Ethan at One Year

My little grandson turned one this past weekend. I was there to see it. My mother and I few to New York for this big event. He turned one on Easter Sunday. Of course I brought and bought him many gifts. But I want to tell you about the one he really liked. I bought him about in the Christian Book store. I don't remember the name of it. But it has a button on the top. If you push the button it sings a very short song. The words are:

When you look in the mirror

you'll see his touch.

Cause God made you special,

and he loves you very much.

I would often sing with the son and he would just start to giggle. Most of the time when he was crying it would sooth him. It was truly amazing.

He now walks by himself. We bought him some shoes and by the time I left yesterday he seemed content with them on and was walking around in them. He was very afraid of walking in them at first. He was a lot of fun to watch when we took him to the park yesterday morning.

He loved watching all the children play. There was a little boy coloring. He walked up close to him to see what he was doing. He seemed so fascinated with his world.

Not only is he teething again but he is also in clingy stage. He has 4 favorite people. Needless to say I am not one of them. His mom and dad, his other grandmother, whom he sees very very often, and his nanny. I am looking forward to the day when he is older and do cool stuff with him and it won't matter if I don't see him every day because he will remember the places we go together.

Ethan plays well by himself. When he starts to focus on something he has great concentration. He will ignore everyone in the room. It is fun to watch him chase a ball around the room. He does that by crawling. He has learned to throw little toys over his shoulder. Yesterday he was crawling around dragging his pj's all over the room. He loves the noise of anything hitting the wooded floor. He will throw anything like tv controls and toys. He loves to turn off the bathroom light and he cheats playing with his pop up toy. He has trouble with pushing things down or turning levers so the little pop up guys come up. So he throws the toy on the floor and the pop up guys pop up. Then it is easy for him to push them back down into the box. This little guy is brilliant lol.

He enjoys playing Peek a Boo. It makes him laugh. His favorite part of the day is still bath time. He is very excited when he knows its that time. Honestly I would be excited too but not of the bath, but of the massage his mother gives him afterwards. I am all for massages.

He seemed to enjoy his Birthday party, though he had no idea what was going on. He was indeed surrounded with total and complete attention. I think he was quite happy with his Birthday cake as well. I know I was. The food was all delicious. What an all around great weekend it was.

Three beams of light.

Starting to recover but a long way to go. It has been a difficult couple of months. It took about a month for my father to get to his final resting place thanks to the Italian government and all their paperwork and delays. In the meantime moving my mother into my home was not an easy ordeal. She wanted to bring the kitchen sink with her. I told her there was no room for two kitchen sinks. Now we are going through the process of negotiating space for the stuff she brought. But their are three gorgeous light beams that puncture though all the commotion and difficulties. I brightest one of course is Jesus. As Easter approaches rapidly I must remember to what He did for me. He died and rose to save us from our sins. I am reminded everyday of how much I need him because no matter how hard I try I just don't cut it on my own. Enough about me I am sure you are sitting at the edge of your seat to hear what the other two beams of light are. Or have you already guessed. Yes, yes one is Ethan and the other is Baby Girl who is due to arrive in mid June.

It has been a long time since I have told you about my little Ethan. He is now about 22 lbs and as handsome as ever. He is an extremely intelligent little guy. You think I am being partial?

Well, let me tell you that at 10 and a half months he got angry with the rocking chair. He was trying to pull himself up on it but of course it was rocking and he was unable to do so. So he pushed the rocking chair to the well and then stood up. That that is an intelligent boy. He now can walk holding on to one hand. His balance still is quite there. But one of my greatest joy was seeing his this past weekend and I did get to watch him take several steps alone from his dad to me. He has the cutest little habit with his pacifier. Every few second or so he flips his pacifier around. Someone will be holding him and he brings his little had up to the pacifier and turns it upside down. He is adorable. He has taken quite a liking to his great grandmother and gives her much joy. He is very picky about what he eats and who feeds him. Only his mother, the nanny and other grandmother have the joy of that. I hear he opens kitchen cabinets at home and takes all the goodies out and plays with them. He knows exactly the order to open those cabinets too, because if he tries the wrong one the other won't open.

All I can tell you right now about Baby Girl is that she is growing bigger each day and she loves to dance. She loves chocolate cake too. One night her mother baked a chocolate cake and had some. Little Baby Girl started dancing her little heart out all night long. I hear she has quite a kick. I am looking forward to the baby shower in May and meeting her in August.

My Father's Death

Don't know where to start or what to say as usual. There are some emotions I can't express here because as much as I would love to they are too personal even for this. But I must say that I am blessed that God gave my a best girlfriend or two in whom I can turn to and express anything and everything my heart desires and know I will never ever be judged. I did not cry at my dad's funeral. I have a different way of grieving. I do the busy thing. I have to keep busy and focus on something, anything else. I am a Martha. (Remember Martha and Mary from the gospels.) I have to do. I have to pick up the phone and inform people. I can't sit down. I need busy work just don't put me in the kitchen! So that is what I did. Then at night when all is quiet I can then allow myself to think and let loose in the privacy of my room, with no other people around.

My father was two weeks short of 95. He died in his sleep. He went to bed and never woke up. That is the best way to go.

The wake and funeral were perfect just the way he would have wanted it. God went before us and helped me prepare everything. The funeral home was great. You know they can read your mind. They know what you need before you do :). I know that that they are supposed to do that but it still amazed me. I mean down to the smallest detail like Thank you notes. I was thinking oh I need to buy thank you notes and there in the packet they left me were a bunch of thank you notes. Too bad they don't write them for you lol. My daughter did a great job writing the obituary and my son's Eulogy was absolutely incredible. I was blessed to have all my children here and my daughter in laws for wonderful support. As I said. God went before us in every way.

So now its over and the real work begins. I ask my Lord to go before me once again to help us move my mother in here with us and to sort through everything. Sorting through everything is not so easy. But as the the Lord says with God we can do anything.

Skiing a love-hate relationship

There was a time when I loved to ski. There was no hate except getting up at 6 am so my husband could be on the slopes for breakfast by 8. We would have a front row parking space. If we were in the second row we were running late. We would be on the first lift ride up with the kids in tow. We would ski till the lifts closed with a lunch break somewhere inbetween. I very much enjoyed being out there in the fresh air, zooming down the mountain side and trying to keep up with the rest of the family. That was our Sunday, almost every Sunday for many many winters.

One winter, I got hit by a snowboarder, tore ligaments in my shoulder and couldn't ski for awhile. The only thing that did was make me paranoid of snowboarders, went back to skiing and nothing else fazed me for many years to come.

But somehow, time passed and I got older. We no longer ski every Sunday. In fact, except to spend an hour at the gym in the morning we hang around the house all day Sunday. You might say we have become old boring people. We relax and do our own thing. But once a year we spend a week at Snowbird ski resort. That is where I am right now. Even that started out as a total blast. We have ski in and ski out capabilities. All we do all day is eat, sleep and ski everyday for a week. Heavenly right? But one day I realized I wasn't 30, 35, 40 or even 45 anymore. Energy became more difficult to come by. One day I was skiing happily down a slope I had skied down hundreds of time and I fell. I didn't just fall I tumbled it my head on the ground hard my ski came off half way up the mountain and I fractured my leg. Actually, Thank God I got off the hook very easily. It could have been much worse had I not been wearing a helmet. We had only started wearing those the year before. But fracturing my leg made me think a lot about life. I don't worry much about death because if it happens I am gone, I'm with God and all is well. What I have come to fear most is pain and suffering and all the things I can't do if I am hurting. So, the love started to dwindle a little and the hate started to appear. Now I am not at all saying I hate to ski. I still love everything I have always loved about it. I can't ski as long as I used. But now I fear falling. I fear skiing on icy terrain. I fear getting hurt. In comes the hate. Now the question is will I eventually give into the fear and hate and stop skiing altogether or will I come to terms with the fear. I am still trying to figure this out.

In the meantime, when I am out there I relay totally on God's protection.

Christmas Memories

As the Christmas season is about to end all we are left with are pictures and memories. I would like to share some of them with you, the memories that is. I have yet to learn how to put pictures onto this blog.

On Christmas Eve I took Ethan to his first church service. It was the Children's Mass at my parent's parish. I actually love this Mass and go every year. I love watching the children, and I love the music. Ethan was extremely well behaved. He is very curious and takes all the sights and sounds in. He watched everything and everyone. He stayed in my arms almost the whole time. There was this cute little girl just a couple of weeks younger than Ethan. She was staring at him and cooing. She kept trying to get his attention. She eventually did. He watched her for a few minutes. She was smiling he was very serious. Then he turned his head and his attention went to other faces and people. As my mother and I watched this scene we giggled. Then came the icing on the cake. I got to bring my grandson to the alter to have him blessed. It was a privilege and an honor to be the first to introduce him to God and bring him for his first blessing. I hope I will have many such occasions in the future. I was told in the past that Jesus must have been around 8 or 9 months old when the wise men came to him bearing gifts. Seeing how Ethan was with others makes me think of how Jesus may have been when the Wise Men came. How he would have looked at them and cooed and giggled.

I mentioned in that past that Ethan tried to talk and have conversations. This has temporarily stopped. I was told because he is teething. He has two tiny pearly whites on the bottom gum. He does love to be held and it is so wonderful to see him look at me with adoring eyes. He doesn't seem to have much trouble being passed around from one person to another in the family and when he is in a good mood he sometimes goes to the friends.

As far as opening presents, he doesn't have that quite down yet but he does love paper. It was fun to watch him tear it up :). All in all we all enjoyed the wonderful week together. I can honestly say I really miss my little guy and I miss his parents too. My other son and daughter-in-law will return to their home tomorrow. I will miss them both very much but I look forward to meeting the child they are to have in June. I am lucky my daughter is still with me for another couple of weeks.

The Best Christmas Ever

The time has finally come! Christmas is here and the house is filled with family. But the Christmas treat is having my grandson here. We had another wonderful experience today. We were blessed to see a live ultrasound of our new unborn baby. My other daughter in law is pregnant now. She is at 14 weeks yesterday. We took my mom with us. She had never seen anything like that. The new little one was very active.

The meeting between my mother and Ethan was a very emotional moment. No not for Ethan but for my mom. She started to tear up. As I sit here and write this, she is in the living room having a blast with that little stinker. Let me tell you how spoiled he is. He will not eat store bought apple sauce in a jar. It must be freshly made. Guess what his mom is doing right now? lol

Ethan is a riot. He still can't crawl but he gets around with an army crawl. Let me tell you his crawl is pretty fast too. He is so enjoying the attention. There are 9 adults in this house at his beck and call and we all enjoy playing with him. He laughs more now than he used too. I just love sitting around watching him and of course holding him and hugging him and kissing him. I guess the greatest thing of all is that he will come to me. He recognized me right away.

There will be more coming up as the days go on.

Christmas time with a baby in the house.