Deck the Halls!!!

We dressed the Christmas tree. This is usually a fun thing to do, but this year, it was even better with our little Bean there. We put the really annoying Christmas music on, wrestled with the tree to get up and lit, chased the cats away every three seconds, had some great cocoa (thanks, Cheryl!), and stopped to take some pics with Emma Bean.

For the past eight years that I've been living with Cheryl, decorating the tree has been a fun, cheerful event. We put up the ornaments we've bought as souvenirs, remembering fondly the trips we've taken. We hang the ornaments that people have given us as gifts and are thankful for the loved ones in our lives. We smile and kid around. Growing up, not so much...

Each year, there was some dread mixed in with the excitement of Christmas. My mother is a perfectionist. My father has zero patience. With a combo like that, what can go wrong? My dad and I would be struggling with a fully decorated tree trying to turn it clockwise and counterclockwise as my mom was on the other side of the room saying, "No. Move it back, there's a bald spot showing now." It wouldn't take too much of that to send Pops over the edge.

And the ornaments...oh the ornaments. So I mentioned how our ornaments usually bring up fond memories for Cheryl and I. Somehow, they had the opposite effect on my mom. There were a few ornaments (why on Earth we still have them, I'll never know) that set my mom off. Brought flashbacks to her of the bad old days. We'd relive the same dreadful memories with my mom yelling at my dad for something someone else did 18 years back.

You know what, though? I'd never trade those memories for anything! It happened every year, and every year we loved it. The tree at my parents' house always shined brighter and looked better to me than any other I ever looked at. It was decorated with heart and soul. Our chaotic craziness breathed a life into the tree. Who knows, maybe I'll pick a fight next Christmas to give Emma something to remember later!

A Sad Goodbye

This is something I've been meaning to write about, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. In September Cheryl's mom passed away after fighting cancer for the second time.

I keep wanting to scream out that it's not fair. Why is my kid being denied knowing her grandma. It is, in my humble opinion, grandparents that help to define who we are, where we came from, and what we believe. Sure, parents do the grunt work of making sure we stay alive throughout the perils of childhood, but it is the grandparents that help define our spiritual growth.

Parents can be a little crazy. They are rash, hot-headed, prone to irrational acts, and after having a baby for five months, I can completely understand why!!! But grandparents are different. They're calmer, wiser, gentler. They've seen hardships we can only read about in books. They've had adventures in far-off lands. They tell you bedtime stories about the fox with no tail - at least my grandpa did :)

It was an excitement about having Emma interacting with her grandparents that really made losing Cheryl's mom hard. Sure, there was plenty of selfishness involved. I want to see her. I miss her. I may have teased her, but I really loved her. But it was my desire for my daughter to learn from the experiences of all her grandparents that really hit me hard.

How do you get over something like this? I'm not sure I ever can. At the funeral, I was a pall bearer and I delivered the eulogy. It helped to do something, but it still hurts. In October, we did a breast cancer walk in Fresno. Little Emma was with us. We hope to do this every year in memory of Mrs. B.

We'll miss you!

The Good Stuff

When I told my cousin I was going to be a dad, he said it was going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. Wow. Understatement. He also said it was going to be the best thing I've ever done. Again, understatement.

Our little monster doesn't sleep during the day really well. We do what we can to get her to sleep. Most of the time it is a bit of a chore, but sometimes, just sometimes, we curl up together and snooze in the middel of the day. These are the moments that cannot be described. All of the worry, pain, fear, anxiety, all of the memories of the emergency room, the long, sleepless nights, the crying - all gone!

Cheryl says she hates naps. I don't understand. I wouldn't trade my naps with the little monster for anything. Anyway, thought I'd share a bit about the good things that come with being a dad.

Baptisms and Broken Toes

Yes, it has been months since I've posted. Such is the life of a parent. Things have settled a bit. She cries a little less than she used to. Her sleeping is okay at night, horrible during the day. And Cheryl decided to stay at home with the the little monster...at least for a little while.

And we baptized her last Sunday. It was something. We did it at my parents' church...in Assyrian. So the 2/3 of the 90-something guests that showed up didn't have a clue what was being said in church, but they were good sports about it. Rene's dad was serving as deacon during the mass so it was very special for him. And little Emma wore the same gown that her dear old dad had worn at his baptism so many years ago.

After mass, we went to the church hall and had lunch. We had lasagna for lunch. We had a few no-shows, and the caterers had made some "just in case" food, so we had a little extra. We ate leftovers for days and still have some in the freezer. For dessert, we had fruit that my mom cut up, cookies and such that my parents bought, and cupcakes which I made.

You've heard "blood, sweat, and tears," but I bet you never heard it said about cupcakes. I made them at our place in Dublin and hauled them to Turlock. On Saturday night, we were doing the last-minute stuff for the baptism. My parents were cutting fruit, Cheryl and I were frosting the cupcakes, and Fate was chuckling over what she was about to do.

A light rain was drizzling outside. I took the boxed cupcakes to the back of the minivan (oh yeah, we bought a minivan, that's another blog posting by itself!) and was joyfully jogging back into the house, barefoot. My parents had some concrete steps put in front of their house a few weeks back. I introduced my big toe to the steps...hard! I heard a really unhappy crunch.

Swear words, cursing, yelling, and howling, I let the family know that my toe was broken. How did I know it to be broken? Because it was facing a direction it should not have been facing. Into the truck with my dad on our way to the emergency room. Thank all that is good in this world - the ER room was not that crowded. 2 1/2 hours was all the whole thing took and I went home with crutches. Yup, for my kid's baptism, I was on crutches. Kinda lame, but oh well.

As for pain, breaking the toe hurt, but the shot they gave me to numb the toe so the large scary man could set it into place - wow, that hurt!!! My dad actually held my hand as the four shots were administered. I thought they were using pliers to pull the bone out, it hurt so bad. The ER doctor that gave me the shot was a smaller lady with a great sense of humor and made the pain a bit more tollerable. She was happy to be at work and was joking it up with my dad and my cousin (who met us at the ER waiting room) like they had been buddies since childhood. At one point, the doctor was asking if she should just saw off my toe, to which my dad told her not to bother, she should just shoot me like they do to horses with busted legs...nice. So the small lady punctured my toe, there was blood after the shots, and the large man wiggled my toe a bit and put it in place and taped it all up. I felt nothing thanks to the miraculous wonders delivered through a foot-long syringe.

Anyway, the toe is set and I'm going to get x-rays again tomorrow and the kid is Christian. By the way, the official story behind the busted toe that I'm telling people is that I was attacked by Ninjas. Let's keep the cupcake and minivan business just between us girls, eh?