Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy came home as a scrawny, two pound little kitten. He was stinky, on antibiotics, and full of worms. But he was spunky. The other kitten we were looking at was fluffy white with a black goatee, and very concerned with hygiene. While he sat grooming, Darcy was frantically chasing the mouse on a stick and finally catching it, he backed away with it in his mouth, growling like some sort of feral weirdo. (Which probably wasn't too far from the truth as the only info the humane society had was that his litter was found in a barn). We thought maybe he displayed enough spirit to 1) be a good mouser and 2) stand up to our German shepherd with an overly strong prey drive.

The first two days he cried non stop. Chloe and I carried him around in a sling during the day, and he slept on her head at night, as close to her breath as he could get. I tried to ignore him so that he would love someone else best.

Right away, he set about taming Roscoe and Ella (our border collie mix) while I tried to convince the dogs that he was not food. He should have been afraid of Roscoe (who had killed and eaten two previous bunnies, and chased off our other attempt at a cat) but he wasn't. Roscoe wasn't quite sure what to do with the scrawny thing darting under his legs, swiping his nose with a set of claws, and hanging off the ruff of his neck, biting viciously (although ineffectively). The vet said she rarely saw such a confident kitten and Darcy proved it when he caught his first mouse. He took his prize to a corner and threatened to kill and eat Roscoe too when he came to investigate. Roscoe cautiously backpedaled away to a safe distance from the high pitched snarling emitting from our sweet little kitty.

At 9 months, Mr. D jumped off the couch and broke his femur. The bone slipped off the connecting ball in his hip. We sat in the little consulting room as the vet told us our options were a 4k surgery or euthanasia. I knew there was no way we could spend that kind of money on a cat. And as it turns out, the little guy had decided that I was his person. Apparently, Chris was thinking-Aww shoot, we're going to have to put him down, then he looked at my face and -Aww shoot, I'm going to have to pay for surgery.


That night, Darcy dragged himself on three legs to my bed and tried to jump up as usual, falling back on his injured leg and crying. So I slept on the floor with him so he would stop trying. And he finally slept, with his head in my hand, close enough so he could feel my breath, and purred. In the morning, he tried crawling after Chris to follow him to the shower, because that's what they always did. And then I knew I couldn't put him down. Because the price of a life, even a cat's life, can't be measured in dollars.

 My 6 year old nephew tried to give us his Christmas money to pay for the surgery and he had his entire class at church praying for Mr. D because they were learning that God can do anything. My tenderhearted kids were distraught. There was a lot riding on this little barn cat.

So yeah, we did the surgery. And although, we found a much cheaper option at the CSU vet hospital, if you had ever told me that we would pay for surgery for a cat, I would have laughed out loud. The orthopedic surgeons were certain that he was injured because he was neutered by the humane society too early, so his growth plates didn't close the way they were designed to. That means there is a possibility that he will injure his other leg. Mr. Darcy is recovering well, almost back to his normal self. He's still a fighter, tearing around the house with hardly a limp, sassing the dogs, and jumping onto our bed at night again. Right now, we are grateful for our happy ending.


 

Winter Gold

I took an early walk this morning before I began my string of commitments. I have been mesmerized by the gorgeous winter light lately. It arrives pinkish golden and changes hues throughout the day. I love winter because she bares her soul for you to see the bones of everything around you. Imperfections and scars are plainly visible, made more beautiful because underneath the snow, you know there is so much living happening.

The Flatirons

I'm waiting for the day the owners of this little farm come knocking on my door because they want to sell it to me. And I will say yes.



On a side note, I (heroically, in retrospect) volunteered to chaperone a group of orchestra students during their lunch at the mall as a stop on their "goodwill tour". Which was kind of ironic since I'm not sure that letting large numbers of preteens giddy from skipping school loose in the mall did much spreading of goodwill. 

I was approached by a disgruntled employee at Dick's Sporting Goods asking me if I was in charge. He asked us to quite playing on the escalators and to not let my group go back upstairs. I'm not sure why he was so cranky. Aidan was simply encouraging patrons to buy various items by pointing out  selling points.  You would think that would be helpful.






The escalators, I could understand. So I smiled sweetly while frantically rewinding in my mind to see if he had seen my dash up the elevators the wrong way. (I'm sure that I should be ashamed of that behavior. But in my defense, they didn't think I could/would do it, and I was mostly trying to stay within arms reach of two certain individuals whose behavior I was concerned about. )

I'm going back for another round tomorrow. The orchestra has two days of playing at area elementary schools with a stop in the middle at the mall for lunch. I will have to make sure that we avoid the stores we went in today. I ran into another mom who was asking if I had seen members of her group, she wasn't sure where they went. They were probably riding the escalators...

"An Update in Pictures" or "My Family is Weird"

I haven't been on this blog for a while, (I know, a common reoccurrence these days) so I'm going to give the cliff notes version of an update. The end of this year has found us in the amazing position of having 3 of my 6 siblings now living near us in Colorado. I'm still pinching myself because it seems too good to be true. It's a jump up and click your heels kind of feeling.

But let's scoot back and hit a few recent highlights of these last few months:



Aidan is becoming quite the cellist. He loves his cello and is on the brink of taking his music to a street corner to try and raise money for an electric cello. He also loves to express his individuality which is not always appreciated by his teachers. For Halloween he went to school as a protester in a shirt that said "I Protest Everything" and a sign with a variety of interchangeable protests: I am the 97.3546%...I protest Obamacare...I protest your greedy consumption of candy...I protest your pessimistic attitude (and the flip side, I protest your optimistic attitude.)...and so on.  When asked for a complete meal plan from his health teacher, he handed her recipes for roasted camel and elephant stew. (She was less amused than I was, but assured me in our little chat that she would never ever forget him as long as she lived.) He does, however, have some teachers that really get his creative bent. His LA teacher loved his enthusiastic end of term presentation about why we should eat road kill, and even baked me cookies as an end of year present. The gym teacher is a gruff, "I used to be in the navy and think I'm a drill sergeant and don't ask me any questions or I'll bite your head off sort of fellow". He and Aidan were best buddies. Not really, I made that part up.



This is Chloe at Aidan's concert. She really loves cello music, it makes her want to be weird. Chloe's teachers think that she is a perfect angel and the model student.  She is about a year away from getting her black belt, and is very justice oriented. Very. She has no problem stirring things up in the defense of anyone she loves. I had to talk her out of trying to take on the 6 foot dude who gave her brother a concussion in a soccer game.

 

For her 10th birthday, we took her to the salon for pink streaks in her hair. A lady who looked like the real live version of Barbie spent WAY TOO LONG quite a while giving her the cutest pale pink highlights.


making cake pops for the party

 

Valley Forge

We went to Philly for Thanksgiving to visit my brother's family who should move to Colorado but still hasn't yet.  They live in this gorgeous, wooded area that is dotted by horse farms and is minutes from Valley Forge, Yes, I'm aware that there is a flagpole sticking out of my head, that's just how patriotic I am.



Chloe's birthday was while we were in Pennsylvania and the ordered the cutest cake and took us all to the Speedway to celebrate. This was some serious go-karting. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that the reason I went so slow was because I had a defective kart and not because I was terrified.

Chloe being awesome

Merry Christmas eve with a cousins gift exchange. Getting all those kids to look at the camera was impossible, so why try?

The photo booth at Chloe's party

At this point, you may be wondering if we always look weird in photos, and the answer is: yep, pretty much.



Merry Christmas!



 

Aidan found the pickle which is a new family tradition. As you can see, he's thrilled about it.

 

Another tradition we have is to make sock creatures for the kids' stockings. This was Chris' first year to take the lead on that project and he did a bang up job making weird looking minions.

Well, I'm about tired of blogging now. Happy New Years and a toast to family, friends, happy memories, and more good things to come.

Paperwork and Fires

Last Friday was a crispy, cool, fall day. Just the perfect thing to entice me stay inside with a cup of coffee and a fire in stove. My wood stove is an instant happy place for me. It crackles and pops as it expands and contracts with the heat, creating a sensory experience reminiscent of fluffy socks and good books. I sat down with the huge pile of papers for our dossier, my favorite pen, and carefully read the instructions.

I love checklists.  Having a little box to put my finished mark in makes me happy. Kind of like those tests with the bubbles to fill in. I love those too.  Happily, my stack of instructions came with two sets of checklists so I can have twice the amount of fun.

After carefully reading the instructions about how this is an OFFICIAL document and no white out, corrections etc could be made, I very neatly started filling out the first page. And then proudly took a picture of my work.

That was the point when I realized that I had got my hubby's name wrong. Seriously. In tidy black handwriting, I had given him my maiden name. And while he was, no doubt, honored to officially become a Hewitt, I'm guessing the foreign government might be a bit less impressed with his name change.

Speaking of which, if you know who's flag this is, then you know where we are adopting from.

A Family That Flushes Together...

I became a little bit more of an urban hippie today. I bought a neti pot. Aidan has been sick with a cold, and often it seems to get stuck in his sinuses bringing a headache and vomiting. A couple of people recommended that I do a sinus flush. Can I just say, Gross? But hey, if it's going to help my little man, I'm all over it. So there I am at the checking out my options, and I couldn't help laughing at the advertising. Sorry for the poor quality pic, I was sneaking a pic with my iphone.

Look at all those happy faces! And there is a whole family nose flushing together with huge smiles on their faces!  I especially love the "Little Squirt to go". I'm going to have to get one for my purse, just in case.

I bought a cute little ceramic one that looks like a mini tea pot. It's teal. And made in the USA. The lady at the check out admired my cute little pot and told me that she found a nasal flush to be invigorating. Good to know.

Happy Tuesday, it might be time to buy your own little squirt to go...

Finally!

It's official now.  We finally have our home study approval.  I was going to be blogging about the whole process, but there was so much waiting involved, it didn't feel like I had anything to say. But that part at least is over. We went in today and signed and signed and signed. 

I was so nervous before our first home visit. I cleaned the house in a frenzy. I didn't know what she was going to be looking for so I prepared for an invasion of Martha Stewart type proportions.  At one point, when I was on my hands and knees with an arm stuck in the fridge, I wondered what the likelihood was that she was going to have an urge to pull out the lettuce drawer-but still, I was prepared. (Sadly, she didn't, and so the gleaming, white underside remained an unseen testament of our adoption worthy house.)

The whole process was partly fun. After all, I got to sit there and talk about how amazing my kids and husband were, definitely my favorite subjects. In fact, I think our social worker wanted to be adopted by us at the end, but that could have just been the sugar high from the chocolate chip cookies I was feeding her.

It was also partly invasive, uncomfortable, and definitely stressful. I'm mostly a private person and not the sort to give all the intimate details to the hairdresser. So having a fresh faced collegiate ask all sorts of personal questions while busily bullet pointing on her laptop was not my favorite thing. I would have rather she just looked behind the lettuce drawer.

Now on to the dossier which is a HUGE stack of papers that makes me want to cry just looking at it. Basically, I think that we have to find the originals of every scrap of paper detailing our lives and have it notarized. But this part is on me to gather and submit. Part of the reason that our home study took so long was that we had to wait on wheels to turn in our agency that were not turning. People left, and new people took their place...things got lost and had to be resubmitted...etc..etc.

Oh, I never mentioned which country we are adopting from. Next time then, because there is a wee story involved and I need go make a pumpkin pie.

Back to School Photos

It looks like we may have finally broken the back of our summer heat and Autumn is most assuredly making a welcome entrance. Our summer was spent resting, and playing, and hanging tight around the house with piles of books on the couch. My creative energy seemed sapped by the heat and the end of school drain on my mind- you know that part of the year when everything is on auto pilot waiting for the rescue of summer break, and all you can think of to make for lunches is PB&J? But now, the weather is cooling and the leaves are starting to change, and part of me is perking up and wanting to Create Something.

I have felt in a rut taking pictures and I confess that my camera has stayed in the closet more often than not this summer. But I signed up for a Photoshop Grunge course and I'm super excited. It's all about creating layers and art in a really unique way, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with some new avenues of photography.

Back to school photos: I let the kids pick something they wanted to express about themselves and then we came up with a location that fit with that. Aidan wanted his skateboard and Chloe wanted something to represent her artistic side, so we went with paintbrushes. We scouted around downtown Denver and found a lovely place with lots of funky graffiti.

The first day that we went I managed to forget my camera's memory card at home. That was brilliant. But on the sunny side, we found an awesome coffee shop, Crema, and drove back home properly fortified with an iced latte.

Aidan is in that camera shy stage where he avoids all attempts to take his picture. But this is where the beautiful thing about taking your own kids' photos comes in to play-I know exactly the sort of bribery to use...

This is the part of the story where we started saying "bacon covered squirrel!" because if there is anything that Roscoe can't resist, it's a bacon covered squirrel.

Aidan's easy: the price of a smile can be bought with the promise of bacon. And it helps to have a goofy sis behind me pulling out all the stops to make him laugh.

Chloe works for cupcakes. Sheesh, you'd think I never feed my kids meat or sugar...okay, well maybe that is kind of the truth.

The sign above the car read "Asshole's Garage" and informed us that trespassers would be shot. But since we weren't actually touching anything I figured we were safe enough. They are laughing because, according to Chloe, I was doing something weird. (Which if you ask my children, might be more commonplace than they would like.)