The Awesomeness of Six

To our precious Tooter,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!  In all your six year old awesomeness, you are equal parts ferocious love and a walking heart attack.  We are so proud of you for all you have accomplished this past year, and we are SO very much looking forward to seeing what you will be accomplishing in the year to come.

Oh, you are ALL boy.  If there is a couch to be sat upon, it must be addressed with a running jump or at least a flip over the back.  If there is a toy to be played with, it must be in an eternal fight to the death with the evil toy counterpart with whom it struggles.  (replete with sound effects, of course)  I, as your mother, am just now beginning to realize that you are not a crazy person, you are just a B-O-Y.  And I am SO glad that you're our boy!!

You still give THE best hugs ever in the whole world period.  Ever.  And you are still notoriously picky about eating, but you have branched out a bit in the past year.  Of course, eating in general has been hampered by our discovery of your allergy to wheat.  THAT has been a toughie, hasn't it sweet boy?  Having to eliminate some of your staple foods like pasta and pancakes and pizza has been a challenge.  And, there's just not a perfect substitute for those things.  At least, not right now.  You'll get to where you like the GF options, I just know it.  But, for now, avoiding wheat is helping us keep your eczema in a much more manageable state.  And that means less steroids, less infections, less bleeding.  Like we say all the time, you still get to sleep in your bed at night.  Not in a hospital.  It's a blessing that this is your health challenge.  The Lord has been so merciful!

You think I'm totally way prettier with makeup on.  So much so that you actually ask me "are you going to put on your eyelashes today?"  ::grin::  (For those wondering, he means mascara.  No, I'm not putting on false eyelashes just to hang around the house).

You have recently discovered Star Wars, X-Men, Masked Avengers, Superman, Spiderman, etc.  Your birthday gathering at the park was a blast today, watching you get things like a Darth Vader mask, Captain America awesomeness, huge growling dinosaurs, and Star Wars Legos!  Everything you opened was met with a "No WAY!!!"  ha!  It was so fun.  Like previously mentioned, you're all boy.  I'm very much looking forward to teaching you how to play Battleship!

You are still a superb sleeper, a great reader, and you are a wonderful student.  You really enjoy math and handwriting and you are getting better at your narrations every day!  I'll admit, your attention span is not like your sister's.  But, again, B-O-Y.  Right now, you're a very visual learner.  You need to see the words, see the math blocks, see the video.  Sitting and listening is the worst way to get information into your head.  But, we still work on that so that you develop an ability to do it!

You had an absolute blast playing soccer this fall, and you're still taking TaeKwonDo.  (You're a Tiger Cub Brown Belt at the moment).  You've told us that you want to play baseball next spring too!  I will admit that even though working in the soccer practices and working in the games was a challenge, I had a ball doing it.  And had SO much fun watching you!

I don't put you to bed very often; usually Daddy does that.  But when I do, like I got to do tonight, you blow me a zillion kisses and I have to catch them all.  :-)  I love that.  And I love hearing you pray, and I love your lisp.  (even though I do work with you on that because as cute as it sounds, you don't want to be 10 and still talking with it).

I looooove that you like to kill bugs.  Blech.  Including the big gross roaches.  ewww.

And, oh, your eyes.  Those sparkly, shiny, mischievous, loving, crystal blue eyes.  Those eyes that make me grin and remind me of your wonderful father all at the same time.

Sweet boy, we love you so much.  You make us proud, you make us smile, you make us crazy, and you make us so grateful to God for the blessing of having a son like you.  May God bless you so much as you continue to grow and learn and, we pray, seek Him first in your life.  Happy birthday sweetheart!  My sweet boy.  Our little Turkey Blessing.  :-)

We love you!!!

Custard's Dash

Custard
2001-2011

I've read before about how important the dash is.  That the year you were born and the year you die is of very little consequence.  It's the dash that means the most.  What you did, how you lived.  Who you were.

Custard was born on November 28, 2001.  We picked him up the day after we returned from our honeymoon, when he was almost 3 months old.  Literally, he was a part of our married life from Day One.

Custard was the epitome of the yellow lab stereotype.  He was so friendly, so easy to train.  He was loyal and unendingly loving.  He was brilliant with our children.  They could crawl on him, pull his ears, accidentally step on him; he returned it all with a wagging tail, a nose in the face, and more and more love.  Custard brought them delight and laughter and loving attention.  Hands down, he was the best dog I've ever had.  Jmk will tell you the same thing.

As much as I loved and cared about that dog of ours, Custard was Jmk's boy.  Custard would do anything for me, but Jmk was the one to whom Custard truly followed and respected and submitted.  I could literally say "Daddy's home, you better go get on your pillow".  And that dog, who had driven me batty being everywhere but on his pillow, would instantly go to his pillow and practically shiver with excitement that Jmk was about to walk through the door.

A couple of years ago, my sweet, golden-eyed kitty cat ran away.  Now, I'm not going to lie and tell you that it didn't hurt.  But, honestly, with a 2 month old baby, two other kids, and the confusion of what happened to her sort of cushioned that blow.  I realize that she probably ran away because she knew that she was very sick.  And that's just what cats do.  I didn't realize at the time what a burden she lifted from us when she did that.

A couple of months ago, we began a process of vet visits with Custard that ultimately ended with the realization that he didn't have much longer with us.  The tragedy of it, for us, was that we were faced with the most difficult choice that pet owners have to make:  Let him die naturally through terrible circumstances which would completely belie the amount of goodness he had in him,  or be merciful.  The latter broke our hearts in a way that we were not prepared for.

Eighteen days before his 10th birthday, we buried our friend, our companion, our sweet dog.  We had a hard time breathing for the next couple of days.  And we cried a lot.  And now we can breathe again.  And though we are able to maintain our composure when we look at the backyard, our hearts feel a literal pain when we instinctively look to see if he's ready to come inside at night.  The children are blessedly resilient and are already asking if they can get a new puppy.  I'm so glad for their desire to have another dog, and we recognize this as their need to fill the hole that Cus's death has left in the family.  We're not ready yet, but we will be one day.

Good dogs show you the type of unconditional love that we all strive to give, albeit precious few of us actually manage to get there.  Custard was the epitome of unconditional love even as he couldn't eat, struggled to stand, and had to breathe through a fluid-filled lung cavity.  Even though he suffered, he still loved us and used all his energy to show us how great HE thought WE were.

And we love him.  We always will.

His dash changed us.  And we thank God for giving us the blessing of a Simply Good Dog.