Me and My Dad

Written August 5th, 2009-

While I was in Florida, before the funeral and service in Mississippi, I was going through my mom and dad's office looking for our old journals that my mom kept for us when we were babies and then let us write in as we got older. I really wish I had been able to find them because Haley would have loved reading everything I wrote when I was her age. I think that start in journaling is what has made it easy to have been writing for almost 10 years. Anyway, I came across my dad's journals. I was just flipping through them, not really reading much on each page because even though he's dead, and he kept those journals understanding that after he died they would probably be read, it still felt like a sort of violation of privacy to read them so soon after he passed.

I got to the end of his latest journal, which I think was dated 2008 because I think he lost the ability to write pretty soon after their visit at Christmas. One of the last entries had a list of his fears. One of them was that he feared that he wouldn't leave enough money after his death to support my mom, and one of his fears, the first one, was that he feared to pray. I wish I could have asked him what he meant, because that really resonated with me. My parents are/were both really religious, very devout Mormons and my dad took religion very seriously. It really affected me that he felt scared to pray, because part of my detatchment to religion, of any kind, is that I deep down believe that I've done too many bad things in my life, that I don't deserve a relationship with God because I'm so bitter and so unwilling to forgive for everything that I've been through as a child and teenager. There it was, staring me in the face, one more way in which my dad and me were alike, the fear to pray. Below the list of his fears was his prayer list, and second on the list was my brother Cameron, and third on the list was my name. It broke something inside of me that my dad thought about me and prayed for me, even though our relationship wasn't much of a father-daughter one. I cried and cried, both that he prayed for my dead brother, who he never knew, and for me, which I think he barely knew. And that he put us so high on his list of people and things to pray for.

I struggled, the entire time I was in Florida and Mississippi, to reconcile my feelings about my dad and our relationship and my too-late wishes that I had known him better and made him more of my life. I'm glad I had the chance to tell him so many times that I loved him when I could, that he came at Christmas and shared that time with my family, and that my entire family, Tim's and mine, could be together. That his last Christmas was a happy one, that he got to see snow on our way to the airport when they left. I am glad that he met my babies and got to spend time with Haley this summer, that he got to meet Savino. I hope that he knew that I loved him, in the only ways I knew how. I hope he knew that I didn't, in the end, hold it against him that he couldn't be the dad that the little girl in me desperately wished he could be. It wasn't his fault. And it wasn't my fault. I couldn't help but cry and cry that he was gone, even while I was worrying that my brothers and my sister and my mom would judge me harshly and tell me that I wasn't allowed to be sad when I chose to have such a superficial relationship with him over the years. I wasn't just mourning my dad, but the relationship that we didn't get to have and that he would never get to have with my kids, his grandkids.

Seeing him the night before he passed away, and seeing the way he looked and how thin, how frail, how not there he seemed to be, was hard. I held his hand and rubbed his arm, and I choose to believe that he knew I was there. When I leaned over and said, "Dad, I'm here, I love you" he moved his hand toward me and his eyes flickered towards me. He was sleeping with his eyes half open, so it was hard to tell whether he was really awake or not, but I think that he was. He knew my mom was back with him again, and I want to believe that he knew I was there. I am still grateful that I decided to spend the night there with them, that my mom wasn't alone with strangers when she realized he had passed away. I am even grateful that we spent two hours just sitting in the room with him after they pronounced him dead. It was easier to let go, having that time to just sit there and cry every now and then and watch my mom stroking his hand. She turned to me at one point and said, "His fingers are still warm." Looking at him, laying there in the bed, dead, it was easy to see that he was gone, that it was just a shell, he wasn't there anymore. I was glad, because later on when we had the funeral and the casket was closed, I didn't have to confront an image of him dressed in a suit, unrecognizable. I prefer the image of him in the bed, laying on his side the way he was when my mom was curled up behind him in the bed. He didn't die alone, we were there with him. And we didn't have to share him, one last time, with everyone else who cared about him, that last sight of him was ours, my mom's and mine and my brother's.

One of the people who spoke at my dad's funeral was someone that my dad had been friends with for years. He called himself my dad's "adopted father" and "adult friend". I don't like him, but my dad did and he wanted him to speak at his funeral. He said a lot of things that I thought were unnecessary, about my dad's first love who drowned after a boating accident, and he also said some things that I was grateful and infuriated by, in turn. He got to one point in his eulogy when he started talking about how much my dad loved us, his children, and he said particularly me and I just broke down even harder, though I had been crying almost from the moment we got to the church. I lost it. He went on to say that he loved me despite my adolescent outbursts, and some other things that made my mom kinda mad. Later she told me that she didn't like what he said and was close to speaking out and telling him to stop. She said my dad wouldn't have wanted me to be upset or feel criticized at a time like that. I don't really care, because I knew that my rebelliousness made my dad upset and sad, even though it didn't change anything. I wasn't hearing anything new. It meant so much more to me to hear that my dad *loved* me, even if it came from the mouth of someone I will never speak to again. I cried and cried, grateful for that scrap of something, and devastated for that loss.

When I was a freshman in high school, I used to wear my dad's shoes to school in these odd outfits. My dad's feet were much bigger than mine, and his shoes were, to put it kindly, ugly. They were orthopedic type shoes that he chose for functionality and comfort. I took his old worn pairs of them and wore them even though I know people used to talk about me and make fun of me for wearing these huge ugly shoes. It was my silent way of trying to claim something of my dad, to have some sort of peice of him that didn't judge me or make me feel less than. I was trying to find some way of connecting with him, when it was so hard for us to find a level that we connected on. I wanted him to be this wonderful dad who did things with you and made you feel protected always, and I wanted him to be this fantasy dad who said all the right things and did all the right things. In reality, my dad had a hard time being my dad. I was 12 or 13 when he married my mom and I had been taking care of my mom and my brothers and sister and it was hard for me to let that go. I was rebellious and I pushed all the limits and I gave my mom and dad a really hard time, partly because that's what teenagers do, and partly because I had so much trauma that I was trying to deny and not deal with and it just came out of me in all sorts of acting out. I got a job and moved out of the house when I was 17 and so we really only had about 5 years together and all of them were rocky. I would like to think that I helped my dad be a better dad because he got thrown into the deep end with me and maybe knew better how to handle my brothers and my sister as they got older and became teenagers.

My dad was an amazing man. I can see that now, with the hindsight of being older and having my own kids and an incredible husband who is also an incredible dad. My dad was born with birth defects that made the doctors say he wouldn't live to be 10 days old, 10 weeks old, 10 years old, and on and on. He did some amazing things with his life, and I think he always appreciated living in the moment because he was constantly being told that his moments were almost up. He walked on fire three times. He climbed a telephone pole, which is no small feat for anyone, but even more impressive when you realize that my dad had a very curved spine and a weak heart. He traveled to see solar eclipses, he had a curiosity about the stars and the universe, he had three degrees. So many people had so many stories about my dad, and how he was so generous in helping others, and how his faith sustained others in times of need.

My dad loved my mom so much. She deserved to have someone who doted on her, and he did. No one ever thought my dad would get married, or have kids, and it's true that he couldn't have kids of his own flesh, but I think that he loved us just as much as he would have loved his own. I think that he knew that this was his chance to have kids, and he got four of us in one fell swoop. I hope that we all made him proud, and that having us as children made his life richer. My dad had high expectations of us, which was hard when you disappointed them, but reassuring in a way, because I really think he truly believed that we had the ability, the potential, to live up to them. I really hope that I made my dad proud with the choices I made in my life, my family, my husband, the peace that I found in myself. I know that my dad was so proud of my brothers and my sister. I know that they made him so proud, that he was always proud to introduce us as his children.

What life holds for my mom from here on out, I'm not sure, but my dad made sure that she would have at least some security and freedom and not have to worry about working into her retirement. He loved her so much, and wanted her to be secure. That's the sort of person my dad was, he always thought about others even when there was so much he had to worry about himself. He never wallowed in the "why me" of life, he just put himself into the geneology of his family, and making plans. He even wrote out a list of what he wanted to happen at his funeral, who to contact, etc. so after he passed away, we knew what his wishes were and weren't left wondering. He had already left a letter with the bishop of his church to be opened after he passed. He had his final resting place picked out and a headstone already purchased and placed for him and my mom. He made it easy on us, so that in a time of such profound grief and sadness, it didn't have to be any harder. He was really a remarkable human being. Even in death, he thought about others, he donated his heart and lungs for study because he was the oldest living person with his set of defects, and the doctors never knew why he survived as long as he did. He outlived people who were far healthier, for far longer. He passed away on his 62nd birthday. He was remarkable to the very end.

I will miss my dad for a long time. I'm glad I finished having my babies before he died so even though Savino is too young to really remember him, at least I can say that he met him. I don't talk about religion much because it is so touchy to me, but if there is a heaven, I know my dad is there, with my brother and my grandmother, and I know that he wants all of us to live our lives and not take a moment for granted. He knew better than anyone not to take any time for granted, to go for what you want and not let fear stop you. My dad may have been afraid of many things, but it never stopped him. When I get sad and afraid, I will try to remember that my dad thought about me often, that he prayed for me, and that he believed in me. If my dad could walk on fire, the least I can do is try to make every day count for me and my kids and my husband. For so many years I acted like I didn't care about my relationship with my dad, I didn't talk about him or think about it because I was always sure I was a disappointment and that if I acted like it wasn't important, then it didn't matter if deep down inside I cared more than I could admit. As he got sicker and sicker, it all came welling up out of me, and now that he's gone, it's something that I've been dealing with and accepting and finding a place for in my life.

I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I had the time with my brothers and my sister and I hope that it brings us closer together. I don't want to lose time with them the way I did with my dad. I had no idea I would miss it so much until it was past me. I learned that me and my dad had so much more in common than I would ever have guessed, from our love of photography and computers, to our interest in family history and geneology. I want to live my life the way he did, without regrets. I am my father's daughter.

DITL- Tuesday, July 27

Coming soon.

Well, it's been about six months since I last wrote here. I have no excuse, just laziness and, honestly, I forgot I had one of these. So maybe I can force myself to write here again? I have been taking pictures, raising kids, cleaning, cooking, the usual. Nothing earth-shattering has happened lately. I am in the process of trying to figure out Flikr so that I can embed my pictures and at the very least, keep my pictures uploaded. I might end up going back and deleting everything and making a fresh start and posting my blog link at Facebook and Myspace so that both sides of my family can keep updated. I don't know how I feel about that yet, so we'll see.

Anyway. Yes, I live!

I live? I Live!

I have nothing to say except WHOA. I have been crazy busy like whoa lately. Well, for the last three months. Sorry! Pictures to make up for it?

Mom and Dad, from Christmas. I have a GIGANTIC backload of pictures that I don't think I will ever get caught up on, but I am trying to chisel away at it when I have 30 minutes here and there.

The kids are big, and in the midst of an extended snow/cold break from school. School was cancelled for two days first because of about 6 inches of snow and then for the biting cold, which the high tomorrow is supposed to be a whopping FIVE degrees. We are staying indoors, keeping the fire burning, turned the heaters and furnace up and just waiting for it to thaw out.

I am loving Netflix lately. It's so awesome to be able to watch something whenever on my computer and getting the DVD's in the mail too. We are rediscovering all our childhood cartoons and the kids ove watching their shows too. Yay for Netflix!

Is winter over yet?

6 Quirks

Virginia tagged me and I am really really trying to update this more often so here I am.. 6 strange things about me? (Limiting it to just 6 is difficult)

- I often tilt my head to the right when typing for long periods of time. I don't know why, or what it does for me, I just notice out of the blue that my head is sideways.

- I am obsessed with pictures of strangers weddings. I stalk the internet and wedding photography blogs because I am fascinated with those moments and how happy everyone always looks. It so rarely lasts anymore, but those pictures show so much happiness and hope.

- I have only fallen asleep without reading first less than 20 times in the last 8 years. I cannot sleep without reading something first, even on vacations I have brought my PocketPC (that I read books in eBook format on) just so that I can read myself to sleep. I have read, literally, thousands of books since we first purchased our PocketPC's, and read on average two or three books a week depending on how long they are and how tired I am and how early I go to bed.

- I am the project killer. I start projects, and they die a slow death. Knitting, cross stitch, sewing, you name it, I probably have at least two projects in progress somewhere that will probably never be finished.

- I cook primarily with an iron skillet. I have a serious relationship with my iron skillet/s (I have a set of three graduated sizes) and I take cleaning and seasoning them very seriously. I only wash them in hot water and dry them on the burner and oil them with a drop of oil and a paper towel and let it reseason every time I use it. A good iron skillet is a commitment.

- I currently live with my husband's ex-wife. And yes, I am aware how strange that is!

Spent most of the day talking to Kathy and Priscilla and comparing stories about Chantal and hearing how she has been playing both sides of the family off each other. I don't know how she thought that was going to work when we are all now living in one big house but a lot of lies were revealed, a lot of Chantal backstabbing, nothing new. Chantal is going to be a not very happy person in the future, she's going to be called out on a lot of things she's said and done.

It was an otherwise quiet day. Savino has two more teeth. I am still tired and need a long soak in the bath tub and some sort of chocolate.

Still no word from the state. Tim is flipping out on me, and convinced he has not gotten the job. I keep telling him it will be OK, it's not a big deal either way.

Have I said lately how much I love my husband? He cares so much about whether I am happy or feeling OK. He kisses me often and asks me what's wrong if I don't look happy. He is proud of me doing what I need to do to get through the day. I love him so much. Kathy said to me today that she can tell how much he is in love with me, and that is reassuring to hear after 10 years of togetherness.

My life is crazy, but I feel a little more validated tonight about how I have been feeling and that I am not the only one frustrated with Chantal. Everyone else feels the same way. It is nice to know that I am not the bad guy.

It's not all drama though, here are 4 beautiful edits that I did today:

10/28/2008

Ugh. I hate being sick. More than anything else. Some icky scratchy throat/sinus/snot thing has struck the house. Me and Tim seem to be suffering the most, probably because we have been all up in each others business the last week. I feel a bit better today with the aid of copious amounts of Tylenol and naproxen, but yesterday, oh my. I ended up begging Tim to come home early from work and he managed everything while I passed out on the floor of the boys play yard and let them crawl all over me. Apparently my comatose body is endless amusement for two toddler, who knew? I slept for about an hour, maybe a little longer, before it was dinner time. I could barely hold my head up through dinner but started to rally a little bit after taking some Tylenol and getting the kids into the bath.

This morning, I think I might live, but it was touch and go there for awhile.

Chantal managed to kill her one month old cell phone last night. And she REALLY killed it, it won't come back on for anything. It's dead dead. How she managed that I have no idea. She's pissed off about it, I am just amused. There's been issues lately that I won't get into because I don't feel like it, just the usual, so karma having fried her phone amuses me. Of course, it meant that I had to give the phone I was using, her old Blackjack, back to her, but I am the least phone obsessed person here. There are literally four other phones laying around for me to choose from to use, so it doesn't matter to me. I would like a new phone, but at this rate, I will NEVER get one, so I'm not getting worked up about it.

Well, time to feed the ravenous boys. I swear, we spend half the day in the dining room

Hey, at least I am getting closer to being caught up here!

10/7/8

I am so so so happy because we have finally rented out the Little House! Woohoo! We rented it to someone who up until recently used to work with Tim's brother, and he came over and paid rent for October on Sunday. Yay! So that is one worry off our minds. I am really really glad that the house won't be sitting empty this winter.

My SIL's wedding is looming large. I still have to find Savino something to wear. *sighs* What a hassle. At least Haley is done, I got her a dress on Sunday and just have to make sure the shoes she has still fit and maybe get her a pair of tights. Of course, I have to make the cake and make sure I have everything prepared for the pictures. I need to go buy a few more SD cards for my camera because I plan to shoot in RAW at least part of the time so I can fix any exposure mistakes.

Oh, a bit of sadness. I went to take my wedding rings off last night so I could put lotion on the babies and noticed that my diamond band is missing one of the diamonds. Sadness. I was not entirely surprised though because I think the diamond that fell out was one that wasn't the right size or color anyway, it always bugged me that when you looked at the ring from the side, it didn't look the same as any of the others. Anyway, I took it into the store today and they are sending it out to get an estimate of how much it will cost to replace the diamond. It turned out one of the prongs snapped and that's why the diamond fell out so the prong will have to be rebuilt too. I am hoping it won't cost a lot because the ring didn't cost that much to begin with. I will know in a week. I had my solitaire checked while I was there too, just to make sure that I hadn't done anything horrible to it. I swear, I shouldn't be allowed to have nice jewelry anyway, I just bash it up. Thankfully, the solitaire is in good shape and the sales guy cleaned it for me. I love the sales guy that was there today, he fawned over my rings and when he was putting my information in the computer to print out a claim ticket for my band, he was all "Girl, you got a good deal!" when he looked at how much I paid for the solitaire. I don't think I'll ever shop at another jewelry store, I like them too much.

Something is going on with Jaden. I don't know what, but his behaviour the last few weeks has been unreal. Today and yesterday he was reverted back to the crying and whining that he was doing the first week that they moved in here. He hasn't been acting like that for awhile, and then it just starts back up again. I am wondering if there is something going on with Shawn that he is doing that. I don't know, but I hope Jaden settles back down soon because the crying over every little thing is unbearable. Between Jaden whining and crying and Savino on his hunger strike, these babies are wearing me down!

I need a nap so badly. I am so tired. Of course, I have to go rouse the babies in a few minutes and change diapers and get them into the car to go get the girls off the bus. At least we don't have to go to the store today. I think I am seriously going to just start going to bed with Savino. I'm always exhausted by the time he goes down, I always feel like I ought to just lay down and go to sleep but I usually force myself downstairs to work or clean or hang out with Tim. Then I don't end up in bed until midnight and then Savino wakes up at some point between midnight and 4 and the last few days several times during that four hour stretch, so there is no real rest. No wonder I am tired. I guess I just have to accept that I need an earlier bedtime. Sucks. I'm too old to stay up until midnight, I guess.

The leaves are changing colors again. I guess that means that fall is really here. And winter soon. I am not ready, bring back summer please! Ah summer, I took you for granted. Now I have to deal with impending Christmas. There are holiday decorations and Christmas crap all over the stores already and we're not even near to Halloween yet. I can't deal with the celebrating Christmas for the four months before it even happens. That's ridiculous.

We let Steve the cat back into the house on a trial basis after a haircut (I shaved him with the clippers) and a flea bath. My cat M'El has vanished. *sighs* Steve is beyond ecstatic to be back in the house. The first night back he slept on everyone's bed throughout the night. He started in Chantal's room and then came into our bedroom and was laying on Laila's bed when I got up that morning. Since then he has been super affectionate, despite having clawed and bitten the hell out of my hands while I was giving him his haircut. He looks ridiculous, just utterly ridiculous. At least it has cut way way down on the amount of cat hair we have to deal with, which was one of my big complaints about bringing him back in. If he doesn't do anything horrible, like covert peeing or whatever, he can stay inside. I am sad to say, but I think it was M'El who was doing 99% of the bad outside-the-litterbox madness.

Oops, time to get the kids.

9/30

I am waiting for Tim to get out of the bathroom and finish messing around with this DVD before I go to Wal-Mart. He took another day off because his foot is still MASSIVELY swollen, his skin is so tight too, it's very hard to the touch. I am worried about him. He's been taking the steriods they gave him and they gave him a shot at the dr's yesterday too, but the swelling looks worse, if anything. He says if it is still swollen tomorrow that he is calling off again too. I kinda hope it is just so he can stay home with me, because I love having him home!

I have to make the Wal-Mart run to get supplies for making the practice cake for my SIL Dawn's wedding in two weeks. I am making the grooms cake in the shape of a guitar. I need to buy a much larger sheet pan, the fondant, the gum paste, and perhaps different icing colors. Tim was all "Why don't you just use icing instead of fondant?". I don't know when the last time HE tried to smooth icing was, but it is a royal pain to get perfectly smooth and level. No thank you. Fondant just looks nicer, that's why they cover wedding cakes in it. I am not so psyched about how much all the supplies are going to cost me, but it's part of my SIL's wedding present from us, so I guess I ought to just consider the money as going towards that. And I will be able to reuse the sheet pan again, of course. I am hoping to get the cake done completely before the kids get home since I have Tim today here to entertain the baby so I can focus on cake making. If it turns out nicely, I will make the cake again this weekend and freeze just the cake part of it in the deep freezer so that the day before the wedding all I have to do is cover it in fondant and put the gum paste decorations on and finish it off. So, fingers crossed that it turns out nicely. I don't want to be in tears four hours from now because it looks like crap.

It has turned COLD for some reason. It seems a bit soon for it to be getting this cold. The high today is supposed to be 68, which is obviously not that cold, but tomorrow it is only 58 and will be in the upper 50's for the rest of the week. I guess I will have to bust out the babies long sleeved shirts and pants sooner than I thought. I have managed to get all their new clothes washed and folded, and I still have to put away Savino's but I gave Jaden's to Chantal. All that is left to wash is the mountain of 2T - 5T stuff. I am holding off on washing it all until I have a container to put it all in to store it.

I'm so tired for some reason. I don't think I slept very well last night. Savino woke me up RIGHT after I fell asleep, literally moments after, at 1am. He drank most of a bottle and fell back asleep. I am dying for this kid to SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT. What will it take? I don't know. He's going through a picky eating phase which is so bizarre for him. Usually he eats pretty well, if not a ridiculous amount, but the last few days he has been turning his nose up at the things he usually eats, so I don't know what is going on. I think it's his teeth, but I hope it gets better soon because he's not eating very much. I think we are going to take him in to have his labwork done today. I've been putting it off for almost a month now, I really hate the thought of them drawing blood from my baby, but it has to be done because our house is so old and I would feel better having his lead levels checked. Our house is seriously old. I wonder if we would qualify for the EPA to do renovations or whatever it is that they do if you have a really old home. I should look into that, I guess.

9/29

We are not having the best day! Well, Tim's bad day started yesterday afternoon when he was cutting the grass in the back by his truck and was stung on the calf by a wasp/bee thing. We've been battling them lately, there was a nest in the front yard on the property line between our neighbors house and our house and Tim put two cans of poison down in the nest and then ended up pouring gasoline down the hole and setting it on fire. Needless to say, he got them, but this other nest in the back he didn't even know about until he was stung. Well, at first it looked like his calf wasn't really going to swell up or anything, but today, oh my, it was BAD. His whole foot was swollen twice the size of his other foot, he looked like half-Frankenstein's Monster, half man. His calf and ankle were really swollen and it was going up his thigh. He came home from work because he couldn't just ignore it anymore. Benadryl wasn't helping, so we went off to the Urgent Care which was also his new PCP because of the fiasco with insurance with our old PCP who has a walk-in clinic. Well, we get to Urgent Care and they don't take our insurance anymore. Um, thanks?

Came home and found another Urgent Care in the next town over in WV that does take our health insurance and the doctors that practice there are also preferred providers with our insurance plan so hopefully he can switch to them, he needs refills on his medications too. He is going to try to get them to write the prescriptions so that we can do them mail-order which is much cheaper and that way he only has to go in for checkups, not just for refills. Anyway, he is out there at the dr right now while I am here so that I can go get the girls from the bus stop when its time. I didn't think he would be done in time for me to go with him, which he was bummed out about.

So, onto the poor me. I went upstairs to get Savino from his nap earlier, and he was crawling down the stairs (well throwing himself backwards down the stairs really) and I was below him with a hand on him so he didn't fall down. He was about five steps from the bottom and I went to pick him up to carry him the rest of the way, I turned to go down the last few stairs and somehow managed to trip myself, fall down the last three stairs and over the one step up to the landing all the way into the stair hallway while holding Savino. Thankfully, miraculously, Savino was comletely unscathed. I managed to twist and cradle him against my body so that all that happened was that he got set down onto his butt on the floor sitting up a little roughly. He wasn't even scared by falling, he just looked at me like "Whahuh?" On the other hand, I hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs HARD with my shoulder and left arm and was twisted half on and half off the landing. Owowow. It really hurt. At first I thought I broke my arm or dislocated my shoulder or something because the impact REALLY hurt. No, instead I just really bashed the back of my upper left arm and have a rash all down the rest of my left arm from sliding against the rough plaster/textured paint of the wall. I also managed to put a big long crack in the plaster of the wall where my shoulder hit it. I had an instant bruise and it looks pretty rough on that spot on my upper arm. It huurrt. I'm OK though, I will just have a really nasty sore bruise tomorrow and an embarassing story to tell. Still, it made the day a little less fun!

I made a few batches of Lara bars today. They turned out so good! I don't think that I have ever had dates before, and I didn't realize that they were so good! They're very sweet, almost like brown sugar. I made a big batch of Walnut Coconut bars for Tim because those are his favorite, and I also made half a batch of Apple Pie bars and half a batch of Banana Nut bars. I think the Banana Nut are my favorite so far, but I would like to try making the Key Lime Pie version too. There's about 20 bars in the fridge right now setting up, so I think we are set for the week. They're really easy to make, I wonder if anyone else outside our family would eat them. Even Savino likes them. I want to make the Very Cherry kind next as well, but I need to get some cherries for that.

Savino is cutting some teeth hard again, which means that he is not sleeping. *sighs* He is mighty cute though, and that makes up for it a little. He just started saying a bunch of new words yesterday and trying to mimic anything you say. He says, "Haley" (Aaa-lee) and "Laila" (sometimes it comes out Laila, sometimes it's just "La la" which is what we also call Laila),"Bye bye","Uh oh!", "Thank you" (Hank Oo), "Jay-d", "Kitty" (itty), "Hello?" (Eh-row?), and "Hey!". Tim was pretty stunned, we just kept saying words to him to see what he would say back, what he could manage and he would keep saying them after we asked him if he could say (insert word). He's too much. He definitely takes his milestones in leaps and bounds! He's 13 months today and I think he's right on track.

He has been standing up alone without holding onto anything quite a bit and has been experimenting with taking steps without holding on. Today he was standing in the front room while I was getting my shoes on and he was holding onto the back of the race car Power Wheel we keep in there when the kids aren't playing with it, and I said "Come on, let's go!" and held my arms out to him and he let go of the Power Wheel and took a step right into my arms! This isn't the first time he has taken a step by himself, the other day he let go and took two steps around Jaden in the play yard to get to a toy and a few mornings ago took two steps from the night stand in our bedroom to the bed. Soon, soon.