Three Years in the Making

This was a moment three years in the making.

This was a moment I did not request. Sunny herself decided her bangs had to go. She also decided she would go first at Jill's salon. For about a year, she's been terrified of having her bangs trimmed (I tried a few times), so for her to up and decide that not only was Jill going to trim her bangs, but she was also going to be the first of us three customers? That was a moment for the camera (and for an envelope to put the hair trimmings in, of course...Jill had one at the ready!).

Sunny leapt into the chair, grinned while getting her "gown" on, and then turned into an utterly serious rock.

Of course, she couldn't actually stop talking for too long. Here she's telling Jill that she (Jill) is missing her ponytail. Apparently the last time we were there for Miss Mouse and I to have trims, Jill had a ponytail in. Silly Jill! Didn't she know that meant she always needed to have one?! Teehee.
Back to the serious business at hand.

One would think she may have been thrilled to have an unobstructed view of the world. I think she was, but she's incredibly pensive and thoughtful (though talkative) like her big sis. I think she was also a little bit afraid I was going to have Jill cut the back of her hair, too.

Now that she's sure no one is going to trim her "tail", which is what she calls the back of her hair, she can relax and enjoy the two French braids Jill put in for her. She was so proud of her haircut! She kept saying "I wook wike Auntie Wahwah (I look like Auntie Laura)" and "Don't I wook gwown-up (don't I look grown up?)?!" In all truth, she looks just like me in pictures we have of me at that age, but, hey, if she wants to look like Auntie Laura, I'm not going to argue!

Butterfly Ball, II

She waited for this evening for nearly a year. Every month or so, I'd get the question, "When is the Daddy/daughter dance?" and would have to tell her it was not for a long time. The past week or so has been sparking with excitement as I've been able to tell her, "Not very long now, Honey!". She woke up singing this morning, knowing today was her day with Daddy. It's been a long week of sharing him with so many others who need him, but tonight....tonight was her time to share him with no one.

This was her night to be his princess, and somehow I don't doubt that in years to come, she'll look back and identify with these words.....

"There's nothing that I'd rather do than to sit around and talk to you,

Reminisce about a simpler time

The music that we made was simple, but it stayed

In my memory and on my mind.

Dancin' on Daddy's shoes,

Dancin' all around the room,

Rollin' the rug up, and kickin' our heels up,

Dancin' away the blues

Sister would clap along, everyone would sing along,

Playin' homemade music, and dancin' on Daddy's shoes.

There's something about this musty room that makes me reel, makes me want to swoon,

That strange perfume is one of a kind,

The rhythm takes me back,

When I hear that razzmatazz, there's no nicer feeling I can find

Dancin' on Daddy's shoes,

Memories you'll never lose

Dancin' away the blues,

Sentimental memories,

Dancin' on Daddy's shoes

Dancin' on Daddy's shoes...." --Leon Redbone

To flesh out the evening a bit, we started primping Miss Mouse around 4 p.m. She was ready and raring to go by 5:30 when we left. Nails were painted; stickers applied to the nails; new sandals were being properly broken in, which meant hearing, "Oh, Mommy! My sandals got dirt in them!"; hair was fixed; new sweater, hand sanitizer, and mini-rabbit-purse were all packed; dance tickets were secured; car seat was transferred to Daddy's car; and Sunny had been cheered by "new" boots (she announced to our neighbors that the boots were "new from the basement!"....) and the promise of frozen yogurt with Mommy after Miss Mouse and Daddy's grand march.

If you take a look here (I'm having trouble with my linking ability) http://www.toomeytales.blogspot.com/2011/04/dancing-with-cinderella.html, you'll see Miss Mouse's expression during the grand march didn't change much from last year. She told me this year she "didn't care too much for the waiting part at the beginning" when they were waiting in line for the grand march. Why? Because two sisters in line in front of her were fighting, and their daddy couldn't get them to stop. She liked being introduced by Mike just fine in front of the crowd, but she was pretty upset about those two sisters!

Upon their return home, which was, as last year, very early, I got to hear all about the splendid food and desserts, the music, how she danced like a "grown-n-up", and how she got not only a glow-in-the-dark bracelet and necklace, but also the fancy mask shown above. Honestly, it was sort of spooky when I let her in the door and saw her wearing it. The silly mask definitely put off Sunny's bedtime by a good 20 minutes due to her shrieks of laughter. It didn't help that poor Miss Mouse was talking at the top of her lungs....I whispered quietly at one point, "Is it hard to hear me when I talk quietly?" to which she shouted, "Huh? Oh, yeah!". I guess the music they enjoyed was fairly loud tonight!

Commentary from Miss Mouse on the evening, heard by either me or Mike:

"This was a beautiful evening to go out, Daddy!" - he says this line was delivered much like a teenager girl

"I will never, ever forget this night. I don't think I will. I don't think so."

"Why is Daddy taking so long to get ready? Oh, I suppose he is going to look fantastic. It takes a lot of work to look fantastic." This after we spent an hour primping her, so she knew her statement to be true!

"There was even music while we were eating!"

"When I was in the bathroom, I could not find the soap. I asked a bigger girl, and she helped me find the soap and get my bracelet off. I thought I should take off my bracelet so that it didn't get ruined. I did not want to get a bracelet from Grammy and Grandpa Bob ruined at the Daddy/daughter dance!" ---I can almost guarantee I would not have thought of that at five years old.....

"Daddy let me try to get my food by myself. It didn't work so well, so he started to help me. I didn't get mad at him, though, because there was kind of a mess, and I didn't think I should keep making a bigger mess. So I was happy he helped me." --What I love is that she has no shame in this statement; it's all factual. She tried; it didn't work; she'll accept help and then try again (soon)!

Laura (my sister) and my Dad danced to the song that I wrote out above at her wedding. Though the dances Mike has taken Miss Mouse to haven't involved live music (as did the dancing my Dad and I often did), she's storing up some great memories of how important she is to her Daddy.

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection" - Sigmund Freud

El Salvador

Last week at this time, Mike was miles and miles away from his biological family here. He was still in the "Americas", but he had left the Northern continent.

We (our church) has partnered in a Church-to-Church relationship through Compassion International with a congregation in a suburb (slum?) of San Salvador, El Salvador. Last week's trip for Mike was the beginning of what promises to be an amazing relationship for both congregations - Hope's and Koinonia's.

An added treat for our family was that he was able to meet both our newly sponsored Herson, who is from the Child Development Center run by the Koinonia Congregation (Compassion International's Child Development Centers - schools - are always run through the local churches and staffed by locals) and our little Keily, who I've been a correspondent sponsor for since August (that means that her financial sponsor cannot or does not want to have a corresponding relationship with her - it could be that she's sponsored by a corporation or some organization that cannot really form the relationship aspect of sponsorship with her.....so that gets to be our treat!)! Keily does not attend Koinonia's Center (she attends one about 2.8 miles away), but Compassion made sure she and her Mom were transported to meet Mike and spend time getting to know him. Very, very cool! Through the mail, we cannot send "real gifts" to our sponsored children; everything we send has to be flat and fit in an 8X11 envelope. Books, clothes, etc. cannot be sent even if they can be flattened because it would just waste far too much of Compassion's money (and they are very, VERY guarded with making sure their finances go to finance the projects they are meant for!) paying customs' officials and then probably ending up having their couriers mugged/robbed anyway. It's seriously difficult for me to think of someone here attacking the mailman to steal some little girls' bracelets or a children's book. Anyway, because Mike was actually visiting these children, we were able to send gifts with him for them. The girls and I had so much fun picking out what to send each child!

This first picture has been turned black-and-white for the protection of your eyesight. Not only is my hubby able to run 1/2 marathons, successfully hunt large (sometimes omnivorous) animals, co-author published Bible studies....He also glows. Really, truly. See for yourself in the unedited version that I've included after this one.

Are you ready for it? Maybe you should get some sunglasses first. Ready? Okay, here we go!

In all seriousness, I love that picture of Mike with Herson. Herson lives with his Mom and his Grandma; there is no Daddy around. I can hardly stop looking at that little guy - he'll be eight this month - cuddled up to my girls' Daddy.

Herson, Mike found, is a small-group leader for his church. Yep. Mike said that anytime he hears someone say, "Oh, a small group leader? I could never do that", he's going to whip out a picture of little Herson and say, "Really? He can!". When Mike told me about Herson's leadership, as a seven-year-old, I was so proud of the little guy! The next thought that struck me, though, was incredible humility - that we are able to be his sponsors. I have a feeling we can and will learn just as much, if not more, from him than he from us.
Mike told me that he looooooved the bubbles. I'm also told they had a great time with the soccer ball we sent, though they did almost hit one of the chickens with it, which I'm sure would have thrilled his poor grandmother!!!

The gal on the right of the picture is their translator. I got to watch a video of her explaining why she loves her job with Compassion. She and a couple others gave impromptu monologues on it when Mike asked them to, and it's heartwarming to see them express their excitement and love for their work and for these children and families, especially as they are doing it in their second language.

I can ask where the bathroom is in Spanish. Ahem.


Herson and Cornelius. Mike told me that Herson is one of the more "well-off" children who attend the school. If you notice in the picture with the bubbles, his house has concrete walls - real walls. It also has a real floor. The doorways between the two rooms are made of sheets, but having real walls and a real floor is a big deal. His mom has a job sewing clothes for a company that contracts with The Gap; her daily quota of sewn garments boggled my mind. I'm still not sure Mike must not have misheard.....Suffice it to say, it's a lot, and I know some good seamstresses. I don't know anyone who could make that quota. But she has money each month that can go to the rent of their apartment-type house, and they have the couple of chickens.

Mike told me their house is roughly the size of our kitchen and living room. I can't give you exact dimensions on that, but our entire house is 1002 sq. ft., and most of that is bedroom space (they definitely squished our kitchen to get our bedroom space). I'm not sure how others feel about that, but it's been incredibly humbling to me to think that a nice apartment - the kind many of Herson's neighbors wish they could have - is the size of my tiny little kitchen and living room. I surely appreciated, as I put away a kitchen-full of groceries yesterday and washed up all the fruit and veggies, the running water I flipped on, the space I had in the basement for the extra groceries....Appreciate, rather than expect more and chafe over what I don't have....that's been the lesson for me over and over and over again in the past years and months I've been involved with Compassion.

*Note: I am not saying that Herson's family is truly well-off, that he doesn't need to be in the Child Development Center he attends, or that he does not live in poverty. Compassion does not allow children in their centers whose families are well-off enough to not need those centers. What I am saying is that it amazes me how little one can have in a developing country and be considered "better off" than others in that same area. Herson lives in poverty, lives a difficult life, goes without many, MANY things we feel are our "rights", and yet, because he has an apartment with cement walls and a floor, he is better off than the kids down the street whose walls are held up with sticks. It amazes me.

As I mentioned, Mike was also able to meet Keily and her mom. I'm told it took quite some time to get to the point of this picture. Poor little Keily (pronounced Kay-lee....we'd been saying it wrong!) was so nervous about meeting Mike that she burst into tears at first.

He kept telling her and her mom through the interpreter that he knew all about little girls who get nervous because he had two of them back at home. I knew he'd be good with her because of how good he is with his own two little sometimes-nervous girls. This man who hunts those large animals can also play dolls like nobody's business.

Keily's mom with the bag of gifts we sent. I love this picture of her because she looks so proud of her little girl and so hopeful. Her smile, in my opinion, is as bright as that sunshine.

I love this picture of Keily because she has warmed up to Mike by this point and has sort of an "I'm thinking about this" look on her face similar to one Sunny often gets. Mike said she did remind him an awful lot of Sunny.

She's about Sunny's size, too, though she's over a year older. You can see that she is slightly bigger, thank goodness, than the doll we chose to send her.

And this picture, too, just melts my heart. She had to have been sweltering in that fancy little dress, but I know she was wearing it because it is her best outfit for such an important day as meeting her sponsor (at this age, she would only know of Mike and I as her "sponsors"....as she gets older Compassion will explain our relationship). I just think she looks so huggable and lovable, and I'm so honored that we get to be her correspondent sponsors! She has five older siblings, from what I understand, and it's likely that none of them were sponsored children. She, a four-year-old, holds the hope for this family to be lifted out of poverty. To have any part in that is just an amazing gift for us.

Thinkin' Hard

Our little Sunny has been thinking hard lately.

It's my fault. After finding small toys in her mouth four times in two days, I went a little hard core on the "talking to". We were both in tears by the time I was done, and, though I felt a little guilty at the time, I'm thinking it was for the best in the long run.

We talked about choking, not breathing, death, visiting her grave at a cemetery....Like I said, I was pretty hard core on it by this time. This toy-in-the-mouth issue's been going on a long time, and I just dissolved over these last episodes.

It's hard to get Sunny to be serious. That's one of the things I love about her. It's also one of the things that makes us have to think so incredibly hard as we're parenting her!

She's a cheery little thing, and when embarrassed or sad or confused or uncertain, she'll often just get cheerier and goofier.

Exhibit A: My Winter Chipmunk
Aaaahhh.....There's our relaxed Sunny.

Anyway, I got confirmation last night that what I had said last week had actually sunk in. You see, we had a sump pump issue. Of course it occurred during the last two hours of Daddy's trip home from El Salvador.

Thankfully, our neighbor was home and is not afraid of water spouts....in basements. Nor is he inexperienced with such occurrences, which also served to our advantage. No one could convince me that it is easy to find neighbors like we have. While Ken was helping disconnect the outside hose from the sump pump, I ran to trip the pump....and was deluged with water spouting at me from said pump. Up the stairs I ran again, this time shouting, "Help, Ken! Help!". With no hesitation, other than to perhaps question the sanity of his own screaming neighbor, he followed me down to the sump pump room and fixed what was wrong (a clamp had blown off allowing water to escape....all.over.the. spare.bedroom.). Then he came over and sucked it all up in a shop-vac. In my defense, I did use our furniture movers to pull a cabinet and a large desk out of the way. Other than that, I was pretty much superfluous in the whole ordeal.

The "but" comes in that we needed to leave the door to the sump pump room open for the floor to dry out. Now, soon after we moved here, I had my Dad install a lock on that door way high up, just barely low enough for me to reach. It scares me to pieces to think of the girls opening that room and drowning in a hole full of water. Sooooo....now the room is hanging open, and we have a five-year-old who can open door to the basement despite (or perhaps with the assistance of!) the child lock on it. In my mind, that necessitated another discussion with the Mice.

I explained that the pump room is open for awhile, that we are not to go in the basement, that if they were to go in the basement, they could fall in the hole and drown. Die. Two sets of huge eyes stared at me. Two heads nodded in understanding.

Two hours later, Miss Mouse wanted to see how the fan was working on drying out the floor.

Sure, I said. We can go down and look.

Sunny went ballistic. "Noooo! You can't go down there (You tan't dough down dair!)! You will die!". Ahem. Apparently my lecturing has been taken to heart.

I felt a little guilty. I don't want to create overly-anxious kids, just ones that are respectful, aware, and alert of possible dangers instead of oblivious to them. We all went together to look at the drying process, and I have my fingers crossed that this bodes well for Sunny's small-toy issues (and peas-in-the-nose propensities, as well, though I don't get quite as worked up about those!). In the meantime, the toys are up, and the basement door is as secure as possible.

Because this is one superior goofball!!!

Three

We recently added a three-year-old to our household. She was so, so excited to be "big"!

Sunny did get two of those candles out on her own. She "blew really hard" and got the third one out, too, though I may or may not have added a little wind to the endeavor.

Our birthday girl with her pink butterfly cake. Unfortunately, I forgot that Sunny doesn't care for sweets if they aren't chocolate. Oops. Poor thing took one bite of the cake, looked at me with tears in her eyes, and said, "But Mommy, I don't wike it!". She had frozen yogurt instead. Thankfully she likes all flavors of that since all I had in the freezer was vanilla!
This is her expression where I think she looks so much like my Grandma and her family. It always makes me smile.

Sunny has wanted a robe in the worst way for months. It was so great that Miss Mouse and Daddy found this one at the mall so that she can have the best of both worlds - a robe that isn't overly-warm! All winter I've had trouble keeping pants on this child because she gets so hot (and after our new oven gift arrived, we no longer have an 80+ degree house; it's stayed at 70 all winter, telling me that Sunny's thermostat is just set "hot"), so I couldn't see getting her a warm, fluffy, long-sleeved robe like the one Miss Mouse curls up in. After doing some research online, I found a store that had these lighter robes; what a relief for Daddy and Miss Mouse to find that the store had them in stock (especially since they were shopping on Sunny's birthDAY.....they HAD to come home with something!). Sunny also got a rainbow-colored pair of goggles from her big sister.

For Sunny's birthday dinner, she wanted to go to Ruby Tuesday's. She loves their salad bar. *Yes, we're raising odd children. Yes, we know most kids want to go to Space Aliens or Chucky Cheese. And, we're so totally okay with it!* Anyway, by the time we got down there, she was asleep in the car. She's struggling to give up her naps, which I'd rather have her keep, and car rides are just too much for her to fight off sleep. I carried her in; we got settled at our table; the poor gal slept through half of her birthday meal. I tried flicking water at her nose; I tried standing her up by the table (while still holding onto her, of course); Daddy suggested shoving her hand in cold water (this was quickly vetoed by myself and Miss Mouse when Miss Mouse was told what could happen to her poor sister....good thing Daddy wasn't serious in the first place!). Nothing worked to wake her up, so she and I ate our dinners after Daddy ate his. Miss Mouse, true to form, was still munching even after Sunny and I had finished. I think we were sort of irritating to the waitress, having taken so long, but it was Sunny's birthday meal! It turned out to be really fun, but there were a few moments where we wondered if we'd just have to box up her hamburger and skip the salad bar for Sleeping Beauty!

This three-year-old is such a blessing to us. She's so sweet, kind, sensitive, caring.....yet she also has a funky sense of humor, knows how to be the "irritating" little sister already, acts out by being even goofier than usual, thrives on attention and will get it however she can, and has a terrible habit of putting small toys in her mouth! Because of these more, hmmm, "wild" habits, I think it's easy to overlook her sensitive side, but that has been showing through more and more lately in so many ways.

For example, we were out to eat a few weeks ago. In true Sunny style, she had fallen asleep on the way to the restaurant, so I held her through the first part of the meal. When she woke up, the adults' food was not at the table yet, so she ate her food on my lap. I had prepared the high chair complete with the sanitary high chair cover right next to me for her to move to when my food arrived. However, when my food came, there was no way she was going off my lap. First came the whine, then the little screams, then a nearly all-out tantrum. Off to the bathroom we ran to calm down. I could sense something was out of kilter with her. Once we got to the bathroom, and I got her calmed down, she was able to tell me that she did not WANT to sit in a HIGH CHAIR like a BABY! She was absolutely horrified to think of having to sit in a high chair. Here I thought she'd prefer it since she tumbled out of a chair during my own birthday meal in November (since then we've mainly sat at booths, but we were at a table this night in question). Apparently that was not her preference. So, out we went, took off the high chair cover, exchanged the high chair for a regular "big" chair, and had no more tears. Several times since that evening she has said, "Mommy thought I was a BABY at the westauwant!" She had been so terribly embarrassed. It came out like a naughty little fit, but when it came down to it, she was embarrassed. For me, it's a rather sweet memory and was a good reminder of what a sensitive little girl she is. Her personality is different than her sister's, but they share sweetness.

Welcome to the world of big girls, Sunny!