Yeah, that’s what I said. It worked out too, because we never once let the girls sleep with us. Never. You think I’m kidding, I’m sure. Oh what about when they are sick, you’re thinking. Nope. When they are sick, they sleep in their own beds. If they are scared or very, very sick, they sleep on our floor in a sleeping bag. What? I need my space at night. This is what I always said and I went with it. My girls slept in their cribs from night one.
I’ve never judged co-sleepers, I’d just never understood it.
Then Harrison was born. I can’t tell you how it started exactly, because it wasn’t the plan. He does have a very lovely crib in his room. The first night we brought him home, it was kinda cold outside and the wind was coming through the windows, making his room a big chilly. So we brought him to sleep with us. That’s pretty much the best I can come up with. He’s not spent a single night in his crib. Not one single night. He naps in there though. When he naps that is, as he’s not really big on daytime naps. he prefers cat naps. Which in reality is okay, since he sleeps about eleven hours at night. I know, I know. Don’t ask me how I managed to do this, because I didn’t. I’ve not put that out there before, for fear of him suddenly not sleeping so long at night. He’s been doing it since he was about ten weeks old, except for last week when he was sick and Monday night when he woke up twice for no reason. He doesn’t move much, he just sleeps in between us, happy as a clam. Are clams happy? I’ve never understood that statement, but whatever. He just lightly snores and that is actually a really comforting sound. He’s a perfect angel bed buddy.
But we’re thinking it’s time for him to sleep in the crib, before he gets old enough to fight us about it forever. I don’t want a toddler sleeping with me. An infant is one thing, but a moving baby and toddler is another. Also, we’ve made the decision to go to Hawaii alone, as a couple. To you know, get naked and make more babies….or something like that. So, we have to get him to sleep by himself, in a crib, or my mother will shoot me and then I’ll be dead. Which really, I’m not that into. I rather like life.
Tonight is the night. I’m hoping I just put him in his crib and he falls asleep and he stays asleep all night. No idea on the chances of that, but hey, he’s pretty freaking easy so far, so it might just work. If not, I have no ideas on how to stop this trend we started. Because I never had this problem before. Any ideas would be welcome. Wish me luck though, because I think I’m going to need it.
This morning when my phone rang, I knew who it was without looking at it. It was Chris, saying, can you believe it’s been ten years? I knew it was him, before he even considered calling me. Ten years ago, he used to call me every day and ask if it was real. After the first month of that, I had to make him stop. I couldn’t say the words aloud to him and listen to him cry any longer. After that it was every month, at least until it had been a year. Now I get the call on this day, every single year. Chris, out of all of us, took your loss the hardest.
Even though it’s still early today, I’ve talked to them all. Just for a minute, to say hi. To remember you. Later today, I’ll call Thomas and your mom as well, so they know I’m thinking about them too.
Ten years today and some days I still wonder if it’s real. I wonder if we were wrong, if you are still out there somewhere, walking around. Drinking in a bar, having the last laugh. I know it’s true, that you are dead, there is no doubt about it. But some days, I wish more than anything that is wasn’t.
A lots happened in the past ten years. Logan and I are three weeks away from our tenth anniversary. We’ve got two little girls and an infant son. Part of me wanted to name him after you, but I decided to leave that to your brother. James and Kate have been married almost eight years and they have two kids, a girl and a boy. Chris is still with Stephanie and they have two little boys. I don’t remember if you met Steph. Possibly not, but I think Chris met her before you died. I know we’d all heard him talk about her. Emmy is living the crazy life of a New York prosecutor. We are still just as close, closer if that’s possible. We don’t see each other all the time, well except Kate and James and I, because we live so close together. When we are together though, it’s like no time has passed. Somehow you always come up in conversation. It’s our way of keeping your memory alive, to bring you up during important moments.
Your brother is doing great. He’s in the Navy….just like your dad, I know…but he’s so different than your dad. He’s still that kind, sweet, generous kid you knew, he’s just somehow become a great man. He’s been married for only a year, but they just had a little girl last month. Drew Isabelle is her name and she’s just beautiful. She has your moms eyes, just like you did. Thomas is a good man. He’s young, but he’s very mature. He’ll make a great dad and husband. When you died, we all promised to watch out for Tommy and we’ve kept our promise. He promised us he’d make you proud and I swear to you Andrew, he will. He takes care of your mom; she’s lived with him for the last two years since your dad died. The last time I talked to her, she seemed to be doing great, thrilled to have a little granddaughter, that’s for sure.
Emmy was here for a vacation a month or so ago. One night we were all playing some silly drinking question game. Questions like, if there was a fire and everyone was out, but you could save one thing out of your fridge, what would it be? Kate pulled a question about if you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be. She didn’t even need to answer it, we all knew the answer. You. All of us, if given the chance to go back in time, would save you. We just sort of sat there for a minute in thought and then we had a drink for you.
Andrew, the thing is though, none of us know how exactly we’d save you. We don’t know how we could have saved you back then. We didn’t know you needed to be saved. We’ve analyzed it for ten years and we still don’t know what we missed. Nineteen year olds are a bit dense, but I think you hid whatever was going on, pretty freaking well. That made it so much worse for us. Don’t worry though, even though we all went through a phase of being pissed at you, we’ve long since moved passed it. Now when we think about you, we remember the crazy things we did as kids.
I wish you’d told us what we could have done to help. We’d have done it in a heartbeat. Until the day we die, we will all wonder what we could have done to help. Maybe one day, we’ll get the chance to ask you.
Andrew, I still miss you. We all do. I have very few childhood memories that don’t include you. As an adult, I’ve found that people don’t stay close like we all have. Most people don’t even stay friends throughout school, with the people they met as tiny kids. It’s not normal, people tend to not believe that we are as close as we are. We were so blessed to have had you in our lives for the time we did. But every day, we still miss you. Our lives are way less entertaining now. If your nineteen year old self saw us all today, you’d probably tell us we’d gotten dam boring. We are very unlikely to wind up in prison though. So that’s possibly a plus.
I hope where ever you are, that you are at peace.
We will always love and miss you.
Melissa
Just so the rest of you know, Andrew was one of my best friends. We met in first grade. 10 years ago today he killed himself. Left his dorm room one day to go to class (he had even said to Chris, after class, we need to go surfing, as he left) and instead drove home. He shot himself in his old bedroom with his dad’s gun. He left no note and although we knew something was up with him, we never knew what. He’d not confided in any of us. We’ll never know why he did it. What we do know, is it changed the rest of us forever. Any innocence we still had at the time was lost that day.
For Andrew Kevin McConnell.
I’ve thought long and hard about what to say or not say to you, after that lovely comment you left on my last post. Here’s my thoughts:
Hugs and stuff,
Issa
There is a small argument going around my house. It’s also not being helped by my parents or Logan’s parents. As we’re getting nowhere, I thought I’d do what any brilliant person with a blog would do; I’d ask the Internets.
Here’s the deal: In March, 3/3/09 to be exact, Logan and I will have been married for ten years. We were planning a four day getaway weekend to Hawaii in a few weeks. But now because of the memorial thing for my uncle, which will be right around then, we’re going to put it off until April. Which is really okay, because my birthday is in April as well. Now though, we’re thinking of going for a week to ten days. Maybe two weeks, who knows?
The argument is about taking the kids. I want to take them all, make a vacation of it. They’ll be on Spring Break for part of it and I could care less about them missing a bit more school. We didn’t really have a family vacation last year. Logan wants to just take the baby. You should know, if we’d gone like we were supposed to in three weeks, we were most likely going to take Harrison. I mean, dudes only four months. However, by the time we go, around the middle of April, Harrison will be almost six months old. My friends were planning on keeping the girls, when we went next month.
My parents and Logan’s parents have other ideas. They want us to fly as a family to LA, spend a day or two with them and then leave all three kids with them for a week or so. They want their grandchildren too themselves, for optimal spoiling. They think we should leave the baby, that we are baby hogs and need to learn to share.
We go back and forth on this, we have all week. We are no close to making a decision than we were a week ago.
So lovely Internets….and might I say, you are looking absolutely fabulous today….what would you do? Bring them, just bring the baby or leave them all in the capable, yet spoiling hands of four grandparents?
Last night, at say two thirty-four ish am (tentatively) Logan and I found ourselves with three sleeping kids, on the bathroom floor. Croup. Oh it’s such a lovely sound. I knew they all had coughs, I’d been listening to it all day, but I didn’t know how bad it was. At 1am, I found out. Bailey and I spent about 45 minutes on the bathroom floor with the shower on at full blast. Then the baby started the seal cough and Logan brought him in the bathroom with us. After another half hour Morgan woke up, came to find us, saw us all on the floor and went and got her blanket and pillow and came in and laid down in between us. All of this without a word. It was almost like she thought it was a slumber party and she was somehow missing out on it. Withing minutes she was asleep. Bailey was asleep in Logan’s arms and Harrison fitfully sleeping in mine. Everyonce in awhile, they’d all start coughing. It was like being in a TB ward or something.
We sat there watching them sleep, listening to them cough for a while without talking. At some point, Logan asked me when it happened? When did what happen, I asked? When did we become the adults?
You know, I just don’t know. I’m not sure when exactly it happened. When Morgan was a toddler and got sick in the middle of the night, I’d still look around for who this mommy of hers was. Why was she looking at me when she said it. I’m not sure when it happened, but I no longer look for her real mommy anymore. I am a grown-up. Logan and I are grown-ups. We have three children, a dog, a mortgage and car payments. In a month, we will have been married for ten years. We save for retirement and our kids colleges. We pay our bills on time and we get our carpets cleaned every now and again. We drink more coffee than alcohol and we enjoy going to bed at a reasonable hour. At some point, we became adults. We’re just not sure when exactly.
I’ll tell you a little secret though. I don’t mind this life. The life of an adult with a family. In fact, I rather enjoy it.
I thought I’d participate in Not Me Monday, something that My Charming Kids does every week. Mostly because none of these things really warrant a full post. And you know, it’s Monday.
I did not tell my husband that we absolutely had to make Harrison start sleeping in his own bed last week and then let him sleep with us all weekend. Nopes, not me. (We are four months and a week into co-sleeping, something I was never going to do. Now I just am not ready to not sleep all cuddled up with my little dude. I will say though, he’s a perfect sleeper when he sleeps with us. Napping on his own, not so much. I have doomed myself, this I know.)
I didn’t tell the entire world, including the Pizza Guy that I was rooting for Arizona yesterday, just because I thought the Grand Canyon was pretty, too irritate my husband.
I didn’t have to explain to my seven year old child what a tampon is used for. Seriously I was not ready to explain this in great detail. My kid though, she’s very inquisitive.
I did not drink a lot of wine. Nor eat way too much food yesterday.
I did not threaten to beat my Wii Fit into a bloody pulp because it can’t seem to just be happy that I use it once a month. I am okay with being fat, now leave me the hell alone.
I did not forget to buy the book for the InstaBook Club, even though I was in Borders twice this weekend.
I did not throw a big ole fit at my husband, because my dad decided to hold my uncles memorial the weekend of my anniversary. In Yellowstone. On the week we were wanting to go to Hawaii. You know, to celebrate our ten year anniversary. But no, it’s better timing for him to wait another six weeks to honor his brother. Because honoring the dead, is always about what is convenient.
I do feel like a big ole asshat for complaining about the one above. Then again, I cried when I postponed my anniversary trip too.
Want to join in on Not Me Monday? The rules are here:
James: So who are you going for in the Super Bowl?
Logan: Oh shit, tell him honey. hahahahahahaha. You have to hear her reason. This is the best shit I’ve heard all day.
Me: It’s a perfectly good reason. (If looks could kill, I’d be burying Logan right now.)
James: Great. So who?
Me: Arizona.
Logan: Ask her why James.
James: I’m staying out of this one.
Logan: Just ask her.
James: Ok, I’ll play. Iss, why did you choose Arizona?
Me: Because the Grand Canyon is pretty.
They are probably both still laughing. But shit, it’s a great reason in my head.
Grab My Button!
I’m a joiner
