Taking a Stand

Family has always been very important to me.  I have always prided myself on making the people around me feel loved and cared for.  I do not have a lot of money or material possessions, but I have a heart full of love, and to me, that means more then anything money can buy.  Once I got married, I looked forward to embracing a new set of people to my family.  Yet, it is very hard when there is a few people who seem hell bent on making sure I do not feel welcome in the family, and want nothing more then to feel they can tell me what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and retaliate when they do not get their way.  I'm not here to name names or put anyone on blast.  However, it has gotten to the point where I have just had enough.  I was the bigger person, extending a hand of friendship for the sake of the family, for the children, and yet all I have gotten in return is grief.  My son is a wonderful child with a beautiful and budding personality and sense of humor.  He is happy, healthy, and is so loved.  Again, I may not be able to afford him expensive toys, clothes, birthday parties, and the like, but to him that doesn't matter.  All he wants is the love of his parents and his family and he has that in abundance.  I refuse to feel sub par because others have more means then I do, or are able to do more for their child then I can do for mine.  But honestly, isn't that just teaching them that life is about money and material possessions, and that if you don't have that, your not worth anything?  As much as I hate it, I am very good at putting on a friendly face and demeanor around people that I do not favor, and I have tried so hard to find a place of forgiveness for past transgressions because the Lord wants us to forgive those who have trespassed against us.  However, just because I forgive, doesn't mean I ever forget, and it doesn't mean I need to associate myself with those who make me feel as though I am unworthy of their time.

The last straw is being called out as not being a good parent.  This truly cut me to the core.  My parenting skills, who I am as a mother, all stems from the greatest example of motherhood I have ever seen, and that was my own beautiful mother.  Like me, she did not have a lot in terms of possessions and money, but she has love and that was all I needed from her.  I parent my child the way she parented me, and I know I am doing right when I see how smart my son  is, how much he has learned and knows in just his three short years of life, and my husband steps in as a father should.  We are responsible parents, caring for his well-being, and I dare anyone to tell me my child is not taken care of.  I don't really know why certain people think we are not as good as parents as we could be.  I could call out some behavior that I have seen that I believe is not conducive to a good parenting relationship and style, but I would never stoop to that level.

As a child, I was bullied almost everyday throughout elementary and junior high school, before times such as these were bullying is now not tolerated and it is dealt with.  Being a child with a disability is not easy, but when I came home, my mom made sure I never felt different, that I was treated normally, and home was my safe place.  Now, as an adult, I feel as though I am being bullied by someone who has come into my safe place, and is attacking me emotionally.  However, I refuse to stand for this any longer.  In order to not feel bullied and to not get my feelings hurt, I am removing myself, and my family, from the situation.  We are real people with real feelings and we will not get them trampled on any longer.  This is not behavior our son needs to see or be apart of, because soon I fear that negativity is going to be placed on my child.

If I have learned one thing from this year, and the loss we have dealt with, it is that life is just too damn short. Too short to be dealing with drama and heartache.  I need happiness and positivity in my life, or I sink back into a place of sadness and grief that I try everyday to overcome.  If you love me and my family, you are here to support us, then your welcome into our lives and into our home.  If  not, then we cannot have you in our lives anymore.

Happy 3rd Birthday John!

While it isn't quite midnight yet here in Arizona, tomorrow, October 23rd, is John's 3rd birthday.  Today was his last day to be two, and I have to admit I felt a little sad about that.  He is growing so fast, and it seems as though time has just flown by.  I already feel as though I am forgetting little things he did as a newborn, and I find myself remembering today little noises he made, and the first time he smiled, rolled over, crawled, and took his first steps.

Today my son isn't so little anymore.  He is a very big boy, as he told me yesterday while eating dinner.  I asked if he needed help getting the pasta on his fork and he looked at me and said, "No, I'm a big boy".  Boy, isn't that the truth!  He is such a fun age now, where we can have little conversations, his sense of humor is coming through, along with his personality, and he is so smart and witty and funny! 

More then anything, though, I have come to realize this year just how much of a blessing this little boy has been not just in my life, but in the lives of everything who knows him.  It has been a very hard year for our family, but what made me get out of bed after everything I've been through, what made  me continue on with life and our daily routine, and put a smile on my face, was this sweet boy.  He didn't understand, and still doesn't understand, what we are going through and how we are grieving.  He just knows that he needs me to be mommy, no matter what.  He makes me laugh when all I want to do is cry, and he is helping to bring back that light in my life that went out when I lost Mom.  Without him, I would not be as strong as I am today.

My mom used to tell me how she was in love with me, and I really didn't understand how she could be in love with me until I become a mother myself.  Now, I understand what she meant by that.  You cannot help but fall totally in love with your child.  3 years ago I looked into his little eyes for the first time, and that was it: instant love.  Love that has grown everyday since.  At the time, he didn't know me, and I didn't know him, but we knew we needed each other.  I don't care if he is 3, or 30, he is always going to be my sweet baby boy.

Happy 3rd birthday John!  Mommy, Daddy, Papa, and everyone one else in your family loves you so much!!!

My son, the genius

I have decided that my little man is a genius.

Yes, yes, I know what your going to say, all parents think their children are the smartest things they have even seen.  I am no exception :)

I would have been blogging more about the smart child that I have, except that one day I opened up my laptop to discover that most keys on the keyboard had been plucked off by my smart child.  I was ready to read him the riot act, however he cozies up next to me, points to the keyboard and with a sad face and those big, brown, puppy dog eyes says, "I broke it, you fix it?"  I tell him no baby, mommy can't fix this, you broke it and you know you are not supposed to touch things that belong to mommy or anyone else.  He just looks at me, gives me a kiss, and says "I fix it Mommy".  Smart kid...knows how to butter up the mommy so her heart melts with how sweet he is and will forget about the very bad thing he has done.

Besides being a normal, destructive two year old boy, he is really become quite the smart little man.  He is very inquisitive, and has a thirst to learn new things each day.  First came colors.  He has these Mega Blocks, which he loves.  He will spend all day building what he calls "big block towers" that are taller then he is, then watch them fall down as he yells "TIMBER".  One day he started bringing me the different colored blocks and asking me what they were, so I would tell him the colors.  That was it, he was telling us colors of everything.  Numbers came next.  One of his favorite shows on Nick Jr. is Team Umizoomi, which are tiny superheros that use their mighty math powers to solve problems in their city.  They teach numbers, shapes, measurements, and the like.  He started telling me the numbers he was seeing on the screen before they would say it on the show, so I started counting with him and showing him the numbers.  Now he counts to 10 with ease, and is working on counting to 20.  From this he also learned his shapes, and can tell point out to me rectangles, triangles, pyramids, diamonds, squares, ovals, circles, cylinders, and even pentagons! 

The ABC's have been what we are currently working on.  Again, those blocks he loves to build with have the letters on them, and he started bringing me the blocks and pointing to the letters and asking me what they were. So we started using the blocks to teach him his letters, and of course he picked that up like no one's business.  Now he can tell us every letter of the alphabet.  I began singing the ABC song to him multiple times a day, and now he is starting to sing it to me, although there are letters missing from the song :)

On the subject of singing, this is his newest hobby.  He has finally learned how to sing songs.  He sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (with the hand movements).  There is also a women on Nick Jr. who sings songs and does sing language and he has started singing those songs around the house and doing some of the sign language. 

His vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds everyday.  He can string up small sentences together, and he can tell us things he wants.  Like tonight, he was playing with a bouncy ball and it somehow got into the kitchen sink.  He came over to me and said "Mommy ball in kitchen, come get it".  He is also just a little parrot, and says the funniest things.  The best part is that he knows he is funny.  He has a great personality.

He loves books, and at nap time and bed time we sit down together on my bed, him laying in my lap on a big blanket, and we read.  The other night I came into my room for reading time and he was sitting on my bed with his favorite book open.  I sat down next to him and he began "reading" the story to me page by page, picking out key things he knew about the story to tell me.  This shows me he already has great comprehension and memory skills.

Our only struggle at this point is potty training.  He knows what a potty is, and he knows what you do in the potty, but when bringing out the little potty and getting him to go on it is a struggle.  I have kept him bottomless, so that he is more aware of the urge to go, and explain that when he has to go, he sits on the potty.  He brings me a diaper instead and tells me "Please Mommy, diaper", and will hold it until the diaper is on, or he just pees on the floor.  I know he can figure this out, but either he likes the security of the diaper, or he is just being stubborn.  So it is a work in progress.  I'm not pushing him because I don't want him to get frustrated or have anxiety over using the potty, but it is mentioned all the time that big boys use the big potty.  I have also switched him over to Pull-Ups so he gets more of the underwear type feeling then the diaper feel. 

I am just so proud of my little man.  I think everyday as I watch him grow and play that my mom is missing out so much on this.  This is the age she loved and was so excited to watch him be because she would always so this is when they are so much fun.  I know she is watching over him.  There have been a few times very recently where he has been playing by himself and I hear  him say "Hi Geema", which was his little nickname for grandma, and he'll act like he is talking with someone.  The other day after he mentioned "Geema" a few times while I was in the kitchen, I went over to him in the living room where he was sitting on the couch with toys.  I asked him where Geema was, and he looked at me and said "Geema at doctor".  I know when Mom was going to her appointments a lot I would tell him we were taking her to the doctor.  Then I asked him where Geema was now.  Anytime I ask him he points to the ceiling and tells me "Up there".  This isn't something I have addressed with him yet because at the time she passed, he has no idea what happened and was so little he never asked where she went.  She spent so little time in this house that I think he was used to her not being here.  It may have been different if we were still living over in our old apartments.  But now as he is getting older he is mentioning her more, which makes me believe she is probably giving him little visits.  I plan on putting together a scrapbook of her with all the boxes of pictures she has just for him, and then we can sit down together and I can tell him stories about her.  I think she would like that.

Happy 33rd to Me

A few days ago, I celebrated my 33rd birthday. It was a quiet day here for me, just doing what I do everyday, taking care of my little boy. As nice as it would have been to get out and do something, who the heck wants to go out when it is 110 outside!? Not this lady...

It was a hard birthday for me though, the first one without my Mom. She loved celebrating my birthday so much, any birthday in fact. When I was a kid, she threw me a birthday every year from the age of 5 to 18. She'd spend time planning the menu and the games and who we should invite. When I was 16 and decided I didn't want a birthday pary, she decided to throw me a suprise party anyway. Once I became an adult, we didn't have anymore parties, but she always made sure that I had a cake and nice dinner and we spent it together. 

I'd like to think that in Heaven, she was up there with my family and throwing me a party up there, still enjoying the day. Or at the very least, she was looking down and smiling, remembering it was my special day. It just brings it closer to home that these are events that she will no longer be apart of with us in person, but only in thought and spirit. Four months later, and I still feel like I am in shock, like I expect her to just walk through the door at any minute.

But I know that she would want me to continue to live my life to the fullest, and celebrate these events and holidays with the same enthusiam ad gusto that she always did. And so I will.

Posting a little Bzz on Filippo Berio

For those of you who don't know, I am a member of a site called BzzAgent (www.bzzagent.com), which deals with word of mouth marketing.  You will be invitied to campagins based on your likes and what fits best with you based on survey answers, and they send you bzzkits, which contains a free sample of the product, plus coupons to pass along to family and friends.

I recently was invitied to join their Filippo Berio Olive Oil Campaign.  I was excited to try this brand, because I do love to cook with olive oil, it is healthy for you, and well, I am Italian, olive oil is something we love to cook with!  I normally only buy the store brand though, because other brands are just too expensive.

The other night I have some chicken that was stuffed with aspargus that I had purchased at Fry's, and I drizzeled a little of the Filippo Berio on top.  The first thing I noticed was how think the oil was, not runny like the store brand.  Also, the flavor was so good, I could actually taste what real olive oil should taste like.  It is now my go to oil whenever I need to sautee some chicken or veggies, or just as a little dressing on a salad.

Happy Mother's Day

I took some time away from my blog, and really haven't spent much time lately on my actual laptop.  I check my emails and Facebook through my phone, but haven't had the motivation to get on here and blog, or play the games I normally like to play at night after my little one goes to bed.  I find that during the day, I get so busy taking care of my little one, that I don't have time to dwell on the grief I feel.  However, it is at nighttime, when everyone is asleep, my husband is at work, and I am all alone, that I just feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.  I feel the grief, and all I want to do is get under the covers and just be.  I don't feel like moving, sometimes I don't even want to watch TV.  Sleep is okay on some nights, so-so most of the time.  I'm also angry, at her.  I am angry she isn't here, I am angry that she died, I am angry that she left me.  Then I feel guilty for being so angry with her.  But I know that is all part of the stages you go through.  I have felt like I haven't been able to get past that.  I realized tonight I need to start writing here again, talk about  how I feel.  Keeping it all inside doesn't help, and won't help me get to the point of acceptance.

Tonight, though, on this first Mother's Day without Mom, I reflect on just how wonderful of a mother she was, and how much she taught me, and helped to shape me into the woman and mother I am today.  My mom was a mother young, at 18, and her and I grew up together.  She didn't know what she was doing, but she knew she loved me, and that was all she needed.  She raised me to be a person of strong character, strength, love, compassion, and respect.  A lot of times, people would call me "little mother", because as much as she mothered me, I mothered her right back.  I am just a natural care-taker, and I just always had the sense that I needed to take care of, that without me she wouldn't be able to survive.  I know this may sound silly, but I believe we did need each other to survive.  We had the perfect balance in our relationship, growing up she was my mother and I respected her, and I knew that if I was told not to do something, I better not do it because she would be good to her word on whatever the punishment might be.  But we were also friends, and as I become an adult, we became best friends.  I could tell her anything in the world, upsetting or embarrassing, and she would never judge me.  She just listened to me quietly while I rambled on, and then she'd offer up the best advice ever.  She never failed in making a bad situation better.  I could have lost everything in the world, and she would have known just what to say to make me calm and feel better.  She made sure that I had the best things, even is she had to scrimp and save for weeks or months in order for her to be able to get them for me.  She was also the most selfless person I have ever known.  She gave to others before she took for herself, and she would go without to make sure her family was taken care of.  Her sense of humor was awesome, her and I laughed all the time, and she had the weirdest quirks, but it made her unique.

I suppose it is very honest to say that the mother/daughter relationship we had was unique as well.  I wanted to be around here, all the time, I had no problem living with her and seeing her everyday.  We did everything together.  We'd spend hours together, only for me to go home and talk to her more on the phone, or computer.  I wish that everyone had the kind of relationship with their mother that I had with mine.  I feel badly for those who don't.  I'm not sure why we were as close as we were, perhaps because we grew up together.  I just know I'll never have that with anyone again.

Today we sent up a balloon to mom, we all wrote on it, the baby scribbled on it, and off it went to her.  It's just a small way to let her know how much we still love her, and always will.  Today I hugged my son, grateful that she taught me how to be a good mom, and glad that I can be here to continue on her legacy, teaching my son things she would have taught him, and making sure he never forgets just how wonderful his grandma was.

Happy Mother's Day Momma, I love you with all my heart.

Trying to Deal

Lately I feel like there is something wrong with me.  I feel as though I should be acting differently then I am.  I feel as though I should be curled up in bed under the covers, crying constantly, totally consumed in grief.  I mean, this is my mom I just lost, my whole wide world.  She was my everything, my best friend.  I could always count on her being right there at my side through life.  I probably depended on her more then I should have.  But I didn't care, she needed me, and I needed her.  This is a huge loss for me.  Actually, huge doesn't even begin to describe what kind of loss this is for me.  Imagine someone being there every single day of your life, no matter what, loving you and supporting you, being your rock, your best friend.   The one person you do everything with.  Then, just take them away and try and understand that your never going to see this person for the rest of your life.  Never hear their voice, their laugh, watch all the little quirks and things that they do.  It's as though someone reached into your soul and just stole it.  I feel as though I should be a basket case.  Yet, somehow I wake up every morning, and some days I manage to go by without shedding a single tear.  I believe my son has a big part in that.  I am mommy, and that is a never-ending job. As a two year old, he doesn't comprehend what is going on around here, and the loss we are all trying to deal with.  He just knows he needs me to be his mommy, kiss his boo-boo's and make him food, and play with him, and take care of his daily needs.  He is truly what keeps me going.  Without him, I really do think I'd be a basket case, laying in bed all day never wanting to emerge from the covers. 


But life goes on, they say.  I know I  need to grieve, and go through all those stages they take about.  But I feel like I stop myself.  I really don't know why.  Perhaps I am just used to being the strong one, and making sure everyone else is taken care of.  But, to be truly honest with myself, I just don't think I have admitted to myself she is really gone.  It is easier for me to put it out of my mind, like she is just still at the hospital and one day she'll get better and be able to come home.  This just doesn't seem like it could be true, how in the world did we lose her!?  She was just diagnosed, they have a treatment plan set for her, and even though the prognosis wasn't the best for her, we knew we had some time left.  The BAM!  Reality smacks you in the face.  Bringing home her urn, and placing it on our wall unit, bring the reality of what happened truly home for me.  I find myself looking at the urn, and thinking, "How the hell did this happen?  How the hell did you end up in a box!?".  It is getting harder each day to keep up the charade in my head that this didn't happen with an urn is staring you in the face. 


I just wish I knew how to deal with this.  I wish she was here to tell me how to, because she'd be the one person who would have all the right words to  make me feel better.  But I know what she'd tell me.  She'd say, "Don't be upset, because I am happy now.  I don't have any pain, I have a healthy body, I have family with me, and am finally where I have always wanted to be, with Jesus, praising him all day long and learning from him.  I had a hard life, things never went the right way for me, I always felt like a burden, even though everyone would tell me I am not, I never felt well for the longest time, I worried about finances and always felt like an outsider.  Now, I am released of all that.  Just be happy for me".


As I just typed these words, I feel as though she was just speaking through me, and I have to take comfort in that.  I have no doubt those words are what she'd speak to me if she could.  So I try not to be so sad, I just try to live my life, take care of my son that way she would want me to, make sure my dad is being taken care of just like she would have, and take care of my husband.  I found an email in her account tonight where she was telling someone about me, and she said she thought I was perfect no matter what, and that I was the best thing to ever happen to her, and she'd go through everything she had to again just to still have me.  You know what mom, you were perfect to me too. :)