while snuggling down in bed with mimi as she read me a story (one of her favorites: books by graham base, she loves all the hidden pictures and clues he puts in his fabulously detailed illustrations and could literally sit and peruse his books for two hours straight), her soft voice and the warm room and the soft blankets and a bellyful of hot pho making it impossible to resist the gentle lull of sleep pulling at my lids. my last thought before i fell asleep was how i hope that when mimi looked back on her life as an adult, these would be some of the memories she would remember and that even if this was the only good thing that she could remember, how lucky she was.
when i think back on my childhood and the time i spent with my parents, very little stands out. my parents both worked so much and were often so stressed out and tired that i never really got much by way of attention from them. we never read together, never cuddled up together in bed to chat, as i did every night with mimi (or if not me, then rob, or a grandparent or aunt or sometimes a visiting friend, even! it's become such a routine that if she doesnt get time to read at bedtime she falls over prostrate with grief, sobbing her heart out). my only real memories of spending time with my parents were a couple of nights after dinner, i remember we all watch t.v. together. i remember watching the Muppet Show and Little House on the Prairie with them. it was only a few nights, but i remember those occasions because it was a time when i felt connected with my parents.
entering into the new year, i am full of these thoughts about how mimi will feel years from now. i want her to always have lots of happy memories of us all together. my goals for 2010 is to foster that to a greater degree. i dont mean with trips abroad and big celebrations, i mean every day little things, like having some family game time, finding time to do some small projects together for school or around the home, being there for all of her soccer games and piano and ballet recitals, giving her lots of love and care when she's sick, making sure that i am always available to her when she needs to talk about what's troubling her or whatever is on her mind...all those moments in our day to day that make up most of our days of the year. and if we can do this as a whole family, how much greater than impact would be on her life.
and dinner...when i was a kid, my parents, sisters, and i always ate dinner together, no t.v. on/no distractions, everyone present at the table at the same time. that was really important. sometimes mimi's after school activities force us to have a very early dinner without rob or rob's work schedule makes it hard for him to come home early enough to sit down and have dinner with us. and then when he does make it home, we havent been so good about making sure the t.v. is off and that we are all mentally present at the table. sometimes rob reads the mail or papers when he sits at the table, and sometimes i dont sit at the table at all. i know it's good for mimi to have this time to connect with us, to talk about our day together. and it's good for ozzy to learn to sit at the table for longer than 5 minutes, and not spend it chucking food on the floor, grabbing food from mimi's plate, and demanding to be held while i'm trying to eat. i hope in the new year we can atleast work in one or two nights when we can eat together as a family and talk (and ozzy can practice better table manners).
this past year, we said goodbye to our dear kaya on october 7th. though it's been three months, i still am saddened when i think about her. she was such a good sweet dog. and while i miss her, i am so thankful that we let her go before she suffered too terribly. so the sadness i feel is thinking about what a wonderful dog we lost and thankfully, not sadness over how much she suffered in the end. while most of her things have been packed up and out of the house, we held on to her dog collars. one i decided to give to my sister for one of her dogs and the other, a pink Coach collar from my very good friend sasha, i decided to turn it into a keychain keepsake. i love being able to carry this little reminder of her with me every day. we still have all of her dog tags too. i thought about adding one them to my keychain too.
guess this wouldnt be a new years post if i didnt mention things that stood out for me this past year. off the top of my head, these are things that come to mind (i hope i dont forget anything really really important!)
mimi started kindergarten, she lost her first tooth, she had to learn the hard lesson of losing a dear pet, she was a flower girl at cousin jean's wedding, she started formal piano lessons, played soccer on a team for the first time, learned to ski and ice skate, learned to swim underwater.
ozzy celebrated his 1st birthday (the korean dol) and this year embarked on MANY firsts. it's been a crazy year of uberfast growth from him. rob was just commenting on how he remembers how much we worked with mimi and it didnt feel like we worked at all with ozzy because he learned to do so many things so fast. even yesterday, he started stringing two word phrases! and this morning he surprises me with some new words that i didnt even know he knew how to say and then the words he's always known suddenly have taken on a bit more clarity. it's probably still not clear the casual passerby, but in my ears, i am hearing a greater ability to articulate the sounds. when 'truck' used to be guck! now it's "cwuck" and "train" he used to just say "choo chooooo!" now he says "chain." he's 'reading" 15 words nows (sight word recall) and he's not even 18 months old yet! the ability to remember dramatically improves by 18 months, so i'm thinking we're going to be in for a lot of crazy growth in the coming months.
what else this year? rob and i celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, rob and i both turned 38 y.o. this year (it just happened for me this past week), we finally got a minivan earlier in the year and then i drove it into a lamp post two weeks later. it's fine now and has not been in any other altercations with said lamp post or other inanimate objects. we decided to have no more kids and rob made it official. (although i have to admit that ozzy has been so much fun, that if i knew my next kid would be like him but with some of mimi's best traits, i would be hard pressed to not have another).
other resolutions i have are of the usual ilk: lose weight/be healthier, be "green," keep a neater home, make time to read more and spend more time with my friends, learn some korean, be nicer to rob, and master the rubik's cube. that last one is on the list because i have a feeling it may be the only thing i will actually follow thru on in 2010...but hey, i'm gonna be optimistic and believe i will meet ALL my goals!
when i think back on my childhood and the time i spent with my parents, very little stands out. my parents both worked so much and were often so stressed out and tired that i never really got much by way of attention from them. we never read together, never cuddled up together in bed to chat, as i did every night with mimi (or if not me, then rob, or a grandparent or aunt or sometimes a visiting friend, even! it's become such a routine that if she doesnt get time to read at bedtime she falls over prostrate with grief, sobbing her heart out). my only real memories of spending time with my parents were a couple of nights after dinner, i remember we all watch t.v. together. i remember watching the Muppet Show and Little House on the Prairie with them. it was only a few nights, but i remember those occasions because it was a time when i felt connected with my parents.
entering into the new year, i am full of these thoughts about how mimi will feel years from now. i want her to always have lots of happy memories of us all together. my goals for 2010 is to foster that to a greater degree. i dont mean with trips abroad and big celebrations, i mean every day little things, like having some family game time, finding time to do some small projects together for school or around the home, being there for all of her soccer games and piano and ballet recitals, giving her lots of love and care when she's sick, making sure that i am always available to her when she needs to talk about what's troubling her or whatever is on her mind...all those moments in our day to day that make up most of our days of the year. and if we can do this as a whole family, how much greater than impact would be on her life.
and dinner...when i was a kid, my parents, sisters, and i always ate dinner together, no t.v. on/no distractions, everyone present at the table at the same time. that was really important. sometimes mimi's after school activities force us to have a very early dinner without rob or rob's work schedule makes it hard for him to come home early enough to sit down and have dinner with us. and then when he does make it home, we havent been so good about making sure the t.v. is off and that we are all mentally present at the table. sometimes rob reads the mail or papers when he sits at the table, and sometimes i dont sit at the table at all. i know it's good for mimi to have this time to connect with us, to talk about our day together. and it's good for ozzy to learn to sit at the table for longer than 5 minutes, and not spend it chucking food on the floor, grabbing food from mimi's plate, and demanding to be held while i'm trying to eat. i hope in the new year we can atleast work in one or two nights when we can eat together as a family and talk (and ozzy can practice better table manners).
this past year, we said goodbye to our dear kaya on october 7th. though it's been three months, i still am saddened when i think about her. she was such a good sweet dog. and while i miss her, i am so thankful that we let her go before she suffered too terribly. so the sadness i feel is thinking about what a wonderful dog we lost and thankfully, not sadness over how much she suffered in the end. while most of her things have been packed up and out of the house, we held on to her dog collars. one i decided to give to my sister for one of her dogs and the other, a pink Coach collar from my very good friend sasha, i decided to turn it into a keychain keepsake. i love being able to carry this little reminder of her with me every day. we still have all of her dog tags too. i thought about adding one them to my keychain too.
guess this wouldnt be a new years post if i didnt mention things that stood out for me this past year. off the top of my head, these are things that come to mind (i hope i dont forget anything really really important!)
mimi started kindergarten, she lost her first tooth, she had to learn the hard lesson of losing a dear pet, she was a flower girl at cousin jean's wedding, she started formal piano lessons, played soccer on a team for the first time, learned to ski and ice skate, learned to swim underwater.
ozzy celebrated his 1st birthday (the korean dol) and this year embarked on MANY firsts. it's been a crazy year of uberfast growth from him. rob was just commenting on how he remembers how much we worked with mimi and it didnt feel like we worked at all with ozzy because he learned to do so many things so fast. even yesterday, he started stringing two word phrases! and this morning he surprises me with some new words that i didnt even know he knew how to say and then the words he's always known suddenly have taken on a bit more clarity. it's probably still not clear the casual passerby, but in my ears, i am hearing a greater ability to articulate the sounds. when 'truck' used to be guck! now it's "cwuck" and "train" he used to just say "choo chooooo!" now he says "chain." he's 'reading" 15 words nows (sight word recall) and he's not even 18 months old yet! the ability to remember dramatically improves by 18 months, so i'm thinking we're going to be in for a lot of crazy growth in the coming months.
what else this year? rob and i celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, rob and i both turned 38 y.o. this year (it just happened for me this past week), we finally got a minivan earlier in the year and then i drove it into a lamp post two weeks later. it's fine now and has not been in any other altercations with said lamp post or other inanimate objects. we decided to have no more kids and rob made it official. (although i have to admit that ozzy has been so much fun, that if i knew my next kid would be like him but with some of mimi's best traits, i would be hard pressed to not have another).
other resolutions i have are of the usual ilk: lose weight/be healthier, be "green," keep a neater home, make time to read more and spend more time with my friends, learn some korean, be nicer to rob, and master the rubik's cube. that last one is on the list because i have a feeling it may be the only thing i will actually follow thru on in 2010...but hey, i'm gonna be optimistic and believe i will meet ALL my goals!
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