Category: Life

Jazz lost an eye tooth last night.

Yes. The boy is 14 years old.

No. I have no idea if this is normal or not. But it’s OUR sort of normal so …

We were eating Chinese food (a favorite in our house) when Jazz suddenly put a hand to his mouth and pulled out a bloody finger. Only, he didn’t know it was bloody and was getting ready to wipe it on his white t-shirt.

Mom’s excellent observations skills saved the day once again.

“Hey buddy, you’re bleeding.”

Jazz was surprised and went to get a paper towel.

Jazz’s top permanent eye teeth actually grew in above and over his baby eye teeth. As a result, they didn’t push his baby teeth out, and Jazz refused to work on them to get them out (which irritated the stuffing out of me), so they stayed that way for quite some time.

He had two sets of eye teeth. It was quite attractive.

The only reason the first baby eye tooth came out was because he had chewed on it wrong and forced it out.

The same thing happened with this tooth, too. Only, it didn’t come out, it just started bleeding – a lot.

Jazz has never really handled losing his teeth very well. He doesn’t DO pain — he’s a bit of a wimp when it comes to his pain threshold. (I can say that, because my pain threshold is pretty high and I always lose patience with people who can’t handle it on the same level as me. No, it doesn’t make sense. Don’t even try).

He’s the type of kid who tends to make a fuss and go on and on and ON (sometimes for DAYS) about a tiny pin prick on his finger. Drives me nuts.

So the first thing that struck me when I saw that much blood was the fact that he was handling the pain pretty well.

(I remember sitting in front of a mirror when I was little and working, working, working on a tooth to get it to come out … and sort of LIKING the pain that it caused …

Yes. I’m weird).

The second thing that struck me was his determination to get it out. He was sick of putting up with it and he stood in the kitchen (while the rest of us tried to ignore him and his bloody paper towel while we ate our dinner) and worked that tooth until he could finally get a good hold of it and yank it out.

It was another proud momma moment. 🙂

He gave the tooth to me and said, his voice all manly and mature (because Jazz has jumped into puberty with both feet this summer — won’t his classmates be surprised by how much he’s changed this next school year) …

“Let’s save time. Just give me the five dollars now and we’ll skip the whole tooth fairy thing.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh, or cry, at his nonchalance over the whole tooth fairy thing.

(And yes. I made a HUGE parenting mistake and gave my kids $5 for every tooth they lost. They’ve made a fortune on us over the years. New parents – don’t do that!)

I’m so relieved that tooth is finally out. I was afraid the permanent tooth would grow so far down over it that he wouldn’t be able to get a good enough grip on it to pull it out and we’d be forced to go to the dentist.

As far as I can tell, Jazz only has ONE more baby tooth to lose – and that’s a bottom molar. Either way, it’s now time to make an appointment with our orthodontist to see what sort of work we’ll need to do to get Jazz’s teeth to straighten out. I don’t predict he’ll need much work done, he has plenty of room for all of his teeth (as opposed to Dude who didn’t and had to have his palate stretched to make room), but his teeth are spaced out and there are those two eye teeth sticking out from all the rest so he’ll probably need braces for a little while, at least.

This is actually perfect timing. Dude is getting ready to have his braces removed July 30th (if all goes according to plan — crossing fingers) and now it will be Jazz’s turn to have some work done.

I am wondering how Jazz will handle the discomfort though. I predict quite a few cranky episodes.

For those that don’t know, Dude is driving now. He got his permit back in March and his driving skills have gone from newbie, to excellent to downright scary in that time span.

He started out pretty nervous, but then worked his way to confident until we were nearly side swiped a few weeks back when Dude failed to yield to an oncoming car. We were turning right and Dude didn’t see there was a car coming. When I cautioned him about the car and told him to stop, he got flustered and hit the accelerator instead of the brake. And when my “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!” got frantic, he still continued forward.

Luckily, the car had plenty of time to react and easily switched lanes to avoid us. They did give us an angry honk, though.

I’ve since “coached” him on the importance of listening to me when I say STOP — especially in that tone of panicked voice. Defy me all you want to but, bud, when I say STOP, there’s usually a very good reason why I’m yelling it. Stop next time.

He’s been downright scared out of his mind since that incident.

However, we have trudged forward. After all, it would be unrealistic of me to tell the boy that that kind of close call will never happen again — of course it will. We’ve all had close calls in our driving lives, it’s a fact of driving. Sometimes you make a mistake or misjudge, sometimes (okay, MOST times), other people do something stupid. And when these near misses happen, he will just have to trust God to protect him. What else can he do?

We’re back to taking short drives to close places; in essence, we’re back to square one. Part of the reason that whole side-swiping thing happened to begin with was because I was distracting him by talking to him.

I’ve since learned to keep my big trap shut.

I’ve apologized to Dude for my part in the near accident and we have both agreed to just take things a little slower this go-around. I will try not to push, he will try not to kill us. 😀

And part of our going slow process is driving to a nearby fast food restaurant and ordering quickie meals.

The first time I asked Dude to drive to a restaurant (Wendy’s), I thought the boy was going to hyperventilate.

Scratch that — he DID hyperventilate.

His eyes got glassy and he nearly drove past the speaker before realizing that he had to stop.

His problem? He was actually going to have to talk to a real live person.

OH! THE HORRORS!

But seriously. Dude is a quiet, shy, introverted kid and he doesn’t speak much to us, his family, let alone strangers. And let alone, voluntarily. So the thought of having to actually speak to someone really threw him in a panic.

I was amused and just a tad impatient with his reaction. I knew he would react that way, I wasn’t surprised, but I guess a small part of me had been hoping that he wouldn’t. That he would just throw his shoulders back, hold his head up high and exude confidence.

I gently coached him on what to say. And through several gasps for air and broken English, he gave the drive-thru attendant our order.

After we had gotten our order and were pulling away, I said, “See? You talked to someone and you’re still alive. People truly don’t bite.”

He laughed me off and he began to relax. It was as if we had broken through some sort of mental barrier at that point. I then told him (after we got home, not during the drive), that when it was time for him to get a job, he would HAVE to talk to people. Especially if he landed his dream job (at this moment, anyway) — working at Game Stop. He would be required to not only talk to people, but he would be asked lots of questions about the various games and to give them advice.

I told him, that sometimes, you have to force yourself to step outside your self-imposed personality box and BE another person. I remember having to do that a lot when I started working. My problem wasn’t being too shy, my problem was being too short with people. I had to teach myself to be patient with people.

I had no idea if what I preached told him had sunk in or not, but now I’m beginning to think that some of it sunk in.

Yesterday, Dude and I drove to Burger King to grab some lunch. He didn’t want to at first mainly because A. he doesn’t like to drive, it scares him (see above) and B. because he was meeting a friend online so this friend could teach him about PHP (a computer language and *SQUEE* — finally!! A serious interest in something!! *ahem* I have to downplay my enthusiasm though because if Dude knows I’m excited about him taking the initiative on something serious he’ll totally lose interest) and didn’t have that much time until they were scheduled to hook up.

But I sweet talked him into going (okay fine, his stomach won), and he drove us to Burger King.

When it was our turn to order, he did so with a strong, confident voice and he was articulate enough that the guy understood what he said.

When the Burger King employee said, “Please pull forward, sir,” I laughed.

SIR?!

It was a proud momma moment. 🙂

This post is about the death reference I made in another entry — I feel like it deserves a more in-depth discussion than just a passing sentence or two in a vacation post.

Though we had a great vacation (as I’m sure ya’ll are sick of hearing about at this point), it was definitely peppered with sadness and guilt.

Yes, guilt.

Five people died this past week.

1. We heard about Farrah Fawcett’s death shortly before we left. This announcement was expected as the poor woman had been battling cancer for quite some time. I pitied the woman. Not only because of her cancer, but because she seemingly got more and more wacky over the years. Perhaps her behavioral changes can be blamed on her cancer treatments, I don’t know. But it got to the point where I could barely stomach watching her speak – she just seemed so …. sad, spacey and child like.

2. Ed Mcmahon died. Does anyone even know that? Poor Ed had the misfortune to die, of a ripe old age of 86 I might add, right around the same time as another celebrity and has completely been forgotten because of it. Poor Ed. I was saddened to hear of his passing – I remember watching him every night on the Johnny Carson show because yes, I’m THAT old and laughing at his goofy side-kick antics. I’m glad the man had lived a long life.

3. Michael Jackson – We were flipping through TV stations in our cabin one night when we got wind that MJ was gravelly ill and had been taken to the hospital. The next time we heard anything about him, he had passed away. We were shocked, as was the rest of the world. It’s always hard to digest something this sudden and this tragic. And it was certainly sad, but we weren’t devastated like a large portion of the population apparently is.

I’ve largely ignored all of the media hype surrounding MJ’s death. Well, to be perfectly honest, I pretty much ignore all media hype because that’s what it is, hype, a calculated method of getting ratings. It’s disgusting. But that’s neither here nor there. So the fact that MJ’s death is dominating the news right now doesn’t surprise me one bit – it’s popular, it’ll help ratings and it helps distract people from what’s really important – say, what’s going on with our government and our country right now.

In fact, I found a post on Sacred and Profane that sums my feelings up about Michael Jackson’s death perfectly.

It’s sad whenever ANYONE dies. Unfortunately (or fortunately), life goes on.

4. We learned of Billy Mays’ sudden death in the Miami airport. We had purchased an Internet “day” pass and Dude was checking his forums when an announcement about Billy Mays’ death caught his attention. I immediately suggested that it was probably a hoax and we Googled for a more reputable source.

It was indeed true. And yet another shock – so many dying in one week!

5. But the truly shocking part of this week came Thursday night while we were in our cabin. I was positioning the boys in order to take a picture of the latest towel animal (as you can see, they were in high spirits) and Kevin was calling our voice mail to see if there were any messages.

Look past the boys silliness and see Kevin in the background on his phone?

That’s when we found out that Nanny had died.

Nanny is Kevin’s grandmother. She was 86 (?) and her health had been failing her for a number of years. Apparently, she overdosed on her medication – she had been on 30 different types of drugs at the time – and had a stroke.

She lost consciousness and never woke up. She passed away Tuesday, June 23rd. We didn’t know about it until Thursday, June 25th. We were in Mexico at the time and we didn’t quite know what to do. Should we fly back for the funeral which was scheduled for that Saturday? We were on the tiny island of Cozumel and we felt … stuck.

Kevin and I agonized over what to do. In the end, we decided not to do anything. Nanny was gone and she would have wanted us to just stay put.

We feel guilty for missing her funeral. However, I was a bit relieved that we did because we would have had to sit through a “don’t be sad, Edith is in heaven now” sermon and well, she’s not. She’s asleep in her grave awaiting the return of Christ. (More on this later).

We didn’t tell the boys. They were having such a good time we didn’t want to dampen their spirits. Especially since we couldn’t DO anything about it.

The boys found out about Nanny’s death at the Miami airport through a message that Kevin had received from his sister on Facebook.

They were shocked and numb the rest of the trip home.

Even though we were all braced for her death because of her failing health, the fact that she went so suddenly and never woke up was still a shock.

We never had a chance to say goodbye. Even though Kevin had been over to her house the previous week to take her son (who is mentally challenged) to a car show. Only, he had his facts wrong and the car show wasn’t scheduled for that day, so Kevin had a chance to sit and have a chat with his grandmother.

We believe that was God’s way of allowing him to say goodbye to her.

We went to visit her grave the day after we returned (we got into town very late). It wasn’t hard to find her, it was the freshest grave in the area. We were all silent and lost in our own thoughts as we looked down upon her resting spot.

The boys, nor Kevin, ever cried, but they did tear up. Me? I just stared, dry-eyed and a bit shocked by everything. I think I’m still numb. I honestly don’t think it’s hit me yet.

When my mom’s mom passed away, I cried, hard. I cried because I would miss my grandmother, but I cried mostly for my mother. I could see how much she was hurting and my heart broke for her. I’ve never been able to handle seeing my mother in any sort of distress.

Sometimes I wonder at my reaction to death. I’m sad, of course, but it’s like I distance myself from it. It doesn’t seem quite …… real to me. I honestly can’t explain it any better than that. I KNOW my loved ones are gone, but still, it just doesn’t seem real.

It’s the oddest feeling.

I honestly think that’s the biggest reason I haven’t allowed myself to get too close to my family – because I’m unconsciously shielding my heart for the day they pass away. I think it’s a survival mechanism and though on the surface that sounds fine, it bothers me. I think it somehow makes me … less human. Definitely cold-hearted.

And it proves something I’ve suspected for a long time – I really do think I’m a hard-hearted person and that realization bothers me on so many levels.

We will always remember Edith for her kindness and willingness to care for children. She was amazing with kids. I’ll never forget how she stepped up and offered to watch Dude when he was a baby so I could continue working. She was so good with him. Dude came home on a monitor (he was a preemie and had sleep apnea, a condition quite common to premature babies) and though others were nervous having to deal with his special needs, she never batted an eye. In fact, she always had a full report for me whenever I picked him up.

Fed him at 10:10, 1:30 and 4:20.
Pooped three times – all normal stools.
Slept three hours
Monitor went off once, false alarm.

And so on.

I used to get a little annoyed at her efficiency, but I always appreciated her efforts and it made me feel like I hadn’t missed so much of his day and it eased my guilt of being away from him just a bit more.

I ended up quitting my job when Dude was about nine months old because Edith’s health wasn’t the greatest and putting my son into daycare simply wasn’t an option.

As a result of Edith watching Dude, they developed a special bond and she always had a soft spot for Dude from that point on. In addition, Edith and I would have long talks whenever I picked Dude up from work and I felt like we had also developed a special relationship.

She was a great woman.

Rest in peace, beautiful Nanny. We will see you soon.