Just not here on typepad. The kids are out of school and I've told them I will be turning off the computer during the day. I'm going to try to sneak in some time tomorrow and edit a few pictures for upload. Yeah, wish me luck, right?
I thought I'd post a couple pictures I took recently (two out of the approximately 300 in a two day period). The first one is of Molly, while we were waiting on James and Bridget. I only noticed a few minutes ago that she'd apparently untied the dress in the back and had re-tied it in the front. LOL! This picture is not very much in focus, which is a shame, but I love it anyway.
And then, again, after Bridget arrived (James didn't want to put on his shirt), we took a few more. Let me tell you, there are very few pictures of Bridget looking AT the camera. I took over 60 pictures trying to get ONE good Christmas picture shot, and gave up because the two older ones were punchy and Bridget wanted to get down.
This one isn't very well focused, either. I wish I knew a trick to get a 2-year old to stay put for pictures!
Will be trying to get back on here in the next few days to post some more pictures; in the meantime, wishing each of you a Happy Holiday without all the madness that usually accompanies the season. :)
Well, in light of the late - or early - hour, I'll offer a brief recap of today (or by now, yesterday):
1 - The buyer backed out. I mean, I guess he did. My realtor says their realtor never contacted her, though she insists they know what a great bargain my house is.
2 - The Christmas tree is up, but getting it to that point wasn't the charming, fun-filled family moment I'd hoped it would be.
3 - James fell flat on his face and had a horrific bloody nose, but he's fine now.
4 - BRIDGET POOPED ON THE POTTY! Oh my gosh, somebody pinch me! No, wait - never mind - it's true that she did, and it's true that she ASKED to poop on the potty, but she didn't finish there. Her diaper got the remainder, sad to say. But I think we're making progress because she asked to go sit on the potty again tonight. No "success" but I think these are Good Things.
5 - Something was definitely supposed to go here, but I can't remember what that was. But can I just say something? I would give - oh, I don't know - a lot of money, sure - to be able to sleep in one morning. No worrying about getting kids off to school, no worrying about readying the house for a possible showing...just uninterrupted, guilt-free sleep.
I finally downloaded pics from my camera; some had been there for over two weeks. I am so ashamed. You know it's bad when over two weeks' worth of pictures can fit on the same 1GB card with room for more. I have sunk/sinked/sank very low, indeed, to let it get so bad.
I thought I'd bring you something completely amazing and far and away from the rather self-centered posts I've put on here in the last few days.
You've surely read the story about the dad who has been doing marathons and triathlons all while pushing his adult son in a wheelchair or other adaptive device, right? And in case you haven't, here's the story - be sure to watch the video at the end; I'd recommend having some kleenex nearby.
Strongest Dad in the
World - strongest love
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick
Reilly]
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their
text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons.
Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed
him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on
the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain
climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your
son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick
was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and
unable to control his limbs.
“He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says
doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in
an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them
around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department
at Tufts University and asked if there was
anything to help the boy communicate. “No
way,” Dick says he was told. “There's
nothing going on in his brain.”
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed.
Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the
cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to
communicate.
First words? “Go
Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the
school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do
that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who
never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still,
he tried.
“Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick's life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were
running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed
with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly
shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single
runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick
and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to
get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they
made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six
going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling
15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii.
It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy
towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? “No way,”
he says. Dick does it purely for “the
awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim
and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their
24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their
best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record,
which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy
who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years
ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his
arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn't been in such great shape,” one doctor
told him, “you probably would've died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass.,
always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and
compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give
him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I'd most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit
in the chair and I push him once.”
