Easter 2011

I was so busy with Lee and everything else that I almost forgot about Easter this year.. Luckily I had bought dresses for the girls way back in the beginning of March so I at least had that taken care of. Girls and I got invited to an Easter Egg Hunt for today at my cousin's house. We went and had a great time after a really brief crying jag on my Aunt's shoulder when she asked me how I really am doing and I got hit by a wave of emotion that I couldn't ignore. The girls had a great time and that's what mattered most. That is that they have great memories of the fun that they had today. Very thankful that we had that to look forward to and do today.

Yesterday my work had a Community Egg Hunt at the park near my mom's house. We arrived a little wet (it was raining) and a few minutes late and wound up missing the entire hunt itself. Somehow 5000 eggs were all snatched up in mere moments. Thankfully we ran into some friends that were willing to share their eggs with us. My boss made sure that the girls got a few more eggs each and we left with quite a few pink and green balloons to play with at Grandma's house. I guess we'll try again next year. We did get a picture or two with the Easter Bunny and a reporter for the local paper took our picture too.

Now that Easter is over, I'm looking forward to a week that will hopefully keep me busy enough to not dwell on the shoulda, woulda, couldas that float into my brain at a moment's notice and make me sad and mad at the same time. I head back to the toy shop on Thursday and am looking forward to it. Nights are really hard for me right now. I'm not totally good at being alone for too long yet with the girls but I'm hoping to get back to something resembling 'normal' soon enough. In the meantime it's all about keeping me and the girls busy.

Been awhile

I've been extremely busy with other stuff... most of it had to do with Lee.
He passed away on April 11th and I haven't been myself since. I did have a CarePages page for him but I've decided to stop posting there. I'll keep it up so that I can read it whenever I want to. The link there is http://www.carepages.com/carepages/OurDaddy .

The girls and I are doing the best that you can expect at the moment. There are lots of tears from all 3 of us.. Lily has not been having a good day today.. she's been really clingy and whiny. Not a good combo when I'm not feeling too confident in myself and my abilities yet. I need to keep myself going though. I have to stay strong and find my new balance for myself and my girls. That is what Lee would have wanted.

Untitled for a reason

You all know that I tend to ramble and today is going to be no different.

I've been dealing with quite a bit as of late. Most of my friends and family know the news already. Lee is dying. My wonderful husband of almost 12 years is laying in a bed at a Hospice dying. Our relationship (all 18 years) has seen more ups and downs than the stock market at times. I still love and care for Lee more than anyone will ever understand. I am going to miss him something awful and the girls I know will be very upset also. My world is getting much smaller on a daily basis. I am lucky to have so many people in our lives that care and will be there for us no matter what.

Some Updates

I haven't been blogging lately... sorry to anyone that actually reads this space besides me. Life has been busier than usual lately. Our family has been going through some challenges over the past couple of weeks and I have been putting my time and energy into that stuff lately. Plus I feel like I've been doing all I can to keep myself sane. This includes getting some knitting done. I'm happy to report that my second lace sock is going rather well. I just turned the heel tonight and now need to work on picking up the stitches that I haven't been working with to rejoin the sock together.

Anna and Lily have been working on giving up on their naps lately. They've both been giving us big fights about taking naps so we have been experimenting with this and not napping them at all. Bedtime has been quite a bit easier to get through since they are so exhausted and they are falling asleep quickly the past week or so now. Maybe once we get through this we can actually put their toddler beds together and move them out of the cribs. Hopefully that will be before or just after their 3rd birthday.

They are both also working on Potty Training (Learning). Anna has actually peed on the potty a total of 3 times (once when her panties and diaper were still dry). Lily is working on the staying dry aspect more than trying to sit on the potty at this point. There's no real pressure from us on this front at the moment so keeping it all on their timetable rather than ours.

I think that's it for the moment. Or at least all I have time for since I need to go put myself to bed. It's going to be another busy week for us.

Easier than I thought

Tonight I had what I thought was going to be a hard conversation with the girls at dinner. Anna started it for me thankfully. We've had pictures of both my Dad and Lee's Dad up for a while now on the wall by the kitchen table plus a picture of my Dad in a nice frame that a former co-worker had given me a while ago. Tonight Anna pointed at the picture of my Dad in the frame (taken just a few days before he died) and asked "Who that?". I told her that it was a picture of her Grandpa and that he would love to know her and Lily. So we talked (me mostly) about him and the picture (He on chair. He have pillow.). During the conversation she would ask or say "That Grandpa" and I'd tell her that yes that is your Grandpa and My Daddy, Mommy's Daddy. I told her that I will tell her and Lily all sorts of stories someday about my Daddy and that he was a nice guy. His name was John.

Later she saw the 2 pictures of my Dad and Lee's Dad on the wall and asked "Who that?" (pointing towards Walter's picture). So Lee told her that it is a picture of his Dad. Daddy's Dad. She then pointed to the other picture (my dad) and asked "Who that?". That's Mommy's daddy. That might have confused her a little since it's a picture of my Dad at a year or maybe around age 2 (he's wearing short sleeves and shorts and was born in the winter). I didn't hear the whole conversation since I was busy cleaning up at this point.

I have to admit that as much as I have prepared myself for this conversation, it was still hard to have. There are so many things that I want to tell them about my Dad and how much I loved him and how cheated I feel that he never got to see or do. I hold tight to my weird belief that somehow my Dad knows that these beautiful little girls exist and that he's watching out over all of us. The conversation though was alot easier than I thought it would be. I kept it to what they wanted to know (Lily was on my lap eating and listening mostly). Answered the questions that were asked and didn't give any extra info that they wouldn't understand at this point. It was a good icebreaker for all of us. We'll see where it goes from here.

Surprise !!!!

Anna is full of all sorts of surprises lately... She has peed on the potty twice for us.. only thing is that she will only produce (so far) on a Saturday and only in the morning. We have been cheering wildly for her and making a huge deal out of it and giving her a sticker for her chart when she does produce. Lily on the other hand seems to be watching what Anna does and is taking her cues from her. So far no actual pee pee from her in the potty but she'll get there in her own time. Lily likes to wear her big girl panties instead of pull-ups lately. Today actually she wore them and kept them dry for almost 2 whole hours before she had a pee accident. Not too shabby. She did try the potty a couple of times though during that time period.

Anna has a new 'game' that she likes to play with us lately.. it's called 'I have a surprise'. How it works is that she takes something and puts it behind her back and then says 'I have a 'prise for you'. Sometimes it's my book that I'm reading, her cup, a toy, her special little girl knife that I let her use for making Peanut Butter sandwiches or even a shoe. When she is ready to show you what she has she does a big reveal and shouts out "Surprise!!". It's really really cute. I look forward to this game everytime she plays it.

The Knitting Gods must be Crazy

Trying really hard not to tempt the Knitting Gods into making me slip up on the 2nd sock.

I've been really really careful on the 2nd sock so far. My only mistakes that I can tell are not doing a yarn forward once or twice (I think) and not having the correct number of stitches. Thankfully I have been remembering some very sage advice that I got from a friend that told me that I can sort of fudge things and pick up the yarn bridge between stitches to make a stitch if needed and hopefully noone will notice. A huge plus of knitting something that has a lace pattern is that there are supposed to be holes, so if an extra one pops up, it's not a huge problem.

I really am impressed with myself on this second sock so far. I haven't had to frog any of it. I'm currently past the point where I went majorly off track with the first sock and had to frog it 3 times before I got it right and had a completed sock. I think the biggest reason for the difference is that I actually have directions that are correct this time since I took the time to write out the directions for myself after going through the stress of incorrect pattern directions for the first sock and having to get them corrected quite a few times by friends and by going to the website for the pattern maker to look for corrections. Hopefully I'll soon have a complete pair of socks and then I can work on my next few projects. I still have 2 blankets on needles and want to start to make my nieces and my own girls a sweater each for Christmas. I need a really simple pattern for that. If anyone knows of one please let me know (sizes 3/4T - my girls , 6/8 - for D and 8/10 - for S).