Welcome to 2012

I haven’t blogged in ages… apparently over a year. Not sure why, other than I guess I have gone through a “keep it to myself” period. So here I am! Yay! My goal is to do some more writing this year and this is a great place to start. Especially since this year is full of crazy. A little “Table of Contents” for 2012 to enlighten you:

1. Move to Sublimity
2. Let’s elaborate: Move to 900 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment in Sublimity so Emerson can go to school there with her family
3. Build a house
4. Elect a president! I love election years

2012 is not for the faint of heart. I am currently putting together my board of inspiration on Pinterest (suggestions welcome!) and my physical board here at the house. I’m already overwhelmed, but very excited. Our floor plans are just about done, so this is truly the beginning of the actual process. Now we have to… wait for it… drill a well. Where the crap am I moving, you ask? Apparently way the heck out there. The real gem of the year, I think, is going to be the apartment dwelling. I anticipate that will be a treasure trove of content for le blog. Suppose I should update the photo and header since I’m no longer 24. DAMN! Alright, see you on Pinterest and see you later!

 

 

What I love about OI

It’s easy to dwell on the sad and upsetting when it comes to a child’s disability, but I’ve found an odd satisfaction in Fin’s, and our family’s future with this new member of the family… not Fin, he was an expected and welcome addition. It’s that Brittle Bone Disorder… that’s the red headed step child I did not ask for. But my Mom has red hair, so i guess I should give OI a chance… Ok, so here it is.

I feel like I’ve been freed from something; some combination of Little League, Football Camp, Basketball superstar complex I think we force on our kids these days. Excel at sports or don’t fit in. That’s it. It’s expected that we need to focus on the physical abilities of our sons if we want them to be an All American boy. Sure, its sad that Fin won’t be able to bond with his fellow kiddos through traditional team sports, but I find myself oddly excited by the possibilities. What will he do? Where will life take him? Perhaps we WILL end up at the paralympics someday, but what about the new emphasis on his mind? Where will that lead him?

Maybe he will enjoy music or theater. Perhaps he will be a world class Erector Set engineer and use his talents to become an architect – a disability-conscious one, of course. Maybe spending a little more time close to the ground will give him an appreciation for the grass and the bugs and he’ll gain a love for science. I just don’t know, but that’s what excites me. It’s an unknown future that I can’t plan for or predict. I’ll have to get creative and that excites me too. What kind of fun things can we do together? The possibilities are vast and endless. This is NOT the life I expected, but oh, what a beautiful life it is:). Vic was unexpected too… not to mention Emerson, so I guess planning has never really been my thing anyway.

I guess the thing I love about OI is that it has totally shaken up my world. I have no clue what is ahead and it challenges my soul in so many ways. Finley knows no other life and will know nothing else, but I can tell you that he will have a bad ass life. He will do everything conceivably possible and we will be right there with him, cheering him on just as if we were in a stadium and he just threw the winning touchdown.

One more thing about OI. It has caused me to totally fall in love with Vic all over again. His dedication to Finley totally turns me on:). Ok, but really, his confidence and love and tender holding of our Mr. Glass is beyond anything I could have imagined. I can’t wait to marry him…

I’ll take the OI… it comes with this:

S

Forward with Caution

In the past month I’ve received two forwards from family members. It’s the forward about the little girl getting tea for the stereotypically naive father. He’s not too concerned with where the water in her tea cups is coming from until wise mommy gets home and points out that she could be fetching it from the toilet… the only water source she can reach.

It ends with warm fuzzies and lessons learned. And a picture attached.

Of my daughter.

I emailed the first “originator” I could find to lay the smack down on using my kid’s image without paying asking me permission first. We’ll see how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

Bottom line. Don’t take pictures of other people’s kids off of the internet and use them in your forward. No matter how damn cute they are.

(Picture in forward)

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful holiday! We wish you lots of love…

Merry Christmas & Happy Sexism!

It has been over ONE YEAR since my last blog entry and man, what a difference  year makes. No need to fill you in on all the details, because hey, who wants to hear that? I’m not good at the Christmas time run down letter that encompasses all the good stuff we’ve done, so here it is in standard bullet form:

-Emerson turned one – everyone got sick from her birthday party

-Vic left his office job to revive his own business – going well and kicking A

-I left (also called, “got laid off”) from my job and have a new, better one (boo yah old job)

-Emerson does hilarious things and is awesome

-I regressed in my literature taste and became frightfully obsessed with the Twilight series for approximately 2 weeks in which I read all four books and saw the movie. Ouch. (Spoiler: The movie isn’t that great)

Em in the back yard getting used to the sled idea

There are other things, but those are the highlights.  Emerson, Vic and I braved it outside the comfort of our space-heater toasty bedroom to enjoy the snow that we’ve been having. Oregon really is beautiful when it snows in a winter wonderland sort of way. And oh what an wonder it has been! We lost power for a night and got all “state of emergency” on it with flashlights and sleeping by a fireplace at Vic’s parents’ house. It was quite exciting, although it really did illuminate how not-prepared we are for an emergency. If any of those end of the world movies hold any truth from sub-zero temperatures to bombs—you name it, we’re not ready for it. It made me want to stockpile my canned food supply and invest in arctic gear and gas masks, but it was just a one night power outage so I’m sure I’ll forget about it soon. Phew… thank goodness.

The "Misfits"

On to more important topics like movies. Maybe I’ve seen it one too many times, or maybe I just have a new lense of adulthood on, but “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is quickly climbing my list of sexist, oppressive movies we commonly show our children. Example:

Donner (Rudolph’s Dad – I didn’t even know this) has been acting a fool and making Rudolph cover his red nose because it’s different (Reminder – this was made in 1964). After getting heat from Dear ol’ Dad and other Reindeer not letting him join in any games for long enough, Rudolph runs away with Hermey the Dentist-wannabe elf. Donner decides he should probably head out to find his son and goes to tell Mrs.Donner (that’s right, she has no name, just Mrs. Donner) his plan and here’s what goes down:

Narrator: Sam the Snowman: Now you can bet that Old Donner felt pretty bad about the way he had treated Rudolph, and he decided the only thing to do was to go out and look for his little buck. Mrs. Donner wanted to go along, naturally, but Donner said…
Donner: No! This is man’s work!
Narrator: Sam the Snowman: And no sooner did the man of the house leave when Mrs. Donner and Clarice decided to set out on their own. Now they were really taking their chances.

Those crazy women… they were really taking their chances now since they didn’t have Dad-of-the-year Donner with them…

That’s just one of the more interesting themes in this tale. I have other theories regarding other lead characters, but that’s a little taste for you. Clearly I’ve seen that too many times this holiday season.

Well, that’s all for now.

See you soon… or in a year:).