Bandie

Today I stacked 3 thin gold bracelets on my wrist. They all belonged to my grandmother. My Bandie always wore bracelets, the tiny gold chains tumbling down her wrists when she propped herself up on her elbow in bed. That's how I think of her, mostly. Comfortably reclined in her nightgown and housecoat, adorned in gold and sparkly things.

My Bandie loved things that were pretty, and in her 81 years of life she gathered a reasonably extensive collection of things that are lovely. My Bandie passed away quietly in December, leaving her lovely things to her children, including her jewelry collection which she left to my mother, her only surviving daughter.

Last week, many of the girls in my family gathered in my mother's bedroom to ooh and ahh at the tables lined with the pretty things my grandmother left to my mother, and we each chose a few things to have and wear and think of her. This morning, I stacked those bracelets on my wrist, and I thought of my grandmother.

Sometimes I forget for a minute that Bandie died. I couldn't attend any of the services or cry at her funeral. She passed at home without any preamble or fanfare sometime in middle of the night the day after my due date with Doogleberry. Four days later, my mother dressed her body in a dark room of the mortuary; in those same moments, I was delivering my baby.

I hope my Bandie danced between the two, both rooms full of love and tears.

***

My Bandie was short, "a scrub oak among redwoods!" she used to laugh, referencing my Papa's nearly universally tall family. She was small, with olive skin and dark hair that sat on her head in soft curls. She was a lady.

Bandie was kind and thoughtful and generous. She was elegant and polished. She valued good manners, good grammar, and bad jokes. She loved Beanie babies and pigs (the decorative kind) and Rottweilers (the real kind.) She loved shopping from catalogs and QVC. She loved food and parties and clothes and flowers. She loved her friends and she loved her family.

And Bandie loved my children. I was her oldest granddaughter, and my Bug her oldest great-granddaughter. The two of them played matching games on our couch after Papa died, Bandie's soft voice rising in pitch with a child-friendly sort of sing song. She loved Mr. Baggins, with his playful little grin. And I know she loved my littlest son. I don't know exactly what life before or after this one looks like, but it brings me peace to imagine her admiring my baby's golden locks and round baby cheeks as they passed each other on that road between this life and the one beyond.

Plus, it explains why he was so late. My Bandie was never on time for anything.

***

Just as I do with my Papa, I cherish many fond memories with Bandie. My parents and I lived in her home when I was a toddler, and my mom tells me stories of myself as a two year old, like the time I unknowingly snatched one of her precious Lladro statues off the coffee table and toddled across the room with it clutched in my tiny little hand. 

Later, when I visited her home by myself as a teenager, Bandie was nervous to allow me to swim by myself while she got ready for the day in her room (a process which, it bears mentioning, took hours to accomplish.) We agreed on a plan, which, in retrospect, was pretty ridiculous: I'd float on a raft while reading a book. Every few minutes, I'd ring this enormous brass bell to let her know I was still alright. Dutifully, I floated there, ringing that silly thing every few minutes to reassure her I had not drowned. After what must have been nearly an hour of ringing every 3 or 4 minutes, my Bandie appeared at the sliding door. 

"Are you ok?!", she called. "I heard you ringing the bell so I came right down!"

It still makes me laugh to think of all the bell rings she missed, and to think that she imagined that in the process of drowning I'd be able to ring that stupid bell.

***

Bandie was particular. She appreciated the fine things in life, and enjoyed surrounding herself with beauty. Bandie expected quality.

Once, when I was 15 or so, she took me through the drive-thru at Arby's. I had never seen my Bandie eat fast food before, but someone had told her about the Reuben sandwich and she wanted to try one. She leaned far out the window and spoke loudly into the intercom system. In her deliberate way of speaking, she ordered as if she was at the finest seafood establishment.

"That Reuben you have?" she asked. "Is it really--- fresh?"

I secretly laughed, imagining a fast food joint answering that question honestly. 

But since then, I've thought more about it, and about what my Bandie meant by her question, and here is what I have come up with. Whatever you are going to do, you might as well do it right.

***

When I think about it, I guess I always thought of my Bandie a little like a bird. She seemed so... delicate, like maybe the winds and the storms of the world were sometimes too much for her fragile little wings. And in some ways, I suppose maybe it was true. I think of my Bandie in her perfectly curated nest, chirping a pretty little song but only for those who stopped long enough to hear it. I feel a little sad when I think of all the times I marched by too quickly to hear her singing.

But you know what? In lots of ways, I think I was wrong about Bandie and her bird wings. After all, in the end, being delicate and particular and fragile didn't keep her from flying.

Nutritional Facts

Today Bug asked me if she could eat salad for lunch. 

I was immediately smug. "What kind of five-year-old asks for salad for lunch?" I wondered, rather satisfied with myself. "I am basically the Nutritional Mom of the Year. Hooray for vegetables!"

I took another bite of my own lunch- warmed up leftover steak on processed white bread.I'm nothing if not a shining example to my offspring.

I dug out the bag of salad, and that's when Bug gave a detailed explanation about just what kind of salad she wanted. 

Verdict?

Plain iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. Presence of a carrot shard may warrant punishment up to and including beheading of the offending parent.

Like I said. Nutritional Mom of the Year.

Speaking of nutrition, turns out we have more than one rather particular eater around here these days. This little ball of adorable has basically only one flavor profile available to him, so you might assume he would be pretty easy to satisfy.

You'd be wrong about that, unfortunately. It's sort of a long story, but essentially one day Mama came home from a doctor's appointment to find her Doogleberry's face and neck covered in hives. He had been contentedly munching a bottle of formula, which is pretty rare for him as Mama generally serves as the pantry, and every place that formula had dribbled had immediately erupted into red, angry hives. Suddenly the terrible eczema, rashes necessitating InstaCare visits, gassiness, and that one incident of projectile vomiting (FUN! Kid is capable of some real distance!) all seemed to make sense. A call into Doogie's pediatrician supported Mama's suspicions. Kiddo's little gut is sensitive to milk proteins.

Mama rather naively volunteered to cut out dairy, thinking maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. It's not a big deal, not really. It's worth it to see our boy so happy and comfortable, he'll almost surely grow out of it in a few months, and it's not that hard to remember. Pretty much the basic rule of thumb around here these days is "if it tastes good, Kris probably can't eat it." See? Easy to remember.

Sigh. These kids.

Worth it. 

Please pass the raspberry sorbet.

Hot sill-ull (and my cake!)

Last night around 10:30, I found myself raiding my mother's pantry in search of a stray boxed cake mix. SOMEONE in our house is turning 3 today, and while I planned to make a tasty cake in a few days when we celebrate his birthday with family members, the little squirt conned me into a last minute addition.

Every day for a week or so before his birthday, I asked him what he wanted to eat on his special day. "MY CAKE!" he'd excitedly exclaim. I tried to redirect his focus to any other food-- spaghetti, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, eggs, pizza-- you know, real, actual FOOD, but had only limited success.

Which brings us to late last night, when the stinker face managed to earn his way out of bed for a brief moment by pooping in his diaper. (Potty training this kid... now there's a prospect that makes me want to poke at my eyes with a fork.) We had considered taking him to IHOP this morning for breakfast while Bug was in preschool.  His little eyes all blurry from sleep, I asked him if he wanted pancakes for breakfast in the morning.

"Nope!" he chattered, cheerfully. "I want hot sill-ull. (Which is Baggins for 'hot cereal'- basically Cream of Wheat.) With MY CAKE!"

And so, because he is just about the most delicious, delightful, and adorable little man ever, I scrounged up an old cake mix and whipped it up at nearly 11:00 at night.

As crazy as our lives are right now-- three kids! House hunting! Work!-- I couldn't let today sneak by without a little tribute to my precious Mister Baggins. My middle child. My precocious, silly, smart, goofy little dude who could not possibly have joined our family only 3 years ago.

He is kind. He is naughty. (Oh boy, is he naughty.)

 He is witty with a wicked sense of humor. He is full of energy. Mister Baggins approaches most of life the way he approaches playing with his Daddy: head first and at full speed, arms stretched out wide and that light-up-the-room grin splitting his cheeks wide open.

Baggins can charm his way into extra cell phone time with every single one of his extended family members after Mama and Daddy have cut him off. He can quote State Farm commercials (She. Sounds. Hideous. Well, she's a guy, so...) He can sing the ABCs and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" and, sort of embarrassingly, plenty of current radio hits that may or may not be entirely kid friendly. Baggins loves hunting tigers with his cousin, loves his slippers, loves his big sister, and loves Matchbox cars.

Oh yeah.

And Mister Baggins loves cake.

Mama loves you, Nugget. Right up to the moon. Happy birthday.

Doogie is born, part two.

I’ve heard that the Eskimo people have dozens of words for snow. I don’t know if it is true, but it makes sense that something with which you are very familiar would lead to very specific descriptive terms for what seem like minute details.

Maybe it is because the experience was new and unfamiliar to me, then, that I seem to lack adequate vocabulary words to describe birthing my third baby. Painful, obviously, and certainly intense, but neither word seems enough. I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic, but the overwhelming agony and then immediate ecstasy of your birth made up the most vulnerable and absolutely present moments of my life.

Surrounded by the nurses and medical student with your Daddy at my side, I suddenly felt I was drowning, swamped and gasping for air in the crushing pain of delivery. For the first time, I felt out of control, and I cried out again and again as the waves of pain crashed over me one on top of the other without relief. The pressure was overwhelming and indescribable, making it impossible to think about the past or the future or anything but surviving that very instant. 

The only moment I remember hearing any hint of anything but absolute calm and serenity in the nurse’s voice was when she called out from the room a second time.

“I need the doctor in here-- right now, please!”

I caught my breath for a brief moment, and desperately pleaded with her. “Please, is he almost here?” I begged, my voice whimpering from the pain.

“He’s coming as quickly as he can. He’ll be here very soon,” she answered, full of compassion. She assumed I was referring to my doctor, who had yet to arrive.

But here is the thing. I wasn’t asking about my doctor. It didn’t matter much to me in that moment if he made it or didn’t or who was in the room at all. I just wanted my son.

I needed YOU.

All at once, my pleas were answered. I tried for a moment to follow the hushed suggestions from the nurses to pant, to hold off delivery just long enough for the doctor to arrive, but it was futile and lasted only an instant.

“I’m pushing!” I called out. It was not a declaration of intention. It was simply a desperate announcement that, without my permission at all, my body was doing what it knew how to do. Without any input from me, I was having a baby. 

You were—FINALLY!—coming to meet your Mama.

Resigned to the fact that you were not waiting for anyone, the nurse pushed the medical student into position and confidently looked up at me.

“One push, honey, and your baby will be here.”

The Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and I have none for that moment.

I won’t lie to you, baby child. It was physical agony unlike anything I have ever experienced, but only for a moment. An instant later, you were here! Pink and screaming and perfect and then you were on my chest and every bit of that pain in an instant was just love. LOVE. It was incredible, unbelievable, perfect.

It was 1:24pm.

The doctor bounced into the room the very moment it was over (“I didn’t know we were doing it like this!” he said, surprised) and dashed over to the clamp the cord and assume all kinds of doctor-ly roles from the clearly bewildered and relieved medical student.

(A day or so later, when he came to check on me, I asked that student if that was his first delivery. He ducked his head sheepishly and nodded. Look at you, Doogleberry! Setting the precedence for awesome from your very first moments!)

The most incredible thing about your birth was how instantly amazing I felt. As soon as you were out and in my arms where you belonged, I felt energized, pain-free, and ecstatic to have such a gorgeous baby. Eventually I handed you off to your beaming Daddy, who took you to the corner of the room to see you weighed, (9 pounds 6 ounces!) measured, (19 inches long!) and wrapped up tightly.

There was some difficulty with the third stage of labor as the placenta did not detach as quickly as we would have liked. I am so grateful for my doctor, who, after missing the main event, was patient and confident and full of compassion. I nearly crawled backwards up the bed as he pressed heavily on my stomach in downward motions, apologizing repeatedly for the pain as he worked to ensure we could avoid infection and hemorrhage. He repeatedly offered IV pain medication, but I declined. I wasn’t trying to be a hero, but narcotics make me insanely drowsy (I’m such a lightweight) and all I wanted was to have you in my arms the rest of the day without falling asleep.

In the end, everything worked out perfectly. The doctor’s skill and patience paid off, and we wrapped up everything without resorting to the horrible sounding procedures the doctor had warned might be necessary if it took much longer. I stayed on the pitocin for several more hours to ensure contractions were successful in clearing everything out, and once he was done kneading my stomach I immediately felt fantastic again.

And how could I not?! Just look at you!

The two and a half weeks since you were born have been amazing. Circumstances at our house have been hectic—nearly everyone we live with has had some sort of health scare or another—but you have been window of peace for me. You are soft and sleepy and wonderful, and my recovery has been a breeze. I feel wonderful, I have healed quickly, and the constant pelvic pain that plagued me throughout pregnancy is completely gone.

And you? You are my dream. Your Daddy adores you, your siblings are over the moon, and Mama is dizzy in love.

Welcome to our family, Doogenheim. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Doogie is born, part one.

Early in the morning on Tuesday, December 10th, Daddy and I headed into the hospital buzzing with excitement to meet our baby boy. I changed into one of those oh-so-stylish hospital gowns—pale, non-descript in color with a dizzying geometric print all over it, nearly identical to those worn by patients in every hospital I’ve ever worked in. Who designs that fabric anyway?

My cheerful nurse started the IV and hung the Pitocin to start contractions, and Daddy and I talked and laughed and reveled in our growing excitement until the contractions became strong enough to interrupt our conversation. I stood at the side of the bed for a while and swayed my hips back and forth, and your Daddy pushed hard into my lower back to ease the pain. Before long, I climbed back up into the bed where I could rest between contractions.

And here is where I gush about how much I love your Daddy. This pregnancy and birthing business is not easy on the man that I married. Medicine and hospitals make him anxious. Three times now I have been lucky enough to have relatively easy, uneventful pregnancies, and all three times your father has spent the ten months from when I happily told him a baby was coming until the day we took our baby home tempering his excitement with a healthy dose of worry. But on the day that you were born, when I closed my eyes to let the waves of pain wash over me, I fell in love with your Daddy all over again. He was calm and patient and unendingly helpful—getting me ice chips and cool washcloths and very literally fanning me with the homemade fan Bug made for me to take to the hospital. I sat in the bed with my legs bent, and he dutifully pushed my knees toward my body during every contraction, pressing my hips just enough toward the back of the bed to ease some of the pain. He is just the very best man. Try to be like him, ok?

Once labor progressed enough to be distractingly painful, I wasn’t terribly social. I found, sort of to my surprise I guess, that breathing slowly and audibly through my nose like I do during yoga was calming during contractions. The waves of pain never lasted more than 5 very slow breaths, so I counted my breathing to manage each one.

I had epidurals when your sibings were born, and those births were beautiful and perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am grateful beyond words for the advances in modern medicine that allow me the privilege of walking out of the hospital healthy and with beautiful babies. That relief for the excruciating pain of childbirth exists is a beautiful miracle. On the day you were born, I had agreed to the epidural when we arrived at the hospital, but I had also considered the idea of skipping the medication this time. My thoughts weren’t part of some social statement or exercise in self-punishment, it was just that I was nearly positive I could do it without that extra intervention. Delivering your siblings happened quickly and uneventfully, and I figured I could avoid giving the anesthesiologist a thousand of our hard earned dollars if things went well. (You know, high deductible plans and whatnot.) The thought of suffering through a contraction or two hunched over and trying to hold perfectly still while the epidural was placed was just enough motivation to keep me focused, and before I knew it (about five hours from the time we arrived at the hospital), I was dilated to seven centimeters.

From delivering the Bug and Mr. Baggins, I knew that the transition portion of labor typically goes very, very fast for me. With both of your siblings, I went from seven centimeters to having a screaming baby on my chest in about 45 minutes. My experience with you was no different, only this time I was experiencing everything without the benefit of pain relief. The advanced stages of labor were incredibly intense. I remember looking at the clock at 1:00 in the afternoon, wracked with the pain of strong contractions coming one on top of the other, and saying to your daddy, “he’ll be here by two. I just know it.”

I was right.

While I had been nearly silent for the first 5 hours of labor, I found myself moaning and crying out quite a bit in the last 30 minutes. The nurses (who were AH-MAZ-ING) called for our doctor to come from his office across the parking lot to get ready for the big event. Swamped with something at the office, he sent his medical student (who I had met at my appointment the day before) because, as he put it, “things might go fast for her.”

That proved to be the understatement of the year.

To be continued...

Welcome to our family, Doogleberry.

Dearest Son,

You are freshly bathed and smell of lavender and milky baby breath, and I am watching you sleep beside me on the couch, swaddled in the softest blanket and dreaming whatever new babies dream. Your little chest rises and falls softly, interrupted by the little hiccups and chirps of a little one still unfamiliar with life on the outside.

I love you.

And I don’t want to forget these little moments, sandwiched as they are between the constant hum of family chaos—Mama and Daddy referee sibling scuffles and orchestrate the frantic rush of dinner time, bath time, tooth brushing, and pajamas while adjusting to a new little person in our family. It’s the happiest kind of circus, but the days run together and smoosh together in an indistinguishable blur. I look at the clock at night and cannot believe the day is gone with so little accomplished.

But then, I snuggled you most of the day, and that’s something.

You are the perfect addition to our little family. You have a little nose and chin that look just like your brother and sister did when they were born, and a dusting of soft blonde hair all over your head. You make all kinds of little grunting and snorting noises when you are awake, and the sweetest sighs and soft hiccups while you sleep. You love eating and sleeping and hate to be bathed and you sound like a lamb when you are happy and a lion when you are mad. You are perfect. You are a dream.

And so I’ll write it all down—even though I missed a chunk of time on this little blog—so that I can remember what it was like to juggle my three babies when they were small and we lived in a borrowed space and nothing was the same as it was 10 months ago before we found out you were coming, before we sold our house and moved, before job changes and preschool and all kinds of other little life changes flipped our routine upside down.

***

I did a lot of reading and thinking ahead of time about what your birthday might look like. I didn’t have any real agenda other than doing my very best to leave the hospital with a healthy baby in my arms. Working in the field that I do has long-since scarred me with the knowledge that there are no guarantees in this world, that scary, hard things happen every single day to people who look a lot like me, and that real life very rarely shakes out exactly the way we plan it. All I really wanted from the experience was to get you out of the deal.

But I’ll admit it, around 3 days after your due date had come and gone without even the slightest hint of baby-action, I was getting a little restless. My mom had been in the hospital, my Bandie had died, and your Daddy had made an extremely rare and therefore unnerving trip to InstaCare all in the days after you were theoretically supposed to be here, and guess what! Still no baby. 

So I ate an entire pineapple with the dimmest hope that the crazies on the Internet were right and it would put me into labor. (Hint: nope.) I lumbered awkwardly on the elliptical and took long, painful walks (waddles?) up and down the hills near Nana and PopPop’s house.

And still, no baby.

 And so, even though I had sort of hoped to avoid any unnecessary intervention, my doctor and your daddy and I decided it was probably best to give the whole process a bit of a jump start.

Spoiler alert: turns out you were worth the wait.

To be continued...

They can, but I can't.

One of the best parts about parenting is watching the unique ways little people interact with the world. Today, while willfully ignoring the near-constant stream of chatter coming from the two people in the backseat of my car, I began imagining what the social consequences would be if I, an adult, engaged in the same habits as my kids. And so, a list of things my kids do that would be inappropriate for me to do:

1. Expressing every passing thought out loud, even if that thought interrupts a current thought.

Bug: Hey Mama, I want to go to Grammy's house because LOOK A KITTY!

2. Lacking the emotional regulation to respond to even mundane suggestions with anything other than near-hysterical energy.

Me: Who wants to go downstairs?
Mr. Baggins, hopping up and down, flapping his arms wildly: Oooo! Me me me me! Peeeeese! DOWNSTAIRS!

 

*See also: flopping to the ground in dismay at any event eliciting mild displeasure.

3. Commenting on every detail of every day, no matter how uninteresting or unimportant.

Bug, while eating a picnic lunch: Hey Mom, some yogurt dropped on my arm and not my swimsuit.

Me: Ok. Go ahead and lick it off. 

Bug: I did already.

4. Finding it necessary to clarify in what form their requests ought to be granted. Mister regularly begs for "milk please in cup." You know, because of all those times I have brought a puddle of milk for him balanced in my cupped palms and required him to lap it up like a puppy.

5. Discussing our bathroom-related needs at a 7/10 volume, no matter the location or situation. 

Bug, doing the universal potty-wiggle-dance (and maybe we're surrounded by people in church): Mama? I need-a go POTTY! Right NOW! CAN'T HOLD IT!

Me: Can we color for a minute instead?

Bug, shrugging: Yeah, sure.

Baggins, with energy: I dess put POOP in my DI-PAH.

Also: a desire to dip any piece of solid food in ranch dressing (Mr. Baggins), neglecting to flush the toilet after use (Bug), and displaying a near-complete inability to stand still, resulting in spastic dancing, spinning, and/or arm flailing while waiting for parental instructions (both), and eating ice cream with the gusto it deserves.

That noise crickets make.

Yoo hoo! Anyone out there? Hello-ooo?!

So here's the thing. It's been, like, I don't know, a million years since I last wrote anything on this little space. Generally speaking, I don't believe in feeling guilty about neglecting things that are not alive and/or important, but the thing is that I actually really enjoy writing here, and more than that, I love looking back at the way things have changed since I started. It's really the only record keeping I do, and it has become something that is important to me. (First world problems, right?) So I'm starting again! Fresh starts! New beginnings and resolutions and whatever!

Here's what happened: around the time I last blogged, things started getting a little out of control free-time-wise. In addition to the usual hubbub, we decided, for reasons that seemed more complicated at the time than they do now, to remodel our kitchen in preparation to sell our home and move. Have you ever tried living without a functional kitchen while simultaneously packing a house on an extremely tight timeline with two small children? While working nights? It's an adventure!

But we did it! We wrapped up the kitchen and I somehow managed to fit our life into boxes. Our plans changed just enough so that we ended up moving to Nana and PopPop's  house, which the kids have absolutely adored. I haven't lived at home for longer than a summer break in 12 years, but to be honest, the transition has been much smoother than I ever guessed. My family has been so welcoming, and we've had the perfect balance of great people around to help with kids and enough privacy to really feel at home.

Other things that help with adjustment: the dreamy amount of counter space available to me in my mom's amazing kitchen.

As anyone who has sold a house can tell you, the move was the easy part. Navigating the ups and downs of  having a house for sale was even more chaotic, but with the help of a fantastic real estate agent who Paddy has known for several years, we made it! Our little red house has new owners, and while we'd been planning this for a while, I cried more than expected when we stood in that empty house for the last time.

I looked around at that empty house and saw the carpet where Bug crawled awkwardly when she was first learning, and the spot we put our Christmas tree, and the rooms I put my brand new babies to sleep in, and I cried until I couldn't see anymore. I thought about all the other changes we have been navigating the last couple of months, and for a second I let myself feel really overwhelmed by all of the decisions we have yet to make.

And then I picked up my baby boy, ushered my little red-head out in front of me, and grabbed my Paddy's hand. Together, my little family of 4 marched out that door and into our future.

Oh, wait. Did I say family of four?

I meant four and a half. 

Spring projects: The Back Door.

The  bummer thing for me about owning our particular 60+ year old house is that we weren't  fortunate enough to snag any of the cool architectural details that you sometimes luck out on with older homes. We don't have any cool molding it anything like that, but what we did have was this oddly embellished back door. Unfortunately, as the last area on the ground floor that I hadn't gotten around to painting since we moved in, the exterior of the door was just dirty, sad, and weird.

(The truth is that I forgot to take a picture before I cleaned it up really well and started painting the top half, so you only get the bottom part of the door for reference. Also, imagine it dirtier.)

Now, I love me a good door (see the front door transformation here) so a change was in order.

Using some paint I had around the house, I spruced up the door to a nice light grey color, and highlighted the embellishments with white glossy trim paint. This way, they look intentional instead of like some tired throw back to when my grandparents were young homeowners.

Here's the total before and after look. What do you think?

The Heart of the Home, or, Finally, my kitchen isn't a total embarrassment.

Right in the middle of a million other major life changes (they're exciting! and nervewracking! and stressful! Let's not talk about them right now!) we decided to finally finish some of the upgrades to our kitchen. As you might remember, we've done smaller cosmetic upgrades from time to time but we hadn't really tackled much of the major stuff, beyond replacing the appliances. Basically, up until last week, this was the status of our kitchen. Admit it, you're jealous of the vast, sweeping expanses of counter space. Don't worry, it's EASY and FUN to prepare dinners with only THREE INCHES OF FLAT AREA to work with.

The worst offender, by far, was the atrocious floor. It was hideous, stained linoleum with paint splatters. Interestingly, you can see that it wasn't the first ugly linoleum to be laid down. At some point, our orange kitchen must've had the very flashy green flooring you can see peeking out from under the dishwasher.

During some other era, the floor must have been this disgusting carpet, which for some reason wasn't pulled up from under the old, wider-than-standard stove. (Packing tape to hold it down is so classy, don't you agree?)

After putting it off for a million years, we decided to go ahead and redo the floors. We knew we wanted tile as opposed to a wood laminate because the rest of our home has lovely hardwood floors hiding under the carpet (just waiting for someone more energetic than me to refinish them.) We figured tile would be a better compliment to those someday-floors. Paddy's flooring guy, who also scored us the remnant carpet piece for the toy room, had a great deal on some tiles. They were a nice, large size and neutral color, so I didn't mind that we didn't really have much choice.

PopPop and Paddy scraped out the laminate that curled up the walls and pulled up the aforementioned carpet piece.

Yummy.

Particularly given the tricky stair section, we opted not to try our novice tiling skills out on our floor, and instead let professionals do the job. We are thrilled with out it turned out!

Before

And after!
(You can see we still have baseboards to add, but I was too excited to wait to share.)

Once the floors were in, we knew the hideousness of the countertops and sink would really be highlighted. Despite my best efforts, the red Rustoleum countertop paint I snagged for a great price turned out to be about as durable as a ripe peach. (CURSE YOU, RUSTOLEUM! Also, your customer service kind of stinks.)

Given the finishes in the rest of the house, we thought granite countertops would likely not be worth the dollars, particularly given that this isn't our forever house. We found a nice laminate that looks great and will hold up well.

Before

After!

We also replaced this gem of a sink. Believe it or not, I scrubbed that thing with Comet on a regular basis. Not even my furious, obsessive scraping and polishing can remove 50 years of grime, it seems.

Though you can't tell (even in person), I ended up repainting the backsplash a lighter, creamier color. The green in the new countertops ended up making the grey backsplash read really blue-ish and bizarre. I also painted the bottom trip of the cabinets where there used to be linoleum coving black to match the rest of the cabinets. Here is the final transformation!

From this:

To this!:

What do you think?

Papa

 Nearly nine years ago, in a fairly unforeseeable turn of events, I found myself in my pajamas, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my grandparents’ bedroom in the faint early morning light, my hair tied back loosely from my face. I could hear Bandie’s deep, regular breathing in the background, but Papa and I were entirely focused on each other. Our eyes met in the pale blue light, a withering smile passing between us.

It wasn’t exactly a tender grandfather-granddaughter bonding moment. In fact, he didn’t offer me ONE SINGLE WORD of wisdom or life lessons.

Instead, I was using most of my body weight to force down the plunger of a large syringe full of hot water into a frustratingly small plastic tube that went directly into my Papa’s stomach. The goal was to dislodge a hard, congealed clump of dried liquid nutrition that was clogging the tube; we joked that when it finally broke free it would shoot right out the back of him. And we’d been trying for nearly a half an hour.

We did eventually force that chunk free, and lots of others, too. We spilled bright red Gatorade on their pristine bedroom carpet in the middle of the night. We survived a potentially fatal medication error (thank you, moron pharmacist), and we survived him re-learning how to drive, including a near-miss with a semi-truck. His slow reflexes pulled our car right in front of the speeding truck, and when he realized what he’d done, my Papa swore—loudly, clearly, and intentionally. I didn’t mind; it was good to hear his voice. We covered his swollen, flaky legs in lotion. We made a few trips to the ER to reinsert the feeding tube into the open hole into his abdomen until I finally learned how to fix it myself, and we entertained a parade of therapists and nurses who slowly nursed him back to health after a devastating aneurysm repair over the course of one impossibly short college summer break.

That summer I spent hours weeding his impossibly congested flower beds, and he took wobbly steps outside to inspect and critique my work. It is only now that it occurs to me that perhaps his impulse to be completely in control of those petunias was more about his own inability to be at all in control of his own body’s painfully slow recovery. Purple petunias, I guess, can handle the grumbling.

***

Last Friday night, my Papa died.

And while I have wrapped my head around the idea that he is gone today, it is somehow impossible to wrap my heart around the idea that he will still be gone tomorrow—that when that garage door opens to let me in the next time I visit, he won’t be standing at the top of the stairs, his hunched shoulders leaving him shorter than his regular six-foot four height.

I have memories of my Papa that are different than many of my peers’ memories of their grandfathers. When I was young, Papa was strong and robust. He taught me to ski and built me bedroom furniture. Maybe other people haven’t seen their grandfathers in swimsuits; I have swum with mine in the pool behind his house in California more times than I can count, both before and after he acquired the long purplish scar down the front of his chest. When I think of my Papa, I think of his tall frame and strong arms, his thick, course, wavy hair forced into perfect submission with gallons of hairspray and the sheer, overwhelming force of my Papa’s will.

It was inconceivable that he look the least bit disheveled. Other people look disheveled. Papa looks perfectly composed, pressed shirt tucked in and slacks perfectly ironed and belted, and he smells of Drakkar Noir.

***

That summer, after weeks of leaving me solely in charge of his nutrition, hydration, and transportation, the day finally came when the speech therapist asked us to bring solid food to the appointment. Weeks of strapping electrodes to his throat by wrapping his neck and face in CoBand (“I look like a nun”, he’d point out, wryly) had paid off, and it was time to try to eat. A turkey sandwich was on the menu.

Though I had single-handedly dosed his medications—blood pressure, anti-coagulation, supplements, pain medications—without the least bit of supervision, he hovered anxiously behind me while I pulled the condiments from the fridge.

“Mayo on that piece, and mustard over here. You can put the lettuce wherever you want, but the turkey has to go that side and the avocado over here.” He directed, squinting just slightly in concentration.

I put the knife down and turned to him slowly, one eyebrow raised to show my mild displeasure at his coaching. He smiled, understanding the irony of his bossiness without a word, but unrelentingly added, “And don’t forget the pepper.”

Papa was back.

***

Once, when I was too young to fly by myself, my Papa drove me from Utah to their home in Northern California. I remember very little about the trip, other than that we went together, just the two of us, in his old, brown Honda, and that we stopped on the salt flats to let me stretch my short legs. I must have made him crazy with my incessant four-year-old chattering.

He bought me fruit snacks.

I never got fruit snacks.

Years later, we made the trip many more times with my siblings and grandmother. We towed his trailer over long miles on the way to the redwood forests, playing a silly game where we picked at item on the horizon and guessed how many miles away it was and then watched the odometer, cheering at whoever guessed closest, all the while Bandie snoring contentedly in the passenger seat. Traditionally, on the way from our home in Utah to his, we stopped at the Peppermill Casino in Wendover for brunch, and Papa put the change from our check in the slots on the way out. I remember his wide grin when he made a few quarters, and his refusal to put them back in the machine to try again.

“Nope,” he said, with finality. “That’s how they get you.”

***

Before that day with the turkey sandwich, Papa was prohibited from swallowing, including his own saliva. He had a suction machine at home, but on the long road trips to appointments, he brought a long a small Dixie cup and every few minutes, he’d quietly spit in to it. It must have been torture for my proper Papa to find himself spitting into a cup. It must have been nearly unbearable.

At least that’s what I tell myself when I remember the time he asked me to pull to the side of the road a mere 6 houses away from home, apparently unable to wait a moment longer to throw out the offensive cup. He unrolled his window, and took aim at the open garbage can a neighbor had left out on the street for pickup.

He missed. Widely. The cup bounced off the can, flinging his last hour’s worth of spit all over the can and road.

Enormously amused at himself, he laughed out loud, and then turned to me without hesitation.

“Just leave it. Let’s go home. They’ll never know.”

***

Papa wasn’t a perfect person. He made mistakes. He could be formal and stubborn and old-fashioned, he cursed, he grew short-tempered when he didn’t feel well, and as it turns out, he was persnickety about the construction of his turkey sandwiches.

Who wants a perfect person around, anyway? All I needed was a perfect Papa.

I miss you, Papa. I love you. Slug bug green.

Mister Baggins Turns Two.

Hello, sweet son-

Exactly two years and twenty minutes ago they put you on my chest, naked and sticky and pink and crying like a baby lamb. I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs with air and marveling at the roundness and realness of you. The new emptiness in my belly was soothed by the weight of you in my arms, and I looked upward through my tears at your daddy, barely believing you were here.

You were finally here, but really, you had been mine all along. Before I saw you and held you and nuzzled your soft baby skin, and before I felt you kick and tumble and wedge your wiggly little self into that spot in my pelvis that ached all through the time I grew you, and even before I knew of you at all, you were mine. You are woven into my soul because I am your mother and you are my son and there cannot be a time in the universe when that was not true. 

And those thoughts, my boy, are what I work very hard to keep in my mind when I find you covered from head to toe in bright blue bath paint a whopping FIVE ENTIRE MINUTES after I pulled your clean, drippy self out of the tub. I look at the blue gloppy mess dripping down the bathroom cabinets and spreading all over the tile floor and I think, MAN that kid is so lucky that I like him.

And listen to my words, son, you ARE lucky. You are lucky that you have an adorable, impish, toothy little smile that fills my heart with sunshine because otherwise, SO HELP ME CHILD, I might have simply let the vultures have you after I found your freshly-dressed self grinning widely and sweetly repeating the phrase "sorry, Mama" over and over again while you methodically pumped all the liquid hand soap from the bathroom sink down the front of your shirt and on to the floor. And then threw the container in the toilet when I caught you.

Oh yes you did. 

Someday, you will have a curious little guy of your own with chubby little cheeks and a penchant for dumping snacks on to the carpet at every opportunity and playing with the toilet plunger on the carpet no matter where it is hidden and guess what? You will NOT sell him to the gypsies, however tempting that may be after he smears your makeup all over his face and clean clothes. (Oh yes you did.) Do you want to know why? Because somehow your father didn't sell YOU to any roving bands, not even when you dragged your sister's Strawberry Shortcake stool out of her room and into the kitchen, climbed on it, and cheerfully swirled and flapped your hands into the water left soaking in the crockpot in the sink, soaking the sleeves of your clean dinosaur pajamas in spaghetti sauce-infused dishwater.

OH. YES. YOU. DID.

You will cherish that little boy of yours, Buddy, just as much as we cherish you, even when he squirts Windex into his mouth (yep, that too) or empties your wallet for the one millionth time, flinging insurance cards and credit cards and driver's licenses above his head like rice at a wedding, or if he soaks his diaper, pajamas, and sheets with baby pee every. single. blessed. morning yea, from now even until the end of time, amen and amen.

You'll love him, because he is a treasure.

You are a treasure. You are MY treasure, and you always will be. I love you to the moon and back.

Happy birthday, Mister Baggins. 

Love,
Mama