Stuology

For as far back as I can remember, my grandfather would tell me, “I want to be buried in a coffee can.” Everybody knew of this request. He drank coffee occasionally, but he wasn’t a coffee fanatic. He was just…overly thrifty. We always joked about it with him, but when he died, we found out that he had a coffee can saved for the occasion, and had it for quite some time. When making his arrangements, my mother and aunt were told that he could not be buried in a coffee can because it was against federal law.

So why does he get to be buried in a Pringles can?

It didn’t say that the can was put inside of an urn, which we were told we couldn’t do either. I’m guessing that we were probably lied to.

His can of choice was Maxwell House.

Public reminder for family members that read this: We are having an “Easter” get together on Saturday. Yes, tomorrow. People are welcome to come over around 3:30. We will eat around 6:00pm and watch the KU/UNLV game which starts at about the same time. I’m probably going to order pizza.

There seems to have been a huge non-communication about this on Mac and my part. Sorry. I’ll even call people.

Mac is moving the 360 into the bedroom so he has entertainment and pain distraction from his surgery that is tomorrow. I’m not nervous about the surgery, but I’m finding myself nervous about the recovery. You’d think that I was the one that is going through this. I will probably feel the same way that he did with my James recovery. You want to be able to have the power to do something about the pain, but you won’t be able to do anything.

Anyhow, totally going to lie in bed and play the 360 tonight. I haven’t done that since, um…my Sega.

James has been moving around more–cruising along furniture. I’m counting down until he decides to let go and make a break for it. He’s getting so much better with food as well. He’s mostly lost his gag reflex, and is eating more solids.

Day 60: Josh

This is my 3-year old nephew, Josh. He is the youngest of my brother’s clan. It is nice to be able to take a photograph of a child who can hold still long enough for me to take it. I tried again with Ada last night, and nothing would make her stay in one place for more than a couple of seconds. That’s how she always is, and it is very difficult to get a photo of her. I got one, eh, it is okay, photo of Ada by trying to get her to pretend like she is sleeping. That bought me about 20 seconds of shooting. James is getting equally hard because there isn’t anything as interesting to him as my camera lens. I have lots of pictures of his close up face trying to eat my camera.

There are some things I’d like to learn about portrait photography, but unfortunately, I don’t have a model or a good space to set up and try them out. I have about zero room in my house now. I guess I’ll have to wait until the weather is nice so I can park the cars outside and use my garage.

Day 58: Stephanie

I typically upload my photo before I pack up for work, or plan ahead and upload it the night before and just mark it private. I did neither, so I’m posting this late.

This is my seven year old niece, Stephanie Lyn. In our family, we pass on middle names, and she was the lucky one to be named after me. It was fantastic to have her here since my opportunities to visit with her are rare. The one thing I remember most about her when she was younger was at 1 1/2 years old, I could understand about 90% of what she said. I could never believe that I was talking to a 1 year old. Now at 7, I can not believe that I’m talking to only a 7 year old. Her intelligence is amazing. That could be a biased opinion, since she is part of “Clan Lyn” as I call it. The conversation usually goes:

My brother: She thinks she knows everything.
Me: She doesn’t think she knows everything. She does know everything. She’s a Lyn.

Day 48: Happy Birthday

Chris, Stacy and the kiddos have left. There were a lot of people in this house, and half of them were age 9 and under. I’m exhausted.

Five of us adults left yesterday early evening to go gambling in Kansas City, leaving Mac alone with all six kids. He is brave.

This morning after I got Ada and James dressed, I mixed up a batch of cupcakes. Stephanie and I talked about doing some for her dad (my brother). I told that we could, so I started early in the morning so they could get on the road to travel back to Hutch. I made eleven^* and one round cake. Steph decorated the round cake.

My coffee pot wouldn’t grind coffee this morning. Talk about a bummer. Time with the kids here seems like it has been filled with constant running around and cleaning. I’m just too tired to look at it now. I hope I get some energy by tonight so I can make coffee tomorrow.

This birthday celebration for my brother marks the end of the food season. November - February is marked with so many holidays and birthdays that it is one big food fest it seems. I need to hit the CMD again. Seriously.

*One of my square cupcake holders is missing. I’m guessing it was accidentally thrown away last weekend. I caught myself almost throwing one away today.

  Ada and James - Summer 2007 
  Originally uploaded by Mac and Mel Wisler.

We decided to go ahead and get the kids pictures taken. Mac wanted to get family pictures for his Father’s day present. He agreed to my plea to wait for pictures until end of October to give me more weight loss time. In the meantime, our grandmothers have back-to-back birthdays, so we got the kids pictures taken. We are taking one for Mac’s grandmother this weekend to her birthday party. I’m going to mail a framed one to my grandmother.

My cash monies diet is working well. It was hit and miss at first with lots of fluctuations. I think I’ve finally found my calorie limit to make it work. I’ve been on it 3.5 weeks, and I hit the 8lb mark this morning.

I took a vacation day today to get other things done besides pictures. One of those things was to get my hair touched up. My roots were showing. Charity redid my color, and I love it. I’ll have to get Mac to take a picture. My cut is a little different too. I didn’t end up liking the back of my first hair cut. I still have the a-line cut, but it is textured a lot more. I like it.

  Ada at the wading pool
  Originally uploaded by Mac and Mel Wisler.

Today, which Mac declared the hottest day ever and blamed global warming even though the only thing to blame is that we are in Kansas in August, we took the kids downtown for some lunch, and then some time at the kid’s wading pool. Ada and I enjoyed it. James–both of them–tolerated it. When I came home though, I felt bone-creaking tired. After my treadmill time, I felt even more tired and started getting an instant headache, but in the back of my head instead of my typical eye-strain headaches. It turns out that in making sure Ada and James and Mac were sunscreened, nobody–even myself–remembered me. I was wearing a sundress, so now I have a strongly-pink back. I also took my camera to practice shooting Ada. She isn’t a good subject since she will not hold still. This shot is the only one that I got of her facing me. The rest are of her back. Even James wouldn’t look at me. The sprinkler in the pool was nice enough to not turn its back on me though.

We hired a babysitter so we could go out on Saturday, staying in KC until Sunday. It was nice to be out with just adults. It was nice to wake up without the crying of children. I also picked up three new nail polish colors. Surgery and the Big Black Death Plague that swept through out house disrupted me doing my nails. I ended up with a really bright pink-slightly purple, a watermelon color and a metallic orange. We picked up Ada a pair of sunglasses with flashing led lights in the rim–just in case she gets invited to a toddler rave. I got James a teether and a nice soft toy to squeeze since he digs doing that. James got along really well with this babysitter. We are going to try to hire her one more time so we can go out–perhaps in two weeks. She goes back to school mid-August. Not at KU
I grilled some fantastic steaks this evening, so we ended our weekend with a yummy meal. Mac got a branding iron from Hilary for his birthday, so I branded our steaks with an “M” and a “W.”

Both Ada and James were up at 6:00am (but not for us, we were asleep!), and James is trying to sleep, but I’m not going to let him. I’m going to try to play with him for about two more hours. Ada didn’t take a nap today either. Hopefully, by 7:30 - 8:00 both children will be asleep and we can go to bed, watch a movie while I do my nails.

Tags: weekend, family

Up until 2004, I went through life feeling content and happy just being the mother of puppies.  Even when I was really young, I declared that I wasn’t going to get married because I didn’t need to be married, and I wasn’t going to have kids. I was going to have a puppy farm–a large-acre plot of land where the unwanted puppies could come and live. However, I’m different than a lot of the childless people that I know . I like children. When I was young, I loved being the babysitter. When my siblings had children, I adored being the aunt. In both situations, it was only temporary. I was not their parent. I wasn’t driven to exhaustion by the time I arrived at home at the end of a day’s work, and then had to deal with children. I wasn’t trying to balance the day to day mundaneness of the household. I’d show up, have tons of fun playing or teaching them to do weird things, let them occasionally break those small, non-harmful rules, and then I would go home. The kids thought I was cool. I thought they were cool. But I never wanted any of my own.

Then Mac came along, and he did want them. And he convinced me. I’m still trying to figure out how. I am at times completely exhausted and still have to deal with children and deal with them calmly. I have the day to day mundaneness of the household chores. I don’t get out much anymore. For reasons like tonight, I don’t care.

Putting Ada to bed can be difficult. It takes the right book, the right music or the right toy. Tonight, she started her half-cry/half-whine, and I just patted my hand on her new pillow, and said "lie down on your pillow." She really likes pillows, so she did and smiled. Then she sat up, grabbed a doll from the end of the bed, and lied back down with it by her side. I grabbed her blanket, and covered her and her doll up. I said goodnight and was walking toward the door when I heard her say, "mama." I turned around and said, "yes, Ada." Then she said, "’night." I stopped and just looked at her tiny head and wisps of hair on her big pillow, her big eyes and soft pale skin, her tiny smile. My heart just swelled with love. I wanted to just stare and stare at her so I could burn the moment into my retinas. I said, "goodnight, Ada. Love you." and left the room when I really wanted to drop to my knees and declare her the most beautiful creature ever. And cry. I never had that when I was the babysitter or the aunt. Now I even better understand why parents take so many pictures of their children. They grow up so fast, and even if it took 10,000 pictures, it would be worth that many to capture just one heart-swelling moment forever.

I haven’t written one of my Good Feelings posts in a long time. I was overdue, so I thought I would share a mother-daughter moment that I would normally not even mention.

Lastly, the moral of the story: