Sole Surviving Son

Last Friday, I went to a funeral service for my sister's neighbor, Jim. I definitely went more to support Mary and Mike (who was doing the service), but since I lived with Mary in that house before she got married, I had also been neighbors with Jim and his wife (also a Mary) for 2 1/2 years. Jim and Mary are pretty involved with Mary, Mike and the kids, so I've seen them both many times since moving out, since I'm at Mary's a lot. Jim was young, only 62, and his death was sudden. His widow, Mary, has been leaning on Mary and Mike a lot for support and Mary and Mike have really been able to show love to this woman.

Anyway, let me get to my point. When Mike was giving a sketch of Jim's life, he mentioned how both Jim and his brother had served in the Vietnam War. His brother was killed in the line of duty, so Jim was honorably discharged as the sole surviving son. For some reason, that really struck me.

I mean, I've seen Saving Private Ryan, so I guess the knowledge of that practice was somewhere in the back of my mind. But here was a real life example of the tradition and you know what? It's a good one. Think what you will of the military - sending home a son from battle because his brother(s) has been killed is the right and noble thing to do, and I'm glad our country does it. Cheesy as it may sound, I was proud to be an American.

They Called Our Number

Our church has this great system of alerting parents when their children need them. When you drop off a kid in the Sunday school room, you get a number and then there is a board in our sanctuaary that lights up with your number if your child needs you. This past Sunday, they called our number. We've only been called out once before, when they couldn't get Ruthie to go to sleep and she was fussing. I went that time, rocked and snuggled her and then put her down with her pacifier, and thankfully, she went to sleep.

This Sunday when they called our number, it was before service had even started. What could already be wrong? So Ian headed back to her room, to see what was up. When he got there, he was promptly informed that she was being moved out of the newborn class and into the crawlers. Apparently, our church has the policy that if your baby crawls off the play-mat that is in the center of the newborn room, then they get promoted. And they take that policy seriously, because then and there Ian had to take her to the crawler room.

She looked so little to be going to that room but she seemed just fine with the change. It felt very abrupt for me - I didn't even have a chance to hum to her Pomp and Circumstance! But I guess that's for the best; better save my weepy nostalgia for a real graduation. =)

Anyway, Ruthie is obviously making great strides in her crawling. I wouldn't say she officially does it yet, but she has lots of purposeful movement and can cross the room, just by crawling and scooting.

She's also been working on her sitting up, and as you can tell by this photo, she's quite proud of that, too.

Bum, buda-bum-bah-dum, ba, buda-bum buh..

Life with Ruthie

In no particular order, I give you: Life with Ruthie, the May Edition!

Here she is, "swimming" with her Sunukjian cousins at my parents' house on Memorial Day. She is screaming; not sure if that comes across in the photo. She really didn't like the cold water. Oh well. We'll try again in a big pool soon, when we can both go in there with her. Maybe she'll like that better.

We just got a bike trailer off Craig's list, and since we're first time parents (and one of us is named Ian McCurry), we got a helmet for Ruthie. Isn't that just about the cutest thing you've ever seen? Safety first, you know.

Here she is in the bike trailer. As you can probably see, she isn't wearing the helmet. We're introducing it slowly, and staying on non-busy streets in the meantime. =) Thankfully, we live very close to the LA Riverbed Trail, which is perfect for biking. Ian, Ruthie and I took a family ride this past Saturday and it was super fun.

On Memorial Day, before we went to my parents' house, we stopped by Ian's uncle's house, since Ian's grandfather was in town. Ruthie got to meet her Great Grandfather McCurry, which was very special.

One of the best things Ruthie is doing right now (and there are many) is open-mouthed kisses. She gives them, and gives them generously. She even moves her little tongue around. It is pretty awesome. Here's Ian getting a good, slobbery one.

I put Ruthie in shoes for the first time, not too long ago. They came out of a box from my oldest niece, Sophie. She's almost 12 now, but somehow the shoes are in amazing condition. And Ruthie was very interested in them.

Here she is, standing up in the shoes. How is it something as simple as shoes ages a child? She looks so big and grown up in these!!

One of Ruthie's favorite pastimes is "reading." As you can see from the papertrail around her, she's a very aggressive magazine reader. Be sure you're finished reading it before you let her borrow it. =)

This was actually the first picture we took of her in her swimsuit. It's a super cute little two piece.

We are really looking forward to summer and taking her to Mexico, the pool and Huntington Beach. Hurry up, summer!

Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected

I've posted here before about a blog I follow, called Enjoying the Small Things. The author, Kelle Hampton, just released a book called Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, about the first year of her baby's life, a baby that was born with un-diagnosed Down Syndrome.

It is beautiful, well-written and stirring. In fact, I have been moved to tears several times. And I'm talking tears. For the past two days that I've been reading it, I have struggled to figure out why the book is touching me so much. Yes, hearing other people's pain is hard and I can be a sympathy crier, but it seems more than that. She has a section in which she talks about reading on the Internet late one night and coming across a You Tube video of a girl with Down Syndrome singing and in the comments, people are making fun of her. Oh, man, that sent me to the Kleenex box in a hurry. Or the story of her husband searching in the garage, tears in his eyes, looking for a heater for their baby's first bath. Grief strikes everyone differently.

I don't really have an answer, and as most of you know, I wouldn't  consider myself a very sensitive person, so my own response to this has startled me. But I think it's that motherhood is changing me. I am softer now, my heart more like butter. When sad or hard things happen to babies, it's almost more than I can bear.

Don't even get me started on my baby. When even the tiniest thing happens to Ruthie, I almost go to pieces. She'll scratch herself and I get so sad. One day, I let my mind wander too far into the future and I imagined her at school, sitting alone at lunch. Geeze, I almost had to get in the shower to calm down. I used to feel silly for having this sort of response, knowing I was over-reacting. But when I read these words in Kelle's book today, it made total sense:

"It is a rite of passage not just for special needs, but for motherhood - to worry, to cry, to go to the awful place of 'what would I do IF?' We ache when they ache, and we writhe with distress at the thought that they will, at some point in life, be hurt. And they will. Our children will hurt, many times along our journey, and there's nothing we can do about it but love them and hold them and whisper in their ears, 'Oh, baby, Mama's here.'"

I was reading the book last night while Ian was doing the dishes and he could tell I was getting worked up, crying and sniffling. He asked me if I was alright and I started a conversation about what we do if it were us. It's funny, because saying it out loud almost makes it feel like it's going to happen (which I know is ridiculous - God is in control and has good things, whatever that looks like, ordained for our family). But as I was talking with Ian on the couch, I wondered how we would handle it if our next baby was born with Down Syndrome. It's not that uncommon and the more children we have, the older I'll be and the more likely it will become. I said something to him last night about how perfect and amazing the 14 babies in my family are and how statistically, it's likely something would happen and since we're one of the last families having babies, it will probably be us. Again, ridiculous. Why do we think things like that?

But the truth is, even if something unexpected were to happen to us, we would be okay. Ian and I both said that last night - we would be okay.

A family at our church recently had a baby that was born stillborn, with no signs the days before that anything was amiss (if one of my pregnant friends is reading this, I am so sorry, because I remember very well how every little thing would freak me out). I was talking with Sarah about it, both remarking about how tragic it is and how hard it must be for the parents and how we could never carry on if that happened to us. But you know what? People do carry on. God brings healing and time and friends and family make you whole again. Scarred, but whole again. It's hard to imagine, but I've seen it in people who have dealt with severe grief. You do get better, you are able to feel happy again, not everything makes you sad.

Anyway, I don't even know where I'm going with this post, but I do know that when Ruthie wakes up from her nap, I am going to hug her, smell her sweet skin and kiss her all over her face. What a gift, that girl. Thank you, Lord!

One foot, eleven inches

That's how tall Ruthie is. I am filling out the application online for her to get a passport (so we can take her to Mexico this summer) and it just struck me as funny, as I filled in that field. She's 1 foot, 11 inches. They always do babies' height in all inches and now I see why. The doctor's would always be cracking up.

Ruthie is Learning To Crawl

I'm not just saying that because I'm a new parent who thinks her baby is the cutest and the best (though I do think that). She really is! It's incredible, watching her learn about her knees and hands and scooting. I know she may have a ways to go yet before she is officially crawling, but she is working very hard at it. (Even the nursery workers at church said she was close, so there's proof for you!)

Almost every time we set her down now, she gets up on her knees and rocks back and forth, or scoots forward (or backward). I am in awe of seeing how she develops and could truly sit around and watch her for hours. She even let me take some video of her doing it and she looks so cute!

Ah, better stop here before you're all throwing up in your mouths and vowing never to return to this biased, baby-absorbed blog. =)

Personality or Problem?

I've been thinking. (A dangerous pastime, I know.)* I have sensed in my spirit in the last few weeks the call for adventure. I love adventure. Of the two of us, I am almost always the one suggesting a trip, an outing, a stay at Huntington, etc. So when I heard the news that my cousin is getting married in North Carolina at the end of the summer, I thought, "Great! We've never been to North Carolina!" Obviously, since Ian's a teacher, time off during the summer isn't an issue for us, and we have just recently accrued enough points on our JetBlue credit card for a two free flights. In my mind, we were set!

So I excitedly broached the subject with Ian, who, Lord love him, was the more practical and realistic one, mentioning the five hour flight - twice in the span of a few days. He said he didn't think we were ready to take Ruthie on a plane for that long.

I was disappointed, but willing to let it go, since I trust Ian's leadership for our family. But right away, I was planning another adventure. (Mind you, we are already going to Mexico for a week in July with my family and to our place in Huntington in August with just our little McCurry family.) We had always talked of wanting to go to San Francisco, since the two of us have never been there together. Short flight, right? And Ian has an uncle who lives in SF, so maybe we could stay with him. If not, my former co-worker, who now works at the Queen Mary, said he could get me a friends and family rate for their sister hotel in Union Square. Perfect!

So Ian and I talked about that option, and I am happy to report he is open to discussion.

But the process did get me thinking. Is it a good thing that I long for adventure? Is it a natural part of my personality, a positive thing even, since it creates good memories for my family? Or is it a sign of being too much of a consumer, always looking for the next best thing, always trying to drum up excitement? Or could it be something (in my mind) even more alarming - the desire to be interesting, to have stories to tell, something to talk about? Now that I'm a stay at home mom, I go less places, do less interesting things. And on the whole, that's okay. Actually, it's more than okay, because I LOVE being home with Ruthie. But I still long for adventure and it's got me thinking about whether that's just my personality or if it's a problem in my spirit, something I need to examine as I seek to be content with the simplicity and humility of my life. No answers yet, just questions. But good ones, I think.

*Ten points for anyone who knows that song lyric reference.