What happens next?

Many of you who read my blog know about my friend Deanna and her daughter Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn passed away on Thursday from Neimann-Pick Type A. It was an awful, grueling battle to watch from a distance. I can't imagine what it was like to watch up close and to live every day. Though we all knew the end was near, it still shook me to my core. I still check Deanna's blog every day expecting an update. The reality that God now has Kaitlyn has not set in for me. This brings me to where my thoughts are today. Today Kaitlyn is being laid to rest. My thoughts frequently turn to what do the Bourgeault's do now? Deanna and Chip have literally been by Kaitlyn's side day and night for months. Chip said on Facebook the other day that the two have not been in the car together in he can't remember how long. Deanna literally never left the house and probably rarely the master bedroom toward the end. Their dedication to loving their child is awe inspiring. Now, with Kaitlyn at peace, I imagine it must feel strange and maybe a little overwhelming to find some new normal. What do you do with all of those hours you filled caring for sweet Kaitlyn? My guess is you spend it trying to keep Cole's life "normal."

What I do know is that it really does put in perspective life and love and giving and healthy children? You know? So as the weeks and months go by, let's all say a prayer of thanks for what we have and one for the Bourgeault's as they adjust to life without their sweet girl.

Happy Birthday Sweet Emma

Dear Emma,

You celebrated your second birthday on Friday. I can't believe that you are two. It seems like you were just learning to roll over. You have learned so many things over the last year. You have mastered walking and have mastered running too. You really like to practice running away to the swings! You have started singing songs to us which is completely adorable. Twinkle, Twinkle Mommy Star is your favorite. Though you have been known to bust out in a rousing rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes too! And let's not forget the Itsy, Bitsy Spider! You are also learning your ABCs. You can recognize letters as letters and then start singing ABCDEFG mumble mumble mumble Q R S T U V and then you move on. 5 and 7 are your favorite numbers and your favorite color must be yellow since you think all things are yellow. You are very well mannered and always say please and thank you and sometimes even you're welcome if we don't say it fast enough! You are also a great helper and love to help with the laundry and unloading the dishwasher.

The thing that I love most about you is your spirit. You are a girl who  knows what she wants and I love that. As we look toward this third year of your life I am excited to see what crazy antics you come up with. I'm excited to watch you learn to use the potty (I'm not excited about the mess.) I'm excited for you to sleep in a big girl bed and I'm excited to hear the stories you come up with. Mostly I'm just excited to have you as my daughter. I love you baby girl.

Friendships and Singing

As I watch Emma playing with her little friends, especially Morgan, I hope that she has the gift of life long friendships. This has been weighing heavily on my mind lately. Most of my friends I have had for years and years. As an adult it is really hard to make new friends. All of my new friends are actually moms of kids in Emma's classes. We have a lot in common in that we are raising toddlers to be good people. We can commesurate on not being able to go out in public, bedtime routines gone astray and how to get our toddlers to eat more than 5 things. I love it. I'm very grateful for my new found friends.

This past year and old friend and I parted ways. Honestly it was something that had needed to happen for a long time. Yet, I am still grieving the loss. Really I'm grieving the loss of who she was and who I was and the friendship we had long ago. Over the years we have both changed and grown in different directions. In hind sight, maybe she and I were never that great of friends anyway. Friends give and take and I'm not sure that happened with us in a balanced way. Still I grieve. And the hardest part is that we have mutual friends so we still see each other and I get a little sad. It's hard to explain.

So as one friendship has ended, others have grown. My next door neighbor (Morgan's mom) and I have really gotten to know one another over the last few months. Trying to keep toddler's entertained will do that I guess. Our husband's are similar and share similar interests which is nice and our kids fight like sisters. The funny part is that we let them because they are both only children and it's good for them to be challenged and to have to share. Having kids makes making friends a lot easier!

And now for the update on the toddler. She turns 2 on Friday. I cannot even believe it. She transitioned to early preschool a few weeks ago and has picked up some new tricks. In the middle of playing with her toys she will burst into song. It is absolutely the most adorable thing ever. Twinkle, Twinkle Mommy Star (from her new CD) and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes are her favorites.  And she is in the "I do it" stage. Except she says "Emma do" or "Me do" or "Ma do" most of the time. It's cute. She has also learned to put on her own coat! We lay it upside on the floor and she puts her arms in and flips it over her head. Ta Da. It's wonderful. She is growing up so fast and learns so many new things every day. Last night in the bath tub she was saying "Oh gosh" which reminds me to curb my language. Mental note on that one. And I really think she is going to love gymnastics. That kid loves for her daddy to throw her in the air, flip her over, help her jump on the couch...all that crazy stuff. Too bad I haven't found a gymnastics class for 2 year olds. She does do Romp N Roll at school and she loves it.

So that's the update for today. Enjoy.

Snow Play

During Emma's first year of life we had a few snows but she was always sick or not walking or something so she never went outside into the snow. Today, she sledded for the first time. It wasn't much snow but it sure was fun!

Look at this face! You wouldn't know she is a bully.

Good thing I'm cute.

Ahh my sweet Emma. I always knew that she'd be a leader since her mom and dad are. What I didn't know is that she would also be a bully!

Sweet pea is going through a tough phase right now I guess. She has gotten past the hitting herself or others which is great. Now she is on to bullying her friends. Her BFF Morgan was over on Sunday and rather than being excited to play with her friend, she hid her toys. The girls stand on stools to play with the alphabet letters on the garage door and suddenly Morgan is crying. I look and Emma has taken her stool and put her own stool away. Nice. Now in all honesty this is probably because 1. she didn't take a nap and 2. it's her house and  her toys. I'm hoping that if the situation were reversed that Morgan would do the same but I may be kidding myself.

She's also struggling with some separation anxiety at school. Worse than we've ever encountered  before. Every morning Mike drops her off and she clings to him pitifully. Toys, other kids and the teachers can't calm her down. A teacher actually had to walk her down the hall so that Mike could leave the other day. And this is the week that she is supposed to transition into the early preschool room though I don't think she has just yet.

Amid all of this, Emma busted out her cutest move ever. Just as we were up to HERE with her on Sunday, she said "scano." Mike and I looked at her and asked her to repeat it. She did. Nana and Pop-pop were on the phone so they heard it to. I said is your name Emma Toscano and she shook her head and said Emma Scano. SOOOOOO Cute. Of course she knows this because we are constantly calling her by her full name when she is in trouble! LOL.

Ahh kids they sure are funny and a good thing they are cute too!

Perspective

I look at my blog every day as I am reading others and have been feeling guilty for not posting recently.It isn't that I have nothing amusing to say about Emma. I do. She's a holy terror these days. Smacking teachers. Smacking herself. Banging her head on the floor when she's mad. Throwing a major fit at Cici's pizza last week, a place we thought we'd be safe to have a meal out. It's a challenging time to be a parent.

Still, my heart has been full for another little girl lately. I've written about Kaitlyn and her mom Deanna before. On Jan. 13 her family got the news that her lungs had begun to fill with fluid and then a day or two later word came that her liver was failing. It's only a matter of time before her sweet life on Earth comes to an end. Every day and every night I say a prayer for her and for her family. Every day I pray for a miracle. When I look at photos of Kaitlyn, I see Emma.

In coping with the grief that I have been feeling for a child I have actually never met but love dearly, I have googled things like "what happens at the end of life" and "near death experiences." I wanted to find some sort of comfort that God is out there I guess. I feel powerless to help Kaitlyn and her family. I have cried hysterically on my bathroom floor so that no one could hear me. I have asked every one of my friends on Facebook  to pray.

Many things have come out of Kaitlyn's journey. For me probably the biggest thing is perspective. Emma's antics are just the antics of a typical two year old. I am blessed to be able to complain about her tantrums, privileged to be able to brag about her accomplishments and lucky to be able to enjoy her hugs and kisses.

I am not a Whole Foods mother

 Before I had a child, I had a picture of the type of mother I'd be. Probably we all do I guess but if you are like me, reality is not at all what you pictured. I pictured myself as the type of mother who was overprotective, jumped every time my child fell, cooked lots of different veggies and only served organic food to my sweet child. I would never wipe food off and give it to my child after she threw it on the floor nor would I allow my child to watch too much TV. In reality, Emma lives on about 5 different foods and has eaten her fair share of floor food.

As I was leaving Whole Foods yesterday I realized I am so not a Whole Foods mother. Daddy went go kart racing so Emma and I went to the Children's Museum in Short Pump where we frolicked and played for an hour before heading over to Whole Foods for milk. Daddy likes the taste of Whole Foods milk the best so off we went. Now I will stop right here and tell you I never venture to Short Pump let alone Whole Foods and especially not on a  Saturday. This earrned me a WTF was I thinking. The store was absolutely mobbed. Yuppies and trendsetters were taking up every aisle, just staring at the many organic and wholesome things. Mainly they were waiting in line for the free samples and drinking wine at the wine bar...oh and buying bread. Emma at this point was so over stimulated and ready to go  home that I should have known better than to even go in the store. We were going to buy some veggies but the price and the crowd and Emma's patience prevented this. So off we go to get some milk. I quickly put three gallons of whole milk in the cart and move on to the skim milk where an old couple is literally just staring at the massive selection of milk. Of course, they are right where I need to be. I quickly give Emma a sample of a potato chip to munch while I politely ask the old couple if I could get to the milk. Grab three gallons of skim milk (and some rather odd looks) and move on. I now have six gallons of milk in my cart. People around me are looking at me like I'm crazy or I am keeping a secret about an upcoming blizzard. We try to go down the aisle with the kid breakfast stuff. I grab  a $4 box of Abby Cadabby organic oatmeal and put it in the basket. Emma demands Elmo oatmeal instead but won't give up the box of Abby oatmeal. A fit ensues and we end up with the Abby oatmeal as people continue to look at me with scorn. I might add that I do notice that no one else in the store has a toddler crying her head off and throwing things  out of the cart.

We hit up a few more aisles for overpriced food that I hope Emma will eat but know that she won't. Pick up some meat which is totally worth the price and snag a few pieces of cheese for Emma to sample while Mommy gets her dinner and daddy's. I try to wait in line for pretzel bread for Daddy but Emma is having no parts of this so we go to check out. Emma throws her blanket on the ground and is trying to get out of the cart. I'm informing her that this is why people use birth control. More looks. The nice cashier asks if I want my meat separate from the rest of the food in the bags. I inform her that I don't care as long as she is fast so that Emma doesn't lose it completely. We pay for our stuff and are out of there.

As I'm driving home I realize that 1. I am not a Whole Foods person or mother. 2. There is a reason that toddlers don't go in public and 3. I am so not the mother I thought I was going to be.

I head home and prepare my dear child a deliciously overpriced organic child bean burrito and fruit. She skips the burrito and eats half the fruit before demanding non-organic cheese and half of my chocolate chip cookie. And I'm okay with that.