Thursday, May 28, 2009

Open Hearts

If you follow me on Twitter you have been seeing my updates posts on my father. He had open heart surgery on May 15th to replace his aortic valve which had started to leak and was sending him into congestive heart failure. Luckily we have never really faced big surgeries in my family so this was a whole new experience for us. He made it through well and though there have been some bumps in the road he came home from the hospital yesterday feeling much better than he went in but still with a 3 month recovery road ahead of him. He has a cool red heart pillow that he needs to hug when he feels the need to cough, sneeze or laugh to keep his breast plate in place and continue the healing.

The experience has been an interesting one for me. It has been tougher than I would imagine to try and balance work, kids, parents and wife duties all at once. My mother doesn't drive in Boston so my older brother and I were in charge of getting her to the hospital each day to visit because that is where she wanted and felt she needed to be.

It was tough on my girls because they couldn't see their beloved Papa every day as they love to nor could they see their equally as important Nana because she was keeping such long hours at the hospital and often left before the kids got up and came home after they were in bed. Similarly, I was also not always there for bed time or morning wakings due to my efforts in trying to get my mother to and from Boston. Thankfully Gary took on a lot of the extra nighttime activities and morning routines to help me feel less guilty about the lack of home time.

But the whole experience made me wonder if mothers ever give themselves enough credit for all the way they extend themselves. My mother who showed incredible strength and grace having to wait to hear about my father and his progress during his surgery; seeing him just post-op with his intubation and central line. And the unconditional love she has showed for him to stay with him in his hospital room for 8 to sometimes 12 hours each day for almost 2 weeks. Yet she took no credit for this as it was just part of what she had to do. Amazing. I hope I have half as much as the courage she has shown.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Big Girl Bed

We have officially and with a hint of sadness taken down the crib. I say "the" crib but it was really one of two for we were at one time a two crib family with the girls so close in age. But it was Nicole's turn to make the transition into a big girl bed last weekend. I hesitated to post about it in case we had to turn around and re-assemble the crib so that she could go back, but really why go back??

It started last Sunday when Gary went to work super early to catch up on things and the girls and I were left alone to eat breakfast and generally do our thing together. Aimee came running out of Nicole's room to tell me that the crib had broken. When asked what had precipitated this breaking, Aimee of course quickly told me that it just broke "by itself." That is toddler speak for "I broke it but I am not going to admit it to you". So after some coaxing and promising that no time outs would be handed down she did admit that she may have stepped on the bottom of the front rail to perhaps try and reach in to get something out of the crib for Nicole when the railing fell apart. We have had our share of issues with this crib because of the older child tendency to stand on things. While I don't think it should have become unglued with her 38 pounds I do have some leniency because I don't know the weight limits on these things.

Nevertheless, the rail was in need of repair and gluing and Nicole could navigate out of the crib anyway so I decided to resurrect the toddler bed and bring it up for her to make the transition. At this point she was napping on the floor in her sleeping bag both at daycare and at home so I didn't think it would be a tough transition. Luckily it was not. We went to Walmart later that day and she picked out a new blanket and pillowcase for her bed and away we went to go home and make it up. Okay, it really only needed a sheet change since it's still a crib mattress, but still, big changes here.

The first night she had a hard time going to sleep because in my infinite wisdom I put the toddler bed with it's head towards the corner for safety but it was a polar opposite of where she had put her head down for the past two years. So we straightened that out and she did eventually fall asleep. But, she woke up at 2AM all confused as to where she was, etc. and I brought her into bed with us. The next night I did hear a whimper but no more that we would have normally heard from slumber in a crib. And then that was it. We still have some random wake ups here and there but so far so good 6 nights in a row of sleeping in her big girl bed.

We were very nervous about this because it was a terrible time getting Aimee to sleep in this same big girl bed. We did the jack in the box thing where we kept walking her back to her bed over and over and over and over for about a month. It was never ending and resulted in a lot of sleepless nights. But, she was younger at about 22 months when she decided to swan dive out of her crib never to sleep in it again. Nicole is so much more mature at 28 months and all.

I have to say I am impressed with her. We baby proofed her room but I still have thoughts of her scaling up the wall with her agility. Last night I put her into bed after a long mother's day and she went down fairly easily and I checked on her an hour later, she was completely passed out under the covers with one little shoed foot sticking up. Yes, the little stinker had gotten out of bed, put on her beach/swim shoes and fallen alseep. Probably dreaming of summertime fun. I didn't put them on her prior to bed, so obviously she doesn't quite go right to sleep when I walk out but at least she didn't come running out of the room either.

I will also admit that there was a brief moment of sadness to realize that I don't have the need for a crib any longer. We've had a crib up and assembled for almost 4 years now. I can't believe how fast it is all going by.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Roughing it

I think enough of you have heard that we live in a house built by my grandparents and inherited by my parents. It's conveniently next door to my parents and while I was younger a great escape from my house and now heading the opposite way to my parents house is a great treat for my girls.

It's been great living here but for the past four years of being here I have always slept with one ear alert for the crapping out of our furnace. It's the original heating system down there in the basement and we've had our shares of repairs to it in the past few winters. Always minor ones that kept it going but not so much of an investment not to do it. Then on Wednesday night I was downstairs doing laundry and I saw a puddle on the floor beneath it. At first I thought it was oil since we have an oil fired system. So I dragged Gary down in the 3rd period of the Bruins playoff game to look at the oil spill. It was only when he was down there with me that I realized it wasn't smelly like oil and I looked closer and realized there was water pooling on the floor near the furnace. Strange for sure because it's not how I thought it would go.

So at 9:30PM on a Wednesday night a week before my father has major surgery I didn't know who to tell or call, etc. It ended up that my cousin who is a plumber came over, isolated the problem area to stop the leak and we resigned ourselves to the fact that a new furnace was needed and cold showers were to follow until a plan was in place.

Since I grew up in a household of "do it yourselfers" and my husband would rather pay someone to do things he doesn't know how to do, there is always a differing of opinions on how to approach things. Luckily he handed over the reigns on this one and let my family handle it. So my brother called in a few favors from friends and we were delivered a beautiful new furnace yesterday and it was installed by aforementioned plumber cousin. And of course on this humid May day we had to test the furnace to make sure it was working by turning on the heat. So we are now with every window open and fan available to try to take it under 80 degrees in here.

Surprisingly with this little mishap I realized that in the summer months I could probably go without a furnace if the sole purpose was to take showers. I could even save a significant amount of money doing it. I simply microwaved some bowls of water and put them into a large pan on the stove. Heated it up to lukewarm and headed to the shower. I used the cold water to wet down my hair and soap up the necessary areas and then took the cold water as long as I could. I then turned off the cold water and used the girls' watering container that we rinse them with to get all the soap off. Granted this wasn't ideal but I was very impressed that we were able to get the job done with showering here and not having to do much out of house showering. Sure I went Thursday to the gym and Gary had had enough this morning and showered at the gym as well. But I am pretty impressed at how we were "roughing it" the past few days. Now I have to turn on my dishwasher because as luck would have it, we ran it on Wednesday morning before the furnace bit it and we were able to stretch it a bit with the dishes the past few days.

Oh, and I also need to bathe my kids.....I suppose I shouldn't give myself too much credit for this after all since they have been sponge bathed for the past three days. Unless you count Nicole's swim lesson this morning where she got a hosing down after the pool and Aimee got her hair cut today so at least her hair is clean from the salon. I guess I am not as rough as I would like to think!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Enchanted

My kids have become obsessed with the movie Enchanted. It is a really cute movie and to be honest I think that Disney hardly ever misses with giving enough involvement for kids and some subtle humor for adults forced to watch it. With McDreamy as it's star along with Amy Adams it is a really fun flick to watch.....once, maybe twice. My kids ask for this movie incessantly and with our busy schedule we really don't have a lot of time to devote to watching an entire movie all that often. So I have seen it in bits and pieces over and over again. Though like any Disney movie there is a point that is a bit scary with an evil queen who turns herself into a big dragon type creature. We can't always look through that entire part and not to spoil anything, but like all Disney movies the kiss of a true love saves all.

I even recommended it to a friend of mine and they borrowed it from the library. However when it was time to bring it back to the library her daughter, who is 2 just like Nicole, yelled at the top of her lungs in the library (always a quiet place) "But I love the princess!!!" and carried on about how much she loved the movie. So apparently we are in good company with our love of Enchanted.

I have tried to put another movie into the DVD player but my success has been limited. They also have an unfortunate affinity for Caillou. Nothing annoys me more than 30 minutes of Caillou. It is amazing to me that they sit through it for 1/2 hour and the only time I tend to put it on is on Friday mornings when I need to take a shower because I am lucky enough that it is available through Comcast On Demand and I don't actually have to sift through listings to find it and coordinate schedules. So that is nice.

But if in your spare time you are looking for a nice little love story for about 90 minutes I do recommend you take the time to watch Enchanted once. Twice maybe if you miss some of the innuendos but I would advise stopping there. Though rumor has it when the actors signed on to the movie it was in the contract for a second flick -- sort of a continuation of the lives of the people so perhaps in the upcoming months there will be a new sort of enchantment to follow.