tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15405456307646209152026-01-27T01:38:54.799-06:00A blog about what life is really like after all your dreams come true...Kathy at kissing the froghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891076797411265353noreply@blogger.comBlogger355125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1540545630764620915.post-29087089021340984232024-02-16T17:37:00.000-06:002024-02-16T17:37:42.296-06:00

   We sat on the floor and I dumped them all. Dumped all the Legos right in the middle of the floor. I’d wanted to get this job done for a long time. No one really plays with Legos anymore. Yet they don’t quite want to let them go. To be honest, neither do I. As I sifted through the spreading pile of plastic bricks and tiny figurines, I felt as if I were sifting through their

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 Joey has been gone for 13 years, and there are already details about him and his life and death that I cannot remember. I couldn't remember what we buried him in. Not a suit. A green shirt? Khaki pants? Hubby says sweatpants and no shoes due his bloated body. Remember, no one would see the bottom half of him anyway. For his recent crapiversary, I couldn't remember what his

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 Anyone who knows me knows that I hate conflict. Like I get sweaty, heart palpitations, a sick tummy, tears in my eyes, totally stressed at having to argue my point or stand up for myself at all.I would rather avoid conflict than plow through any uncomfortable discussion. But, unfortunately, as an adult - and especially as a parent - there are situations in which I simply have to

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I haven't written anything on this blog in almost six years. That seems like a long time. Maybe it is. shutterstock.comAfter six years I had to make the font bigger so I can see it. Other things have happened in six years, too.In six years, Hubby had to retire from his job due to a disability. Instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for himself, he thought of a clever way to

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Image from Morguefile One day about a week ago, we were driving in the car when I yelled, "Oh shoot!" Hubby pressed his imaginary passenger side brake and looked frantically from side to side expecting an oncoming disaster. "What is it?!" "We forgot to go to the cemetery on Memorial Day," I said forlornly. "Oh," he said, with a mixture of relief and sadness. It's been seven years since we

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photo by unsplash When you're a person who is grieving a loss, there are a lot of things you learn from that loss. You learn the whats and hows and whys and whens of your grief. You learn that everyone is grieving something or someone, and that grief shapes who we are and the choices we make. But when you're a person living with really deep grief - the kind that you keep in a box that you

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"Mom," a whisper comes through the darkness, "Mom, guess what?" "What?" I respond, knowing what is coming next. "You're my favorite." My five-year-old snuggles against me, moving deeper under his fuzzy blanket.  "You're MY favorite," I respond and hug him to me.  Soon I hear the sounds of his steady breathing and preschool snores, and I leave the room to cuddle with my "other

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I really hate what the world is becoming. I hate that social media is making it so much easier for people to bully other people. I hate that the original purpose for it - to connect and unite people - has been lost in a sea of emboldened vitriol. When did we come to accept that it was okay to openly laugh at and make fun of someone's life? Take their photos, their thoughts, their trust, and

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For Christmas 2008, Hubby thought it would be a good idea to buy two mini swimming frogs for Joey and Slim. I don't even remember their names (maybe Hopper was one), but they lived in a tiny tank in the middle of our kitchen table for two years. In an act of complete cruel irony, the smaller one that "belonged" to Joey (I'm thinking that was Hopper), died just four days before Joey did. It

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feature image sebastian/dreamstime.com I’ve been a mother for almost thirteen years. From the struggles to conceive to the battles to stay pregnant, from losing multiple pregnancies to raising multiples, and the agony of having to say goodbye to a child I’d only begun to know, I’m no stranger to the heartache that sprouts from a heart that was only intended to know pure love. Thirteen

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October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month. Bullying is something that we talk about a lot. We talk about it in schools, in neighborhoods, in our own homes, and particularly during the current election. We hear of children being mean to each other, and we immediately call it bullying. We hear of adults being harassed in the workplace, but is it really bullying? We hear the

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Muscles! It’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that your five-year-old child has an inoperable brain tumor when just one month earlier he was giving you a minute-by-minute summary of his Kindergarten Round-Up. It’s impossible to describe the feeling of sitting across from a pediatric doctor who tells you that your son is going to die when just two months earlier he was given a

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On the drive to school the first day, Slim looked at himself in the rear view mirror and adjusted his new glasses. "I look good. I really look like I'm in junior high." I smiled at him and continued to drive through the intersection toward school. In the drop off lane, he bolted out of the car faster than he ever had in the first seven years attending school. I barely had time to say, "Be

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I remember hearing that in Disney's sequel to the wildly popular Frozen, the character of Elsa will be gay. My immediate reaction was one of slight outrage. While I fully support gay rights, I wondered if we as parents are ready to have gay cartoon characters and be forced into that conversation with our children. Well, you know what? I think the answer is yes. As I was finding the above

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Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos You found a camp that you thought would be perfect for him. You hoped it would be perfect for him. After all, it's a subject he loves. After all, HE could be running the camp. So you took a deep breath and signed him up. You filled out all the paper work. Under the medical information section you wrote high-functioning autism and ADHD. You

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I am at the gym and ESPN is on the television in front of me. I see two commentators discussing last night's basketball game and the tussle between two highly-paid and famous players. I see video footage of one of the men taunting the other. He laughs about what he did and steps to the man who tells him to admit to it. He is not a hero. *     *     * I am away from the

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shutterstock.com At the boys' tennis lesson the other morning, I met a lovely couple: a grandma and grandpa who were staying with their grandsons and helping babysit for the summer. We talked throughout the lesson, and I really enjoyed the conversation with them. At one point they remarked on the size difference between Slim, my twelve-year-old, and Knox, my ten-year-old. Knox is a big boy

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morguefile.com Right after we pulled into the garage on the last day of school, twelve-year-old Slim ran across the street toward some girls who were playing outside. A few minutes later he came back into the house. “Why are you back inside, Slim?” I asked. “Oh, those girls saw me coming and ran into their house,” he shrugged, matter-of-factly. “I guess they couldn’t handle my

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There were a gazillion plants and flowers at Joey's funeral. Well maybe not a gazillion, but it seemed like it. There were so many that we let people take home what they wanted. For years, I heard from my dear friend Meagan about her "Joey plant" and how it was doing really well. Last fall, my mother-in-law gave me a plant. It was, for all intents and purposes, pretty much dead. Hubby gave the

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dreamstime.com Two weeks ago, I ran my first 5K race. Before the race, I was fully prepared to write a post called "I just finished my first race, but here's why I'll never be a runner." Even though I could run 3.1 miles on the treadmill and around the track at the gym, as of race day I hadn't run three consecutive miles outside. As a result, I was majorly panicking. The night before the

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ID 40416516 © Ampack | Dreamstime.com My friend talked me into running a 5K. I've always wanted to run a 5K. I can run three miles. I used to be a pretty good soccer player and ran all the time during games.  Honestly, though? I hate running. Like, I feel like it's the most boring thing I can think of doing and I'd rather be doing many other things. But,

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*This post contains affiliate links.  A few days before Christmas, we added a puppy to our family. After thinking about it and talking about it and looking at adorable picture after adorable picture for better than five years, we thought it was time. The photo that made us fall in love.  We've had Hannah, our darling Havanese-Poodle mix, in our family for almost three months now,

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photo by stockimages It was a totally harmless comment. We were at the zoo and Slim, my twelve-year-old with ASD, was super excited running from tank to tank at the aquarium talking very loudly. He is normally a very loud talker anyway. A mom walked by with her two daughters and said, "Oh my god that kid is loud. I thought you girls were loud, but that's loud!" She was in front of me long

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shutterstock/wavebreakmedia I have never felt as much love and support as when Joey was diagnosed with cancer. People came out of the woodwork to send support, prayers, gifts, meals, and love. Entire communities came together  - the dental community in which my husband works, the school and church communities we attend, friends of our siblings and parents, our college and high school

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It has happened to all of us: we forget to check the pockets before we wash clothes. It happened to me with a crayon, and the waxy stuff came off pretty easily with just a little elbow grease. This time it was an ink pen, tossed casually into Hubby's pants pocket and forgotten over the course of his busy day. And in my haste - between substitute teaching three days that week, making dinner

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