Jun 9, 2010
Posted in Daily Ramblings, Scrapping | View Comments
Gosh – I’ve had so much to blog and then when I sit down to do it, I can’t think of anything I wanted to say. I hate that! And most of what I think of blogging is a bunch of random snippets that run through my head and are not cohesive in any way, shape or form.
The first thing I wanted to tell is that I have to backpedal on my Mother’s Day disappointment. Steve totally surprised me with a gift that he had planned, but due to his breathing problems before Mother’s Day, he wasn’t able to get it. Then came finals week (and no decent teacher can do anything other than prep & deal with that)and before we knew it, school was out. Needless to say, I was really surprised when I opened up the envelope he gave me and saw the receipt for the new Droid Incredible. I had expressed that when my iPhone contract is up next year, I wanted to cancel and get a Droid like Steve’s. But I hadn’t even thought any more about because I’ve still got an entire year on mine. I’m so thrilled about it and really excited to see it! It won’t be available until the end of the month. Then I’ll give my iPhone to Maggie until my contract expires. She’s totally excited about that and I hope she can handle giving it up when the year is up. So a big THANK YOU to my husband. Like, seriously.
I realized the other day, as I drove past the local farm fields, how much I love driving rurally at this time of year. See, the corn has started coming up, but is still rather small – like ankle height. When you drive by a field, all the rows of emerging corn go by really fast. It’s always looked to me like someone running really fast. I can remember as a child driving to Iowa for our summer visit with our dad and just watching those fields go by, imagining that we were racing some really tall, long-legged person who was running incredibly fast. I just kept racing and racing. So I always think of that when the beginning of June rolls around.
As far as the exercise goes, I tried to do the Bollywood dance one the other day and majorly failed. It totally frustrated me because I’m actually a pretty good dancer, but for some reason, I could not put these moves together at all. Perhaps it’s moving in a very different way than I’m used to or something, but I could NOT do it. And felt so stupid just bouncing around, so I gave up. Still having trouble with the yoga and the crampy feet, too.
Let’s see…reading. I’m reading Melissa Gilbert’s autobiography right now & just finished Kristin Chenoweth’s. Kristin’s is quite good and appropriate enough that I could let Maggie read it, too. She LOVES Kristin. Melissa’s book is a little more tawdry because she’s apparently lived a more gossipy, troubled life (though it’s not like she was Dana Plato or anything), but it’s interesting to read about growing up famous and all the people she knew. Plus, remembering Michael Landon is cool. I HAVE to start reading faster. I’ve got 2 more library books here that I have to get through, plus another NINE that I’m waiting to come into the library. Plus a bunch of books here I haven’t read. Gotta read, gotta READ!
I’ve also done some more scrapping! I hadn’t really done any since about March, but I pulled it out again. Here’s what I’ve done:
Dec 3, 2009
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Since I’m not designing anymore, I thought I might offer up some of my old stuff as freebies here on a monthly basis. No biggie – just a kit or something that people might like to have. I mean, it’s made and is just sitting on my hard drive – maybe somebody would like it, y’know?
This month is a kit I made last year for Christmas time. It’s called Sparklemas (with a tongue-in-cheek nod to Edward, the Sparkliest Vampire) and is filled with traditional Christmas colors and tons of sparkle. Just click on the pictures to download. And don’t forget – if you use these for your layouts, please link me up!! I LOVE seeing how people use my stuff, so please, please share!!
Nov 7, 2009
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I know, I know. “Christy!!! You changed your theme AGAIN?? Can’t you focus on anything for more than 10 seconds?!?” No. No, I can’t. I am a gnat on crystal meth.
See, this weekend is Internation Digital Scrapbook Day. (Yes, I know. A ‘weekend’ cannot be a ‘day’. However, the celebration of a day can last a weekend. Trust me.) With this holiday comes a boatload of sales at nearly every online digital scrapbook store in the universe. And I did a little shopping. I was visiting ScrapbookGraphics.com and one of my favorite designers, Flergs, and saw she has blogwear that works in WordPress. And I said YIPPIE! Because most designers who do blogwear only do it for Blogger and I can’t use it. Plus, she used my new favorite kit of hers to make it, so I had to buy it. I love the black/yellow/green/white combination. It’s so crisp and clean and friendly. Reminds me a bit of my grandmother (don’t ask me why – I cannot explain how my subconscious works), so it was a must have. Love the touches of glitter and I think the flowers are stunning. I’m having a little trouble keeping the white background there – it seems to flicker on & off with each refresh & I’m not sure why. Going to have to fix that because I can’t expect y’all to read my blatherings off a dotted swiss background.
I haven’t actually done any actual scrapbooking yet this weekend, but I sure have taken advantage of the sales. Wanna see what I bought?? Oh, I’ll link up the pictures, too, in case you see something you’d like to buy yourself.
At Scrapbook Graphics, I bought:
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Then, at Digital Design Essentials, I got these great things:
Aren’t those just the coolest alphas ever?? And they were (and still are) only $1!!! I love them and can’t wait to use them.
Finally, I got all these layered templates from Digichick:
By the way, I LOVE layered templates. Truthfully, I use them with almost every single layout I do. See, I can come up with my own layout, but it takes me a while to get it laid out nicely and it’s never quite as good as I envisioned. With the templates, not only can I count on the fact that it will look AMAZING, I can also get layouts down much more quickly. For me, it’s about getting the memories down, so I don’t mind not being so much of an “artist”. Anyway, I can change it up if I want to, as well, so I’m not stuck to what’s there. I love it. Some of my favorite templates are by Kitty Designs (hers are called “The Sketch”), TaylorMade (called “TaylorSketch”), Ali Edwards, Katie Pertiet, and Tiffany Tillman. They rock, they’re inexpensive and they’re a great jumping-off point. <end recommendation>
And discussing my scrapbook purchases made me realize I haven’t shown off my layouts in a while. So, here’s what’s new!
Oct 9, 2009
Posted in Down Syndrome, Scrapping | View Comments
I can’t promise that every day will be DS-themed, but if you read my last post, you know I’m on a mission not only to raise awareness about something that’s near & dear to my heart, but also to introduce you to my Henry. Because once you are familiar with someone who has that little extra something in his or her chromosomal makeup, not only will you never be the same, you’ll realize that words like “retard” and making jokes about “the short bus” are based on ignorance of the unknown, fear of the “different” and simply not knowing of whom you speak. So. ‘Nuff said. Here’s what I want to talk about today.
This is a layout I did about my Henry and our reaction when he was born. He was so little. Very, very little. He still is, actually, compared to other little boys his age. But, unlike many other parents who have a child with Down Syndrome, we had no idea. We had no prenatal testing to screen for it, and because he was born at home, we didn’t even know when he was born. Oh, yeah. This amazing child was born at HOME, with no crazy medical intervention, medical “professionals” creating fear and panic for me & my husband, no whispers and prying eyes as people felt sorry for us for having a “defective” child. He was born, we held him, we weighed him, I nursed him. Any problems didn’t even surface for the first couple of days, so we didn’t miss the time of joy and excitement that comes with a new baby because people around us were saying “I’m sorry” or qualifying their comments because he was “less than”. (Don’t misunderstand. Most women have their babies, DS or not, in the hospital & that’s cool. Especially because many children with DS have severe medical issues that must be addressed quite soon after birth. I would never say that all babies with DS should be born at home. I’m just glad Henry was.)
In fact, he was 2 weeks old before we knew. We were so blessed. We had 2 weeks of “babymooning” before everything changed. At first? He was just small. He was losing weight and, it turned out, unable to nurse, plus he had slight jaundice, so that’s what everyone was focused on. We had a little baby scale at home and I’d weight him, pump my breastmilk, feed most of it to him via syringe (he couldn’t make the bottle work, really) and then weigh him again. Keeping track of how he gained and how much he ate. We went into the pediatrician’s every 2 days or so. After about 2 weeks, his jaundice had cleared up enough that the doctor was able to really examine him. Here’s what I wrote about that experience in the above layout:
I remember standing alone in that doctor’s office as the doctor was finally able to examine him after the jaundice had cleared up. I watched him turn, lift, pull, move, poke, prod Henry all over & then just out of the blue said, “Has it crossed you mind that Henry has Down Syndrome?” Before it even registered, I said, “That’s funny you should say that because I thought that in passing when I was looking at him one day, but that’s all it was…just passing.”
That’s all I remember. A dull roar started filling my ears & all of my insides started roiling. It slowly, very slowly, started creeping into my consciousness and everything around me started crumbling. I don’t remember anything else that was said, just the voice inside trying to keep the tears at bay because I didn’t want the doctor to think I was a bad mother for being sad about it.
Then I had to go out & tell my mom who was with Steven in the waiting room. The noise she made will never leave me. It was raw & guttural – animal-like. A wounded moan. The weight of this was more than I could comprehend. It would be weeks before I understood. Weeks of testing, reading, researching, doctor’s appointments and crushed dreams. Accepting that the dreams you’ve had for your child will never come true is gut-wrenching. Henry will never be president. Henry won’t be a doctor. Henry may not go to college. Henry may never live on his own. Henry won’t have children. Henry won’t do a lot of things. That’s hard to accept. The fact that he’ll most likely need us to care for him for the rest of his life – that’s hard. But I’m thankful. Thankful that he’s with us. As hard as it’s going to be, I wouldn’t give him back. But it’s going to be a rough road. Your existence has redefined true north for us. I guess it’s our journey to find it again. With you as our compass.
I won’t lie. I won’t minimize. Finding out what was up with Henry was one of the most difficult, defining moments of my life. I was scared. I was panicked. Do you know why? Because I was ignorant. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what to expect – all I knew was what my limited, stereotyped experience had shown me. It was rough – especially at first. But, you have to understand that all of that now pales in comparison to who Henry is. You’re going to learn a lot about him over the next month. Because he’s amazing. Much more so than I EVER could have imagined as he grew inside me in 2003.
Sep 26, 2009
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