Earlier this week, good friends of mine — Candice and Emmanuel Jackson of Kankakee — gave birth to her second daughter, a beautiful little girl named KaLeah.
Candice was rushed to Riverside late Sunday night, and delivered the baby during the wee hours of Monday morning. They had just had their baby shower last Saturday, and were hoping to spend more quiet nights at home before KaLeah was expected to come on Feb. 5.
Eight days early. The little one — whose unique name combines those of her two grandmothers, Karen and Leah — just couldn’t wait.
While chatting in the hospital with Emmanuel, he shared his joys and concerns about having a second child so soon; the couple have a two-year-old daughter named Destiny.
That’s when I realized that we share similar feelings.
We’ve learned that we can never be prepared for the additional responsibilities and financial costs that come with parenting for a second-time. But we can only try our best.
And because KaLeah’s arrival snuck up on Candice and Emmanuel, I also realized that my son, Jayden, might catch Alicia and I off-guard. (more…)
“Oh my, just look at those green peppers.
“They are so green – just like Kermit.
“Remember his song about being green? It was so sad.
“And what a beautiful eggplant but it’s really not an egg, is it?”
That was just a portion of my play-by-play patter through the grocery store vegetable section when my boys were 4 and 18 months.
Those were the days when I narrated nonstop.
Perhaps I was trying not to fall asleep. After all, those days literally blurred together. They were not broken by large blocks of nighttime sleep, but peppered with small moments when I was folding laundry and closed my eyes on the brown corduroy recliner – the one I told my husband would never see the light of the living room because it was so ugly, so ratty and so perfectly comfortable for 10 minutes of shut eye.
It was also the era where I literally had to mark my showers on the calendar – just to make sure I remembered to keep up with basic hygiene.
The season is upon us.
The sad season.
Too many people are sad this time of the year.
Children become sad in the winter too.
Are we parents helping the situation?
It is hard to bring ourselves to allow the boy to stay outside and play very long because of the cold. He didn’t notice the end of his fingertips were hurting until he came back inside. I thought it was frostbite. The fresh air and sunshine are good for kids though, aren’t they? Besides, he loves to be out there.
Our walks with the puppy are not as long. He is less rambunctious indoors (and chewing on fewer things he isn’t supposed to be chewing on) if he has that opportunity.
Cabin fever sets in although we never really spend an entire day at home or indoors.
Try to look at the bright side, there are only 51 days until Spring.
As I’m getting older, more and more of my friends, former classmates and co-workers are getting married and having kids.
Because we married young (22) and had three kids in the first five years of our marriage, these well-meaning newlyweds and young parents tend to ask my wife and me for advice or to share experiences.
Here’s the main problem with that. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Sure, I’ve got three kids, but that doesn’t mean I should be dispensing parental advice. That’s like asking somebody about electricity because he just found a bunch of wires. That’s essentially what I am. I found these wires and now I need to find out how to make them function without setting the house on fire.
Well, my nights of moonlighting at Target are over.
Yesterday, I filled out my voluntary termination papers, receiving my employer’s blessings to return if needed.
I hung up my red polo shirt and khaki pants, and stored away my white-and-red name badge.
I truly didn’t want to quit my position as sales floor team member and backup cashier. Nor did my wife want me to. Lord knows, we could really use the extra money.
But I had no choice. This last week was almost a nightmare for me and my family. And signs were showing that I needed to be back home before things got worse.
No longer — at least, for now — could I work until 11 p.m. after leaving my gig here at The Daily Journal.
On Tuesday afternoon, my wife went to pick up Zion from her baby-sitter’s home while I took care of some business up north on one of my rare days off. As Alicia headed back to her car while carrying Zion, she slipped on a sheet of black ice on the walkway. Alicia — who’s pregnant, for those who don’t know — hit the ground hard, which resulted in a painful leg causing to limp over the last few days. Zion slipped from Alicia’s arms and was tossed into a pile of snow.
Grace has fallen in love with her Little Mommy twin set that Santa brought her. And like any good mommy, she wants to bring her babies everywhere.
The only problem with this is that toys get lost — usually in the abyss called my car — because I don’t remember which toys we’ve dragged where until they miraculously show up again. (Or not.)
About a week and a half ago, Grace brought one of her dolls (the baby boy) to daycare for show and tell. A few days later, she’s at home crying for both of her babies. Although we turned up everything in the house, we could only find one.
When I picked Grace up on Wednesday, she was carrying her baby boy. It wasn’t until then that I realized the teacher must have thought it was a classroom toy, and put it back in the toy box, as has happened with Elmos, Doras and at least half a dozen balls brought in from home.
“Oh Gracie! You found your baby doll!” I exclaimed, happy he finally showed up. “Let’s bring him home and reunite him with his sister!”
Grace cuddled the doll the whole way home, and ran into the house shouting about how he needed his bottle and a ride in the carriage.
Grace played quietly in the living room as I swept the floor and finished loading up the dishwasher. Just as I was popping a pan of tater tots in the oven, Grace comes storming through the kitchen with the twins in the stroller.
“MY BABIES!” she delighted, only to my surprise there were three.
Oops. I wonder which kid went home that night without her baby. I guess this is why you should write your kid’s name on everything they own.
The kids’ grandpa on my side has been a Reader’s Digest fan for decades.
So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when the little magazine started showing up at our house.
I called him to find out if he knew anything about this mysterious arrival and he said he received a buy one, get four free subscription offer and he told himself, “Oh, I’ll give one to each of the kids for Christmas.”
Yes, you know where I get my cheapskate ways from.
So anyway, a parenting story in there about changing the way you ask the kids things or talk to them about certain issues really caught my attention.
We narrowly averted World War III the other day.
Grace and I were walking into Wal-Mart on Saturday. We were barely in the door when Grace’s radar picked up on Dora — a Dora TV Cart.
We have rented the Barney cart at least a billion times over the last year, and the Dora cart was brand new. The $1 rental fee is usually well worth it. It keeps Grace occupied while I shop.
Grace immediately started begging for the cart, and I promised we would get it as soon as we made a quick trip to ladies room (getting those beastly carts through the door is nearly impossible). It was pretty dead in the store for a Saturday morning, so I figured I had 90 seconds.
The ability of my kids to make a mess sometimes amazes me. They can take something that looks rather unassuming, like say a chocolate chip cookie, and turn it into a complete disastrous mess in about 30 seconds. Crumbs everywhere, and every ounce of chocolate in the cookie smeared on the face, in the hair and on the hands.
Also, in our household we have made the terrible mistake of keeping a treasure chest of toys downstairs in the living room. Cars, animals, toy phones and various other things that stab your foot and trip you are constantly strewn about. Oh sure, we can pick them up and put them away, but by the time we’re done, the kids have already undone our work and made another mess somewhere else. They’re walking, (somewhat) talking, whirling dervishes of mess-making and they care not for anything to do with cleanliness.
Sometimes, though, it goes beyond the amazing and borders on the paranormal.
During one of our trips to the orthodontist in Watseka, the daughter and I decided to do a little experiment.
No, it didn’t have anything to do with flood waters.
This was before that messy disaster.
We decided to wave at the occupants of every car we met and also some pedestrians as we cruised through several small towns.
The people to the south were less taken by surprise at the spontaneous action and on a case-by-case basis, the further south we went, the more people waved back.
Try it sometime.
You may find your kids have a lot of fun with it.
