Chats with Button

this will be a catch up post (I've been keeping this stuff on his page, but nobody probably sees that - the sh*t that comes out of his mouth needs to be SHARED! lol)


at 2.5 years old:
Daddy: "What do we do if the smoke alarm goes off in our house?"
Button: "We CRY!"

(after wiping a boogie into a tissue)
"the garbage man is going to come and pick up my boogie.  Yea, and then he looks at my boogie and takes it.."

(he started playing in the toilet water at daycare (((I KNOW!!))) and told E he put his hand in the toilet.) 
When E told him that was bad:
"I didn't put my hand in this toilet or the one downstairs.
I did it at preschool... and not now, I did it last week..."

for Maddie's baptism:
"We're gonna wear our suitcases..."



at 3 years old:
(while driving, as I stopped and waited for a line of cars to turn left):
"How come you didn't say bad words, Mommy?"


at 3.5 years old:
setting: bedtime, and E says no milk because we don't want to pee the bed...
"C'mooooooon.... you know you can get me a cup of milk..... c'mooooooooon..."

in the bathroom at a walmart/kmart and a boy walks in with his mother (actually probably too old to be in the women's room with his mother, but I can totally understand not wanting to send a son into the men's room alone nowadays!!) 
"That boy was really tall mommy... he can probably drink beer already!"


at 3.75 years old:
(I'm drinking a pint glass of hard cider with dinner...)
Button "Are you going to drink all of that??"
(me) "yup, I am."
Button "Then you're gonna pee the bed!!!"


me: "Do you wear your shoes during nap time at preschool?"
Button: "Yup"
me: "What about [Mack]? Does she wear her shoes during nap time?"
Button: "Yea, [Mack] wears her shoes at nap time too..."
me: "You've seen her at nap time? How do you know she wears her shoes during nap?"
Button: "Well she doesn't wear MY shoes during nap time!"

Laugh as much as you breathe...

That day, I saw death at every corner:
Someone could approach my car while I am stopped at this light; I don't necessarily drive through the best neighborhoods as I leave work, and my eyes dart corner to corner, ready to roll through a right on red.  I enter a Dunkin Donuts, warily noting places to hide behind, counters to duck beneath if someone were to come in shooting.  I leave from dropping the kids at daycare and picture a heart in a chest cavity, beating steadily on until a hiccup or falter.
I sit at work and refresh the status page for the airlines that E is traveling on (a work conference in San Francisco for three nights) dreading a stall in progress, a red banner flashing breaking news of a crash.

All these things - things that happens to someone else, until they happen to you.

Or someone you know.


Last Friday morning, I was sitting in the administrator's office when our daily money talks were interrupted by her cell phone ringing.  As usual, I swiped through social media waiting for her to finish her call, but this day - Friday morning, her gasp and warbly 'What??' chilled my veins.

A co-worker of ours - "JT" for sake of ease - died that morning, in a car crash.  We hung up, shock settling in the office around us like a fog.  We had to call back the news bearer a few minutes later, sure we had heard wrong - asking him to tell us different news, that they'd heard a correction of facts from someone.

And then we had to spend the morning calling in colleagues, one or two coworkers that had known him for even more than the 8+ years that I'd known him. Nearly to a person, the reaction phrases uttered were, "But I just saw him last night as I left the building!!"



Most of Friday was lost in a haze, trying to look up details - had he been in pain? was anyone else hurt? - and wondering how to tell old co-workers that had left and moved on.  We learned more details, details of a small crash in a small town on a small road, that had have us all sure that he suffered a health crisis - a heart attack, or, a stroke - before the accident.  (No, there were no other injuries, nor any other cars involved...)

And the suddenness - from vivacity Thursday night (for JT was, in one word summed up, vibrant) to just gone - is the same suddenness which takes away a friend's old high school classmate on the cusp of fatherhood, and the cousin whose Texas ranch we had just visited months before a Christmas tragedy (E learning failing to water ski and SIL and I swapping engagement stories and wedding planning) and the innocent victims of a shooting in a mall/library/elementary school/place of worship.



I honestly didn't mean to get all philosophical, because - to be honest - in a little over an hour, I'll go pick up the kids from daycare and give them sweet hugs and kisses as I load them into the car; but then one of the dogs will have crapped in the living room, and while wrangling two leashes and two toddlers outside, Button will clothesline himself on the dog leash (true story, happened last week...) and I'll lose patience when he asks for a cup of juice for the 5th time in 2 minutes and Mack clings to my legs, begging Uh-Puh! as I try to move around the kitchen and organize something, anything for dinner - and I'll probably do chicken nuggets for them and microwaved leftovers for me (unless I just wait to eat until after they go to bed) and I'll breathe a sigh of relief when they've been tucked in for the night...



I've spent a decent amount of time since Friday trying to comprehend just how tenuous life is, and I can't anymore - it's terrifying.

So, just - you know.  Grasp it by the horns, stop and smell the roses, dance like no one's watching, enjoy the little things, do what makes you happy - and all those other idioms out there.



We laughed and cried through a small memorial service for JT here at work today.  I was ok until another coworker came over and hugged me - I even whisper-yelled at her: "nooooo - I was fine until you came over!" as I quickly teared up, again. But we laughed - we shared stories; I looked at old Christmas party photos, late nights at work when we came together on a project - we definitely laughed.

Laughter is the best medicine - we all agreed with the reverend/pastor/spiritual leader who spoke at the service.

We survived the first full 24-hours of E's business trip. (Ok, yes - I was 20 minutes late for work this morning - too many episodes of Shameless and too many glasses of wine late last night...)

But also last night, I crawled on the floor upstairs, playing the monster as I snarled and tickle-tackled two giggling kids; I let them race around in their underwear/diaper, and I soaked in and sucked up the sights of smooth toddler skin; we laughed - a lot.



My new favorite "Love Life" idiom:

Laugh as much as you breathe

f*ck Wednesdays... LOL

whatever. 

It's Thursday, but I need to post a Reading Challenge update, but it won't be much of an update because I've been writing in my free time; except I hit a slump starting last Friday - not necessarily a block, since the entire novel is outlined already, but just felt blah about getting back on the computer after spending all day on one at work.

I knew I wouldn't write over the weekend, but then it carried over into this week... Tuesday night I fell asleep on the couch really (embarrassingly) early, and only woke to slog upstairs and fall back into bed. (I felt amazing yesterday after all that sleep!)  

And I've been doing well with a work-out goal/commitment - this 7-minute workout video I found on pinterest which I did Sunday night in addition to time on the elliptical, Monday night, (slept Tuesday night), my hot yoga class was Wednesday night, and I hope to do the 7-minute video (+eliptical) every day I'm not at yoga! IT'S ONLY SEVEN MINUTES lol

I want to be bikini-ready in 17 days! because, I mentioned - we're going to Turks & Caicos on the 22nd, ALONE AND WITHOUT CHILDREN and it's our first trip without kids and I'm really freaking excited to sit on the beach/by the pool with a book, have drinks served to me, and not worry about: toddlers going near the pool, who is thirsty and needs juice/water, this one needs a change because she pooed in her swim diaper, that one needs to GO poop on the potty, this one needs to go down for a nap (2 hours in the room, ugh) and they both are eating like BIRDS HOW ARE YOU SURVIVING THIS WEEK?!

So. 

I'm very excited.  It's only three nights, but I think that's the perfect amount of time because I'll miss those little faces by the time we touch down in T&C on day one...

We'll more than make it up, because after we return (Thursday night around midnight) we'll pack up the kids and head to the Poconos on Friday to spend two nights (Memorial Day weekend!) in a house there (VRBO!) which has an outdoor hot tub (for AFTER the kids go to bed! unless it heats up/cools down quickly, then we can use it as a pool for them during the day...) and a grill on the deck, and a playground less than 1/4 mi away and a lake to rent boats and it will be a lot of fun / exhausting.

We'll come home Sunday and probably do NOTHING all day Monday... (I really hope the weather is nice that weekend!)

The craziness actually begins the 17th of this month when my parents arrive from TX - they'll be house/dog/baby-sitting while we're in T&C, but they'll be here for a few days before we leave so we can all hang out and catch-up/party. 

And tonight, E is going straight from work into NYC for a Rangers hockey game, so it's me with the kids, and I'm already mentally exhausted because Button is at MIL's house so I have to drive three towns over to pick him up and then head back to our town to get Mack from daycare (or vice versa?) and I would really like to avoid rush hour traffic that bogs down the route between MIL's house and ours so I'm hoping to leave work early... 

Whew.

oh oh and oh, sad news - E's cousin (one I've never really mentioned, but she has a son about Button's age, maybe just a month or two younger, and to my understanding was one-and-done because she had a horrible pregnancy and gets terrible migraines and couldn't take anything for them during her pregnancy, and her and DH are rocky and he left for a few weeks before they had their son, anyways) 

this cousin, E just told me this morning, had a pregnancy and had to run into the ER last week with pains and it ended up being ectopic and she had to have surgery...

(in his words: "she had to have emergency surgery because a pregnancy developed like, in this tube instead of where it's supposed to be..."   -_- )

So, send healing vibes for her and hubby...

So yea,

Maybe I'll do a reading update tomorrow...