Okay, so now what?

I woke up this morning with an odd, queasy feeling. No, I'm not pregnant. Thanks for asking, though. We all just love to be asked if we are pregnant. Am I right, ladies?

The feeling...it wasn't hunger, although I was hungry. I'm not sick. I am feeling a little displaced. See, preschool ended yesterday. School ends tomorrow. I am about to have three kids, all to my self, all day, every day. Oh, boy. I know I made those three babies but I guess I didn't think this through very well. What are we supposed to do with ourselves all day?

Yesterday, we had our preschool program. It's over! I made it! Three days a week for 2 hours at a time, I had eleven three year olds in my basement. I still have some of the fingerpaint smudges on my walls to prove it. I will admit, there were some weeks when I wondered what on earth I'd gotten myself into. Who does that? And I'm not even medicated. What was I thinking?

I'll tell you, though, what I was thinking. It came from this place in my heart that tells me that I feel happy when I am teaching. I know there are those out there who say that teachers are the people who couldn't make a living doing anything else. Well, I beg to differ. Teachers are people who are barely making a living doing what they truly love. And I am a teacher. I am a teacher!

Aha. So maybe we'll run things a little more like a school around here. I already get paid very little for the work I do here. Maybe I'll just make it official. Misha's school. Mom's school. Peay's Place of Education. Whatever. School's out....but I think we will remain in session here at our house. I have a basement full of small chairs, tables, craft supplies, books, scissors, glue, pencils, music. Why not?

So if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed, you may consider dropping in on us this summer. I think we will be holding school. No, I haven't completely lost all of my marbles. I just think it will be fun to have our own little play school. Maybe three times a week. Maybe from 9 until 11, just like preschool. No tuition involved, no expectations, nothing major. Just some learning, some structure, some schedule. I like that. I need that.

Oh, but don't come over for the first two weeks of June. I'll be busy storming the beaches at Normandy. Sixty-five years, you know. Obama and I, but not Queen Elizabeth. Should be grand. Should be educational. Should be right up my ally.

Holes...

Lincoln's new shoe is missing. I have looked everywhere and I can't find it. It's not in the car, where he frequently discards objects. It isn't in the backyard, where he's been known to leave things. It isn't in the toy closet...but a lot of other things that don't belong there were found while I was looking for the shoe. I have spent a lot of time looking. I don't want to go buy another pair of shoes. I JUST bought these shoes.

That sums up how I spent a portion of my afternoon yesterday. I hate having one lost shoe or one lost sock. Inevitably as soon as you give up on the lost object and throw away the mismatched pair, you find it. So what do I do? Do I hold on to one little green croc in the hope that I find its match? Or do I throw it away? Every time I see that little croc, I'm going to be irritated. Is it really worth the frustration?

Yesterday evening may have helped clear up this dilemma. Hadley has a new glitter ball. It's her prized possession. Do you even know what glitter balls are? I didn't until a few weeks ago. They're ALL THE RAGE at Westfield Elementary these days. I went to 3 Wal-Marts, 1 Walgreen's and 2 Bed Bath & Beyonds before I finally located this glitter ball.

She placed the ball on the piano bench next to her as she was practicing and along crawled Lincoln. Yes, crawled. He still won't walk. 18 months and counting... but that's a complaint for another day. Continuing. He crawled over and picked up the glitter ball and went to the vent next to the piano. He removed the vent and threw the ball down the tubes. The air duct. Sorry. Correct terminology. Goodbye glitter ball.

Aha. Do you think? Could his lost shoe really be...? Hadley wept, wailed, gnashed her teeth. Lincoln grinned. He was really quite proud of himself. He even replaced the metal vent correctly. Who needs those baby toys to help your children line up shapes? Just let them play with the vent. He's good at rectangles, apparently. I am flashing back to the phone call I made about 2 years ago to the vacuum cleaner repair man. Those central vacuum holes were too irresistible to two year old Maddox. (Look, I used to, too, two in one sentence. Does that win me a prize?) Anything that would fit went in. I should have seen this coming. I've had a boy before. I know what boys do. And Lincoln really loves sticking things into holes. I called my friend Tony, the HVAC guy. Anyone lucky enough to have never needed to know, HVAC guys are heating, ventillation and air conditioning guys. "Hi, Tony. Sorry to bother you. Quick question. Where is the magic hole that you can open up in your furnace room and retrieve all lost items." (I had to speak rather loudly to drown out Hadley's wailing.) I held my breath in anticipation. Surely there must be a little door in the furnace. There has to be. "Mama Peay," Tony laughs, "there is no door in your furnace. Anything that goes into those ducts can only be removed by cutting into the duct system." Great. So I guess I can throw that lost soul green croc away, I think. "Thanks, Tony."

Has anyone seen Lincoln's bottle? The one I just filled with 8 ounces of milk?

Great.

For sale: One very lovely home in Highland, Utah. Glitter ball, size 4 green croc and bottle full of curdled milk are included in the price.

Uno, dos, tres, cuapado!

He's four, he's four! Our little man turned four today. In keeping with Maddox's arrival at 11 pm, his birthday blog will be published somewhere around that same time. Here he is....our four year old.

My favorite things about Maddox are:
--he's honest - to a fault! A few days ago, he wanted a powdered doughnut. I said no. He went and ate one and returned with powdered sugar all over his face. "Hi, Mom," he said. "Guess what I just ate?"
--he's funny - and getting funnier every day. His one liners range from asking random strangers embarrassing questions like why their bums are so big to telling me that he doesn't like it when I'm angry because I have a mean face. How can you not laugh at that?
--he has great fashion sense - and that comes from me, if you're wondering! He loves clothes. This is a new development but it's so cute. He has his outfit for tomorrow laid out. He'll be wearing the new baseball shirt that grandma gave him for his b-day.
--he has a great smile - of course I think so, I'm his mom...but...whenever we go somewhere, I notice people watching him. Maybe it's because he's wearing red cowboy boots but I think it's the smile. When we got the kids' pictures done a few weeks ago, it was SO hard to choose Maddox's best picture. He was perfect in all of them.
--he's my snuggle puppy - for those of you who haven't read Sandra Boynton's book, Snuggle Puppy, it's one of our favorites. He loves to snuggle with his mommy and I hope that he never outgrows that.
--he says cuapado instead of cuatro. No matter how many times we count in Spanish, he likes that word better. It's sort of a hybrid between crocodile (which he pronounces perfectly in both languages) and cuatro. Either way, it's cute!
--he's a leader - and I can completely see why. There's something about this boy that makes you want to be where he is, to do what he's doing, and to smile while being there and doing that. That makes it VERY important to get him on the right path. When Maddox is being mischievious, it's a hard day. When Maddox is flying right, the whole house seems to run smoothly.
--he has strong opinions - and he doesn't care what others say. If he likes the red boots, he'll wear the red boots. If he thinks that soldiers should carry guns, light sabers and swords, then that's what they carry. When he thinks my shirt is ugly, he lets me know. When he tells me I look nice, I smile because I know he means it.

I could go on all night but I won't. See...Stewart is out of town and he usually comes in and tells me to go to bed at this point of the night. Otherwise, I'd stay up all night. Since he's gone and there is nobody here to pry me away from my computer, I think I'll exhibit some restraint and pry myself away.

Good night!

I like to look for rainbows....

On April 6, 2001, Hadley Anne Peay was born into our family. Really, you could say she officially made us a family. Before Hadley, it was just Stewart and I, selfishly muddling our ways through life. And then she arrived.

Oh, how the world changes when you have a baby. When the doctor handed Hadley to me, she looked into my eyes and I knew that we knew each other. I was sure she knew my voice (I later found out maybe not my voice but that's another story...) I had the sensation of looking into eyes so familiar that they could even be my own eyes. Her eyes don't look like my eyes. I just knew them as well as I know my own eyes. It was the first time in my life that I had ever had such a feeling. I remember the first night in the hospital. I wasn't able to sleep because I just wanted to look at her.

Two months later, we learned that Hadley was deaf. I mourned the loss of the person I thought I would raise. It was a death of sorts to me as I re-defined what kind of mom I would be. The child I thought I had given birth to no longer existed to me. I cried.

I consider myself a linguist of sorts....a lover of words, language, poetry, a Spanish and Russian teacher, a debate champion. My husband, the law student, dreamt of being a great orator, a statesman, a litigator. What were we to do with a child who could not hear?

We began our journey...first sign language. We learned, we practiced, we signed. Our deaf mentor came twice a week, I enrolled in ASL at BYU (lots of letters there, eh?) and a few months later, we came to a horrible realization. I had enough time to make great progress with my sign language. Stewart did not. What did that mean? Was he to have less of a relationship with his own child because he could not communicate with her as well as I could? And what about cousins? Grandparents? Uncles and aunts? Did they all need to learn a new language in order to know Hadley?

Next stop on the journey...cued speech. Stewart and I attended a workshop and spent a weekend learning cued speech. It's a phonemic representation of spoken language. It is based on our spoken language and a combination of lip reading and hand shapes to represent the sounds. It provides a bridge. It seemed closer to what we were looking for but...

And then, we met the Larsens. They probably do not know how much they have impacted our lives. We hardly know them. They are a family with two deaf daughters (and later, a deaf son) who invited us over to dinner and introduced us to Hannah, at that time 5 years old, and Sara, then 2. Both girls are profoundly deaf and both had cochlear implants. They didn't really speak much, although the girls did speak. I was just shocked to see them both turn when their names were called. That was SO MUCH more than I had ever dreamed my deaf child could do. I felt an awakening at that moment. On the drive home, Stewart and I looked at each other and I could see that there was hope in both of our eyes.

You all know how the rest of the story goes as far as Hadley's hearing is concerned. But today's story for me is more about the beautiful young lady she has become.

Hadley is now eight years old. Today she chose to be baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. My sister, Karyn, sang a beautiful song to Hadley called "When I am Baptized", in which rainbows are mentioned as a reminder of Heavenly Father's love for us. It was such a perfect day...it even rained. Not normally perfect but just right for a baptism day! So many friends and family members came to support our little angel. Thank you to all of you.

I have thought many times over the past eight years about how my expectations for Hadley have continually evolved as she has grown and matured. I could not be more proud of her. I really couldn't. I cannot even believe that I ever worried about her the way that I did. She speaks, she sings, she reads, she laughs, she cries, she dances, she is everything I ever wanted in a daughter and she is so much more. I still look into her eyes and feel as though I am seeing my own soul. What greater joy is there in life than to have children who you love, who you admire, who teach you, and who love their Heavenly Father.

Happy belated birthday, Hadley. We are so proud of you.