And Butterpea Makes 3

As I contemplate whether to make that phone call and take the job, which I don’t WANT to have to do, but NEED to do for the sake of our family, I have so many regrets.  I hugely regret not teaching in a public school the 2 years we were here the last time.  That’s about $35k I missed out on.  I regret every meal I have eaten out, every article of clothing I have bought.  Random household purchases, even getting my Masters which cost us $5K or more (with truly little benefit until I have a PhD).  I regret every coke I ever drank.  I could probably stay home with her forever if I had never bought a coke.   Every trip to Ikea, Target, Wal-Mart, I regret.   I feel like I have failed her.  I feel like I have failed Mr. K by not going back to work.  He wants to keep the house (but rented) in Dallas, do the addition to it, buy a house here, get to go places and buy things.  I think it’s truly a gender difference.  I want those things, but would go without every single one of them for the rest of my life to stay home with my baby.  I would drive Zippy, crammed in there, crawling out of my skin from the claustrophobia of it, for 10 more years if it meant staying home with her.  And looking at the math, I will only clear about $1600, so that’s not that much anyway.  December’s check will pay for Christmas and the trip to NYC for Mr. K’s 35th bday.  After that, even if I pay every cent to the credit card it will take…well, I won’t say how long.  Let’s just call it forever.    

Anyways, I am off to take a shower and reflect a few minutes on how my perfect life in 2008 came to be this.  Those were the days.  Mr. K was working for Beck, making good money and loving his job.  I was happily at home with our baby.  We lived in our perfect house, with the best neighbors and friends.  I miss those days so much. But you can’t go back, you can only go forward.  Right?

Well, I got offered a job.  Not just spontaneously…I had applied for it.  I just didn’t expect things to happen quite this fast.  I figured I would apply and then I would go to work after Christmas.  I don’t want to.  Work, that is.  I mean, I love work, it’s just that Mallory is my baby and all that.  I think about my friends and relatives and realize I am really, really lucky to have been able to stay home for this long.  Kyrs, Julie, Kate Scott, Heather, Elizabeth, etc. all went back to work long before this.  So, I shouldn’t complain.  I am just so used to being with her all day, every day. 

So, why go back to work?  Well, with 2 house payments, 2 sets of bills, 2 years of one income, and eventually wanting a second baby, well, 2+2+2+2=get a job.  I am in desperate need for a bigger car.  I love my car.  Really, I do.  I even named it Zippy.  We’re bonded.  But it is way. too. small.  Picture me going back and forth from New Orleans to Dallas, 9 hours, with the baby, all our stuff, and the dog.  Nothing fits in the way back except the dog.  Mally is in the middle, so barely anything fits beside her.  If Mr. K is with me, then there is barely enough room to put our overnight bags in it.  I struggle to get Mally in her carseat because she’s big, but not big enough to get in it “all by ya-self.”  So, new car.  Then we need to look at buying a house here.  No mortgage lender in their right mind would lend us money for a house right now.  We have a house with a mortgage and a rental, tons of debt, a car payment, and student loans that maybe Mr. K will pay off when he’s 100.  So, get a job. 

The plan.  Here’s my plan.  Because if I didn’t have a plan, I couldn’t do it.  I am going to pay one paycheck per month (there are 2) toward the debt.  I will do this until one credit card is paid off (there are 2).  Then I will save a few months and buy a bigger SUV or van.  Never thought I would buy a van, but lots of people love them, so we’ll see.  Then I will start saving for the next baby.  And I will actually have maternity coverage which I don’t have right now.  Then if all goes well, some time when Mally is 3 hopefully she can have a sibling.  If we continued at this rate, I don’t think we would ever have another baby.  And as much as I love the one I have, I would love to have more. 

The upside is I love love love the place I picked for her childcare.  The downside is that I haven’t heard if she will be accepted and she can’t go there until she is 2.  Which leaves me with no childcare for the next month.  Did I mention they want me to start, like, today???????  I am putting them off to buy some time with Mally.  Shooting for next week, wishing for after Thanksgiving.  Of course, the sooner I go, the sooner I get paid.  Getting paid before Christmas could be nice.

There are a few other downsides besides missing Mally all day.  It’s going to mean more time in the car.  The drive to the day care then to school and back will be probably an hour and a half of driving every day.  Of course, I am driving 40 minutes a day now to take Mr. K to work every day and save the $8 a day in parking fees.

The upside is that it’s kindergarten.  I like kinder.  It was probably second hardest to 6th grade, but I did like it.  This will be a class that needs to be created because the other classes are too full.  They will pull a few kids from every room.  The room itself is huge but EMPTY.  No play kitchen, no blocks, no puzzles, no books, no nothing.  There are huge desks and metal folding chairs.  Yikes!  I would have one day to set it up and then teach the next day.  I think that is insane.  I had 2 days the last time I taught kinder and I cried thru the first day at the mere thought of getting it done in 2 days.  But I have decided not to let that part stress me out.  I get done what gets done and that’s it.  I prefer to do it surrounding the weekend so that I can have 3 days at least, but we’ll see.  Of course, I would have Mally with me over the weekend, but that’s ok.  Mr. K has a major deadline.

So, I will keep you posted on whether or not I take a job.  For now, I am going to put on some going-to-the-playground clothes.

I must hear this 500 times a day.  It’s cute.  The first 400 times.  Until you actually need to go somewhere in a hurry.  Then “Do it by ya-self!” as we walk, painstakingly slowly down the stairs, is enough to put you right over the edge.  :)  Now, ask her to put on her own clothes and she hands them right back and says “do it by ya-self” with a different meaning of “Yeah right, mom.  You do it.” 

Little kids and their incorrect grammar is so cute though.  Yesterday I asked Mally if she was sure she was done on the potty and she said “I are sure!!”  So cute. 

Additional cuteness…she kisses her own hurt toe this morning, then promptly gave it a “big squeeze.”  She has just gotten into the whole big squeeze thing.  It’s adorable.  She wants to “big squeeze” her dinner, her babies, her

Well, I decided I couldn’t mention a completely foreign topic without giving a link to a great picture.  This is from some other great blog I just found and the picture of the classroom makes me drool.  Ah, the teacher in me. 

http://www.whiteoakschool.com/camp-creek-blog/2007/10/3/beautiful-classrooms.html

And no, it’s not my mind.  :)  I found a mother’s day out.  I have been looking, and looking, and looking some more.  I have seen such a broad range that it amazes me.  Some were nice facilities but had unfriendly workers or cost way too much.  Some were very friendly but the facility was lacking…one didn’t even have a playground.  Uh, hello, Mally’s goal in life is to go to the playground every. single. day.  So no playground?  Forget it.  So, here’s the place.  http://www.stpauls-lakeview.org/academics/early.asp

I toured today.  I love it.  Love love love it.  They are doing a semi-Reggio approach which you may not have ever heard of in your whole life.  Most people haven’t.  Reggio is a town in Italy.  The basic idea is that the materials are very creative and ever-changing.  The activity set out has a purpose, but the child can do with it what they please.  For example, they had made pumpkin mobiles from tissue paper squares placed on contact paper pumpkins and strung with orange ribbon.  No set way to do it necessarily, and they could decide something totally different.  Tons of art is involved in Reggio.  And they are supposed to record what they are doing but drawing, dictating, or photographing the activities.  There was a picture for each day this past week which showed what main activity they did that day.  This is sent to parents so they have something to discuss with their kid.  Ask Mallory what she did on any day of the week, ever, even if it isn’t true, and she will say “went playground!”  So, the pictures are great and there is a little caption to go with it. 

The room. was. awesome.  It was huge.  It was clean.  There was a special reading nook, a train table, a huge kitchen play area, dress up area, a fish tank, a large art area with available supplies, a block area with floor blocks and table blocks, a math manipulative area, and more.  There were lots of pictures of things they had done, as well as lots of actual artwork everywhere.  Reggio is big into variety of materials.  Clay, sand, tissue paper, construction paper, play dough, water (they were mixing colored water with droppers today), sculpture materials, etc.

The playground was awesome.  And huge.  And had a wooden area for trikes, a giant garden, an outdoor classroom, greenhouse, treehouse in the works, field with soccer goals, and a Waldorfian wooden climbing area.  (Waldorf is another approach to learning and it’s very “green.”)

I saw some of the other rooms as well.  The cafeteria area is wall-to-wall artwork from kids.  One entire wall is collaged self-portraits.  I was in love.  It’s awesome.  Did I mention that already?  I had considered a Montessori school because of many reasons.  This isn’t one, but that’s ok.  Montessori does multi-age groups and the one I visited yesterday said Mally would be in with the preschool kids instead of toddlers because of her abilities.  But honestly, I am not so sure that is what I want.  KWIM?  I don’t want to hold her down, but I don’t want to push too hard.  How do parents find a middle ground?  I am repeatedly told by strangers and at all of the schools that we have looked at (and there have been dozens) that Mally is articulate, confident, intelligent, smart, cute (of course, that’s unrelated but I had to throw that in there), high, old (code for smarter than kids her age), etc.  And it scares me.  I know it sounds ridiculous and there are so many parents out there just begging to have their kids go through a day without struggling, so it’s a bit trite.  Seriously though.  I have taught a lot of grades.  I have seen those smart kids.  There are “smart kids”  and there are over the top kids.  I don’t want the over the top kid.  They rarely have social skills and they have so much trouble making friends.  Even when they are super sweet and can carry on a conversation with any adult with no problem.  They always have a sad look in their eyes because they know they are different…or maybe that look was boredom.  ;)  Anyhow, I still remember Crystal Bollinger from first grade.  She did the last page of the math book, the assessment page, in like, 2 minutes, but her parents wouldn’t skip any grades because they said they didn’t care if she learned a thing, but she needed to make some friends. 

Not to mention that, as her mother, I don’t see it the way other people do.  She knows 20+letters, all of them if it’s a particular set we have, but only half her lower case letters.  She identifies numbers to 9, counts to 11teen (which comes after 12 in case you were wondering), counts to 5 in Spanish, and is trying hard to write her name.  She can write the M and an l.  So, yes, I had first graders that couldn’t do half of that stuff, but it’s just so “her” that it doesn’t seem unusual to me at all.  It’s as normal for her as singing Twinkle, Twinkle and going right into the “ABCD” song or hugging her babies and pushing them in the stroller.  If it becomes more clear that she is “gifted” (and that’s the first time I have used that word) then we’ll see what to do about it later.  For now, I am going to sign her up for mother’s day out where she can go and glue glitter on pumkins and make ghosts from socks, where she can climb the stairs and go down the slide a hundred times.  Where she can build with blocks and read a book to Curious George.  And, at last, I will have a little break too.

On to another topic.  Potty training.  It’s yucky.  We are still in the phase where I can put her on it and she will usually go, but the only time she asks to go is if she is in her bed!  She does usually tell us when she needs to go poopy.  I guess it’s more obvious to her.  I think if I did real panties and stayed home for a week, we could be trained.  Now, how do people deal with the little girls going to the potty in public restrooms?  It’s so gross.  I can’t remember the last time I sat on one, so putting her on one makes me want to puke.  Ick.

New topic.  Again.  Uh, I signed up for the Arbor Day Run 5k.  I will am going to come in last.  Every day I have an excuse for not exercising.  I am only running about half a mile at a time about twice a week.  Uh, not going to cut it.  Race is in 2 weeks.  I don’t expect to win or anything, but not being last would be a good goal.  On the upside, I quit coke and am down to my pre-baby, pre-miscarriage, pre-Clomid taking, weight.  It’s nice.  My Joe’s jeans fit.  I should say they fit like they are supposed to, because technichally I think I wore these a few times last year.  They were way tighter.  Yikes!  What was I thinking?  People ask how I lost this weight, but I tell them you don’t want to know and it surely wasn’t exercise!

Can I end by saying that I love having my internet access back?  It rocks!

Hi everybody!  Yay, I am back to blogging.  It’s great!  I finally got broadband internet so I can use the net from Nola or big D.  Sweet!  So, no more blog withdrawal.  But I am having coke withdrawal.  I gave it up on the 18th, so it’s been a week.  I had to do it.  Mally had started saying constantly “Mommy drink coke!”  So, now I drink tea, water, milk.  I like those things, but I do miss coke.  Not as hard as I thought it would be.  I thought that if I would give it up for her while I was pregnant, I could give it up for her now.  My goal is to make it to New Years.  It’s my anti-New Years resolution. 

We have been doing lots of fun fun fun stuff here.  We went to a birthday party at City Park Saturday morning…don’t read into that that I actually have friends here already…but I had never even met this kid.  His mom just gave everyone at Mr. K’s office tickets if they had kids.  So, Mally had the best time ever.  She rode so many rides.  The carousel is her favorite usually, but she had a fit to ride the ladybug roller coaster.  Mr. K went with her and we thought she would be terrified and cry.  Well, she cried all right…when they made her get off!  She LOVED it!  I was amazed.  She rode that several times.  She also rode the ferris wheel, the big giant slide, and played on the playground. 

After the party, we ran errands and then we took her home, got dressed, and went to the Krewe of Boo parade.  She loved that too.  She got 2 teddy bears, a ton of beads, and her fave…candy.  :)  The floats were a little scary for her, but she loved the horses and the lights.

Yesterday when we asked we asked her what she wanted to do with the day, she said, “Go Target!!”  Crazy baby.  :)  We did go to Target and we started with the Christmas shopping.  Got an indoor play tent that is a tree house.   They had a princess one, but this one was better and well, I can only do so much princess.  If it is a Disney princess, she is obsessed with it.

We will be going to Dallas this weekend and I will be there for about 10 days for the Swedes visit.  Can’t wait to see Malin, Mathias, Elias, and Felicia.  Yay!  Going to go to the arboretum and probably the Children’s Museum.  We are having the 2nd annual Halloween party too.  Yes!  That should be interesting considering we get in town Friday night around 9 and then Halloween is Saturday.  Mally is going to be Hello Kitty so that part is going to be easy.  I just fell in love with her Halloween outfit with Hello Kitty with the tutu so she’ll wear that and we’ll paint her face.  We got some bunny ears that I doctored to be HK ears. 

Ok, lots of people have asked how I am doing here.  In Nola.  I am fine.  Really, I am.  I like it.  Mally and I do lots of fun stuff.  I do miss some things though.  So here is a top 10 list.

What I miss about Dallas:

1. Mallory’s perfect room with her bed and real furniture.  And her toys…play kitchen, puzzles, books, farm, monkey music, etc.

2. Friends…Lindly and Kyrstin and Jin-ya, all their kiddos, etc.  Does Lindly count since she moved?  Is it bad to put friends 2nd past Mally’s room?  :0  Ah, but I do miss long walks and talks, girls!

3. The dishwasher

4. My housekeeper

5. The space.  500 less square feet here means tiptoeing when Mally sleeps since her room is in the middle of the shotgun style house.  The kitchen sink is about 5 steps from her pack-n-play.  Good excuse not to do dishes. 

6. Outdoor playthings.  The sandbox, the glider, the swing, the ball pit, the pool in summer, the deck, the ride-on toys, the slide.  Right in the yard.  Tons of parks in Nola, but at home it’s in the yard. 

7. The driveway.  Here we park across the street and getting Mally in and out of the car, constantly crossing the street, makes me nervous. 

8. Big ass TV.  Cable.  Lots of cable. 2 TVs.  Ah, junkie. 

9. My easy part time job at the church.  Everyone is nice there.  $12.50 an hour.  3 hours minimum even if no kids show up to watch and I leave after 15 minutes.  Mally gets to go too.  Get to see Anitra and Kyler.  It was nice and consistent. 

10.  Babysitting/tutoring.  Babysitting at my house is easy cause there are tons of things to do.  I was keeping the same sets of kids regularly and that was a steady income.  Not a huge income, but steady.  And I love tutoring Neiman.  He’s a sweetie and I miss seeing him mom too.  We’ve become pals.

To be fair, here is the list of what’s great about NOLA:

1. Parades.  You don’t have this in Dallas.  Not even St. Pat’s compares.

2. City Park with it’s massive playgrounds, Storyville, roller coaster, carousel, etc.

3. Walking everywhere keeps you skinny and helps the environment. 

4. Streetcars.  Mally loves them.  That tiny thing in downtown Dallas is nothing compared to Saint Charles Avenue.

5. The bus.  You can take it here.  You won’t fear for your life.  It actually goes places you would want to go.

6. Food.  Ah, the restaurants.  They are awesome.

7. Audubon Zoo puts Dallas PLUS Ft. Worth zoos to shame.

8. Atmosphere.  This should be way higher on the list, but who wants to edit?  New Orleans just has a feel like no other place.

9. The playgrounds.  They have shade.  Big gigantic oak trees for shade.  In Dallas you can only go during certain parts of the day, or you risk 3rd degree burns on the slides and swings.  Here you can go any time.  It’s wonderful. And I can walk to at least 3.

10. Closer to the fam.  Don’t read anything into this going last…it’s just now occurred to me!

about a no-good horrible, terrible day.  (Ok, book reference for you non-teachers)  Yesterday was the worst day I have had in a while.  Ok, it’s the worst regularly sucky day, all huge catastrophic days in the recent past set aside.  So, it started with Mally falling off of our bed.  It’s not that tall.  There’s no real danger of permanent damage from a fall from a height that’s only knee high, but still.  She landed face down.  Mind you, she was trying to get off the bed at the time and she’s done this hundreds of times.  She’s a pro at it.  I don’t know what went wrong.  Ok, back to the landing.  She landed face down.  On a plastic letter X.  Yes, an X.  The magnetic kind you stick on the fridge.  She was wailing.  I was trying to assess the damage, all the while thinking “what the heck did you fall on?”  So, it really looks a lot like a flower.  If you didn’t know it was an X, you would think I stuck a flower tatoo on her forehead.  It’s bad.  But today it’s so much better.  Thank goodness. 

That was around 10.  Around 11, we had our second choking incident in 3 days.  A few days ago she choked on bacon.  Yesterday it was probably a chip.  And I mean really choking.  Not just cough cough.  But bad.  I had to jerk her out of the high chair.  (In hindsight I wonder how I didn’t hurt her poor little legs considering she was STRAPPED in this thing.)  Did some version of the hymlach and she puked everywhere.  Both days.  But yesterday was worse.  When it starts, she starts flailing and kicking like crazy.  The first time, she was crying the whole time so I knew she was going to be fine, but yesterday when she couldn’t cry, I was really freaking out.  I was bawling and of course, both of us are in the kitchen floor covered in puke.  Ug.  And she’s crying “hold you, hold you” and I am thinking “I am never going to let you go.”  It was awful.  I just don’t know what I would do.  I know Shannon’s death has made me more paranoid about things, but seriously, it was as bad as it gets.  I am thankful though that we live in walking distance to Children’s Hospital so if something happened, they would be here in seconds. 

That was our second major event, but I am not done.  It’s not enough to survive till noon, you have to get through the whole day.  So I had a part-time job interview for a tutoring job twice a week.  Went to that.  Left Mally with Mr. K. at work and they had a blast.  Interview was a breeze.  Will find out something next week.  When I picked up Mally, Mr. K. said he hadn’t changed her.  Well, I hadn’t been gone but an hour and a half, so I didn’t think anything of it.  On the way home, she fell asleep.  I put her in her pack-n-play, aka her bed here.  When she got up, hours later, I laid her on our bed to change her.  She wet thru the diaper (this hadn’t happened in MONTHS) and it was all over the bed.  I had just changed the sheets yesterday morning.  And I think, if I pick her up, it’s just going to get on the rug too!  Oh, good grief.  So our sheets are double-washed.  Even the comforter.  Yay me. 

So at the end of my day, when I had to tell someone, I texted Lindly, and the whole time I am thinking, my day sucked, but hers sucked more.  But since that will be the case for a while, I might as well go ahead and tell her about my crappy day.  Right?  I try not to feel guilty when I think I have had a bad day.  Sometimes it’s hard. 

Let’s see what else is going on?  I am making appointments for nursery school tours for Mally.  I can’t believe she’s nearly 2!  I am planning to go to Newman’s next Friday if I am in town, then to Ursulines, and McGee’s Little Gate sometime soon.  They are all super expensive, so I need a J-O-B.  :)  We made a smart cookie out of her and she just needs some social stimulation big time.

Oh!  And remember how I dropped a quick 10 or more pounds in July?  Well, still gone.  Good riddance.   I actually went running one day this week.  I have to since I promised Malin I would do the Arbor Day run with her.  It’s a 10K.  I can do that.  Right?  What amazed me was how easy running was.  Not that I did some great amount of it, but maybe it’s easier when you aren’t 10 pounds overweight?  I would have started running again before now, but mentally, I couldn’t get past the idea of that being what Shannon was doing when he died.  But I know he would want his friends and family to go and live life to the fullest, running and all.

Cute Mallory-isms this week…

“I found anudder one, tiny rock!” (as she stuffed them all in my pockets…gotta get that kid some pants with her own pockets!)

“Write you Kymes!” (She’s into having someone write her name on her paper.  And she will tell you what color… ”Write you Mallory yellow.”

“Daddy go work!” (While this seems boring, it’s the first time she hasn’t just said “Daddy work.”)

“Pancakes!  I want pancakes!”  (My little darling won’t eat the frozen ones from the grocery store.  Only real pancakes will do.  Pancake snob. 

“I like you, Brudder Sister!”  (Ah, Dora’s twin siblings, Brother, and Sister, are tub toys that she’s been carrying around.)

“Hi Present Girl!” (Gotta love the FP Little People Birthday kids.  They go with us everywhere.)

“Sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker.” (What I am when I give in to the constant whine.

Just wanted to put some cute things Mally has been saying lately.  Yesterday we pulled into a fast food restaurant and she said “We’re here!! Mommy coke!”  Hmph.  Guess that means I am drinking a few too many.  That’s too bad because I feel like I am going through coke withdrawal!  I NEED my coke!  And today we were out running errands so I fed her Wendy’s for lunch and she said “Ooohh!  Happy meal toys!”  Ug.  Too many happy meals too.  Ug.  :)  She’ll be telling her Daddy on me before you know it!  :)  She is also asking for everyone now.  She says “Are-do, Uncle Bear?” or repeats things like “Daddy, Todd, Daddy, Todd, DeDe, Daddy, Pop Pop, Mommy, DooDaddy, Grammer.”  So cute.  And she counts things constantly.  Oh my goodness at the counting.  Loves to count.  Count to 5.  Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.  She counts steps and traincars, fingers and toes.  Anything worth counting, she counts it.  She will be in the middle of a store and count letters on signs, or else tell the names of the letters.  She is also singing constantly.   Does the ABC song to G and starts over.  Again and again and again.  In the middle of it she breaks into Twinkle Twinkle.  So it sounds like ABCDE Little Staaaaarrrr. 

She loved going to the library this week.  She wanted a “Panda Bear book” and lucky for her they had some.  She had a great time finger painting at the Children’s Museum.  She LOVES it!  So we will have to try to go a few times a week.  I have tons of finger paints in Dallas, but it’s just such a mess that I have been putting it off.  No more!  She made a construction paper duck there and has carried that thing around for 2 days!  It’s feet fell off and she says “Uh-oh, gone gone feet.  Uh-oh duck.  Quack quack.  No feet.  Wings.  Nose.  Eyes.  Gone Gone feet.”  Gotta glue those little feet back on! 

She has started having some really long drawn out conversations with herself.  We saw the streetcar one day and she knew we were going to get her Daddy at work.  So she said, “Street car.  No, no.  Daddy work.  Street car.  Ride it?  No.  Daddy.  Get Daddy work.”  As if she knows not to even ask if we can ride the street car because Daddy’s at work and we have to go get him!  So cute!

Well, it’s done.  I will start with this brief message tinged with sadness and then a few funny things.  First, I finished the sandbox today after a trip to the Home Depot.  Still might need to replace 2 screws or just wait for Mr. K to come home and use his muscles to fix it.  It had been over 6 weeks since Mally had been in the sandbox.  The sandbox was the point of the last conversation I ever had with Shannon.  Lindly was in the car and they were waiting while Shannon put the sand in the sandbox for me.  Mr. K was out of town.   So anyways, the last thing I recall that he said to me was “I’ll be by this weekend to get that cover put on for you.”  Well, by the weekend I was in Jackson to see Margaret.  So, I finally sucked it up, went the the Depot, and got it done.  I know he would be impressed.  For you, Shannon.

Ok, so some other news.  Let’s see.  Miss Priss has been overly funny now that she talks soooo much.  I had to take the panel off of our computer yesterday and she said “baby choo choo train!”  I got to say, it had as many parts as a train, for sure!  Everything this week is either “baby …” or “princess.”  She called a dime a “baby quarter.”  Tried to tell her it was a dime, but she would have nothing of it.  :)  She is calling everything princess.  Puts on a shirt and it’s a “princess shirt.”  If it’s a book or a toy or a dress or whatever, it’s a princess one.  I have no idea what started it, but earlier this week, the first thing she said was “I Daddy Princess!”  So now she thinks she’s her daddy’s princess.  Which makes me tear up, but it’s ok.  She only wants pink everything.  She’s done other funny things too.  She tried to share a sucker with Chloe.  Chloe was very unimpressed.  Today she woke up singing “Teamwork” from Wonder Pets.  She’s basically a mess! 

I have to work tomorrow morning and I suppose I should be in bed, but I finally cried about losing my grandmother.  I had put grieving for her on the back burner while I have been dealing with losing Shannon and all that his loss has entailed.  

 For those of you who don’t know, Margaret was Webb’s mom, and Webb is my biological dad.  We speak on occasion.  He doesn’t deserve it.  I honestly think that more than crying for Memaw, I am crying for the loss of so many years of happy memories that could have been.  She was a great person who always made me smile.  However, I always felt somehow betrayed by her.  When my father lost his parental rights I was 7.  I was in the second grade.  And she just disappeared.  As if she signed away her rights as well.  I have felt guilt in the past about not having more of a relationship with her, but I just think back to all of those years when, because I didn’t see Webb, I didn’t see her.  Whole years would go by.   No more backyard fun.  No more cousins.  No more aunts and uncles.  No more anything.  Just gone.  Christmas maybe, but that’s just part of a day per year.  So, while I cry for her now, she’s been gone a very long time really.  However, I finally posted on her obit page and here is what it says. 

“Memaw, I am so glad Mally got to meet you. To me, you are red popsicles in the backyard swing, lima beans and the best ice tea, long holiday talks on the sofa, fancy paper dolls and the most beautiful dollhouses, teddy bears in velvet clothes, a huge swimming pool and catching baby frogs in buckets.  Thanks for all the best memories.”

Mally will never know how funny she was.  How she lit up the room and was so brilliant.  And she was beautiful too.    I am truly glad Mally got to meet her.  She won’t remember, but I took pictures.   The memories I do have are great ones.  And that makes me sad for all the ones I just don’t have.  At the mercy of my parents, a divorce, just the way life goes.  I guess I could have tried to seek her out more as an adult.  I have been one for a very long time now.  I never wanted to visit her because she lived with Webb and visiting her meant visiting him.  Most of my Hatten relatives don’t understand why that was so hard, but when your father gives up rights to you, declaring before the world what you already knew, that he doesn’t care about you at all, it amazingly makes you into this adult that doesn’t want to see him any more.  It continues to be a struggle for me.   I digress into other things, but the long and short of it is that I didn’t want to go because he was there.

I talked to Shannon’s dad today.  In speaking, I told him about Memaw and how I missed her funeral to stay in Dallas and go to Shannon’s memorial service.  I hadn’t talked about it since that one blog a month ago today.  So when I got some time to myself tonight I started to realize I really still have some guilt about it.  But I am not superwoman.  I couldn’t do back-to-back days of funerals in 2 different states that are 8 hours apart.    Maybe that’s the guilt right there.  That I could have made it work somehow and I just didn’t.  My grief for Shannon just outweighed my grief for Margaret.  And it was all just more than I could handle dealing with at once.

I like to think there’s a Heaven somewhere and she’s there talking to Shannon and they are making each other laugh.  Most times I have a hard time believing in Heaven.  Then when you lose someone you realize that there just has to be one because the idea of not seeing your loved ones again is just too hard to accept.