So, as you can see our blog has a new look! I suddenly felt that we needed a face-lift. We’re in emotional upheaval right now given our past week… and we’re also on the verge of the start-of-the-new-academic-year (which, around here signals major moving and shaking). Lots is happening and lottsa lottsa lots will be happening over the next few weeks. As Kyle and Owen are fond of saying: “IT’S A BUMPY BUMPY RIDE!!!!” Hold on tight folks! And thanks for following along with us on our wild and crazy journey!
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Today Alex and Esther took Kyle and Owen to Dorney Park (click here). If you read this blog you know that Alex is the boys’ babysitter/nanny. She’s caring for them 30+ hours per week this summer while they are out of daycare. She’s the best. Esther is a graduate student at Lehigh, she is Alex’s roommate and very close friend. Esther spends a lot of time with K & O when they’re with Alex, and they know her well. Today it was super hot here (high 90s, and humid). Alex thought it would be fun to take the boys to Dorney and she convinced Esther to go with them. The four of them had a fun and special day together. I think they spent almost the entire time in the “Wildwater Kingdom” part. The boys clearly had a blast. They were totally exhausted when they got home. They had a quick swim, ate supper, and were sound asleep just a bit past 7:00. Today Alex took our camera with them. In the photos Alex has on brown sunglasses; Esther has white sunglasses; Kyle is wearing a blue swimsuit; Owen is wearing a red swimsuit. I love it that my boys have Alex and Esther in their lives.
(note: click on this photo to enlarge — Owen literally has stars in his eyes!!!)
Alex and the boys — the best nanny ever!This morning K & O were playing with their baby dolls (their current favorite thing to do). This time they were in the playroom holding their babies’ faces upward toward the light that hangs from the ceiling. They were pretending that the “ceiling is the sky!” and the “light is the sun!” They were both looking up, squinting their own eyes, and holding their babies’ faces directly upward toward the light. They were being super dramatic saying, “ooohh!! baby! baby! don’t look right at the sun baby! it will hurt your eyes baby! you will be BLIND baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Then they’d dramatically fall to the ground, kicking and bucking, holding their babies to their chests, screaming, pretending that they were all blinded by looking too directly at the sun. ????!!??? They are both rolling around on the floor, dramatically clutching their babies, screaming about being “BLIND!!!!!!!!” Suddenly Owen comes to a complete stop. He sits up. He holds his baby’s head to his neck, soothingly rubbing the baby’s head, cooing and gently looking down at his precious baby doll. Then, very exaggeratedly cheerily and happily-chipperly he says to his baby: “It’s o.k. baby! It’s o.k. Douglas James! It’s o.k.! You’re just blind!”
The reason for my blogging break was the death of one of my best friend’s husband. In high school Robin and I were BFF (for those of you under 30: BFF = Best Friends Forever). We remain dear, dear friends to this day. She is one of the very best kinds of friends — one who you feel connected to even when you’re miles and years apart. I’m being sincere when I say this: Twelve years ago, when she met the love of her life, and then seven years ago, when she married him, nothing could have made me happier. Nothing. To be the Maid of Honor in their wedding was one of the proudest moments of my life. I adored Joe. Absolutely adored him. For her I adored him. And I also just simply adored him. So did Braydon. When I got home from work on Thursday, and heard the voice mail message from Robin’s sister, telling me that Joe had been killed in a motorcycle accident on Wednesday night, I could not have possibly felt more stunned. Joe is larger than life. Robin is deep in my heart. Their two young children are two of the sweetest, most precious kids you can imagine. The thought of Robin and her babies losing Joe is still almost too much to bear. I simply cannot fathom what she is going through. (click here) We had to drive to New Hampshire, a 10+ hour trip if you consider twin three year old boys strapped into the backseat. We decided the only way to manage it was to break it up by doing an overnight on the way there. We turned it into an impromptu mini-vacation in Providence, Rhode Island. It made us feel good to do something that Robin and Joe would strongly approve of: focus on the love and joy of our little family. We let ourselves enjoy it. We took it easy. We took a ton of photos. We took the life we’re living and made the best of it. We took lessons from Robin and Joe and immediately put them into action. The four of us hugged and said “I love you” a lot. It felt right. Sunday we dropped Kyle and Owen off with my parents for a couple of days, and we went straight to Robin. There is nothing like running to hold one of your very best friends in mourning. There is nothing like trying to do the impossible: absorb some pain from your grief-stricken friend. Anyone who’s ever had to do it knows what I mean. We did the best we could. But nothing is good enough. The funeral was Monday morning. We spent the rest of the day at Robin’s house with about 200 other people. For most of the afternoon, off to the side, were five of us, a tight group of best friends from high school: Jamie, Jody, Kerry, Robin, and I. It was surreal. To say the least. It was not the reunion I had imagined. To have to leave Robin on Monday night was very, very hard. We spent that night at my parent’s house. Then made an 11 hour drive straight back to Pennsylvania on Tuesday. We got home at 9:15pm last night. It was hot and dark and the sky was full of stars. Our little family of four ran to the pool, stripped down, and went skinny dipping in the moonlight. It was magical for the boys. It was heavy with mixed emotions for Braydon and I. I’m self-conscious writing about all this here because it seems too sacred to put on a blog. And Robin is a regular blog reader, so I’m conscious of wanting to only honor her in what I write. But I wanted to be sure to be honest with people — because sometimes we need to take a break from “regular” life for all the wrong reasons. Life is too complicated to blog about sometimes. I am back again, blogging again, but nothing is the same for us here. And that is not a bad thing. Hopefully things will never entirely go back to “normal” again. Life has pivotal moments. This was one of them for us. What we have seen is our dear friend Robin be full of grace and gratefulness through the most devastating loss imaginable. It is almost unimaginable. But in the shadow of humility, watching your friend go through this, the unimaginable is the least that we can expect of ourselves when we have nothing but that for which to be grateful. Thanks for reading. Love to you all across the blogosphere, Heather
There is nothing our family loves more than to travel together, explore together, adventure together. Even though our trip to Providence was short (Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday morning), and even though it was for all the wrong reasons (our dear friend Joe’s sudden death), it was exactly the kind of experience that we so enjoy. And it was exactly the kind of experience that Joe would have wanted for our family: fun, love, and family bonding. We are committed to do as much of this as possible. And to never ever take one single second of our precious time together for granted.
Providence September 11th Memorial9-11 is especially poignant for Braydon and I since we got married on 9-15-01, just four days after. Robin and Joe were in our wedding. I was the Maid of Honor in theirs July 29, 2000. There was something about watching Kyle and Owen look at this memorial… it just felt… deeply touching in some way.
Kyle & Owen’s First Room ServiceThey had awesome home-made macoroni and cheese and milk.
They loved it.
Kyle Being Educated On The Rhode Island Capital Building(see post below)
Providence’s Waterfire
Asleep in a Luxurious Hotel BedOwen on left, Kyle on right
We cannot get over how incredibly sweet it is how they cuddle up whenever they sleep together
This photo deserves it’s own post. For many reasons. One of which is simply how cute it is~~ Kyle is spontaneously kissing his brother in the photo. Also, I’m posting it here for the record. Just in case Kyle is ever a Governor. On Sunday morning we spent some time at the Rhode Island Capital Building. Kyle was very impressed with it all. And he repeatedly insisted that this was going to be his “office” when he “grows up.” We told him he’d have to be a Governor to have an office like that. Since then he’s repeatedly insisting that he will be a “Govnoor” when he’s “growed up” and that he “and Owen both” will “go to work” at the “Captool Office.” He adds that he will “bring his bag to work at the Captool Office.” Tonight at dinner he again told me this for the millionth time. His tune has changed, however. He’s now saying that he will “not go to that Captool Office” — He will not, he says, be the “Govnoor of Rho Island,” nor will he be the “Govnoor of Pennsylvania.” He will, he says, “be the Govnoor of a special place” and “it will be a surprise.” I’m not making this stuff up, folks. I’m just posting it here for the record. Knowing Kyle, we just never know. But he’s so driven, that I will eagerly volunteer to be his campaign manager if he ever runs for any office. Because if he decided to run, he surely would win. So, you read it here first folks. You read it here first.
***
P.S. to this post — Just this morning (Thurs), Kyle ran by my office, saw the above picture on the screen, pointed to the picture, and shouted out: “THERE’S MY OFFICE!!!”
Hi Johnson-McCormick Family Blog readers!!! Since starting this blog I’ve posted pretty consistently on a daily basis. I love doing it. And goodness knows that K & O provide plenty of material to blog about (I am not a blogger who is ever at a loss for material, that’s for sure!) But I have decided that I’m going to take the next five days off from blogging. No need to worry when you don’t see any posts, I’m just taking a little blog break so that I can focus as much of my energy as possible on some other things. I plan to be back in the saddle again Wed or Thurs of next week.
Photos taken this morning. Kyle and Owen’s baby dolls are not new to this blog. For other appearances of Donald (Kyle’s baby) and Douglas James (Owen’s baby) click here, and here.
Kyle & Owen, July 2006***
The photo above and the two below were taken one year ago. I know it is so cliche, and everyone says it, but really— I cannot get over how time flies. The truth is: I can barely stand it. I love every single stage and phase (so far at least), and I miss every single one too. I see these pictures and I recognize these bambinos as my own two boys — but the difference between then and now is just stunning to me. Last summer they couldn’t get enough of these strollers (photo below)… they’d push them around 24 x 7. The fun seemed to be simply in pushing them. Now just to push the strollers is not enough. This morning they had these same two strollers turned upside down on the floor, they had all their toy tools out, and were pretending to “fix the strollers!” with their “DRILLS!!!” After much, much busy action, when the strollers were finally “fixed!” K & O went upstairs together to get their babies. They got side-tracked though, and I found them in Owen’s room, “feeding the babies milk from bottles!” They were both sitting on the floor, each with a baby doll in his lap, pressing the toy bottles to the babies mouths. They said, “Look Mommy! We are feeding these babies. They were sooooo hungry. They were crying. Because they were hungry. They were not acting up. They were just crying because they were hungry. Because babies cry if they are hungry. They have no teeth. They need bottles!!!” As usual, they announced to me that “We are the MOMMIES!” (side note: this continues to fascinate me… for all the gender egalitarianism that we try to model and instill, they both still insist that they are the “mommy” not the “papi” when they play with their dolls?????). Anyway, I said, “Oh! Yes! And Papi and I used to feed you two just like that! With bottles! When you were little babies!” Owen said, “But we are not babies now! No!!! Because we grew big! We are growing and growing and growing! Now I am bigger!” And Kyle said, “We are grown up now! We will be a big man soon! Pretty soon we will be sixty just like MorFar! And we will be driving our own car! And we will be going to the restaurant — just me and Owen. Me and Owen both. Just us. And we will leave you Mama, but we will come back.” I had all I could do to not just fall on the floor in a weeping heap right then and there.
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