giving me pretty much a day to myself (heaven!).  We also had a fun dinner out with my family.

More to come about Christmas itself, but it’s late and I don’t have any more photos to post anyway.  Hope your Christmas was merry and bright!

It’s been a long time since I awoke pre-dawn and eagerly tuned into the local news to watch the school closings scrolling across the bottom of the screen.  I didn’t really expect a snow day, since we got less than a couple of inches, and my school’s name did not appear on the list.  So, I showered, dressed, had some coffee, and started packing a lunch when the phone rang at 6:45.  School canceled!  Yea!  A whole day stretched ahead — with an unexpectedly clear schedule — and the best part?  Lily’s Parents’ Day Out program was still OPEN!  Since we don’t get refunded for absences, I quickly packed her up and hustled her off to school, giving myself six blessed hours to myself.

Got a little more Christmas shopping completed.  Got a little work done for my other job, so I was still a bit productive.  Got a jump start on dinner and even made a batch of Tollhouse cookies.  Picked up my sweet angel and smiled to hear her say “cookie” for the first time.  She made “reindeer food” at PDO today (for the uninitiated, that’s oats with a little glitter thrown in to attract Santa’s team to your lawn on Christmas Eve night), and excitedly told me about it by signing “reindeer” (hands to head like antlers) and saying “Ho, ho.” (She never gets that third “ho” in there.)

So it was a nice day.  Which is not to say that I don’t have nice days WITH Lily around, but this was a pleasant change of pace.

Oh, I have to note that Lily impressed our Parents as Teachers educator, Laura, yesterday by being able to point to the following body parts: eye, eyebrow, ear, head, hair, nose, nostril, chin, tummy, and bottom.  She also knows arm, feet, toes, lips, teeth, tongue, cheek, hand, and fingers, but we didn’t get to those.  Laura says they like to see children at this age point to three body parts.  I glowed with maternal pride.

Here are a few quick pics from the last couple of days:

Remember that nerve-wracking, composure-frazzling, anxiety-inducing board game of our youth — Perfection?

It’s the one where you had to fit all the different shapes into their respective places while a ridiculously loud timer clicked away each millisecond and, at least on our model, would frequently without warning (poorly calibrated timer, I suppose) POP! and send the pieces flying into the depths of your hot pink shag carpet.  Remember that?

That’s kind of my life right now.  I feel like my days are punctuated by sudden, blood-pumping interruptions at unknown intervals.  My day starts with one such interruption.  Most people know I’m not a morning person, and I used to — pre-Lily — arrange my days to start with at least one solid hour of coffee and zoning out to the morning news.  Now my day starts anywhere between 5:45 and 7 a.m. (or, one day this past week, at 4:10) with a sudden, unnecessarily loud “Mommy!” often accompanied by noisy whining and shrieking.  And so my nerves begin their daily frazzling.

Outings are frequently cut short when Lily decides she’s had enough.  She lets me know by signing and saying “done,” climbing out of the shopping cart, writhing in the stroller, or throwing herself out of my arms.  I feel a cold prickle of sweat as I hurry to grab one last ingredient for dinner (which is never the actual last ingredient, I discover upon getting home).  I hustle her to the car, anxious to avoid a scene.  Once there, the timer resets, as I have an undisclosed but limited amount of time to get her home before she falls asleep in the car, which may rob me of a precious nap for the day.

Nap time.  Start the timer.  Set it for…oh, say an hour and 20 minutes.  It’s never longer than that.  Jump in the shower, blow dry hair, brush teeth, throw on clothes.  Race downstairs and heat up a cup of coffee to settle down for a little — POP!  Ah, well, today it was only 37 minutes.

Daily, I am amazed at how mentally and physically exhausted I am at the end of the day, as I sit rocking Lily and softly singing lullabies.  By the time I quietly glide out of her room, I’m usually ready to hop into my pj’s and swap my contacts for glasses.  I’ll likely be asleep on the couch by 9.  Every night this past week, I was treated to a bonus round of “Perfection” sometime in the middle of the night, jolted awake for reasons only Lily could know, though I don’t think she really knew either.  I think the true source of my fatigue is not the physical demand of chasing and toting around a toddler (she is only 19 lbs, after all, though insanely strong), but rather the drain of being on edge all day and all night, ready to fly to action.

Motherhood is trying in all sorts of ways.  I like to think that I am growing into the role.  I’m becoming more patient, more adaptable, more easy-going.  I’m learning to release all notions of schedule, to reassess my expectations of what I hope to accomplish in a day (in a week, in a year).  But I’m having a tough time with the time limits.  Something about her cry, her whine, her urgent calling, elicits a visceral response from me.  I go about my day, trying to put things in some semblance of order, always waiting for the outburst that sends me scrambling to pick up the pieces.

Perfection: performance under pressure.  Not my strong-suit.  I never liked that game, anyway.  I hope, given time, our lives will more closely resemble Monopoly — long, a little dull, with no clear winner and everyone opting to quit and go have a snack.