I'm calling mine A Bucket List

I know some people who have done this under a different title and while reading their lists, of course I couldn't help but make my own. It kinda falls a little bit into my self-evaluation mode, I love the bucket analogy, and I think lists are the cats pajamas. So, for the next few posts, I'll be listing the things I want to have in my bucket when I go to meet my maker. I'll give them to you in installments of 25 at a time and they are in no particular order. I hope you too, feel inspired to create your own list and if you'd like to share your list - I would love to read your 100 Things to Do Before You Go.

1. To raise my son to be a good man.
2. To be a better grandmother than I had, than Edna is.
3. Plant and maintain a beautiful flower garden around my home.
4. Learn how to can fresh fruits and vegetables.
5. Have sit down meals together, as a family.
6. Watch our St. Louis Cardinals claim another World Series Championship, in person.
7. Attend a service, in the church where my parents were married.
8. Eat a fresh lobster, on the East Coast.
9. Have a pool in our backyard.
10. Rent a cottage on Lake Missaukee for a week with my brother's family.
11. Cook with more fresh vegetables.
12. Vacation to Washington D.C. and make a scratch of my Uncle Dan's name on The Wall.
13. Return to Oregon to see Emily and meet her son, Charlie.
14. Return to Cable Beach in the Bahamas, where we were married.
15. Be a really good friend and not repeat past mistakes.
16. Redo my whole kitchen!
17. Find a church I like, and attend - regularly.
18. Vacation to Alaska.
19. Visit the Holocaust Museum.
20. Read more books.
21. See a Broadway show.
22. Recycle.
23. Learn to speak Spanish.
24. Go charter boat fishing for coho salmon in Manistee with Jeremy and JJ.
25. Finish a quilt.

Jacob's first baseball game

We took Jacob to his first baseball game today. We went to see the West Michigan Whitecaps (Class A team for the Detroit Tigers) play the Quad Cities River Bandits (Class A team for our St. Louis Cardinals).

Jacob actually watched about 2 innings.

The rest of the time he wanted to go up and down the stairs or run on the concourse.

We left in the bottom of the fourth inning. Jacob wouldn't sit any longer. Good thing though, as it started to rain on the way home.
We did have a lot of fun. We saw potentially future Cardinals play some ball. The players threw out T-shirts and Momma even caught one. I'm glad we chose to do this rather than leave a Cardinals game in the fourth inning. The ballpark was great! Inexpensive, family friendly, and a lot closer than St. Louis!

The River Bandits did win 5-3.

On bathing cats...

Have you ever given a cat a bath? The last time, the cat bit my thumb and broke the skin. I called the Dr. office after it had swollen to twice normal size in about a half an hour. The receptionist asked me how quickly I could get there, and the Dr. was waiting for me at the door. He cleaned the wound and gave me an antibiotic on the spot and called in a prescription to be filled immediately. We don't have that cat anymore but, did you know a cat's mouth is that dirty?

So - last night, previous experience aside, I decided our cats needed baths. Brady (named after Michigan QB at the time, Tom Brady) is about 6 years old, and maybe 19 lbs. He's huge. He's gray and white short hair with a smudge on his nose. Brady is my cat. I was scratching his back and noticed some old flea dirt, some flaking skin, and a lot of loose hair. It's been about 5 years since the time Brady had a bath! Jeremy and I decided to make it a tag team effort - thankfully! Poor Brady he yowled, and he yowled. He was so loud, and making noises I have never, ever heard from a cat - at one point I even looked over my shoulder, thinking there was a child hollering behind me and being in the bathtub, it echoed. I held Brady down in the bathtub and Jeremy got him wet, shampooed, and rinsed him. Brady hollered the whole time. It took all I had to hold him. You would have thought we were killing that cat. I was afraid he was going to wake Jacob! Once we got him out and in a towel, he quieted down but, we didn't see much of Brady the rest of the night.

Woody, (named after then St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Woody Williams) is about 4 years old and 15 lbs. He's an orange tabby, with a face like a lion. Woody is Jeremy's cat and an inbreed from my sister's farm. He has no hair on his ears, or by his nose, very little hair on his tail AND he sheds like crazy! So we're ready to wash him - he hasn't had a bath since he came to us! Anyway, we can't find him! We searched our whole house (which is huge), no Woody, anywhere. We searched the basement, under all the beds, in the closets, under the furniture, still no Woody. Jeremy chased him into the house earlier, so I knew he was in. We couldn't find him. Jeremy finally went outside and looked again. Jeremy didn't see where Woody came from but he was sitting on the back porch when Jeremy had given up and came in. Okay, so, I thought the cat was in (we don't let him out, he sneaks). Jeremy scooped him up, took him upstairs, and washed him. Jeremy said Woody made about 5 yowls and was done - I never heard a thing. We didn't see Woody the rest of the night either.

We finished up a some laundry and went up to go to bed. I wanted to take a shower - I felt like I was covered in wet cat hair, I walked into the bathroom and I smelled it. Woody was pretty quiet for his bath but he had peed in the bathtub! 11:30 PM and there I am, with the antibacterial scrubbing bubbles, cleaning my tub. Thanks cat.

Although both cats looked shiny, clean, and fluffy this morning, I think the damn cats can stay dirty!

Straight to your inbox...Us!

I (thanks, Kate and Aubrey, for the idea) have added a new feature here to your right. Now, you can request to be notified by email when we have written down a random thought or two.

Jacob fell out of bed again last night. First time since Daddy posted about it. This time he woke up and he was sitting on his knees, crying. I love that moment. Not when they're hurt (I'm not sadistic) but when they wrap their little legs around your middle, clamp on with their little monkey toes, hugging you so tight, holding wads of your jammies in their chubby hands while you rub their little backs telling them they're okay and you love 'em. It kind of erases the moment when he turned his bottle of blue Bug Juice upside down and shook it all over my new living room couch.

Did I mention I'm going to start canning? No? I'm going to start canning. Simple stuff. Some dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, relish, and jam for now. I'm a little scared to can other stuff cuz you need a pressure cooker. When I was a kid, pressure cookers could explode and they did and I'm scared of them still. I went and bought my canning kettle, racks, funnel, tongs, seals, and jars last night. Did you know that new jars are 79 cents? Jars from Goodwill are 20 cents? You have to sterilize them anyway before you use them and I can save 50 cents a jar. It doesn't take a genius! Now I just need the stuff to put in 'em. I'm sure you'll hear how this project goes...

In my garage sale, I sold all of my flower arranging stuff, my painting/stencil stuff, and my thread crochet for doilies so, I know Jeremy was wondering what I was going to get into next (I know he was). Hopefully, the canning crap doesn't end up in the yard sale next year. At least I know I could sell my jars for at least 50 cents a piece and still make a profit!

I gotta go - I have another Goodwill to hit before I get home and they close at 6!

Vacation and Jacob's re-evaluation

Last week was vacation for us. As usual, it wasn't much of a vacation but we did accomplish a few tasks:

• Jacob's closet in his new bedroom got a new shelf, hanging bar, hooks and paint.
  
• The storm windows are down and put away and the screens are in.
  
• The new to us TV in the living room has cable.
  
• The garage sale was successful. I sold almost all of my crap and made some good money.
  
• Everything from the garage sale is either back in the basement or returned to it's owner.
  
• We have a sidewalk.
  
• We have dirt in preparation for a lawn.
  
• We went out to breakfast with Grandpa and spent the day playing with cousins.
  
• Jacob got his first sunburn - Ma wasn't thinking of sunburn in April.
  
• Jacob has a sandbox with a cover to prevent Tootsie Rolls from the neighborhood kitties.
  
• Jacob's outside toys are outside.
  
• The screen door to the upper porch has a coat of primer.
  
• The rail on the upper porch has been scrubbed back to white.
  
• The gutter on the upper porch is now void of pine cones.
  
• There isn't a single pine cone in my yard or my neighbor's - we raked 'em all up.
  
• Murray (our dog) found a nice Grandma that wants to love him and keep him - at her house.
  
• A nice man picked up my old landscape timbers and broken trellis. Thanks to freecycle.com
  
• We bought a new baby monitor - with 2 receivers. We finally got smart!
  
• We didn't do anything special to celebrate our anniversary. No flowers, no cards, no dinner, no babysitter. We weren't planning to do anything special, we didn't, and it was okay.
  
• Jeremy, Jacob, and I went to the first Antique Show of the year. We had fried pickles, a spiral potato, pop, popcorn, and cinnamon roasted almonds - I think we spent more in junk food but we had a good time.
  
• Jacob had his re-evaluation this morning. He does qualify for speech therapy services. They will start coming 2X a month to work with him. He's not putting enough words together, he's not speaking as clearly as he should, and he hasn't made enough progress since he got the tubes in his ears - are the reasons why he now qualifies. They come back, I think May 12 and they will do another assessment to find out how delayed he is and then they'll start to help him from that point forward. In the meantime, we will continue to read to him, talk to him, and coach him to name items or to repeat us (watch your mouth momma). At this point, I am thankful that he is a December baby as he can't start preschool until he's 4 or kindergarten until he's 6. Not that he's not intelligent enough but, the cut off is Dec. 1 and it gives us an extra year if he needs it.
  
  All in all, we were busy but, we enjoyed our time off. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Happy Anniversary!

Six years ago today, Jeremy and I stood out on the white sand beach of the Bahamas, with the water lapping at the shore, getting married. Wow! 6 years...

Jacob needs a re-evaluation

I worked from home yesterday morning to get caught up before going on vacation. I didn't know we had an appointment but, as I was working the morning away, I heard Carrie from Early On talking to Jeremy at the back door. She was here for her monthly check-up on Jacob's speech. Apparently Jeremy forgot too as he was in his jammies through the whole meeting.

Carrie and Jacob played a little fishing game. She had a little wooden fishing pole with a magnet and four little fish that had songs written on the back. So every time he 'caught' a fish, they sang a song. Of course, Ma and Da had to sing too. He had so much fun!

We talked with her for awhile. She asked a bunch of questions and decided to bring the speech therapist back to re-evaluate Jacob's speech. He hasn't made enough progress since the tubes. We know he hears, the hearing tests have confirmed it - twice. He just doesn't speak. He adds a few words here and there but, when asked to repeat them, he'll look at you and say "huh?". He's still only using the beginning or end of a word. He also speaks much like a child with a cleft palate. He's very nasally sounding. His submucous cleft may have more of an effect than what we had originally thought. There isn't a surgical procedure to correct it so therapy is the only choice.

Jan (speech therapist) will be back either the 28th or the 30th of this month to do the re-evaluation.

Jacob is very smart. He knows the words, he knows what things are. If you ask him to get his cup, plate, spoon, fork, coat, etc. he'll do it. If you ask him to get his shoes, he'll do it. He knows the words, he just doesn't say them. It's funny, I knew something wasn't right. I knew he wasn't talking enough. I knew he was too quiet. Most of the time you don't even know he's here. I've turned around and almost ran him over, not knowing he was there. He'll come up and play at your feet without so much as a peep! I'm told Albert Einstein didn't say a word until after he was 4 years old! Who knows!?!

Not that I want Jacob to need speech therapy but, I do hope he qualifies for service. We need some help. He's a very stubborn child (Jeremy says he's my son all right) and he's always on his own agenda. I can't force him to talk and I don't know what to do to help him. As a mom, that really just...sucks! Yes, we talk to him all the time, "up the stairs, 1 up, 2 up", "ohh, look at that big red truck!", "here's your glass of milk", "yes, that's a car, a blue car".

I know it's not any one's fault. We caught the issue in the time frame in which it's normally noticed. We went straight to a specialist. We had the tubes put in as soon as we possibly could have. This doesn't mean Jacob is stupid, slow, deaf, or retarded. And no, asshole...he won't need to go to a special damn school! YES! Someone really asked me that!

Anyway - that's where we are. Thanks for letting me unload!