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Mar 8, 2013

Ten Years

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It was on this day, ten years ago, that I stood in front of our friends and family and said “I do” to joining in marriage with Aaron.

Ten years. Wow.

Some things have changed since that time, while others stay the same. We have a house now, and a dog, although two of our cats have been with us all along. The only blogging I did at the time was on LiveJournal, but now blogging is a much bigger deal. Aaron still makes his weekly pilgrimage to the comic book store, and ten years of added comics makes me glad we bought a house larger than needed at the time.

And of course we are now parents to two beautiful daughters. That’s a big change.

 (They can be a little silly, too.)

The past ten years have been…interesting. I can’t say they’ve been totally awesome, because there have been a lot of painful moments mixed in with the happy ones. Our life together was nearly ripped apart at one point. But that’s real life, isn’t it? The vows say “for better or worse” but many people don’t think about the “worse” that could come their way, because it’s a happy day full of promise for the future.

The biggest myth about marriage is expecting it to be effortless like the media prefers to portray it. It’s not. It takes effort and determination and work, the levels of which can vary from day to day. You occasionally have to be utterly selfless, painfully swallowing your ego and setting aside your wants for the sake of the other person and for the sake of your partnership. However, it IS a partnership, and your partner will (should?) do the same for you when needed as well. And the rewards from each person making those small sacrifices are exponentially greater than what was given up.

(Kinda like a rehearsal for parenting, eh?)

We’ve been through ten years of absolute joy and plenty of struggle, and we’re still together. We learned how to be partners, how to work through our problems, and how to keep love going even when the newness starts to fade. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s not always hard either.

I can look back at our first ten years of marriage and say we’ve learned a great deal about how to make a life together. I doubt we’ve figured it all out, but I don’t think that happens for a long, long time. If ever! But that’s OK, it gives us something to work towards.

Today on our tenth anniversary, I hope for many more years together for Aaron and I, and I hope our family will prosper in the years ahead. As cliche as it sounds, I’m so thankful to have married my best friend. I love you, dear, and I love our geeky little family.

Ready to take on the world together. (Yes, I had to throw another Disney picture in.)
Filed Under: Aaron, daily life, love, me me me, memories, more than parents ·


Mar 5, 2013

The Most Magical Place on Earth

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I was somewhat quiet in the social media world last week, and with good reason. After months of planning, saving and waiting, we packed up the kids and drove to Florida so our daughters could have their first experience at Walt Disney World.

It was the first time we’ve been on a week-long vacation as a family, and the first full week of vacation I’ve had in nine years. Aaron and I had spent a day of our honeymoon at the Magic Kingdom, then for our one year anniversary we spent a week at the Disney World Resorts. The second trip wasn’t quite as much fun as we expected because I was newly pregnant with Cordy at the time, and spent the entire trip with morning sickness (24/7 sickness, really). I was unable to eat anything and generally had no energy to do much.

Back then we had dreamed of coming back to Disney for our 10th anniversary, and bringing any children we had with us. So last year, around our 9th anniversary, we discussed it and decided we’d try to make it a reality for 2013. Our anniversary is in March, but the pitfalls of getting married during spring break is that you can’t travel anywhere warm for anniversary trips without crowds and higher vacation fees. But the end of February was close enough.

This time we stayed at Port Orleans – Riverside in one of their new Royal rooms.

This was the building our room was in.

The rooms are decorated as if Princess Tiana had made the room up for the other Disney Princesses, including a note on the table welcoming her royal friends to stay with her. There are hidden elements of all of the princesses in the room, from Cinderella’s mice and Aurora’s three fairies in the border along the top of the walls, to Ariel’s fork and pipe (dinglehopper & snarfblat) in the shower curtain design, and even the sink faucets looked like the genie’s lamp from Aladdin.

The cool part was the hidden surprise in the bed headboards. Pressing a button gave us a magical fireworks lightshow in the headboard – it’s no surprise that the kids wanted to press the button several times every day.

Sleeping under the LED fireworks.

We visited all four parks while we were there, with two days spent in Magic Kingdom. Seeing the dropped-jaw looks of amazement from our daughters as they saw Cinderella’s Castle for the first time and met their first characters made tears come to my eyes. To them, this was a dream come true.

The castle lights up in different colors at night.

The rides were also a hit for all of us. Thanks to a special card we got for Cordy (more on that in the next post), it was possible to ride every ride we wanted to without Cordy having an anxiety attack from standing in a long, tightly-packed line.

There were a few rides Cordy refused to ride, and a few that we coaxed her onto and then she refused to ride again. Cordy’s experience of Disney World was mostly what we expected it to be: she didn’t want to leave home, then she was anxious about every new experience once we were there and didn’t want to leave the hotel room each day, and then at the end she didn’t want to leave Disney. “I don’t want to…” was most often heard from her during the entire trip, but we expected this.

On the bus to Hollywood Studios – Cordy loved riding the bus and the monorail.

Because of her autism, she’s an awful grump about doing anything new, which means she complains and whines throughout the entire experience, then tells us later that she liked (most of) it. It’s a good thing we have some understanding of how her brain works and know how to compensate, or otherwise we would have felt like this was a horrible trip for her. She did have a few moments where she felt safe with a new experience and really enjoyed herself. And of course we went back to the rides she liked as much as we could so she could really enjoy them the second time, now that she knew what to expect.

Finally! A hat big enough for Cordy’s head!

Mira, on the other hand, threw herself fully into Disney with the force of a five-year-old typhoon. She was determined to see and do it all, and even if her feet hurt she wouldn’t complain for fear of leaving the park early. She had an agenda of what she wanted to accomplish, including rides she wanted to go on and characters she wanted to meet. Other than riding Space Mountain (which we convinced her was probably too intense for her) she checked off everything on her list and then some. As we rode the bus back to the resort each night, she usually leaned against me and fell asleep fast.

Mira LOVED meeting Stitch. They’re two of a kind.

Whenever anyone asked her what her favorite part of Disney was so far, she always replied, “Everything!!” And I’m fairly certain she meant it, two exclamation points included. She loved everything about Disney World. Even if she did figure out that the characters were people in costumes. When we met Cinderella at the Magic Kingdom on Thursday, I joked that we’d see her in less than an hour in her castle for dinner. Mira gave me the “are you serious?” look and said, “Or maybe it’ll just be another Cinderella.”

During the fireworks, Tinkerbell flew out of the top of the castle directly over us. I pointed to her and said to the kids, “Look! Tink is flying past us!” and Mira then responded, “I think she’s really using a zipline.” Despite her clever mind, Mira was still willing to put aside her rational thoughts to fully enjoy each character meeting, though.

I have no idea what secrets they were sharing.

As for Aaron and I, it was fun to experience Disney as parents. I went to Disney as a child, and we went together before we had kids, but this was our first trip seeing it through their eyes. It was definitely more exhausting, and we were at the mercy of their wake up times and energy levels, but it was still a fantastic experience.

My mom and aunt were also along on the trip (they stayed off-site and spent most of the week seeing other places in Orlando) and they watched the kids for us for two evenings so we could have a nice dinner and spend some time riding rides together without the kids. It was a good balance of time with and without the kids.

We topped off the trip on our last night there with dinner in Cinderella’s Castle with the princesses. What better way to end our vacation than by seeing the inside of the castle and visiting with the princesses one last time? I had my own surprise for everyone, too. In the weeks before our vacation, I had secretly ordered a custom cake to be delivered at dinner that night.

Sorry for the dark photo – it was dark in the room at that point.

It was gluten-free for Aaron, with a design that was reminiscent of our wedding cake and a flavor that matched one of the tiers of our wedding cake. It was so gorgeous no one wanted to cut into it! A tenth anniversary cake in the castle at Disney World – perfect end to the week, no?

The morning that we started for home, there were tears from all of us. No one wanted to leave. Before we had even left our resort, Mira had already started asking when we could come back again. We agreed we didn’t want to wait another ten years to come back, and that maybe we could begin slowly setting money aside for a repeat trip in a few years. (Once we finish paying off this one!)

I know there are many people who are cynical about Disney, but I can’t help getting caught up in the magic. Yes, it’s all designed to get you to spend money, but I never feel cheated in handing it over. It always feels like we got our money’s worth and then some. Disney works very hard at providing a unique experience that goes above and beyond any standard theme park, and for us they were completely successful.

It was a magical vacation.

More to come on what attractions we liked best and recommendations if you’re planning your own trip. I wish Disney had invited me to write about our trip, but this wasn’t sponsored at all, as my Visa card can attest. We really love Disney that much.

Filed Under: family time, love, memories ·


Feb 13, 2013

Nightmares Feeding On Mom Anxiety

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Do you ever have those dreams that are so real that you wake up startled, disoriented, and trying to determine if it actually happened or if now, awake in your bed, is the true reality?

Now what about nightmares?

My sleep was disturbingly interrupted by one of those nightmares this morning. This one was worse than many because it didn’t involve any danger to me, but instead to one of my children. And unlike other bad dreams where I can wake and realize any danger was highly unlikely and improbable, this one involved a very real scenario that left me shaken and unable to go back to sleep.

In my nightmare, Mira died. It was a very life-like situation: she wasn’t with us (I can’t remember if she was at school or with family) and she choked on a bit of hot dog. The horrific scene played out where we received the news, and then planned her funeral. I remember sobbing that I’d never hug her again or see that impish smile. I tortured myself with “what if?” – what if she had been with me that day, what if she had only picked a different food or someone had cut up the hot dog better for her, or what if I had never encouraged her to like hot dogs? I remember walking into her room and seeing her favorite stuffed animals on the bed, and I was overcome with grief.

And then I woke up.

Terrifying, right? It took me several minutes to calm my breathing, wipe the tears out of my eyes and realize I could hear Mira arguing with her sister downstairs, perfectly healthy, perfectly alive. My mind was still on fire with the false memories from the dream, trying to push them aside and write them off as fears conjured into a hellish scenario for my brain to process.

The half hour remaining before my alarm went off was useless. I tried to go back to sleep, in the hope that more sleep would erase the lingering images from my mind, but the danger had been laid out for me and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I needed to do to prevent this from becoming a reality. After all, I had just bought hot dogs for Mira at the grocery last week after she asked for them – was this some warning, or just my mind arranging a random collection of thoughts and memories then taken to the extreme end?

I do occasionally worry about Mira choking. The kid is a talker – an excessive talker – and that includes while she’s eating. I’m often reminding her to chew and swallow, then talk. How easy would it be for her to accidentally inhale a piece of food?

And the concept of choking is one I’m personally familiar with. When I was five or six, my babysitter had given me some of the candy orange slices as a treat. (You know, the thick, sugared gummy-jelly wedges?) I was so happy to get them that I inhaled them. Literally.

I ate the first two without any trouble as I looked out the back door, trying to finish them so I could go out to play, but when I popped the third one into my mouth, it accidentally slid too far back and got stuck. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t yell for help. I remember the confusion and then the panic as I tried to cough or swallow to dislodge the candy. My babysitter was two rooms away and I didn’t think I could make it to her.

I walked from the kitchen to the living room, starting to hit myself in the chest, begging my lungs to work as I became light-headed. I remember stumbling over the rug (her rug had tripped me on many better days as well) and landing with my chest on the arm of the couch. And that did it – the candy popped up enough for me to cough it out. My throat burned as I gasped for air.

My experience could have ended far worse, and to this day I still won’t go near orange slices candy. I know Mira has trouble focusing on any single task, so I guess it’s only natural that I’d have a nightmare about her choking.

The hard part now is getting the nightmare out of my mind. As parents, we only have so much control over our children and we can’t guarantee their safety 100% of the time. Letting a child out of your site, even for a moment, is trusting that you’ve surrounded your child with the safest possible world and the best teaching, and that they’ll remember what you’ve taught them.

But there is no absolute safety. There are always risk, accidents you have no control over, and dwelling on all of the what if’s will only zap all of the joy out of being a parent.

When I came downstairs this morning, I sat on the couch next to Mira and she immediately threw her arms around me and said “I love you, mommy.” I pulled her close to me as she nuzzled her face into my neck, and hugged her tight.

That was my restart for the day. Instead of thinking about possible danger, I’m choosing to focus on the great moments I have with my kids. Because if something bad should ever happen to any of us, I want to know that our days were filled with love and happiness.

If anything, the nightmare was a good reminder to notice the little moments of joy in each day.

This kid cracks me up.
Filed Under: being a mom, family time, love, memories, Mira ·


Dec 19, 2012

Our Friendly Neighborhood Santa

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I wanted to write about all that has been going on in my head the past several days. About the heartbreaking tragedy of Newtown, Connecticut. About my anger over the media trying to (wrongly) link Aspergers and autism to violent behavior. About my own daughter with autism, and how she is so afraid of violence she won’t even watch Harry Potter because she can’t deal with the idea of Harry’s parents being killed.

But...I can’t. It’s too much to process right now.

So instead, I’ll share with you a happy story, about two little girls who got to walk to Santa’s house to meet him and have a snack with him.

One of our neighbors is a professional Santa, and his wife dresses up as Mrs. Claus. He lives one street over, and we see him occasionally throughout the year. He’s clean shaven from January thru late Spring, then begins growing the beard back in for the holidays.

This year they sent invites to the neighborhood to come to Santa’s house for milk and cookies one Sunday afternoon. Their house is always well-decorated for Christmas, including an extra mailbox for letters to Santa. The invite was to all kids to come to Santa’s house and meet with him.

Our kids were confused as to how Santa could live in our neighborhood. We explained that Santa has lots of homes all over the world, and visits each of them often so he can keep an eye on all of the good little boys and girls in that area. When he’s not there, he has helpers who keep up the house for him. For two little girls who love Santa, that was an easy story to buy into.

So we took them to our neighbor’s open house, and we were greeted at the door by Santa. Cordy and Mira were stunned into silence for only a moment, before bursting through the door and telling Santa how much they liked his decorations. Mrs. Claus then appeared and guided the girls into the kitchen to pick out some cookies and snacks.

We chatted a little bit while other families arrived. Then Santa sat down in his chair and invited the kids to come talk with him. Each took their turn telling him what they’ve been up to lately and what they hope he’ll bring them on Christmas. Mrs. Claus took photos of each of the kids with Santa, too. (Likely better than my blurry iPhone pics here.)

…and I want a Furby, and more Skylanders, and Pokemon, and a kite, and…

Having “Santa” as a neighbor is helpful, because he knew right where they lived, and he already knew they had a dog named Cosmo – they really believed he was watching them all the time. Getting that kind of confirmation from him reinforced for them that Santa was real.

This is type of gesture that reminds me there are still good people in the world. There was no cost for this open house, although donations of canned food for our local food bank or gently used coats for the homeless shelter were encouraged.

They opened their home and their kitchen up to all of the families of our neighborhood. They had been baking sugar cookies for days to prepare, and the snack spread was impressive. Time, energy, and money were given out with no expectations in return.

No child left that home without one-on-one time with Santa, and the room was filled with lots of smiling little faces as it sunk in that they were visiting Santa’s house. It was pure joy and love.

I don’t think any other Santa will be able to top that experience for my kids. Or for me.

Filed Under: family time, holidays, love, people who don't suck ·


Dec 14, 2012

What’s In A Name?

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Yesterday as I was driving the kids home from school, somehow the topic in the car shifted to names.

Mira: “Mommy, my teacher’s last name is the same as her husband’s last name.”

Me: “OK.”

Mira (suddenly sounding upset): “A friend in my class said that a family is everyone with the same name.”

Me: “Well, that’s not quite true…”

Mira (now more upset): “She said that if you don’t have the same last name as us, you must not be our real mom, and you must be a stepmom.”

Me: “WHAT?”

Mira: “That’s what she said. And it made me mad! But you’re our real mommy, right?”

Years ago when Aaron and I got married, there was a small discussion about changing names. I was in grad school at the time, expecting to make a name for myself in academia (hahaha), and I wasn’t all that keen about changing my name. Aaron was completely indifferent to the idea. He was OK if I took his last name, and he was OK with me keeping my name.

I wasn’t really trying to make a feminist statement with my last name. After all, it’s a paternal surname. But it’s the name I’ve had since birth, the name I graduated from high school and college with, and the name I had for the start of my career. I’ve had to spell it countless times, sound it out slowly when people mangled the pronunciation, and agree with hundreds of people that yes, it is an unusual last name. I’m acclimated to handling anything involving this difficult name now.

Aaron’s last name, while not as hard to spell as mine, is equally as unusual and often mispronounced. I didn’t feel like trading away one difficult name for another. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of giving up my public identity and changing every legal document to become a different identity that was still the same person underneath.

Besides, both of us felt strongly that a name wasn’t what tied a family together. A name is deep on a personal level but superficial when it comes to connecting with others. Your family are the people you love, including some who may share the same surname, but certainly not limited to that group. And names can easily be changed, while the person who carries that name remains the same.

We’ve had a few moments since having children where eyebrows were raised that I had a different last name. Most times a quick “we’re married, I didn’t change my name,” is enough to clear up any confusion. If needed, we have miniature, laminated copies of our marriage license. It’s not a big deal to most people.

I still answer socially to Mrs. hislastname and I don’t mind if I’m called that by others or receive letters addressed to that name. I’ve even said that if the name thing ever became an issue, I’d change my name if the situation required it. But for now my legal name is the same name I was born with, and there are no serious objections (from those who matter) to make any changes to that.

I never expected that a kindergartener would suddenly bring the issue to the forefront of our kids’ minds, especially in a school where there are so many families made up of different names, some married, some remarried, some not at all. Of all of the situations I imagined in my head, I never thought it would be the youngest generation making sweeping statements about what defines a family.

Mira was shaken by the declaration from her friend. She knows I have a different last name – which also happens to be her second middle name – and she’s never questioned it until now. I reassured her that we were just as much a family as any other family, and that having a different last name didn’t make me any less her mommy. My name may be different, but she still grew inside my belly.

She’s going back to school today certain that we are a family, and ready to tell her friend that whether you change your name or not doesn’t define how strong of a family you are. A woman changing her name or not is a personal decision that in no way reflects on the love she has for her family or her dedication to that family. Love bonds families together, not names.

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Filed Under: being a mom, big issues, love, other people's kids, school ·