It's Official

Brian and I are Grandparents! (Sounds fishy, doesn't it?!?)

I have dreaded having fish since Ann Catherine started asking for one. Even though I had fish as a child, I remember those many fish dying every single time we changed out their water. Simple solution might be to just never change the water but, obviously, it can't work that way. The tank gets too dirty. And there's nothing worse than a greenish-tinged fishtank (unless it's the dead fish that start floating in it soon afterward). So the next solution would maybe be to get a few snails. They like to suck up the yuckiness, apparently. But after finally buying the tank and reading the instructions, I realized that our snail-solution just wasn't going to be enough. Not only that, but these instructions managed to actually scare me worse and made me actually regret agreeing to our new fish-pets. It started talking about testing the PH levels in your tank. And making sure calcium levels were right. And putting conditioner in it to make the acidic levels just right. And good bacteria versus bad bacteria. And using a vacuum to clean up food. And how to figure out if you're over feeding them. It was downright scary.

Even though I had given her a tank for her birthday, I managed to hold her off with lots of excuses from actually BUYING the fish until after Christmas. Oh no, we didn't have time for that because we had to finish her reading project and get ready for the Christmas parade. It's takes days and weeks to just set up the tank! Oh no, we couldn't afford them right now because of Christmas and all the birthdays at this time of year.

But then the inevitable came along. I was out of excuses. So, yeah, I sucked it up and we went fish-shopping. Picking out the fish was easy. She had her heart set on the tiny pink fish I had seen in the store. But when we went to buy them, they were all out of them. So Ann Catherine started looking around and started laughing because the label called this particular set of fish "Mickey Mouse" fish. Sure enough, look closely at the tail and you can see why they have that name. For anyone who knows our Disney obsession, they will completely understand how two of those fish came home with us.

One was named Mickey and the other was named Minnie. And I prayed that I didn't kill them off right away.

Yesterday morning, Ann Catherine went to feed her fish. And, as usual, I'm sure she stalled for time (as she does every morning when she's supposed to be getting ready for school) by staring into the fishtank. But this time, she saw tiny black eyes staring at her from the bottom of the tank. Daddy came running and realized that there was a tiny baby fish staring back at him. He called me and we all had a good laugh. This would explain why Mickey the supposedly-boy fish had been hiding in the decorative barrel for several days. I thought he was dying. No - HE was giving BIRTH to babies. Ummm...I think we may have switched a couple names.

Anyway, as we talked and laughed about this interesting development, Ann Catherine started yelling again. There was now a SECOND set of eyes at the bottom of the tank.

Now I had a problem. I'm already worried about killing two adult fish. But now we have two more to worry about. And the only thing I know about baby fish is that you're supposed to keep the adult fish away from them. Nearly impossible to do now that they were already in the tank since we had no idea that fat little Mickey was actually a Minnie! So I asked Brian to explain to Ann Catherine that baby fish are hard to keep alive. And they usually die. And yes, we even explained that adult fish sometimes eat baby fish. She didn't bat an eye. Her class just raised a set of crayfish and we all know that the two mean crayfish ate all of the other ones. So she accepted this news just fine and we all went about our day fully expecting to no longer see those little tiny eyes in the bottom of the tank when we got home.

Ann Catherine and I were the first to get home last night. We put our stuff down and right away went to look to see if those two little sets of eyes were still in there. We prepared for the worse...and had a little surprise.

Right away, Ann Catherine found a tiny fish swimming around the back of the tank. OK. So one made it. Then she saw the other one hiding in the orange plant. OK - so they both made it a full day.

So here's where the problem started. I had a hard time seeing this second tiny orange fish in the middle of a giant orange plant. So she pointed and I finally saw the two little black eyes. Then we realized we had a small problem. She was pointing in a place other than where I was looking. Uh oh. There were now THREE baby fish!!

And then something caught my eye at the base of the plant. Ummmm.....yeah, four. So we laughed and giggled about the fact that we now have four baby fish. And Ann Catherine decided to show me where Mickey, the supposedly-boy fish, had been laying the eggs in the decorative barrel in the tank.

And then I saw it in the darkness of the barrel. FOUR MORE EYES!!!!!! There were two more baby fish hiding in the barrel.

Ann Catherine is now obsessed with getting a bigger tank. I'm personally sweating because I have no idea how to keep baby fish alive. Brian's declaring we're giving them all away and neutering Mickey and Minnie to prevent future babies.

And 12 little tiny black eyes are just staring at the humans going crazy.

New Addition to the Family!!!!!!!!

Now before you all get way to excited, let me explain. Ann Catherine is now the proud owner of two fish. She asked for and got a fish tank for her birthday. We finally got her two fish this past weekend. After lots of looking at the different types of fish, she decided on a Golden Mickey Mouse Platy and a Red Mickey Mouse Platy. They are named, you guessed it, Mickey and Minnie. Mickey is Gold and Minnie is red.

Can you guess why they are called Mickey Mouse Platy.

Do you see it now!!!!!!

Before and After

This was my baby boy on Christmas Day.

And this would be the reason he has that nice splint and wrap on his arm.

That is a view of his arm from the side with his arm and hand flat on the xray table. Can you tell why we immediately knew we needed to head to the ER? Bones are not supposed to look like that. In fact, arms are not supposed to look like that!

Well, this is my little boy this morning.

Ignore the fact that he's wearing the same PJs. We're pretty limited in his wardrobe right now. Basically, he's down to two pairs of PJs - one long sleeve that is stretchy enough and one short-sleeve that can fit over his cast on nights when it's not -7 outside. And as for his shirts, well, we're down to three or four shirts with sleeves that either stretch really well or are shirts that are ugly and we don't care about stretching the life out of them. Yeah, my son is wearing ugly clothes right now. But we love him. And his cast is pretty.

Don't you think his cast is pretty? Or would a boy's cast be considered handsome? Regardless, from day one as we were trying to get his mind off the pain in the ER, we have been asking him what color cast he wanted. And from that awful day in the ER all the way to Tuesday morning when they put the cast cover over the splint (not a full cast), he has been announcing that it'd be green. So green it was. And he's a pretty handsome little boy with it on.

Even better, the xray technician who took the xray on Tuesday morning looked at his xray and almost didn't believe us when we said he had broken both bones. In fact, she almost didn't believe that he had a broken arm. If it weren't for the fact that the ER had put a splint on, I'm sure the lady would have called us crazy and sent us home. She called Brian over to get him to show her where it had been broken. He looked at it, squinted at it, and called me over. We looked again and honestly couldn't do more than guess. There's no sign of the break at all! In fact, his arm is lined up perfectly. She was very impressed with the work the ER Dr. had done. We were pretty impressed with the fact that he hadn't rebroken it by falling four or five times throughout our house last week!

Luckily, the orthopaedic Dr. managed to figure out where the break was. She's a pretty smart cookie and pointed it right away. We had to squint to figure out where she was pointing at. But the good news is that she said it was healing beautifully and that we'd have to come back next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that but, after that, we may get to get it off! Only five weeks with it on! I can handle that!

Now if we can just get him to stop jumping from the couch onto the coffee table and back again, we'd be much happier parents.

Saying Goodbye to 2009

I've now written this blog post four times and have deleted each attempt. They were all too depressing and I'm been waiting for inspiration to descend.

The truth is that 2009 has been a hard year. I should be counting my blessings: the fact that my family is healthy, we have a home, we have food on the table, we can afford to go out to restaurants and shop occasionally, the fact that we've started to get our lives in order financially for the first time since we married, the fact that we have jobs to go to every day.

But I've been wallowing. I've been frustrated over how hard it has been to be a working mom this year and lonely because of the fact that I'm the only working mom I know. I've been stressed over the chaos of Will's health illness that lasted for three months and culminated to a nice ending with his broken arm on Christmas Eve. I've been stressed over the possibility of losing a job in an economic climate where retailers are struggling and just hoping and praying to make it another day. It's been hard to watch my bosses pace, to see them whisper, to see the worry lines on their faces, to hear them breath a sigh of relief with a small chuckle when they manage to make another payroll. As a couple, Brian and I have had to deal with job losses on several fronts: our own job loss at a job we worked together on the weekends, the loss of his parents' jobs and home, and a friends' job loss as well. These losses have been hard to watch and scary to deal with. And the fact is that my calendar and to-do list has exploded. The older Ann Catherine gets, the more she has to do. The more she has to do means my own to-do list grows. She's very active in Girl Scouts and her homework is growing at school. I want to be an involved parent, so all of those activities means more for me to do. Plus, with all of Will's health concerns, we've had an enormous amount of doctors visits, specialists appointments and the worry and concern that goes with it. To top it all off, the stress and anxiety has gotten to me so badly this winter that I've started having my own personal health problems with my heart and my breathing. My doctor has had to put me on medicine and then up my medicine at least once and, while upping it worked for a few days, my heart problem started back up again on Christmas Eve after we spent the day in the ER with Will. I have a feeling she'll be upping my medicine again in January. So, yes, I think I'll be happy to leave 2009 behind.

Of course, this year had some wonderful moments. Can you say Disney Trip? I have discovered a newfound obsession with all things Disney and had a wonderful time feeding that obsession this year. And getting to go for four days in October was just icing on the cake. Added to that, we have had a wonderful time growing into our new church, making new friends there, and learning how to worship in a totally new way. And on top of it all was the blessing of our newborn niece who, I can honestly say is one of the most beautiful, sweet and precious little girls I have ever seen before in my life. She ranks right up there with my own daughter. I may just have to steal her one day!

I could sit here and tell you all about December and how our Christmas went but, the truth is it was bad...really bad. All the things that I normally do to help create the Christmas magic for myself and my family never did happen. We never got to go to the Christmas programs we normally go to, we didn't get to go to the Christmas Concert I had been looking forward to attending since last Spring, and we never got to go to the Christmas Eve service I always look forward to and use to get my heart into the true Christmas Spirit the night before the big day. We discovered that Christmas is more fun with the crowded chaos with family on Christmas Day. Plus, we had to watch our son struggle to open his gifts and walk down the hall to his bedroom with his head hanging on his chest as he struggled not to cry because he couldn't play with his new toys on Christmas Day. Yeah, I think this is one Christmas I'd prefer to forget.

So I'll end this on a more positive note. I'm looking forward to 2010. I'm excited about our trip to Disney in May and will have a ball making plans and dreaming lots of dreams for what we're going to do during those eight days. I'm looking forward to getting to know the women in my Sunday School class even more and finding opportunities to maybe grow some real friendships with them over this year. I'm looking forward to continuing to work on our debt-free plan and see some of the debts actually disappear this year. And, silly as it seems for me to be excited about this so early in the year, I'm even excited about Christmas this year. I'm determined that this year will be better and will be full of some wonderful memories because this year we'll make sure we're surrounded by lots of family and crazy fun Christmas chaos.

My New Years resolution for 2010 is simply this: to do the things I can and to say no to the things I can't. I will do my best to keep up with the chores and tasks, but give myself permission to not stress over the things I can't. I will give myself permission to take days off and do nothing more than play with my kids and take some time to myself, all while ignoring the state of my house and the things on my to-do list.

And last, I'll continue to pump my children full of vitamins and milk. Healthy bodies and strong bones are a necessity for this year!

P.S. I apologize!!! How in the world could I forget the addition of my newest brother-in-law in my list of wonderful things for 2009?!? He's my husband's long-lost twin brother!