Red is One!

Well friends we survived.  Last month my littlest little turned one.  Red made it through her first year of life.  Which is always the most perilous for as all.  As my kids get older I realize more and more how little we really know them at one.  Parts of their personalities are emerging, but there is so much more there waiting to be revealed.  It gets harder to pin down who exactly Red is, because I’ve realized that after twelve months what I know is just the tip of the iceberg.  But I’ll try anyway.

She is funny and feisty.  She thinks fart noises are hysterical and watch out when she’s mad.  That temper doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.  But then she smiles and the whole world melts.

Until recently Daddy was pretty much only a second thought.  But in February and March I found myself traveling quite a lot, which gave her quite a lot of time with Tommy.  Once she realized he also provided food, and the stuff he gave her was pretty tasty (and usually forbidden) she jumped right on that train.  Now she shakes her whole body with excitement when he comes home and scrambles to be the first in his arms.  They’ve become quite the duo, those two.

She remains desperate to be a part of the mix with her two older siblings.  She wants to keep up, do what they do, play where they play.  I’ve long felt her whole life would improve once she started walking and I’m starting to see hints of it.  After a quick bout in the “drunken sailor” stage, (where she wove and stumbled, falling after a handful of steps) she’s now a full on walker.  The look of pride on her face is priceless.  She’s been watching this two-legged movement her whole life and finally, she’s in the club. 

In the last few months Tommy has started including her in the family wrestling matches.  He and the kids roll around on the floor like puppies, each of the kids desperately trying to “attack” Daddy.  I love watching Red in the mix.  From her thrilled expression, to her enthusiastic head bumps, to her relentlessness in the ring, this girl loves her life when she’s rolling around with the big kids.  She’s taken to trying to get me to wrestle, bumping her head against mine and pushing me when we find ourselves down on the floor together. 

If I had to predict I’d say Lou will be determined and easy going, a difficult combination.  She knows what she wants, wants it with intensity and does not give up until she gets it.  But there is a relaxed quality about her the rest of the time. 

And her smile man.  It’s the best.  She doesn’t turn on the charm like her sister, but she charms without intention.  It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there. 

All, particularly Monster, adore her.  Toots has taken to her recently too, the two of them playing more games and giggling together more often.  I love the way she fits right into our chaos and I am so curious to see who she continues to become.  She’s going to surprise us, this one. 

Happy (belated) first birthday Red!!


again, these beautiful photos are courtesy of the ever talented Mary at Where's the zoom.  She rocks.

Monster Turns Five!

Last month my little monster turned five.  I’ve written about how this age is rapidly becoming my most favorite.  Monster is proving to be the greatest kid ever.  We really love him a lot.

He requested a pirate birthday party this year and for the first time we invited friends from school.  He was so very excited to stuff his invitations into envelopes and deliver them to his friends.  The party was great, filled with pirate games and a pirate ship piñata, ice cream sundaes and running around with a gaggle of 5 year olds.  Later that night, after the party had ended we ate tacos with his grandparents and cupcakes with orange frosting, all per his request.  The kid knows how to do birthdays already.

 

At age five he remains sweet as pie.  Seriously, this kid.  He loves his baby sister and (usually) plays well with his middle one.  The very first sentence he learned to write all on his own was “I love you mom” and I am the very happy recipient of that note on a regular basis. 

showing off his tie of course 

In the last few months he has taken an extreme interest in “being handsome.”  After baths he stands in the bathroom painstakingly combing his hair as neat as he can manage, and for his birthday he asked my mom to buy him ties and bow ties so he “could be handsome” and he wears them all the time.  It’s kind of the cutest.  Earlier this week we rode our bikes.  On one of our pit stops at the library he bemoaned the fact that earlier that morning he had combed his hair “handsome” and his bike helmet had messed it all up.  Life, man.

He’s starting to read and write which is so great.   I love, love, love watching him make sense of letters and words and fall in love with books.  It takes very little persuading to let him stay up later and read just one more of his Superman primary readers.

We’re finding him extremely interested in God.  He asks us to read to him from the Jesus Story Book Bible each night and he brings it with him to church on Sunday.  He comes home from school with little notes he’s written about loving God and he tells us he has dreams about being in heaven and seeing Jesus and Granda.  In his dreams heaven has mountains and he’s excited to go there.  This little faith is emerging and I’m so protective of it, knowing I’ve done nothing to create it, but have all sorts of power to add baggage to it.

Recently he started asking if he could work out with me at the gym.  After dropping his sisters off in childcare I let him run a few laps with me on the track.  He ran with his arms at tight ninety-degree angles, hands stiff just like The Flash.  Every so often he would break out of it, turning back to look at me with sweet eyes and a mischievous grin, daring me to race him.  My heart welled more than a little as I ran with my boy.  We raced and giggled and I fell just a little more in love with this kid.  In a million years I couldn’t have dreamed him up and he is more than I ever could have hoped for in a first born.  He’s sweet and funny, charming and thoughtful. 

Happy fifth birthday, Monster.  We love you so!

Pictures are courtesy of my friend Mary, who is, obviously, so so talented!

Bad Heart.

Today would have been my dad's 68th birthday.  I thought about my dad even more than usual and drank a bit of Guinness with dinner to mark this day.  And here I wanted to share a few thoughts about the man that raised me.

In his favorite place: Ireland

My dad had a weak heart.   He was born with a heart condition, the name of which I can never remember, causing me to call my mom from my midwife’s office every time I am newly pregnant so she can remind me what it is that runs through my genes and could lead to trouble for the babe inside of me.  Hearts have plumbing systems and electrical systems, so to speak, and his condition had to do with his electrical system.  There was a hole, or something, and apparently it was a big deal.  My aunt said that when received word that her father, my grandfather, had passed away at first she assumed the call was about her nineteen year old brother, my dad, that the heart condition had finally taken him.  His weak heart wasn’t expected to last very long, I guess.  But you’d never know this from looking at him.

Part of why the details of my dad’s weak heart are so hazy is because I can only remember two times in my whole life when his condition ever came up.  Once he explained that he wasn’t allowed to do sports as a kid, on account of the weak heart, so that’s why he ended up participating in debate team and student council and the school plays.   Which was so like my dad, to turn lemons in to lemonade.  There wasn’t a hint of bitterness or longing when he recalled his inability to do what every other boy on the block was doing.  Just happiness over the opportunity that one closed door afforded.  The other time the weak heart came up was when he and my mom flew to Texas to see a doctor who specialized in my dad’s condition so he could fix the problem.  And he did.

My dad had a weak heart.

cheering on our team

My dad had a strong heart.  He lost his dad when he was a young man in college.  I thought about this a lot when I was in college, how much I still needed my dad at that time.  How did my dad finish learning to become a man while mourning the loss of the one who was supposed to teach him?  If it had been me I think I would have floundered for a few years in self-pity.  But not my dad.  He took his strong heart and started his career.  At age 20 he started working for the company he would retire with many years later.  And then his strong heart took care of his mom.  He played bridge with her friends and took her on trips with him. 

My dad had a strong heart.  He made strong-hearted decisions.  He followed a moral compass that led him to what was true and good.  His values and priorities lined up and his commitment to them caused him to live a life that made the lives of those around him better, not worse. 

My dad had a strong heart.

My dad had a bad heart.  When I was thirteen, awkward and gangly and in need of braces, my dad suffered his first heart attack at age forty-eight.  While his heart condition had to do with the electrical system of the heart, the heart attack was all plumbing and had nothing to do with his condition.  His arteries were clogged from too much smoking, too little exercise and a few too many trips through the drive through at his go-to lunch spot, Wendy’s.  He wasn’t extraordinarily obese and he’d certainly cut back his once two packs a day habit over the years, but it didn’t matter.  That bad heart got him. 

And I’ll never forget the sight of him in the hospital bed, so pale and weak, hooked up to machines that beeped and hummed.  Seeing us see him in this state was one of two times in my life I’d see him cry.  (The other, for the record, was when he dropped me off at University of Illinois for my freshmen year of college.)  It was the first time I think I realized my dad could die.  That this bad heart could get him in the end.  .

We all changed our lives for my dad’s bad heart.  Skim milk replaced 2%, bagels on Sunday morning instead of donuts (which was met with much weeping and gnashing of teeth).  We ate turkey burgers and oven roasted fries.  My dad joined a gym and went faithfully every morning.   But my dad had a bad heart and even though he made changes I don’t think he could every fully accept this fact.  He looked around and saw people drinking and smoking more, eating worse and working out less whose hearts could handle the abuse.  He didn’t want to accept that his bad heart couldn’t sustain it.  And so, less than twenty years after that first heart attack, his bad heart finally gave out.  Another heart attack took his life.

My dad had a bad heart.

But oh, my dad had such a good heart.  He loved so well.  Never once did I question the simple truth that my dad loved and accepted me.  He was decent and kind-hearted.  He welcomed and invited everyone who crossed his path.  People felt comfortable and accepted in his presence.  You couldn’t help but feel good about yourself with my dad.  He did that.  He made you feel like enough.

helping, always

My dad had a good heart.  He lived the life of a helper.  Letters of encouragement to friends in college, serving the community or those he worked with, my dad never seemed to turn down a chance to help someone.  I had to check with my mom first before asking him to help with the kids because he would tell me he could, even if he had work of his own to do.  He loved nothing more than to serve others (and of course spend time with his beloved grand children).

selfies with Monster

My dad had a good heart.  In the end his most defining feature was his kindness.  His big, good heart.  He loved us with that good, kind heart.  He loved my mom and my siblings and Tommy and my kids and I with everything in him.   We were the fortunate ones, the beneficiaries of his good heart. 

My dad had a weak heart, a bad heart.  My dad had a strong heart, a good heart.  I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.