Sadness- A tough lesson in life

Heartache by PolarBear

We are all very upset today. Our wonderful budgie friend, Sunbeam, died. He was the tamest I have ever been able to get a budgie. We actually got him as a family Solstice gift in 2004. Now, barely over 3 years old, he is gone.

For the last year he and his partner Raindrop have been my constant companions in our bedroom. I had stopped closing their cage door unless we had to have the house doors open. Sunbeam would sometimes wake me when I was napping or even in the morning by hopping out of his cage and landing on my head and lightly pulling on my hair. I was never able to teach him to talk, but he was an astonishing mimic, often playing games with us by imitating the sounds of the phone or the microwave and seeming to chuckle when someone came running to find out what was happening.

Looking back on the last few days, I think he was trying to tell us he was not feeling well even though he showed no serious signs until just yesterday. He had been extra affectionate a couple of days last week, and would not leave my shoulder. One morning he kept coming out of his cage and sitting on my leg while I was sleeping. I was worried I would roll over on him so after putting him back 3 or 4 times I closed his cage door until I was ready to get up for the day. It seems like he was trying to tell me something was wrong.

We tried so hard to save him. There is no vet that we could take him to anywhere here, and we wouldn’t have had the money anyway, so I had kept him warm and hand fed him mashed-up seeds and tried to get him to drink juice and water. At first he would take a little and seemed to be getting stronger, but finally he just refused.

I sat beside him all day long, watching him in his cage. Finally he got too weak to hold on to the perch and I caught him before he fell. I held him close for another hour until he finally breathed his last in my hand. When he died, we all cried, but me and the girl cried the most. The boy didn’t entirely understand and thought we could put new batteries in him.

Up at the top is a picture I made of him when he was a few months old. I took a photo and processed it digitally to look like a painting.

We’re really going to miss him.

Things I Never Thought I'd say

Ever notice how being a parent makes you say things you NEVER thought you would say? Today, we had one of those moments. There is not a lot of explanation required except to say that our two year old took off his diaper and was running around the house. And i heard myself say:

“Don’t be putting a clothespin on your penis.”

There are so many other things like this that happen. So many of these are so embarrassing that you almost hate to talk about it but… these are things I never thought I'd have to day

• “Why did you put the air freshener up your nose and get it stuck?”
• (At 2am) - “You had your time to play with Mommy. Now Daddy wants to play with Mommy. GO TO BED!”
• “Get that toy away from your crotch. Your vagina is NOT a parking garage.”

I can’t think of any more right now, but I am sure this is a post open to future revisions!

Fun Stuff

By PolarBear

We’ve been doing a lot of work making a garden, including one for the kids. Using the “Square Foot Garden” technique there is a 3×3 foot section of garden especially for them, growing cherry tomatoes, little cucumbers and all sorts of stuff.

It has been a lot of work but is educational for everyone… this is an all new technique, but it has been very exhausting since I can only put in an hour or two a day so it has taken what seems like forever.

Now, because we’ve been working on the garden something else got neglected - the front porch. It didn’t get any attention so some stuff just sat there, including a box with some pieces of rag and the silly girl’s purse.

Tonight, MamaRil finally started tidying it up since the garden is almost “done” (it will never be “done”, but almost all set up). When she picked up the box with the purse she heard noises inside… and buzzing. She got a little nervous, worried it was wasps and dumped it out on the front lawn.

It wasn’t wasps - it was a nest of bumble bees! Just a tiny little nest with a little queen and a whole bunch of the tiniest bumble bees you could ever see. Well, all I knew about bumble bees is that they don’t make honey and they pollinate EVERYTHING. So I checked things out online (the internet is great!) and we all learned a lot.

Tomorrow, we are building a new home for our bumble bees (hopefully they will stay around). We’ll put it in the back yard near the garden and hopefully they’ll help pollinate all our plants. Cross your fingers that the bees stay!

Today Our Baby Boy Is A Kid

Posted by PolarBear

We’ve gone through some huge changes in the day. Or specifically, last night.

The boy has learned some new skills. He is developing a huge vocabulary and is able to say many words clearly. So, his ability to communicate has increased by leaps and bounds. That’s not the big thing that came to a head last night, though.

In the last 10 days he has shown huge growth in 2 areas:

1. He has figured out how to open doors. It wasn’t consistent at first, but now he is able to open any door he wants to any time he wants to.
2. He figured out how to get out of his crib.

This came to a peak last night. When he decided he didn’t want to go to bed, he figured out that he could just get up, get out of his crib, open his door and leave his room.

It is a huge milestone, because since he can now:

• talk
• get anywhere he wants in the house
• control whether he stays in bed

He is officially a kid, no longer a baby. You can’t put him anyplace and expect him to stay there any more. He has always been an escape artist when it came to high chairs, booster seats, strollers and so on, but now the last place he could be put is ineffective. No more making him take a nap. The only place we can keep him in place is in his car seat in the car. I sure hope that he doesn’t start unbuckling himself anytime soon.

We need to take his crib apart and set up his toddler bed, and we are going to be on the lookout for bunk-beds for his room. Last night, the only way to keep him in a space was to let him go where he wanted to go: to sleep with his big sister in her room. Although they stayed up pretty late, he didn’t come out any more. Mama thinks he’ll be sleeping there tonight, too.

We’ll see.

I for one am sad that we don’t have any more babies. They grow up so fast.

OUCH

Written by Polarbear-My hubby

Oh what an awful evening.

The girl decided that, in spite of catching crap for it every time, she could jump up and down and dance on the couch. We were upstairs and heard a crash, and rushed downstairs to find she had bounced herself right off the end and through the top of the glass end table.

Mama grabbed her foot, which was bleeding, while I went hunting for a towel. I had Anjohli get down on the couch, which she was already bleeding all over, and had Mama raise her foot above her heart and keep pressure on it. After a few minutes of pressure, I took a look at things and decided she was probably going to need patching up. I told Butterfly we would have to go get stitches or maybe just steri-strips put on it at the hospital so they could make sure there was no glass left inside. She burst into tears and said she was scared of stitches and she didn’t need the hospital. I told her, they might even just glue it or something but I wasn’t sure, but I was absolutely sure she had to go to the hospital.

We got the bleeding virtually stopped and while Mama prepared the vehicle and got the boy into his seat, I consoled the girl. I then asked her if she wanted a picture of her toe so later she could show people what happened, and she thought that would be cool. I took a picture of the cut on her big toe for her… and here it is.

She didn’t want to go to the hospital but I scooped her up in my arms and carried her out. 6-year-olds are heavy, I’ll tell you… I cradled her in my arms all the way to the hospital, and by the time we got inside to the triage nurse, she was actually quite calm. Of course, we had to get in the car and drive through a blizzard and all she had on was a dress (and her coat) , with no shoe and no way to put anything on her, so she was a little chilly. She lay down across a chair with her toe up, and after 10 minutes they brought us around to treat her “Level 4 laceration”.

As usual we ended up waiting in the treatment room for about 40 minutes before anyone looked. A really nice resident finally came in and gently checked over her toe, cleaned out a few remaining bits of glass, irrigated the cut to be sure and asked the girl if she was tough enough for some stitches. He then said, maybe we can get away without stitches and asked Butterfly if she would like them to glue it instead. He asked his attending to look at her toe and he agreed it was a wound that was suitable to glue. So, the opened up the Medical Krazy Glue and stuck her toe together, put on some steri-strips to strengthen it, and put on a really nice dressing.

We finally got home around 9:40pm after picking up some frozen pizzas, since the whole evening had been more or less absorbed. The doctor had told her to stay off her toe, but as usual with kids, as soon as we were home and safe she had to start walking around all over the place. She is supposed to keep the dressing on and stay off it for 48 hours. We may have to tie her down tomorrow.

Anyway, we are very glad it wasn’t worse… it could have been really serious if she had landed differently, so we were all lucky. Good thing the only permanent damage is the end table, which has 3 levels and the top one is now in a million bits in the garbage.

She took some kids’ acetaminophen and has finally gone to sleep. With everything going on the stress level is really high here right now, so it is a relief to be getting to bed.