Lizards and Snails and Gecko Tails

Bugs. My kids love them. Yesterday afternoon I was repotting a mum when I discovered a tiny little speckled gecko. It looked so cute just sitting there at the bottom of the pot. I called my daughter over, "Hurry, come see this!  Get your brother!" Both kids ran towards me. 

The excitement in my voice must have startled the little gecko because that thing flew out of the pot and landed right on my foot. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" I screamed so loud it scared my kids. "What's wrong, Mom?  Are you OK?" they wanted to know. "The, the, the lizard is on my foot!"  I yelled again. 

Both kids looked down and started laughing. The little gecko was quietly sitting there about a foot away from my foot. "Mom, it's just a tiny gecko. You're not scared of it; are you?"  D reached down and tried to pick it up. Its tail broke off. N picked up the tail. "Cool, it's still moving!" she said.  D picked up the gecko and held it up to me. "Here, Mom. Touch it." I reached out my hand, but for the life of me, I couldn't do it. You see, I grew up with the fear of bugs in me. I was taught to let out a blood-curdling scream and smash any creepy-crawly I saw. 

My kids, thankfully, have not adopted my ways.  They have opted to go with David's.  David loves bugs, too.  He picks up spiders and carries them out of the house.  Instead of swatting flies, he catches and releases them outside.  He has taught the kids not to step on ants, but to observe and admire them.  He has modeled respect for these creepy-crawlies and the kids have taken this to heart.

"Come on, Mom. Just a quick touch.  You can even close your eyes."  I closed my eyes and gave it a quick swipe with my index finger.  It felt rough and scaly and a little creepy.  The hairs on the back of my neck all stood on end, but I did it!  I touched a creepy-crawly! I have never done that before!  And I did it all because of my kids.  And my husband.  

TTYL.

Plastic Bubbles

Last night at dinner, my son spilled orange juice all over the kitchen floor and as he was cleaning it up, he got a nose bleed.  Boy, was he mad!  "I am bad luck today!" he shouted as he stormed off to the bathroom holding his nose with the paper towels he had just used to clean up the orange juice. A little while later, his sister accidentally hit him on the nose while they were playing and he got another nose bleed. "This is torment!" he shouted.

After he calmed down, I reminded him that people who don't do anything never get hurt or never get nose bleeds.  "It's better to go through life with a few bumps and bruises than to always live life in the sidelines," I told him.  His daddy chimed in, "You don't want to be the boy in the bubble." That was all it took.  D wanted to know who this boy was and why was he in a bubble.  

So instead of reading his bed time book, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon, we googled "the boy in the plastic bubble."   I had heard about this boy but had never taken the time to learn his whole story. It is heart-breaking.  

David Vetter's parents already had a healthy daughter but wanted very much to have a baby boy to carry on the Vetter name.  They had had a boy already, David Vetter III, but he had died at the age of 7 months from an infection.  He had been born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).   Going on the advice of three ambitious doctors who were doing research into a cure for SCID, the parents decided to have another baby.  The doctors warned that this baby had a 50% chance of being born with SCID.  The parents agreed to take that chance and their new baby boy, David Vetter, was born with SCID.  Within seconds of the C-section birth, he was  transferred to a sterile plastic bubble where he was expected to live until a cure was found.  My guess is both the parents and the doctors thought this situation would be short-lived. 

Unfortunately, they were wrong.  That little boy lived in that bubble for twelve years never having felt a human hand on his skin until he was in coma as a result of failed bone marrow transplant from his sister.  His mother was not allowed to hold him before he was put in his bubble for fear of infecting him. Can you imagine not holding your baby right after the birth? Can you imagine a life without human touch?  The lack of human contact had psychological repercussions for him.  He was assigned a psychologist early on to care for his emotional needs.

I cannot fathom wanting to have a child so badly that you would take a chance like that.  What was the quality of life for that little boy? But it is easy for me to do some Monday-morning quarter-backing, we have been blessed with easy conceptions and three healthy children.   I am more upset with the doctors who would ask these young parents for a baby for their experiment.  That is a human life they were experimenting with!  That couldn't happen today; could it?

N was so enthralled with this story that she even dropped her Fancy Nancy book and came over to read with us and look at the pictures.  "Why did they put him in there, Mommy?"  she kept asking.  We tried our best to explain why anyone would do that to their baby. "That is very sad," she said. We all agreed.

D was very pensive.  Then he said, "I'm glad I don't have to live in a bubble."

  

TTYL.

Photo: Courtesy of the BBC UK.

Once

Do you ever watch a movie that makes you feel like a different person after you've seen it? 

We just finished watching Once, a musical about a chance meeting between a guy and a girl that evolves into an uncharacteristic romance.  The movie was filmed on a $100, 000 budget, but it is one of the best movies I have ever seen.  Partly because it is unpredictable.  Partly because it is so real that you feel you are one of the characters yourself.  Partly because it makes you question your life.  Partly because of the music. 

Oh, the music.  The music is just fabulous.  The movie won an academy award for Falling Slowly, my new favorite song.  Listen to it so you can see what I am talking about:

You listen to this music and you wonder how it is possible for a brain to put notes together like that to create something so beautiful.  It literally brought tears to my eyes.  

I love movies that make you question your life.  The characters in this movie have simple jobs. He fixes vacuums.  She cleans houses and sells roses.  But they both have a passion for music and that is what gives them both hope.  What is my passion?  I am 40 years old and I have spent half of my life (19 years) in school, six years working in the oil and gas industry, five years working for government, and the last four full-time parenting.  I love politics.  I love computer systems.  I love math.  But what is my passion?  I'm not sure I know and that's why I think I am lucky to have watched this film tonight.

TTYL.

Short and Sweet

Today is short and sweet.  Everything seems so easy.  Do you ever have those days?  Making lunches and breakfast was actually fun this morning with everyone helping.  IK slept in until 9:30 a.m.  (unheard of!)  I got my book fair plan completed and mailed out before IK woke up. I found out a good friend is getting back with her husband after being separated for more than a year.  I got all my errands run. 

I even got 10 hours of sleep last night.  I accidentally fell asleep with the baby last night at 8pm and rose at 6am to the sound of my husband running into a toy on the floor while trying to wake up our four-year-old who also managed to get in bed with us last night.  Ah, yes, I know. I've heard it all.  "Don't let your children into your bed.  You'll never be able to get them out." But it's so much easier than completely waking up and taking them back up to their bed and it's a myth that children can't sleep by themselves if they have been sleeping in the family bed.  My 8-year-old slept with us until he was 3 and he was perfectly happy to move into his new room and sleep all by himself in his new big boy bed.  Same with NK.  She still comes down to our room occasionally, but for the most part, she stays in her room at night.  I actually love snuggling with them.  They are not going to want to sleep with us forever so why not just enjoy it?  Seize the moment because tomorrow morning they will be different children than the ones you're snuggling with tonight.  

Now I am sitting here watching IK deconstruct her tiny sandwich.  She only wants to eat the turkey.  She refused her veggies and fruits and now she wants more turkey.  Hmmm.  That's a lot of nitrites for one little human.  I should cut her off.

I wish parenting were as easy as everything else has been today....TTYL.

   

Victory is Ours!

I have been humming "Victory is ours.  Victory is ours.  Victory is ours today!" all morning.  I want to sing it at the top of my lungs, but IK is still asleep.  It was a late night for everyone last night.  I have two reasons to celebrate.  The obvious one is Obama, the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.  Woohoo!!!!  The second reason is that my son DK won his own bid for VP at his school today.  Woohoo!!!!!    

I have been up most of the night reading reactions, both from Democrats and Republicans, about the outcome of the election.  Yes, I actually read the National Review.   I stopped when I got to the article that equated allowing abortions to allowing slavery.  Huh? 

Overall, most people are congratulatory.  Obama overcame many obstacles and ran an excellent campaign.  Conservatives agree that the Republican party needs to regroup and devise a new agenda that appeals to the middle class.  What they need  is to start the difficult task of separating themselves from the religious fanatics that make up their current base.  I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's one of the main reasons you lost, folks.  The American people decided they do not want a right-wing evangelical that close to the presidency.  What part of separation of church and state do you not understand?  Some of you might think I feel this way because I am not religious.  Wrong.  I am a Catholic.  I believe in God.  I believe in Jesus (which by the way, wasn't Jesus also a community organizer?)  Maybe where we differ is that I believe in helping people not just in telling them how they should act based on my own personal beliefs.

But back to my literature review, the most disturbing part is that the majority of the opinion pieces I read on the National Review did not seem to blame Palin for their loss. How is the Repulican party supposed to regroup and appeal to the general public when they are tied at the hip to these right-wing evangelicals?  Not that we don't have our own left-left-lefties, but for a party to win it needs to appeal to the middle.  I'm sorry, but in America, the middle is not made up of conservative, evangelical Christians, guys.  Time to do your homework, Republicans, or you're going to be in the same boat in 2010 and 2012.  

Must wake up IK to go to Little Gym class...TTYL.

Don't Count Your Chickens

The vice-president speeches at my son's school this morning were anti-climactic.  I didn't even have time to set up the video camera to record DK's speech before he was done saying it.  Oh, well.  At least I got to take a picture of him giving it and he knows it was important to me because I actually showed up at assembly.  I have only been to assembly one time this year and that was for the first day of school.   I am blessed that my husband takes the kids to school with him every morning.  But today I was nervous and excited for DK and his speech so IK and I made the half-hour trek over to school.   It was actually very nice being there to watch assembly and now I'm wondering if I shouldn't help my hubby out on Mondays and take the kids in... Nah.  

Speaking of speeches reminds me of elections. We are actually thinking of getting a sitter and going to the Driskill tomorrow night to watch the election results with other Democrats.  We would love to host a party at our house but most of our friends have kids and would need to go home about the time that the results are starting to come in from the polls closing.  Bummer.  

Sometimes I get nervous that we are counting our chickens before they hatch.  Every where I look, I read some analysis of what went wrong with McCain's campaign.  Yes, selecting Palin probably made him go down in the polls eventually, but People... IT'S NOT OVER!   Anything can go wrong.  Today on NPR, they were saying that small town voters will have a big impact in some of the swing states.  That worries me a lot -- small towns are full of Republicans, right???Then they had a story about how long the lines are expected to be tomorrow and that might deter the younger voters who are overwhelmingly for Obama.  They interviewed a young man in a swing state who had been waiting in line for 3 hours to cast his early vote.  It was the first time he voted and he said he didn't mind waiting that long because he knew he was casting a historic vote.  I hope other young voters feel the same way he does.  

I am so glad the election is tomorrow.  I cannot go on like this.  I can feel the anxiety inside of me.  I hope with all my heart that Obama wins.  Can you imagine the celebrations that will ensue if he does win?  I will be the first to go out on the streets and light some candles and sing something.  Hallelujah!  The first Black man to be elected President!  The feeling of victory is starting to pump into my blood and it feels GOOD!   

But there I go again, counting chickens....I wish it were 10pm Tuesday night already....

TTYL.

You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take

My son is running for Vice-President at school and tonight he wrote his speech.  He is already in student council as a class representative, but he really wants to be an officer.  I had a great time working on the speech with him.   DH and I wanted him to embellish it with a call and response type cheer or at least a chant. My sister suggested he say "DK is our man!"  I suggested, "DK, DK, he's our man, if he can't do it, nobody can!"   His dad suggested, "A vote for me is a vote for excellence!"  (That's the school's theme this year. ) I told him his favorite candidate has one - "Yes, we can!" but he did not budge.  In his speech, he simply says his name, what position he is running for, and why people should vote for him.  And he closes by saying, "Please vote for me for Vice-President. Thank you."  

I had him practice saying it slowly and pausing after each sentence.  I reminded him to look at the audience which he reluctantly agreed to do after watching one of Obama's speeches on YouTube. He also made two very simple posters.  I really wanted to make the posters for him, but resisted the urge.  It's his responsibility.  What am I teaching him if I make the posters for him?

I imagine most parents are thrilled to watch their child want to be involved in this type of school activity, but I am more nervous than he is about this election.  The other two students running for vice-president are in fourth grade.  DK is only in third.  What if he doesn't win? Will it affect his self-esteem?  Will he cry?  What will I do to support him if that happens?  If he wins, how do we teach him humility?  

My brother says I make parenting hard because I over-think everything.  Maybe he's right.  I should just let my child enjoy his moment in the spotlight. He can't win if he doesn't try.  Go get 'em, DK!  Have fun!

TTYL.