My Life...daily reflections

God help the little children

This evening Sarah had a hard time going to sleep. At one point, some hour or so after I put her to bed, I heard her crying in her room. This is a very unusual thing for her. She and her sister go to bed without a fuss every night and have pretty much since they were infants unless they were ill. She had gotten up a couple of times and snuck down the hall to listen to what I was watching downstairs. Unfortunately, I was watching the news at one point and I believe she heard some disturbing news perhaps.

I got very irritated with her for still being up (it's been a long couple of weeks with lack of sleep as we adjust her new insulin pump). I sternly told her to get in bed and go to sleep. But as I went back downstairs something told me to go back up...get her a drink and just make sure she was ok. After I gave her the drink, she did something that made me laugh. That was enough to break the ice for her to tell me why she'd been crying. As she did, she began sobbing again. Through her tears, she told me she never wanted me to die. Wow. Wasn't expecting that one.

Long story short, we had a long talk about life, empathy, compassion and fear. She seemed to feel better and finally went to sleep. The news was still on as I came back downstairs, and as I cleared the stairwell I read on the screen that the body of the missing 12-year-old girl, Brooke Bennett, had been found. As I saw the image of that little girl's smiling face on the television, I nearly lost my footing as I began to cry.

What in the world is this WORLD coming to???!!!! That poor child. Oh my God, that poor child.

My own little girl, just six years old, had just sobbed in my arms fearing the world and it's hard truths. I told her that she can't live in fear, that she has to realize that the world has bad things but that she can't fear them...that death is a part of life. But as I told her this, I recalled the fear I had of death at her age. I remember fearing for my own mother's death and of my family and friends...of myself. I know her fear is real. Eventually she told me that she had looked out her window and thought she saw someone that might climb in her window and take her. I knew where that fear had come from. The news about Brooke going missing had been on tv off and on for the past few days. As we always do if the girls hear of these stories, we remind them that strangers can be dangerous...that there are mean people in the world that will hurt children. Unfortunately, I've never had to tell them before that many times that person can be a family member! I'm not a mother who candy coats things such as this. I'd rather my child have some fear, based on the realities of the world, versus go about unknowing of what might come at them. I can help them curb their fears, hopefully, but also teach them to respect that fear so they aren't taken advantage of.

Then I come downstairs to be confronted with just what kind of things in the world my daughter must fear...that all children must fear. Having just told Sarah about what empathy is, all I could do is look into that little girl's eyes in those photos and think of what fear she must have had in her horrible last moments on this Earth. NO CHILD SHOULD EVER HAVE THEIR WORST FEARS COME TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am beyond grieving over this child. I am absolutely ANGRY with the world for allowing people who could do such things to exist. There should be no trial for the person who did this to Brooke. HE should be hung up by parts of his anatomy I won't get into and allowed to be tortured and killed by the child's parents. Of course, considering her mother was married to a child sex offender and her uncle was a registered sex offender also, I'm not even sure they'd care too much to hurt the offender. How could someone put their child in that kind of harms way???!!! Was there an acceptance of what these men had done...were doing...or a feeling that it would never happen to them?!!!  There is no kind of "justice" that would even remotely come close to punishing this person or people as far as I'm concerned. As a parent, I HATE them for making the fear my child fears REAL...that all children and parents fear.

This evening when I told my own daughter there were indeed things that go bump in the night that she might be scared of, but should try not to be, I learned just what monsters lurk. And now, I'm the one griped with fear. God help us. God help the children of this world who meet these monsters.

God bless Brooke. I so wish dear child your worst fears had not ever been realized.

The New Frontiers

Really wonderful band. Check them out on Myspace.

No place like home

Lovely, busy weekend around here.

Friday night we took the girls to a drive-in movie in a nearby town to see "Wallee". It was fun, but waiting for the sun to go down and the movie starting so late was a bit stressful with two kids who have very set bed times!

Gorgeous drive to the movie. I can't say it enough, the country around  here is some of the most beautiful in this country of ours!

This scene so reminded me of my childhood. Dave's dad ran our local drive-in when we were kids.

Girls waitin' for the movie to start.

Sun goin' down. It was such a nice night out, not terribly hot with a nice breeze.

Showin' the movie. Dave's dad helped the owners of this drive-in get it up and running. It's doing really great business.

After our late night out Friday, Ruby had a birthday bash to go to on Saturday. On Sunday, we took our families, Dave's parents and my mom, out to brunch at Cortner's Mill, a former grist mill which opened in 1825 that is now a restaurant. This place is special because the mill was opened and run for generations by David's mom's family. The girls liked seeing the river running under the mill that used to run the wheel to grind the flour. It was nice because Dave's niece was working that day and actually served us our brunch. Nice family affair.

Sarah looking over the rail at the dam at the mill.

Sarah skipping rocks.

After we ate, we (us and the girls) took a lovely drive out in the country over to a flea market to shop for a couple of vintage bikes. Again, I heart where I live. It was such a beautiful drive...photos can't do it justice honestly. This area below is where Dave and I hope to one day build a home and retire.

Beauty and the beast

Every evening for the past week the girls and I have gone outside to play, catch fireflies and take a walk before a later than normal dinner and bedtime. It's been really lovely just letting them run around in half their clothes and get sweaty, dirty and tired at the end of the day. I usually garden while they run around. But most often, I end up stopping to help catch fireflies (lighten' bugs as I call them).

Sarah is a bug girl. She loves the things and is not afraid of pretty much any of them. One of her favorite things is to hunt out bugs and catch them and put them in her bug box. Firefly season is her favorite time of year and it's not uncommon for her to catch 50 in her box!

The other evening I heard her scream as I was trimming a bush. I knew immediately when she called for me in a very excited tone that she must have found a good bug. And indeed she had. As a native Southerner, cicada bugs are nothing new to me. They practically are etched into the psyche of what is to live in the South during the summer...their noise echoing off everything as the sun goes down. Sarah has long enjoyed collecting cicada shells. Well, this night she was lucky enough to discover the cicada still in it's shell,  freshly emerged from the soil and SLOWLY inching up a tree trunk by our driveway. In all my years, I've never seen one of the bugs still in it's shell. He was very gross and very LARGE. Sarah was impressed, but seemed unwilling to touch the alien looking beast. Or so I thought. Within seconds she was screaming that she'd put him in her bug box. My first reaction was "did you touch that thing?" She didn't...just scooped him off the tree into her box.

I told her she would have to let him go when we went in. But she begged me to give him food and wait to see if he'd emerge from his shell. I figured there was no harm and helped her gather some green stuff to place in the box. We placed the box on a table in the shade on our driveway.

Lo and behold, as Ruby was leaving for school she remembered the cicada and ran to see if he'd come out. Sure enough! Even I was impressed. I really didn't think there was much chance he'd transform while in that box. Ruby was so excited. So I told her we'd take it to school to show her friends. She was thrilled.

Sarah still didn't know that the cicada had emerged, so when I came back home from showing it off at Ruby's school, I called Sarah outside to let her know. She was even more thrilled than Ruby, but immediately wanted to let him go in case he suffocated, which was funny since he was in an open mesh bug box. Eventually, he did fly out of the box and completely ick me out. See, I had a little incident with one of these buggies getting into a box of Barbies I had been playing with outdoors when I was a girl. Not too much fun to have a gigantic winged bug come crawling out in your bedroom, ya know.

Here's the shots of Sarah's close encounter of the bug kind...

Here's the cicada in the box...shell attached at the top and gigantic winged beast at the side.

Here's Sarah bravely opening the bug box door to let the critter escape.

The photos doesn't really show how BIG this bug was...about three inches in just the body! ICK!!

Here's the shell he left behind. So hard to believe that BIG bug came out of that relatively small shell and out of just the tiniest slit in the back...leaving the whole shell intact.

Now for something less creepy and more lovely...

My newly bloomed lilies! I ordered a huge box of lily bulbs off QVC several months back. After forgetting about them and letting them not only dry out but also mold a bit, I was VERY skeptical of them ever growing anything. But behold...

I now have about 20 blooming or about to bloom lilies around my house. This stargazer is as big as a dinner plate and it's aroma will nearly knock you off your feet it's so amazing! Thankfully, the box had late blooming varieties too so I should have a show all summer long!

Here's Sarah eating lunch on the deck...with our gnome friend.

And here she is modeling THE CUTEST dress we got off the sale rack at Target for $3!  

Setting an example

The beginning of this post doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the post, but I wanted to take the time to document this for our family, and for those who have left a comment or emailed me about Sarah getting her insulin pump.

First, for the people who have asked what exactly the pump does/is...

For the past three years, since Sarah was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, she has had to get the insulin she must have via shots, four shots in fact every day since her diagnosis. I think I recently tallied that up and put it in a blog post and it was near 5,000 shots. Needless to say, though she was a trooper for each and every one, the shots are painful and dreadful for a small child to do daily that many times. Just imagine how any child feels about getting a shot at any time. Now imagine that your child must get four of them each day to LIVE. I think that clarifies the importance.

So, options? Well, the only option is an insulin pump, which is pretty much self explanatory in it's name. It is a pump, about the size of a  pager, that pumps minute amounts of insulin subcutaneously (under the skin). The biggest perks for the pump are, first, that shots are eliminated. It requires only a site change (sort of like how an IV goes in when you're sick, though this is not into a vein) every three days. Secondly, instead of set amounts of insulin that are limited by insulin syringes, we can now give Sarah tenths of a unit of insulin. It opens our options and treatment of her blood sugar up by about 10 fold.

That said, she can't take the pump off for more than an hour at a time, must sleep in it and wear it pretty much all the time. I had reservations about this one thing...the fact that she'd be hooked up to this device all the time. I couldn't imagine dealing with it myself. But in keeping with the surprising ability of children to acclimate to things, Sarah has taken to it wonderfully. She did cry a bit the first day when she kept pushing it up into her ribs and could swear she could feel it under her skin. I was worried about her wearing it while she slept. I figured she's complain about rolling over on it or it poking her. But she did not. There were tears at bedtime when her beloved nightgowns couldn't be worn because there was no place to attach her pump. We put her on some soft shorts and an over-sized shirt and she was just fine. She's taken to this new nighttime attire because, as she says, when she gets up in the morning she's already dressed! We have already ordered a soft belt for her to wear around her belly at night to hold the pump so she can wear her nightgowns.

It's been quite stressful making this adjustment...for me. I felt like I had just "mastered" the shots. To start on something new and so seemingly high tech was overwhelming. The night before she got the pump, Sarah couldn't sleep because she was so excited to get it...to get rid of shots. However, I was in tears in fear I wouldn't be able to work the thing and might harm her. Such is our vastly different perspectives.

But as of today, I can easily say very emphatically that I LOVE the pump. Sarah and I were out running errands today and decided to go out to eat for lunch. Before the pump, we couldn't really just make that kind of decision without planning. We had to have insulin, so you needed to make the choice to eat our or not before you left the house so you could take it with you. It was not a problem for the most part, but for the times when plans change or you get a whim, well, it made things limited. And if you forgot the insulin, which only happened to me two times, both incredibly at inconvenient times (one out of town for instance), it was just a nightmare. For example, when we recently went out to eat with my in-laws I forgot Sarah's insulin, only the second time that's ever happened to me. It was very anxiety inducing to sit and watch her eat her lunch knowing I had no insulin right with me. The pump alleviates that worry...it's right on her hip! So today we ate in relaxation and ease, knowing we wouldn't be stared at as we pulled out needles and a bottle of insulin for people to glare at. Sarah always hated getting shots in public. We never EVER took her to somewhere in hiding though for a shot. I wasn't about to make her feel ashamed of her disease. Believe me, I've dealt with plenty of stares of disapproval while giving her insulin in public. God, I can only imagine what breast feeding women experience. People can be real asses, ya know.

And as of this evening, we have had something happen that hasn't happened since Sarah was diagnosed. She had a WHOLE day of NORMAL blood sugars before EVERY meal...every single meal and before bed! I was nearly knocked off my feet when I realized this evening that was the case. I can honestly see a change in Sarah too. She isn't as hyper with her blood sugar swinging wildly. She says she feels better. She's happy and relieved to be done with those shots. It's a very, very good thing, this pump.

Though I still have my fears and concerns, I feel silly now being so scared to make this change. I have to say that it's been good because I've been blessed with THE MOST mature and sweet child around. In keeping with how she's handled this entire disease, she's coping with this beyond her years. She's my hero.

And because she is so sweet and was so proud of doing this, here are shots of her completed scrapbook about our vacation to the beach. She took all of the photos with a little waterproof disposable camera I got her, except for the first one. That one was taken by Ruby, who put her finger over the lens. Sarah salvaged it though by being very creative and using an embellishment sticker over Ruby's finger!

Ladies who lunch

Girls eating lunch in the playhouse.

Sittin' pretty

When I first saw this picture of the girls my first thought was, "Oh, Sarah...sit with your legs closed girl!" Then I realized she's six and oh heck, who am I kidding, she's gonna sit like that and show her panties to the world and not worry about it. I think I've been looking at too many celeb photos of the like on PerezHilton perhaps. Anyway, after I got over that Britney moment with the panties, I looked at the photo again and was totally tickled with how it turned out. Silly girls, gorgeous red door and blue porch. Great! I have no idea why Typepad is over sharpening it and making it look jagged. Hopefully you can click it for a large version and it will be as sharp as it is in reality.

The rest of these photos are just snapshots from here and there the past few days...

 

Ruby with "mermaid" hair, the result of a day long braided ponytail.

Sarah working on her beach scrapbook. I got her this little scrapbook at Target in the $1 bin months ago, knowing we were going on our trip. She took some photos with a disposable camera and scrapbooked them all herself. She's ahead of me when it comes to scrapbooking. This is her second one! I'll post pictures of the completed book.

And then this little shot of a big change for Sarah and us the past couple of days...

Sarah's new insulin pump. She's had it for two days. So far so good. It is a big change for her diabetes care and the first night was a long one with several lows that had us a bit worried. But with a slight change in her dosage she's doing really well.

Star struck

So, my husband's night with Nicole Kidman...

Sorry to leave ya'll hangin' with my cryptic tidbit. Yes, David spent an evening alone, but for Nicole's country sangin' husband Keith Urban, at a movie theater in Nashville. If you weren't aware, Ms. Kidman and Mr. Urban reside for most of the year in these here parts.

This story will need a bit of background. My husband's father has been in the movie theater business for more than 50 years. He knows everyone and everyone knows him in the biz. He repairs and installs equipment all over. BMI music publishing in Nashville asked him to run movies for them in their private screeening room several years back. These screenings tend to be for big wigs, ie celebrities and music moguls and such. He's met several famous and pseudo famous people this way. A year or so ago, one of the big deal celebs was Nicole Kidman, with Keith. Dave's father has met famous people over the years. Being the humble country boy he is, no one really impresses him that much. Nicole Kidman did. He said she was strikling beautiful in person and VERY tall and thin...and pale. Pretty much sums up what I would think she'd look like. Mostly he said she was incredibly nice and even gave him a bottle of champagne.

Fast forward to last week. Dave's dad told him he'd been called to run a movie at BMI. Since David was off, he said he'd tag along, especially since it was his father's birthday. At that time Clyde wasn't sure who they'd be running the movie for. I don't think either one of them even thought of it being Nicole Kidman. Dave was hoping for Jack White of the White Stripes,lol. They didn't know who the movie was for until they got there and were told that it was indeed Nicole and Keith. Well, to say my husband was excited is an understatement (though he was trying to remain as calm and cool as humanly possible).

The show was supposed to begin at 6:30 p.m., but the couple was late, arriving in their BENTLEY! at 7:30 p.m. When David called to let me know they were there, he was thinking he wouldn't meet them. They had come in and sat down for the movie right away. Two hours later David was in the projection booth with the door open and glanced up to see Nicole, who is eight months pregnant, on her way to the bathroom...followed by Keith. He said she looked up at him and smiled and he froze, LOL.

On the way back from the bathroom, she stopped in the doorway to ask if David's father was in there. Dave told her he was and went to get him. Clyde came out to say hello to Nicole, who remembered him from before. He introduced David to her and SHE SHOOK HIS HAND! They made a bit of chit chat about the movie and then Keith came in also. And that was about it. Nothing too earth shattering.

Dave's reflections on the brush with fame was a) she was very tall and thin...emphasis on thin, even though she is pregnant b)she was really nice c) she didn't look like he imagined she would...she looked less movie star and more "real" and normal, though beautiful d) her accent wasn't as strong has he'd imagined, though Keith's was nearly indecipherable e) Urban looked really normal too...baseball cap, jeans and a button up shirt.

Though he tried to act very nonchalant about the whole thing, Dave was super stoked about this meeting with Nicole Kidman, LOL. He's told everyone he comes in contact with and has been talking about her like this, "Nicole this...Nicole that", as if he is a personal chum of hers. We've watched at least one film of hers since and she was partly nude in a scene and he was grinning so big I thought he might break his face.

I think it's very cute that he was all star struck. I think it's cool that she was so nice and remembered meeting David's mom the last time Clyde showed them a movie. And, I can't believe anyone can be that skinny at eight months pregnant!

That's the story in a nutshell.

Hmpf!

My husband just spent all evening watching a movie in an empty theater with Nicole Kidman!

Well, her husband, Keith Urban, was there too.

More later...

"Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow"

A while ago my friend Erin asked me to post the photo of David that I've written about a few times...the one by the fence that runs along the church where we got married. I finally scanned it and thought it would be fun to see the three photos we have of this fence that signify the changes in our life since then.

First one...David circa 1991 or 1992. This is a scan of a photo so it's not great. I just scanned it straight with no editing whatsoever.

Next is both of us, seven years or so later on our wedding day...

Then this one I took the other day of Dave and the girls...

Since I'm taking this little walk down memory lane, I went ahead and scanned a couple more shots to compare/contrast.

This is the color scheme of the church where we got married ten years ago...a sunny yellow with apple green doors. I loved those colors of course, which tied really well with the fall/harvest theme of the wedding since we got married on Thanksgiving Day.

Here's the little church today with a much different color scheme and newly added ramps. We've been told that we started quite a trend when we got married and that several couples have had ceremonies at the quaint little church. It doesn't have a regular congregation any longer, just a service about once a month still. The fact that it's been in use though for 200 years is really amazing. It's been lovingly cared for, and Dave and I plan on starting an annual contribution for upkeep this year on our 10th anniversary.

And here's Dave and I in front of the doors...

Quite a contrast to this one I already posted!

And lastly, to get a feel for just how out in the country the church is (and how OLD it is) here's a shot of the view from the cemetery behind the church where both David's great, great, great grandparents and grandparents are buried. Note the outhouse attached to the back of the church, which is still used since the church as never had plumbing.