Yarn Quest

Today was a fun day... for me.  It was a yarn store shop hop, which if you are a quilter you know what I'm talking about, and if you're not you probably don't care. Caitlin and I spent all day driving around and browsing through yarn shops. I bought some yarn, but not in every store, so I felt like that was showing a lot of restraint. Jake got to go have an all-day play date so I only had to take the girls. They were really well behaved until the last two shops or so, and then Lila fell asleep and Evie was still well behaved.

At the third store we went to Lila grabbed a hank of yarn off of a display and brought it to me and said, "Mom, I want this yarn for my birthday!" "You do? What are you going to do with it?" I asked. "Um, knit with it." (And you have to read that with a total teenager 'duh' voice, which I never get used to hearing from my two year old...)

We got to meet up with Brian for lunch so the girls were very excited by that. Because he works a fair commute away it isn't very often we are just down in his neck of the woods. Lila did not want him to go back to work after lunch... or at the very least she wanted to go with him. Fortunately she fell asleep pretty soon after he drove off, so there wasn't too much of a tantrum.

After the fun, fiber filled afternoon we went swimming at Pa Dave's. Caite and I did our best imitation of a water aerobics workout. It wasn't half bad, but I'd forgotten how ridiculously hard it is when we'd turn the other way and walk against the current. When 3/4 of your body is under water that's a lot of resistance. We both kept slipping and getting dragged under by the current we'd created. And then we'd laugh so hard that it was even harder to stay upright. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be feeling it in my calves tomorrow...

A very fun and full day. Jake summed it up best when I got home tonight to find him laying on the couch watching some "Phineas and Ferb" with his dad. He said, "Man, I'm going to have to spend tomorrow recuperating!" I feel the same way.

Buffet Etiquette

First of all I want to say thank you to all the family and friends who left comments, messages on facebook and otherwise reached out to let me know that we are not facing this new chapter of our lives alone.  Your words of encouragement and concern were definitely balm to a troubled heart. It helps just to have a place to vent when the stresses start piling up.

So tonight I am going to blog about what I was originally going to blog about yesterday, before the whole evaluation thing happened.

Yesterday was Tuesday, Movie Day. Same as it's been for a month and a half now. But for some reason I got the times mixed up in my head and we showed up for the 10 am show at 10:30. My kids were crushed, and I felt like a total bone head. So we decided to splurge and go to a matinee showing of Cars 2. The kids were thrilled and my coolest mom status was saved. (I am really trying to work on my numbers for this week, I want to get a better satisfaction rating than 82% and I definitely do not want any ish!) Caite was able to come with us and we all really enjoyed the movie.

Lila spent a good 10 minutes singing "Here we are together, together, together..." towards the end, not quietly. But otherwise was pretty well behaved. Evie lost one of her flip-flops which inspired her brother to ask in a very exasperated voice, "Who takes off their shoes in a movie theater?" Fortunately we finally found it wedged under a seat, three over from where she was sitting. I'm still not clear how that happened, but at least we found the shoe.

Since we went to a later movie we were all pretty hungry when it got out. So we decided to grab a bite to eat so we could hang out longer with Caite. We settled on Chuck-a-rama. I know that many people probably just said "Ew, gross, why?" but let me explain why that is a treat for my kids. Brian doesn't do buffets. Even before the leg issue which makes it impossible for him to carry anything and walk, he just doesn't do buffets. I don't know if it's an OCD thing or just a Brian thing, but I can count on half of one hand the number of times I've seen that man in a buffet line. The last time Jake and I went to Chuck-a-rama was with Josh and Elena (I can't remember why, but Brian was out of town) and I was pregnant with Evie, so at least five years ago.

We got seated at our table and then I explained the basic concept to my children. We would walk around and they could pick out whatever they wanted to eat. Their eyes were huge as they contemplated the ramifications of that statement. My only stipulation was they had to have real food before they hit the dessert bar. After we had gotten everyone their first plate and drink one of the servers came around and asked if we needed anything. Jake looked completely confused and said, "Well if we do, don't we just get it ourselves?" She ignored that and said, "If you need anything my name is Kathleen." Jake got an even more confused look on his face. He leaned over to Caitlin and asked, "So... what? We just yell 'Kathleen' across the restaurant?" We laughed and explained that she was just being polite and was there if you needed help. Satisfied he went back to his food.

Things were going along just fine. Jake and Evie were ready to sample different things so Jake picked up his plate to head back. We quickly stopped him and explained that he should leave the dirty plate and get a clean one. He felt that was a somewhat inefficient business practice, but bowed to our superior buffet experience. Then the server came to bus our table and picked up the half-eaten plates. Lila watched her with a startled expression and then yelled after her, "Hey! That's our food!" She turned to me and said, "Mom! That lady took our plates!" I tried to explain to her again why they took the dirty dishes because we were finished with them, but every time an employee would walk by us after that she would eye them suspiciously and lean over to protect her plate like it would be snatched out from under her fork.

It was a pretty funny lunch, watching my children discovering this unknown concept. It will be even funnier if it's another five years before we go back and they have to relearn it all over again...

Evaluation

There is nothing like a stranger with a clipboard and a bunch of probing questions to make you take a real hard look at your life. Tonight we had a medical evaluation in our home to qualify Brian for a wheelchair. We spent a good two hours going over his medical history, the story of the car accident, and what day to day life is like for him. Right now I am just overwhelmed. We've both know for awhile that a wheelchair would probably be in his future. I think we just both thought that it would be a bit more in the distant future.

The truth is mobility has been hard and getting harder for awhile now. Both of us really try to stay positive and focus on the blessings we have rather than the struggles. And really, it's hard to complain when you see other people who have much bigger struggles. But tonight we had to focus on the reality of Brian's disability, and it was just more painful than I was expecting.

The sheer cost of everything is overwhelming. Getting into a wheelchair means some pretty serious accommodations will have to be made. (I am trying to hard to stay away from the word remodel, but it's what it boils down to ultimately.) Ramps... hard surfaces instead of carpets... wider doorways... I can't even think about the bathrooms without bursting into tears. And then there is the new physical therapy to learn how to use the wheelchair which means co-pays, not to mention the cost of the wheelchair itself.

Brian could tell that I was upset after the meeting and asked the fateful words, "Are you okay?" (I swear, those three little words can drive me to tears faster than anything!) I said, "This just isn't how I pictured my life, you know? I never thought these would be things I'd have to deal with and worry about." I know he didn't either, I mean who would before it was something you have to deal with? Brian said, "Come here. I want to give you a hug, but it's just so much work to get up."  So I went and sat with him and he held me while I cried. And then from the bathroom Evie yelled, "Mom?! Lila has a HUGE booger coming out of her nose!" And so life goes on...

Of course as overwhelming as it is, we are both very excited for the new addition to our lives. Brian's life and mobility will be so much better, he'll have so much more freedom. It's like I said to the therapist, "It's time for us to stop clinging to what we had and embrace our new reality." I know we will be okay. We always are. No matter what comes our way we will handle it together as a family and we will be okay. I know that it will help to get educated about what programs and assistance are available for us. I also have a couple of ideas I've been mulling over for awhile to bring in some more income and this might just be the push I need to go forward with them. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

I think it's been very cathartic to get this down in black and white. This is part of my story. I think it's important to record the good and the bad equally. This is a real life and the unexpected is part of a real life. I look back at what I wrote when my mom was sick and at the end of her life and I didn't write anything but the surface. I wish that I had recorded more of my deeper self at that time. I think it would have been helpful with the grieving process. And that what this is. We have to grieve the life that we had and the one we thought we would have, and then get busy living the one we've got. Because the one we've got is still pretty good.

Random pictures from the last 24 hours....

My kids have been in weird moods today. 

There has been a lot of whiny, a lot of silly and just about everything else in between. 

I came upstairs from changing over the laundry to find this very detailed chart and graph sitting in my living room.  After an equally long and convoluted explanation from Jacob I finally understood what it was about. This is charting his satisfaction rate with each member of the family. He was quick to reassure me that even though I was currently only ranking second it was a new week and I would have a new chance for better numbers. 

Gee, thanks.

I have to point out my favorite thing on his chart. Ish. It stands for issues he has with us. That and the fact that he has my age listed at 31, I'll take it.

Apparently Lila got her hands on the camera. There were about twenty pictures of her chin and shirt in various stages of blurriness, and one of underneath Evie's bed. 

Jake's original design for a poster advertising the movie he's writing a script for. He seriously cracks me up.

Lila barely survived dinner.

It's so hard to be at this stage when she really still needs a nap most days and the choice is between dealing with a horribly tired and ornery toddler from late afternoon on, or having her refuse to go to bed at a reasonable hour. 

Evie's been more low key today. Probably because she's getting over a 24 flu bug. She has still had her moments though. Tonight she was snuggling with her daddy and climbed down from his chair to get a pillow. As she got down she said, "Well. That's shocking!" in the tone of voice you'd expect from an old maid who saw a dirty picture or something. Brian and I both responded quickly with. "What? What's shocking?" She looked at Brian and said, "I touched your blanket and it shocked me." We really do have horrible static electricity in our house...

Please ignore the rumors...

Awhile back Lila started talking about marriage. A lot. Since she's at an age where she is full of imagination, watching a lot of princess movies, and she attended my cousin's wedding recently, this seemed fairly normal. Then she started saying things like, "I marry Evie, Jake marries Libby, but Daddy doesn't marry Mommy."  Of course my response was something like, "Silly girl, Daddy already married Mommy." She would just shake her head and say, "No, Daddy not marry you."

When Brian would come home Lila would greet him with a stern demand that he marry me, immediately. In vain we both tried to convince her that we were in fact already married. We would point to our wedding picture and say, "See sweetie, that's when we got married." But she wasn't buying it.

Unfortunately it then progressed to where she was telling complete strangers in the grocery store, "Daddy not marry Mommy."  In desperation I would remonstrate with her and say, "For Heaven's sake Lila! Stop telling people we're not married! We ARE married!"

After a few weeks of this I decided it was time for a serious discussion of what she thought marriage was and why she thought Brian and I weren't. Turns out she thinks getting married means dancing. Because at the end of all the fairy tales the prince and princess get married, and then they dance. And Daddy most definitely does not dance with Mommy.

Since then we've been trying very hard to get her to say "dancing" instead of "married". I thought we were making pretty good progress. Then today at church (It was just her and I because Brian stayed home with Evie who had a flu bug, and Jake stayed home to help) one of her nursery leaders came over to say hello. He asked Lila how she was doing and Lila smiled up at him and said, "I have a new daddy!" He looked at me in shock, and I looked at her in shock and asked, "What did you just say?" She repeated, quite clearly, "I have a new daddy."

Oh brother, here we go again...

Just for the record, no she doesn't.
And no I don't know why she said it.
(And the only reason I'm not wearing my wedding ring is because I need to get it re-sized and am afraid of losing it.)

Crazy girl. Don't believe anything she says.

Three wheelin'

Brian and Jake have been on a Father's and Son's camp out with Brian's side of the family this weekend. They had so much fun doing... whatever it is that boys do when girls aren't around. (I'm thinking a guest post is in order for them to fill us in on their getaway.) 

So today the girls joined them for a day playing in the mountains. We got up to camp in time for lunch and then set off to see some sights and do some fishing. We stayed through dinner time and then packed up our boys and came home. It's one of my favorite ways to camp while I have little children.  A nice long day of playing in the dirt and nature, and none of the inconveniences of packing and sleeping away from home. Plus we get to shower before going to bed. Always a plus in my book...

Here are a few of the shots I took of our day:

Brian's always loved to go off-roading,

and rock crawling.

Brian was so happy that he had his scooter and could drive around the paths and explore with us. The last couple of times we've been camping in this area he only had his crutches with him and so ended up waiting in the car for us, not too fun for him.

Provo River Falls in Kamas Canyon. 

This is the fullest we've ever seen this river running.  

Nature's untamed power is pretty awe inspiring.

Jake and Grandma T.

Evie's turn.

Lila has to do everything the big kids do, even climbing on great big rocks!

This just about sums up the day. We were all together, but the kids were too busy/silly/tired/ornery to pause for one second to smile in the same direction at the same time. Oh well, at least we were together.

I don't know if this is karma, or ironic, or what exactly...

So after my post yesterday about needing to find a babysitter more often I ended up being one tonight! It was fun actually, because Brian and Jake have been camping for the last couple of days, so the girls and I got to have a "late night" at Emilie's. They were thrilled. Emilie's kids were perfectly behaved and went straight to bed when asked. (I have to figure out that secret!) My kids of course were not going to lay down when there were all kinds of new and wonderful toys to play with.

I figure tonight was helpful in two ways: 1) the night passed quickly and I wasn't getting all freaked out by every creak and pop I heard because I was too busy taking care of the kids, and 2) I am hoping it will end up being like that saying "To find a friend, you must be a friend," only with babysitters.

Some other fun things we did on our girl day today was go do a little shopping for some summer time clothes. I finally realized when I did all the laundry last week and by Wednesday both girls were out of short sleeved shirts and shorts that they didn't have any summer clothes! Yikes. We found some great deals at Kmart and I was doing the math in my head as we picked the clothes out. I stopped when I figured we were right around $60, and thought that was a bargain for the amount of clothing we were getting. Imagine my surprise when the total was $36! Now I know I'm not a math whiz, but even I can do multiplication fairly accurately. At least it was a pleasant surprise.

After the shopping we went and got pancakes for breakfast. A real treat for my kids, I think they'd rather eat at a pancake house than McDonald's even. Lila was being pretty ornery on the way to eat because she was so hungry. After she pretty much cleaned her plate, she leaned back, gave a contented sigh and then said, "Okay Mom, I not ever be grouchy again." Right... until the next time she gets hungry I guess.

We also went and played with Addie and Libby for a little while. It was fun watching the four little girls clomp around in "noisy shoes" (high heels) and dress ups. It always takes me back to my childhood and playing dolls and dress ups with Dinee.

We've had a good day, but we are pretty excited to drive up and spend the day in the mountains with our boys and have them come home with us. We miss them when they aren't around...