christmas 2008

's wonderful! 's marvelous! That's how my Christmas was, and I hope yours was the same. What was wonderful about my Christmas? It was wonderfully traditional, and although we missed mom, we still managed to enjoy the season. The entire time, though, I couldn't help but wonder how different it will be next year with a nine-month old crawling around (and a hopefully well-trained, one-year-old rottweiler and a fifteen-year-old cat).

Our Christmas season started off with the annual Christmas party hosted by Jen and Bob, followed by Christmas Eve appetizers and dinner (this year at Ryan and Rachel's), opening presents with Al Christmas morning, Christmas dinner with Al's family at his brother's house, and ended with Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village last night (I've only done this once before, so technically it's not "traditional"). In between all of those were extra visits with Al's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew in from New York and an impromptu "baby shower lunch" thrown by my female in-laws since Kim won't be able to make it for the real thing. Oh, and a really bad cold and body temperatures ranging from 96.3 to 96.8 that made me feel a little weak and freaked, but didn't interfere too much with the festivities.

The festivities were/are so much, in fact, that even though I've been wanting to go to the movies since October, we still haven't had the time to go. So in the next three days that Al still has off, I'm hoping we can sneak it in. It will have to come sometime in between my physical therapy, the annual New Year's party at Del and Nicole's, and a football gathering at Log and Jen's on Thursday (which honestly I'm not too thrilled about, just because I'm not a football fan and we'll just have finished "partying" twelve hours before the gathering...maybe I'll just send Al and take another nap, which I've been doing frequently these days). Right now, I'm supposed to be straightening things up around the house and Al is working on emptying the baby's room, formerly his computer/television/guitar/poster room, in preparation for the painting I'll start late this week or early next week. And that's all of our news. Deliciously mundane, and although it's the holidays, "normal." After this week, my actual "normal" reality will start, and I can't wait. It'll change soon (sometime on, before, or after March 12), but it'll just be a new kind of normal. And the thought of that makes me happy.

hold the calls

I admit it. I used to make them. I used to take them. But that was when I was younger, single, non-pregnant, and tended to go out and stay out late. Now I just hate them. What am I writing about? Late night phone calls.

In my book, there are only four acceptable reasons for a late night phone call (and I'm talking any time after 9 p.m.) from a non-relative:

1. It's an emergency. Someone is dying, has died, or possibly could die (as in, I'm so drunk I can't drive and I'm doing the smart thing hoping for a ride) and you need to talk to me. These types of calls should be rarer than Christmas.
   
2. I'm expecting you to call and we've arranged it ahead of time, or I'm expecting you to call since it's incredibly good news. If you had your baby in the middle of the night and know I'd be upset if you didn't call me, then please, pick up the phone!
   
3. You're expecting me to come out and I haven't arrived yet. This would actually apply to my husband more than me since he plays late night hockey games and I tend to stay in. While acceptable, these calls tend to annoy me if they turn into five or six phone calls that eat away at the very limited time I spend with my husband, so keeping it down to one call is advised.
   
4. It's a work emergency. This, too, would apply to my husband rather than me. He works at a plant and sometimes the night guys just need to know something that went on during the day or need advice on a job. This type of call is rare, so understandable.

So to my husband's almost forty-year-old friend who just doesn't get it (and doesn't read this blog, so it won't do a bit of good), get a clue: calling at 10:30 at night and having to have, "Were you sleeping?" be the first words out of your mouth is none other than rude, rude, rude. Al won't tell him that, of course. One of these days I'll just have to answer one of his late night calls and tell him that Al can't speak to him because it's a household rule that we don't take phone calls after 9:00. It wouldn't be so bad if it was a once a year thing, if he lived in a different time zone, etc. But this Peter Pan hasn't quite grown up yet and makes late night calls more often than I'd like. It especially bothers me when Al's worked a twelve-hour day and I've seen him for all of an hour before he gets a call, because Al's too polite to cut off the conversation and lets it go on for twenty to thirty minutes. Argh...

Now that my rant is over, thanks for letting me vent if you've stuck with me. I hate to complain online; Al thinks I complain too much as it is. Of course, half of what he thinks are complaints are not "complaints" in my mind (ah, the joys of miscommunication), but this definitely was one. Off to cooking dinner...

sarah

Sarah died today. You may remember reading about her in my previous blog. She was 34, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a little over a month ago, and ultimately died (I think) of liver failure. She had three young children and a husband as well as a close extended family. Please pray for their comfort, especially with her death coming so close to Christmas.

yes, i'm a quilter

People seem surprised when they find out that I have a few domestic abilities. Like when I was getting married and registered for a pastry cutter. Most of my friends didn't know what it was and seemed impressed that I make my own biscuits and pie crusts (or even that I bake from scratch at all). Well, prepare to be even more impressed. Instead of registering for a generic, themed baby's crib set like a million, gazillion other people have, I decided to make my baby's quilt. I'm done at long last (it was interrupted by things like my soon-to-be nephew's quilt, my mom's death, etc.) and decided to post a few pictures of it (the front is pictured first, then the back). This should help those of you who keep asking what the baby's room is going to be like, because I'll also describe my non-conventional ideas for a gorgeous, gender-neutral kid's room.

Our kid's room will have either a dark or rosewood-colored hardwood floor, espresso wood furniture, and light grey walls (and despite what my sister-in-law says, the grey walls will not make the kid feel like it's growing up in a prison cell). I'll use three colors as the main accents in the room: charcoal grey (see the teddy bear that inspired it all), a deep red (see the reds in the quilt), and tans. We're installing a ceiling fan/overhead light this week (yea!) and the blades look like wood (interchangeable between mahogany and rosewood) and (ideally) will echo the floor. We've registered for a few crib sheets and a bumper, and I'll make another bumper to match the quilt and we'll probably register for a couple of blankets that match. (For those of you that are wondering, we did start the registry today [Babies R Us] and will finish it off this week. The shower is January 17 and invites will go out soon. Everyone keeps asking, so I thought I'd throw it in there.)

As for my health? I'm feeling mostly good and doing my best to eat well. I'm sleeping slightly better most nights, thanks to physical therapy, but my carpal tunnel is getting worse, especially in my right hand and wrist. I see the doc on Wednesday and will talk to her about that. I don't (and never have had) have a lot of energy, so I'm not very active. Baby doesn't seem to move a whole lot, but when it does it likes to kick (never in my ribs, which makes some people predict that it'll be a boy). Al's been able to feel the baby kicking a few times now. He's "excited," if that's ever a word you can use in reference to Al. Also anxious, mostly about Mya because she's been a little, shall we say, rambunctious lately. She's not getting over the jumping/biting think very quickly and he's never successfully trained a dog (I have) and he's getting worried about having her around the kid. I'm not; we'll get her into training soon and she'll mellow out eventually. Both of us have bad coughs and are hoping to get over them soon. And that's about it for now!

Another post soon...I hope...

life, a week later

Mom passed away a little over a week ago, and--strangely enough, from my perspective--the entire thing seems a bit surreal. The diagnosis, the drawn-out, bedridden battle with cancer, her last breath. The visitation. The funeral that we had to push back an hour to avoid the Santa Parade passing in front of the funeral home. Watching them lower her casket into the vault, but not waiting the fifteen to twenty minutes it would take for them to lower the vault into the ground and start covering it with dirt.

My mom's body was in there. It's just surreal.

I thought I'd be more prepared for the reality of mom's death when it happened since this has been a drawn-out process and not a sudden thing. And honestly, I haven't been as emotional (teary) as I probably would have been otherwise, especially considering the amount of hormones raging through my 26-week-old pregnant body. For the last several weeks, I even had a Spongebob mantra running through my head ("I'm ready! I'm ready!") because I hated to see mom being forced to lie in bed and let her body waste away. But it's just starting to hit me that I'll never be able to call mommy again when I'm sick (I'm a big baby and like her to take care of me, even if it's just bringing over soup) or call her and ask her child-rearing advice (luckily, she gave a lot to Al in those last few weeks--at his request, of course) or even tell her about my day or what the kid has been doing. It's just starting to hit me how much I'll miss her.

I've also had some odd thoughts about the after-life running through my head. Now, I know not all of my readers believe in an afterlife or are Christians, as I am, so if you want to stop reading or think all of this is hogwash, I'll understand. But lately I've been thinking about my brother's beliefs versus general Christian beliefs--is there a "resting" period for souls after life and before heaven, or do souls go straight to heaven? If straight there, what was mom going through? Was she a bit afraid because she was entering this new situation alone? Did she have a private "meet-and-greet" with God, or were her parents and other people she knew waiting to greet her? Is she happy? (Stupid question for a Christian, I know, but I can't help but wonder.) And--for me, this is the scariest question I have--does she remember? Does she remember us? Me? That I'm pregnant? That I'll be having a baby in March? Will she know when I have it and what it will be? Does she already know? I want my mom to remember and know, and I'm so afraid that she doesn't and won't because life here on earth is so imperfect and full of sin. How could people in heaven get away with knowing how life is (or was) here on earth without it tainting heaven a little?

Anyway. Enough of my questions and tears. Life is slowly returning back to normal (or finally becoming normal) for me and my husband; I'm living at home, he's back to work, so am I, and we'll (hopefully) get the Christmas decorations and cards up and out this weekend. We'll get the puppy into training, prepare the house for the kid, maybe even attend a birthing class (and it might be too late to get into one that would fit his schedule). Someday, this will all start to seem real. But not quite yet.