The End of Summer

Summer is nearing an end. Most of Emmelia's friends started kindergarten this week, but she is doing pretty well with the transition. Next Monday her friends from Preschool will get moved up into the pre-K room with her. For now, it's just her and three friends who were in pre-K but aren't going to Kindy this year, so they are getting lots of extra attention from their teacher.

Last night was our last swimming lesson of the year. Emmelia did TERRIFIC! She has really gotten more confident in the water this summer and will put her face under without too much complaining. The teacher said we can advance her to the next swimming level - Eel at the YMCA. This is really good news for me because I was a little worried she and Maura would be in the same swim class next summer. The Pike and Eel classes meet at the same time, so it will still be convenient. It's hard to believe that next summer will be the first summer since 2002 that I won't be in a parent-child swim class - both girls will be in the water while I sit and wait for them. I guess I should learn to knit or something.

Lately I have been so... I don't know, disappointed, I guess by the digiscrap world. It just seems to me that there is more and more of a disparity between those who design and those who don't. The designers, I guess logically, set the standard for what is "in" and what isn't anymore in digiscrapping. And it really seems a little hard to keep up with what is "in" because everyone is trying so darn hard to come up with something NEW that will sell!

I enjoy scrapping for me, but I have to admit I also really like comments and feedback. I would really like it more in the galleries if people would give honest feedback to layouts - say "looks really nice, but might be more balanced if such-and-such element were over on the other side" - something like that. But no one knows each other and are afraid to comment at ALL or when they do, it's just "Great job, thanks for sharing". Which, you know, it's nice to get ANY comment these days, but still.....

And lately I've also been noticing something that always annoyed me about paper scrapping - people making layouts with kits and quotes that have NOTHING to do with the photos they are using. I hate that. But I realize that's a total pet peeve of mine and everyone is free to do scrapping however they'd like. But I do wonder if some of it is because people are on creative teams and are sort of forced to make a certain designer's kits work with whatever photos they have.

I would like to apply for CTs and make layouts that maybe will get noticed or appreciated, but at the same time I'm not sure I really want to buy into the politics of the digiscrap world or find myself in the same boat of having to "force" layouts just to meet the requirements of the creative team. I like having freedom in my creativity. I realize part of my problem is I just like to look at layouts in galleries and get ideas and I don't hang out on a bunch of forums, which is probably where people would get to know me, but I just don't have a lot of extra time for that.

Anyway, after I vented those last few paragraphs on my digiscrap board where my friends seem to understand, I was able to get over the scrapping block I've had the past few days and come up with these two layouts using kits from my friends Christine Nash (Nanny's Kitchen) and Tamara Lee Miller (Fly Away Butterfly). I even branched out a little bit - using blending modes and trying the current "in" thing of making a cluster of charms on a simple layout.

Returning to "normal"

In a massive leap toward our lives returning to normal, the Deac went back to work today! I think it was a bit stressful for him looking at 4 months worth of unfinished tasks and put-off projects. But he'll roll with the punches and be in the swing of things again quickly.

Today I got the paperwork to open enroll Emmelia into the elementary school we'd prefer for Kindergarten next year. Yes, NEXT YEAR and I'm already having to put her on a waiting list for a public school. Crazy! Having had her in the pre-kindergarten room this summer and having a chance to interact with the kids going to kindy this fall on field trips, etc., I'm actually glad she's got another year to wait. Academically she's more than ready, but having another year to emotionally mature won't hurt a bit. I was even surprised to find out that she is physically a little smaller than most of the kids going to kindy this year. Supposedly physical size is directly proportional to success in elementary school.

Yesterday I took Em to a birthday party for 2 of her best friends (neighbors with similar birthdays, so they had a combined party) and realized that this week might be the last week she sees some of her friends. She's staying in the pre-K room at daycare, but most of her summer classmates are off to kindergarten this week at schools all across the area. Some of them will be doing before- and after-school care at the daycare, but some will be doing it at their elementary schools now. These are kids we've gotten to know well over the past 4 years and it's kind of an odd feeling watching them all go their separate ways now. I hope Emmelia isn't too traumatized by seeing them all go, but she's pretty adaptable. And she has some friends in the preschool room that will be moving into pre-K next week. So she'll probably do okay.

A new collage

I am hoping to find a little time to scrap today, but in the meantime I did put together this layout this week:

I had a ton of cute photos from our visit to this awesome park for a playdate earlier this month, and wasn't sure how to showcase them all without overwhelming the page. Jen Caputo to the rescue with one of her amazing sketches! I am really happy with the colors and "white space" in this layout, even though there are 10 photos on it!

That new park we visited is VERY, VERY cool. We'll be taking the girls back there again soon.

Chinks in my Armor

On the way home from work tonight I found myself suddenly very much missing my father and sobbing in the car. It was a strange moment because I realized I've been supressing a lot of grief and emotion in an effort to "be strong" for those around me. At home I have to be strong for the kids - so they don't feel the extra stress we're under; for my husband - so he feels supported and can concentrate his energy on healing; for me to be able to cope with all the extra duties expected of me to ensure our life proceeds apace. At work I have to be strong for our co-workers, because the Deac and I have mutual co-workers now and they need to feel affirmed that their IT guy is going to be back soon to support them. At church I have to be strong for the kids, for the Deac, and for the parishioners who don't really understand why their deacon hasn't served a liturgy since Pascha. There's no chance for me to NOT be strong, really.

At times this summer I've thought that's good - that not having a lot of time to process and dwell on my grief might make it easier to handle. But now I'm not so sure that I'm not just prolonging the inevitable.

And through this whole summer of desperation and difficulty, I've discovered something else about my life which disturbs me. I've realized I have no one in this world on whom I can rely to care about me. Very few people have offered us any tangible help. But, you see, it's not like there's a lot of tangible help to be offered - I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad or feel like they need to suddenly offer help. In fact, it's prideful to think that anyone SHOULD care more about me than their own busy and stressful lives. I'm just saying that it's been eye-opening. In a way it feels like a crisis of faith. Only I still have faith - it's all I have left.

The truth is, I have always had a tendency to want to rely on other people for support and validation of my self-worth. But we're told: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save" (Psalm 146:3). We're also told that experiences such as long-term illness are given to us by God to strengthen our faith and reliance on Him. I suppose that is happening, but not in the way I expected.

I thought I would be drawn more towards a pious experience of my faith - want to pray more, to spend more time at church, or reading the scriptures. Instead, I find I have no energy for that. I have no energy for anything "extra" beyond mere survival at this point. I don't feel any desire to reach out to anyone, including God. And I know that God understands that. I realized tonight that there is absolutely nothing I can do besides fall into God's arms and rest on His strength. It sounds trite to say that, and even I am not sure what it means in any practical sense. But emotionally, spritually, that is very much the sense I have.

Today I participated in about the umpteenth "diversity training" session of my career. It's a part of University life, I'm afraid, to re-learn how we should think about diversity every couple of years. And while I didn't get much out of the training itself that I didn't already know, there were a few stories that brought tears to my eyes. And I think that's what led to my breakdown in the car on the way home - I've been trying so hard to supress the grief and loneliness and sadness that tearing up when I heard others speak of their pain was the chink in my armor. Probably not a bad thing, except I'm still not in a "safe" place to express it - we still are not back to any semblance of "normal life." But harder than that for me has been realizing there is no one to share this with me. It's something I have to shoulder on my own - or, better yet, learn to share with God. When I learn to rely on God and God alone, I will truly have begun my journey to salvation.

I really need some time away - a retreat or something, maybe a week at our favorite women's monastery in California. But that will have to wait for quite a while until we've recovered a bit in a physical and material sense. In the meantime, I'm continuing to tread water.

P.S. Another "chink" in my emotional armor this week has come from thinking and praying about Lynette Hoppe, who is facing her last weeks on earth from metastatic breast cancer. She is an amazing woman. I can only hope to have an ounce of the pounds of faith she has when I near the end of my life. Read the last entry on her blog - and keep her in your prayers.

Anniversaries

Yesterday would've been my father's 65th birthday. A few weeks ago, a party supplies catalog appeared in our mail - probably because I ordered some things from Oriental Express for Emmelia's party last year - and one of their new party "themes" was John Deere. I thought that would've been so appropriate and fun to have a John Deere themed party for my Dad's birthday. Oh well - we likely wouldn't have had a lot of time/energy/money to plan much this year anyhow.

Today is the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos - the day wherein we remember her death and from her example learn how to approach death ourselves. Happy feast! This also means it is the one year anniversary of my blog! That's really hard to believe... that I'm still here, still posting. I averaged a little over 10 posts a month in my first year, but not very many comments. You all need to work on that part. ;-) The other anniversary we celebrated recently was the 6th anniversary of the Deac's ordination on Sunday. He didn't quite feel up to serving on Sunday, but did serve his first liturgy since Pascha for the Dormition liturgy last night. It was good to hear his beautiful tenor voice singing litanies again. And so good to have him on the mend.

Yesterday Emmelia officially started Tae Kwon Do lessons. She LOVED it! This was after showing us what she had learned at her "graduation" ceremony last Saturday - and also broke a board! Though they won't always be in the same class sessions each week, she was joined yesterday by her 3 friends from school. Each girl earned her first belt by memorizing and reciting the "Little Dragon's Pledge" (the Deac said Emmelia did a terrific job reciting, too):
1. I will listen to my parents.
2. I will clean my room every day.
3. I will do my best at Tae Kwon Do.
There are really good messages already sinking in to her about honesty, integrity and what they call "life skills" that are messages she's heard from us umpteen times but really mean something now that her Tae Kwon Do teacher is saying it, too. Heh.

Today I get to be fitted for contact lenses again! My cornea seems to have healed and my vision has returned to normal. So I imagine I'll have the same prescription but with preservative-free solution. Hopefully I won't have to get the expensive contacts you throw away each day, but we'll see. I am *so* excited to have a break from these stupid glasses again! (Edited to say: they just called and moved my appointment to next week. Boo.)

Get this - over 2 months until Emmelia turns FIVE (how did THAT happen??) and we ALREADY HAVE THE PARTY SCHEDULED. Remember all my angst last year about finding a place to have her 4th birthday party? Well, NONE of that this year. She knows where she wants it and what she wants on her cake and I've reserved the time. EXCELLENT!!

Oh, I just finished a page with a new kit by my friend Christine Nash (called "Razzle Dazzle"). I had these photos of Emmelia from June that really show her personality, but weren't very good photos - kind of out-of-focus or too close-up. This was kind of a fun way to show them off in a fairly simple layout.

World Events

Back on September 11, 2001, I was 7 months pregnant with my first child. As I watched the events of the day unfold, I felt a growing feeling of fear, anxiety and sadness at the state of the world I was bringing my child into. The next day I was hospitalized with premature contractions due to the stress. Luckily, Emmelia stayed put until the week before her due date.

But today we received word that a predominantly Christian village in Lebanon, Deir Mimas (which I'm told literally means "Monastery of Mamas") has been destroyed by Israeli bombing. 350 Orthodox Christian families (and families are BIG in Lebanon) are displaced from their homes. These are people NOT INVOLVED in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The nearby monastery of Hamatoura was also destroyed. The monk working to repopulate the monastery was thankfully not there at the time.

One of Emmelia's best friends from church is in Lebanon now with her mother. They go every summer to visit family and I've been so worried about them through this whole thing. They are in north Lebanon, so somewhat safer, but the options for returning to the U.S. early next month, as planned, are severely limited by the destruction of the Beirut airport and all roads and bridges to Syria.

{{Sigh}}

Another week has reached its end

It's been a good week, even though I've been in severe pain for most of it. My uterine pain seems to be recurring - I see the RE again at the end of this month and am not really looking forward to having to make a decision about a possible hysterectomy. But we shall see.

I managed to get a ton done at work and also have some time for scrapping. No housework got done, so I suppose there is balance. {{hee}} As you can see, I'm still trying to catch up on some of my old photos.





Tomorrow the daughter of some old friends is getting married in my hometown. The bride was actually one of the flower girls at our wedding. I am a little bummed we can't be there, but the long car journey is just impossible for the Deac right now, uncomfortable for me and the girls, and gas and hotels are not cheap. Plus we had no one to take care of the dog. So, we stay home. Turns out the bride and groom live in the Denver metro area, though, so we'll hopefully get together with them soon and buy them a nice dinner. And we'll have to plan a visit to Grammy when everyone is feeling better!

Since we're staying here tomorrow, we decided to go to Emmelia's "graduation" at the Tae Kwan Do place. She gets to show us what she's learned, break a piece of wood, get a free uniform, and sign up for a month of free lessons. The deac wants to just sign her up now, instead of waiting until soccer is over. I guess we can see how it goes. I'm going to try to get some good photos tomorrow because I'm obviously back in the scrapping mood!

An Expensive Summer

New water heater installed to replace broken one: $870
New crown on back molar due to enamel chipping and crack: $800
Co-pays for four CT scans to track the pneumonia: $400
Radiation dose the Deac received with each CT scan: 800 millirem

Feeling we had when the last CT showed the pneumonia is finally resolving: PRICELESS!

Made me feel up to scrapping again, actually. Here's a couple layouts of playground visits this summer. The one with just Maura was made with a freebie kit from 2peas and the green one was made using my friend Amy Huffman's (Doodleboogs) Wilbur kit.

We had a lovely weekend - the new playground/park was a ton of fun and Emmelia got a bowling score of 67 at the birthday party!

Yesterday we found out that Maura does have asthma, something I suspected but was hoping wouldn't be true. Luckily she is in a "lull" right now and doesn't need any treatment, but we have to watch her carefully once cold/flu season hits and get the nebulizer going as soon as she has any lung involvement. The doc is quite sure she'll outgrow this. After her appointment, the Deac, Maura and I had lunch at a different Pete's restaurant in Denver than the one we usually go to - Pete's Kitchen. I had a veggie pita sandwich and it was really yummy!

Later yesterday both girls went along with us to vote in the primary election. It was kind of boring since no one was running unopposed, but it gave me a chance to try out the new electronic voting machine. It was pretty easy - a lot like operating an iPod.

Emmelia's class has been doing a segment on physical fitness and has gone on a couple field trips to a local Tae Kwon Do place. She LOVES it! I told her that we'd think about signing her up after soccer ends. I don't want to over-schedule her. The nice thing is there seems a positive message sent and an emphasis on building self-confidence. And the first month of lessons are free, so if she doesn't like it we're not out much.

Friday

Do you like my creative post titles this week? :-)

Boy, I JUST have NOT been in a scrapping mood this week. It's odd. I am tired and finding it difficult to stay focused due to the tiredness, but have still been accomplishing a lot at work, so that's good.

The mother of one of Emmelia's classmates is making a quilt for their teacher this year. She sent home blocks of white fabric with a clear 4x6" pocket sewn on. We are to decorate the square and put in a photo. Actually, we were supposed to do this a while ago - I just found the envelope again last weekend. She sent 2 blocks so that she'll hopefully get enough returned to make a quilt for the daycare director, too. I think it's a fun idea, I just wish I had remembered to look at it when I was in a more "scrappy" mood. But here's what I came up with:

For her teacher (that's her with Em in the photo): And for the Director:
I think they will like them. Most everything is from my friend Christine Nash's new "A Bit of Funky Fun" kit. Except the frame and tag (which I re-colored) in the first one - those were freebies from ScrapGirls. The first one actually started out following a sketch from my friend Ginger's blog, but it actually turned out to not follow the sketch very closely at all - that freedom to be creative is part of the fun of scrapping!

Tomorrow we have a busy, busy day planned. The girls and I are meeting some e-friends from my due date board at a new local park. Then we'll probably grab a quick lunch together before I deposit Maura at home with the Deac and take Emmelia to a birthday party for one of her classmates at the local BOWLING ALLEY! Then we'll head down to church for a memorial service for the Deac's mom (Anne reposed 10 years ago today - may her memory be eternal!) before Vespers. Then after a short playground stop (assuming it's not raining like the dickens), we're planning to eat out at a new Italian restaurant we found (& which quickly became our favorite) with our good friend Michael. Whew! It should go by in a whirlwind, but I'm looking forward to every part of our plan. If we can get some good sleep tonight, it should go even better. I need to remember to give Maura some Motrin for those molars before bedtime.

Speaking of teeth, I had a dental hygiene appointment today that went really well - the hygienist was ecstatic about my flossing and the good shape my teeth and gums are in now! That was cool. The bad news is that I need a crown on one of my molars. That will cost as much as it cost us to have the new water heater installed this week - and the Deac and I are seriously wondering what God is up to... why all these high expenses at a time when finances are low and unreliable? Sigh. I suppose this is life as an adult. And at least I have insurance, even though it only covers 50% of the darn thing. But - it could be worse! Let's hope it gets better! Especially in time for the CT scan on Monday.

Yep, there's just no reason NOT to do it

This just in from Reuters...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14154841/

Breastfeeding reduces anxiety into childhood

Kids cope better with stress than their bottle-fed peers, study shows

Updated: 6:16 p.m. MT Aug 2, 2006

LONDON - Breastfeeding's calming effects seem to be long-lasting.

Years after being weaned, breastfed children cope better with stressful situations like their parents' divorce than their bottle-fed peers, researchers said on Thursday.

"In children who are breast-fed, there is less of an association between parental divorce and separation and childhood anxiety," Dr Scott Montgomery, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an interview.

---

---

Breast milk is full of nutrients, hormones, enzymes, growth factors and antibodies that are passed from mother to child.

Research has shown breast-feeding reduces infections, respiratory illness and diarrhea in the child and cuts the risk of post-birth bleeding in the mother.

In an observation study published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Montgomery and his team studied how breast- and bottle-fed 10-year-olds coped with the stress of their parents' marital problems.

The children were among 9,000 youngsters who had been monitored from birth for a major British study. Their teachers were asked to rate their anxiety level on a scale of 0 to 50.

There was a higher level of stress in all the children but the breastfed youngsters coped better.

"The anxiety was much less obvious in children who were breastfed," Montgomery said.

The researchers do not know why breastfed babies were less anxious. They suggested breastfeeding could be an indicator of other parental factors or the physical contact between the mother and the child may have helped to reduce anxiety.

Breastfeeding could also influence the development of pathways in the body linked with its response to stress.

"The more we look at breastfeeding, the more benefits we see. As this is something that is, in evolutionary terms, normal it is likely to be important in normal human development," Montgomery said.

(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.