Memory Lane Monday

Memory Lane Monday is a way for me to reminisce about memories from my childhood even if I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

I think this trip down memory lane is going to be bits and pieces of my memories of my Korean grandfather who lived with us off and on over the years that he was in America.

I don't remember exactly when my grandfather came to live with us; he just did.  I do know that we lived in St. Cloud and we lived in the apartments that were behind the high school.  (My mom chose this area because her sister's in-laws lived close by and they would babysit me from time to time.)  We lived in a two bedroom apartment on the ground floor which is always a good thing because I was not good with stairs.

I remember that my grandfather would wake me up every morning to go to school...even on Saturday.  He would say "Critty, school".  (It took everyone, including my mother, a long time to pronounce my name correctly.)  I had to call my mom when she worked on Saturdays to help explain to him that it was the weekend and there was no school.

I remember that my grandfather ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches A: because that's the only thing he knew how to ask for in English and B: that's the only thing I knew how to make...I was only in elementary school for crying out loud! 

I remember that when we moved to Kissimmee, we lived in a three bedroom house.  It was me, my mom, my grandfather and my mom's only brother.  (Eventually two of my mom's sisters came to live with us, but that is for another day.)  Somehow my dad came to live with us sporadically in this house and there was a lot of fighting between him, my grandfather and my uncle.  My mom was ever in the middle trying to diffuse the volatile situation.

I remember that my grandfather loved old black and white television shows and movies even though he didn't understand anything that was going on.  I'm sure he made up his own stories to go along with the pictures he was seeing on the screen.

I remember that before my aunts came to live with us, my uncle decided to move to California and he took my grandfather with him.  I was probably 6 or 7 at the time.

I remember that it was many years before he came to live with us again.  I was in college so there was plenty of room in that big house of ours.  He fished a lot, someone would drop him off at the lake in the morning and return late in the afternoon to pick him up.  He never really caught anything, but he loved it.  I remember we had to find night crawlers for him to use as bait.  He was too slow to catch them himself, those suckers are FAST, so all the girls had to do it for him.  On days he didn't go fishing, he would stay downstairs to watch TV.  As soon as my dad would come home, he would run upstairs only to come down for dinner.  My mom always questioned him about this, but he never gave her an explanation.  He terrorized my brother with a cicada.  He fought a lot with my oldest aunt who had a lot of anger towards him because of the life she was forced to live in Korea.  My mom is forever grateful for the time she got to spend with him because she learned a lot about his life before he was a father.  (Like the when he fled to Japan during a time of conflict and lived with a lady and pretended to be Japanese.)

I remember feeling sorry for my youngest aunt who tried to have a relationship with him, but because she didn't speak Korean anymore couldn't even communicate with him.  (She is only three years older than me and lost her language because she wasn't allowed to speak Korean in the house.  My uncle, who she was living with, didn't want her to fall behind in school.)

I remember that he was very unhappy living with us in Indiana because he didn't have any friends there.  Not much of a Korea population in the rinky dink town we lived in.  I guess fishing, old black and white movies and the occasional Korea movie from the Korean store in Indianapolis can only keep a person occupied for so long.  He went back to California to live with my uncle.  He met a woman there who took what little money he had left, but at least he was happy with her.

I remember he died a few years after he returned to California.  I don't remember how old he was, but I think he was in his 90's.  It is one of the few times that all the siblings were in the same place at the same time.  They buried him somewhere in LA.

I remember all the time I got to spend with him and all his little quirks. 

Mostly I remember that I miss having him around. 

Thankful Thursday

The Move

The move went great!  I'm pretty impressed because we closed on Thursday and had to be out of our rental by that night.  We were supposed to close on Tuesday which would have allowed Jerry to move boxes and non essentials to our house all day Wednesday giving us a little bit of a jump.  I took Thursday off, dropped Jerry off to get the moving truck and took the kids to daycare.  By the time I got back to the rental, Jerry had the upper part of the moving truck full and the washer and dryer on.  It took us most of the morning to get the rest of the furniture on and we basically threw whatever else we could is the nooks and cranny's.  We were mostly done by the time we had to do the walk through, we just left the dining table and chairs off the truck so we had somewhere to sign the closing docs.  It took us an hour to sign all the closing docs which left us at 3 PM to get the truck unloaded into the house.  (I was picking up the kids at 5:15 leaving Jerry to do the majority of the work while I took care of them.)  We did well and got most everything off the truck when I had to leave to get the kids.  My mom and dad came over just in time to get the couch off the truck.  My mom helped watch the kids and unpack a few boxes while my dad and Jerry went to get the rest of the living room furniture and some miscellaneous items from the rental.  They were still able to fill the truck up a second time.  Mean while I had to go pick up Jerry's mom from the airport and by the time I got back I had to put the kids to bed.  While I was doing that, Jerry and his mom went to the rental to get the rest of our belongings and do some spot cleaning.  It took about 5 more trips in Jerry's car to get everything left at the rental to the house and we were done with everything at around 2 AM.  I still had to work the next day and get the kids to daycare so that Jerry could get the truck back to avoid the second day charge. 

We are mostly settled in and only have a few boxes to unpack.  Once we get the washer and dryer hooked up, we will be set as there are piles of laundry laying everywhere in our room right now.  (I had to do some essential laundry for us and the kids laundry at my parents house so we wouldn't have to run around naked for a few days.)  The house is coming together and now we can start to focus on making it a home. 

Memory Lane Monday

Memory Lane Monday is a way for me to reminisce about memories from my childhood even if I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

I think I'll start of my first MLM with the story of how I scarred my brother for life.  My brother is 13 years younger than me; no he's not an oops baby.  (Although my mother has everyone convinced that she waited so long to have more children because I was the demon spawn of Satan.)  Anyway, when he was around 3 or 4, my mom use to dress him in overalls a lot.  He did look darn cute in those overalls and of course they had this nifty pocket in the front where some years previously my sister had her first (and only) shop lifting experience at the ripe old age of 2 and hid a candy bar she picked up while we were checking out at the register of the local grocery store.  Anyway, being 13 years older than my brother was super fun for me.  I dressed him up, I got him to stay mean things, I painted his nails, basically he was my living toy.

Back to the overalls and the torture.  We had this fake, plastic fly that was the size of a silver dollar that we probably got out of a gum ball machine.  I was playing with it one day and noticed that Sean was afraid of this fly.  Unfortunately for him, I thought him screaming like a manic was hilarious.  So, I began to torture him with it just so I could get him to scream.  Well, he kept running away from me when I showed him the fly and I got the brilliant idea to put the fly in the chest pocket of his overalls so even if he did run, he would still scream.  Genius!  It worked.  No matter how fast he ran, he couldn't get away from this fly.  Of course I laughed hysterically, would take the fly out of his pocket, let him calm down and put the fly right back into his pocket for another round of side splitting laughter.  Little did I know the life long damage I had inflicted on my poor brother.

My Korean grandfather, who spoke VERY little English came to live with us for a short period of time while we were in Indiana.  (He could say some semblance of our names, he could ask to go fishing "feeshing", he could ask for a pb & j "peanut butter jelly" and he could tell us to go to school "go schoo.")  My mother is constantly telling us stories of how poor they were, not to guilt us or anything but she actually thinks these stories are hilarious, and how they use to have to make their toys.  I guess a really fun thing for poor Korean children is to play with bugs.  Like they used to catch dragon flies by their wings and then tie string around their tails and fly them like kites or balloons.  They also liked to catch cicadas and pull their wings off and then let them walk around all hobbily wobbily.  I guess my grandfather remembered his kids doing this and caught a cicada and brought it in to the house for my brother to play with.  Of course he didn't know about the torture he had endured at my hands and tried to give it to my brother.  Needless to say my brother freaked the fark out!  My mom came home from work and my grandfather told her that Sean was hiding in the closet.  My mom found him in the closet and the poor thing was hiding under a Korean mink blanket, sweating, shaking like a leaf babbling "Papa, buga buga."  (He called flies buga bugas.)  My mom was totally freaked out.  She asked her dad what happened and he told her the story.  My mom lost it.  She couldn't even tell the story without laughing hysterically.  She still can't really tell the story without a lot of hitting (my mom is a hitter when she laughs, no lie) and laughing. 

To this very day, if my brother is caught off guard by a fly, he will jump.  He kills flies like they are some kind of mutated, poison/plague carrying alien.  Flies do not get to stay alive around my brother.  He will hunt them down until they are destroyed.  I feel sorry for any fly that crosses my brother's path because they do not have a chance.

I still laugh when this story gets told or when some wayward fly scares my brother but sometimes I do feel a little guilty that I'm the one who did that to him.  (Don't tell him I said that though.)

9 is Fine!

(One day late because we spent all day yesterday moving and had no internet.)

Good lord!  My baby is 9 months old.  (Little Miss Lucy will be 2 months!)  So surreal how time flies so fast.  Tyler's 9 month appointment will be next week, so I don't have any of his stats for this post.  I don't even know if his 9 month update will be posted tomorrow since we will be in the middle of a move, but I wanted to have it ready in case I can hit the publish post button sometime tomorrow.

He crawls on his hands and knees now.  It was the army style crawl for the longest time and I thought he never would get up on those knees and he would go straight to walking.  He's still very slow and will only do it for a few minutes.  If he sees something across the room that he really has to have in his mouth, like yesterday, then he will fore go the hands and knees and army it up.  He's so quick dragging his fat little body across the floor. 

He's pulling up on everything now and he's starting to cruise.  The other morning when I went in at 5 am to give his his paci and get him to go back to sleep, he was standing in his crib, eyes shut, but standing there whimpering.  It was the saddest little thing.  He's really good at letting himself back down once he has pulled himself up too.  I was surprised at this because it took awhile for Kaitlyn mastering the sitting down from a standing position.  He's a pro though and will let himself down slowly without bonking the nog nog.

I started to make homemade baby food for him and he absolutely adores it.  He tried avocados at daycare the other day and they said he made the worst face at first, but then he ate them all gone a little bit later.  (I forgot that they were a new food when I packed them I was just so excited to get him to try them.)  I don't think that I'll be making much more purees as he can handle finger foods and he can have things like egg yolks, cheese and beans.  I might just have to mash things up really well for him because they just let him get too messy feeding himself at daycare and I can't constantly buy him new clothes because of all the stains.  (I strip him down if I'm going to let him make a mess.)  Maybe when he can have deli meats I'll start sending little baby bentos to daycare for him to eat.

He's got 5 teeth right now with one more about to break through.  He's having such a hard time with teething.  He's SUPER drooly these days and he soaks through bibs and shirts.  He usually runs a fever for a few days when he's getting them so he is pretty miserable.  I give him crushed up ice cubes that keeps him happy for quite a long time.  He will only nom on a teether for like 2 minutes then he's off.  I might have to get one of those Mam ones that clip to the paci clip so at least it's attached to him.  I just don't like it dragging on the floor when he crawls.

He still only babbles da da and ba ba.  He will every once in awhile say ma, but it's really rare, usually only when he's upset.  I remember it was such a big deal when Kaitlyn stopped saying ma ma and babbled da da all the time.  I got really upset.  With Tyler it's a lot different.  Sure I still try to get him to say it, but I know that just because he doesn't he doesn't love me.  I know he loves me because he shows it by always wanting to be with me or the fact that I'm the only one who can get him to lay still or go back to sleep in the wee hours of the night.

He's gained an interest in the dog that's never really been there eve though Peanut is always hanging around him.  Tyler will watch Peanut intently when he comes into the room and when Peanut lays next to him, he will pat him.  He doesn't pull on him...yet.  He just kinda pats his back and poke him in the face and just watch him.  He really gets interested when I interact with Peanut and he will stare at us watching our every move.  I know he's learning a lot and I want to make sure that I am modeling how to handle a dog properly so he doesn't terrorize him like Kaitlyn does.  I'm sure that when he gets a little older he will start pulling on his tail and chase him around and body slam him to the ground.  He does watch Kaitlyn very carefully so he's going to pick up on how she interacts with Peanut and mimic her.  I can say I tried though.

He still has a very happy disposition and I still get comments from his daycare teachers that he is always smiling and happy and he's such a good baby.  I don't know how I got so lucky with two great babies.  I could have sworn my mom cursed me to have the demon spawn of Satan because I gave her such hell as a baby.  Maybe my payback will come in the form of the teenage years.  Someone shoot me now.



Help

How do you help someone who doesn't want it? 

How do you help someone realize that their situation is more dire than they care to admit?

How do you help pull someone from the abyss when they don't grab onto your hand?

How do you help to keep someone from drowning when they refuse to grab on to the raft you throw them?

How do you help someone stay alive when all they seek is death?