I've been described as a Hobbit and I've come to embrace the idea - I love good food, parties, a comfy home and family. However I would probably be of the Took family line since I do like adventure also. Share in my creative adventures and remember "Not all who wander are lost."
When I started a blog I had no idea I would have so little time to do it, or that the big drive to do a post would be so I could pin something on pinterest and have it credited to me LOL. And even now I don't have a ton of time but I wanted to share how awesome this Halloween turned out!
First is my Michelangelo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Boy!
Found the costume at a thrift store and the shell at WalMart. He wanted his head shaved for his costume - yep we're a dedicated family. ;) I did his makeup with Ben Nye green and orange and we sprayed his head. Even with powdering it off with baby powder to set the makeup he still was rubbing green off all over the place and the bath Halloween night left a green ring in the tub! LOL!
Next we have Princess Anna. There were tons of Elsa's but she was the only Anna at school. She had a light blue shirt but I made the bodice, skirt and cloak. I used puffy paint for the flower embroidery on the bodice and skirt and also for the light blue scallop on the bottom of the skirt. I used this guide to look at, I didn't make a stencil just freehanded it but it was very nice to have the guide to look at. I used this tutorial for the cape. Also, we dyed her hair red. Yep, no fake wig or messy spray - we did the real stuff and she looks great with it! I used Ben Nye white hair paint for the stripe. We even found her some great boots! I'm so happy with how the whole thing turned out, she looked perfect!
These two together were very cute and funny.
And for me - I was going to be a dead bride but I recently started working in the kids school lunchroom (yep, I'm a lunchlady!) so big poofy white dress wouldn't work so well. So Halloween morning I was trying to figure something out, I was thinking of doing a Day of the Dead makeup when I found my Nightmare Before Christmas skirt so I figured I'd do more of a Jack makeup and then I thought it would be fun to do half Jack and half Sally. It turned out so nice and I got a lot of compliments - I might do that more often, simple costume or no costume and focus on some cool makeup instead.
So it's been exactly one month since my last post. :(
I knew there would be times when I wouldn't be consistent and this is my first try at a blog but I had no idea this kind of thing would happen. The day after my last post I was all set to post the second half of the Brave birthday party when a whole lot of things got put on hold, including this blog, all due to one thing...
My little super hero guy Eli.
Yes he's super - super cute, super intelligent, even super sweet - but he's also super hard to deal with at times. The day after my last post really puts it in perspective. We were picking up something by the local mall and the kids know there's a play area there which we hadn't been to in a long time (we hadn't been much of anywhere in a long time) and since we actually had some time we figured why not we'll stop in for a bit and let them play. My husband and I chatted a bit but mostly we kept an eye on the kids anticipating when it wold happen - and sure enough it did. You see unlike other parents who can just sit and enjoy a free moment when at a park or play area of a mall, we are constantly listening for those cries of fear and pain - no not coming from our little guy, from the other kid our little boy hurt. Sometimes this cry comes from a kid a few years older and even a few feet taller than him. I heard that familiar noise and I look over and see him attack this little girl, rip the glasses off her face and throw them across the room. As usual I'm up in a flash and over there in a bound booming his name out in my mommy voice that I really don't like to use but especially in public, and we're going home. We knew he'd be upset to leave - he hates to leave anywhere - but this time was a bit different than other times. This time we got one of his ultra mega tantrums and he screamed bloody murder so bad I had to get out of my seat in the van and go sit by him and cover his mouth so my husband could drive since we were all in super panic stress mode from the whole ordeal. Over the last few weeks there have been many sleepless nights and tears and that's just been from me and my husband. We finally are taking the big plunge into trying to figure out what makes our beloved little boy tick so to say, knowing that it's not just a phase and it's not just the terrible two's and it's not just a typical little boy being a little rough now and then.
It's been really hard and I want to cry right now even as I type. Eli was a wonderful baby. He was quiet and sweet and not nearly as hard to handle as his sister had been as a baby. She would scream until she was red all over as a baby and this birthmark on her forehead would turn deep purple. That birthmark still changes color like a mood ring at times. Then as Eli grew up he changed. We attributed some of his outburst to not being able to talk fully yet and being frustrated at that lack of communication. Some of his first words were "I hate you!" and he screamed them incessantly at our friends and neighbors but we just attributed that to a cranky 2 year old. In our church there's a nursery the kids can go into when they hit 18 months old and then they move to primary at the beginning of the year if they've turned 3. Since Eli was born in February this meant he would have almost 3 years in nursery since he couldn't start primary until the year he turned 4. It took 1 year to get him in nursery - he pinched and bit constantly. There was a time he had bit another kid so they came and got me and I talked with him in the hall for a couple minutes and he seemed compliant so I set him down and opened the door and he went straight in and bit another kid. He never denied it, in fact there were times where the teacher would tell us he hit a child and he would run up and say "no no, I pinch!" (Yes you may laugh - we did then and we do now, it is funny and laughing at what we can is one of our few ways of staying sane through all of this) Finally he seemed to settle in and was doing a lot better and we only had to come get him a few times here and there instead of every sunday. This year is when he turned 4 though and I've been to my own class less than 5 times since the new year as he utterly refuses to go to primary.
It doesn't help that he's always been amazingly strong. When we first moved into our house he had just turned 2 years old and he could lug a whole gallon of milk with one hand up the stairs. It may sound silly that an adult can get beat up by a 3 year old but I can attest to it as there are days where I'm covered in scratches and bruises. Even my husband who is 6'2" and somewhere over 200 pounds has a hard time when Eli goes out of control. He'll head butt you if you try to hold his arms so he can't hit or scratch or pinch and he kicks and bites. Sigh.
There's lots of other issues too. He picks at his lips till they bleed. He refuses to eat particular foods, for example when we have eggs and toast for breakfast he has to have egg whites and plain toast with no butter. I never wanted to have picky kids because I thought it was all about the parents and how they acted when it came to picky eaters - boy was I incredibly wrong. People say to be firm and not give in and that the kids will eat when they're hungry - they've never met my son. It's easy to call him my little super hero because he changes is clothes almost daily and wants to wear his super hero costume type stuff A LOT. My daughter started Kindergarten recently and we'll go to class parties and my son will just sit in a corner refusing to interact with the other kids and participate in the activities. With all of these things I've tried to work with him and often fight with him to get things to be different, to be "normal," but he can go from 0 to 100 in a millisecond, and it can be because his sister "broke his imaginary ball." Yep, that's what he told me one time when he clocked her upside the head. And if I try to get him to stop something, such as picking his lip, it makes it worse and he'll pick it all the more because heaven forbid anyone tell that child what to do.
So why is he this way? What does make him tick? And most importantly what do we do about it so it doesn't get worse? These are the questions that have racked my brain the last month and while we have a tiny bit figured out it's only the tip of the iceberg. We've considered things like Aspergers and O.C.D. and A.D.H.D. but one of the big things we are looking at is O.D.D. which is Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
-ok little rant here feel free to skip - why must we always talk in code with all these letter stuff? Tons of people will spout off some 3 or 4 letter code and it's like a different secret language. I hate that kind of stuff, part of why I will never ever text and use that whole texting language. But even more than that, why does everything that wavers beyond some indescribable "normal" have to be a "disorder?" Why can't we just say Oppositianlly defiant? Although now that I think about it, if I was to tell people, "He's O.D." I guess that can sound bad since OD typically makes people think Over Dose and drugs and all that - again we humans feel we have to shorten everything up these days. Don't even get me started on nicknames - even if you name a child a short name some people will even go so far as to just call them by the first letter of the name. - rant over now we return you to our regular scheduled program...beep...
I'm just barely getting to where I can have time to do stuff - and realizing that I do need to keep doing stuff. The last month I've spent a lot of my time and energy in this boy of mine who today I can say I love and is wonderful, but there have been many times over the last month where I was saying the opposite and that hurts more than any kind of physical pain he can put me through. I was ready to give up this blog entirely as well as a lot of other stuff feeling I would need to now devote myself entirely to the situation of my son forever but as I've was scouring through blogs and articles and essays I found a wonderful bit of advice (wish I could remember the specific thing it came from but I guess that's not as important) but the advice was to keep doing things other than taking care of your child and while I've heard that before this was coming from some parent of a child with autism or something like that, something that was even more intense than my own situation and it jerked me out of the spiraling hole I was putting myself in where I would never have any contact with the outside world ever again. That's part of why I'm writing this - to get back into the swing of things and somehow make time for me.
As for the situation with Eli, my husband and I had felt for some time that maybe there was something up but it wasn't until that huge outburst at the mall I told you about that I honestly sat down and decided to start figuring stuff out. I had called Eli's pediatrician at some point but they just said to talk to the school district. So finally I made phone call after phone call and found the right place and made an appointment. That appointment kept me going for the next week as I anticipated the "cure" to our troubles. I felt they would tell me what was going on and while we don't want to medicate the heck out of our little guy, if we had some starting point, some guide to let us know what road to take. The big day came and I took Eli in, I filled out a long test thing which they looked over and said, "Yes we can see there's some big concerns here," then they asked more questions and asked Eli some questions then told me "He doesn't qualify for anything there's nothing we can do for you." That was it. Wait, THAT WAS IT?!! Yep. I was in utter shock. I hadn't known where to start and this had been the only thing I had found and it was nothing. I came home and laid on the couch in shock for an hour. My husband was leaving to take our daughter to Kindergarten when I had got home and from the look on my face he knew something was up so he bought me a rose and some chocolate - he's so sweet. I found out later and I really wish I had known before - the whole thing with the school district was just an assessment to see if Eli qualified for school help programs - a friend of mine went through it with her son and they told her he qualified but they couldn't say why in any way, all they could say was what programs he could do but they aren't allowed to do anything more than that.
And now my kids are awake and my son is running around pantsless so I can't share too much more. But I'll quickly share that we have found our own kind of path we are following with Eli for now. We separated the kids room so now they each have a room instead of sharing and that has helped. I'm keeping an eye out for all of Eli's little quirks and we're being able to understand some of them better - he likes to wear pajamas all the time because he likes the tight shirts, he wants shorts all the time because he doesn't like how it feels when pants brush the tops of his feet. And I've stopped fighting. There's a lot of things I'm letting go such as the idea that he needs to wear clothes during the day and can't wear pajamas because those are only to sleep in - that's not a battle worth fighting. We also just had an appointment with our amazing friend Jan who is our "therapist" as I call her, who does Body Talk - we're into alternative stuff like that, check it out. We also have an appointment with a conventional therapist our friend goes to whose son has O.D.D. and we've been using an essential oil called Intune and that seems to have helped a bit. We're just starting on the path but those few weeks of nightmare constant tantrums that day at the mall stirred that I was afraid would be our new every day life have subsided a bit and even though he may still have nothing on but a shirt, I'm hearing my little boy play on his xylaphone upstairs instead of screaming so there has been improvement. We're just taking it one day at a time and I'm going to believe that it will get better. It has to - because I love that little guy.
To me a Quest is something you work really hard on, putting all your time and thought into it until you've achieved and finished it to the end. So in some ways it wasn't the best word to use as I haven't been able to put all my time and energy into it but the word Quest also brings up images of adventure and excitement, exploring into the unknown, something noble, something great! One of my Quests deals with family history. It's intriguing to hear stories and learn about your ancestors and it can really help you to feel like you know who you are and have a sense of who you came from. It can be really great to learn about the cultures of your ancestors. I knew from when I was really little that my great-grandpa had come to the U.S. from Germany so I always loved to learn about German culture and customs. I know a lot about my Dad's side of the family, at least more than my Mom's.
It was probably about 10 years ago that I started getting more involved with figuring out my Mom's family history. My Mom's Dad, Lendon Hicks, passed away in 1999. I didn't know him terribly well, we had spent time with him but we had always lived very far away from each other. I had this desire to learn more about him and his family. Little did I know what I was getting myself into - a fun and exciting but also very time consuming and often frustrating um, well - Quest.
My grandpa Len holding me as a wee little baby
I was in college and took some classes about doing Genealogy and the school had these great resources including, at the time, free access to Ancestry.com files. I dived in and often would find out after hours of putting in data that there was a quicker and easier way to do it, hence some of the frustration. Family History is one of those things that can really suck you in, it's a time warp where you can go four hours and you suddenly pull out of it and go, "hey, maybe I should get some food before the day is over." One of the problems with Family History is there isn't a definitive end to it. True you can get to a point going up the family tree where you can't get more information. A friend of mine was doing her family and got to Elly the barmaid, daughter of Elly the barmaid - yep not going to really be able to go past that (although I do believe that was getting back into like the 1600s). But for me I wanted to figure out about siblings and such, not just the one straight line back. Feeling that way however can make it so Family History becomes this crazy labyrinth and you find yourself going off on this tangent path and winding and twisting all up when you realize you probably have gone a bit far off from your original path so you go back and try to flesh that path out more.
For most people when you're starting off Family History you talk to - well - family. My Mom's family has never been that close though, living far apart and living their own lives. We didn't get together for holidays or have reunions. Right after I got married in 2004, I went with my Mom and sister to Kentucky and it was like this little mini reunion as we visited with her sister and brother who hadn't been all together like that for probably 10 years. (Now mind you, there's 11 or so kids in the family but most of them are half siblings and step siblings to my mom, she has just the two, I guess you'd call them full blooded siblings, but she had a bit of a relationship with some of the other siblings also. I didn't really know there were so many siblings until just recently actually) But I just wasn't all that close to my Mom's relatives so I didn't feel like I could call them up and ask about the family. Plus after Mom's accident I couldn't really go to her for information.
I took what info I did have and just went for the Censuses and government records. I was really getting the hang of things, how to look stuff up online and gathering all sorts of census stuff - but then I had my daughter and it's not very easy to go to a Genealogy library with a baby. I realized being a mom of young kids I needed to set aside Family History for another time when I could do it more. This wasn't easy as there was a draw to keep finding more but I had to keep saying to myself that whole idea of there being a time and season to everything. Yet every now and then something calls be back to it and I'll once again get sucked into it for a time before I set it aside - the Quest calls to me.
Wow, long post and I haven't even once mentioned the whole Cherokee thing. I'm sure someone's going to read a bit into it and wonder why the title is Cherokee Quest. Well let me get to that right now. In looking up family stuff on my Mom's side, I had heard that some of the ancestors might be Native American. I thought this was really cool since I've always liked the culture of the Native Americans - I've been drawn to the art, music, etc. and on my bedroom wall is a collection of dreamcatchers, medicine pouches and other such Native American iconographic objects that both my husband and I have collected/made over the years. (My husband doesn't have any Native American ancestors but he got attracted to the Native American culture through Order of the Arrow Boy Scout program) It seemed rational enough for my ancestors to be Native, at least in my eyes my great-grandparents had Native features, but I only had 2 pictures and a newspaper clipping to go off of and I only remember meeting them in person once.
Carlo and Edna Hicks1990
I had heard that my great-grandpa Carlo's mother was Native American but when I found her in the census she was put down as White so I didn't think much more of it. I did keep searching for more history and at one point decided to share all the census and marriage licenses and such on facebook for anyone interested. I suddenly got friend request from relatives I didn't know and went to look something up online and found this great site that had a lot more information and even some pictures of some of my ancestors! Carlos mother, Minnie Hicks, was in that group with a few pictures and in looking up a little more online I found more pictures of her - once again to me it looked like Native American features.
I added that into my information and posted more on facebook and one of my mothers cousins told me that it's specifially the Cherokee tribe that Minnie is said to belong to as well as some of Edna's ancestors and there's a good chance we are related to the current Principal Chief Michell Hicks of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, but the only connection is the last name Hicks.
In looking up on my great-grandmother Edna's line, her grandmother Elizabeth Carmack was also said to be Cherokee. One of Edna's nephews put that idea out on a forum and recently I found her father Rev. Jacob Carmack's gravestone was put up and the idea of him being Cherokee was put on a forum also. What I find interesting is the information about Jacob didn't have his daughter Elizabeth so it's more than one source. Plus, as I've searched for more information about Minnie, I've discovered that "Minnie" is a common Cherokee name (or at least I found a variety of other Minnie's that are proven Cherokee).
In case I've lost you and this is all confusing here's a pedigree outline:
Overview - Lendon is my mom's dad. The surname Hicks, is a Cherokee name, there's a fair amount of Hicks in this list of Cherokees. (There's even more Fields in that list, which may be related to Edna, some of the names in that list match the Fields names I found here but sadly the years don't match.) The circled people, Minnie, Elizabeth and Jacob, are said to be Cherokee.
Sigh. There are some great websites but to view the information you almost always have to pay a lot of money. And once again there's the whole issue of time, a lot of this takes tons of time which as I said before is not something I have a lot of right now. So I'm not sure how to go about things and if I'll ever be able to fulfill my Quest. But perhaps posting all this here will help. If you're reading this and want to see more information - the Census and other records, you can check out my facebook album.
I started writing a post and I realized I probably need to explain about my Mom's accident at some point or a lot might be confusing later on. It's a pretty long and sometimes crazy story and there's a lot of other stuff I want to take the time to write but I remembered I had written out a whole bunch of it to share with friends and family on facebook so I looked up the old note and here it is - I wrote it back in 2011 so I'll add a little updated note of where things are at at the end.
Me and My Mom at my wedding 2004
September 23 2005 (the day after my first wedding anniversary, Mom was only 43) my
mom was riding a mule up in a canyon and fell off and hit her head on a
rock. She was life flighted out and was in a coma. My sister's wedding
was to be in just under a month - we decided to go through with it since
we didn't know how long mom would be in a coma. Mom woke up from her
coma in November. The accident had caused a Traumatic Brain Injury also
known as a TBI. The doctors told us she got some blood on her spinal
cord and if it had been something like a millimeter to the other side
she would have died whereas if it had been the other way nothing bad
would have happened. The whole thing caused or was basically like a
stroke, mom can't do much on the left side of her body.
Me and My Mom Christmas of 2005, just a bit after she woke from her coma
She had to
learn how to eat again, swallowing being particularly difficult because
they had given her a tracheotomy, this also caused her voice to change
and she's had to work on speech therapy. She went to a couple different
nursing homes. Some were nice
an others were terrible holes that I wouldn't want anyone to ever have
to stay a night in let alone live in. Then 3 years ago she moved out to
Minnesota to go through a program for TBI at the Mayo clinic. One of
the first places she lived in was abusive and didn't give her the proper
medication - we had no idea since she was so far away and she never
said anything. Thankfully she was able to get in a different and much
better place, Minnesota is at the lead when it comes to having housing
for people who have a disability or are unable to care for themselves -
it's not just nursing homes.
Krissy has always loved her "Mamă" and loved to help her
This was in 2008, when Krissy was just over 1 year old
2008
Going through that program and working with
a lot of other therapy she's improved greatly from the state she was at
after the coma. She's still in a wheelchair for the most part but she
can stand up and walk a bit with help. She can not move or use her left
arm and hand at all. A TBI is very difficult in a lot of ways, it
effected her memory both short and long term. I didn't realize the
extent of this until I made her a scrapbook of her life for a christmas
present and she did not remember a majority of the things pictured.
She's very impulsive and can get offended very easily (then you hope
it's one of those things she forgets in half an hour and not one of the
few things she remembers and recalls over and over) She hasn't
forgotten everything and she has been able to do better with short term
memory things but it's a day to day thing and we never know what she
will or will not remember.
We've had her stay with us a few times for
holidays and these visits sadly were very terrible and never went well -
it was just too difficult having her around constantly and trying to
take care of her turned out to be pretty strenuous. The harder thing was
her temper as we would get in awful fights and she would say hurtful
mean things. The best visit we ever had was when she stayed at a
nursing home and we would go and visit her and we took her up the canyon
for a cookout. She was somewhere that she was taken care of and had her
own space where she could nap a lot (she gets tired very easily due to
the TBI) but we could still see her and do things with her. It's hard
for her to understand and accept that I can't devote all our time and
energy to her as I have my own life with a house to take care of and
kids to raise - but there are days where she's better about
understanding this than others. There are times where it's like she's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - I can talk to her in the morning and she's
happy and things are going fine, later that afternoon she's angry with
me and claims she has been all day, then later that evening it's like
nothing happened and she's fine and everything's great. In a lot of
ways it's like she has the mindset attitude and disposition of a
teenager but she knows she's older.
So now we come to today and I'm
trying to get her moved back out here to Utah. Some of the problems we've
run into is she was going to school before her accident, she was just a
few months away from graduating. The problem is she had student loans
to go to school and they started taking money from her Social Security
and so she's behind in rent where she currently lives. So I'm working
at getting that taken care of and finding a place for her to live out
here. We have to get her approved somewhere, get her out here and then
get her on Utah's Mediade and Medicare - if she's not ale to get on
those to pay for her living I'm not sure what we'll do but she should
qualify. It's been a struggle to find a place - I've looked up
countless nursing homes, called many and gone to a good number in
person. The majority of them only have people that are 65 and older -
she stayed in places like this before and she would make a friend who
would die a week later. The majority of places also have never dealt
with someone that has a brain injury and it can be so different than the
typical alzheimers and such that we worry they wouldn't want to keep
her. Utah only has nursing homes for someone in mom's position - she
needs 24 hour care in case she falls out of bed or so she can have help
with daily living tasks. I wish Utah had some places like Minnesota
where there's only 4 people to a house and they are around the same age
and get the most up to date care but it has been hard to know what is
going on and how she is being taken care of since I'm not there to see.
Finally a few days ago I was able to find a place here in Provo that has
dealt with those with a brain injury and has residents that are younger
and it's not a huge place with over 100 residents. It's a nice place
with therapy cats and it doesn't feel or smell like a hospital.
Hopefully we can get everything worked out for her to move there.
It's
true that this whole thing is not easy and there's been a lot of tears
and heartache but there's a lot of good to look at too from the fact
that she's not still in a coma to the fact that she's been able to see
and enjoy her grandkids even if it's not in the traditional way. I'm
actually very glad she's moving back because I can make sure she is
being taken care of and it will be a lot easier to spend time with her
and have her do things with the family. So that's where things are
currently at least that's a brief summary of what's gone on.
When she came back home to Utah April 2011
April 2011
-Whew, I'm glad I had that written out already, it would have been hard to try and put it all together. I did get her moved out ok and things went really well. We did have a hard time near the end of 2011 because Mom got a horrible infection that effected her psychologically such that she was not herself and even got to the point where she would barely whisper to talk to you and she was rather lifeless. We didn't know until later that it was all due to the infection, between Christmas and New Years she got cellulitis so she went into the hospital and they gave her some real heavy duty medications that finally cleared everything up and snap, she was back to herself (at least back to how she's been since her accident) but she didn't remember like the past 3-4 months because of it all. She thought we hadn't been to see her for Christmas and I was all "I have video of us singing christmas carols with you." But it's all good. We know now what some of the main warning signs of those infections are and she's been doing a lot better. I'm sure I'll do more post about her - for instance I'll have to share the big 50th birthday party I put together for her last year - but by putting this all together now if I need to mention anything about her accident and such I can put a link back to this post for people to know what's happened.
