She was one of a kind

The bench that Cobra and Mark brought to Gabriel just out of the blue one day.

I lost a good friend Monday. I've written about Cobra in my blog before. She had been battling many health problems for years now, and her heart finally gave out Monday morning. She was 66 years old.

We met 9 or so years ago when I was matched to be her Literacy tutor. We became really good friends during the process and had stayed in touch even though the training stopped when I found out I was pregnant. What I'll remember most about our friendship is the times I would go over to her house to tutor, and we'd end up just talking and laughing for the entire two hours instead. I came to look forward to those Saturday mornings just to catch a little of her spark and carry it with me all week.

Her real name was Diane, but she changed it to Cobra while living in Iran with her husband, Mark. She was a fascinating person with a rich history that I was still learning about. She had 4 kids that she had some issues with after divorcing their Dad and running away with Mark (the youngest was 16 at the time), but she has since made peace with them about that and many other things. She had never told them about her dyslexia and reading issues, even though several of them struggled through school with the same problems, but she came clean about that too.

She loved to cook and garden, and you never left empty-handed after visiting her. She would pile me up with little knick-knacks she had seen and thought of me, homemade fudge during the holidays, fresh veggies she had extras of, or best of all, her homemade fig preserves right off of her many fig trees each year. We just finished off the last of it about a month ago, and when I called her in the hospital two weeks ago, she said she had more at home to give me.

She was very spiritual and believed in omens and visions. She claimed she had dreams about people's futures. She understood and was respectful of many different religions. She was also very talented with arranging flowers, even though they were mostly silk, which I just don't get into. She did several weddings and sold arrangements at craft booths here and there. She and Mark helped out with our wedding, and she immediately became fast friends with Jav's family from Mexico even though there was a language barrier. Cobra was just like that. She broke barriers and exceeded expectations about what human beings could be like.

She was so excited when I told her about the first pregnancy, and ended up falling in love with Gabriel and he loved her right back. She always had gifts for him when we visited. We made a point to visit about once every three months or so, and last saw her in late July, just before she flew to Michigan to spend two weeks with her kids, grandkids and one great-grandson, all of whom live there. Now I'm so thankful to God that she was able to make that trip.

She taught me about strength, perseverance, gratitude and giving. In the midst of all of her pain and health battles, she never stopped living like she wanted to, and never stopped thinking about other people and what she could do for them. I'm very thankful that she became part of my life, and I'm really going to miss her.

What I learned from Gabriel's birthday party

Taken the morning of the party, he is already so excited he won't sit still for a picture.

The cake.

He has his new dinosaur t-shirt on I bought for the party.

We threw another backyard birthday party for Gabriel Saturday. Even with only inviting immediate family, Godparents and kids, and our few neighbors that we're really close to, the guest list turned into 21 people. A few couldn't make it, but it still seemed like a lot of people. We followed the same idea as last year and set up the ping pong table in one corner of the yard, and added a croquet course on the other. The new swing set proved to be pretty popular with the kids.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, especially Gabriel, who is our little party mingler. He greets each new arrival with a big hug. He never stops moving, and goes from one group of people to the other to see what every one is doing. He sometimes will stop mingling and join them for a little while, but then he's off to the next grouping. The thing I'll remember most (besides the things I have listed below), is the look of pure joy on his face when everybody sang Happy Birthday to him, while he sang right along with us.

I, however, did not have as good of a time as I did for his birthday last year, and was very upset when it was over (probably due to complete and utter exhaustion). After giving some thought as to why, here's what I have learned from this year's party:

10. The minute I finally have time to relax a little and maybe even play some ping pong or croquet, everybody's ready to go home.

9. My dog apparently doesn't like the way my uncle moves around. He was a new addition to our guest list this year since he now lives here instead of Fredericksburg. We're very happy to have him with us, but he moves very awkwardly due to his strokes and we couldn't get Molly to stop barking at him and had to lock her up in the garage. She's never done that to anyone before.

8. The kids love it when it's pinata time, but I am starting to hate pinatas. Last year my niece almost got whacked in the face. This year it was almost Gabriel. For a few seconds I thought he had been hit. This was the point where my blood pressure got up so high I could feel it, so I went to lay down.

7. Planning a sit-down meal instead of just snack foods when you've invited more people than your table holds is a big mistake, especially when it's too hot for anyone to want to sit outside. Which leads to...

6. Apparently late September is always going to be hot, or at least the day we plan Gabriel's party will be. What happened to our 75 degree highs from mid-week?

5. No matter how much planning we do before hand, we are still scrambling to do tons at the last minute, and are busy throughout the party. It's very frustrating to realize the party has ended and I got to see very little of it going on. I have to piece together what happened by watching the video.

4. Small doses of family are good and welcome at this point. Large doses are bad. Just very bad.

3. Never attempt to throw any kind of party when you are 42 and 7 months pregnant. Your hormones and nerves do not understand the concept of "party time" at this point.

And the things that kept me going:

2. I value my husband's patience and willingness to jump through hoops more and more each year. And I think I might lose it without his sense of humor and ability to calm me down.

1. No matter how much work it is, how many things seem to go wrong, or how exhausted you are afterwards, if Gabriel had fun it was all worth it.

And he did! (More pics to come).

The sadness of Puff

This post goes along with my post about Gabriel turning three. Last week I was sad to hear about the passing of Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. I dug out my Best of PP & M CD, which is the same as my parents' album I listened to as a kid. I love many of the songs, and of course grew up listening to Puff, The Magic Dragon. But even as a youngster I could sense something sad about that song. I think I thought it was really sad that Puff had no one to play with after the boy moved onto other things.

I played the song for Gabriel on the way home from Mother's Day Out. When they got to the last verse, and the words go, "A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys," it hit me that I was listening to the song for the first time as a parent, and the sadness took on a whole new level. My baby has turned into a toddler, and it's truly just flown by. Needless to say, I almost had to pull over with tears running down my face and Gabriel asking, "Mama are you ok?" repeatedly from the back seat. Maybe it's good to be reminded of how fast they grow up so that I will try to enjoy every living second of having him little, before the dragon ceases his fearless roar.

Happy 3rd Birthday Gabriel!

The very excited Birthday Boy after waking up Sunday.

Gabriel helps out by reading the plans to his Dad.

Allison, Gabriel and Andrew enjoying all of the guys' hard work!

The entire outside crew.

The inside crew.

Sunday my little man turned three. I can't believe it! This was the first year he was totally aware of what it meant, and was very excited when he woke up that morning. Plus we had told him that Daddy and his Godfather, Uncle Keith, were going to put up a swing set for him. Uncle Keith has put up several swing sets, play houses, trampolines, and various other last minute toys, so we told him the best gift he could give us would be to come and help Jav, whose experience is just beginning!

Keith brought his oldest son, Matthew, to help out (I think he's 13 now). About two hours after they started working, the rest of the family came hauling Aunt Christine's homemade spaghetti sauce (she calls it "gravy", having come from an Italian family by way of New Jersey), meatballs and sausage, more gifts and homemade cards for Gabriel, and money to help out with the swing set. These people take their position as Godparents very seriously! And they give Gabriel so much love.

I did what I could to help out with the rest of dinner, but Christine basically took over and had everything ready by the time the guys finally finished 4 hours after they started. They said the instructions were only pictures, and most of the pictures were wrong. I think Jav would still be working on the thing for Christmas if we hadn't had Keith's help! We sat down to our fantastic dinner, while the kids hurried so they could go outside and play on the new toy. Gabriel was running around shouting, "It's finished! It's finished!" Allison and Andrew helped him try out everything, including the see saw which Gabriel had never been on before, and Allison sent him flying off of it when she sat down on her side. But he was a trooper and jumped right back up yelling, "I'm OK!" Thank goodness for thick St. Augustine grass!

We had bought a small cake for Gabriel (the big one will come for his party Saturday) and had tons of ice cream for cones for everyone else. My personal find was a gallon of Bluebell Chocolate-Covered Strawberry, which I'd never seen before and couldn't make my buggy drive by at the grocery store. I think it's my new favorite flavor. Gabriel sang Happy Birthday to himself with everybody else and blew out his candle (Mommy was really tired by then and only put one on instead of three for some reason). We were all exhausted but really happy at the end of the day, and knew that we had all made one little boy very, very happy.

Ode to the perfect tuna sandwich

When we were on our honeymoon in Scotland, we spent the second night of our trip on the island of Skye. I wish we would have had a little more time there to explore the place. It was a picture-perfect quaint fishing town. (I had to find this pic on Google. Our only pictures were taken on my non-digital camera at the time). Once you are in town, many of the buildings are painted in pastels along the main walkway. We had a terrific dinner in a little pub, where I ate the best fish and chips I've ever eaten. The next day we were off to Inverness, which involved half a day of driving and going right along Loch Ness. After leaving our bed and breakfast we decided to stop at the local bakery to pack up some sandwiches, chips and cookies to have a picnic somewhere along the way.

We ordered tuna salad sandwiches, and then forgot to say "crisps" instead of "chips", which of course means french fries anywhere in the UK. That caused a bit of confusion and several looks from the ladies behind the counter like they were used to dealing with rather slow Americans. We started our drive and eventually made it to Loch Ness, where there were several places to stop and take in the view, as it is much more enormous than you might think from watching those shows on Discovery. We found a nice spot, and even though it had started sprinkling, we opened up the hatchback and laid out our picnic. Those sandwiches were so delicious, I can't even put it into words. They had added red onion, and celery, and maybe cucumber, but I couldn't figure out anything else. While we were eating, a gentleman drove up, got out of his car in full kilt regalia, and began playing the bagpipes. I'm not making this up! It's a big tourist thing, and you are expected to leave some money in the hat he places in front of him. The whole experience was so surreal and special, but when we talk about it or tell the story to people to this day, the thing we rave on about the most are those tuna sandwiches.

I've tried to replicate the flavor. I've added the three ingredients I figured out that day, plus I play around with others, but I can never get them to taste as good. I know that some of this is location related. Things just taste better on vacation than they do back in normal, hum-drum life. But as I was planning how to mix it up and try again for dinner tonight, it hit me that the bakery may have had access to fresh tuna straight out of the ocean. Or even if they used canned tuna, a can of tuna from Scotland is probably a heck of alot better tasting than a can of Chicken of the Sea! So I think I will give up on my quest to taste the perfect tuna sandwich again, unless someday we find ourselves back on the Isle of Skye, where I will then flat out ask them what they do to them to get them to taste so good. And by the way, whoever thought of that name, Chicken of the Sea? Probably a rather slow American.

First carousel ride

A little over a week ago, we went to lunch with Jav's family for his Mom's birthday at Cheesecake Factory. That place has some GOOD food, although I think their menu is so extensive that it's hard for people to make a decision. They need to pare it down a bit. We decided to split three different kinds of cheesecake for dessert: Chocolate, Red Velvet (with delectable cream cheese icing), and Dulce de Leche. I tried really hard to not pig out and eat more than anyone else.

After we finished, everyone was really full, and Jav's Mom and sister had the brilliant idea of walking into The Parks mall to let Gabriel ride their huge indoor carousel. So we all took a little walk to walk off our lunch, and Jav was voted the one to ride with Gabriel. He was a little apprehensive, but mostly excited. He picked out a horse and when the thing started moving, I don't think I've ever seen him smile that big! It was great fun to watch and try to get pictures every time they sped by. He of course wanted to ride it again, and this time picked out a tiger to ride. It really did make the day even more special. Now I know it will be a blast to take him someplace that has even more rides-once I'm in a little better shape to do that!

The laziest day I have had in a long time

What does a schedule look like on a nonstop rain-filled Saturday, when it's just me and Gabriel and he has a cold?

7:am Get up, feed pets, empty litter boxes with hazmat uniform on, take out garbage (gee I miss Jav right about now).

7:45am Gabriel wakes up, still has low-grade fever, we realize we're stuck at home again all day. Sigh. Call brother to cancel on my late birthday get together in Weatherford today. Double sigh.

8:15 am Turn on Noggin, fix waffles and bananas for breakfast.

9:am Work on computer for awhile while Gabriel watches Dora video. For the hundredth time.

10:am Read the paper while Gabriel reads some truck books. Do some laundry.

11:a.m. Play in Gabriel's room. Make a dinosaur playground out of his Sesame Street garage, including a swing I rig from string and a thick rubber band. Try to remember the different voices I use for all of his little cars. Build some skyscrapers with blocks in the living room. Knock all the skyscrapers down.

12:pm Watch the rain and some hummingbirds out of the picture window.

12:30 Fix lunch - quesadillas

1:15 Read a bunch of books and get him down for a nap. He falls asleep before I finish singing to him, which is just so sweet. Finish up the laundry for the day, print out some Real Simple recipes I copied from the magazines and start a binder.

1:45 Nap time for me, too.

3:45!!! Wake up and take a shower. Ahhhhhh.

4:00 Gabriel wakes up and wants to play some more. We have juice and pretzels and turn Noggin on again. I clean the master bathroom, the only real productive thing I did today.

4:45 Rest and watch Ni Hao Ki Lan with Gabriel and try to learn some Chinese.

5:15 Turn off the TV and play some more in Gabriel's room, and push cars back and forth down the hallway.

6:30 Go to Chic-Fil-A for dinner. It finally stopped raining for about 15 minutes. Sing with the Laurie Berkner CD while driving. Get stuck in a massive traffic jam coming home due to a bad accident. 2 police cars, 1 ambulance and 3 fire trucks try to squeeze past the traffic, even on two bridges where there was no place to pass. Even Gabriel was concerned after awhile. Tried not to look at the accident, and said a little prayer for all the people involved as we drove past.

7:15 Finally make it home and eat dinner. Yummo! Decide to have ice cream for dessert. German Chocolate, my favorite. Double Yummo! Gabriel is an extremely happy camper about now.

8:15 Decide Gabriel doesn't need a bath since we have done absolutely nothing all day.

9:00 We talk to Jav, calling from his cousin's wedding in Mexico. He sounds a little tipsy, but it's good to hear from him.

9:30 Finish reading books, turn on the lullaby glow-in-the-dark toy that makes jungle animals go around in a circle on the ceiling, Gabriel almost falls asleep watching it. He murmurs, "Mama I had a really fun day today" to me, and I tell him I did too! I just about melt I love him so much.

Speech, and what we've learned

A ton. Gabriel is now talking all the time. He wants to describe everything, and he wants confirmation from us that we understand him. He wants all of his toys to have conversations with him. When he first started talking, I could probably only understand 30% of what was coming out, and most people's percentage was much less. I know how frustrating this was to me, and apparently it was frustrating enough to him for him to get better. Which I'm thankful for, every day. I can now understand about 90% of his very long sentences.

Part of his problem was lower jaw development. The poor kid had huge cheeks when he was born, and even though they've been steadily thinning out as he's grown, he still needed to strengthen those muscles to say certain sounds. This was figured out by our awesome ECI therapist and coordinator, both of whom I appreciate SO MUCH, for all the great information and tools they've given us over the past year. The second problem, I think, was just an overall slowness to develop fine motor skills. That's one of the fascinating things I've learned over the past year is that speaking and eating with a spoon all stem from the same part of the brain. He had trouble with both until just a few months ago. And the final thing giving him trouble (and this still does) is talking too fast and laziness to say things clearly. He just rushes through it and I have to remind him to slow down and say it right, so other people can understand him. But I can be proud that Jav and I have worked SO HARD in trying to improve his speech, (Gabriel's worked hard too), and even though we still need to work on a couple of consonants, we are seeing the results.

I'm not sure whether or not he'll still need therapy. Jav still has some trouble understanding him at times, especially over the phone. We were supposed to have our final Re-Evaluation with the Speech Therapist and our Therapy Coordinator this past Wednesday, but through a series of misunderstandings on their part, they didn't show up. I think this will be very valuable information to have, though, in our decision as to whether to keep going (which from this point will be paid for out of our pocket because our insurance doesn't cover any of it and he's too far along to qualify for the FW public school therapy program.) They will basically give him the same tests, updated a little due to being a year older, that they gave him when he started the program and see how much he's progressed. So we're trying to reschedule before he turns 3 a week from Sunday.

All of this has made me very interested in possibly furthering my education and pursuing some type of career in early child development or speech therapy when I have to go back to work. Supposedly the therapists are so badly needed right now that they all set their own hours, which would work beautifully with having to take and pickup kiddos from school. I'm not sure, though, how it would work with school holidays or summers, and that's still the only thing giving me pause.

I'm just so glad to be able to communicate with him now, all the time!!!