A tale of a frozen family

Every Thursday, I devote my blog to being thankful. I think in this life where everyone is under pressure to get everything done as fast as possible, where we are overbooked and under rested, we need to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. I got the idea from here

I am thankful, that in a declining economy, our business is growing by leaps and bounds.

I am thankful, that the offspring officially became a “little dragon” yesterday… when she was accepted into the private martial arts academy.

I am thankful that my health is coming around. WOO HOO!!!!!

I am thankful to have such an amazing and supportive family, even if we are spread all over the place.

What are YOU thankful for?

I’ve always wondered why no one really tells you what to expect when you enter motherhood.  All you ever hear is those usual things “life will never be the same”  “you’ll never sleep again”  “you’ll spend the rest of your life worrying”, etc.   But they never really cover the in depth range of emotion you experience as a mother.

I never thought I would find a day that I would worry about the most innocuous of things.   I never thought it was possible to love my child more than the day before.  There are times I look at her and I swear my heart feels like it’s going to explode.  Those times are usually when she doesn’t even realize I’m looking at her.    There are times that she just blows me away.   Of course, I say these things like I’m the only mother in the world that has had these feelings towards their children!

I love that she still lets me hug and kiss on her and she’s not embarrassed yet.   She was playing independently earlier and I asked her to please come here.   She walks up and I give her a huge hug and tell her that my love meter was low and I needed a recharge.  I was charging charging charging my love meter!  She laughed so hard and then says “But wait mommy!!!  You can’t charge too much… because if you do, I won’t have any love left for Daddy!”  Isn’t that the sweetest???  So we agreed to make sure and save enough love for Daddy to recharge his love meter too.   (insert that heart feeling like it’s going to explode sensation again).

I will openly admit though, that yesterday she really BLEW ME AWAY.    We’ve known for a while now that she pretty much falls into the “freaky smart” category.   Maybe we should have noticed when she started her fascination with books as soon as she could sit up.  (yeah! I have an excuse to put one of my favorite pictures here as a reference!)

But I still have moments when I guess I live in denial and she brings that reality rushing right back to me.   Last night,  I’m cozied up on the couch watching her play “Big Brain Academy” on the Wii.   She can’t be happy with an easy level, which we repeatedly *tried* to get her to do.   She has this really bad habit of wanting to push herself beyond her ability, but then getting frustrated when she can’t figure it out…. so we try to cut it off at the pass.   I learned an amazing lesson last night while trying to cut her off at the pass.   I really don’t give her enough credit :(   Okay… so where was I???  Oh yeah, so she’s playing big brain academy and insists on playing the hard level.   I sit on the couch, preparing for the onslaught of outrage when her frustration kicks in, from not knowing the answers.   I sat and watched.  I watched her whiz through these games, one after the other.  My jaw started to hang lower and lower.    I watched her identify a screen full of balloons in which she had to select the lowest to the highest number and pop them in that order.  I looked at that screen and saw numbers like -97, -44, 62, 4, 59, 23, 25, -17, etc.  *I* was having a hard time visually identifying them with the time ticker counting down as added pressure.   She FLEW through them, not missing a single one.   She moved onto the memory games where she nailed every single one of them.   She moved onto the math games, which.. understandably, she missed several, but she GOT some of them!  I’m not talking easy addition, I’m talking about adding double digit numbers, multiples of times, in a 10 second span.   I was shocked.

I learned last night, that I need to stop thinking of her in terms of what is “normal” for her age, and start giving her the credit that she deserves.  I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for a child, for them to KNOW they can do something, but repeatedly be told by adults that “they can’t do that, they aren’t old enough”.     Like her various science experiments LOL!  

 She’s going in…..

I hope this doesn’t cause any permanent brain damage….

You see, that is the other thing no one ever told me about being a mother…. that my little girl would teach me so much every day.   I’m in awe of how much I learn from her every day.   What I would give to look at the world through her eyes.  

Not to sound like a ridiculous sap….. but I am so blessed to have been chosen in this world as her mother.  My only hope in this world is that I’m capable of teaching her as much as she’s already taught me in her 4 years on this earth. 

Every Thursday, I devote my blog to being thankful.   I think in this life where everyone is under pressure to get everything done as fast as possible, where we are overbooked and under rested, we need to take a moment to stop and smell the roses.  I got the idea from here

Since I’ve not posted in a while, I have lots of things to cover and be thankful for!  My biggest is that I was able to quit my job.  I can’t even formulate into words how immensely thankful I am for that happening!  It renders me speechless…. how thankful I am.  Thank you so much hubby for pushing me to make this decision!  I LOVE YOU!

I’ve also come across a few things this week that I’ve read, heard, seen that really hit home for me and I wanted to pass those onto others.

First was an article I read in my monthly edition of Woman’s Day.  I think there is something in this article that we can learn from.  Here is the link to the story

Another one of my weaknesses is reality TV.  I watch this really cheesey show called “Workout” which is about a gym in Beverly Hills.  Last year, one of their trainers took ill and tragically, passed away.  I’d only seen him on a few episodes, but he was one of those people who you could tell really touched the lives of the people that knew him.   When they talked about his funeral, they talked about “Doug’s rules” and those too really stuck with me.  Here they are:

Just for today, do not worry.

Just for today, do not anger.

Honor your parents, teachers and elders.

Earn your living honestly.

Show gratitude for all living things.

 I will be the first to fully admit that I’m guilty of NOT doing many of those things every day. 

 And lastly…. a quote I read from Mother Theresa “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” Because lords knows, over the last 3 or 4 years I feel like there has been WAY too much trust in me LOL.

I spent all day yesterday sleeping, or lounging around.  I was POOPED!  

Saturday was our annual “expo” for our company.  It’s basically a trade show for all things children.   Since we run a children’s education company, it’s very beneficial for us to be there.  But it’s EXHAUSTING! 

During the day, we see over 15 THOUSAND children.  It’s complete and utter chaos from the moment we walk in, until we drive away.   It doesn’t help that someone apparently stabbed our tires while we where there too (grrrrr) which has now prompted the purchase of a new set of tires.  Not an expense we were looking forward to, just one day into my unemployment!  HA!

At any rate, I can’t put into words how amazing it is to spend all day with children, watching this reaction, over and over. 

They just get so amazed… and it’s just cool to see their little minds open up and learn.   It’s really heart warming, and I’m quite proud to say that I FINALLY made it through watching one of hubby’s stage shows without crying.  For those of you that know me, you KNOW that is a huge step.   I’ve been unable to watch our shows since the very first one I saw…. to watch the children get sooooo excited about what we do, sends me into tears every time!

God I love what we do!

I reserve every Thursday to give thanks for things in my life. A stop and smell the roses moment, that makes us all a little more grateful for the little things in life. I jumped on the band wagon from here.

This week… I am so incredibly thankful for the gift of being approved by the largest school district in the state. This will do amazing things for our company in terms of growth… and in terms of me quitting my 9-5. I am soooooo incredibly proud of my hubby for making this happen!

I was prompted to do this from here and I thought it was a great idea.

Take one day out of the week to reflect on something that you are thankful for. It doesn’t have to be a long list, and for me, during this week, I don’t have the mental energy to go very far. But I do like the fact that it makes me sit back and think about all the good I have in life.

This week, even though Em and I are both hacking up lungs, I am very thankful that I have been blessed with a very low maintenance child. She’s just as sick as I am, yet she is content to sit on the couch and watch a movie, or cuddle with me in the chair (while I try to work on my laptop). I love that she compliments what I need from her on most days.

Do you just ever have periods of time that you are virtually just uninspired???  I’m not really sure what is up.  I don’t know if it’s the constant weather fluctuation, or the flu season or what.  The last couple of days, I want to sleep all day and night. 

We were suppose to go to an astronomy symposium last night, which would have been a great opportunity for the Man to break out his new bad boy megga kick butt telescope.  Additionally, they have a junior astronomer club for the kids, that the spawn would have gone NUTS over.  It’s normally for kids 6 and up, but at 4, she knows more about our solar system than I do… including the order in which they fall from the sun (which she will tell you is NOT a planet, but a star mom!).  So…. at any rate, I was excited for her.  I couldn’t wait to tell her when we picked her up from preschool yesterday afternoon.  

We get there, I look at her.. she looks flushed.  I say nothing, because it’s gymnastics time and I refuse to be one of *THOSE* mothers.  So I wait till it’s time to go.  I put on her coat and instinctively do that feel their forehead with the back of your wrist move.   She’s burning up :(   We get her home… temp is 101.  Needless to say, we didn’t go anywhere.  She complained about her legs hurting when she walked and that the inside of her head hurt :(  So I gave the poor kiddo some Tylenol and she went to bed at 7pm.  Didn’t wake until 8am.  Again today, between 100-101 all day.  The upside is that she didn’t complain about any pain today.   As a matter of fact, she’s not exhibiting any symptoms at all, other than fevers.   I try very hard not to get paranoid about anything, but who am I joking.  Having my baby in a hospital for 5 days last year about did me in, and I’ll move heaven and earth to try and keep her from EVER having to go through that again… which of course started as a simple cough.  So… I sometimes think I *look* for symptoms that probably aren’t even there.   Long story short… she’s got a constant fever and nothing else. 

 I feel puny, but not outwardly sick.  Still healing up from surgery and just feeling overall worn down.  I suspect I’m coming down with a cold or something though.  I guess that explains the “uninspired”.   

I also acknowledge that I appear to have a serious case of diarrhea of the mouth and that it’s quite likely that NO ONE on this planet gives a rats a$$ about anything that I am babbling about at this very moment. :)  So I think I’ll just go shove myself in a pint of Hagen daaz.

It’s Thursday again…. and in following along with the “Thankful Thursday” challenge that I read about at http://anotherchanceranch.typepad.com/another_chance_ranch/2008/01/the-beginning-o.html   (I really want to learn how to do hyper links here!)  here’s mine for the week.

I am thankful for my improving health.  I am thankful for my reducing level of pain.  I am thanksful that my family is healthy.  I am thankful that my bulldog didn’t die from eating a sponge!

What are you thankful for?

Shopping for a new doctor that is.  I’m not talking about my wonderful surgeon, who if I HAD a uterus, I would gladly bear a dozen of his children out of mere gratitude for everything he’s done for me, when no one else could even figure it out.  I’m talking about a general physician.

I’m not sure when this new trend completely took over, but it seems like now….. if you have a runny nose, they write you a stack of prescriptions an inch deep and send you out the door.  They don’t care that the stack of prescriptions costs you 2 thousand dollars, or that those prescriptions make you 10 times worse than what you went seeking help for.  *sigh*

I had my final straw with my GP before I met my fabulous surgeon.  Since she didn’t know what was wrong with me, she decided to write me a stack of prescriptions a half and inch thick for a diagnosis that a specialist had already said was not the problem.   I tried to think that maybe she was thinking outside the box and maybe the specialist had missed something, so I took the prescriptions and within 3 days was 10 times worse.  That’s when I decided it was enough.  This was the 10th or so time that she’d done something similar in the last 2 years.    I look back at the rapid decline in my health since October and I’ve decided it’s time to take a step outside the box and look for somebody who can do the same.

I’m going back to my “crunchy” roots (my hubby loves to call me crunchy… because of my tree hugging tendencies… you know.. breastfeeding until college, cloth diapers, no vaccines, etc.)  so…. since my naturopath is all the way in the city (and is not covered by insurance) I started to quest for a doc that would fit the bill, out here in the burbs.  I talked to about 4 or 5 different offices, each one referring me to another feeling they might be a great fit for my crazy hippy self ;)   and I think I’ve hit pay dirt.   I think I’ve found one that thinks like I do.  She’s a propionate for natural health care, is an acupuncture advocate (and specialist) believes in eastern medicine as well as western medicine in moderation, and is also an MD, so my insurance will cover her!

I scheduled my “meet and greet” appointment later in the month.  I’m hoping that we’ll be a good match!

And since I was talking about cloth diapers earlier… lets take a quick stroll down memory lane.  Man I miss those cute cloth booties!

Isn’t that the cutest little bootie EVAH????

So anyway… peace out… I’m off to eat some granola and hug a tree!

Lets take a few moments to step outside of our busy lives and reflect on what we are thankful for.

I’m thankful that I’m healing up!  I’m thankful that Em has her best friend to play with today.  I’m thankful for all of hubby’s hard work.  Things are really starting to look good. I’m thankful I still have a couple more weeks of medical leave before I have to go back to work!

What are you thankful today?

Tomorrow… I will unload the camera… and we’ll play more “lookie what I did”.