Don't Let The Cat In...

     
            My Kaycie Lou is quite the character, full of personality, stubborn, opinionated, hot headed, and absolutely hilarious.  She does nothing half-way and is not afraid to let you know how she really feels about a situation.  Dinner has always been drama for Little Red.  If it is not eggs, fruit, or milk, she does not want it and refuses to eat it.  And because I am not much of a cook, much less a short order one, she is offered the same things we are having.  I try to have some compassion and fix something she will like but probably 4 out of 7 nights she goes to bed with little to no dinner.  As you can see, she is not starving.
             We have tried everything, bribery, force feeding, tears (on my part and hers), counting, airplanes, disguising food, trickery, you name it, I've done it.  Not proud of some of our lower moments but most parents are experts on feelings of desperation just not so much experts on dealing properly with that desperation which is where our latest encounter comes in.
              Our house at the beach had a nice array of stray cats that came along with it.  There were probably 8-10 of them skirting around between the houses and my mom would make sure that their food and water bowls were full twice a day.  They would not come near us but occasionally would run by or stop for a peek in the window.
                One afternoon the big kids and I went with my dad on the boat which left Kaycie and her dad, along with my sister's family, brother's family, and my mom at the house.   While having dinner Kaycie again chose this moment to have a battle of wills with her father over her dinner.  This was not helped by the fact that my niece, Paisley is also a temperamental eater and that she and Kaycie were as thick as thieves for the week.  In one of those moments of desperation my hubby says to all the kids, "You had better eat or I'm going to let the cats come in and they are going to get your food."  Kaycie, eyes opened wide, frozen with her hands by her side, shouted, "SOMEBODY FEED ME!!!!"
               Now you may be thinking, "That is just mean!  You have scarred that child for life!  Yada, yada, yada..."  But hear this, since we have returned from the beach she has successfully managed to eat three dinners with the rest of the family.  All of those dinners have included vegetables!  Those vegetables have not been easy for her and they do come with lots of sputtering, gagging, and crinkled noses but she has gotten them down, which is something to be said.  And when she has started to balk, my hubby will knock on the bottom of the kitchen table and give a low, "Meeeeeoooooooowwwwww."  It works every time.  She's getting some veggies in her and I've stopped feeling like I will lose my mind at dinnertime.  And since I am going to get to keep my mind, I'm even willing to pay for her therapy over losing hers because of the desperate measures of her mom and dad.  "Meeeeoooowwww."

Forty Years and Counting

       Today my mom and dad will celebrate forty years of wedded bliss...ok well maybe bliss is not the right word, how about wedded life, wedded togetherness, wedded reality.  Truth be told, how can you summarize forty years of life together in one word?  I can't even wrap my head around forty years, it is more than my lifetime.  And how do you even begin to write about two people and the life that they have made together in forty years?  Two people who do not fit the mold of "perfectly perfect for each other" and in some ways are complete and utter opposites.  Two very different personalities that somehow, someway, just work.
        In truth I am sure the last forty years have not been all bliss, nor easy, nor fun.  I know this to be true, I have been around for almost 35 of these forty years.  But despite the ups, downs, rights, lefts, twists and turns that are a normal and functioning part of my parents' marriage, there is a deeper underlying theme that has held them fast for forty years and counting.  That theme is family. We are a family.  It began with two and has grown to seventeen and counting.  However it is not our numbers that make us a family.  It is our actions and reactions that define us.  It is those snapshots in our lives that were instituted by our mother and father that have shaped us into this larger multi faceted functioning group.
        It is a first date at Fairystone Park, it is a young Juanita hiding in the dorm closet of a young Joe only to be discovered by a visiting set of parents, it is a home in Maryland and a move back to Martinsville, VA.  It is a baby who, 1 year and 2 days later, is followed by another baby, who 3 years and 2 days later is followed by yet another baby.  It is a four year old ghost at Halloween with no eye holes, it is a 9 year old daughter frantically searching the house for a purse that was hanging on her arm the entire time.  It is Saturday nights spent with Granny watching Dallas and Hee Haw so that mom and dad could go on a date.  It is a little brother with his own set of my little ponies, and a "surprise" pregnancy at the age of 35.  It is not getting your own room until you are fifteen years old.  It is being woken up at 7:15 every morning with the shades being pulled and a sing song "Riisssseee and Shiiiiinnneee", it is an obligatory stop at the clinic (approx. 4 miles from our house) for a well deserved spanking before we left on any vacation, and an 8 hour ride in the car with a red coat over your head.  It is a clinic dance party in our basement. It is a little sister nicknamed "Muskrat".  It is becoming a "band family" complete with a 6 year old mascot.  It is waking up an eight year old girl at 2am to go with you to treat a horse for colic.  It is taking an hour and a half to wash the dishes because we simply hated them that much, plus the fact that we were too busy pretending to be cafeteria workers serving lunch slop. 
          It is more fights than I can count, and less spankings than we probably deserved.  It is letting four kids go and do and fail and try again.  It is an unending supply of encouragement mixed with some good ol' fashioned discipline and expectations.  It is love, lots and lots of love.  It is watching your children go from 4 in number to 5, then 6, then 7, and finally 8.  It is a second opportunity to raise kids the way that you've always wanted to with the addition of seven grandchildren.  It is closing your clinic for your grandson's first birthday party.   It is finally getting not one but TWO more redheads! It is four different families driving 100+ miles and then sitting for three hours to watch a little blond bombshell perform a gymnastics routine that lasts approximately 3 minutes.  It is all we know, what we do, how we behave.  It is who we are.  And it is this way because on June 17, 1972, Joe and Juanita said "I do" and that is exactly what they did. 
             Thank you mama and daddy for this fully dysfunctional, extremely loving and devoted, hilarious, well rounded, stick like glue family that you have created.  I am so blessed and so proud to be a part of the legacy that you are weaving.  Your love, support, and guidance have gotten us here and my prayer is that we, as couples as well as families are able to take what you have shown us and make it our own.  I love you more than you will ever know and will spend my life in gratitude for the decisions, sacrifices, and choices that you have made that have brought me to where I am today.  Of one thing I am sure, I may not be able to describe your forty years together in one word but I have no doubt as to how I would describe you as the leaders of our family.  You are the best of the best.  All my love - Ang