Thanksgiving

This year marked a new milestone for me. I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time ever. It was a lot of hard work, but I think it turned out good. I also had a lot of help so that made it a lot easier. After eating way too much, everyone relaxed. We had to look through the ads to see what stores we were going to hit up on Friday. Then Torii, Rion, Nathan and I played Monopoly Jr. Meanwhile, many people were watching Christmas Vacation in the living room. Cordelia ate and ate and ate. (I weighed her tonight and according to my scale she's up to 20 pounds!) Towards the end of the night she seemed to get a little crabby and tired. After everyone left I got the boys settled down and then gave Cordelia a bottle. She drank it, but then got up and started crawling around again. She was in a great mood and didn't seem tired at all. Ten minutes later she crawled back up onto the couch and onto my lap and was out immediately. I've never seen her crash like that. It was a lot of work to host a big holiday dinner, but the end of the night was the best. We didn't have to load anything into the car. We didn't have to lug kids around. And then we didn't have haul sleeping kids into the house when we got home. That was worth all the hard work.

Thankful

Tonight our neighbor stopped by. He gave me a card and we chatted a little. He didn't say much about the card, only "you'll know how we feel when you read it." Then he said Merry Christmas and Happy Thanksgiving and he left. For a moment I thought maybe we did something to tick the neighbors off and they wrote us a note about it. I was shocked when I opened the card. Our next door neighbors, along with another neighbor and some family members decided to help someone out this Christmas and that someone was us. They wanted to help us with expenses from Cordelia's surgery. Inside the card was some money. I would have went right over to their house upon reading this, but I was close to tears. We had to use money that we had set aside for Christmas while we were in Minneapolis so I have been really worried about the holidays. This will help so much. I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and my neighbors are one of them.

Yummy!

After school today we had to stop by the grocery store to pick up some milk. I hate going into a store with all three kids for just one item. Although in this case not getting milk would have been worse because there wasn't a drop left in the house. When we got near the milk case, the boys saw that there were samples being given out so we had to stop. They were sampling some milk that is made in Sterling. We tried the chocolate milk. When Cordelia saw everyone else had something she wanted one too so I gave her a sip of mine. When I let her sip from my water glass at home she just takes little sips. When she got a sip of that chocolate milk she wouldn't stop. She put her face as far as she could into the cup. She had a big milk mustache and it was all over her new jacket. We did buy some of the chocolate milk. It was really good plus I like to support those small businesses.

A nice surprise

This morning while I was at work I heard a little voice outside my door. I thought I heard "mommy", but thought that voice couldn't belong to me and I felt a little sad. Then the door opened and it was Fred, Torii and Cordelia. They rarely stop by my office so it was a really nice treat. Fred said he would go crazy there because it is so quiet. I told him I love it. I used to listen to the radio, but I haven't for a long time now. I love the quiet of my office. I go crazy at home when the TV is on loud, the computer is playing music and the kids are running around. I feel like the Grinch when he says he can't stand the noise, noise, noise. It was good to see them, but Cordelia was mad to go. That short little visit made the rest of the morning go by fast.

Failure to thrive

I was reading something by another mom whose daughter has been sick and they aren't entirely sure why. She wrote about the doctor diagnosing her daughter as "failure to thrive." I really felt for her because we heard those words with Cordelia. It was like a kick in the stomach. It hurt to hear those words. Maybe I'm just so used to living in a P.C. world that I didn't expect to hear something so harsh. Everything else has changed so why not say, "growing challenged" or something. It's just hard to hear the word failure and your child's name in the same sentence. I felt like I should defend her. "It's not her fault!" "She's doing the best she can!" "I'm doing the best I can for her." When failure is connected to your child, you as a parent take part of the blame too. Really, nothing was her fault or mine or Fred's or anybody else's. Still, it hurt to hear failure to thrive. The good news is that she now has no problem "thriving." She's getting round and heavy. She's gotten a few more pounds on her and she looks healthier than ever.

Heavy subject

When we were at Cordelia's doctor's appointment last week, Torii saw a poster on the door about child abuse. He noticed the picture of the little kid on it. On the poster you could only see the kid's back and part of his face. It looked like he was sitting in a corner. Torii started asking me questions about the picture. He asked if the boy had been bad and why he was sitting like that. Wow, that's a pretty big subject for a four year old. I'm not good in these kinds of situations, but I answered it the best I could. Now that I've had time to think about it, I know how I would have answered it better. I did tell him the boy wasn't bad, but I didn't exactly saying anything about someone hurting him. I'm just not ready for my kids to know that sometimes people hurt kids. I know they'll learn about these things someday, but I want to protect them from those kinds of evils for as long as I can. I was totally ready to answer questions about sex, but this one really blindsided me. And really, I know I shouldn't shield them from things. It will do them more harm to put them in a protective bubble. Sometimes it is no fun to be a parent.

Movie date with the boys

Today I went to Madagascar 2 with Rion and Torii. This was a first for Torii. We took Rion to his first movie when he was 2. He didn't sit still and got bored. We tried again at 3. He was better, but still not quite ready. At 4 he really enjoyed going to movies and actually sat through an entire one. Torii is even more wild and impatient than Rion so we really weren't in any hurry to take him to a movie. He really liked the movie and sat through the whole thing. It was really packed, even though it was in three theatres. Torii said next time he would like to sit higher up. Rion would like to see the movie Bolt next and they both keep talking about seeing a movie with Aunties Kelly and Laurie. So make room in your Christmas schedules Aunties! The movie was good for the kids, although I thought it was just ok. I haven't even seen the first one so I think I missed out on some inside jokes. It was a good time and it was nice to get out with just the boys. I missed a lot of time with them while we were in the cities so they deserved an afternoon with just mommy.