That La Kid

This year’s family calendar, as they say on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Theme Park, “is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction.”

A few of your cousins have been planning a trip to Walt Disney World for 6 years and this is the year we are finally going! (Come with us! Please!) I’ve designed this calendar to help us count down, and celebrate our adventure together.

There are some straightforward coloring pages, and a few activities that require your creativity as well. My apologies to the female Sadler Great-Greats, but it’s much easier to add a pony tail to Kyle and Logan characters than it is to undraw long hair! I built in space for femininity where I could. Look at these example sketches.

If you would like a calendar printed for you and shipped to your house, click the link below to send some chedda’ my way, $10 is about what it’ll set me back, and I’ll make it happen. (I also have Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay, Facebook Pay… all the Pays.”)

And if you’re thinking, “this calendar doesn’t apply to me! I’m not planning to go on their trip!” Well. I’ll tell you what, there’s one way to remedy that. 😉

Love you all! Can’t wait to see you again soon!

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I hurt somebody’s feelings on Facebook. And they think I’m a cyber bully. I don’t wanna be that person. So, I penned an email to them, but I may never hit send. It might just be one of those things that I had to get out of my system.

Backstory: They posted a Facebook Live video while operating an automobile. That’s it.

I wish that I had screenshot my response so that you’d have the full picture. It really wasn’t negative, because you attract more bees with honey than vinegar. (Does vinegar attract any bees?) But people interpret the things that we type with their own biases, and based on how they feel at the time. She was obviously feeling defensive.

I told her that it would be smart to go home and get on her wifi, as she had already indicated was her plan. Because I knew the stereotypical rebuttal would undoubtedly be, “I was using a hands-free device,” I quoted, and said that I was quoting, Ellen Degeneres’ line, “If you need both your hands for something, your brain should be in on it, too.” And I said, basically, “sorry, not sorry. I’m unapologetically rigid on this, as we all should be.”

(Side note, that is from a stand-up routine that my sister bought on dvd like a decade ago, why are we still having this conversation?! I just Googled it, the program is “Here and Now,” 2003! And she wasn’t referring to texting, she was referring to headset phones, which I think just bolsters my case. Ellen is specifically referencing a hands-free device!)

So, the person that I offended posted another live video, safely at home, condemning bullies. I reference that video a bunch in the email, so I hope you are roughly able to follow along without seeing the literal context. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, she says, and if you want to approach her with a concern, then fine, do that. It’s just THE WAY some of us went about it that bugs her. Because we didn’t disagree with her and maintain a sunshine and lollipops disposition, she’s taken issue.

But I mean, really, we’ve fostered this culture of, “agree with me or GTFO.” So, who really wants to hear a difference of opinion at all anyway? Let’s be honest.

I don’t know. I thought I was perfectly pleasant. Stern, serious. But not upset, not at all vicious. (I MEAN I CAN BE IF WE WANT TO GO THERE.) This is not a sunshine and lollipops topic. This is a GET OFF THE PHONE, YOU ARE DRIVING! topic. This is not merely a matter of differing opinions! She is literally risking lives to chit-chat on her way home from Starbucks!

Anyway.

Here’s my email.

So, here we go. Here’s my constructive argument since you took what I said about using one’s brain COMPLETELY out of context.

I’m absolutely aghast at your response to criticism over your driving while on Facebook. If you’re feeling defensive, I think that deserves a little bit of introspection. Why does it break your heart that people disagree with you? Why IS this a hot button topic?

It seems you’re not aware of how horrifyingly dangerous distractions like that are while driving. It’s not an opinion that it is dangerous, it’s a fact.

Texting and driving is 6 times more likely to get you in an accident than drunk driving.

You said that you totally understand the dangers in one sentence, but then the next you said that you wait for a red light to check comments, which indicates that you absolutely DO NOT GET IT.

You conveyed in the newest live that you ARE aware, and that you totally understand, “that people get killed and stuff like that.” Then Lord Almighty, why on earth would you do it?! Why are you waiting until someone you know personally is affected or killed to take a stance? (I’m not!)

The simple solution, really, rather than a rallying cry that “everyone is entitled to an opinion,” is to just admit the goof, apologize and not do it. You shouldn’t feel like a scolded child, shake it off and admit it wasn’t smart. You didn’t think about it before. Next time you will. That’s it. So simple.

For the record, there IS a difference between operating a palm sized computer while driving, even hands-free, and talking to your passenger.

It’s not a matter of your hands and eyes being on the wheel and road respectively. And as I see it, it’s not a keyboard only issue, or texting specific. Distracted driving is anything that takes your attention away from the road. You are driving a lethal weapon, and it deserves your complete focus and undivided attention. Your brain should be completely and fully committed to the operation of the 2 ton mass of steel hurdling down the road. It’s also not a matter of your opinion on what you feel is safe enough for YOU. You are physically sharing the road with me! YOU. ARE. PUTTING. MY. LIFE. IN. DANGER.

How stern is too stern? How harsh is too harsh? How do I contain myself when she’s literally putting my life on the line? She’s not alone on the road. Any one of us can and do make totally stupid mistakes while driving completely unencumbered! Why. Why add additional risk factors?

Anyway, I wasn’t being a bully. Being right doesn’t make me a bully! If I were being a bully, I would’ve said, “Not only does selfie broadcast FacebookLive-streaming while driving make you look like a stereotype attention-seeking millennial, and stereotype bad female driver (thanks for that), IT ALSO makes you look like a fucking idiot.”

Bruce did a really neat thing and we are super proud.

We bought a “stamp” for him to design himself, and he really did it. At the ripe ol’ age of 4, he designed his Mickey stamp. Daddy transferred the image onto the rubber block, and they cut it together. Mom rolled out some ink on one or two prints to show Bruce how it works, and then he took over and made 65 prints!

We only stopped because it was midnight! Bruce was giddy, it was a productive night!

And the art isn’t too shabby for 4!

If you’d like to own a piece of this magic, drop me an email at AwesomeWendyLa@gmail.com or, if you’re feeling generous, throw a little cheddar Bruce’s way.

The prints are 3.5″ x 5.5″, but I am putting them in mats that fit a 5″x7″ frame. Bruce is calling the shots on putting the mats and prints together. If you don’t want a randomly selected color mat, and would rather just have the print, lemme know!

As I lay here on my stomach, watching the Olympics, editing Monkey’s baby registry and feeling her somersaults, I can’t help but think about how much everything will change. How much it already has. We’re a family of four. This is real. This is really happening. Crazy. I’m one who doesn’t much care for change. I actually hate it. I like our 3 Musketeers team.  But, listen to old Rafiki, “Change is good.” I wanted to get pregnant so bad.  I tried so hard for this baby.  And this week, for the first time since I saw that blue line, I have a distinctly uncharacteristic lack of anxiety. It feels good. I like not being tied up in knots.

So, last night Bruce was running amok pushing his own kid-sized cart in the grocery store. I had already told him to stop being crazy. He is so sweet when he’s in trouble. He immediately recoils and says, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry ’bout that.” (And actually when we got home, he said, “I’m sorry I was acting crazy in the store.” OMG: consider my heart melted.) Anyway, instead of another stern scolding, I asked him if he was going to get his bananas or what. It was so crazy. He immediately shaped up. “Oh. Yeah!” I think I’m on to something with this doling out the responsibility stuff.

Bruce just went down for a nap in his new big boy bed. I really thought he would resent being kicked out of his room to make way for baby, but he’s handling it like a champ! He loves his big boy room! We are decorating it with a vintage airplane theme. I still have lots to clean up, and some artwork to hang. And the closet is still full of my American Girl furniture.  My poor little guy. He never did have a fully themed finished nursery. I’ve got to get better.

He’s big into Legos these days but still loves his trains. He’s been flipping through last year’s Thomas the Tank Engine catalog picking out birthday presents for himself. (Most of which I’ve added to his Amazon Wish List, by the way.)  I wonder if he likes playing with them as much as he likes shopping for them.  When he doesn’t clean up his trains and tracks, I threaten to give them to kids who don’t have any trains. He usually squeals, “nooooo!” and puts them away.  Today, thumbing through the catalog, he told me that maybe we’ll give these tracks to “the other kids” and he will get new ones from his “book.”

Pretty sweet, I guess. At least in some sideways way he’s thinking of others.

We lost Jasmine on November 3. It’s been incredibly difficult on our entire little family.

My dad’s cousin, whom I refer to as my cousin, Joe, was hospitalized with terminal stomach cancer (and pretty much everywhere else cancer at this point) right around the time of our Family Reunion on November 14.

The bright spot, has been this anniversary getaway here in Walt Disney World.

It’s hard to find the starting point. So many thoughts. So many eloquent words that are forever just out of my grasp.

On December 9, I tested positive on a home pregnancy test. I looked at the + and thought, “welp, this is how my relationship with Bruce started, just a couple of blue lines on a pee test.” When Tom discovered it on the bathroom counter, he yelled, “IS THIS FOR REAL?!” while I spied on him from the other room.

On December 14, I miscarried in room 2826, at 5:45 am, at Disney’s Old Key West Resort.

I just don’t understand how much one person should be required to endure at one time. Tom and I have had many long, tearful talks this week. We believe life begins at conception. We believe that the tiny little ball of heartbeat that my uterus so ungraciously refused to host was our son or daughter. So. I named him/her Jo. Calling them “It” hurt my feelings every time. So, now we’re calling them Jo, in honor of my cousin Joe, who we’re all going to miss really bad here soon.

I just want to get it all down while it’s still fresh in my mind and on my heart.

I’d been spotting the entire pregnancy. We didn’t know we were pregnant until almost 8 weeks into the game because I had such heavy spotting in November that I thought it was a regular, albeit light, period. The reason I know we’d almost hit the 8 week mark is because I had an ultrasound done on the morning of December 13 at Florida Celebration Hospital. We went in to the Emergency Room because the spotting was getting to the point where I was starting to worry about it.

That entire experience was bizarre enough that I’m contemplating discussing it with an attorney.

So. We go in, we tell the doctor my symptoms. He orders blood work, a pregnancy test, and an ultrasound. The ultrasound tech couldn’t tell me anything. She said, basically, that the doctor would have to tell me what she saw, she couldn’t tell me herself. (Which sucked, because since she couldn’t TELL me that she was looking for my non-existent right ovary, she continued to poke and prod while my feet and legs fell asleep.)

So, Tom and I assumed that post-ultrasound we would return to the room in the ER where we first met Dr. Adam and he’d show us what was going on.

Nope!

We went into a large waiting room with about half a dozen other patients and waited on lab results. Some of us were wearing only hospital gowns. Alright, well, when the test results came back, surely we’d see the doctor.

Nope! And don’t call me “Surely.”

We were called to a desk at the front of the room where a nurse told me in front of a room full of people that I have a “Threatened Abortion.” And that I should stay hydrated, take it easy, and that she herself had 4 miscarriages, one of them while she was vacuuming, so avoid that kind of heavy vibration. “Maybe you overdid it at Disney.”

Can you spare me the fucking anecdotes, please? Can you not say, “ABORTION,” in front of a waiting room full of people? I thought The Twilight Zone was over at Hollywood Studios. What is happening?! She also mentioned other things that were going on, but because I respect my own right to privacy, I’m not going to post what they are on the internet.

There was no comfort in that. It was a printout based on a symphony of symptoms. It was basically the same information I read at home on WebMD that got me anxious enough to look into it at the hospital in the first place. At least it wasn’t an ectopic pregnancy. At least there really was a baby with a heart beat.

We left. As we waited for the valet to retrieve our car, a lady who had also been in the waiting room thought it would be cool to talk about how that was a heck of a thing to go through on our vacation.

I read the paperwork from the hospital and what really has stuck with me is “fetal heart rate: 154 bpm.” That really resonates and makes it feel real. Our baby was at 8 weeks and 2 days gestation on December 13, 2015. (I concede that’s not very far along. It’s basically one skipped period. But hey, 2 months down, 7 to go.)

We went to Epcot and spent the rest of the day taking it real easy and enjoying our time with our friends from Texas. We picked a pearl in Epcot. When I said, “I only get pearls when I do races,” we decided that this would be my, “congrats! We’re having a baby!” pearl.

I woke up at 5:45 am on December 14 with bad cramps and a full bladder. I went to the bathroom, and returned to bed. But as quickly as I pulled the covers over me, I ripped them off and ran back into the bathroom. And that’s where it happened.

The cramps were the worst part. I think they wholeheartedly confirmed that vaginal delivery will never be for me. It was like what I imagine contractions feel like during labor. It was worse than the torsion of my fallopian tube with Mr. Nasty. It brought tears to my eyes (which, for me, is saying something). Isn’t it bad enough that I’m losing my baby? Why must I also be tortured? It was excruciating. I’d cramp really bad, and then something would drop. This cycle went on for about two, maybe two and a half hours. I was waiting for Dr. Wolanski’s office to open at 8:30 am. They pulled my chart, and when the nurse called back at about 9, the cramping had leveled out to standard menstrual cramping levels. I told her the pain had been a little bit more than I was willing to bear, and she said to definitely return to the hospital and let them help me with that. I didn’t need to. By 11:20, I was at lunch at Hollywood Studios, overwhelmed with love and hugs from our Texas Twins. They bought us lunch. That was such a warm gesture, and something I’m sure I’ll never forget. It was nice to let someone take care of us for a second.

We went back to the room and physically I was much better. Lindsay came to see us. We laid in bed and tried to guess the 23 Disney-released full-length animated feature films whose title consists of only one word. She took us to Company D, the Disney Cast Member shop. Being with people, just being wrapped up in love and support, is the part that will always stay with me. I know that’s how it works. I don’t remember how it felt to have staples in my head after the bus accident when I was in high school. I remember Jonathan Rettimnier bringing a card to the hospital in Melbourne that had been signed by my entire photography class. I don’t really reflect too much on the pain I experienced with Mr. Nasty. I remember my family sitting in that tiny hospital room, just to be with me.
There were so many beautiful sentiments that came to my mind while I was in the shower this morning that I ran to the computer to get them all down, but now that I’m sitting in front of the computer, I’m suddenly at a loss for words (even at a word count of over 1000 so far).

The waitress at Artist Point brought us a champagne toast last night, without even knowing that it was almost our anniversary, or that it had been such an arduous week. We toasted to Jo. Champagne glass in hand, Tom said, “I want to say something, but I can’t because we’ll both lose it.” He said he’d tell me later. It was, “we love you.”

He also said, through tears, “the day will come, you know?”

“I know.”

Bruce is saying so much. “I un caul” (I want call) is a popular one. Specifically, “I un caul Hay-lay.” I need to shoot more video of this guy. The other night, he was playing with an app on Tom’s phone and speaking Chinese. I kid you not.

Other things he says:

I uhn eat. : I want to eat.
I uhn ah. (Motioning to his mouth) : I want a vitamin.
I uhn eeeeee. (Moving his finger in front of his mouth like he’s brushing his teeth) : I want to brush my teeth.
I wuh see. : I want to see. (Usually wants to see what’s cooking on the stove.)
I uhn ig. : I want an egg.
Cook! : Cook!

He likes to illustrate the difference between hot and cold by having me lift him up to the stove where he pretends to touch a hot pot then jerks his hand back, “AHT!” And he’ll pretend to shiver while saying, “cole, cole!” He’s a boy who knows what he “uhns” and has no problem telling you. “I uhn up! I uhn dow! I uhn out! I uhn play! I uhn toyeee! (Toy Story, not actual toys.) I uhn can-y! I uhn bat! (Bath.) I uhn P’Paw! (Grandpa, my dad. I feel bad because I called my dad Pa-Pa in front of the Armstrong clan while we were picking apples. If I were within earshot on the receiving end, I’d have been mad. The sting of losing Paw Paw is still very fresh and raw. But for the record, we didn’t direct Bruce to call my Dad that, he just does.)”
I love him more and more every day. That’s a BFD for me. I stress, and struggle, and lose faith. It’s hard. I don’t know if i was built for motherhood. I worry about what I’m doing that will “inevitable screw him up,” as they say in “Now and Then.” So, yeah. Big deal. I’m thinking about keeping him.

I’m down to 212.8.  My lowest weight since college. Half a pound from now, I’ll be able to say I’ve lost 20 lbs in 3 months. Not bad. Not record-breaking or anything, but not bad. It’s not even the running, it’s just kind of amazing what happens when you decide animal products cause cancer and man-made products cause diabetes. I did cheat last night. I’ve had candy since Halloween and for dinner last night I had Wendy’s fries, a couple of nuggets and some soda. It was nothing to write home about. I mean, I didn’t even enjoy it that much. Interesting, because my diet used to be fast food twice a day. That shit’ll kill ya’.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself, but I’m afraid that I’ll re-read this in 5 years and be like, “Who cares that you lost .8 lbs?! BRUUUUCE!” On that note, Bruce is growing in leaps and bounds and everything he does surprises me.

Today while I lazily played on my iphone, he was in his high chair eating an entire bowl of cereal, with milk, all by himself.  I’ve been giving him dry cereal, but today he coaxed me into pouring in milk (vanilla soy milk). The floor wasn’t pretty, but you’d be surprised how much made it into his mouth. I was surprised. I was impressed. I looked up from my phone when he said, “MORE?” His bowl was empty.

He’s saying all kinds of things these days. The most recent are, “juice,” and “cookie,” and “ice.” All food is “more.” (Except juice, cookies, and ice, of course. And pizza…) Pizza is “pee pee,” which I can already tell is going to create a super-awkward moment in my not-so-distant future.

I was looking at his feet today while he laid in my lap, which he NEVER does, eating “corn-corn” and watching “Robin Hood.” I just marveled at those little miracles. I hate feet. I do. They’re ugly and gross. But Bruce’s feet are so cute and sweet and perfect.

Bruce also says, “guh gur!” aka “good girl!” to Jasmine when she comes in from outside. He pats his thigh to get her to come to him.

There’s so much, and I feel like it’s all happening so fast! I hope I remember to take time out and just enjoy my nearly-2 year old!

226.8. 

My run got rained out last night. It’s a shame too, because my mile time was outstanding, about 12:45. My one mile that I ran was a fast one. (Relatively speaking.) I’m wondering if it was because I was adequately hydrated. I drank so much water yesterday. I caught on to something, if I drink and drink and drink and drink it flushes my body of bad stuff (waste, but toxins, too, I think) a lot quicker and easier than me just trying to run it off.  I used to put off drinking water because I wanted to see how low I could get the scale to go before I ingested anything on any given day. Now, it seems, the more water I drink, the less I weigh the next morning. So, the lowest I was yesterday was 228.2, and I woke up this morning at 226.8.  I’m moderately excited, still anxious for 224.

Bruce doesn’t eat much and it makes me nervous. I know he’s capable of eating a lot because he has in the past, he just doesn’t. I can’t make him. Today for lunch he had half a banana, a handful of cashews, a few bites of my vegan lasagna, some popcorn and an oatmeal cookie. No dark leafy green veggies. I feel like a bad mom. I am, however, very proud of the popcorn. We made it using half a cup of popcorn kernels and 1 tsp of canola oil, most of which seems to be on the paper bag and plate in the microwave. When I divided the canola oil by the serving sizeI believe I consumed, it was a minimal amount of calories. I’m excited. Supposedly, you can air-pop in the microwave with 0 oil. I guess that’s on the horizon for us. 

Joan Rivers just passed away. That makes me sad. (It’s like the news had to do a special report to beat the news breaking on facebook.) I liked her. I enjoyed her on “The Apprentice,” and marveled at how sharp she was despite being 81 years old. I didn’t really take them seriously when they talked about her being in an induced coma after some difficulty during a procedure. I just figured that she was tough and would pull through. She didn’t. Life is fragile. You are precious. Take care of you.