Fathers Day - many many moons ago

This breaks my heart, but also gives wings to each broken piece.  I don't know how else to describe longing and joy.

Arica helped make this video for Zander a few years ago for Fathers Day.  I think the sound should work.  Hey Zander, let me know, okay?

Afternoon Storms

 

Those are some well defined ribs.  He "has a hole in his leg" as the expression goes.  This kid eats basically everything and anything.  He would guzzle a gallon of milk in a few days if we let him.   

 Ender changes outfits atleast twice a day.  Summer or winter he'd rather be in his "tarzans" (underwear) Cora, summer or winter would rather be buck naked.  In the winter, however she orders me to roll out the space heater in the kitchen so she can eat breakfast comfortably.  Anyway....

The lightning and thunder splintered and cracked the iron clouds.  Rain gushed out and my tough girl that likes to push her big brother around whimpered and begged to go back inside.  The thunder was intense, its great sound smashing straight over head, but I couldn't go inside.  Its not me.  I tried to comfort her with a little education and teach her to count the seconds between the flash of light and the peal of thunder.  I think it took hold.  Later that evening, she and Gunther accompanied me on a puddle jumping walk while the sky still gurgled and fizzed with electric clouds.  I am beginning to pay more heed to her.  She has always been so simple to interact with, yet lately, she is demanding a more complex response from me and zander.  Some things she just can't get over as easily like before. She needs a human connection to encourage, persuade or distract her.  It only takes a moment of this "extra effort" and she's back on track, but if you choose to dismiss her feelings.... cover your ears and duck because she's coming for you.  Its a normal and healthy thing being 2 1/2, its just that the majority of my mental energy was required by our strong willed Ender.  "Oh would you look at that, Cora needs a mom and a dad too.  Make room Ender Johnny" 

It just comes with the Territory

A week before Sam was due, Ender contracted pink eye.  Lovely.  He was more than happy to share it with his sister.  If only they could share their toys and space so easily, we would have accomplished Miss America's dream of world peace within these walls.
Thankfully, it was plenty of time to medicate those angry eyeballs, so..... we could move on to the day of Sam's birth where Ender woke up with round two of pink eye, zander with flu like symptoms and me in early labor and a sore throat.  Stupendous.
Grandparents are the greatest.  I was worried no one would take our infested children so I could do the whole labor and delivery thing.  But, grandparents have guts and unconditional love.
With Ender and Cora gone,  I could focus on the contractions. By 11 that night we decided to head to the hospital for the heck of it, oh, and so zander could sleep.  He reasoned he already wanted to be there instead of me waking him up in the middle of the night because as it was he was not feeling well. 
We go through the annoying but I guess necessary steps it takes to get checked in through triage and eventually admitted to the hospital.  I get an epidural that works this time, have mercy!  so thats the heaven everyone is talking about!  The nurse seriously tucks Zander in for the night and he promptly passes out, leaving me to wonder.... was that my water that just broke? He misses a few scary moments of Sam seemingly disappearing, of needing oxygen, of being rotated this way and that, but I didn't mind a bit, not with an amazing nurse.  Nurses can be all you every need in life.
Around 6 am, I'm watching the planes land at Sky Harbor and its pretty much go time.  The doctor's and nurses scurry in and all that commotion wakes sleepy head in the corner.  Twenty mellow dramatic minutes later, we welcome Sammy boy into the blazing summer of this world.
Zander gets pink eye that night in the hospital.  I'm sick with swollen lymph nodes and my crotch hurts of course.  He takes medicine and is no good to me at that point.  Of course, Sam raises hell for me that night.  I've never been so tired before where I was hallucinating voices and getting a nice foot massage by a 1800s railroad worker.
You just got to keep going though.  We did and at the end of it all, and two weeks post partum, we rush Ender to the E.R. for a sudden attack of the croup.  But of course once again, I have to handle the situation because Zander has taken a sleeping aid.  Thankfully, those trusty grandparents I mentioned before come to the rescue. Zander's dad and Aunt Arica pick Zander up from home so he can switch with me at the hospital and I can be back at home with a hungry newborn.

I think things are settling down.  However, Zander's tendency for OCD -ism and neuroticism has been agitated and he's been fixating over the air flow and dust content in our house.
Because of that I have to open our vintage milk delivery door every time I run the dryer or bathroom vent, but I always forget.
In the middle of his air flow puzzle and the day after Ender's expensive ER visit,  he asks me to run the dryer.  I hit the ON button.  Ker-klump thump, clunk and maybe a snap crackle and pop was thrown in there too, but I'm not confident.   Then a dead dryer.  Aye caramba!  I'm thankful I married a problem solver.  I Just would have cursed the no good machine and bought a new one.  Zander gets to business.  I'm washing dishes as he's tinkering at the old clunker.   In helping him to diagnose the problem, I chime in "It sounded like a spoon getting caught in a garbage disposal"
"Um, well...come look and see then."
I go over to he machine and I see on the floor one of Cora's purple spoons on the floor.
"Huh, thats funny, "I think, "it doesn't seem chewed up.  In fact, its perfect"
"No, not there " he says "Look here"

As my realization comes into focus, my whole body tremors with disgust at the sight of a chewed up rat clogging the vent hole.  I proceed to surprise myself with a 5 minute long heebie jeebie dance paying tribute to all things putrid.   Dang!  Just when I was able to start eating spaghetti again.  Its taken me half a year to get over the first 45 minuets of the movie Seven.

And for as strong willed Ender is, he is equally tender hearted toward his little brother.