The children are at school and Rudy is exuding peace and tranquility in the Wellness Center. He loves it, and asks that we might consider a gently rolling waterfall or some soft music.
How the Honey Badger Helps With a Project
Here we are, it’s Sunday night and I’m relaxing in my brand new “Sitting Room / Office”. Sean and I spent the entire weekend working on this “little” project where we revamped our traditional dining room. The walls went from a deep burgundy to a subtle light blue. The giant gold chandelier was ditched for a more modern light fixture. The chocolate leather love seat and recliner were brought upstairs from the basement. And last, but not least, we were given my father’s handmade oak desk from my sister. It’s huge, heavy and absolutely gorgeous. I have been sanding and staining it meticulously the last two days. Anyway, the room has quickly become (as of tonight) a place where we quietly enjoy wine, a sophisticated set-up and it just so happens to be the furthest room from the kids’ bedrooms. I think we should call it: The Wellness Center.
We couldn’t possibly have gotten this project done without the help of the Honey Badger. Dylan was gone for the weekend, so he came late this afternoon to the…….aftermath. The Honey Badger helped A LOT. Here are the ways in which she helped:
1.) A well versed game of Hide ‘n Go Seek : HB Style. It gets painting underway like nothing else. This version consists of hiding in a blanket on the floor and HB tells you exactly where to look for her (even though she’s a big lump on the ground in plain sight) and then she giggles loudly. For example, “Mommy, look for me in the garage!! Mommy, look for me under the coffee table!!” Here’s a visual aid:
Oops. This isn’t Erin! Silly me. It’s Sean, following her directions when it’s his turn to “hide”.
2.) All painting prep work and anything in regards to dining room project must pause for Dylan’s playoff football game. We drag Erin there, with a bag of full of books, toys, snacks and beverages. Dylan played great, but took a really hard hit to the head in the 3rd quarter. He left the game with me wondering if we should be heading to Medcheck. He likely has a mild concussion, but he’s doing ok. It was a gut-wrenching game, with horrible replacement officials making horrible calls, to the point where we lost the game by ONE point. I was devastated. Dylan looked at me and said with a smile, “Football’s over!!!”. Last week was CYO Basketball evaluations. He mentally checked out of football and checked into basketball at that time. Poor Sean had to watch the game from the playground because Erin insisted on playing. She was a ball of mud by the time we got home.
3.) Back to painting….Erin really, really, really wanted to help paint. We set her up in the kitchen with her Crayola easel paints and paper. That lasted about 5 minutes. She was intent on the real deal. Then, Sean had to leave while he ran to Menard’s. She was happily sucking on a pouch of applesauce when he left. I had just started painting, I was so happy to be done prepping and finally getting underway. Erin wasn’t amused. She was actually pretty tired of asking to paint. So, she squeezed the rest of her applesauce into my (full) paint tray. That was neat. I used her middle name when scolding her. She cried. I didn’t feel bad. But, then I remembered I wasn’t three. So, then I felt bad. She just wanted to be in the mix. And, so on to #4.
4.) Finally, I succumbed to her requests for painting and set her up on the dining room floor with a real can of paint (small, it was a sample can), a paintbrush, and a box. She was absolutely thrilled to be painting a box. She asked for tape as well, so I sent her to the drawer for some scotch tape. I didn’t need to know what the tape was for, I didn’t care. Here is Exhibit A:
“I’m in my pajamas AND I’m painting. This is the best day EVER.”
Here is the final product. She’s so proud of it. You might not be able to see all of the many, many strips, so many strips, of scotch tape:
Anyhither, she helped in a lot of other ways too. She stayed in her pajamas all day and so we didn’t have to get her dressed. Also, she helped herself to snacks in the fridge and pantry, so we really didn’t have to feed her all that much. We were REALLY busy, so she was doing a super job of handling the most basic of tasks – dressing herself and eating. Oh! she also found a caterpillar and named it Audrey – a boy – and she set him up in the lap of luxury with a container with holes in it, a SKATEBOARD, half a Lego man, and a Crayon. He is livin’ the life. Or, he was, until she set him loose. Then, it’s all kinds of crazy here while she and Sean try to track him down at BEDTIME and suddenly Erin (amazingly) finds him and we get him back in his home. We are AWESOME with “pets”. Annnnnnddddd, if you stay tuned, it’s about to get EVEN BETTER. Dylan turns 10 this week, and well, you should just stay tuned.
I leave you with the Before and After pics of the Wellness Center:
BEFORE
AFTER. Decorated with some lovely stuffed animals.
My Husband is a Beast!
When it comes to Sean McGill, he’s all or nothing. So, when I asked him to join me on the Atkins diet, he was adamantly opposed. Then, I started telling him each day how I was losing 1 lb. per day. He was working out every day on his lunch break, but losing nothing. He still wasn’t swayed. I told him I had been on livestrong.com and they had practically endorsed the high protein/low carb Atkins diet and offered advice on how to work out while following the Atkins guidelines. Anyway, it was this that finally got him to give it some thought. He decided he was ALL IN. We were hard core Atkins followers, consistently losing weight for about 7…whole…days. Then, after he lost 10 lbs, and I lost 5, we decided maybe it wasn’t really all that healthy to be in ketosis (where you lose the weight so quickly in Phase 1). So, like any other critically thinking, highly intelligent, college grads’ couple, we decided we needed to add SOME carbs back in. In the form of wine. In the evening. And, guess what? We kept losing weight. We felt like badasses because we circumvented the process.
Then, we ate regularly during the weekend and we gained it all back.
Ok, we weren’t really doing it right to begin with. You’re supposed to do 2 weeks of nothing but protein, no wine, blah blah blah. We put forth some serious effort at first, but now we were half-assing it and still succeeding…kind of. The result is I feel like I’ve now shot my metabolism in the face. In the meantime, Sean has transformed in a way that I have, uh, never seen.
FOR EXAMPLE, Sunday morning. He was pumped UP to go to the grocery. In fact, he went THREE times that day. It doesn’t matter about the first two trips. What really got me was the 3rd trip, this time to Trader Joes. He happened to come home right as my Mom & Dad pulled up in the driveway to take both of our kids, along with two of their other grandchildren, to lunch and the Dollar Store (where SO MANY treasures lurk!!!). My Dad asked Sean, “How’s it going?” and Sean responded, “I’m living the life, Bill. I just got back from the grocery!” And, sadly or not, he was truly happy about this. He prominently displayed his fruits and vegetables, including ginger root, kale, and tiny cucumbers (he was especially excited about these, never having bought them before). He was more amped up than ever. The Colts game had already been underway for an hour, and my husband could usually be found sitting in the family room watching it and drinking a Guinness. Instead, he was in the kitchen concocting a “Smoothie” consisting of a recipe he found on Dr.Oz’s website. Who was this man and what did he do to my husband? We actually had a free couple of hours, NO KIDS, and my husband was excitedly chopping up his kale, ginger root, vegetables, and fruit to puree in the blender. He slowly poured it into a glass, drank it, set it down, put his hands on his hips and said, “Hm. Not bad.” I said, “That’s it?! After all that drama and excitement? Pour me a glass. I want to try it.” And tried it, I did. Not bad. I didn’t have too much to say about the “smoothie” one way or the other and went back to my work. My husband then threw one leg up on the granite counter top, hands on his hips and said, “I HAVE SO MUCH ENERGY!!!”. Good Lord. The windows were open. People could see in, neighbors could hear us. I have no doubt Sean thought the kale was running through his veins.
This was all too much and I just couldn’t stop laughing. But, I pulled myself together, kept sipping my drink that I wasn’t sure if it tasted like vomit or something totally delicious. He laughed his ass of with me because, let’s be honest, he didn’t know who the hell he was either, and declared excitedly, “I’m going to pour myself another Health Shake and go watch the football game!!!!” and in that moment, I really did lose it. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t even breathe. It gets better though. I was actually falling asleep working at my computer, getting ready to go lie down and take a nap. Then Sean strides into the kitchen and says, “I’VE HAD THREE OF THOSE THINGS!! I’M PROBABLY GONNA DIE!!” and this just sent me over the edge. I was gasping for breath, doubled over laughing at his sudden passion for kale shakes. Maybe this just sounds a little boring and not the least bit funny, but you have to know Sean and his enthusiasm for things. He threw his whole entire body into the kale shake and he’s a changed man. This was Sunday, it’s now Tuesday. He’s still making a shake each morning of kale, ginger root, bananas, carrots, celery, and other things that I can’t keep track of. I drink my coffee and marvel at this man who is a constant source of entertainment for me, my kids, and my own family. He’s a natural phenomenon.
Regarding the Honey Badger…
Hi there. This is officially my first post. Many friends and family encouraged this endeavor, mostly as a result of my posts about the Honey Badger. (The Honey Badger would be our 3 year old daughter.) I can’t do a blog just about Erin, although she IS hilarious. My son is also the epitome of humor, but he’s more reluctant to let me “share” online. Since so much encouragement has come from the stories of the Honey Badger, it is only fitting that I share with all of you a story about her that is very near and dear to our hearts. Sean and I have only told this story to a few very close people to us. So far, that’s been family. I usually tell funny stories about her, but I would like to open this blog with a very staid story about her. Perhaps what I am about to say will let my readers know just how much of a treasure she is, and why she is here.
My pregnancies for both my children were painful, problematic, and utterly agonizing. As a result of going into preterm labor with Dylan at 5 months, and prohibiting his early exit up until he was 5 weeks premature, I enjoyed a weekly shot of progesterone in the hip to ensure Erin didn’t try to do the same. We also opted to have all the prenatal testing done, not to entertain any thoughts of abortion should the markers indicate a problem, but to ensure we went into any situation with our eyes wide open. Having said that, approximately 3 months into my pregnancy a huge flag alerted us to the fact that our baby was likely to have Downs Syndrome. This could have been a false positive, so we opted for an amniocentesis to know what we were up against. It took 4 scheduled visits, 3 of those utter disappointments, to get the perfect window where the placenta could “safely” (although there is no guarantee of safety) be plunged with a giant needle, shipped off to the lab, and results back to us. Those results would tell us if we needed to arm ourselves with every weapon at our disposal to make the best life possible for our Downs baby, or breathe a sigh of relief that the test was false. It made no difference to us if he/she was or wasn’t Downs, except for how we would prepare mentally and financially. Speaking of mental, by the 4th visit to have the test done, we were wound pretty tightly and pretty emotionally. So, when the tech asked us if we would like to know the sex of the baby, which up until then we had opted not to find out, we busted out a “YES, PLEASE!”. It was a girl. My son begged for a little sister. This was swell, except I only knew I could raise a boy. A tomboy myself when I was little, this was quite a shock to me. My husband was THRILLED.
Now, before I go any further, I want to expand on the wonderful facility that was taking such good care of us during this process: Maternal Fetal Medicine in Indy. Being huge Indianapolis Colts‘ fans, we were pleased to find out that my M.D. there was Lauren Dungy-Poythress. She is (ex) Coach Dungy’s sister. If you ever had respect for that man, wow, you should meet his sister. She is an amazing doctor. I have never met a doctor like her, and my husband feels the same way. To say she is a warm person is an understatement. I can’t even describe the calmness and serenity she brought into every room she walked into. She would put her healing hands on my belly, talking very softly, slowly, intelligently, and made my husband and I feel as though we just left church after we spent time in her presence. I have been in countless numbers of Dr.’s offices in my 37 years. I have never had a near-religious experience with a Dr. like that EVER.
So, when the amnio was done, and we were walking out of the room and wiping tears of joy that it’s a GIRL!, we headed to the check-out to schedule our follow-up meeting for the results. We were stopped right at the back desk by one of the other doctors. This was an older woman, African-American, with a very similar demeanor to Dr. Dungy-Poythress. She was very inquisitive, asking if we knew what the sex of our baby was. We hadn’t even told our family, but we felt comfortable sharing with her. We said, “Yes, we just found out she’s a girl!”. More tears. She very calmly asked me if she could place her hands on my belly. Of course, she was a very calming presence. I invited it. I felt her warm, healing hands upon me, only this was different. She was reflecting on something that meant a great deal to her. She paused for a moment and looked up at us. She was very intent on what she had to say and looked us straight in the eyes, this old, wise woman. After a pause she said, “She is going to be a very, very strong woman. She will ease the suffering of many.”
This story of Erin’s beginnings still gives us chills.
Mostly Domesticated. 