Adelaide: (in a bathing suit with her hands behind her back) Look, Ariel has been caught! They’re going to put her in a tank with dolphins! It’s a good thing I like dolphins.
August: (with hands behind his back) Wook! I caught!
Mommy: Oh no, August has been caught, too…
Adelaide: No, he’s just pretending!
Mommy: Well aren’t you pretending, too?
Adelaide: I’m pretending I’m caught for real, actually.
Last week, my Grandma Pearl passed away.
I guess it’s been more than a week now.
August 2012
She was loving and kind and always knew how to spoil her grandkids and great-grandchildren. The Christmas tree was always full, thanks to grandma’s generosity.
She kept busy, working years past retirement (even though she didn’t really need to), visiting family in and out of state, always in the middle of crocheting an afghan for one of us.
August with his blankie crocheted by Great Grandma
My dad loved when she would come over and make pot roast with potatoes and carrots and gravy.
I heard someone say that Grandma Pearl was always on your side, and that’s the truth. I don’t remember her saying a disparaging word about anyone, except maybe a politician once in a while.
I will miss her.
Her last gift to us was a flight for our family to Minnesota for her funeral. And so we booked our tickets and made our way to the airport early on a Thursday morning.
We parked our car at Kyle’s work and took the Gold Line to Union Station and the Flyaway bus to LAX.
Augie enjoyed staring out the window on the bus.
And on the plane.
Adelaide was excited to ride a train, bus, and airplane for the first time (that she can remember).
She’s excited.
This is how Augie drank his apple juice on the plane with the tiny cocktail straw they gave him.
Later he fell asleep coloring.
I took a picture of the clouds. “So artsy of you,” Kyle says.
We met up with family at the Mall of America for dinner. (The mall is right by the airport.)
Aaron and Evie made room for us at their house. Adelaide and 2-year-old Audrey got along well. Audrey and Augie were not as friendly with each other, but they still enjoyed chasing and hitting each other.
Friday night was the wake, and the funeral was on Saturday at noon.
Here’s Adelaide on the morning of the funeral. She learned a lot about death on this trip. At the graveside she cried, “I don’t want to go to heaven! I want to stay on earth!” Heart = broken.
My aunt Laurie asked Kyle and me to sing a couple of songs and lead the congregation in hymns for the funeral. We sang a medley of “I Will Praise Him Still” and “Give Me Jesus,” and a Steven Curtis Chapman song, “My Redeemer is Faithful and True.” And we led the congregation in “Old Rugged Cross,” “In the Garden,” “Because He Lives,” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
I don’t think anyone was in the mood for “I’ll Fly Away,” but I still enjoyed it.
That night, we found ourselves locked out of the house. Kyle and Aaron worked on the door for a good 30 minutes until Kyle finally had success using a credit card on the latch.
On Sunday, we went to my dad’s church, and Adelaide finally got to play in the snow.
Adelaide was so excited about the snow. She kept asking, “When can I play in the snow? I can’t wait!”
After playing for about five minutes, she decided she didn’t like the snow. “When will the snow melt? I want to play in the grass. The snow makes my fingers hurt.” We explained that you really need boots and gloves and snow pants to enjoy playing in the snow.
On the last day, we went back to the mall for dinner on our way to the airport.
Megan looking like a mannequin, and no one wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day.
Adelaide got to ride on the big swings, but her ride got cut short when some older kids started goofing off.
You can’t tell, but he’s watching Adelaide on the swings.
I spotted a St. Baldrick’s shavee and snapped a pic to take back to work.
The kids did well on the plane.
We got home and took a taxi back to Pasadena because I booked the tickets too late in the day to take the train back. Oops.
It was a quick trip, but I’m glad we got to go.
Thanks, Grandma.
In closing, here’s a photo of Kyle pretending he has ham lips.
There should be a word for days like today. Days that you find to be suddenly free that weren’t supposed to be. Maybe there is a word for that, made up by some TV writer, or maybe it’s just called playing hooky.
Whatever it’s called, today was a day like that. My grandma died yesterday, my mom’s mom. And then Augie had a fever and a miserable night, where he moved around every 30 seconds until dawn, when he finally slept. And he could not be separated from my body the whole time, which means I also had a miserable night.
“I think I’m not going in to work today,” I told Kyle around 8.
“That’s why you have sick days,” he said.
So I called in. Or emailed in, actually. And I went back to sleep.
The kids woke up and went outside to play. I got up and gave them each a slightly green banana and shared some banana bread with them.
We watched the birds pick at seeds from our new bird feeder.
Kyle got up, and we decided to have lunch at The Habit. We split a chicken salad, which tasted nothing like a cheeseburger.
We came back home and gave the kids showers.
Adelaide and August played outside while Kyle and I spent some much needed alone time together.
Kyle went to work, and I took the kids to the library just before it closed. I got some easy readers for Adelaide, and we went to the park.
Adelaide made friends with two little girls, and they ran around together. August mostly wanted to stay on the swings, but he went down the slide a few times, too.
I looked up at the mackerel sky and admired the way the setting sun cast its orange light on the underside of the date palms.
It was time to go home, but I decided we should walk down to the street fair instead.
There was an old Mexican man playing a harp, and Adelaide stopped to dance and got some applause from strangers.
Adelaide wore her long Rapunzel braid, but she was pretending to be Elsa from Frozen. I warned her that people might think she’s Rapunzel, which made her exclaim every two minutes to no one in particular, “I love pretending to be Elsa!” Finally I said, you know, not everyone knows who Elsa is if they haven’t seen the movie. Which made her change her exclamation to, “I love the movie Frozen!”
Someone said, “Look, it’s Rapunzel!” To which she replied, “Actually, I’m being Elsa from Frozen,” but they weren’t listening. “It’s OK, I know who you really are,” I said.
Then we bought a $3 bag of kettle corn and shared it on our walk back to the car. The harpist was gone when we walked by the spot where he was playing. Instead, the bubble man from the park was there, and he made bubbles for the kids to chase and pop.
We walked up to the big fountain by the library, and Augie tempted fate a few times as he walked around its perimeter.
Then the kids ran through the rosemary bushes and pretended they were lost in the forest until I spoiled their fun and made them get in the car.
We stopped for gas and went home. I made the kids a snack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and warm milk. And now we wait for Daddy to get home from work.
…that I’ll probably forget if I don’t write them down:
1. He still falls down and bruises his forehead regularly. I hope this does not cause permanent damage.
2. His clumsiness is partially because he loves to wear his sister’s shoes. And he does not like to have his shoes off, even when he goes to sleep at night.
3. He does not like to have his diaper changed or take showers. He doesn’t like being naked.
4. He’s getting better at talking. Some cute mispronunciations include “bo-bot” (robot) and “dookie” (cookie).
5. His favorite foods are any kind of soup, condiment, or beverage.