Homecoming

A few weeks ago, Ella spent 4 whole days with her Gamma and Papa, 3 hours away in Youngstown. Oh, how I missed my sweet, spirited, dramatic little Ella Bella. And how much I loved the time with her dear sissy Kate.

Kate and I drew a sidewalk chalk 'welcome home' message as we waited for Ella and her daddy to return.





And Kate Kate was absolutely thrilled to see her big sister pull in the driveway.She pointed, smiled ear to ear, ran in place. She immediately ran up to Ella and hugged her. Meaning she ran up to Ella, stopped, and slowly ducked down just a tiny bit to wrap her arms around Ella .... low enough for Ella to be able to tuck Kate's shoulders under her own armpit and squeeze tight. Both of them smiled, eyes closed tight, saying "awwwwwww," as they've heard me say a thousand times, whenever they hug each other.





But the even sweeter part is that for the next hour or so, whenever Kate looked up and realized that her sister was, in fact, back home, she'd run over to Ella and hug her again, as if she was surprised to see her still standing there.

The two of them played and loved on each other the rest of the day.



And their daddy and I loved watching them.

What a happy homecoming. And what a very grateful life.

These are the days

My little Ella Bella is spending 4 days at her Grandma's house. My mom has basically been wanting to kidnap Ella since the day she was born, so this mini vacation to Grandma's house has been 2 years in the making.

Chris drove her up to Youngstown on Wednesday night. "My goin' to Gamma's house, mommy! See you lay-do! My play with my dollies. Miss you," she said, as she smiled ear to ear, waving to me in her pig tails, pink bows and PJs. (It should be noted that my mother has kept all of the toys I had as a child, and those of my cousins, so she has more toys at her house than I do at mine. This is not an accident.)



Ella has woken up at my mom's house for two mornings now (amusingly, she's been sleeping in bed with both Papa and Gamma. Given that Papa is kind of a big guy, and his hands are about the size of Ella's body, it paints a funny picture in my head.) So far, she's gone swimming, to see Papa at work, to her cousin's house to see wild turkeys and chickens and their homemade backyard 'fairyland,' had ice cream, gone to Barnes and Noble and generally frollicked morning til night. And she's been there for 2 days.

I miss her, but I know there's no one earth who'd take better care for her than my mom. And I know she feels completely and utterly loved and cared for. So I don't feel quite the 'sting' I thought I'd feel, being away from her for 4 days.



As it turns out, I'm grateful to have some alone time with my Sweet Kate. It occurred to me that I had a year of alone time with Ella. Enjoying and celebrating every single discovery. Every new skill. I was so worried that the new baby would take my attention away from her....and felt so much guilt about that.

But it turns out that most of the time, Ella is still the one who we chase around the most. She can talk to us, so we end up talking and interacting with her, maybe more than Kate. Now I feel reverse guilt! Poor Kate. She usually just walks around trying to hang out with Ella and be involved with whatever 'project' she's working on. And my day is usually spent picking her up and trying to get her interested in some other activity, because Ella doesn't want anyone to touch her play-dough creation, or the way she has all her dolls lined up in a row, or eat the wooden cookies she's just taken out of the oven.

So it's been very sweet, spending a few days alone with Kate. I get her out of bed, lay with her in my bed as she drinks her entire bottle.....without Ella's usual demands that she be the one to lay closest to me. I took her downstairs for breakfast and actually got to watch her eat. Which is a really sweet experience, simple as it sounds. She still picks up food with her thumb and forefinger, and makes a 'humph!" sound with every bite, like she's catching her food.



She took her morning nap and I hurriedly got ready for the pool. I'm not brave enough to take both girls to the pool by myself yet....but loved getting to put Kate's chubby little legs into her pink striped bathing suit. Loved following her around as she walked in circles in the shallow end of the pool, went up and down the baby water slide more than 3 dozen times. Kicked her legs as I held her in the water.

And when she started to get narky, it was so, so nice to be able to focus on meeting her need at that moment. Had Ella been there, I would've immediately left the pool when Kate got whiney...knowing that Ella couldn't sit still, next to me, while I tended to Kate. She would've been walking around in the water and I'd be freaking out about potential water hazards, and poor Kate would've been screaming her head off for a bottle.



But not today. Today, I got to sit in a sunchair, toes in the water, Kate wrapped in a thin towel, eating yogurt bites one-by-one, until she single handedly ate the entire bag. It only lasted 10 minutes, but it was oddly divine. I can still see her chubby little fingers diving into the yellow yogurt bite bag, again and again.

We got home and had lunch and we both took a long, glorious nap. I fought the voice in the back of my head...the one that told me I should wash the 8 loads of laundry in my bedroom, or scrub the floor that had syrup, milk, juice and squished blueberries all over it, or organize my closet, or clean my guest room for my parents-in-law who are coming in 2 weeks. I fought the urge to check my email, to check on projects at work. And to pull the weeds that've been driving me crazy in the front yard.

I took a nap and I loved it. So there.

I fed her dinner and gave her a bath and put her in the cutest purple jumper, pigtails with purple bows and took her shopping...another thing I rarely do with both girls. She smiled, said "HIIIIII!" to every single person she passed, and "choooo, chooooooooed" as we walked through all three stores.

Then she walked around the yard as I pulled those weeds that'd been driving me crazy for a week. I put her in her jammies, gave her a bottle until she got groggy in my arms and I lay her in bed. She seemed to welcome the opportunity to sleep.

It might sound like a really mundane day but it wasn't mundane. It was a really great day. These are the kind of days that I can never get enough of. These are the days I know I'll long for, 20 years from now, when my girls are in college and not sleeping in the room next door to me. I liken these days to a vacation. The way I wake up every morning of a really, really great vacation, and am completely focused on getting everything out of each day that I possibly can, even as a small voice, in the back of my mind, is reminding me that I only have 6,5,4,3,2,then 1 day left.

Days like this, with my sweet Ella, and with my sweet Kate....they really are the best days of my life.

Grocery Store Fun

I generally dislike going to the grocery store. It basically usually reminds me that I'm not a very good cook. And there are usually about 1,000 other things I'd rather do.

Until last week, when we ran out of milk and a few other basics. Chris is usually the one who goes to the grocery store. But this time, after work, I asked Ella..."You wanna go to the grocery store with Mommy? We gotta get milk for Kate-Kate." "You wanngo to da gwow-swee stowa? OK mommy!" she exclaimed.

When I got her out of the car and into the grocery store, I put her in one of those grocery carts with a plastic 'Fred Flintstone' style car in the front. She squealed with excitement. "Beep beep! Beep beep! We comin', Kate Kate! We gon' get milk for yooooou!" she exclaimed, as if she was driving a car, drive-thru style, through the entire grocery store, with the express mission of getting milk for her Kate-Kate.

She continued to make this loud, joyful, purposeful proclomation all the way through the grocery store, as I picked up a few other odds and ends we were missing. As we waited at the deli counter, she peeked her head out of the car to tell another little girl, who was wearing a tutu, "Hey, my like yo' outfit!"

I love that she still says "my" for "I" but yet still says the word "outfit."

It wasn't until I got halfway throught he store that I realized that in all the excitement of seeing Ella Bella make my fellow shoppers laugh, I lost my debit card in the store. So I had to take my little driver out of the car, to my real car in the parking lot, to get a different card. Back into the store to purchase the groceries, then back to my real car where it took at least 10 minutes to convince Ella to get out of her grocery car and into mine.

The pictures of this so-fun, every-day-moment memory are only in my mind. But I'm pretty sure I'll forever remember looking down onto my little pig-tailed Ella Bella, seeing her still-pudgy hands 'beep beep' the horn and steer her grocery car as she proudly exclaimed, for all of Worthington to hear, that she would not let her baby sister down...she was getting milk for her Kate-Kate.

Comfort and Joy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my sweet friend Cathy. How she was there for me during that long time in between college and when I met Chris -- which was filled with lots of loneliness. And self reflection. And self doubt. But was also filled with a million fun times and the beginnings of several very important friendships.

And I realized that as much as I want to write about how grateful I am for Ella and Kate and Chris and my family and all of life's little, beautiful moments...I also want to write about the women in my life who've taught me so much about the person I want to be.

Two of those women are my dear friends Mara and Deb, who came into my life at the exact same time as Cathy.

I was 22 years old, at my first job. Every day, I was overcome by the feeling that I was literally living some awful, sad, excruciating love song about heartbreak. In retrospect, it's almost funny how dramatic the time was; how little faith I had in myself or the future. But the pain and guilt and sadness and loneliness weren't very funny at the time. They were all-consuming and self-defining.

Alas, it seemed like every single sad love song was somehow speaking directly to me. I was filled with the something akin to grief over a lost loved one; marked by the tenderness and naivity of a middle schooler who's lost their first crush.

Mara and Deb were older, cooler and more experienced than me. Both personally and professionally. They were good at their jobs and had their own lives and really didn't 'have' to take an interest in that hard-working new girl who stayed really late at work, most nights.

But they did take an interest.

They would hear me crying in my little cubicle, well after 5 p.m....not about work...but about lost love. And they would sit right on the floor with me and listen to me lament my broken heart for hours on end. Until snot covered my face and I was nearly hiccuping through sobs, mascara smeared all over my face.

They could have trivialized my pain, or told me something trite...pointed out that there were many other fish in the sea. Or that I had my whole life ahead of me. They could've even been more direct and told me that millions of other people were dealing with far greater tragedies than the loss of a high school sweetheart. They could have rolled their eyes and told me to get it together.

But they didn't do any of that.

Instead, they offered endless support and love and encouragement. The comforted my tears and surprised me with unexpected sweet and funny gestures and emails and cards. Mara gave me one of the most special gifts I've ever been given -- a gratitude journal that encouraged me to write down 5 things I was thankful for every day. I wrote in it religiously during those difficult times, and it helped me stay focused on the beauty of life. Helped me put my brokenness into perspective. I still have that journal on my bedside table, along with the ribbon in which Mara wrapped it.

And Deb, oh...my amazing friend Deb. Even after we lost Mara to California, I was crying on Deb's shoulder for years to come. She and her husband even let me spend the night in their house, on a work night, after one particularly hard and trying day. And when I first learned that my very dear Uncle Danny took his own life, and I was all alone in my apartment, away from all of my family, it was Deb who I called, crying uncontrollably. It was Deb who was there beside me, in my apartment, hugging me, even before I hung up the phone.

And it was Deb who sent me a card, in the depths of my darkest hours of self disappointment, that simply read "When in doubt, listen quietly to yourself. Love, Deb."

Deb and I still live in the same city....and even if we go months without seeing her, I'm immediately filled with feelings of peace and comfort, just by the sight of her. Just by hearing her voice. She defines the words 'comfort' and 'acceptance' for me.

I now look back at that time of my life and wish I could shake that 22 year old girl. Tell her to get some perspective. Get a grip. I wish that girl could see my life today...I wish she could've had more faith that everything really would work out.

But I know there was a purpose to that experience. It brought me Cathy. It brought me Deb. And Mara. And it taught me about the friend and mother and human being I want to be.

I hope I can give that kind of acceptance and support to Ella and Kate...and for the other amazing women in my life. I hope I can be comfort and joy for them, the way these dear friends were, and always have been, a comfort and a joy to me.