Jessicarrot

Sweet Hila Camille is turning 5 tomorrow.  In some ways I can’t believe she’s only turning 5.  She seems too perceptive and artistic to ONLY be turning 5.  We’ve been celebrating since Saturday with a trip to build-a-bear where we spent more on a stuffed rabbit and stuffed rabbit clothes than I’ve spent on an entire outfit for Hila–ever.  But it was totally fun and she loved it.  We also rode one of those old-fashioned merry-go-rounds.  The kind with the real horse-hair.  The kids loved it.  She had her favorite cousin spend the night Saturday also.  Today we had cake at Mema’s and tomorrow we’re going to start with cake for breakfast and presents and then cupcakes for her class.  Yes, I’ve been baking cakes non-stop.  Hila wants to celebrate her birthday by firing up the black snakes leftover from 4th of July and dying Easter eggs!  LOL.  She’s such a funny kid.  I just adore her.  I have ever since I knew I was having a girl.  I had her name picked out before I had any children at all.  My great-grandmother passed away and although my only memories of her were strained because she was a bit of a cranky old woman I always LOVED her name.  And I’ve never heard of anyone else with that name.  I found out later that it is actually a Hebrew name that means “aura”.  I always wondered if my great-great grandmother had made it up.  I can think of two naughty things Hila has done in her lifetime and both of them a pretty funny.  First, she and Asher wanted create the illusion of snow inside our house so they got the canister of powdered sugar I had left out and scattered it all over the floor of the kitchen.  That’s what we get for calling powdered sugar “sugar snow”.  Then when she was about 2 she got a container of Vaseline and opened it and smeared the entire contents into her hair.  It took weeks to wash that stuff out!  Hila is such a joy and a peacemaker.  She’s always doing things to make other people happy or more comfortable and I feel so blessed to be her mother!

I was thinking about some people who have done cool things for me, some because they were actually thinking of me and some who have affected my life even though they are completely unaware of me.

1. Thank you to whoever first discovered that you can bake uncooked lasagna noodles in a lasagna with a little extra water. I don’t think I’d ever make lasagna if I had to cook the noodles first.

2. I was just thinking of this for some reason–a million years ago in college when I worked at the Planetarium gift shop on Saturday morning this lady went off on me because she thought I hadn’t given back her credit card. I’m kind of forgetful so I checked all the obvious places and when I didn’t find it and told her I didn’t have it, she absolutely made a scene, threatened me, insulted me–it was the only thing anyone in the shop could pay attention to. Then she looked in her wallet, discovered that I HAD in fact returned her card to her and she walked off to go see her show. My thank you is to the guy working with me (I don’t remember his name or what his job was) who chased her down and made her apologize to me before he would let her go into the show. I was too embarrassed for her at the time, but thinking of it now, it makes me cry a little bit that someone stood up for me like that. Thank you, guy who did that!

3. Thank you to Google for helping me find the cheapest place to buy cheap things from China.

4. Thank you to Cara Ellison for including me in your will, and for researching and writing about Enron, and writing about other things that I find so interesting.

5. Thank you to lego.com for keeping my son so enthralled with your website that is always changing and updating.

6. Thank you to the people who came up with Leap Frog and the Zula Patrol for teaching my kids so many things that I couldn’t.

7. Thank you Michaels for marking that glitter pack I bought down to .01 so that I didn’t get AS upset when Hannah opened and poured it out all over the couch and floor.

8. Thank you to the photo center at Wal-mart for giving me all those film canisters while the rude people at Rite Aid insisted that they HAD to throw them away every day.

9. Thank you to Julie for making me that little scrap book out of paper bags that I am now going to rip off and make for all my other friends.

10. Thank you to the people who hold open doors for me when I’ve got a stroller and 3 kids in tow, it really means a lot.

11. Thank you to my friend Crysta who made me the little apron I am currently wearing as an accessory AND a useful place to put little things while I clean my house.

That should be good for now. There are a lot more people I should thank I’m sure, but those are some of the ones that had been on my mind…

One year ago today I gave birth to a beautiful 10 lb 11oz round little pink baby girl.  Yikes.  And I got to do it after my epidural wore off.  It was all worth it though, she is a sweet, good natured, healthy little girl who has been taking her first steps the past few days.  She started sleeping through the night consistently at 2 months, a first for me as a mom.  I like to think of it as Hannah’s gift to me.  She’s sweet, patient, adorable and her siblings love her like crazy!  We only took video of her pink cupcake eating and bewilderment at her little gifts.  She’s sleeping peacefully now in her new pink pj’s she got from Grandma and Grandpa Juett.  The box of tissues didn’t go over as well as I’d expected.  I guess I accidentally taught her that it wasn’t okay to pull all the tissues out.  When Hila presented her with her own box of tissues she just stared at it.  Oh well.  The kids loved winding up her new jack-in-the-box for her.  And Hila made a book about Hannah’s first year that I’ll have to take pictures of.  I think Hannah would rate her 1st birthday at a 6 out of 10.  Here are a list of the good and bad points:

Good:

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Bad:

Being woken up to eat cinnamon rolls in the car.

Good:

Taking Asher and Hila to school (she normally stays home with Daddy)

Bad:

Going to the Dr. for shots

Good:

Eating at McD’s with Daddy and getting her very own ice cream cone.

Bad:

Being over tired from too many errands and not enough crib time.

Good:

Having her brothers and sister so excited for her to eat her pink cupcake.

Bad:

What was mom thinking putting a lit candle in her face?

Good:

Homemade pink butter cream frosting…mmmm

Bad:

Getting washed up in the sink to look pretty for present opening pictures…brrrr.

Good:

Having everyone in the family pay attention to her while opening presents.

Bad??

What are presents?

Happy Birthday Hannah Claire!  We love you!

I get a little gloomy around September 11.  I had no personal connection to anyone who died in the terrorist attacks, but all the same it makes me sad to think about.  And not in the way that it was sad on that day 7 years ago.  It was devastating and horrifying then.  Now I’m just completely puzzled.  I was searching YouTube the other day for a tribute video I’d seen a few years ago.  I found all kinds of videos of September 11, none were the one I was looking for.  But what I found troublesome were the ones created by conspiracy theorists claiming that our own government was in league with the terrorists and they allowed, or aided in the attacks.  I don’t get their motivation.  I mean, to the point of being infuriated I don’t get it.  If it was something asinine like that woman on Fail blog who is all freaked out about a rainbow in her sprinkler I could easily laugh it off.  But the fact is, September 11 was something so sinister, so horrifying I just don’t get how people can insert their idiotic need to be “in-the-know” about it.  And I also don’t get why these people, cynical as they are–feel good about suggesting that the government was involved in this attack and still continue to live here.  If the government was really so evil it would explode its own city, its own people…wouldn’t you get out?   Granted, some of them are probably insane.  When we lived in California I got a huge kick out of walking through our neighborhood to this man’s house who was a total nut job.  He posted all his conspiracy theories in a plastic tube on a palm tree outside of his house.  He was convinced “they” were after him so he’d only be at home one day a month.  Among his conspiracy theories were that all CIA agent’s wives were purposely infected with cancer.  And government officials had a device that could infect you with any kind of disease if they shook your hand.  I was amused and disturbed at the same time.

The truth of the matter is, terrorists perpetrated this attack on our country.  They murdered thousands of innocent people.  They murdered children, mothers, fathers, siblings, friends.  People who died and left a huge hole in their communities, in their families.  Some people jumped to their deaths to escape being burned alive.  Some people didn’t have a second to react before they were pulverized.  Some people, when they realized what the hell was going on decided to fight back.  Some people were climbing up dozens of flights of stairs to rescue people trapped in the buildings. To focus on anything but these people is just pointless and insane.

9/11

The ashes spread a clear mile in an instant.

Groaning and shuddering into oblivion.

Unceremoniously cast over the city streets, cars, people…

People who are so easily compartmentalized.

Except they are some father, some mother, somone’s child…

Its ugly to think anyone, anything could think so little of human beings to do this…

to take pleasure in causing death. Unthinkable.

In shock and desperation we watched it happen, over and over, blacked out in our minds.

The millions of papers, fluttering like ghosts.

Billowing clouds of ashes and concrete showering down, exploding outward.

The moment of impact, once, twice exploded, exploded a hundred times, three hundred times over.

The moment where two thousand nine hundred and seventy four people died, its like some familiar old

cartoon.

I got a note from my Endocrinologist with the results from my latest blood draw.  Double good news.

1.  My TSH was nice and supressed so as not to allow thyroid cells to grow.

2.  My thyroglobulin level (first taken so its the marker) was at .3, also very low.

So for the time being I can say I’m cancer free.  As long as my Tg stays low to undetectable that means I don’t have thyroid tissue growing in my body and therefore no cancer recurrance.  Yay for good numbers!  I will have regular blood draws from here on, an ultrasound in October and possibly a whole body scan at the year mark.  So far everything is working out perfectly.

Hila on the 4th of July

Gabe wearing my glasses

Hannie standing

Pretty Hannie

Asher lost 2 teeth at once.  His first visit from the tooth fairy was very equitable.

Then he lost one on top.

Hila’s first day of school pose.

Asher’s 1st day of school was rainy! (He started on a different day)

I can’t stand it when anyone prefaces a comment like that. Actually if you’ve thought enough in advance to know what you are about to say is rude, just don’t say it. I mean, if you don’t want to be rude that is. I just watched 10 seconds of Larry King to see the Liberals all giddy and snide about Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter being pregnant. Two of the guests prefaced their comments with “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” with such a satisfied little smirk. So I have to ask myself, if the shoe was on the other foot would I be all over this too? Say Barack has a teenage daughter and turns out she’s pregnant, would I be on my moral high-horse about it? I can honestly say I wouldn’t. As a mother I just think kids are off limits. Its vile and trashy to strike out at someone by attacking their kids. The fact that this story came out after rumors were flying around that Palin faked a pregnancy to cover her daughter’s pregnancy is just sick. Photos of the kid comparing stomachs to her mom? I just think its pretty low. I don’t think that kind of ugliness wins people over…not for long anyway.