a stolen meme

I can't concentrate long enough to write a thoughtful post because Aidan is in front of me being so incredibly adorable - I keep giggling every time he does, which is often - so here's a meme I considerately nicked from Carissa. Have fun learning a little more about me:

I AM… (I'll just leave it at that: "I am".)
I WANT… a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A pink one, preferably.
I HAVE… a perfectly good vacuum cleaner, and a bad case of I-want-itis, apparently.
I KEEP... too much stuff. But I love making my twice-yearly trips to Goodwill to clean it all out - so therapeutic!
I WISH I COULD… redo some major decision/turning points in my life with the perspective I have now.
I HATE... cilantro. (I've said that many times, but so strong is my hatred, it bears repeating.)
I FEAR... something happening to either or both of my men.
I HEAR... Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, my husband's car pulling into the driveway, and Aidan's giggling. Awesome.
I DON’T THINK... it's right that political campaigns spend more time bashing the other candidate rather than truthfully present their proposed plan of action. It makes me not want to vote at all, really.
I REGRET... writing off so many people in school because I assumed they wouldn't like me.
I LOVE… cooler weather, and that some of it has arrived today.
I AM NOT... overspending this Christmas season.
I DANCE... like the stiff white woman that I am.
I SING… all. the. time. Love it.
I NEVER... sleep on my back.
I RARELY… watch scary movies. I don't like 99% of them.
I CRY WHEN I WATCH… Monsters Inc. When Sulley has to leave Boo behind in her room at the end, or when he roars and makes her cry - ugh. Big nasty tears.
I AM NOT ALWAYS... weepy when I watch Pixar films.
I HATE THAT... drivers are so bad around here.
I’M CONFUSED ABOUT… uh, pretty much everything.
I NEED... a nap. Oh pretty please?
I SHOULD… stop using the word "should" in so many sentences about myself.

TV fast: the outcome

I totally forgot to tell you guys about this - so sorry. Parenthood distracts you like that sometimes.

So, we went a whole week without TV, no cheating. No movies on the DVD. No reruns during the day. No TV on the Internet. Not even any Baby Einstein for my little munchkin, although we played Baby Bach for him yesterday, and I have never seen a two-month-old so transfixed in all my life. He was completely mesmerized.

(I know, I know. I'm completely setting myself up for a bazillion TV-is-baaaad-for-kids comments. He only watches it for a few minutes a day, I promise. Leave me alone.)

Okay, so back to the original idea: no TV for a week. It was interesting, to say the least.

I did get some good reading done, just like I had wanted. Among some other books, I read The Kite Runner, which was totally awesome and made me bawl lots of therapeutic tears.

I didn't spend too much time online, either, even though I'm mad guilty of that most of the time. I knew that would be just as useless as sitting in front of the TV all day, so I tried to reign myself in a bit.

I did get some nice time in with Aidan, and I even took some pictures of my little Sweet Pea that I'm really proud of. They are, of course, still stuck on the camera. I mean, I didn't get that productive, people.

What I was most looking forward to was the QT I would spend with Jason. All that uninterrupted quality time with no distracting elements.

Uh HUH.

It turned out that we did spend a lot of time together, but it was mostly silent. Is that so sad? We didn't talk a whole lot. In fact, I spent a lot of those meals - that were meant to be intimate reconnections - sulking or eating in stony silence. I didn't overdo it on the Internet overall... but in the evenings when we were at home together, yeah, we were sitting in the same room, TV off but completely absorbed in our own laptops. This was NOT the outcome I had wanted.

Apparently, turning the TV off meant dealing with a lot of crap we'd both either ignored, suppressed, or completely missed altogether. And maybe we weren't so good at that. I wasn't, at least. I'd had a lot of frustration about being a new mom, feeling lonely (gee, wonder why?) and sleep-deprived and left to do a lot of the parenting while Jason got to go to work and live his pre-baby life relatively uninterrupted. I should have talked with him about it, but I hadn't, not before that week. Maybe all those moments with the TV blocked it all out, I don't know. But during the TV fast week, it all came bubbling to the surface.

We really didn't talk about it all, actually, until Friday night when we were supposed to meet our friends for a night at Disney. We were headed down the road, all was good, I was feeling fine, and then... blaggggghhhh. It all came out. I'll spare you most of the gory details, but suffice to say, by the time we were in the parking lot at EPCOT, I was in tears and demanded to be brought home. Spent that night and most of the next day trying to run away from pressures that felt too overwhelming.

We talked that weekend and got everything out in the open, healed some sore spots, reconnected, snuggled a lot. It's all okay now, really. I'm not trying to run away anymore. And the TV fast turned out to be a really powerful lesson for us both, that we need more than just a week to pour the best parts of our days into each other instead of wasting them, so that when those critical moments happen, it isn't akin to a bullet train hitting us both in the heart. That we're not staring at each other, silent, wondering how to communicate when we don't have the constant drone of the TV to distract us. That we love each other, and love each other WELL, instead of loving our technology a little too much.

kids make liars out of you: the sequel

...and Aidan did NOT sleep through the night last night.

Maybe he'll prove me wrong tonight... and sleep until 7am?

Hmmmmm...

kids make liars out of you

Remember my last post? About how it was so hard to find joy at 4am?

Not 24 hours after I posted that, I found it. At 4 am. As I slept blissfully because - shock of all shocks - SO WAS AIDAN.

That's right. My little boy slept through the night last night, and I could not be prouder to be proven wrong about his sleeping habits.

We fed him a a big bottle at 10:15pm, got him all fed, burped, changed, and wrapped up in his swaddler (aka the Baby Strait Jacket), and put him down at 11pm. His eyelids were barely open, and he was ready for bed. 3:30 came along, I hear him fuss a little bit over the monitor, so I go in to pop his binky back in his mouth. It's been our routine, this binky-popping in the middle of the night. He'd fuss, I'd put the binky back in, then 15 minutes later, he'd fuss again, I'd get out of bed... you get the picture. Sort of like hitting the snooze button on my son. It's my way of trying to delay a feeding I don't really want to do, and lately, he'd only been taking 1 or 2 ounces anyway.

So, I popped the binky back in. Went back to bed. Next thing I know, Jason's getting up, and it's 5:30. The monitor is silent, but I'm too groggy to make a big deal about it. Maybe Jason fed him, I thought groggily. Back to sleep.

I wake up, no alarm, no sound over the monitor, at 7:15am. I had about 3 seconds of feeling well-rested before the panic set in: why didn't he wake up for his bottle? I threw myself out of bed, horror scenes flying through my brain, and ran into his nursery. And there he was, still swaddled, binky firmly planted between his lips, sleeping peacefully.

Friends, it was the parting of the clouds, the light shining from heaven, the angels singing sweet melodies. Oh, glorious moment that I realized my son slept through the night! All morning, I kept squeezing him, hugging him, saying "Good boy!", and Aidan gave me these withering looks like I was mentally unbalanced.

That's okay. I'm just grateful Aidan has joined his parents in a long family line of champion sleepers. Good boy!

finding joy...

...is a little hard to do at 4 in the morning, after just a few hours sleep. I think I dropped it somewhere in the dark, along with Aidan's binky.

Forgive me if I take tacit, bleary-eyed acceptance instead. Whoever coined the phrase "sleeping like a baby" never met my talkative, grunting, squirmy worm. Love him, but sheesh...

loved and forgiven

Shortly before I left work to go on maternity leave, I cared for a patient who had been the victim of a horrible accident. He was about my age, and one night, in a not-so-safe part of town, another person decided to run over my patient - repeatedly - with his car. It left him with brain injuries and swelling so severe that even some of our most calloused, experienced staff were open-mouthed at the CT scans of his head. He actually came into the hospital somewhat conscious and alert, nodding his head to questions, but within the night, the bleeding and swelling in his brain turned him completely unresponsive, and he never again acknowledged anyone's presence, not even his mother's.

He came to our unit a very, very broken man. A part of his skull needed to be removed because of the massive swelling, and the left side of his head bulged under the skin. We cared for him, treated his fevers, his erratic heart rate, bathed him, turned him so that he wouldn't get bedsores, fed him through a tube, and monitored his oxygen levels as a respirator kept his lungs going. The chances of recovery were nil. Doctors broke the news to his mother, first gently, then bluntly, as she refused to believe her son was really gone even though his heart was still beating. A hospital ethics committee wanted to end life support, and his mother adamantly refused. He was still there when I left for maternity leave, and the last news I'd heard was that he was moved to a nursing home. I thought perhaps he'd made some miraculous improvement, though I knew the quality of life after such an accident was bound to be poor.

Today, I read that he passed away this past Wednesday. He was 34 years old.

I'd seen a lot of patients like him in the year I worked in my burn/trauma unit. Their injuries are severe, their prognoses grim, but they start to blur together after a while. Maybe it's the brain's way of protecting you from the reality of so many hurt people, I don't know. But I don't remember all of them. You give the best nursing care you are capable of, and then you try to leave their stories and faces at the hospital and go home to be with your family.

This patient, however, is one I will never forget.

He was a career criminal, purportedly one of the biggest drug dealers in my city. He had a rap sheet a mile long, I was told - possession of narcotics, robbery, assault, etc. He was outside a nightclub when someone, clearly set to kill him, ran over him repeatedly with his car. Police had to use their own vehicles to barricade this guy from continuing to run my patient over, and the scene was reportedly so "unstable" (dangerous, I presume) that it took paramedics a full hour just to reach my patient. When news of his injuries broke and the newspaper published the story online, comments came flying in from all over, some mentioning the bravery of the officer who risked his own life to stop the other guy's car, but most saying that our city and the world in general would be better places because this guy was critically injured, off the streets, and would hopefully die. They used words like "scum" and "trash" and a few others that are too offensive for me to mention. People seemed pretty content that justice had been served to this guy, who, as one person wrote online, "got what was coming to him."

What people didn't see, or at least care to remember, was that my patient, however heinous the crimes he committed, was someone's son and father.

His room was full of bright posters and funny little crayon drawings from his son. A picture of a bright-faced little boy in a baseball uniform hung under the dry-erase board. Get-well cards and balloons were stashed in a corner of his room to make way for all the medical equipment to keep his body alive.

His mother came to visit her son every single day. She was a kind lady, strong and fairly stoic about the whole situation, given the gravity of her son's condition, though her eyes told me she was feeling every bit of pain that comes with seeing your son lying gravely ill in a hospital. She worked at the hospital in a different unit, and when she was at his side, she always helped the staff to care for him. She spoke to him, talked to him about his son, told him how much she loved him, asked him to move something - anything - or at least turn his glassy-eyed, blank gaze to her in recognition, which he never did.

This past weekend, she had to bury her son. No parent should ever have to go through such hell, burying their child. And though he may have been what many would call a bad person, a criminal, a detriment to society, he was still, after all, her son. Loved. Forgiven.

And I am reminded again and again, when I think of him, that no matter what I do or what other people think of me, or how many times I screw up, even when I screw up in huge, messy ways, that I, too, am always loved. Forgiven. Not just by my very awesome parents, but even more by my Papa in heaven. He comes to visit me every day, too, waiting for me to look His way and talk to Him.

falling in love... again

Welcome to the world, Kathryn Grace Vercillo! She's the beautiful new daughter of my awesome cousin Jen - born October 4, weighing in at 6 lbs, 12 oz, and 19 inches long.



Jason, Aidan, and I are sending buckets of love out to the proud parents and sweet-pea Kathryn - don't they look awesome?



(And she had a C-section, too. It should be criminal to look that good after major abdominal surgery.)

We love you!

fasting

The television is always on. It is the background noise during my days at home with Aidan. I watch enough ER reruns that I think Aidan's first words will be "get me 10 cc's of lidocaine, stat!" When Jason gets home, we watch Friends. We feed Aidan to the sounds of Charles Gibson and the nightly news. We eat dinner in front of the TV, or at the dinner table, looking over the couch to the TV (with the volume turned louder to compensate for our distance). We watch the primetime line-up for the night, or pop in a DVD. We almost always watch Family Guy at ten. And then the same pattern happens again the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One of my friends only recently acquired a television set because she married a guy who owned one. Before then, she read books. Talked to friends. Had quiet time. Ate dinner and had meaningful conversation with her dinner guests. I imagine she still does that now, as she is still not a TV watcher. It really all made sense to me, but I just thought I liked seeing Monica, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, and Ross too much to give mine up.

And then on our date this past Friday, it just sort of hit me: I wanted to break away from the TV. It was probably inspired during date night, because when we are on date night, in a restaurant without TVs, sitting in the back of the truck at the beach, or even in the jumble of commotion at Disney, we have the best conversations. It's one of those perks when you marry your best friend, those excellent chats. But we don't have them as much at home, mostly because I think we're both more interested to see who gets kicked off The Biggest Loser than to really go into deep conversation.

Plus, I'm sitting here in amazement at how fast Aidan is growing up - two months old already! - and since I'm facing the return to work in just a few weeks, I don't want any moment with him to be wasted. I decided he deserved our full attention when we're with him, instead of dividing it between him and, say, Lennie Briscoe, Peter Griffin, or Dwight Schrute.

So this week, we're fasting. The TV is being turned off. No TV, no movies, nothing. And I predict one of two scenarios will happen: we will either reconnect with each other in fabulous new ways, deepen our walk of faith, and discover just how little we need that box... OR we will go certifiably insane and just stare at each other, drooling and glassy-eyed until the following Monday when we can end our fast.

Either way, it should be interesting.

So if you see me this week, and I'm just a little off: voice trailing off mid-sentence, foaming at the mouth, or else babbling incessantly about how I think saving the cheerleader will save the world, well... I guess just drive me to the nearest Best Buy and park me in front of the largest HD TV you can find there. Take away my credit card first, of course.

feel-good friday

A few of the reasons I'm smiling:

Aidan just flashed me a grin from his crib this morning. I am forever ruined!

Tonight is date night - I've been looking forward to it all week. It's the night that makes the rest of the week's trials so, so worth it. Plus, my husband is hawwwwt. And we have free babysitting, in the form of my awesome brother Don. Score!

Aforementioned Hawwwwt Husband took my middle-of-the-night feeding shift with Aidan last night instead of waking me up so that I could sleep. His heart is just like that, people. Huge and giving, even when he's tired himself.

I love the numbers of the sizes of clothes I can fit into.

My new awesome boss is totally working with me and my schedule so that I can make sure Aidan has someone taking care of him when I go back to work, and they're all FREE. Free childcare for all but one day of the week. That's no small blessing.

Before my date night tonight, I get to go on a little roadtrip (45 minutes) and meet up with one of my dearest friends for lunch, the one who calls me Anne Girl. I so miss her company, so today is a special treat.

finding joy

It's been a long time since I posted, hasn't it? I'm kind of amused at how little I've been writing and yet how great my husband is about posting on his blog - when I first started this blog, back in the day, I suggested to Jason that he might like to do the same. He didn't really warm up to the idea at first, but then he started posting a little in his own space... and now, well... I have some catching up to do!

Anyway, it's been a long time, but not because the inner wheels of my head haven't been busily turning all this time. I've been looking inside myself a lot lately. A lot of what I have found is stuff that I don't feel ready to post publicly. Some of it, I barely understand myself and find it hard to put into words. Soul searching is hard work, yo.

A friend of mine recently took me out to lunch - it was delicious and we had a good time, but it was a lunch with a purpose. You can sense when someone has a message to give you. And she said to me, "You know, Anne, for as long as I've known you, over these past 5-6 years, you've always wanted something. First you were sad because you didn't have a boyfriend, and you wanted a boyfriend. Then someone came along and you were sad because he didn't like you as much as you liked him. Then you met your husband to be and just wanted to get married, and you were sad because you wondered if he would ever propose. Then you got married, and you were wanting to have a baby, and sad that you didn't have one. Then, you wanted to have a house and were sad living in your apartment. And you have all these things now, and I just wanted to say to you: be happy. Don't keep "waiting" for the next thing. Whatever it is you have to do to be happy, do it. You've gotten everything you've wanted."

I have to admit that her words stung a little. Okay, a lot. But she's a friend because I know she won't sugar-coat anything, and she means what she says. Still, it's hard to realize that one of the lasting impressions you've left with people, especially those who are close to you, is one of sadness and longing and waiting for the next thing to start in your life. It made me, well... sad. It made me feel a little defensive inside, and I wanted to tell her that she had no idea what I'd been through, what I'm still trying to reconcile in my heart. I wanted to have a lunch where everything was surface-y and light-hearted and without agenda. Deep inside, though, I knew she spoke truth. This is not the legacy I wish to have. Sadness is not the impression I want to leave with people, especially when I am trying to impart just how awesome Jesus is to those who don't know. How much are you going to want the life of a Christian who is perpetually sad, longing, discontent? I didn't think so. It all made me sad to hear.

It also made me determined to go out there and find the joy.

The good news is, it's not that hard to find. God sprinkles it all over my life, most notably and recently in the form of the most terrific man in the world along with the most terrific little man in the world. When I choose to see the joy, I am delighted. Sometimes it's in little things, like getting the unexpected green light (score!) or a apologetic cashier giving you something free you expected to pay for (in this case, pink reusable grocery bags). Sometimes it's in the bigger things, like realizing just how freaking blessed I am to have my best friend as my husband, or that I will probably never be out of work in my career path, or how awesome it is to be a part of a dynamic, loving, life-changing community. And sometimes it's in all the other things: a morning run you dragged yourself out of bed for that connected you spiritually, your infant son flashing his first toothless grin at you, being the world's worst stinkin' bowler and laughing your head off over it, or finding out that Pei Wei is actually owned by PF Chang's. (Dude. I so didn't know. I am SO THERE.)

I know this probably sounds like the worst sugary get-happy drivel, but it's been a tiny shift in my thinking that has made such a huge difference. I haven't discovered some massive secret of the universe. I still have crappy moments. Seeing joy and being joyful is far from an automatic response for me, and sometimes I have to work pretty hard at it. I still think negatively and probably project that quite well to the world at times. I still have a lot of inner stuff I have to work through, scars and open wounds that surprise me with their depth and rawness despite their age, and thankfully, I've been blessed lately with the right people who can do that with me. But if I can find the joy in each day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, it keeps my perspective in the right field, and the bonus is that I'm a lot more fun to be around. You can find joy in spite of those wounds, even if they are deep and painful.

So I ask you, for any of you still faithful enough to check if I post anymore: what are you putting out there to the world? Where do you find the joy?

And a belated thank you to a friend who lovingly shook me awake and told me to get over it already and go find some joy.