jody berger

Lucy

Lucy's been sick for the past few weeks.  She is having some degree of kidney disease/failure, and it appears to be pretty bad.  I took her to the internal medicine specialist today, and we made the decision to hospitalize her for 1-3 days in order to try to "flush" out her kidneys and hope that she will start to feel better and then start to eat again.  It is so sad to see her sad and uncomfortable (though she has many moments of happiness and playfulness, too).  

We have had her for over 11 years.  Some of that time has been stressful because of how she reacts to strangers (though she's always been wonderful with our vet's office and seems to be doing very well with the emergency animal hospital, too), but she has been a wonderful family member with us.  She loves trying to kiss Ethan good morning (he is not as fond of this ritual) and for the last year or so, she has really taken to following Jordan around.  Of course Scott and I adore a million things about her after all these years.

It feels so sad and lonely to be here without her tonight.  I miss the sound of her collar when she'd wake up and "shake" herself awake.  The way she'd follow us up and down the stairs a zillion times, even if we just ran up or down because we forgot something.  I love how she will "pet" us back by putting her paw on us if we stop rubbing her belly for a minute.  How soft her ears are.  What a comfort it is just to hang out with her when the house is quiet.

I hope we can get her kidney levels back under control and get her eating again so that we can have our happy girl back at home with us.

Beautiful Ruins

I just finished the book Beautiful Ruins (by Jess Walter) for my book club.  I had pretty low expectations (because Sheri and one other person told me that it was ok, but not great), but I enjoyed it!  It took a while to get into it, but once I was into it enough to really care about the characters, I couldn't wait to keep reading.  Not an all time favorite, but definitely a good read.  It'll be interesting to hear what the consensus is at book club later this month.

I liked this quote from page 284:

"But aren't all great quests folly?  El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos--we know what's out there.  It's what isn't that truly compels us.  Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet legs--four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon--but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this; the hope of the serendipitous savant--sail for Asia and stumble on America--and the hope of scarecrows and tin men:  that you find out you had the thing you sought all along."

Books

Although my magazine pile is once again growing (because the arriving issues are being massively ignored--not for lack of interest, just for lack of time!) I have actually read quite a few books recently.

For book club I read The Cuckoo's Calling, which was wonderful.  It's the book that was written by J.K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame) under a pseudonym (Robert Galbraith).  Even though I loved the Harry Potter series, I probably would not have picked this book on my own.  I'm so glad it was chosen for book club, because I really loved it!  I hope she writes another to continue it as a series.  It was great.

I also read Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris.  I wanted to read it because I was going to see him speak at CSUN with mom and Amy on 11/16/13 and thought it would be good to read his most recent book before I saw him.  In the end, it didn't really matter whether I had read it or not.  He did touch on some of the topics from the book that night, but not too many.  Honestly, I thought the book was just good.  Not great, but good.  Not my favorite of his (he has some I truly loved, like Me Talk Pretty One Day) but still enjoyable.  Seeing him live is wonderful!  I have only ever seen him live once before--at UCLA sometime around 2004?  I don't remember the exact date.  Both were wonderful evenings and if you enjoy him as an author, you should definitely see him do a reading.  I laughed so hard I cried--several times.  The man in the row in front of us had such a fantastic and unique laugh, that sometimes Amy and I were just laughing with him (not really at him, since it was not meant to mock!)  The whole evening was a lot of fun.

Most recently I read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.  I loved this book, but I found it so emotionally intense!  I am probably not doing it justice by always qualifying my review with how much it hit me emotionally.  I often cry during books, but this was seriously some of the saddest, most gut-wrenching crying I have ever done while reading a book.  I think I scared Lucy at one point.  :)  Anyway, it was really a fantastic book and I am definitely interested in reading more by this author now.  Even though I was super emotional the day I finished it, I am so, so glad I read it.  This is one I will remember for a long time.

Here's one of the quotes that stood out to me while reading the book:  

"It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man--the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring--you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life.  You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.

I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being.  I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child.  I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history."  (p. 110)

...

I really do need to be better about writing here.  I haven't even written at all about our trip to Hawaii this summer, have I?  Well, today will not be that day.  But I do miss keeping up with the little day to day things.  I'm going to try to be better.

So far the school year is off to a great start.  Jordan's teacher seems fantastic and he is in class with many of his good friends from last year and/or soccer, baseball, etc.  Ethan is still in Ms. Toni's class and loves it more than ever.  She is so fantastic and I am already sad that this will be his last year with her.  (Happily we have many more months left in the school year...and I know he will be psyched about being in kindergarten at Jordan's school next year, so it's all good!)

They both started tae kwon do a few weeks ago.  They go to the same place that Brady has been going for a few years.  Jordan and Brady are actually in the same class right now, even though Jordan is just starting and Brady is a junior black belt.  I guess jr black has to repeat the series of levels so they are able to be together, which is great.  Jordan loves it and is so focused and confident in there.  I am really proud of him.  Ethan is in a beginner class for younger kids and also seems to love it.  He talks a lot in class (of course) but is excited about it. I think he's most excited to earn a belt but I am not sure how dedicated he is to it in the long term.  He's so cute and proud, I'll tell you that!  I had no idea how expensive it was when we signed up for this one month trial period.  And I think they make you sign a contract for a year, so we'll see if he is going to continue right now.  Maybe we will have him wait until he's a bit older and then start up again?  Either way, it's fun and different and they seem to like it!

I'm sure I'll have some stops and starts but I'm going to try to be better about jotting down the everyday stuff here.  :)

The Post-Birthday World

A week or so ago, I finished reading The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (link in the right column under "recent reads").  I loved it!  Erin (CRF Erin) recommended it and I am SO glad.

I found myself really appreciating several different quotes throughout the book...I finally started marking the pages so I could write them down once I realized just how many I wanted to remember!  (I know I missed a few great ones before I purposely marked them, but oh well.  It's a library book so chances are I'm not going to reread it.)

Here are some of my favorite quotes (no spoilers!)

"Still, perhaps the whole tumbling cycle of wanting and getting was wrongheaded.  Desire was its own reward, and a rarer luxury than you'd think.  You could sometimes buy what you wanted; you could never buy wanting it."  (p. 160)

"(One of the luxuries of which the underprivileged were deprived in the United Kingdom was consonants.)" (p. 177)

"And somehow whenever Irina was at a loss for words, she blurted her most private reflections because she couldn't locate the public ones in time." (p. 252)

"There are varying advantages and disadvantages to each competing future.  But I didn't want to have one bad future and one good.  In both, everything is all right, really.  Everything is all right." (p. 380--I was a little worried that it was getting too meta at this point, but that ended up not quite being the case!)

"But that ending fucks everything up!"

"Fucked-up sounds realistic to me."  (p.387)

 

The sixth 4th

This is the 6th year that we've lived down here for 4th of July.  I honestly can't even remember what we've done on other years--I don't think it was anything huge.  Probably just enjoyed the day with Scott being off work, maybe fired up the BBQ in the backyard, etc.  We've never actually gone to a big fireworks show, because Jordan was afraid when he was young.  Once Jordan was old enough to be interested, Ethan was afraid because he was young!

I do remember packing everyone up in 2009 (Ethan was about 6 weeks old on 4th of July) and starting to walk to the park by our house.  It's up in the hills and has a lovely view, and we had been told you could see some nice fireworks from there.  As we were walking there, someone set off some fireworks/firecrackers at their house and it scared the crap out of Jordan.  Back home we went, without even seeing a single one.  (We can hear them from our house, but can't get a great view.)  I think last year we might have showed them some fireworks on tv?

This year, we decided we were going to a proper fireworks celebration.  In the morning, we went to our city 4th of July parade.  We got there just as it was starting and managed to snag a parking space in the lot near the parade's end (happened to be the lot where a yummy bagel place is!)  We happily managed to get a great spot to set up our chairs, and we were good to go!  We ran into some friends of ours (Alex, Emma, and Anne), and they ended up sitting with us for a while.  It was so perfectly what I imagined a 4th of July parade to be.  Kids dancing to the music from the floats.  People waving and cheering and just supporting their friends and community.  There were over 100 floats scheduled to be in the parade.  We stayed for about half of them, and that took about 1.5 hours.  Seeing as how it was about noon, we decided to grab some lunch at the bagel place.

In line at the bagel place, we ran into one of the Rabbis from our temple!  Turns out he lives near us, but we had no idea.  We also ran into one of the families from Jordan's baseball team.  A quick trip to Ralph's (not our local store, but right next to the bagel place) for some dessert ingredients (Yum! If you like lemon, make this!) and we ran into another one of the families from baseball that we were all fond of!

My friend Amanda had invited us to their street's block party (her son, Justin, is one of Jordan's best friends from school), so we headed over in the late afternoon.  They had an inflatable water slide in their driveway that was taller than their house!  It provided lots of water fun for the kids, but was crazy fast. E tried it once and that was enough for both of them.  Kids were coming FLYING out the bottom--one other kid even bounced out of the little "pool" at the bottom and over the rim into the street (he was fine). I was just as happy that they left it alone.  They played with squirt guns and other water blasters, ran around, grazed on food, and enjoyed being with friends.  Scott and I didn't know many people, but it was fun to hang out for a while.  They had a basketball hoop out, a volleyball net stretched out across the street, etc.  We stayed for a few hours, then headed home to get the boys into some pajamas.  We decided we wanted to go to a nearby lake to see their fireworks display.  We had chairs in the car, but were hoping to get a good spot where we could watch from the car since Ethan was still not so sure he even wanted to see them.

Well, we didn't have to worry about E.  He fell asleep in the car on the 15 minute ride to the lake. We circled that parking lot a zillion times, and finally scored a parking spot.  We opened the back of the car and piled into the back (E still sleeping in his seat).  Of course, a tree was blocking most of our view of the show.  Jordan and Scott got out and walked about three cars over and had a perfect view. I traded with Scott for a while so I was able to watch with Jordan, too.  He LOVED the fireworks.  His whole body gets excited in these situations.  I love it.  His face, his smile, his excited hands.  He was in awe.  He kept saying, "It's so beautiful!"  E slept through the whole thing.  :)

Next year we'll go earlier to a true fireworks show.  They will love it!

Stats

Ethan had his 4 year old well check a little bit late this year.  His weight was 32.6 pounds (10th percentile) and his height was 40 inches (25th percentile).  I'm happy to have him on the charts!

He is healthy and wonderful!

4

In the last 7 months, he's had croup three times and pneumonia twice.  For today, he is healthy.  He had a fantastic birthday.  Red crown courtesy of the teachers at school (where he celebrated by bringing pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and getting to be line leader all day).  We had dinner at Farrell's, followed by some browsing and some spending of birthday money at the Lego store.  He loved when they sang to him and made a big fuss.

The image I never want to forget from tonight:  him earnestly making a wish with his eyes closed while the candle burned on his (free) birthday sundae with rainbow sprinkles (among other toppings).  Wish I had my camera out at that moment, but so glad I got to experience it fully (and not just from behind a lens.)

This

This pretty much sums up how I've been feeling over the last few days.

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On Sunday, Scott took Ethan to his religious school class.  They talked about the Western wall in Israel, where many people put written prayers into the crevices of the wall.  Apparently someone from temple is going to Israel soon, and offered to take written prayers to the wall.  The kids were given the opportunity to write something and place it to be taken to Israel.  After Ethan was done, Scott asked him what he had written.

He said, "I made a map so G-d can find our house."

 

Big Bed

Tonight is Ethan's first night in his big bed!  It's long overdue, but we wanted to put it off as long as possible.  In the crib, E would stall a bit or call us in for another hug or one last potty trip, but he was really good at settling down and going to sleep on his own.  I'm not sure how it's going to be with him in a bed!  But it is time.

We got him a full size bed, and he picked Spiderman sheets from Pottery Barn Kids (he wants the whole Spiderman theme from PBK...the clock, the nightlight, etc.  But he can wait for some of those as birthday presents or something like that!)

It was really fun putting it all together and rearranging his furniture.  He was so excited and happy.  When the mattress was delivered, he kept commenting on the delivery guys tools, how they were working, everything.  At one point, he told them to be careful not to hurt themselves.  It was adorable.

He definitely stalled a LOT tonight, but I think he was probably nervous and excited.  He did end up going to sleep on his own, which was really important to me.  I did not want to start something where he would need one of us to be with him when he fell asleep, etc.  The only concern I have for tonight is that the bed rail we have is not high enough for his mattress.  It only goes up about 2 inches above the mattress, and I'm afraid he'll fall out of the bed!  But it is what we have for now, and it will have to do until we can find another one that is a better fit for his bed.  Hopefully he doesn't tumble out!

It was sad to take apart the crib, but so exciting to see how happy he was for the change.  I want to try to repurpose one of the crib sides as a magazine rack that can prop up against my bedroom wall.  I saw a post about that somewhere online, and think it would be perfect for me.  I always have a stack of a zillion magazines right next to my bed!  I have also seen it repurposed as a quilt rack.  I love that idea, but I don't own multiple quilts and I am not a quilter/sewer.  So.  Not really useful for me. But the magazine thing I could get behind!