I have been thinking and rethinking about sharing a unique conversation I had with Ava a while back. I'm afraid I will forget or become a skeptic, and worse yet, start believing it never really happened the way I know it happened.
What she was saying to me finally stopped me dead in my tracks. I needed to listen to her. I needed to absorb what she was saying. I needed to know if she was confused. I needed to know if I was confused with what she was saying. I needed to sit on the steps with her and cry because she cried, and I was so overwhelmed with confusion and heartfelt belief.
We were having a day of work at our house. I needed to get some projects done and Ava was being a great helper. She disappeared at one point and came back down stairs with a funny look on her face. After getting her to admit she had been standing on her windowsill with the window open, we had a talk about how the fall could kill her...sorry, this instance called for the hard truth. I concluded by saying I wanted her around a little while longer and would appreciate it if she never did anything like that again. "I would miss you terrible!" She got it and moved on like only a toddler can.
She came back down with me and helped me hang photographs of our family. There was one particular photo she kept looking at and wouldn't take her eyes off. It was of my grandfather (my mom's dad). I asked her what she was looking so intently at, and she asked who he was. I explained, but she said, No, that's my daddy. No, that's not your daddy. That's your bisnonno (great grandfather). Nope. That's my first daddy...so, you know where this conversation went. I explained in more detail who he was, wondered if he looked like her daddy, she said nope, that's my first daddy when I was little, then I came here to be with my new daddy. "HUH!?"
No honey, you are confused. No mommy. Yes honey. This went on for about 5 minutes. Needless to say she was getting frustrated with me. I went about finishing hanging pictures until she sat down on the stairs. I looked at her and saw the sadness and tears cover her face. "Mommy, he was my first daddy and I miss him and I want to see him again!" I am not eloquent in my writing to fully describe the emotion I saw. It was an emotion only a mother known’s is true, and an emotion I have only seen her use with us.
I scooped her up into my arms and started crying with her. "Honey, I believe you, but are you sure you aren't missing Daddy. He will be home soon. "No MOM! I was with him (bisnonno) when I was a baby and then I grew up and was here with my new daddy. You were with him first, then I was with him, then I was here" Could a three year old REALLY be saying these things! I finally said through my tears (which were making Ava uncomfortable), "I believe you. My tears are of joy and excitement that you got to see him. What did you do with him? Did you talk to him?" Her matter of fact, heart stopping answer, "Nothing, we were in a brown house and he sang a lot." (in case you don't know, he was an opera singer).
To not sound like a crazy person, I can explain a few of her thoughts through rational events, but the emotion she had was authentic and genuine. I was shaken up and she was over it...like only a toddler can do. I turned on the TV. I needed to absorb what she said. The bible does say we are with God before we are here...was she really with Nonno at some point? She missed him, she really truly cried in sadness over him. We had listened to one of Nonno's CD's a couple weeks prior and only said once who was singing. No pictures. There you have it, she is thinking about that. That's where she got it, RIGHT!? Then I am back to the emotional break down she had. I can only explain that as a true feeling about an event that happened to her. Maybe in heaven, maybe in a dream. My human brain can rationalize almost all of it, except her crying over him. She doesn't know him! Also, did me telling her about dying, if she fell out the window, spark a memory for her? Either way, I believe her.
Why do I believe her? I had a dream when I was four about this same man. It was of his passing. It was a dream that stood out above all else. It was weird and I woke up confused. He did pass away the following morning. Could what she have experienced be a dream. What better place for such an event to occur then when we are asleep (my sister reminded me of this & her stand out dreams too). These dreams are different and real. Not everyone has experienced these dreams, but some have, and they are real and true. It gives us a connection to something else, which has always kept me a believer on my own spiritual level. OH GEESH, I could totally turn this into a religious/spiritual post, but that's not my point. I want Ava to remember this.
We have talked a couple times to her about this, and she sticks by her story. "It wasn't a dream, it was real." It never falters, and I will not ask again. Once they know something gives them attention, they start embellishing. :-)
It was an event in the days of our lives that still stands strong.
Monday, April 2, 2012
LIfe in a nut shell for a toddler...
"aaaahhhh, this is a good life", says Ava, sitting kiddie pool side with Mommy and Daddy ...I think that was an excellant way to end out the weekend.
Friday, March 30, 2012
March Madness
Snowfall on March 2 to blooming trees by the Spring Equinox
(this is almost six week’s early people)...
2012 is definitely holding up to its perceived outcome.
Ava is a bit confused by the warm weather, "You mean we don't have to wear our winter gear!?"
Needless to say, we made the most of it and enjoyed some early spring clean up.
I am so happy to have a fellow lover of the outdoors, and gardening, with me this year. Sometimes God is good when making you wait for a good thing. Ava is the mini me I always needed. ;-)
Needless to say, we made the most of it and enjoyed some early spring clean up.
I am so happy to have a fellow lover of the outdoors, and gardening, with me this year. Sometimes God is good when making you wait for a good thing. Ava is the mini me I always needed. ;-)
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
2012 update
There is always lots to say, I just can't find the energy to blog about it any more. We stay pretty busy with day to day stuff, and, I am happy to say, there is not a lot to talk about on the home front.
WELL, the more I sit here thinking about it, I guess there has been more.
Ava can do so many smart things, minus the fall she took on an icy slide...which we will get to, and some days I look at her and think, "when did this happen". I owe most of her school smarts to her amazing teachers at Seton. Preschool has been an exceptional experience for both Ava and I (I don't mean to leave out her dad here, but let's be real, preschool affects her and I the most), and we have watched her blossom. She is writing, recognizes all letters and numbers, understands the concept behind patterns, her drawing has changed so much, she prays, she has actual conversations which we fully understand ;-), her imagination is off the charts, she helps set the table, sweep the floor, clear her plate, load and unload the dishwasher (don't worry this is all by choice, we are not running a sweat shop), she LOVES to cook with me, she is polite, still shy, and dang it, she is a lot of fun to be around. She is even good at the art of teasing, which suits this household perfectly.
WELL, the more I sit here thinking about it, I guess there has been more.
Ava can do so many smart things, minus the fall she took on an icy slide...which we will get to, and some days I look at her and think, "when did this happen". I owe most of her school smarts to her amazing teachers at Seton. Preschool has been an exceptional experience for both Ava and I (I don't mean to leave out her dad here, but let's be real, preschool affects her and I the most), and we have watched her blossom. She is writing, recognizes all letters and numbers, understands the concept behind patterns, her drawing has changed so much, she prays, she has actual conversations which we fully understand ;-), her imagination is off the charts, she helps set the table, sweep the floor, clear her plate, load and unload the dishwasher (don't worry this is all by choice, we are not running a sweat shop), she LOVES to cook with me, she is polite, still shy, and dang it, she is a lot of fun to be around. She is even good at the art of teasing, which suits this household perfectly.
yes, she can peel carrots!
OK, I could brag about my daughter all day, so on to the icy fall. A split second decision on my part, to let her go outside by herself, for a moment to catch snowflakes on her tongue, turned into a chipped front tooth. In my defense, who tries to climb an icy slide!? Oh wait, you can't blame the toddler. :-) Two weeks later, it has turned grey. *sigh* That's right. My daughter has a grey front tooth which will probably fall out too soon. Hello white trash. Yes, I am a little vain. Sorry. There is nothing we can do about it except thank our lucky stars it's not a permanent tooth and will have no adverse affects on her permanent tooth. To top it off, she had a small cavity on the other front tooth. ANOTHER BIG *SIGH*!
This is her pointing out her chipped tooth (which you can't see)
Below are just some pictures showing what we've been up to.
Charlie, the neighborhood rock star tom cat comes to visit a lot, and an afternoon of swimming in the "hot pool"
Valentine's Day was fun at home, and a school party made her day.
Valentine quote of the day "Mommy, know what I like the best?" "Playing with you!"
(everybody now, aaahhhh...this girl makes me smile 100 times a day)
School Party...
don't worry, they didn't watch tv the whole time, I just like these pictures
These last two pretty much sum up Ms. Ava
I think enjoying motherhood finally snuck up on me. :-)
Friday, January 27, 2012
POM
This is a shout out to my friend Kevin who gave me the best tip in the whole world...cut into a pomegranate under a bowl of water. Genius! Well, he's not a genius, but he was right about this. I'm sure I could have googled this information, but it's much more fun talking to old friends on the phone while walking around the grocery store (plus he's always bragging on facebook about living in California, and since pomegranates are grown there...well, you get the idea). So here's my documentation, mostly for his pleasure on being right.
The beautiful POM exposed under cold water
You can see no stains on our hands
(by the way, this is such a cool thing to do with a toddler)
cleaned and drained
drying and being picked at...a lot! You HAVE to try one.
Now is the best time to buy, so savior every little popping seed.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
To believe, or not, the end is near...(just for the record, I am not a believer)
I love Joel Stein. He's cute (in my husband sort of way) and funny. I particularily loved his take on the end of the world...or maybe it just means a new beginning.
My Psychic Powers at Work
By Joel Stein
I don't think i have actual psychic powers. But I must have some sort of extrasensory perception, because my prediction columns for the past two years have been freakishly on target: For 2010, I accurately predicted both a Sarah Palin reality show and the name of my unborn child--and it wasn't even a common name. For 2011, I predicted the further destabilization of Pakistan and a pimento-cheese craze. Eerie, huh?
This year, though, predictions are easy. That's because they don't have to last very long. The ancient Mayans have a calendar that predicts the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012. Sure, that's plenty of time for something like pimento cheese to get going, but there's no point in making predictions if there's no following year in which to brag about them.
Still, it would be pretty cool to see people being eaten alive by locusts and drowning in a flood of cow's blood while screaming, "Dude, this is exactly how Joel Stein said it would happen!" So to get the exact details on the apocalypse, I contacted David Stuart, the Mayan scholar who in 1984, at the age of 18, was the youngest recipient ever of a MacArthur "genius" grant. Unfortunately, Stuart was in the Guatemalan jungle. This wasn't unfortunate for me--he got all my e-mails--but I figure it wasn't so great for him. Stuart had a slightly different take on the 2012 apocalypse thing. "The end of the calendar is completely made up by people who don't know anything about the ancient Maya," he wrote. Not only did the Mayans not predict the end of the world in 2012, but more shocking, they are called Maya, not Mayans. That guy totally deserved his genius grant.
If the Maya didn't predict the end of the world, there was a huge opportunity for me to break news by finding out what they do predict. I'd call some actual Maya, ask them who will win the U.S. presidential election and American Idol and what time the Nobel committee will call me. Unfortunately, the Maya are not all about Facebook. So I called Robert Sitler, a professor of modern languages and literature at Stetson University, who has been traveling to the Maya regions of Guatemala and Mexico for more than 35 years. He's asked nearly 200 Maya about what will happen Dec. 21, which indeed is the last day of the 13th Bak'tun, the end of a 5,125-year cycle, though there are bigger deals in the ancient Maya calendar, like dates that come up every octillion years. The Maya, it turns out, are math nerds.
None of the Maya whom Sitler spoke with had heard of their calendar, which hasn't been used for centuries. But in the past two years, they have seen awful American movies and TV shows about it, so some of them now believe in their nonexistent apocalyptic predictions, just as we do. I think this is the stuff the antiglobalization people are afraid of.
Some of the Maya were freaking out so much over the incorrect American take on the Maya prediction that Maya elders in Chiapas invited Sitler to tell them about their own calendar and calm everybody down. Part of Sitler's speech involves a set of hieroglyphics that predict the arrival of the deity Bolon Yokte', who is linked to warfare, famine and social strife. If this is Sitler's calming-down speech, an NFL team should hire him to give locker-room speeches, pronto.
Sitler visited Tulum, Mexico, three times because it's the home of a traditional Maya culture. I visited Tulum in July with my wife and son for exactly the same reason, assuming that traditional Maya culture is all about hanging out at the beach and going to an enormous water park. Though the Maya there didn't know about the ancient calendar, they happened to be really into predictions anyway. "They actually talk about the end of the world," Sitler said. "They were at war for a long time with the Mexican government. They said that some sort of war is on the horizon, that this time they will win." No offense to the very nice Maya who were serving me margaritas, but my money is on the Mexican army.
Wanting more specifics, I e-mailed Alessandro Carozzino, the guy who ran the hotel I stayed in, Posada Margherita. Though technically Italian, he's lived in Tulum for a really long time, so he probably knows something about the future. I remember talking with Carozzino over gelato as he made some bold predictions for 2012, including that he would open a second branch of his Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. "I spoke with all the Mayan guys working here," Carozzino e-mailed me. "All of them told me the same thing: It will be not the end of the world; it is the end of a period. Another time will start, and new things are going to happen." I am not going to argue with actual Maya about 2012, so I'm going with their prediction: This year, new things are going to happen. I feel almost as sure about this as I did about pimento cheese.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2103276,00.html#ixzz1ib3nlk4h
My Psychic Powers at Work
By Joel Stein
I don't think i have actual psychic powers. But I must have some sort of extrasensory perception, because my prediction columns for the past two years have been freakishly on target: For 2010, I accurately predicted both a Sarah Palin reality show and the name of my unborn child--and it wasn't even a common name. For 2011, I predicted the further destabilization of Pakistan and a pimento-cheese craze. Eerie, huh?
This year, though, predictions are easy. That's because they don't have to last very long. The ancient Mayans have a calendar that predicts the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012. Sure, that's plenty of time for something like pimento cheese to get going, but there's no point in making predictions if there's no following year in which to brag about them.
Still, it would be pretty cool to see people being eaten alive by locusts and drowning in a flood of cow's blood while screaming, "Dude, this is exactly how Joel Stein said it would happen!" So to get the exact details on the apocalypse, I contacted David Stuart, the Mayan scholar who in 1984, at the age of 18, was the youngest recipient ever of a MacArthur "genius" grant. Unfortunately, Stuart was in the Guatemalan jungle. This wasn't unfortunate for me--he got all my e-mails--but I figure it wasn't so great for him. Stuart had a slightly different take on the 2012 apocalypse thing. "The end of the calendar is completely made up by people who don't know anything about the ancient Maya," he wrote. Not only did the Mayans not predict the end of the world in 2012, but more shocking, they are called Maya, not Mayans. That guy totally deserved his genius grant.
If the Maya didn't predict the end of the world, there was a huge opportunity for me to break news by finding out what they do predict. I'd call some actual Maya, ask them who will win the U.S. presidential election and American Idol and what time the Nobel committee will call me. Unfortunately, the Maya are not all about Facebook. So I called Robert Sitler, a professor of modern languages and literature at Stetson University, who has been traveling to the Maya regions of Guatemala and Mexico for more than 35 years. He's asked nearly 200 Maya about what will happen Dec. 21, which indeed is the last day of the 13th Bak'tun, the end of a 5,125-year cycle, though there are bigger deals in the ancient Maya calendar, like dates that come up every octillion years. The Maya, it turns out, are math nerds.
None of the Maya whom Sitler spoke with had heard of their calendar, which hasn't been used for centuries. But in the past two years, they have seen awful American movies and TV shows about it, so some of them now believe in their nonexistent apocalyptic predictions, just as we do. I think this is the stuff the antiglobalization people are afraid of.
Some of the Maya were freaking out so much over the incorrect American take on the Maya prediction that Maya elders in Chiapas invited Sitler to tell them about their own calendar and calm everybody down. Part of Sitler's speech involves a set of hieroglyphics that predict the arrival of the deity Bolon Yokte', who is linked to warfare, famine and social strife. If this is Sitler's calming-down speech, an NFL team should hire him to give locker-room speeches, pronto.
Sitler visited Tulum, Mexico, three times because it's the home of a traditional Maya culture. I visited Tulum in July with my wife and son for exactly the same reason, assuming that traditional Maya culture is all about hanging out at the beach and going to an enormous water park. Though the Maya there didn't know about the ancient calendar, they happened to be really into predictions anyway. "They actually talk about the end of the world," Sitler said. "They were at war for a long time with the Mexican government. They said that some sort of war is on the horizon, that this time they will win." No offense to the very nice Maya who were serving me margaritas, but my money is on the Mexican army.
Wanting more specifics, I e-mailed Alessandro Carozzino, the guy who ran the hotel I stayed in, Posada Margherita. Though technically Italian, he's lived in Tulum for a really long time, so he probably knows something about the future. I remember talking with Carozzino over gelato as he made some bold predictions for 2012, including that he would open a second branch of his Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. "I spoke with all the Mayan guys working here," Carozzino e-mailed me. "All of them told me the same thing: It will be not the end of the world; it is the end of a period. Another time will start, and new things are going to happen." I am not going to argue with actual Maya about 2012, so I'm going with their prediction: This year, new things are going to happen. I feel almost as sure about this as I did about pimento cheese.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2103276,00.html#ixzz1ib3nlk4h
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
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