A Look Back

On the iPod, "See you again (feat. Charlie Puth)" By: Wiz Khalifa

When my dad died a wise old sage told me that when you lose someone close you gain a lump. At first the lump is in your throat making it hard to swallow or even breathe. You will question it and hate it and just want it to go away. But over time the lump moves sometimes it's in your heart sometimes in your hands but eventually it finds a home at the bottom of your foot. You will always feel it there but although impossible to believe right now as time goes by you will start to feel nervous that you don't feel it enough but then it will quickly resurface somewhere you least expected it to be.  But on special days... Birthdays, holidays, weddings, anniversaries the lump moves... sometimes it moves all the way up to your throat again but then it eventually settles back in your foot... In a way you will come to love the lump... It will remind you so deeply of the one that you love and it will just become a part of you. 

I'm not sure why but for the last couple of days. The lump has been in my throat...making it hard to breathe...

Maybe it was seeing pictures of my brother introducing his three year old to my dad's old records... Maybe someone who reads this blog needs to hear this story today... Or maybe the lump just needed to move...

But Something is bringing me back to that day 7 and 1/2 years ago... So much so that I spent some time last night looking at blogs I had written years ago... This post was written on the 2nd anniversary of my dad's passing...

"On the iPod, "Crazy Faith" by: Alison Krauss

About three weeks ago a friend on facebook listed this as their status:

"can't believe I havent seen my father in 19 years."

I have been thinking about it ever since...As of today I have not seen my father in 2 years...I can't even imagine 19...

I have written so many blogs about today in my head over the last 24 hours. What should I say...Should I tell you about the day 2 years ago or should I tell you how incredible he was. Maybe I should tell what he means to me. Or maybe I should write an entire blog about how pissed off I still am (not at him but at the disease). I thought about how my family would feel, would they want me to write about such a private day?? So as of this minute I decided that I'll write a little about everything...

On my birthday of 2007, I got a phone call that would change everything. I was having a party at my apartment and my parents were supposed to stop by. My Dad was in treatment for prostate cancer and had been since about 1998, he had been in drug trials at MD Anderson for probably about 1 year. (on a side note they don't explain to you that most of the drug trials are meds that might extend your life by weeks, maybe months and come with awful side effects, they are not cures like one would hope for...) The phone call was simple "Amanda, Daddy is not feeling well, I am taking him to the ER...You don't need to come...today is not the day...we will call you if something changes." For the next 4 months it was more of the same...sick one day, better the next. Our family house changed too... there were walkers, shower seats, lots and lots of pill bottles, and even a checklist that I made up on the computer titled "How do we feel today?" I remember the day in particular that I finally accepted that things had changed. My dad was bad...and I wanted so badly to speed drive him to the hospital so that they could "fix" him. My mom knew... She somehow knew that the time had come to stop going to the hospital. I've never asked her how she knew... Did someone tell her? Anyways, after listening to me freak out about taking him I watched her pick up the phone and call his doctor, who was always a close friend, she simply said, "Gabriel, I'm with Amanda, Joe Bill is not doing well... She wants to take him to the ER... I thought maybe she should ask you some questions..." As I picked up the phone... Tears started rolling down my cheeks... Without asking any questions... He said in words I can't remember verbatim... "Amanda, I'm so sorry but we are running out of time, we can't fix him... We could make it a bit better but then in a couple of days, maybe hours you will have to bring him back...and the visits will get closer and closer together and it will be very painful for him. I think we should make him comfortable so that he can listen to his music and be with yall."

We signed up for hospice and he fired hospice (pretty sure he wasn't a fan of the nurse!) I do have to admit though this particular hospice sucked! Anyways he refused for any hospice to come back at that time.

Things continued to get worse and it was extremely difficult for us to completely care for him. On Christmas Eve day, I walked into the room where he was sitting and said, "I've researched some hospice companies I found one that sounds great, they will be here this afternoon. His response was a simple "Ok." On Christmas eve day, the hospice nurse came out and visited with my dad and by 10pm they had delivered meds to keep him comfortable.

Things progressed quickly...My dad had been walking with a cane or walker for a solid three weeks the cancer had long ago moved to his bones and the pain was intense but for whatever reason on Friday Jan. 4 he decided to go out to dinner for mexican food with my mom, my aunt and my uncle and he went without any kind of walking device. By Saturday, he changed. He was sitting in his chair all day and acting a little strange. A hospice nurse came over and said he sounded great and that we still had time, probably weeks! I left to go to dinner with friends and got home at about 10 pm. I figured everything was fine and that they might be sleeping so I didn't call. I should have called my dad couldn't get up and even my brother couldn't help him up...the fire dept. had to come. He didn't get out of bed Sunday. Friends came and went all day. Telling stories, listening to his favorite music, looking at the pictures that still today envelope my parent's house. At this time we also had round the clock help just in case my dad needed anything.

I slept over at my mom's on Saturday night. I woke up for whatever reason at about 3 am and decided to go and check on him. He sounded terrible, we had heard about a condition called the "death rattle" it is just part of the process, but when I went to tell my mom what I thought was happening she reassured me that the nurse had said weeks...we were fine. So I went back in, made my dad sit up and take just one more sip of water from a straw and went back to bed.

I woke up to the sound of my brother screaming, "Wake up Daddy, get up Dad!!!" I ran back there and he was still there but not there all at the same time. Of course, I was shocked but not really surprised, my father refused to be held back he had obviously made a choice. By 5pm with all of us there by his side and music playing in the background he took his last breath. It was peaceful, I don't even think I was angry at this point, the anger came later... I knew he was in pain and I knew the last thing he would want would be to be stuck in bed.

The most interesting thing about the journey was that days later as the news spread we got phone calls and visits from all of his friends from high school and life and everybody had one thing in common, my Dad had called them all within the last week of his life, coincidence, I think not! He sent hundreds of CDs those last weeks, adorned with pictures of times long ago. 

My Dad lived his life his way to the very end. When I think about everything he has missed in the last two years I get very sad, weddings, funerals oddly enough, birthdays... I worry some days about how I'm going to explain him to my kids, how will I show them how his smile lit up a room and how it felt to hold his hands. Sometimes right before I walk into a room at my Mom's house I wish that when I open the door he is just sitting there....

I'm sorry this became all about the disease and the end, but i just wrote and it came out. For what ever reason this was the story I needed to tell today so thank you all for listening.

I miss you Daddy, I love you and I wish you were here!"

xoxo chef a

Naps and Secrets

On the iPod "Incomplete" By: James Bay

I know I've said it before, but I honestly can't get over how different my boys are... I mean just today at the splash park, Levi spent a half an hour worried about the water getting in his eyes and the other hour worried about ant piles in the grass and Luca divided his time between running as fast as he could away from me through every surface barefoot and standing directly under the water dump buckets. The differences really go completely across the board....

Levi gave up bottles by himself and switched to one nap with no effort on my part at all. So I guess I had always expected that it would just happen for Luca the same way, but boy have I been wrong! Let me preface this by saying I am by NO MEANS asking for advise (I have plenty of personal mommy council and I am aware it's up to me to set the ground rules for my child,) but I'm just having a harder time with it than I ever expected. Here is my current secret... I keep a bottle in the car with water in it... I'll bring a sippy cup into a play date or to mommy and me, but as soon as we hit the car our dirty little secret is out and the bottle is in his hands... I have no willpower, Luca might possibly go to first grade with a baby bottle stashed in his lunch box. It is his comfort. He doesn't have a paci or suck his thumb, no blanket or lovey, just a bottle... Any bottle... He doesn't even care what kind... It doesn't even have to have milk in it... I could tell you that I have a date that I will absolutely take it away but I would be lying... I have NO DATE! The second he looked at me with his puppy dog eyes and threw the sippy cup in my face 3 months ago I decided not to care. The only change that will be happening for now is that I will be hiding the bottle in his diaper bag while its 95 degrees outside... Judge me if you want to, but people nurse their kids till they are like 8 now... Why should my kid suffer because I couldn't produce enough milk. I mean if he has bonded with the bottle why should I come between them??? Only kidding... Kind of. I promise he will give up the bottle... I hope at least by the time he wants to try a bottle of another source. 

Onto the dreaded nap change... Luca has been an unbelievable sleeper ever since at 8months when I put on his Amber teething necklace and he slept through the night. I can count on one hand the number of times he has woken up in the middle of the night. And since about the same time he has taken two GLORIOUS naps a day. He would wake up at 6:15, go down for his first nap at 9:00-9:15 sleep till sometimes 11, play and eat lunch. Go back down at 2pm sleep till 3:30-4. Play more, eat dinner and by 7:15 would be knocking on the hall door ready to go to his bed. We could not have asked for a better sleeper... We even changed our schedule... No more dinners out past 6 pm and if we do go out it is timed with military precision. Until about 8 weeks ago, when he started having a hard time with his daytime naps. He was going between dropping one a day, being super cranky others, fighting us terribly during the daytime hours while luckily his nighttime sleeping has stayed pretty consistent. I just knew he was trying to switch to one nap a day, but it wasn't easy at all! I have read all of the books, tried all of the different methods. Been on the verge of tears with my closest friends. But nothing was really sticking. What makes my schedule hard is that I wake up super early... I really like to leave my house no later than 6:30 even if that means a quick diaper change and both boys are in the car in pjs on the way to BeBe's house (yes I know I'm extremely lucky to have a mom that will lovingly take my children that early so I don't have to drag them to the markets with me), but this is where the boys differ again... Levi will walk in and curl up in her bed and sleep for another hour... while luca gets up and it's full steam ahead.  So over the last week I have FINALLY figured out how to survive this and get Luca on some sort of crazy schedule. I have found that instead of sleep training, Luca needs lounge training. Luca needed to be taught how to just chill. Every morning I have been lounging with him. If I get him before he wakes up himself he will cuddle with me just long enough that he is learning how to just chill with me. And then once he has lounged a bit he needs lots of protein food sources and LOTS of activity so that he can push through lunch and then go down for his nap. My hope is that I can eventually get him to lounge right over to BeBe's house and do what Levi does but who am I kidding that will never happen lol. The lounging technique is working for his naps as well. It has been hard for him to nap longer than about an hour and a half (which was his regular napping time when he was taking two) which just isn't enough for him... So I've been lounging him back to sleep if he wakes up. For example, today he woke up from his nap and I could tell it wasn't enough so I went in and cuddled with him on the bed for just a couple of minutes and then put him back into his crib and he slept another HOUR! I'm hoping that he will eventually just sleep through. 

But I'm just happy that I feel like I'm figuring him out. That is what I find is the hardest part of them growing up and changing, it's the feeling that you don't know them. It takes you right back to their first big change as a baby, whether it was feeding problems, sleeping problems, or crying problems. We are their mothers...we all feel like we should just know how to make their lives perfect and when we are tested and we don't know its hard!!

For someone who prided myself on not scheduling Levi, I sure have made a complete 180 when it comes to Luca. I'm trying to embrace it. Embrace the schedule, Embrace the change and Embrace the differences. So for all of you mommies out there who are parenting in a way that you never thought you would or are dealing with your own frustrations... Never fear YOU ARE NOT ALONE! 

xoxo chef a

The Last Day

On the iPod "The Sun is Rising" by: Britt Nicole

As I sit here at 10:15pm the night before the last day of school... I am a bit of a mess. I really didn't expect to be, but alas here I am a super anxious, worried, over-analyzing ball of energy. And to think last week I thought it was so crazy that my 4 year old was/is having concerns over the school year being over and the fact that someone is about to "move his cheese." I have no idea where he gets that from... But I digress...

Maybe it's the fact that time is flying by so fast or the uncertainty of what the next year will bring but to be honest it feels a little bit like the last day of summer camp. We are about to have the last friendship circle and as we burst into tears about leaving this place that we called home for the last month it strikes us that the reason we are crying is because we realize that we will never get this moment back... It will never be the same...

Today as I picked Levi up from what was his last full day in the 3s it was two fold... I looked at him and I saw the anxiety in his eyes. "Only one more day..." he told me as he hugged me hello... "I know, sweet boy" were the only words I could muster to say. In my heart, I know that he is ready to move forward, but as I watched him on the playground today it struck me... Which, if any, of these friends have become an "it" person for him? Am I doing my job to support the friendships he has made this year? Will he come back in the fall and be able to pick up where they left off? Will I? What about my mommy "it" friends? Is this the beginning of a lifetime friendship or will we gently go back to our "new regular" life this summer and this will be that year we were really close? So many unanswered questions... 

I've been actually feeling this anxious pull about the school year ending for awhile now. It's funny how life works, just when you feel like you are getting in your groove, life changes... Don't get me wrong, we are going to have a blast this summer. I will not miss Levi's ever present runny nose or the argument over school year bedtimes. But I will miss this moment in time... This is the last of the baby years. Whether any of us agree with it or not in PreK shit gets real...

When I discussed my concerns and fears with my resident advisor ie: my therapist :)

She reminded me that my feelings are all valid and pretty normal especially for a girl who has never been big on change. She told me to do something that at the time seemed crazy to me... She said to say my piece...If you don't want to see a friendship end... Be honest, tell the friend. If it's hard for you to say it... Find a song, Write it...

And she is right, well she is always right... 

I am a believer of true friendship. I pride myself on having real friendships that lack bullshit. I am straightforward, honest to a fault, an absolute overgiver, and despite my seemingly confident personality, inside there is a girl who is nervous about everything lol. But tomorrow as we leave Levi's school as a Prek student and as a veteran preschool mommy we will have said our piece... I will use this day to teach my 4 year old how to make sure that the people who have touched our lives over the last 9 months, know that they mean something to us. That their friendship has actually changed our life... And we are thankful for that... I will not worry if he sees me shed a tear over this year being over because I want him to know how very lucky we are to feel like our experience has been so great that there is actually something to miss... Many people aren't lucky enough to care...

Something tells me that the book "Who moved my cheese?" will become a staple in this house, but I'm really ok with that... I'm so lucky to have this sweet sensitive little boy who lights up my life and reminds me everyday what's really important.

Xoxo chef a