Grandmama

I have a million and one things I could be doing right now, but I can't stop thinking about one thing.  Jarrod is on his way to San Antonio right now.  He left early this morning to make the 10 hour drive.  He is on his way to say goodbye to his Grandmama.  Just typing that made me start to cry.

She has been in the hospital for over a week now, and we've known for the last few months that this was probably going to come sooner rather than later.  But.  I think it's just human nature to hope and pray for a loved one to be with us as long as possible, and if that means not coming to grips with reality, then we do what we have to do.

Grandmama lived in Abilene while we were in college, so my memories of dating Jarrod are also filled with memories of her.  He would take me to visit her, and I fell in love with her immediately.  A lot of grandparents just aren't "with it".  Meaning, they don't really get current things, so you don't even attempt to talk to them about certain stuff, but Grandmama was never like that. 

She always wanted to know exactly what was happening in our lives, and she always remembered from one visit to the next.  She always made a point to treat me like I was my own person, and not just some girl connected to Jarrod.  I don't think I've ever visited with her when she hasn't asked me about my family...in detail!  She wants to know how each of my brothers are doing, how my niece is, how my mom and dad are, how many baby donkeys my mom has each year, etc.  She also talks to me about my work.  When we moved to Arkansas and I started working from home, she would call me during the day because she knew I was suffering from cabin fever.  She would make me promise her that I would get out on my lunch break and run some errands or something, just so I didn't go stir-crazy!

One of my favorite memories from my wedding day involves Grandmama.  The ceremony was over and the bridal party was standing around with our families, waiting to get pictures over with so we could go to the reception.  A bunch of us were standing in the foyer of the chapel, and Grandmama took my face in her hands and said, "Now you really ARE my granddaughter!"  When she backed away, I saw my youngest brother, Austin, standing right behind her and he had an ear-to-ear grin on his face.  I'm sure he was thinking, "That old lady is silly!"

I am so thankful that Grandmama got to meet Collin.  As he grows up I will be able to tell him that all she ever said about him was how "pretty" he is.  She tells me this religiously!  She says, "Ohhhh, Nicki.  He. is. just. SO. PRETTY!" 

Collin with his great-grandmother and his Papa



Grandmama loves to quilt.  She made Collin several quilts and blankets before he was born, but my favorite is the one she made for him last year.  Collin really seems to like giraffes, and it all started with a stuffed giraffe he received as a gift when he was a baby.  It was also a sound machine, so that thing travelled everywhere with us.  Then for Collin's first birthday, he had a cake with a giraffe and his birthday shirt had a giraffe on it.  Shortly after that, we received a quilt from Grandmama.  I think Jarrod thought it was obviously a sweet thing for her to do, but I immediately recognized that she had chosen the material based on our conversations with her about Collin's fondness for giraffes.  Again, it's her attention to detail when it either wouldn't register or matter to someone else that has made me love her so much.

So today she is all I can think of.  Jarrod is her grandson, and he should be there to tell her goodbye.  But this morning as he hugged me before leaving, I told him to tell her that I love her and after he told me he would, I said, "No.  Really."  Because for the past several years she has been my Grandmama too.


Grandmama and me at my Abilene bridal shower - 2007





Why We Don't Celebrate Halloween

I've really been struggling with whether or not to write this post.  Every time I decide to do it, my mind races to all of my friends and acquaintances who will immediately label me a crazy, fundamentalist.  So this is my attempt to show that I'm a very normal person who just happens to have some very real convictions regarding Halloween.

Growing up, my family did not celebrate Halloween.  I have never in my life gone trick-or-treating, nor had I ever even really witnessed trick-or-treating until a few years ago.  My family lived in the country about 10 minutes outside of town, and we did not have a "next door neighbor".  Each year, all I knew about Halloween was that for a couple of days out of the school year, my classmates would talk about what they were going to dress up as, and then in the days following Halloween their lunch boxes were filled with fun-size Snickers and Skittles.

Of course I thought I was missing out on something.  I'm sure I told my parents they were the worst parents ever for not allowing my brothers and me to experience the joy of dressing up and receiving free candy!  It all started when I was really little and my dad, who is such a Godly leader of our family, did a study on Halloween.  He read up on the origins and what still goes on today, and he decided that as far as his family was concerned, he felt it was best if we didn't celebrate it.  Whenever my brothers and I would whine and ask why we didn't get to have fun, he would simply say that it was a holiday that didn't serve any purpose in glorifying God and that's why we didn't celebrate it.

When I became an adult and Jarrod and I started our own family, I realized I have the same convictions.  I believe very strongly in a spirit world and in the existence of evil, and I believe there are things we are called to resist. 

I know people will say they participate in Halloween just for the fun of it.  They will say they don't dress up like anything scary, and they don't do anything evil on Halloween.  But for me, it's the gray area involved.  How do I say to my kids, "You can dress up, but not like anything scary.  And oh by the way, don't pay any attention to those creepy looking people walking down the street with you"?  How do I say to my kids, "It's ok to celebrate Halloween and laugh about curses and seances, but we don't play with Ouija boards"?  How do I say to my kids, "Ghosts and spirits are fun on Halloween" and then still teach them about the evil nature of Satan and his demons?  So for me, it's the in-between stuff that I don't feel comfortable with and I feel the Lord laying it upon my heart to resist the entire notion.

Some of you will tell me that you have incredible childhood memories from Halloween, and you want to impart those onto your children.  To that I say, I do too!  Since we didn't trick-or-treat or do anything else involved with Halloween, every year around the same time, my parents would have a party at our house.  They would invite friends over from church, and we would have a hayride around a "country" block.  We would have a huge bonfire in our pasture from all the brush my dad had collected over the past year.  We would have yummy food and us kids would run around like crazy. 

I remember playing hide-and-seek in the dark in our pasture in front of our house.  I remember how we would climb on top of my dad's hay bales and run down the rows of them like a robber on top of a moving train, and then we would slide down the sides of them.  I remember cold night air that would make your chest hurt to breathe, but never wanting to go inside because it would mean leaving the fun.

So no, I've never trick-or-treated and I've never seen the movie Hocus Pocus, but as an adult I can honestly say I don't feel like I missed anything.  I love Fall.  I love anything pumpkin related.  I love apple cider.  I will decorate for Fall, but you won't see any bats, ghosts or witches around, and you won't see us trick-or-treating.  No biggie.

Hello, my name is...

Captain Nostalgia.

Nostalgia is such a tricky thing.  You start out thinking you are just paying tribute to sweet times and places and before you know it, you are sucked into memories and listening to Texas country music while looking at newborn pictures of your son.

It started last week when Collin was weaned from his paci.  I noticed immediately that he's sleeping better.  He falls asleep faster and seems to sleep more restfully.  He used to lay in his crib for 30 minutes to an hour talking, rolling around and playing with his puppy dog (that he has to sleep with).  Now, I lay him down and he is almost immediately asleep, and when I sneak back in sometimes to stare at him before I go to bed, he's usually still in the same position.

Without the paci, I rock him at bedtime and he closes his eyes quickly and is almost asleep in minutes.  When I hold him and he has his little eyes closed, I swear he looks just like his infant-self.  When I see him looking like that, I cannot believe how much he has grown! 

And then my mind starts thinking to how I cannot believe how far Jarrod and I have come in the last two years of Collin's life...

From the time I got pregnant to now, we have lived in 3 different places.  We went from seeing our family on a semi-regular basis to not very often at all.  We went from one group of friends to starting all over again.  And now it's sinking in that I've transitioned from having a baby to having a little boy.

So it started with the paci and compounded when my husband came home Friday singing a song about Texas he learned secondhand from a coworker.

It's a dangerous mix to listen to this song while searching for baby pictures of Collin.  Especially when Josh Abbott gets to the part about "an Abilene sunset".  Oh man.

In Other News

Here's some more of what's been going on around here -

Collin loved seeing all the farm animals at the pumpkin patch last weekend, but the one he will not stop talking about is the TURKEY.  On our way home, Jarrod was talking to his parents on the phone, and Collin was yelling from the backseat, "Nonne, MY TURTEE!"  When we got home, Jarrod dug out his hunting stuff and showed Collin how to call a turkey.  We also had to watch YouTube videos of turkeys.  And of course, I couldn't resist myself, so now this little guy is in the mail on his way to our house :)

Also, we decided to get brave last weekend and take away Collin's pacifier (paci).  I have always said I don't want to be that parent whose 4 year old is walking through the mall sucking on a paci.  And then I had a kid.  My niece has been paci-free since she turned one.  She will even take a paci out of her doll's mouth and tell the doll, "No!"  I could have really used her to help me wean Collin!!

When Collin turned one, his daycare stopped giving him a paci while he was there, but we couldn't deny him once back home and going to bed.  The rule has been that he can only have it when he's sleeping at home.   And the occasional road trip when he's struggling to get comfortable in his seat.  He calls it a "bite" now, and we've noticed that he really isn't using it to suck/soothe his self but more so to bite and roll it around in his mouth.  (Jarrod says, "He's just making out with it!") 

When Collin turned two a few weeks ago, I told my mom that I would take it away.  A month later and Jarrod finally took the bull by the horns!

We have several pacis, but Collin's favorite has been the most obscene thing you've ever seen.  It was given to us as a gift, and he has had it since being an infant.

The other night, before bedtime, Jarrod cut the nipple off.  I have read that if you cut a bit off the nipple, your child won't find it soothing to suck on anymore.  They will slowly decide they don't want it and presto, they're weaned!  Well, Jables and I didn't communicate much before he took the scissors to the paci and this is what we ended up with -

There's no way you can get your mouth around that much of the nipple left.  Poor Collin!  After getting dressed for bed, he grabbed his paci up and popped it in his mouth and it fell right out!  He looked at it and then held it up to us and said, "My biiiite!"  We both acted surprised and told him it was broken.  "Oh, no!"  (I know, we're awful!)  However, he has been sleeping paci-free for the past several nights.  It's like he doesn't even remember that he has others to fall back on.  We just remind him each night when he asks for his "bite" that it's broken. 

And lastly, Collin can almost-almost count to 10!  I know!  It's amazing.

He loves to jump and he always wants to say, "1...2...3!" before jumping.  However, it mostly comes out, "Twooo...twooooo..." while he's bobbing up and down about to launch from wherever he stands.  Last week, I noticed while we were driving home from somewhere that he was in the back saying to his self, "Two...eight...nine..."  I asked him if he was counting and he said, "Uh-huh", so I started counting to 10 and he repeated after me each time.  On some numbers he knows what is coming next, so he'll skip ahead.  For instance, when I say "seven" he won't repeat me, he'll say "eight!".  I have to stop him and get him to go back and repeat me. 

Well, for the rest of the night I kept going on and on about how smart Collin was and how he could almost count to 10.  Bubble burster that he is, Jarrod spoke up and said, "I think he has a while before he's there."  As a parent, it's easy to spend a lot of time worrying about whether your child is developing normally, whether your child is smart, whether your child picks things up in a timely manner, so it's nice to have validation sometimes that he "gets it"!  

Jarrod and I compromised, and now I'm saying Collin can almost-almost count to 10 :)

Pumpkin Patch Fun!

Well, hello!  I know it's been a while since I last updated...not really sure what that's all about.

Probably the most notable thing to happen since my last post was our visit to the pumpkin patch this weekend.  Collin's daycare has their porches all decorated for Fall and every day when I pick him up, he has to show me the "puntins" and tell me that they are "oyange", and then he points to the mums and tells me they are "yeddow" and "geen". 

So on Saturday we woke him up and told him we were going to see a lot of pumpkins, and he could pick out his very own.  We had lunch and then drove a little bit to Augusta, AR to Peebles Farm Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze.  We did not try to brave the corn maze this year, but instead, we pretty much let Collin run all over and direct us to where he wanted to be at any given second.  I kept telling Jarrod how shocked I was that it was actually easier to get cute pictures of Collin last year when he was still a baby.  The kid just has too much energy now and will NOT sit for a good picture.

Here are some of the pictures we were able to get...Enjoy!


This makes my heart happy - Collin petting a piglet!



Really trying to get in there and pet him "good"!

 

Daddy & Collin being silly

 

Someone once told my husband he missed his calling as a wildlife photographer, so now he thinks he's brilliant with a camera.  Collin & I were watching people shoot the corn cannon!

 

Collin -1 year old - Oct. 2011



Collin - 2 years old - Oct. 2012
I can't believe how big he is getting!



Cute boy sitting with a bunch of "puntins"!

I think he was in the middle of saying, "cheese!"

Collin 2012

 

He was saying, "PIG!"





Hank the Donkey

I am one proud mommy today.  This morning, while getting Collin ready for school, he saw tucked away in his closet my stuffed donkey from college.  That's right, people.  I said COLLEGE.  Not childhood or elementary school, but COLLEGE.

If you know me, you know I have an obsession with farm animals.  I grew up on a farm, and while it's true I never wanted to leave the air conditioning or get dirty, and that I once asked my mother, "Why does that cow only have one udder?"*, I have since grown quite fond of the great outdoors and farm animals in general.

When I was a senior in high school / freshman in college, I became obsessed with donkeys.  I thought they were the cutest thing ever.  When I was back home for the summer after my freshman year in college, there was a miniature donkey for sale, and I begged my parents to buy him.  I think there may have been a hissy fit involved.  My mom loves animals.  She can talk to animals.  Growing up, they always did whatever she wanted them to do and never did anything I wanted them to do.  I knew I could convince her to buy the donkey, so together we convinced my dad.

On the day that we were supposed to pick him up, I had to work.  My boyfriend at the time was going to take my parents' trailer to pick up the donkey and bring him back to our house for us.  I called/texted him a million, gajillion times that day.  When I finally got home and got to see the donkey, I'm sure I kissed his soft little nose raw.  He bit me on the thigh a few days later trying to get a hold of my pants to get my attention, and I had a fist-sized bruise for a week.  I was working as a lifeguard at the time, so my bruise was on full display.  When little kids would ask what had happened to me, my coworkers would laugh and say, "Ms. Nicki's donkey bit her!"  I know.

His name was Hank.  Or Hanky-Panky.  I loved him.  We had a horse around the same time and Hank would go up behind that horse, grab his tail with his teeth and swing his head back and forth with the horse's tail going like a jump rope.  Hank was fun.

The same boyfriend gave me a stuffed donkey; I also named him Hank and took him back to college with me.  When we got married, Jarrod informed me that there would not be a stuffed donkey sleeping in the bed with us.  That was tough.  Hank has been confined to a box for the past several years, and then when Collin was born he reappeared. 

However, Collin hasn't had any interest in donkeys.  He sees tons of them when we visit my parents. 

Um, yes.  Hank prompted my mom to try her hand at miniature donkey breeding.  One incredibly begged for miniature donkey, led to a herd that is 10-15 in size at any given time.  Collin mostly calls them horses.  He thinks they're cool, but that's about the extent of it.

Until this morning.

He saw Hank and said, "Horse!" and I said, "No, that's a donkey" and he said, "My don-teeee".  He had to hold on to Hank while I dressed him for school, while he rode to school and even when he got out of the car at school.  I had to explain that Hank would be in the car when I picked him up and he could have him back then.


Cuteness overload!

If you ask Jarrod what animal I want next, he'll tell you that I want a mini-pig.  Really, I want my parents to get one so I can visit it and love on it and sneak it in the house but not have to take care of it myself.  My mom says it's not happening.

*Someday I will explain the story of the cow with only one udder.  Or, you can figure it out for yourself and save me the embarrassment of explaining to you just how naive I can be.

Dog vomit and baby poop...Happy Tuesday!

Holy guacamole.  It has been a lovely 12 hours. 

Landry Paige is allergic to Arkansas.  (Ok, to be fair, I think she has adult onset skin allergies, but still.)  She scratches and digs all the time now.  We just recently ended a round of steroids, and some other medicine, and she seemed better for a few days but is now back at it.

So, last night I decided to give her a bath.  We have some oatmeal dog shampoo, and I thought maybe I could get the grass, and whatever else she's allergic to, off of her while also "soothing" her skin.  My plan failed.  She was still scratching when we went to bed, which drives Jarrod absolutely bonkers.  He can't sleep when she is scratching and her collar is jingle-jangling.  THEN.....we woke up to her getting sick.....under our bed.  When she's in trouble, or wants to hide from Collin, that's where she heads.  Evidently, it is also where she goes to get sick.  This all happened at 4:29 AM.  And again at 6:30 AM.  Just lovely.

Eventually, we all had to just get up for the day.  Collin has his breakfast as soon as he rolls out of bed in the mornings.  He can't be bothered to snuggle or lolly gag.  It is straight to the kitchen where he promptly begins pointing and babbling on about what he wants to eat.  Jarrod will usually turn on the TV during this time and they'll watch "toons" or hunting shows.  This morning, in an effort to restore some calm to our household, Jarrod turned it to the Serenity Radio Station.  It sounded like a spa in our house this morning.

Collin finished his breakfast, started playing and then proceeded to just about have a blowout.  I didn't see it, but I have heard about it LOTS from my wonderful husband!  I was getting ready in our bedroom while listening to Collin in his room fussing at his daddy. 

Here is a little of how the conversation went:
Jarrod (upon opening the diaper): Whoa!!!  Oh my gosh, kid!
Collin: STOP!!
Jarrod: Hold still...
Collin: No! (I'm sure he was pointing his finger as well.  He does this for emphasis!)
Collin: Mommmyyyyyyy!
Jarrod: Collin!  Hold still.  I am trying to get all of this poop off of every inch of your PRIVATE AREA!

All of this arguing, and discussion about the massive amount of poop, is set to the serenity music coming from the living room.  Let's just say there was lots of laughing coming from me during that conversation!!

Everyone made it to work and daycare safely.  Now, I just have to work, clean, cook and watch Landry to make sure she doesn't ralph anymore, because we are having Community Group at our house tonight.  If it's not one thing, it's your mother ... or your dog ... or your baby ... or your husband.

Here are some pictures of Collin being his cute, silly self!

Before school last Friday.  He was growling at me!

 

Out shopping.  He loves giraffes and this is a giraffe hat.  He was sad to leave it!

 

Driving his car in the driveway last night.  He had to have his hat turned like that b/c his Daddy was wearing his hat backwards at the time.