Memorial Day: Remember, Relive

Memorial weekend is usually filled to the brims with picnics, sprinklers and racing around to fit everything in.  This weekend was slower this year with the inclement weather and we took full advantage of slowing down a bit and taking things one day at a time.

I had Friday off and we enjoyed a long, slow stroll through the park.  Alyssa is happy to practice walking and Riley only has one speed, RUN, so we took off sans stroller and just strutted along all the while Riley was leapfrogging ahead of us running til I said stop and waiting for us to catch up.

We met pretty little girls at the park and they all enjoyed getting out for a bit after the rainy week.  My girlfriend Becky has been a friend for a long time and it's so fun to see her navigating life with 2 little ones now.  I remember those days so perfectly and now I can look back happily cause it's just a little easier now.  We enjoyed a quick lunch on the way home and all took a solid nap which just makes my day all the sweeter.  I lourve a good nap.

Saturday was rainy and Daddy had to work so caribou had to be delivered as he swung by on his way home.  It was yummy.  Have I mentioned that I am slightly obsessed with vanilla white chocolate mocha's?  I could seriously drink one everyday and I am going to switch over to grownup coffee soon but until then I could seriously drink vanilla whites everyday.

Alyssa was picked up, how's that for a babysitting service (!?) so we could take our big boy to the omni-theatre.  Us and about 500 people had the same idea so after standing in line for tickets for 30 minutes we promptly treated ourselves to ice cream cones for a job well done.  Under the Sea was good and perfectly fitting since Riley is really obsessed with cuttlefish.  Something we had never heard of before but are in his National Geographic animal book.  We read it everyday and he always asks what a cuttlefish is and I can only tell him the short paragraph under the weird picture.  Anyways, this movie was all about cuttlefish, so perfect!  It was loud though and he thought we were moving which panicked him a little but we all really enjoyed it and it was a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Sunday was all about the obligatory memorial weekend early morning fishing trip and then a picnic at Elm Creek.  Holy hot, holy people, holy thank goodness for water and food and the best two Nana's around.  You know Riley loves you when he is given the choice to keep fishing or come in to see you...Owie, Riley really loves you!  In fact the early morning wake-up call, the hot day and all the running around had our boy so tired he put himself to bed at 7:20.  He walked over to us and said "I am very tired, I am just going to go to bed, I love you mommy and daddy but I am too tired to brush mine teeth."  Alyssa followed right behind him and 30 minutes later it was still quiet and we knew it wasn't a joke!  We stayed up super later for us 11:15 and watched We Bought a Zoo.  Ack, I love this movie.  Warm fuzzies, trickling out all over this one!

photo cred goes to Annie!  

For Memorial day this year I really wanted to take the time out to really appreciate the meaning of the day other than just the "start of summer".  I have been wanting to head down to the Fort Snelling Cemetery to see the graves of my grandparents and I figured my parents would too.  We made a day of it of course swinging into Caribou to red, white and bou bogo and then preceding down to Historic Fort Snelling first.  Wow, incredible fun hearing the history of our early state and how they lived.  So fun going in and out of the buildings getting a feel for life way back when.  Riley loved every minute of it.  He was such a trooper, never complaining and commenting numerous times about the "beautiful view" we had at various stops.  My kid loves him a gorgeous view!

We walked over to the Fort Snelling Non-denominational Chapel and really enjoyed the beautiful historic chapel that once had prisoners of war sitting in the upper balcony as they too were required to attend worship every week.  It was beautiful and the Chaplain was actually there to point out all of the memorials donated around the sanctuary and the significance of everything around us.  Outside the chapel were huge white crosses to signify every war the US has been in and it simply stated the war and the number of casualties.  Talk about knock the wind right out of your lungs.  American Civil War over 600,000 American lives lost, WWII over 400,000 American lives lost.  War on Terror which is what I have grown up knowing, seeing just over 6,000.  Then in the Chapel garden they had the candle lit for the Unknown soldier and smaller crosses to signify the combat deaths of the family members who attend the chapel just during the War on Terror.  It was chilling.  You could feel the heaviness of loss in the air and when you started to read the names on the crosses and the cities they came from, most from cities I drive through everyday, and then saw their age...it was heartbreaking.  I walked a very fine line when Riley solemnly asked "you mean they didn't die cause they were old?"  It was easy to not soak in completely what we were surrounded by when you are switching off holding the hand of you 3 year old and your camera but today looking back at the pics I am struck by the sadness of bloodshed and lives lost.  Of the families that have but pictures and memories to go on with.

We proceeded to drive to the cemetery and it was pretty packed.  Perfect uniformity.  Solid pride and unbelievable sadness as you walk by the graves of the brave, some losing their lives in the heat of battle, some living with the memories of the battles as they came back home to live until their death.  I really love how they buried my Schaber grandparents right on top of each other.  It is oddly comforting to know they are close.  My Hutchie grandparents are right next to each other and maybe it's because the Hutchies are very sensitive or maybe it's because my Dad was touched so deeply by seeing his parents but that was the more difficult "hello, it's been a long time" for me.  Riley stood out walking among the white graves in his red, white and blue and they may not be technically the best pictures but these are my favorite and I can look at these and easily start weeping today.

Papa was having a hard time, Riley to the rescue

This picture moves me to tears.  How lucky they are to have each other.

Yesterday was so meaningful.  All I wanted to do was show my boy that there is a price we pay for getting to live our lives as we know it.  I wanted to teach him a little bit about courage and honor, sacrifice and pride.  He doesn't totally get it yet but he was touched down deep in his heart by the endless graves and pictures of those lost.

I remember your sacrifice.  I live my life not always grateful but yesterday reminded me of you and the price you paid for my freedom.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart and these pictures will haunt me and at the same time remind me that you stood up for us and helped secure our freedom.  It can be very scary times we live in these days.  The War on Terror has left us all wondering what will happen next.  How quickly the images and stories can become monotonous and thrown away like yesterdays news.  How very special that our nation gives us a day to honor and thank those who have laid down their lives.  Chills people, chills.

I love you Mom and Dad and had fun just sitting in the back, along for the ride.  I love you little man for your curiosity, your sensitive heart and your playfulness.  I love you D and Alyssa Lu for coming home to two big smiles and lots of hugs.  I love and miss you my grandparents who I have been thinking about non-stop since our visit.  I love this country and I love democracy.  Enough love for one night?  I think that about covers it.

My Mommy heart

We have started to pick up the pieces from the super bug that invaded and took over our lives.  It's been slow going.  The Mommy in me has been enjoying the simple things like dinner at the table with all four of us in attendance, bath time where it's not all about cleaning the sick off of our children and playtime in the living room where I can do more than lay down and watch.

My first week back to work was exhausting.  Friends and family helped fill in the gaps with dinners for 3 more nights and extended nana care so I could take 3 hour naps.  It really, really humbled me.

No one looked forward more to Mothers day weekend then our boy.  He had been counting down the days from 6 to 1 until he was finally able to proclaim "today's the day!".  Seriously, he is ready to retire and live up north.  It's hard not to imagine his future and see professional fisherman somewhere in there.  This boy was born with up north blood in his body.  It is seared into his bones and he breathes it deeply.  He is exactly what I envisioned when I started dreaming about my own babies all those years ago.

It's funny that I still don't know what I want to "do" with my life.  I enjoy my job and some days I feel very passionate about it and some days it just feels like a job.  I work with great people who I truly missed while I was out for a week but one thing remains the same,  I knew from a very early age that all I really needed was a family.

That is enough for me.

I have a husband who is so good for me, to me, that I wonder how I even deserve him.

I have now two children who are complete opposites from their appearance to their personalities and I still have to pinch myself---they are mine.  I have loved them for my whole life.  I have dreamed about them and pictured myself mothering them for my whole life.  I was born to be their Mother and that is all I am certain about when I think about what I want to "do" with life.

Alyssa was unusually cranky during our girls only weekend.  We never hear her cry and she is not at all a whiner but of course when I had planned out shopping, ice cream and brunch sister gets cranky.  I am not sure if it was her teeth coming through or the fact that she missed the boys but she was not herself.

I woke up Sunday morning and put our girl in bed with me.  We watching Bubble guppies together and she ate breakfast in bed.  I drove her over to my parents so I could teach my last day of Sunday school and she could nap before brunch.  I was struck at how ironic it was to be driving and walking into church alone.  No kids with me on Mother's Day?!  I don't know about you but I get jittery when I don't have a child with me like I forgot something.  I forced myself to relax and enjoy the service and when Kyle finally showed up Lyssi Lu at brunch it was like there was air in the room again.  She happily followed me walking up and down the brunch line putting on a show of smiles and little poses. Still irritable but nothing endless food wouldn't fix, sister was happy or at least she appeared happy.  Her real happiness came when the boys walked in the door.  She squealed out so loudly when she saw Riley.  He was so proud to tell her all about his fun weekend and she was happy to just listen and scream out some joy once in awhile.  Sister is all about family.

My sweet baby girl is not so much a baby anymore but we had been still feeding her a bedtime bottle in her room before we laid her down for the night.  It was special and honestly neither one of us were ready to throw out the bottles.  It was the one piece of her babyhood we were holding onto.  I finally broke down and realized that it was time to start a new bedtime routine for her.  Our girl resisted for a week and stayed up on the couch long past 9 in defiance of the new routine.  How we held our ground I do not know but she is on board now with the new plan.  Toons, bedtime snack, we all squeeze into our bathroom for teeth brushing, Daddy gets Riley, Mommy gets Lyssi Lu, we snuggle on Riley's bed for a book and then we shut off the lights and tuck each of our children in.  It's a good new.  She is growing up and we are so enamored with her and everything she does.  The children are starting to play together intentionally and it's so heartwarming to see their connection.  They sit on the floor and zoom cars back and forth or Riley turns pages on a book and Lyssi points out and "arfs" at every dog she sees.  He congratulates her when she learns a new skill and she claps her hands so proud and then chases him to say she loves him.  They sit on the floor together and snuggle up to Deuce petting him and hugging him as they seem to sense his time is near also.  During bath time she tries to wash him up with a washcloth and he teaches her to squirt water out of her mouth.  The mommy heart in my chest has been so close to exploding it's a wonder it still beats by the end of the day.  It's not always fluffy and soft but it's more about choosing to acknowledge the good and pure rather than to listen to the loud and rough.  Make no mistake about it, our house is loud.  Riley openly admits that he doesn't have an inside voice and Alyssa just tries to match him.  It's actually quite comical but I completely understand how for others it would be the best form of birth control.

Riley came home from his opener weekend with a "ittle baby turtall" so we headed out to the library for more info on him.  We just toddled around the library following the librarian around in search of the amphibian owners manual.  I turned around and saw my children holding hands following just behind us.  I almost screamed out "look at these cuties, they are holding hands, they love each other, they are mine, are you seeing this."  I held back, we found the book, checked it out and walked out, this time I got in on the hand holding.  It took about 10 minutes to get to the car but I was in heaven.  People walking by were smiling and oogling over the cuteness and I must have looked a fool with a huge smile on face completely unaware that there was life around and outside of that moment.  We are still trying to get him to say that it would be best for the "ittle turtall" to live in the swamp by nana's and papa's but until then we have invested a few bucks in an aquarium, food and fish friends for him.

Now I am looking into a weekend off.  No husband, no children for a night or two.  It's nice and totally quiet.  I think my husband loves me!  I do have to work tomorrow but even that sounds nice.  An office totally to myself, turning up the tunes and pounding out some backlogged workflow so that come Monday morn, I know exactly what I am walking into.

My Mommy heart is content.  It is happy and recharging and already ready to squeeze those two but until then it's continued to beat and get lots of rest already.  4 hour nap after work, oh yea!  Party animal, I know it's a problem.

To my Mom,
I love you.  I realize everything you have done for me and continue to do for me.  It's means the world to me and even though I don't always acknowledge it and sometimes just expect it, I understand now.  You are the most selfless person I know and we all benefit from your example and heart.  I love getting to see you almost everyday.  Thank you for watching our kids, thank you for loving them like crazy and for not losing your mind in the chaos.

To my Mother-in-law,
You have completely stolen my son's heart.  He is quite enamored with his up north nana and I am pretty sure if you offered he would move in with you in a heartbeat.  You have raised up a good son, a perfect son for me and I see your legacy of love instilled in him everyday.

To my Mom friends,
You put me to shame.  I am in awe of you.  You rock the party that rocks the party.

Happy Mother's Day 2012...2012---be.like.whoa.  Don't blink it will soon be fall again, I know this dance, summer goes too quickly!

Prisoner

If only I had seen this coming.  Just when I thought I was feeling well enough to clean the sick right out of our house it all came crashing back down on top of me.

It was Sunday.  I had to call in sick to Sunday school because Alyssa Lu needed me.  She was still sick and was my little shadow.  I was determined after drugging myself up with Aleve Cold and Sinus and ES Tylenol that I would take the bull by the horns and get this super bug out of our house.  Things were coming along perfectly.  The sheets were all cleaned, the house dusted and vacuumed, the dishes disinfected and finally all the Kleenexes picked up and deposited in the garbage can.  Daddy went to the grocery store to stock up for the week and I was so proud to have my lettuce lunches all chopped up nicely and in containers ready to grab each morning.  We sat down to watch a little TV before bedtime and I thought I had just overdone it by cleaning to hard.  My whole body ached, I was chilly and sweaty and pukey feeling.  I went to bed early and tossed all night not able to get comfy.  My alarm went off at 3:00 and I got up slowly feeling absolute misery coursing through me from my head to my toes.  I thought that if I could just get a Dew in me and follow that up with Tylenol and some more Aleve I could make it through at least 4 hours of work.  Wrong.  My legs shook the entire drive to work.  I was so weak I threw up from the concentration it took just to walk into the hospital.  My body was moving like a 90 year olds and I couldn't even sit up straight.  I was shivering with a fever, my head was at least 101 lbs and I was about to burst into tears from the misery.  I have been sick with a sinus infection before, you just have to fight through the pain until the meds kick in but this was different.  I couldn't even keep my head up.  I left work at 6:13 and hardly made it home before literally collapsing into bed.  The rest of the day I stayed in bed fighting through fever after fever.  Waking up with the covers shellacked to me only to get another fever 30 minutes later that left me clinging hopelessly to those same covers trying to stop the shivering.  D had to work so we had to have Uncle Kyle come over to watch the kids.  It was decided that the best thing to do was to shut the bedroom door and just let the kids think I was gone.  So I laid in bed, miserable, alone and unable to do anything but toss back and forth and stare up at the dots on the ceiling.  This continued into Tuesday and by Tuesday evening I lost it.  I couldn't hide in our room anymore but I still couldn't move.  I desperately missed our kids and I needed someone to touch me.  I hadn't been touched for more than 24 hours.  I laid there praying to make it to our Dr's appt on Wednesday and sweating out fever after fever.  I actually devised a plan that when I got the uncontrollable shivers I would take a bath so hot that it would numb me up enough so that I could go back to bed and sleep until the fever broke.  I took 7 baths between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.

By Wednesday morning I was a shell of a person.  My left eye was sealed shut with gunk, I hadn't showered since Sunday.  I missed my kids so bad.  I felt so miserable.  I hadn't been able to read or even watch TV so I had been staring at those stupid dots on our ceiling for 3 days.  The tension was building between Derrick not feeling good himself and him having to take care of the house, the kids and his job that was keeping him to busy to rest all the while I laid in bed, hardly moving.  We made it to the Dr and 2 hours later it was found that Alyssa had her first ear infection, D had a sinus infection and I was severely dehydrated, had super swollen glands/throat and had a very high WBC count which the Dr felt very confidently was from strep.  I was too weak to fight him on not caring a little more to find out what was wrong with me and just went home after the negative strep with antibiotics and anti-nausea med to help me keep food down.  I wanted answers to why my body ached so bad that my bones hurt.  I wanted to have an answer to why my brain had been on a low sizzle for 3.5 days fighting fever after fever.  I had been crying all day long.  I was wallowing in my own self pity and when we got back home and I made it back to bed I just continued to cry.  I cried myself into a deep sleep and woke up once again with a fever.  Everytime I had to get out of bed it was like a thousand pounds of force reigned down on me pushing me towards the ground.  I had hit rock bottom.  That is when my Mom called and said that dinner was going to start being delivered to us for the next week.  I cried some more.  A very sweet long time family friend brought over a chicken, croissants, caesar salad, grapes, carrots and cookies and I ate for the first time since Sunday afternoon.  It is amazing what can come from the love of a warm meal.  I no longer felt bad for myself.  I wrapped myself up in the goodness that came from her heart and slept, slowly but surely fighting my way through the fevers that were starting to be farther and farther apart.

By Thursday I was able to turn on the TV and watch a little at a time without my head wanting to explode and my eyes watering uncontrollably.  I had created this little sick sleeping hole in bed so that I was elevated and really well cushioned as my body was still very sore.  I slept on and off until Friday morning when I woke up fever free and was able to leave the bedroom and take refuge on the couch.  I laid in the sunshine and napped without numerous blankets.  I drank water and tried to taste the homemade mac and cheese my family was raving about from Thursdays delivered dinner.  I couldn't really taste it but it looked to good to ignore.  I drove for the first time since Monday to my parents house and spent the next few hours sitting down and just watching my kids play.  Riley golfed and Alyssa just toddled around finding anything to keep her busy.

Today is Saturday, I am weak and still so very tired.  But this is finally a cold/sinus infection I can handle.  My throat is still sore and enlarged.  My ears feel like they are bleeding and could explode at any second.  My eyes are very sticky and red.  My Kleenex use has gone up dramatically but I can sit up and I just read my daughter a book.  I can finally control how good I feel with 1000 mg of Tylenol taken regularly, antibiotics and Aleve.  I am pretty sure I will be in liver failure after all of this but what can you do?

I am angry still over the week that was taken away from me.  I don't like not having any answers but after talking to my allergist he said that a few of his severe allergy patients (I should be living in a bubble according to him and my degree of allergies) have reported mono/mump like symptoms and have been taken out of their lives also.  That gives me a little peace of mind but I am a mother and I wasn't able to even hold my children or touch them until Thursday.  I am a wife and I didn't lift a finger to clean, cook or contribute for 5-6 days.  I am an employee and I didn't make it back to work all week.  I feel like a failure.  I didn't even know it was May!


I am so sorry I have been such a debby downer.  I am so sorry I missed out on so much and let my family down.  I have hope that this week will be better.

I am reminded of love by Chris, Penny, Melissa, Kyle and my Mom who have brought us food.  Kyle watching our kids for us, bringing me shakes at 10:30 at night that I couldn't even stomach after a few sips.  My mom fighting through her own version of this super bug to watch the kids even when she was feeling shaky knowing that I couldn't do it.