Inspirational

I have been watching this season of Dancing With the Stars. In my next life, I'd love to be a ballroom dancer. For now, though, I am content to watch other non-dancers learn how to dance. It gives me some sort of hope that I will somehow convince my husband to want to dance and that we will start taking dance classes and be the coolest couple ever to chaperon a youth dance. Okay....maybe I'm kidding about that last part and I do realize it is a complete fantasy and is about as likely to happen as me starting at linebacker for BYU next fall. Anyhow, I digress. I wanted to comment on Marlee Matlin.

I realize I am a week behind in making a comment on this but since we were travelling and I had the show on my Tivo, I just watched it last night around midnight as Lincoln refused to sleep. I didn't mind being up so late since I was completely blown away, yet again, by this amazing woman.

Marlee is profoundly deaf. Her main form of communication is sign language. She won an Oscar for her role in Children of a Lesser God and has appeared in several other things as a deaf woman. She does speak but usually signs and hears very little but was able to learn how to dance. For you Seinfeld fans out there, she was Jerry's girlfriend who they used to read George's ex-girlfriend's lips at a party. Great episode....

Anyhow, the judges were amazed each week with her performance. They continued to comment on how blown away they were that she was able to learn these dances even though she can't hear the music. I happen to have a little girl who also does not hear all of the music but absolutely loves to dance. I watch her dance through her life, waving her arms and twirling around. There must be an entire soundtrack in her head because she seems to be constantly dancing. I guess that is why Marlee is an inspiration to me. She reminded me that there is no reason that deafness should limit someone. Congratulations to her!

Wanna Get Away? Ding.

You know those Southwest commercials when something really awful happens and then the voice says, "Wanna get away?" Well, we just got away and I think that Southwest decided to make an anti-vacation commercial out of our vacation. This is the family trip that we will always remember. I tried to tell myself that over and over again as the trip progressed. "We're making memories," I kept thinking.

Now that we are home, I'd really like a vacation....

Here are my top 10 reasons for needing a vacation from my vacation:

10. The days we had planned on going to the beach or going swimming were overcast and the days we went to Disney were sunny. Thus, I have a terrible farmer's tan. I'd really like to get rid of it!

9. While my hotel was very nice and quite luxurious, I had a hard time enjoying it because there were never enough towels or sheets. Hi, Housekeeping, it's room 191 again. We'd like the usual. Thanks. Huh? Keep reading!

8. In the car on the way to the airport, Maddox threw up all over himself. That means that my car really smelled great by the time we got home!

7. I changed no less than 5 diahrrea diapers on the airplane in a one hour flight to California. Our row smelled like death. Ever wondered what India smells like? Try sitting in row 13 on the plane we took to California!

6.On our very first night in the hotel, we had to call the front desk at 3 am for a change of sheets because Maddox woke up and vomited all over. Here's one of the few advantages in being deaf: Hadley slept through the entire circus!

5. Apparently when your rental car keys fall out of your pocket at Disneyland, they are very difficult to find in the park at 10 pm. They are even more difficult to find when you don't know where you lost them, when they have no identifying key chains and when you are exhausted and your kids are FINISHED for the day.

4. When you are travelling with a family and there is only one hotel bathroom and a "traffic jam" because everyone needs to vomit or take care of other business all at the same time, which happens to be 3 am, you end up with some messes in the hall. Thankfully, we bought a Nemo bucket for the beach and one child was able to use the bucket.

3. My hotel room ended up smelling like row 13 on the airplane. The nominations for a name for this illness are 1. The Bamboo Flu, 2. The New Delhi Helly and 3. The Yangtsee River. And for the lady at the Sea World Shamu show who was eavesdropping on our coversation, no, the Yangtsee River is not in Alaska. Really? Is anyone really that stupid? I thought those Jay Walking people were faking it but apparently in California, anything is possible.

2. The Newport Beach Emergency room is a really nice place but it's not where I wanted to spend one of my vacation days. Luckily, Maddox is so darn cute that all of the doctors, nurses, PAs, etc. on staff came in to our room to hear him sing, "Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a pirate's life for me!"

1. Sleeeeeeeeeep. I need sleep. Now that my baby is finally sleeping through the night, I expected to get at least one good night's sleep on this trip. Not so much. With two kids vomiting and a very sick husband, there wasn't much, if any, sleep on this trip. You know you have a problem when you tuck each child in at night with a bucket next to them. One child got the Nemo bucket, one child got the hotel ice bucket. Hopefully housekeeping throws that thing away!

Since I had the "mental toughness" to avoid the illness, I figure I deserve a vacation now. I plan to leave the sick kids and sick husband at home and just go soak up some sunshine on a deserted beach somewhere. There will be no characters, rides, chicken nuggets, diapers, emergency rooms, sippy cups, sleepless nights or Disneyland lost and found visits on my vacation. There will be no traffic jams, sold out baseball games, cloudy skies or stinky hotel rooms on my vacation. I will not be sitting in row 13 of the airplane. I'd love a grown up who reads interesting things and provides good conversation but who doesn't throw sand, isn't sick, and knows when to shut up, close their eyes and enjoy the peace to accompany me. Any takers?

Definitions

I don't really like those open-ended questions about myself. My blog profile, for example, is just awkward for me. I consider myself a very confident individual. I like me. I am happy, for the most part, with who I am. That doesn't mean that there aren't thing's I'd like to change about myself. It just means that after many years of life, I have gotten to a place that is comfortable. That being said, I would rather not try to define myself in a blog profile or a questionaire. Who am I? As soon as the question is asked, I start to wonder. It's like a social experiment. There is so much that goes into me that it just seems impossible to sum myself up in a few words.



For Hadley's birthday, we gave her a storybook kit. It has these little books and she can write her own stories. Last night, she came running up with her first completed story. The title is "All About my Family" and she dedicates a page to each family member. She easily defined her mom as the one who takes care of everyone, her dad as the "fun" one who rides bikes with her, her brother Maddox as the one who gets in trouble but who she really loves and her brother Lincoln as her buddy who likes to say "goo". I could write several blogs about how unfair it is that I have to be the caregiver rather than the fun parent but that's not what worried me. What gave me pause was the page she wrote about herself.



She wrote, "I am the only one who is deaf. That means that I can't hear." That is the only thing she wrote about herself. She didn't write that she has sparkling eyes, that her favorite color is baby blue or pink depending on the hour of the day, that her laugh is contagious, that she loves to dance, that she reads better than any other first grader I've ever met, that she is full of love for everyone, or that she loves rain boots, umbrellas and rain coats but doesn't really like the rain. No...she wrote that she is deaf and that she is the only one who is deaf. It is the first time that I have ever seen her define herself like this and it is really bothering me.



I hope you don't misunderstand me. I am so proud of her deafness and I do not think it is something to be ashamed of. It is definitely a part of who she is. It sets her apart from many people and it does have a lot to do with her identity. I only can hope and pray that she knows that she is so much more.



In college I took a secondary education class on individuals with disabilities. If I learned nothing else in the class, I came away with an understanding of labelling and how it can be so dangerous. I remember being struck by the idea that we are all people first and that when referring to a child, we should first identify their humanity. Instead of saying a deaf girl, we should say a girl who is deaf. I have never really been hung up on that as a parent of a child with a disability. If someone says "deaf child", I am not instantly up in arms. However, the concept is so true. I want Hadley to be a 7 year old girl first and foremost. I want all of Hadley's "Hadliness" to shine through. I want people to notice HER. I want them to see that little dimple under her eye, to understand her silly jokes, to laugh at the fact that she never puts her book down, even when getting off the bus and walking across the street, to admire her fearlessness when trying new things, and to be drawn towards her because she is a powerful spirit. Sure, she is deaf; that may make her more interesting sometimes. But does it have to define her?

Want to waste some time?

86 words

Speed test

Okay, maybe I am sort of a competitive person. So I kept on doing this darn speed test until I got above 80 words per minute. Maddox and Hadley kept asking me what I was doing as Hadley called out the random words that were highlighted on the test. It's a serious waste of time but kind of fun anyhow!

I've gone digital...

I am not a scrapbooker. I buy paper, stickers, ribbon, etc. and think...okay, here I go. I'm going to at least print off my kids' pictures and get them onto simple pages and into books. But have I ever successfully created even one scrapbook page? NOPE! Do I even get the pictures printed? Sometimes. Then I put them into boxes and think, "One of these days, I'm going to have time to organize these and get them into books."

Well, it has all been revolutionized! Thank you, Caroline, for introducing me to digital scrapbooking. I love it. I created a whole book for Hadley's birthday with about 40 pages and it only took me a few hours total. I can do it with a fussy baby bouncing on my lap. By the time you pay to print your pictures, buy your paper, your special sewing machines for the paper, the brads, the tags, the ribbons....and whatever else people use for scrapbook pages, it ends up being a pretty big investment, right? My 12X12 pages printed at Costco for $2.99 each and I'm pretty proud of them. They even look somewhat artistic and creative.

If there's anyone else out there who, like me, has not found the time or the creative drive to create albums of beautiful scrapbook pages, give the digital a try. Here are a few of my creations!

Simplify...sometimes less really is more!

Those of you who know me well know that I have a serious problem when it comes to birthday parties. I can't stop. I just keep going and going until it has gone WAY over the top. On the day Hadley turned 2, Stewart shipped out to Iraq. Her birthday went almost completely unnoticed that year. I think my mom made a cupcake and we took a picture of her blowing out the candle. We did nothing else. The following year, when she turned 3, her dad was almost home and we thought we'd wait and have a party when he got here. He got home and it was chaotic and the party never happened.

I must have decided to compensate for those 2 failed birthdays when she turned four. We had a cowgirl party and invited about 25 kids over. It was complete insanity. You know it's out of control when there are ponies in your yard, right? The next year, the princess party was equally crazy. The 24 children running around dressed as princesses, princes, and knights were great but I think it took me and my house a week to recover. Last year's luau about drove me to an early grave. The hula lessons were fun but did I really need to make hot dogs that looked like octopuses for 23 children? They were nestled on a bed of shell-shaped pasta with goldfish crackers. So cute.....so cute that the kids were scared of the octopus and I don't think anyone ate them.

So this year I decided to simplify. When Hadley suggested we go to Build-a-Bear for her birthday, I was thrilled. She was only allowed to invite 5 friends, we didn't do treat bags, pinatas, decorations.... We just went to the mall, built our bears, came home for pizza, cake and ice cream. Really great. I was finished cleaning up within 30 minutes of the last guest's departure. There was only one bag of garbage from the party, she didn't get 25 new toys (we have way too many as it is!), I only had a slight headache by the time it was over and it really was fun. My thanks to Karyn for an adorable cake. The kids were mesmerized. Well done, Karyn!

Now I'm asking myself if this is what happens to people who have 3 kids. Do you just stop putting as much effort into things? I hope not. I hope I am still as excited about Maddox's 4th birthday as I was about Hadley's. But it was nice to take a step back this year. Hadley declared it to be the best day of her life....ever! I'd call that a success.