If It Wasn't Pancakes, It'd Be Something Else

As I was getting ready this morning, Twinkle came into my bathroom in a perfectly chipper mood. "Mom, I don't need to eat breakfast. We're having green pancakes at school."

"That sounds great", I said. "But, you know, your teacher didn't send a note home about it."

"Yeah, she's going to send home a note today."

"Then honey, I think maybe you're having pancakes tomorrow, not today."

Twinkle went on to insist that it was today, and she wanted green pancakes today, and, and, ....TEARS.

Oy. She managed to stop crying, but was still very droopy. And whiny. She needed me to carry her downstairs. She needed a lot of holding and babying. She finally felt a little better.

We started breakfast and she, as usual, wanted a straw for her OJ. I was forced to remind her about the straw incident from yesterday which ended with OJ all over the table, floor, chair, her. More tears. Sigh. These tears didn't last as long, but yeeshk.

So, we finish breakfast. While she's "using the facilities", she says she doesn't want to go to school. "But today is art!" I remind her. "I'm too tired for that." Everything I list, she's too tired for.

Now, mind you, whenever Twinkle behaves like a 5 year old, Mr. Swizzle thinks she's sick, and I roll my eyes. Mr. Swizzle had already left this morning, but I still heard him asking if maybe she was sick.

So I told Twinkle that maybe if she was too tired for those things, that she should indeed stay home from school and go back to bed. She wasn't that tired.

But she did stay whiny. We made it upstairs to dress for school and she needed more snuggles while sitting in the floor with mom. I again asked her if she thought she should stay home, having almost convinced myself that I could call the carpool buddy and say we wouldn't be picking up Twinkle's classmate.

But, no Twinkle wanted to go to school and she wanted me to walk her in while she confirmed that the green pancakes were indeed not happening today.

I've actually spared you a lot of details of other whines from this morning. I half expected Twinkle's teacher to call during the day and say she wasn't feeling well.

She had actually turned herself around by the time we picked up her friend. And by "turned around" I mean, swung to the opposite end of the spectrum. But she still seemed like she was right on the edge of swinging back in the other direction. She didn't have a Jack Nicholson look in her eye or anything, but I do find myself wondering how her day is going.

Catch Up

The past week has been a whirlwind. I keep staring at my new daughter's chubby cheeks and beautiful face and can't wait to look at her in person. Today we sent our acceptance letter back to our agency which they will send to China and we'll start the wait for travel approval. People from our agency who received their referral in February had about a 4 week wait for travel approval, so I'm going to try not to get to antsy before that.

Twinkle had a couple of rough days at school last week. There were 2 days that she had to sit out PE because she wasn't listening to the teacher. I think not listening is one of her biggest problems and I hope it's her being 5. I know when she's older she won't listen in other ways, but I'm ready for this to pass. She said she wasn't listening because she was so excited about her sister. I hope so. I was pretty scattered last week myself.

Oddly, on Friday, I woke up cranky. I told a friend that I think I used up all my happy and excited feelings at the beginning of the week and cranky was all I had left. My trip to the gym and a visit with my trainer Friday mid-morning helped, but I had a small bit of cranky following me around all day.

Saturday, we had a little party to celebrate our referral. We had four couples and their kids over to help us celebrate. We opened the bottle of Dom that some other, out of state, friends had sent us a year or two ago, so we kind of felt like they were here with us, too. Hubby and I talked earlier in the day about sharing the Dom with friends. We didn't mind, but we did feel like being a little selfish and pouring our glasses first and getting more than just a little taste. Cause really, when are we going to have Dom again?

Today, Hubby talked to his sister, who is still going on and on about the journal my MIL read at Uncle J's visitation . Good Lord. I think the main worry that she has is that Hubby is journaling about her in not so good ways. A friend told me a quote one time that I think of often: "You wouldn't worry about what people thought about you if you knew how rarely they did." Or something like that. Anyhoo, it constantly amazes me how someone's death can actually not be about the dead person. All of these people have to make it about themselves. Let's not think about the other 100+ pages in the journal that made no mention of my MIL at all. You know the ones that had realizations that Uncle J had over the last several months when he knew he was dying. Something that someone else could read and, I don't know, learn from.

Now, my MIL just called. Hubby is out on the deck talking to her. She called to see how things are going, but now I can hear Hubby talking about his nutty sister. I think it's funny how she tries to drag him into all the drama, and he just doesn't take the bait.

Families.... Can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em for scrap.

From One End of the Spectrum to the Other

Last week on Monday, we spent the afternoon at the hospital with Hubby's uncle and his family just hours before his uncle died.

This week on Monday, we finally received our referral for our daughter from China. We've been in this process for 2 years now, and it feels great to finally see our baby girl's face. She's just too cute.

Next we wait for travel approval and wait to find out when we'll travel. It will most likely be in May, but there is a lot to do between now and then and I think that time will go by surprisingly quickly.

It's Funeral Time, Let The Wackiness Ensue

Today was the funeral for Hubby's uncle. It was a very nice service with a lot of wonderful memories shared by several people. Twinkle went and, aside from acting like the 5 year old that she is, did well. I'm not sure the child could listen to save her life. Literally. But that's another post.

Last night was the visitation. These are usually right up there with bamboo shoots under the fingernails with me because they usually involve an open casket. I don't have anything against seeing dead bodies. What bugs me is the number of people that say, "Oh, he/she looks so good." Uh, no. He looks dead. He never looked like this in real life. He would never wear that color lipstick.

Luckily, the visitation and the funeral were both closed casket. So, I got to hear other ridiculous statements instead. Not the least of which came from my mother in law - the sister of the recently departed:

"We sprung for the flowers on the casket." Me: Hmm, ok. Hubby: "Are they real?" while walking toward the huge spray of who knows how many long stemmed red roses on the casket. MIL: "Well, I would hope so considering how much I paid for it."

Did you see that coming? Wait, you don't know my MIL. You may not have seen it coming. She, as is her usual, went on to repeat 3 or 4 variations on the theme of "I spent a lot of money on the flowers". OK, we get it. You're wonderful to spend so much money on your one and only brother who died too young. OK, OK!!!! (I think 60 is too young)

The other interesting "episode" from the visitation involved the presence of a journal of the departed. It was one of those that has a different question on each page and in answering you kind of write most everything that has occurred during your life. I think it's a great thing to have when you've lost a loved one. MIL decided "I'm going to read J's diary". OK, live it up. Then I hear, "Well!" Hmmm, I think, she's gonna get herself worked up. She was on a page where the question was something along the lines of listing happy memories with your siblings. Dear Departed J, who had one sibling, apparently had no wonderful, heart-stopping memories involving his sister, my MIL, and wrote just that.

She pointed this out to me and I said, "You need to put that book down and stop reading it." Which, of course, she did NOT do. Fast forward five minutes and I hear another Marge Simpson grumble. I'm not sure what the question was, but Uncle J had written something along the lines of "I think I was treated better because [MIL] always picked on me." OK, this is something even I know, and I'm only married into this nuthouse. I told her again, "REALLY, put the book down." NOPE. I wandered away. She read every page. I'm sure she missed some really profound deep thoughts in there. Having cancer for 2 years can make a person think. But, I think she was looking for her name. I think there are issues to be sorted, and I wonder if she'll ever sort them out.

What's interesting is J had 2 children, one male, one female. As did my MIL. I can't say the relationship between Hubby and his sister is great, but they don't hate each other. Their cousins? HATE. Apparently they don't really speak to each other. EVER. Wait that's not true. The did manage to trade comments over their father's death bed on Monday. And evil eye looks. They are polar opposites and can't stand each other. There's way too much to go into, but it's just crazy. I could detail why I think one is worse than the other, but again, I don't have all of the facts. There is probably so much that has gone on between them that I can't even fathom.

All in all, it was nice to talk about fond memories of J. Some of the behavior was slightly entertaining if also sad. Some of the behavior was just annoying and wrong.

What more could you want out of a funeral?

On A Lighter Note

You may remember my previous post about carpooling. Well, it's working out quite well. In fact, on Monday, which was a very long day, Twinkle was able to go home with her carpooling friend while Hubby and I were at the hospital with his family. It was very nice, and convenient, that our carpooling buds had nothing at all scheduled on Monday afternoon and the mother said Twinkle could stay there as long as need be.

When we left the hospital around 5:00, I called to let her know we were on our way, even though it would be about an hour before we got there. She said the kids were hungry and could she go ahead and feed Twinkle some mac n cheese? No problem with me! She loves mac n cheese. Then I heard her say something about chicken, and as I was about to say "Twinkle doesn't eat chicken, we're vegetarians", I realized she was talking about packing up a dinner for Hubby and me so we wouldn't have to worry about it when we got home.

I was so touched by this, I didn't have the heart to tell her that we don't eat chicken. I mean, obviously, this is a pretty casual acquaintance although we trust each other with the lives of our children on a daily basis. But, we don't know each other THAT well. So I think that made it even more touching that she was making us dinner.

I arrived to pick up Twinkle and this woman has a big basket into which she put a big dish with a WHOLE roasted chicken in it (that actually smelled great), a container with salad in it, a container with more mac n cheese for Twinkle and a loaf of bread. Now I use the term "mac n cheese" loosely here. It wasn't Kraft. It was rigatoni with melted cheese all over it.

I actually thought to myself, "Maybe I COULD eat chicken". Sure it's been about 17 years since I've eaten any kind of animal meat, but that's how touched I was. I couldn't bear to just throw it out. Did I mention it was a WHOLE chicken?!

When I got home, I called my neighbor to see if they wanted a chicken. She wasn't there, but called me back later and I took the newly bagged chicken over to her. She said it'd be great for Tuesday night because they would be busy all day and she wouldn't have time to fix a decent dinner. So, everything worked out.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how/when/if to tell my carpooling buddy that we're vegetarians.

Oh, What We Humans Are Capable Of

What a week. And it's TUESDAY!

Yesterday morning, Hubby's mom called to say that his uncle was in the hospital. He's been battling cancer for a couple of years. He'd undergone chemo and gotten rid of it. Then... it came back with a vengeance.

This weekend he went to the hospital with a fever. When Hubby's mom called, she said that he was on life support and they were taking him off of it. He was comatose and there was nothing we could do. OK. So Hubby went to work. Don't get me started on that.

Hubby's sister called around 11:30 and said that everything MIL said wasn't entirely true. Uncle J was opening his eyes every now and then and clearly understanding what people said to him. The "taking him off life support" was actually the fact that they were not giving him another dose of the medication that was keeping his blood pressure up with the knowledge that when it worked its way out of his system, his blood pressure would drop and everything else would begin to fail.

Hubby and I headed to the hospital and got there about 1 and stayed through the afternoon. His uncle held on until this morning at 1:00.

What makes it especially hard is the bond that Twinkle felt with him. Last year at Uncle J's 60th birthday, Twinkle told everyone that he was her "GREAT Uncle". Then she asked to sit beside him at dinner (without mom and dad). She was thrilled! She was so well behaved and talked to him all night. She truly loved her "great" uncle J.

Last night we told Twinkle that Great Uncle J was very sick. She asked if he was going to die. I didn't want to lie and say no. And I didn't just want to say Yes. So, I lied and said that we didn't know, but that he might. She burst into tears and said that she didn't want him to die. When she went to bed, she cried a little again and prayed for Jesus to make him well.

I'm not sure how I'm going to tell her that he died. I usually just blurt things like that out. I feel the need to be straight up with her. We're planning to take her to the funeral. She's almost 6. I want to shield her from all that sadness, but I want her to know it's OK to grieve. We grown ups don't know all of the answers. Sometimes we bawl our heads off. And that's OK. I don't think she's too young to be a part of all of this, and I think she'd feel left out if we didn't include her. She needs to grieve this loss in her life. She needs to see that that's OK. She needs to hear happy stories about Uncle J and know that he'll always be a part of us.

Now, if I could just learn those things myself.

Twinkle's Pearls

"Mom, my brain has a 100 brains inside it."

"Twinkle, don't worry about your father. Just buckle your seatbelt." T: "Mom, I do worry about Daddy." (Don't we all).

"Do you know why I was crying? Because I'm tired." Finally she's coming around to my way of thinking.

"Mom, I've changed my mind. I don't like melted cheese."

"I can feel my bladder."(with hands on abdomen) Great.

"What's inside a uvula?" um....

"I got ashed."

"I don't want her to be my babysitter. She always tells me no." Hmm, too much like mom?

"My brain is smoking red. My brain has steam coming out of its ears!"

"I can play Princess Monopoly by myself because I have 2 hands."