Kindergarten

First I have to say that I did not go to Kindergarten, my mother kept her kids at home with her for as long as possible.  And most parents do not realize that Kindergarten is not mandatory in the State of California, so I did not have to send her to school this year.  She also is not turning 5 until November, so she barely made the cut off for this year.  With all that said, after much deliberation and debate, we made the decision that she would benefit from Kindergarten.  Taaa Daaa!!!  Gosh, we parents have such hard decisions to make, and God doesn’t even send them with a manual.  I really believe each child should come with their own manual, but that is a blog for a different day.  There are a number of people around me who home-school or use a Charter school to educate their children, and I have noticed that they are very vocal about what is wrong with the public education system in their opinions…now opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one and everyone thinks everyone else’s stinks!  Now first I appreciate that you feel very strongly about the public education system and home schooling, but I don’t care!  I am not a teacher, so in my opinion I am not qualified to teach my children at home, especially in elementary school.  I have no problem if you want to teach your kids at home, but don’t push your junk on me!  This being said…I just took my Casey-bug to her very first day of Kindergarten this morning!

This child woke me at 6 am this morning, then again at 7 am wanting to know if it was time for her to go to Kindergarten.  I almost ate her before we even got there.  So I get up and get Ryan…she is following me everywhere!  We picked out her outfit last night and I take her downstairs and get her meds into her before I start on her hair and clothes and lunch.  We get her in her clothes and she watches tv while I brush out her hair and braid it.  Her socks go on and then I can get her breakfast and pack her lunch, holy crap I am packing a lunch!  I check to make sure that I have written her name on everything…including each shoe, pack her backpack, and watch as Aunt Angie takes pictures.  As I see the pictures I start to cry…yes I am a blubbering idiot!  All I can see is my baby girl with tubes and leads coming off her with her batman glasses on.  OHMYFREAKINGGOSH!!!!  Who is this little girl in the pictures?

Let me explain a little…my little girl was dreamed about by both my husband and I long before we met, we each had a name in mind, and we loved her more than life itself before we even met her.  Cassiopia Camilla; which means “clever virgin”, she is named after a constellation and her grandmother, and we call her Casey.  When she was born she was taken from me almost immediately…I didn’t get her back for 2 weeks.  The day after she was born she was taken by ambulance to Loma Linda Children’s Hospital, where she stayed for that 2 week period.  In the NICU and because of the federal newborn screening it was discovered that my little Casey had Congenital Hypothyroidism.  Before the newborn screening this was the leading cause of Mental Retardation in children…my little Casey was on medication within 8 days of birth…with no long term effects.  She takes her medication every morning, as she has done since this was discovered.  Because of the wonderful doctors there, we have a healthy, happy, and very intelligent 4 ½ year old girl.  This is all we were seeing this morning as she jumped around happily waiting for me to drive her to school…an under 6 pound girl being fed and nourished with tubes as she layed under the UV light in the NICU at Loma Linda.

So here I sit waiting ever patiently for 12:25 to arrive, thinking about my baby girl…I am sure she is fine, but I wonder if she is happy and being a good girl.  I remember when she turned 1 and 2 and 3 and 4…I remember taking her to Los Angeles to see the agent that she is still with…I remember the night we brought her home…I remember when she picked Pooh…I remember when she poked Ryan in my belly because he wouldn’t stop kicking her while she was sitting on my lap.  So here is to you Casey!  You are a big brave kindergarten girl!!

Now off I go to sob quietly into my pillow…

Comic Con 2011

For my husband’s birthday I bought him Comic Con tickets for this year, understand that we have wanted to do this for years now and was finally able to afford it this year.  Comic Con is the world’s largest comic convention, every magazine covers it, every news station is there, and studios and companies wait to introduce new movies, cartoons, and toys at it.  I waited and refreshed using 2 browsers on 4 computers to get tickets for 1 day!  People from all over come and dress up at Comic Con…this is something to be excited about!  This year Warner Brothers was introducing the new Thundercats cartoon…I was so stoked that I just almost wet myself!  I researched online which booths we wanted to see, the bag I wanted to get (Thundercats of course), and where the cool stuff was going to be!  We paid ahead of time to park in relative proximity to the San Diego Convention Center and had everything ready to go.

The day came, July 22, 2011, we got a good night’s sleep and rose early to get to the convention center early to get our badges…We get to San Diego and our designated parking lot to discover that relatively close actually meant “oh my CRAP!  Which way is the convention center and great mother of Abraham Lincoln!  Are we there yet?”.  We basically followed people with huge bags that said Comic Con on them…Holy cow I could fit both my children in those!  We had false hope that we were getting close when we spotted the 30 foot tall giant smurf…we were wrong.  Then we saw the convention center…only just over that bridge and 2 blocks to get to an unknown line that lead to nowhere.  We came up on it from the south and guess where badge pickup was…the NORTH end!  Onward we trudged…after all I was getting the Thundercats bag that could hold my children and be turned into a backpack!  To lobby C and upstairs then back around some strange line set up to a lady that said “this way”…after committing our first born we got our badges.  On to get our free combination backpack-child holder…They handed us this folded up mystery bag with 2 BOOKS on it and our lanyards, telling us that they weren’t allowed to say which bag it was…but we could trade with someone for the one we wanted.  That was my first disappointment of the day…I opened it up to discover Bugs Bunny looking at me, NOT Lion-o!  So we were like whatever let’s just find our way to the cool stuff…we looked around seeing no signs pointing us anywhere.  I saw something that said “Ballroom A”…now what the hell is that supposed to mean?!  So being relatively smart people we started following the crowd again…first to a bathroom then to the exhibit halls downstairs.  I saw a very large black woman wearing something smallish, bright pinkish, very fuzzyish, and had a tail…I am pretty sure that image will be with me for the rest of my life!  I don’t think God could scrub that from my brain with a steel brush! 

We finally enter the exhibit hall and the first thing we see is a ginormous Optimas Prime!  Holy crap, we walked right into the Hasbro booth!  My husband was very happy as we looked at all the new toys being introduced.  We stood in line to get our free toy, took some pictures and started walking on…to crap, crap and more crap.  We saw some really awesome things that people were selling…apparently Angry Birds was the “thing” to buy.  The problem with this buying business was that it seemed the prices were hiked up by like 50 to 75%...what a freakin’ rip!  We only made a purchase when we got to the Chessex Booth, where we bought dice.  The Marvel booth was pathetic, the Lego booth wasn’t giving anything away and all they had was a pile of yellow legos for people to build with, and most of the others were fairly pathetic as well.  We finally made it to the Warner Brothers booth, right as the Thundercats thing was over…and the display of the new toys was a complete disappointment!  I could compare it to something, but it would probably offend people.  They didn’t even have the new toys for sale, and I was saving my money for that!! 

At this point I was more than a little sad…we moved on and got an unidentifiable one-eyed purple alien/octopus plushy at the Capcom booth and the promise for a free t-shirt at the Nintendo game center at the Marriott next to the convention center.  We discovered that they were charging for autographs…$30 for Xander on Buffy, and $50 for Stan Lee who wasn’t there. 

We decided that this was a good time for lunch…they had a $10 burger combo special to Comic Con attendees at the Hilton, also next to the convention center.  First:  “Next to” does not mean close at all…within walking distance, yes…a hike and asking the people where to find, yes!  We get there and ask for the said burger and fries, they bring out a hamburger on a bun with cheese upon it…no ketchup…no mayonnaise…no mustard…nothing to dip your fries in.  After eating half of it my breathing starts to become a little labored…I look at the bun a little closer and ask the waiter if it is wheat, as I am allergic to wheat.  He starts to panic a little as he runs for the chef…it is wheat (who puts a hamburger on a wheat bun?) and I ask for some Benadryl asap!  Amazingly enough the Hilton has no ketchup, but they have Benadryl on hand…have they done this before?  Thankfully the bun wasn’t cracked wheat or I would have been in an ambulance at this point…the Benadryl stopped the reaction and I was able to walk to the other “next to the convention center” hotel…at the other end of the convention center.  Do you have any idea how big that place is?!?

We finally make it to the Marriott in the hopes of our free Nintendo t-shirt…that hotel is nothing but a maze and no one knows anything about the Nintendo gaming center.  We finally find it and it becomes the high point in our day…Ryane played Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, becoming a happy boy!  I played Ocarina of Time on the 3DS and I became a happy girl!  We got our free shirts and Zelda posters and rested for a while.  We did LOVE the Wizards of the Coast booth, as we got a free deck of Magic Cards for playing the new game…Awesome!  We also got to play the new Dungeons & Dragons game and got a poster.  We got some more free stuff at the convention center and headed for the car when they closed.  The walk to the car consisted of seeing a man walking around in his tidy whities…he didn’t even bother to dye them red or anything…another image that is not coming out of my head.

I did discover that we weren’t the only ones disappointed in this year’s convention, which is good because I was beginning to believe that we weren’t missing anything.  I think that if we go again we will dress up, that should make it funner…at least I hope!  

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

I know that this is incredibly late, but Life has been creeping up on me lately and this is the first I have been able to write about it.  For Father’s Day I had the opportunity to take my dad out to Palm Springs to go on the Aerial Tramway that they have out there.  It goes from 2643 feet to 8516 feet in a matter of 10 minuets…and oh my gosh, it is breathtaking!!  I had this opportunity to go with my dad because my mother HATES heights, so she was happy to give me money if I would take him. 

From what we understand the billionaire that built it funded it all by himself, and it cost some astronomical amount.  The towers were the only thing that were manufactured in this country, everything else; including the cables and cars were manufactured in Switzerland and shipped here.  It is the world’s largest rotating tramcar.  This car has windows all the way around it and it rotates 360 degrees as you go up.  When we went the windows were open, as it was over 100 degrees at the bottom, but when we got to the top we needed jackets as the temperature dropped by about 20 to 30 degrees.  The air was very thin, but the views were breath-taking!  We sat and ate lunch together at the top and talked, then we bought some souvenirs and went back down.  Going down was just as gorgeous as going up, and we both shed a tear at being able to do this together, just the two of us.

For those of you who are interested:   http://www.pstramway.com/ 

Boys are Filthy Leeches

I have noticed since having a son a trend that seems to go with boys that doesn’t go with girls…that being that boys are filthy leeches! 

But let me tell you why…I used to bathe Casey about 2 times a week at this age…with Ryan I have to bathe him every other day and that still isn’t enough.  I bathe him, get him out of the tub, put his diaper on, get his jammas on, then he has about 30 min or so before he goes to bed.  You would think in such a short time he couldn’t get that dirty, right?!  WRONG!!  I don’t even allow this child to have food or juice in that 30 min window…I don’t even let him go downstairs and play or outside either.  Somehow within 10 min this child is dirty again…HOW in the name of Zeus’ butt-hole does this happen?  I don’t have a dirty house…cluttered maybe, but not dirty.  The toys are gone through at least every other week to make sure there isn’t any food or ick in them.  I vacuum weekly, clean their rooms weekly, clean the bathrooms weekly…so where is this dirt coming from?  I have come to the conclusion that he is a dirt magnet, and my mother informed me that all boys are dirt magnets.  Hence my afore mentioned statement that boys are filthy leeches.  I am pretty sure that if there is a spec of dirt or dust within a 10 yard radius it flings itself upon my son…after his bath! 

Now onto the leech part of my statement; boys, unlike girls, are leeches!  My daughter was always independent, would play by herself and never really wanted to cuddle.  A fact that used to drive me up the wall, but now I am grateful for.  The Doctor pulled his huge head out of me and sewed his butt to my side…and since then he is only happy while he is sewn to me.  I can’t do anything anymore.  If I sit in a chair he stands next to it and screams, while I cook his breakfast he stands next to me and screams while pushing me, and when I clean the house he follows me around screaming.  Most of the time all I can do is sit on the floor while he sits upon me…if I lay on the floor he sits upon me…and when I sit on the floor and play a video game he alternates between sitting on my lap and giving me kisses.  Yes, I know it is so cute…it is what keeps him out of a stew pot!  He is a leech that is wearing a red headed, blue eyed, little boy suit!  Boys leech the very life out of their mothers.  Mine ripped me apart and ruined my body, and now he is leeching my very life blood out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my son just as much as my daughter…he is my little man and I paid dearly to have him.  I realized last night as I was holding him and rocking him to sleep that boys, unlike girls, have to be taught to love.  Girls come to us from Heavenly Father with an inborn desire to nurture and to love, boys don’t.  Boys come to us as a potential ball of anger, frustration, and testosterone.  Love is something that only their mothers can teach them…and how does one go about teaching love?  We, women, who have love come naturally, given to us directly from God, have to discover the secret of teaching love.  I thought about this for some time as the tears flowed over my almost sleeping son; we teach love by first showing love.  And not just any love, the love of a mother is a pure, untainted, and unconditional love…exactly like the love of God. 

 

This is why boys are filthy leeches…so that we mothers are forced, if we are doing our job, to teach them love by loving them.  We can’t push them away, it just isn’t in our natures, we must gather them under our wings “as a hen gathereth her chicks” and love them forever.  “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as you’re living my baby you’ll be!”  The trick is to remember this when they are eating the dog food, throwing our phones, and breaking our glasses.  Here’s to our filthy leeches and our love of them!  Love them with all that you are, cause someday God will expect us to answer for their care and shaping.  We have to shape them into responsible, hard-working, compassionate Priesthood bearers.  Here’s to our sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers…may we love them the way the Lord loves them!

All photos taken by Special Moments Photography  http://special-moments-photography.blogspot.com/