A Hard Parenting Moment

I recently wrote a post about letting people go.  Well, several nights ago Noah and I were talking, it was late, he had a cold and he started talking about my dad.  It broke my heart, without going in to personal details, basically he was saying things like I wish I could meet Grandpa. He is almost six and has never met my dad. He lives in England with his new wife and it just is far away. I haven’t seen my dad since before I found out I was pregnant with Noah.  Noah kept saying things like where is Grandpa? How far is England? Why haven’t I met him?  I didn’t have the heart to say anything. He went on to make a plan to go see him. He calculated every detail of the trip out to me.  I just went a long with it.  I felt the tears falling down my face because it made my heart hurt so badly.  We have never had the best relationship and again without getting in to all the personal details he has hurt me many times in my life, more than I can count. I had known this for a long time and it is who he is, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.  I was really hesitant to let him back in my life and now Noah’s life back in 2007.  It is really hard because he’s my dad. My five year old doesn’t know, it is sad that he hasn’t met him.  I already have seen him disappoint Noah and continue to disappoint me. I used to wonder if I did something wrong, if I wasn’t good enough growing up? I wondered if it was my fault. 

So, what do I say? I mean I am definitely not going to say the truth to my five year old. I don’t want him to know, if that makes sense. I guess I will just have to go along with it for now and not make any promises. It is not like he has made any effort to see us. He invited us out there when Noah was two.  That’s a long way from home and I would be worried something would happen and we would be on the streets in England to fend for ourselves.  He has never offered to come here once. When he was living in the states, he never offered to see us.  We actually moved to be closer to him and he took off to England.  He has never heard Noah’s voice other than on videos. He doesn’t call, Skype or anything. Noah has seen two pictures of him.  It makes me so sad, because who could want to not meet my sweet little boy. He is amazing and so smart.  It has really turned in to a very stressful and hurtful thing for me so I decided to just let him go. Let him have his life in England and all that and hope he is happy, but I can’t let him hurt us anymore. My heart can’t take it, I don’t want Noah’s heart to hurt or ever feel unloved  by him like I did for almost my entire life.  It just really stinks because Noah is asking about Grandpa all the time now and I know he is genuinely just a kid wanting to see someone he loves.

Noah's Accent

I am first generation American on my Dad’s side. I am both Irish and English. I find it hilarious that sometimes when Noah talks he either talks with a slight British accent or in British slang.  Now, he watches Kipper, Peppa Pig, and Thomas and they are all British shows.  There is a character on Kipper named Arnold. If I ask Noah if the little pig’s name is Arnold (Ar-nold) he will say no its ahh-nold.  Peppa Pig is a weird show where the pigs look like they have pink hairdryers for heads and they walk around snorting all the time, which seeing as they are pigs that would make sense.  All the other characters along with Peppa Pig’s family will talk in their British accents and then randomly make their animal noises. Most other shows with talking animals do not do this.  Noah loves popsicles so now he calls them “ice lollies”. He will say can I have an ice lolly mommy? I am always thinking popsicle Noah popsicle.

He has become very fond of legos and when he wants help taking them apart, he asks me to break it in to bits. I am not sure where he learned that from but I think it’s funny and cute.  One last British thing Noah says is when he wants to do something he will say “Can I have a go?”  I bet my dad would think it is funny that Noah sometimes talks with a British accent.  When we go to England someday, Noah will fit in as long as there are lots of ice lollies and everyone is named Ahh-nold.

Football and Soccer vs Donut and Crumpet

Noah turned 5 on September 6^th while we were on board of The Disney Dream.  My dad sent him some wonderful presents for his birthday using rapidparcel.com. One of the things in the box was a pump for his football. I was confused for a minute, because the ball was round. I told Noah what the pump was and what it was for.  I said for your football. He opened his present and it was a soccer ball. Not to confuse Noah I said oh look a soccer ball, how cool is that? I keep forgetting that in England, soccer is called football. I had a similar confusion when my dad said something about getting a World Cup Football. I was thinking isn’t the World Cup hockey, no wait that is the Stanley Cup. World Cup is soccer. Now cue Mrs. Doubtfire saying something about how soccer is called football in England. Mystery solved. 

My dad also sent a really cool Crayola Color Explosion 3-d thing. You use a thing that looks like a glue stick and you rub it on the black paper and it shows a picture and you can “color” it.  Noah used the first stick coloring like crazy. He is now mad at me because I want to save the other stick for another day.  I love this dad, because its  not messy at all. It would be a great thing to have for traveling.  Thank you so much for all of Noah’s gifts. We love you!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I am very Irish and so St. Patrick’s Day has always been important to me. It is not a day for me to go out and get drunk but a day I think about where I come from. My dad was born in Ireland, My Grandpa Bill was also born and buried there. I have many relatives that came from Ireland on both sides of my family. I am sure I am like 65% Irish because I have Irish on both sides. I know that my grandma Rose’s great grandparents came over to America on a boat called The Spotted Cow. My dad’s family came over when my dad was a boy. I know that a lot of people are Irish which is cool and if you aren’t St. Patrick’s Day is a day you can pretend by wearing green.

St. PWhen I was little we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. A leprechaun came to our house and brought my sister and me a small gift. We would always look for the leprechaun and come up with schemes to catch him, but we were never successful. I guess the leprechaun was too smart and tricky for us to see let alone catch him.
I think it is important to learn about your family’s heritage and celebrate it. I don’t decorate my house in shamrocks or listen to Irish music all the time, but I am proud of where part of my family is from. I invite you to celebrate your heritage and pass it on to your children. If there are certain traditions, or songs or food, pass it on.

Please have a happy and safe St. Patrick’s Day.

PostEgram Connects Families

We live in such a digital age, everything is done on a computer, we have email, Facebook and blogs. When was the last time you got a hand written letter from a loved one? It has been a while for me I know. I used to get handwritten letters from my grandma Rose. Not everyone is up to date with the digital times, which is fine. I remember the first time I showed my grandma the internet. She thought it was really neat. I am not sure it was something that she could of gotten in to. Some older people choose not to use the internet; it can be kind of confusing even to me. There is a great website called PostEgram. They will print out your Facebook statuses and photos or whatever you want as like a newsletter to send to your loved one and mail it to them through Snail Mail. We went from snail mail to email, well PostEgram made our email now snail mail. It is a pretty cool service.

I also think about how not everyone has a computer. It is somewhat of a luxury item or someone just might not want one in their home for whatever reason. Not everyone can afford the internet. Maybe they live in a rural area where they only get dial up that doesn’t seem worth it. There are many reasons why someone doesn’t have a computer or the internet. However, everyone has a mail box. Now with PostEgram you can sign up for your updates on Facebook either 4 times a month, twice a month or once a month. They also have subscriptions to help you save money.

When my aunt and uncle were visiting from California, I was talking about different things going on with my cousins and I mentioned that I am friends with them on Facebook. Now my aunt and uncle are electronic wizards, after all they had their own electronics store and are very computer smart but they are not on Facebook. They live in the mountains though and they are so busy doing other things on their home. I think it would be really cool for my cousins and I to send something like that to my aunt and uncle because they are so far away and that way they could stay in the loop so to speak.
I hope you all check out PostEgram for more information.