grandma and grandpa day

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit today, and for the first time since the flu took over our house, I felt good all day long. We had my second favorite Kansas City barbecue and toured the World War I museum for free (thanks Kelly!) Took pictures in front of the Kansas City skyline, which I just love.

There was iced coffee, a plate of cheese and super happy baby. It'd only be better if we could do this more often.

Bowlin'

We spent last week in the Dallas area cheering on K-State in the Cotton Bowl. 

First up was the pep rally at the Texas Rangers Stadium in Arlington. Henry was enthralled with the 20,000 + K-State fans, fireworks, big screens and familiar fight songs. He yelled right along with the best of them.

Followed by the game at Dallas Stadium, which is unnecessarily huge and left me nauseated for the first quarter. We also visited the Fort Worth stockyards where Henry sat in his first saddle. Giddy-up!

Now we're home. There are no more road trips, holidays or extended periods of time off. Hello, real life.

a first christmas

Henry was rather neutral about his first Christmas. Though it was full of experiences including ringing the Salvation Army bell, candlelight Christmas Eve service, opening presents (puppets and books were the favorite), a turkey dinner he slept through and an overflowing stocking.

Puppets!

Aftermath

quick, everybody look in all different directions

 

 

 

This is the largest group of kids Henry has ever been around. His head did come one-inch from the cement fireplace. But you know, I'm such a cool mom that I trusted daddy and kept snapping pictures.

And then I disinfected all the toys because OMG THE BABY SPIT.

to my favorite fathers

To my father, 

You helped me become the woman I am today. You've taught me many things - things I am still discovering today. As I face the job of parent in the next two months, I realize more and more the thought and immense love that went into shaping my life. The sacrifices, the anxiety and the joy. 

I'm excited to see you with your grandson. To help shape his life - teach him how to identify crops in the field, how to paint the house and properly mow a lawn. I hope he looks to you for advice when Shea and I don't have the answers. I hope he experiences the passion of a K-State/KU basketball game with his fanatical grandpa. I hope he learns the stories from your travels, understands the importance of climate change and gets it when he sees the awards hanging in your office.

Thank you for loving my mom, and loving her more as her belly grew. Thank you for rubbing her back and bringing home special treats when she was hot, tired or grouchy. Thank you for the moments before and after my birth when you spent time thinking about what makes the best kind of father. You did good, if I do say so my self.

Love, 

Your daughter

To Shea, the father-to-be,

I hope that the love you feel the first time you see your son's face is so great it feels as if your heart will explode. That everything they say is true - you never realized you could love this much.

I hope the sleepless nights, the hormonal wife, the poopy diapers and the exasperating cries feel more like a privilege than a chore.

I hope our little boy grows up to be a man like you. One that loves God. Respects, cherishes and honors his wife. Works hard. Has joy for baseball or chemistry or whatever he loves most.

I hope you stick to your convictions in the hard moments when being a dad is just plain hard. Even when he screams that he hates us or we realize the other parents are letting their kids do that.

I hope we're always a team. That the love between us makes us even better parents. And that when we're done being full-time parents, we realize our marriage is even stronger than before.

I hope that being a father is one of the biggest blessings in your life. I hope you develop a father-son bond you're proud of.

Our little guy is the luckiest. You'll do great.

Love, 

Your partner-in-crime

she's graduated!

Last year, I wrote this about my brother and sister who technically don't share my blood. Last year, it was Chris who graduated from college. Now he's off being smart at Johns Hopkins. Layne finished her time at KU today, and we are so proud of her especially the fact she survived a lot more physics and chemistry classes than the two of us combined.

We started as babysitter and kid. Grew to be friends and self-proclaimed sisters. I sat in the stands at her softball games, and she stood beside me at my wedding. Now, I can't wait for our little boy to meet his Aunt Layne and to see all the exciting things coming her way in the next couple of years.
 

 And my favorite picture of the day:

 

Congratulations on the beginning of what will no doubt be an exciting journey.

love before sight

This Mother's Day seems different. In three months, I'll be a mother. Or to this little boy, I already am. I am sure next year at this time I'll have a whole new appreciation for what my mom did for me 28 years ago.

But the last six months have shown me what she did before I breathed my first.

She worried about me constantly for nine months, especially in the beginning. She worried that I would be healthy and strong. That all my parts would be in the right places. That her body would sustain a life growing inside her.

She gave up caffeine. Wine and beer. She tried to eat as many fruits and veggies as she could. She says she felt the healthiest of her life when she was pregnant with me. Later when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, she gave up sugar. All sugar. She worried that if she didn't do everything right, it would somehow affect my health.

She read pregnancy books. She did special exercises. She sewed her own maternity clothes. She endured backaches, swollen ankles and heartburn like you wouldn't believe. She watched her body transform from something she used to know to something built to grow a life - still beautiful but very, very different. She looked at her closet every morning realizing she probably was wearing the same thing she wore two days ago because that's what fits. She worried her body would never look the same again.

She was scared. Excited. Anxious. Overjoyed. Nervous. All at once.

As the due date approached, she worried more. Worried that my lungs were developed enough to breathe on their own. That I would be alert, and she'd hear that cry immediately. That as the months went on that I would continue to develop as I should.

She took childbirth classes. She toured the maternity ward and listened to the women scream. She then promptly decided that she would NOT be a screamer. Thousands of women do this everyday, there is no reason for screaming. And she didn't.

She washed all my clothes and blankets with special soap. She saved pennies to be able to buy a rug for the nursery. She worked til the day she went in labor and then shopped for glasses with my dad on her way to the hospital. She did it all while helping to put my dad through the final year of his PhD program.

She wondered if she'd know what to do when she got home. If she could figure out breastfeeding. If she knew how to give me a bath. What she would do if I cried all night long. If she could do it all on two hours of sleep and not go crazy.

She did it all without ultrasounds. Without pregnancy websites that address every worry. Without knowing if I'd be a boy or girl or what my 4D profile looked like.

Now I get it. How much joy, how much work and how much worry went into my life before she even saw my face.

Thank you, Mom. For loving me so much before you even knew me.

Read more: 100 things my mom taught me.

angry clouds and some pumpkin gelato

As we were going out the door to the game Saturday, we considered whether or not to bring the ponchos. "It's only a 30 percent chance of rain. There's a better chance of it not raining," my mom said. We brought them anyway, which turned out to be wise because eight plays into the game, this happened.

It's for real. Birds were flying in circles. The lightning got an "ahh" from the crowd and eventually caused a 1.5 hour delay of game. Fans were asked to leave the stadium and seek shelter. Considering our shelter was one mile away at my parent's house, we stood around watching the mass exodus. Finally the announcement came that we could take cover in the adjacent basketball stadium.

We arrived just as the downpour began to find the court full of kids shooting baskets and posing for pictures. We waited. And waited. And waited. Until finally we were allowed to go back to our seats and sit in the cold rain. Lucky us. Thus proceeded the longest, most boring game of my life full of play challenges, TV timeouts and an over zealous girl behind me who cheered, "go offense" or "go defense." I guess at least she knew which was which.

The last 27 seconds made up for the five hours of boredom. Sorta. I guess. But my family does NOT leave football games early. We rewarded ourselves with Chinese food, brownies and a movie. (Sidenote: Every time Shea says "mmm brownies sound good right now," my mom makes them for him! I never remember this kind of service when I was a child. This makes me mad and also proves it was probably good I was an only child.)

Sunday we spent the day at the Plaza Art Fair with my adopted extended family who I love and adore. 

That's them enjoying the art from the curb. My whole goal was not to buy art but to find pumpkin spice gelato. Mission accomplished.

Weekends like this make me grateful from head to toe that we now live close to the people I love most.

love, sacrifice and cough drops

{They were happier than they look. Promise.}

One of my favorite stories my mom tells is about sacrifice and cough drops.

They both moved away from their families in Illinois, where they met in college, to pursue a new life together. They earned master's degrees at University of Kentucky. My mom then worked to put my dad through the rest of his degree and eventually a PhD. There was no extra money, and sometimes not enough. They did their grocery shopping at different stores, referring to a master list of food prices and sales to maximize their grocery budget. She made cookies for a special treat but crackers, chips and pop never made it on the list.

One time they were running to catch the bus, and my dad dropped a handful of cough drops. Realizing later the drops were gone, they went back that night in the dark to pick them out of the snow. Because buying more cough drops would be expensive and unnecessary.

When my mom got pregnant, she worked up until the day she started having contractions. In fact while in labor she was shopping for new glasses for my dad. She nursed as long as she could and used cloth diapers. Soon they moved to Michigan and lived in a rented house my mom hated. (Considering you could lay on my closet floor and look through a hole into the basement, who can blame her?)

My dad continued in his post-doc, and my mom worked in the soils lab. It wasn't until they moved to Kansas before the start of my kindergarten year that my dad got his first professor job, and my mom eventually went back to teaching. This was also the first time they bought a house - more than 10 years after they were married.

Sometimes I think my generation - Shea and I included - didn't learn about sacrifice. So many people we know have fallen into this pattern of graduating from college, getting married, buying a house, buying a bigger house, getting a new car every couple of years, and it goes on and on. We'd rather be comfortable and impressive but consequently, in debt.

One of my very best friends is giving up her career dream, at least for now, to support her husband's. It's not always easy, and lately never easy. There isn't enough money, and the days of waiting for a job, a real estate miracle and new baby are full of worry. Shea and I aren't picking up cough drops in the snow, and we lead a very rich life compared to many. However we are trying to sacrifice so that our money goes toward paying down student loans rather than payments for a house we don't need. I don't love our apartment but I do love the stories we'll have about our crazy neighbors. (Seriously. Crazy.) We know someday we'll be debt-free and comfortable but only if we sacrifice and live a little uncomfortably now.

As for my parents, after years of sacrifice and discipline? They have more than enough money to buy extra cough drops.

purple pride

In the fall, my family goes to football games with as much purple on as possible. Birthday parties, picnics, and yes even weddings were scheduled only on away game Saturdays. Why did Shea and I get married in August and not September? Football.

We traveled to bowl games complete with car flags and magnets. And apparently really untamed, teen aged hair which a few days later I died purple. Good golly somebody give me some hair gel and a flat iron.

We live about a mile from the stadium. My fall memories are filled with tailgating, hot dogs, walking to games and screaming or crying at the top of my lungs. We sweat it out during 100-degree home openers. Sat for four hours during a downpour refusing to leave before "happy trails to you" was sung. Froze to death - only surviving by drinking hot chocolate - through four long quarters.

We been through embarrassing losing seasons where beating Bowling Green was a triumph and seasons where they announced "welcome to the field, your NUMBER-ONE RANKED WILDCATS." It still gives me chills. I cried happy tears when we beat Nebraska for the first time in 40 years and cried tears of misery when we gave up the Big 12 Championship in the final seconds.

Growing up in a college town is just different. The heartbeat of your town, the color of its people (purple), the specials on the menus, the street festival pep rallies and the common bond rises and falls with your team. And if you dare suggest you're not a fan when they lose, we'll hurl all the bandwagon insults we can muster.

I haven't had season tickets since early college (due to my Minnesota residency) after a 15-year streak. But, we're back.

Tomorrow we'll arrive just in time for the huge pep rally in the middle of downtown followed by predominantly purple fireworks. Then it's a Saturday of tailgating and four glorious hours of K-State football with seats next to my equally purple-crazed parents.

My dad will have his headphones on listening to the radio while watching the game and of course yelling advice to players. My mom will smile and roll her eyes but with unfailing dedication will recite all the cheers. I'm a combination of the both of them minus the headphones but complete with "GAAAH" and "YESSS" screams. Shea will probably tell me who is going to be drafted or why we need a playoff system, and I will have to explain once again, that's not what college football is about.

It's about a town coming together every fall. Always in purple.

Previous purple love: Bleeding purple since kindergarten

part two: red shoes and a bursting heart

We worked really hard to make our wedding a Shea and Sarah one.We used a polka dot theme for our save the date and invitations. We designed and wrote our own program - newspaper style.

My most favorite decor touch though was red shoes. First, I decided I wanted to wear red shoes because we were using red accents with our black and white theme. Then I asked the bridesmaids to buy red shoes. Then my mom wanted to wear red shoes. Eventually we included a card with the invitation inviting our guests to wear their "ruby slippers" to our Kansas wedding.

Our amazing decorator incorporated this into our cake display. (See the shoes?!)

After a day of golfing for Shea and nails for me, I met Shea back at the reception site to construct our candy buffet. I had my first freak out after realizing no one had made my ribbon bouquet for the rehearsal in one hour. I know, super important. My mom was too busy and stressed to do it and deal with my frantic and totally misplaced tears. But magically (magically she got a call from my mom) Ashley, my personal attendant, came to the rescue.

The rehearsal was the first time I saw everyone that had arrived. Everything did not go perfectly. People were late. People were huge jerks self-centered. People talked during the instructions despite my best only-child glare. The musicians couldn't all be there. We forgot the flower girl basket. On the upside, I loved my Anthropologie dress.

As we drove away, I was ready to fight frustrated but was quickly redeemed. I have never felt so loved as I did at the rehearsal dinner. It was the unexpected, completely amazing chapter of the wedding week. We had a Kansas themed barbecue and sunflower dinner. My favorite.

My dad gave a speech followed with my mom. They told the stories of me trying to convince the school board that I should not have to drop orchestra, Spanish or journalism because they required me to take gym especially something called "Net Sports." They talked about when I returned a few years later to convince the same school board that the high school's Indian mascot was racist. Or five years later when I sued my university in federal court for First Amendment violations.

Then Randy, close enough to be a father, talked about how I don't just participate, I lead. He had examples I had even forgotten. He talked about my influence in his kids' lives. How everything Layne did was because I had done it. Next to me was Layne, who gripped my hand as the tears poured down my face.

There were friends who remembered coffee shop dates chatting about boys. Shea's friends who talked about his habit of labeling kitchen cabinets or his antics at work. Layne and Chris who remembered our countless mac and cheese lunches. The speeches went on for hours, and I thought my heart would burst from my chest.

All good things come to an end, at least for the night. We drove back to my parent's house to pack our wedding night bag and then get Shea to the hotel. I commented as we drove home that my car just felt funny. We went inside to organize and came back at midnight so I could sleepily drive Shea to the hotel.

And my car would not start. Not even a sputter. My dad averted disaster and drove Shea to the hotel, as I resumed panicking and chowed down a melatonin pill.

part one: it begins

There are times when I come to those moments. The ones where it hits me that this moment is the one I've talked about my whole life. I remember in high school just wanting to know my future last name so that I knew when I met him. I remember convincing myself in college that it was OK if I ended up single - think of all the good I could do in the world with all my free time!

Then suddenly I was trying on white dresses. Picking out flowers. Getting rings sized and cleaned. Having showers, a bachelorette party and "let's all tie ribbons on tubes of bubbles" parties. The comments I had made my whole life like "when I get married," "when I meet my husband," or "my wedding" - it was actually happening despite the fact I still felt 10 years old inside.

Sometimes I panic that I will forget the details, how I felt in certain moments, what people said. I keep saying "we need to write it all down" before we forget. So that's what I'm going to do this week in honor of our one-year anniversary on Sunday.

Wednesday night was actually one of my best memories of the whole weekend. It was one of the few, stress-free moments I got to spend with my parents - just being their only daughter. My parents had been taking dance lessons and after practicing their learned dances along with our father-daughter dance, Shea made sure my parents knew the electric slide.

Shea also got his first look at my parent's basement. Now being a true relative, though a few days shy, he was allowed to enter this dark land, where my mother bans all others.

Thursday night we got to spend time with friends before the craziness began - most of them driving eight hours from Minnesota to be there. We grilled at my parents house. Ate smores. Eventually headed to my old college bars where the wedding party was shocked to find $1 beers. Thank you, college town.

I went to bed that night knowing that the next two days would be fun, but really failing to understand how amazing they would be.

a little art, a little gelato

This weekend one of our favorite people visited. Even though Ashley's left us for college in California, we're happy a very important person in the extended family is back for the summer.

We had a dinner and  a little wine, which ended up more on the ceiling and less in our glasses.

After a quick stop at the dog park, we headed to Balsano's Gelato Cafe, which had a 20-minute line. The half wedding cake-half mint chocolate chip was well worth the wait.

We spent the rest of Friday night sitting on a bench guessing the relationships between people standing on the balcony of a bar. Turns out, Ashley's a pro at body language psychology.

Saturday morning Shea made the girls breakfast before heading to City Market for fruit and loose leaf tea. We stopped by KC Juice for our favorite smoothies (watermelon juice!) and then finally made it to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Who could resist picture taking with sculptures followed by a little skipping?

Less than two years to convince Ashley that Kansas City is a great place to be post-graduation. We need talented costume designers here, too!