Wrapping Up Summer

Matthew is taking a little nap so I thought I would update my blog and add a few new pictures.

Time is flying by. I just realized that I have been writing this blog for over a year now. A lot has changed in a year’s time, but a lot has stayed the same. When I started the blog one of the first things I typed was about how much of what I would write wouldn’t be earth shattering or extremely important, but would be pretty much an update of what is going on with us. That is still the case. When I sat down today to type I realized that there really isn’t a lot to talk about.

My sweet little baby has become an adorable toddler. He is growing up so fast. He is showing interest in potty and often says “me pee pee” to let me know he needs a diaper. He is talking more every day. I don’t always understand what he is saying, but he is trying to communicate. He loves to sit and read books to himself or his stuffed animals. And he climbs on EVERYTHING.

He is going to turn all my hair gray before he goes off to kindergarten. He likes to do things for himself, but he wants you to watch him. He wants to help with everything - cleaning, couponing, cooking, you name it and he wants to do it. It is like my life is stuck on the Matthew channel, because he wants all of my attention.

I think we may be getting a taste of the terrible twos already. On Thursday of last week I actually got a note sent home from his teacher to let me know how badly he had behaved. It said, “Matthew did not have on his listening ears today. He climbed on everything he could, threw food from the table and refused to lay on his mat at naptime. He talked very loudly all day, almost as if he was shouting.” His teacher told me that he used his time-out time to catch his second wind. Friday was a little better. He has been trying his luck this weekend with poor table manners and not listening. Time-out at home breaks his heart because he doesn’t like to be separated from me and Brian. We sit him in the corner and ignore him. It is such a challenge because he won’t do something he has been punished for sometimes for several days, but then other times it is like he does not remember that he got in trouble 5 minutes ago for the same action. We do pop him sometimes, probably not as often as some people think we should, but I don’t want to teach him to hit others when he feels they were “bad”. Popping him is my last resort and I finally understand when my parents said that spanking hurt them more than it hurt me. Last night I was so aggravated because he refused to lie down and go to bed. He was tired, but he didn’t want to miss anything. I don’t know why I think that I can reason with a 17 month old. But it is hard to stay annoyed when he wraps his arms around my neck and says “ma-ma” and just hugs me for all he is worth. I think he knows that I can’t stay mad when he is all sweet like that.

Summer is pretty much over. Not officially according to the temperature or the calendar. But for all practical purposes it is over. We had a pretty good summer. We didn’t really do anything special. We visited some family and just spent time together. We got to spend some wonderful quality time with Brian’s family about a month ago. It was so nice to have everyone get together and just have fun. Unfortunately we don’t all get together too often unless it is for a funeral. Brian and I want Matthew to have a close connection with both of our families. We want him to grow up with lots of memories of his extended family. It is sad that we don’t get to spend time together more often. I understand why we don’t. We all are busy and have our own families. It is hard to plan something and get everyone together. I hope that Matthew will grow up knowing all these people, even if he only sees some of them a couple times a year. We really missed having Cathy there. She would have had a blast.

Matthew and I met Me-Ma, Pappy, Aunty Christy and Ayden at Chuck E Cheese’s a couple of weeks ago. The boys had a ball. They really enjoy playing together. I am glad that they get along so well, even though they don’t get to play together on a regular basis.

I guess I should wrap this up. Matthew is starting to stir. So the quiet will be over soon.

Pictures are Memories and Memories are Priceless

With my long commute to work and back, I often have extra time to ponder (only if Matthew is sleeping of course. Otherwise I have to talk to him and entertain him.) Anyway, I have been thinking about all the things that I have learned as a mom and all the things I wish I had known before embarking on this motherhood journey. There are lots of tidbits that I heard before Matthew arrived that are valuable, whether I believed so at the time or not: sleep when he sleeps (heard that countless times, but still couldn't seem to do it), clean later, cherish the baby days because they are too short (I realize this more and more with each passing day). And things I now realize: my patience has seemed to grow, my ability to get everything done has disappeared, my brain thinks of Matthew first in every situation, nothing about my kid grosses me out, things I would never tolerate from other children doesn’t cause me to bat an eye when Matthew does it.

But of all the things that I have learned or been told, my most valuable piece of advice is: Take pictures. If there were ever anything that I wanted to tell another mother, it is that. Sometime at a later date, these images will become so precious and priceless to you that you would be willing to take on a burning building, an angry bear, or a psycho-serial killer to save them.

I have heard so many people (myself included) who say things along the lines of “I wish I had a picture of him at that age,” or “I wish I had a photo of him doing this,” or “I wish I could show you what you looked like when ….” I believe that you can’t take too many pictures. You don’t have to print them all, but you will want to save them all. The first 6 months of Matthew’s life I took at least 150 pictures EACH month. (I know that sounds crazy, but it is the truth.) I still average nearly 100 photos per month now and Matthew is 17 months old. And there are still moments that I don’t have captured on film. I wish that I had taken more pictures of him with his Grandma Cathy before she passed away. And I can’t go back and get those priceless images to preserve for Matthew.

So fellow Mommies remember that kids change before your very eyes, and our memories are faulty, even if we don’t believe them to be. It doesn’t matter if you are a good photographer or if you have an expensive camera, you can preserve these priceless memories. I enjoy looking at photos from my childhood and many of them are grainy or blurry. But enough of the image exists for it to spark a memory for me or my family in order to tell the story.

I have tried to stage some really cute and artsy photos to take of Matthew. That generally doesn’t work. And many of the photos I take are a split second too late to get the face or smile I am trying to capture. And I have learned that Matthew is generally too quick to catch good images of. But I still snap the shots and save them. My point is don’t get wrapped up in taking perfect photos just TAKE THEM.

Someday when your son towers over you or your daughter is putting on makeup, you will be able to see your babies any time you want, at any stage of their lives you want. Someday, you will miss those grubby little faces covered in spaghetti sauce and the skinned knees and messy hair. Taking pictures ensures you will never have to let those memories fade.

Speaking of pictures, I finally got around to getting Matthew’s one year portraits made. I was only 4 months late. And wouldn’t you know a week after I got the prints back daycare had a photographer come in to take the kids’ portraits. As horrible as this sounds, I kind of hope that the images from daycare aren’t too spectacular. Because then I will definitely want to buy them and I just bought the others. I can’t seem to resist pictures of my son. I think that is all mothers, which is probably why the photographer comes to daycare twice a year. Anyway the pictures from Wal-mart turned out OK. Matthew didn’t want to smile really. But at least he didn’t cry.

We had Matthew’s picture made with Brian and Gene to get 3 generations of Stanley men in a photo together. That was one thing that Grandma Cathy had wanted us to do from the time that Matthew was born. I am sorry that she didn’t get to see the finished product.

9-11 Never Forget

I can't believe that it has been ten years since the 9-11 terrorist attacks on our country. It is hard to believe that ten years ago today, the world as we know it changed drastically. An unprecedented act of aggression was launched against our great nation.

It seems so odd to me that I lived during one of the most horrific, yet historical events in US history. I mean I know that history is made everyday, but I witnessed a huge historical event. My son will read about this in his history books and he will ask me where I was and what it was like. I never really thought about what I would tell him until the dawn of this ten year anniversary. I know I will tell him that our world changed on 9-11-01. I will explain that nothing like this had ever happened to our country before. It was an attack that came out of nowhere and took 3,000 lives. I will tell him that because of this terror attack new words and phrases became a normal part of our lives – terror alert, Ground Zero, war on terror, 9/11, Patriot Act, al-Qaida, Department of Homeland Security, Taliban. I will be able to tell him what it was like to be so afraid for the security of our country, so sad for all the people whose lives were lost or changed, and so proud that my fellow Americans looked beyond all the things that separate us and make us different to unite under a banner of red, white and blue. Everything else ceased to matter. People did everything they could to help each other out and American pride was evident on every car, house and face. We became truly proud to be Americans.

I will tell Matthew that particular Tuesday was just another ordinary day. I like many others can’t remember exactly what I did last week, but I remember exactly where I was on 9-11-01. I was in my graduate level genetics class listening to a lecture. Class was about half over when a student who was habitually late came in asking if we had heard that a hijacked plane had just crashed into one of the twin towers. The class erupted into talks of previous hijackings and speculation as to who would do such a thing. None of us had any idea of the terror we would watch on TV the rest of that morning. After the brief interruption the lecture resumed for about ten more minutes. For once, no one hung around after class. We all rushed out to tune in to the news. I walked 10 minutes across the brickyard to my office. By the time I reached the office I shared with fellow grad student Justin, another plane had crashed into the twin towers. Justin was tuned in to the little clock radio we had in the window sill and was staring at the breaking news on the computer screen. He told me what little he knew at that moment – a plane had been crashed into the first tower and as he was watching the live feed on that story he saw the second crash.

We began discussing the odds that this was an accident – pretty slim. But who would be crazy enough to hijack two commercial airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center’s twin towers. While we sat there in disbelief the news anchor announced the grounding of all commercial flights nationwide. Minutes after that, we hear that the Pentagon has been hit. It is pretty apparent that America is under attack. And then the unimaginable happens, the second tower hit begins to collapse.

Thank goodness I had no other classes that day. I was glued to the computer monitor. I like many Americans witnessed the collapse of part of the Pentagon, the crumbling of the other twin tower, and the joining of a nation. I will tell Matthew that as soon as his daddy got off of work he came to my apartment. We went out to KFC and really just reflected on the horror we had seen in the news, but the gratitude we had that the rest of the terror plan had not come to fruition. We were really thankful to be alive ourselves and to have each other.

This nation was wounded, but not defeated. Our country rose up tall out of the rubble.

We stood united and proud as a nation. While this awful thing destroyed lives and really hurt our country, some good did come of it. We were reminded of the things our nation was founded on – belief in God, faith, prayer. Those things got us through those very dark days. This nation once again turned back to God and got on her knees. Prayer and God were once again the center of our lives. We prayed prayers of mourning for those who perished, we prayed prayers of thanksgiving for those who were spared, we prayed prayers of healing for our broken nation, we prayed for strength and safety and miracles. I have no personal connection to that day, except as an American. And even though I don’t have that kind of story to share with Matthew, I am forever changed because of 9-11. The national anthem took on a whole new meaning to me. Before it was just a pretty song, now I can’t hear it without tearing up. Before I appreciated soldiers and their jobs, now I am truly grateful for their service and sacrifice. And I will never forget the sacrifice of soldiers, policemen, firemen, and normal civilians.

This event redefined the word hero. Heroes aren't comic book characters or actors on a movie screen. Real heroes are the firefighters who rushed into the twin towers, while others were running out; they are policemen who ran toward the devastation instead of away from it; they are average Joes who helped people evacuate; they are passengers who took back a hijacked plane all the while knowing they probably would die; they are soldiers who fight for our freedom every day; they are people who searched the rubble for days hoping to find survivors; they are parents who raise their children alone because of this one day in history; they are neighbors who waited in line for hours to give blood, money, food, anything they had. I will stand as a proud American in support of all those whose lives were changed that day. These will be the things that I tell Matthew when he begins to study this historical event in school. And I hope he learns what a great nation this country can be and that he is truly blessed to have been born here. I hope to raise a proud American.