Adventures with Cosy and Oliver

 

Back update: no improvement. I see the doctor on Friday. I am having a hard time sleeping even while taking ambien. The pain breaks through. I haven't checked my bp today.

Next order of business: the beginning of "date night" (and day and night and day) has been moved from Tuesday evening to Wednesday lunch date (and night and day and night). Don't want y'all to be disappointed when I don't check in from some place fabulous tonight... just know that I'll check in from some place fabulous tomorrow and then tomorrow night I'll have a fabulous What I Ate Wednesday post telling you ALL about it! (Well, all about the food anyways... *wink*)

I picked Cosy up this morning about 8:30 (in the car, I don't mean that I physically lifted her) and brought her to my house. She stayed and played a bit. She and her dad made a donut run... and then they took Jessi to work... and in between we played with beads and bubbles and used the bug zapper. She is addicted to these moronic toy opening videos on YouTube and I had reached saturation point today so I changed it to the Wizard of Oz in hopes of creating a new, much better obsession. Cosy loves to sing. She will sing "the itsy bitsy spider" with me as many times as I will. I'm out of breath and sweating and having a full on cardio workout from helping that spider crawl up the water spout a gazillion times and she's clapping her hands and saying, "AGAIN! AGAIN!!!". SOOOO... I thought, as long as I'm singing along and being animated, she might just be ready for the Wizard and YES, it worked! She did ask a few times to change it to her thing but I said, "let's just see if that Wicked Witch comes back...." and I did the evil laugh with her and... I'm not saying she's asking to be Dorothy for Halloween but she's definitely following the yellow brick road.

 
I have so much work to do with this one to fully indoctrinate her into loving musical theater. There are so many alternatives out there. She is a country girl, after all... but her name is Cosette and it would be a shame for that name to never been listed in a Playbill somewhere... is there any better name for a musical theater geek?

I digress. Austin carried down the laundry for me and Cosy helped me load the washer. This is one of her favorite things... watching my clothes take a bubble bath... see how even laundry becomes fun when you're looking through the eyes of a child?

  

I took a lot of pictures of Oliver when we FaceTimed last night. They were outside on his new trampoline so the light was good. He was tired and not Tigger bouncing all over the place like he normally does when we FaceTime, ironically, since he was literally ON A trampoline.... so I was able to get some photos that weren't just blurs. I just can't get over how beautiful he is... that gorgeous curly hair, his big brown eyes... he's so articulate and witty and smart. I had heard that kids who are bi-lingual sometimes have delayed speech but that's not at all the case with Oliver. I also wondered if he would realize that some words are English and some are Spanish because to him, they're all words, right? But we've noticed that he uses the same phrases with the the people he heard them from... and he ends up speaking Spanish with Marquee's family and pretty much just English with me, except for the Spanish phrases I use with him. It's fascinating to watch a little one grow up with two languages from birth.

 
What else can I tell you about Oliver? He's pretty much potty trained (still working on the poo... he tends to do that when he has his pullup on at night). He loves sports, just like his dad. He loves music and animated stuff and... really, all kinds of things on tv. He loves his cousin Cosy and has endless patience with her when she won't hug him or share toys with him. He will sometimes be an instigator, especially if he thinks he'll get a laugh like when he is persistent with trying to hug her and she is shrieking and pushing him away. We shouldn't laugh but it's just so stinking funny!  I won't make Cosy hug back though because I think it's important to let her know she has ownership of her body and doesn't have to share affection with anyone unless she wants to. (these are things I didn't think about as a parent but I think about now that I'm a Nana and have a lot more time and experience). (also, these are things I think about when raising a girl that never occurred to me when raising boys, which is sad, because boys get abused just as much, if not more than girls).

 
Oliver is outgoing and friendly and loving and smart... he will have the occasional meltdown as all three year olds do. He is constantly in motion, he mind works overtime. When we FaceTime he always has to know where Cosy is... where is Uncle "Hoggie"?... where is Pop?... where is the cat?... what are you doing? And when we start to say goodbye he will kiss the phone and tell me he loves me. He can show you how many fingers old he is and he can also make the sign for "I love you" in sign language. He is honestly, the most perfect little boy that I could ever imagine and I consider myself an expert on little boys. It's hard not living closer to him because I don't get the one on one time with him that I have with Cosy but we talk on Facetime a couple of times a week and I feel very bonded and connected to him. He has so many people in his life that truly cherish him and I know that he's growing up feeling loved and supported and will be able to do great things because he is loved.

And now... please, God, I'm going to try to catch up on a little sleep because my body needs rest, deep sleep rest, in the worst way. Hope you have a great day and I'll be back again tomorrow night with a restaurant review for What I Ate Wednesday!

 

Throwback Thursday - July 4th and 5th

This week I'm going to look at what happened on this day, July 5, and the day before July 4th in my blog history. These have been two very memorable days in my life. Last year on July 4th, my dad went to the hospital to see my mom who had been in the hospital for the past few days. She had been very sick but mentally fine. That morning, July 4th, changed everything. From that point on we only had brief glimpses of who my mom used to be. I can remember one day when she seemed particularly clear and I tried to hurry and talk to her about everything, knowing it could be my last real conversation with her. It was.

In July of 2015, I was enjoying tiny baby Cosy and looking forward to Oliver's arrival. This year the highlight of the month will almost surely be Oliver's birthday party on the 21st. It will be Cosy's first ever visit to Oliver's house and her longest road trip. I'm so excited to be there for his party this year. Last year my mom was so unwell that it was impossible for me to travel that far away. Instead I gave him a little party at my house for the family up here. It will be nice to go to his party (and also to not have to give  a party!) this year.

The post summarizing my 4th of July in 2014, didn't go up until a few days later. Cody and Marquee and their friends had come up for a visit. They had a nice swim in the lake and we did fireworks and sparklers and it was just a nice time with friends and family and friends that feel like family.

On the 4th of July and 5th of July in 2013, we were growing mushrooms in our front yard. It was a very wet Summer, our first full Summer up here. The basement flooded frequently. My level of frustration was pretty high but at the same time... life was much easier since I had recently stopped working.

On these days in 2012, I was at Grandma's house in Hayesville, North Carolina, staying with her until it was time to move her to Assisted Living. She went through a lot of emotions that week and it was... rough. The whole process went much more quickly that I had thought it would but I feel proud that I was able to spend those days with her at the end of her time of independence and help her say goodbye to the people and places that were so important to her. It was hard.

Probably the hardest 5th of July I ever faced was the one in 2011. I was at work and I received a call from Austin letting me know that the house was on fire. Our little duplex had been struck by lightning and caught fire. The next two weeks were hard... some of the hardest days I had ever lived through at that point but in the end, we were ok. A lot of special treasures survived the fire. We survived the fire. The cats survived. I had renters insurance (it's so important! If you're renting you really NEED it!) that paid to pack up all our stuff, clean it, salvage what was salvageable and move it to our new apartment. I felt very, very blessed throughout that whole process. It was not easy but having renters insurance made it bearable. The fire is covered in blog posts that you can access by clicking here and here.

Looking back at 2010, I was talking about losing weight and what was different for me in that weight loss effort than previously. You can read my posts here and here and here is a fabulous recipe for this really yummy frittata. Now I need to make a frittata this week!

AND... the oldest blog post I have for this day is from 2009 when I had just had my wisdom teeth removed. It's short and sweet but if you'd like to read it (and your fabulous comments!) you can click here. 

Hope your 4th of July was amazing and I'd love to hear how you spent it this year... and what was your most memorable 4th of July?