Lessons Learned with Kiddo

The countdown continues! Our overnight visit with Kiddo went very well. She settled in to our house nicely, demonstrating natural curiosity about everything, and we had a great (almost) 24 hours with her. No broken bones. No temper tantrums. No disasters. And I'm just talking about Roger and me.

We did learn some important things this weekend.
Here are the top 5 tidbits we can share:

So, remember how we told you that Kiddo was 6? Yeah. About that. Apparently, she's 7. While we were absorbing all of the other information about her, she had a birthday during the time between her initial referral and our first meetup. We completely blocked out the fat that she had turned a year older. Oh well.

Ice cubes in the bathtub are the best stress reliever ever. In one of our earliest meetings with Kiddo, we shared with her that throwing ice cubes into a bathtub can be a great way to relieve anger (Thanks, Katya, for that Pro Tip!). It makes noise but doesn't do any damage or make any mess. At one point during our visit, she said she was angry and asked to throw ice cubes in the tub. We had a GREAT time.

Bass Pro Shops makes for great, free fun. She noticed the store as we drove home to Ashland on Friday night and asked to visit so we went to "window shop" on Saturday and had a fun time looking at all the animals, riding the elevator, and ogling the fish.

Everyone in the family loves to get their nails painted! Even Daddy!

The longer we are with her, the better we feel about everything. Apparently the feeling is mutual as our conversations since Saturday have revolved around little else except our next weekend! I love the way we are "easing back in" to parenting. Hopefully she won't be too disappointed when real life revolves around school and work and not always the fun stuff.

So this week is IT. There have already been lots of phone calls, emails, appointments made, and logistics set preparing us for the week ahead. The week to follow will include enrollment in school, doctor visits, and MORE. If you're looking for a way to help us celebrate, consider stopping by the Gathering For Good event at Capital Ale House on Thursday to benefit CJSTUF. It might be our last chance at Happy Hour for a while. Not sure if Kiddo and I will make it to the Team CJ festivities at the 10K on Saturday but we will do our best.

Thanks again for all the love and support. We continue to feel the love and can't wait to share Kiddo with our community!

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9. Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole. There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them." I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known. This...

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen. If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life. I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into ...

It's a (not quite) Jolly Holiday

I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room a few weeks ago. While I waited, another patient came out into the reception area to make her next appointment. The receptionist offered a few dates, including one on a Saturday. The woman (I have no idea who she was; let's call her Maude) originally said yes to the Saturday date. Then the following conversation ensued: Maude: Wait! Is that Mother's Day weekend? Receptionist: Hmm. You know what? I'm not sure. When is Mother's Day? Maude: You don't know? Receptionist: (nervous laugh) Well, I guess I should know this.... Maude: Are you a mother? Receptionist: No. Maude: But...you have a mother, right? You should know these things! At this point, I was incensed with "Maude". This woman knew nothing about the receptionist. She could have recently lost a child. She could have been struggling with infertility. She could have had a mother who recently died. Or she could have a strained or just very compli...

I See What You Meme

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