It's hard to believe that 10 years have passed since that beautiful Tuesday morning in 2001 that changed our country. That day and the subsequent anniversaries have had great effect on me despite the fact that I did not lose anyone directly related to me and was not physically near any of the sites. I guess I am like many other young Americans who had not seen anything like this before. Not that anyone had seen anything like this before but older Americans had gone through Vietnam, JFK, Korea, etc. For Americans my age, the Gulf War had seemed so far away and foreign with its glowing green nightvision bombs and names of countries we hadn't learned about yet in fourth grade geography. September 11th was different. It happened live, on TV, in color, right there while we were watching.
I remember coming out of conducting class and hearing parts of conversations in the Music Building lounge about some plane hitting a building in NYC. Katie and I went upstairs to the band hallway and heard the news spilling from computer speakers in the graduate assistants' office.
No one quite knew what to do...should we go watch TV? should we go to class? We went to class. I don't think I will ever forget sitting in the band room for Brantley's Music Ed class and everyone just sitting in stunned silence. He asked if we wanted to talk about it and a fellow student, a New York native, just said, "Why?" I can't remember if anyone actually said anything else or how long we stayed in class before we all left to gather around TVs in lounges across campus.
It seemed like all I did for days was watch the news, the same video clips, the same sad stories over and over again. Suddenly planes flying overhead weren't just unnoticed pieces of scenery, they were reminders of what had happened.
That Thanksgiving the Marching Royal Dukes marched in the Macy's Parade. My group of friends went to Ground Zero. Even though we were standing RIGHT THERE looking at the ruins, it didn't seem real. How in the world could those two great towers fall? How could so many innocent people just die like that? And for what?
Each year around this time I've gotten sucked into watch the specials, the documentaries and all of the coverage. And each year it fills me with the same nausea and sadness.
This year I have made an effort to avoid the coverage and instead focus on the "good" things that came from this tragedy....Americans coming together, showing patriotism for their country and the building of hope for the future.
And in that spirit I have two things to share:
A friend posted this video yesterday. These kids are from a public school in NYC. I have followed them for a while now and thought this video was perfect for this post being that they are from NY and singing about NY.
Each year around this time I make it a point to either read or watch the monologue that Jon Stewart gave on the first Daily Show episode after September 11th.
If you don't want to watch the whole thing, here is the ending, which is my favorite part:
"The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. Now it's gone. They attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that."
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Catching Up...Again
It seems time has flown by again and it's been a while since the last post. It's been an eventful two weeks...
-Hurricane Irene made her way up the coast and poured A LOT of rain on us. Ridgewood had a lot of flooding, including the sports fields across the street from the Seavers' house. Our new house in Midland Park ended up with about three inches of water in the basement. Turns out we weren't alone, our neighbors had water in their basements too. We were very lucky, though, to just have that water in an empty basement....there were so many that were without power for a while, lost a lot of belongings, etc.
-My parents came up for a visit which was great. Henry enjoyed having his Grandad and Ding Dong around to read with and to play with. One of the highlights of their visit was our fun field trip to the Morristown National Historic Park, which showcases the site of George Washington's Headquarters from the Revolutionary War. Our docent was excellent and we learned lots of fun facts. Henry "earned" another Junior Ranger badge for his hat...this time they made us fill out the booklet!
-Henry's Heart....During his 1-year doctor's visit Henry's pediatrician noted that he had a slight heart murmur. She wasn't overly concerned but wanted him to see a pediatric cardiologist to see if it was something we needed to watch or just let go. We took him in and he had an EKG and a ultrasound of his heart. He was a real trooper having to sit still and the staff was great (blowing bubbles, having Nemo on the TV, etc.) The cardiologist didn't see anything wrong anatomically with the heart but was concerned with some extra little blips on the EKG. They sent Henry home hooked up to a Holter Monitor (Click here for a picture to get an idea of what he was hooked up to.) to track his heart beats for 24 hours. He was pretty unaware that he was hooked up to it and didn't try to rip it off or anything, which was nice.
His cardiologist called back on Tuesday around 1 to give us the findings. She wanted to wait until Eddie and I could both talk so I had to wait anxiously for five more hours. It was a long wait because all I could think about was what she was about to tell us. Turns out he has a 2-to-1 beat pattern where the top part of his heart beats twice while the bottom beats just once. This basically means there is a disconnect in the communication between the two parts. This causes his heart rate to be slower than a normal one-year old.
His cardiologist said that he seems to be tolerating everything just fine and we don't need to do anything differently. We just have to watch for him to be dizzy, faint or extremely pale. He will have to go in for appointments for an EKG and the Holter monitor every six months. In the long-term if he starts showing symptoms of it affecting him they would look into a pacemaker.
The doctor didn't seem overly concerned about the condition so I'm working to not think too much about it either. As she said, he's still the wonderful, active little boy we brought in last week. I still have much more to be thankful for than to be worried about so that's a good thing.
-Walking...well, sometimes....Henry took his first real steps on September 1st. Of course I was the only home but managed to catch it on video thanks to my smartphone! He was kind enough to take some more when my parents arrived and since then has only decided that walking is fun a few more times. I guess he figures he's much faster when he crawls.
-General joys of parenthood....Henry continues to be an amazing little boy. He seems to really like making people laugh so tonight's bathtime became the biggest splash-fest I've seen in a long time when Henry saw that it made me laugh. We were both hysterically laughing! It's a good thing the bathtub/shower has sliding doors because it allowed me to just get my right shoulder and arm wet...until he caught me off-guard and got it right in the face. It was a real hoot. He's such fun and I love that his temperment is such that it is. We really got lucky!
That's all for now. I will do a photo/video post this coming week to catch you up with those.
-Hurricane Irene made her way up the coast and poured A LOT of rain on us. Ridgewood had a lot of flooding, including the sports fields across the street from the Seavers' house. Our new house in Midland Park ended up with about three inches of water in the basement. Turns out we weren't alone, our neighbors had water in their basements too. We were very lucky, though, to just have that water in an empty basement....there were so many that were without power for a while, lost a lot of belongings, etc.
-My parents came up for a visit which was great. Henry enjoyed having his Grandad and Ding Dong around to read with and to play with. One of the highlights of their visit was our fun field trip to the Morristown National Historic Park, which showcases the site of George Washington's Headquarters from the Revolutionary War. Our docent was excellent and we learned lots of fun facts. Henry "earned" another Junior Ranger badge for his hat...this time they made us fill out the booklet!
-Henry's Heart....During his 1-year doctor's visit Henry's pediatrician noted that he had a slight heart murmur. She wasn't overly concerned but wanted him to see a pediatric cardiologist to see if it was something we needed to watch or just let go. We took him in and he had an EKG and a ultrasound of his heart. He was a real trooper having to sit still and the staff was great (blowing bubbles, having Nemo on the TV, etc.) The cardiologist didn't see anything wrong anatomically with the heart but was concerned with some extra little blips on the EKG. They sent Henry home hooked up to a Holter Monitor (Click here for a picture to get an idea of what he was hooked up to.) to track his heart beats for 24 hours. He was pretty unaware that he was hooked up to it and didn't try to rip it off or anything, which was nice.
His cardiologist called back on Tuesday around 1 to give us the findings. She wanted to wait until Eddie and I could both talk so I had to wait anxiously for five more hours. It was a long wait because all I could think about was what she was about to tell us. Turns out he has a 2-to-1 beat pattern where the top part of his heart beats twice while the bottom beats just once. This basically means there is a disconnect in the communication between the two parts. This causes his heart rate to be slower than a normal one-year old.
His cardiologist said that he seems to be tolerating everything just fine and we don't need to do anything differently. We just have to watch for him to be dizzy, faint or extremely pale. He will have to go in for appointments for an EKG and the Holter monitor every six months. In the long-term if he starts showing symptoms of it affecting him they would look into a pacemaker.
The doctor didn't seem overly concerned about the condition so I'm working to not think too much about it either. As she said, he's still the wonderful, active little boy we brought in last week. I still have much more to be thankful for than to be worried about so that's a good thing.
-Walking...well, sometimes....Henry took his first real steps on September 1st. Of course I was the only home but managed to catch it on video thanks to my smartphone! He was kind enough to take some more when my parents arrived and since then has only decided that walking is fun a few more times. I guess he figures he's much faster when he crawls.
-General joys of parenthood....Henry continues to be an amazing little boy. He seems to really like making people laugh so tonight's bathtime became the biggest splash-fest I've seen in a long time when Henry saw that it made me laugh. We were both hysterically laughing! It's a good thing the bathtub/shower has sliding doors because it allowed me to just get my right shoulder and arm wet...until he caught me off-guard and got it right in the face. It was a real hoot. He's such fun and I love that his temperment is such that it is. We really got lucky!
That's all for now. I will do a photo/video post this coming week to catch you up with those.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Second First Birthday Party
We got back from the cruise on Saturday morning and used the rest of the day to prepare for Henry's NJ First Birthday Party. It was a dinosaur theme since he is a big fan of the book "Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs". I used the book for inspiration to draw some dinosaurs to hang around the house during the party. Also I had found fun little dinosaur-shaped foam stickers at the Dollar Tree in NC earlier in the summer. I used these to decorate green plastic cups, food labels, etc.
We had a great group of family and friends for the party. It was fun to have everyone together and to enjoy some tasty food. Henry received many great gifts...he is such a lucky little boy!
I made two dinosaur cakes for the party: a small one for him and a larger one for everyone else. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. The big one was made using a pattern and directions from Betty Crocker online and the small one I just eye-balled on my own. Henry, just like his other birthday party, refused to eat his cake so no fun messy cake face photos this year. Maybe next year??
Here are some other photos from the party:
Next update: Mets Game and the hurricane...and then maybe we'll be caught up on the big stuff!
We had a great group of family and friends for the party. It was fun to have everyone together and to enjoy some tasty food. Henry received many great gifts...he is such a lucky little boy!
I made two dinosaur cakes for the party: a small one for him and a larger one for everyone else. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. The big one was made using a pattern and directions from Betty Crocker online and the small one I just eye-balled on my own. Henry, just like his other birthday party, refused to eat his cake so no fun messy cake face photos this year. Maybe next year??
Here are some other photos from the party:
Next update: Mets Game and the hurricane...and then maybe we'll be caught up on the big stuff!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Catching Up
I have been a bad blogger! We have had quite the active August including:
CRUISE!
Eddie, Henry, Grandma Pat Pat, Ellen, Karen, Tio Mike, MomMom, PopPop and I had a fantastic cruise out of NYC up to Canada. It was Henry, MomMom and PopPop's first cruise and I think they enjoyed it. We all enjoyed the good food, the trivia games and our ports of call. Here are some pictures from the trip:
Group Shot in the dining room. Ellen took the picture but her face is in the display screen on my camera. :-)
Our little family on formal night. (Henry looked sooo cute but pretty much refused to smile for pictures!)
In St. John (New Brunswick) I took a photography shore excursion. It was with the same photographer that we had taken a tour with when we were there on our honeymoon five years ago. The tour went to new stops and I got a lot out of the tour. Here are two shots from the tour:
In Halifax Eddie, Ellen and I took a bike tour of the city. It was an awesome shore excursion. Here are Ellen and I on our bikes by the bay:
Carnival has a new "Didja" section of their menu, as in "didja" ever try *insert food item here*. Mike and I (The Outlaws) tried frog legs!
Henry dancing at the Fun Farewell Party:
I got up at 5:15 in hopes of catching some photos of the Statue of Liberty as we were coming back into port but we were already somewhere around midtown so I snapped some nice skyline shots:
Next blog update will contain more on Henry's NJ Dinosaur Birthday party, a Mets Game and other fun things we've been doing!
CRUISE!
Eddie, Henry, Grandma Pat Pat, Ellen, Karen, Tio Mike, MomMom, PopPop and I had a fantastic cruise out of NYC up to Canada. It was Henry, MomMom and PopPop's first cruise and I think they enjoyed it. We all enjoyed the good food, the trivia games and our ports of call. Here are some pictures from the trip:
Group Shot in the dining room. Ellen took the picture but her face is in the display screen on my camera. :-)
Our little family on formal night. (Henry looked sooo cute but pretty much refused to smile for pictures!)
In St. John (New Brunswick) I took a photography shore excursion. It was with the same photographer that we had taken a tour with when we were there on our honeymoon five years ago. The tour went to new stops and I got a lot out of the tour. Here are two shots from the tour:
In Halifax Eddie, Ellen and I took a bike tour of the city. It was an awesome shore excursion. Here are Ellen and I on our bikes by the bay:
Carnival has a new "Didja" section of their menu, as in "didja" ever try *insert food item here*. Mike and I (The Outlaws) tried frog legs!
Henry dancing at the Fun Farewell Party:
I got up at 5:15 in hopes of catching some photos of the Statue of Liberty as we were coming back into port but we were already somewhere around midtown so I snapped some nice skyline shots:
Next blog update will contain more on Henry's NJ Dinosaur Birthday party, a Mets Game and other fun things we've been doing!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Birthday Boy!
I had every intention of updating the blog on Henry's actual birthday but time got away from me so here I am catching up...
Henry's birth day last year was a long day....labor last through the day (again!) and never got to the point where I wanted to give up, mostly thanks to the lovely gentleman that gave me my epidural. I know some women are anti-epidural but it was a great experience. I wasn't pain-free by any means but it made it bearable and I was able to focus on what I had to do instead of how much it all hurt. I can't remember what time the pushing started or exactly how long it lasted but (I think) that I stayed pretty focused and did what I was told by the doctor. Eddie was a great support, fed me ice chips, helped me stay focused, etc. So after some pushing we finally had our little Henry James. He was beautiful and so alert from the beginning. Eddie and I took some family time before we invited my parents and Ellen in to meet him. It was a very special time for everyone.
Over the last year we have gone through so many changes. I remember seeing a list of stressers on marriages and they included new job, moving and children. We've had all three in the last year but I've got to say we're doing great. We've really managed to keep things pretty normal despite all of the changes. I think our keeping Henry on the go and not really changing how we operate has helped him to be a flexible and fairly easy-going kid.
At a year old this is what Henry is like:
-Very curious about everything. He loves to point at things and have us tell him what he is seeing or what is going on. Favorite things to point at: planes, photographs on the wall and ceiling fans.
-He loves monkeys and calls them "ahh-ahhs", which we think comes from the "ahh-ahh" part of "ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh" that we use for our monkey sounds.
-He says Pop-Pop and Pout-Pout (Fish) the same way and it's like a little puff of air saying "pa-pa". Very cute.
-He signs "food", "more" and "all done"....when he feels like it.
-He crawls up stairs quickly and is getting better at coming down then.
-He loves books and many times prefers them over his other toys.
-He likes to dance to music and likes it when I sing to him, especially in the car.
-He really is a very happy baby for the most part. His fussy moods are rarely very severe and rarely last long. He is pretty flexible and deals well with being taken places and having his schedule varied.
-He likes swimming and being in water. We'll be starting up swim classes at the Y again this fall, which will be fun.
-He seems to like to make people laugh and will repeat actions that get a laugh out of people.
-He is just a generally amazing little boy, of course I'm a little biased.
A friend of Eddie's once told me that having a child was hard and better than she thought it would be...and it is so true. It's been an amazing year and while I'm not wishing time away, I am really looking forward to see what kind of kid Henry turns into. I feel very lucky that I can be at home with him during the day to watch him learn and grow each day. (Thanks Eddie for working so hard!)
We had the opportunity to have a photo shoot with the three of us a few weeks ago and we just got the slideshow of some of the images from that shoot. It's a perfect way to wrap up this Year Old post.
Henry's birth day last year was a long day....labor last through the day (again!) and never got to the point where I wanted to give up, mostly thanks to the lovely gentleman that gave me my epidural. I know some women are anti-epidural but it was a great experience. I wasn't pain-free by any means but it made it bearable and I was able to focus on what I had to do instead of how much it all hurt. I can't remember what time the pushing started or exactly how long it lasted but (I think) that I stayed pretty focused and did what I was told by the doctor. Eddie was a great support, fed me ice chips, helped me stay focused, etc. So after some pushing we finally had our little Henry James. He was beautiful and so alert from the beginning. Eddie and I took some family time before we invited my parents and Ellen in to meet him. It was a very special time for everyone.
Over the last year we have gone through so many changes. I remember seeing a list of stressers on marriages and they included new job, moving and children. We've had all three in the last year but I've got to say we're doing great. We've really managed to keep things pretty normal despite all of the changes. I think our keeping Henry on the go and not really changing how we operate has helped him to be a flexible and fairly easy-going kid.
At a year old this is what Henry is like:
-Very curious about everything. He loves to point at things and have us tell him what he is seeing or what is going on. Favorite things to point at: planes, photographs on the wall and ceiling fans.
-He loves monkeys and calls them "ahh-ahhs", which we think comes from the "ahh-ahh" part of "ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh" that we use for our monkey sounds.
-He says Pop-Pop and Pout-Pout (Fish) the same way and it's like a little puff of air saying "pa-pa". Very cute.
-He signs "food", "more" and "all done"....when he feels like it.
-He crawls up stairs quickly and is getting better at coming down then.
-He loves books and many times prefers them over his other toys.
-He likes to dance to music and likes it when I sing to him, especially in the car.
-He really is a very happy baby for the most part. His fussy moods are rarely very severe and rarely last long. He is pretty flexible and deals well with being taken places and having his schedule varied.
-He likes swimming and being in water. We'll be starting up swim classes at the Y again this fall, which will be fun.
-He seems to like to make people laugh and will repeat actions that get a laugh out of people.
-He is just a generally amazing little boy, of course I'm a little biased.
A friend of Eddie's once told me that having a child was hard and better than she thought it would be...and it is so true. It's been an amazing year and while I'm not wishing time away, I am really looking forward to see what kind of kid Henry turns into. I feel very lucky that I can be at home with him during the day to watch him learn and grow each day. (Thanks Eddie for working so hard!)
We had the opportunity to have a photo shoot with the three of us a few weeks ago and we just got the slideshow of some of the images from that shoot. It's a perfect way to wrap up this Year Old post.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Last year...
Last year at this time my water had broken 17 hours ago and we had been hanging out in the hospital for a while...
My Katie spent a good amount of time helping to keep me amused until my contractions got to bad to think things were funny...and then she rubbed my back in rhythm with my breathing pattern...without me asking. She rocked.
We waited and waited and waited...."Leroy" didn't like the Pitocin they had given me so he started to get a rapid heartbeat, which caused some tense moments for us. Once things calmed down for the night Eddie and I used the white board in our room to finally figure out what we were going to name our little boy. We settled in for the night, thinking we'd have our Henry James in the morning...
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
First First Birthday Party
Because we were planning on being down in VA/NC anyway around this time we thought it would be fun to have a First Birthday Party for Henry. Really this was also a time for us to have a lot of our friends and family together for us to see too! We chose Pout-Pout Fish as the theme since it is a book that Henry lovs and is special to him and my parents. We made some character cut-outs to hang around the house and Henry LOVED them. He would go nuts, point to Pout-Pout Fish and whisper "Pow-Pow". It was adorable.
The party itself was fun. Unfortunately it was hot and had rained a little so we couldn't play any fun lawn games but we sat around inside, ate, chatted, etc. We sang Happy Birthday to Henry and gave him his first cake. He didn't know what to do with it but ended up squishing it and barely ate any of it.
I was really glad to have had the opportunity to have our friends and family together to share his "birthday" since we will be in New Jersey on his actual birthday.
Speaking of New Jersey, we drove back up after Henry's party. The drive was uneventful (thankfully!) and we were back and in bed at a semi-reasonable hour. Eddie headed back to work on Monday morning and Henry and I worked on getting back into our routine.
Yesterday was our weekly "picking" adventure. We hit the motherload! Julie, Kevin and I rounded a corner to see the unassembled version of this:
It is a little faded from the sun and could use a little wash but it looks like it is in great shape. (I googled the product and see that it costs around 500 bucks!) I am looking forward to getting it cleaned up and assembled for Henry to play on!
In Home news, Eddie and I have a meeting with a contractor tonight to (hopefully) finalize some rennovation plans for the kitchen, bathrooms and floors. It will be nice to get things going so that we can feel like real progress is being made and can get closer to actually moving in.
The party itself was fun. Unfortunately it was hot and had rained a little so we couldn't play any fun lawn games but we sat around inside, ate, chatted, etc. We sang Happy Birthday to Henry and gave him his first cake. He didn't know what to do with it but ended up squishing it and barely ate any of it.
I was really glad to have had the opportunity to have our friends and family together to share his "birthday" since we will be in New Jersey on his actual birthday.
Speaking of New Jersey, we drove back up after Henry's party. The drive was uneventful (thankfully!) and we were back and in bed at a semi-reasonable hour. Eddie headed back to work on Monday morning and Henry and I worked on getting back into our routine.
Yesterday was our weekly "picking" adventure. We hit the motherload! Julie, Kevin and I rounded a corner to see the unassembled version of this:
It is a little faded from the sun and could use a little wash but it looks like it is in great shape. (I googled the product and see that it costs around 500 bucks!) I am looking forward to getting it cleaned up and assembled for Henry to play on!
In Home news, Eddie and I have a meeting with a contractor tonight to (hopefully) finalize some rennovation plans for the kitchen, bathrooms and floors. It will be nice to get things going so that we can feel like real progress is being made and can get closer to actually moving in.
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