The Best Medicine Around

Our trip to the keys this year was a balm for all of us. We fortuitously picked the most frigid, arctic week of the winter to escape New Hampshire, but even more than that, we all needed a mental and physical check-out badly. The kids were so wound up to go to Florida the week before we left, that Aiden's teacher had to have him work at a table all alone so he could have some chance of focusing with his "vacation-brain" working overtime. Haley didn't have any work to do, but she was still crazy to get to the water and sand. Actually, Haley wouldn't agree we that we were even IN florida until she hit the sandbox and beach at the Conch House. THAT is Florida for our little girl.

Key Lime Smoothie from Robert Is Here is a must before we hit the "stretch" to the keys

Mom and Haley at Robbie's

Dad's absence was felt keenly everywhere I turned (how could it not be, he was such a part of that house and the little tropical garden oasis my parents have created there) but I wanted to be nowhere else in the world for that week. Mom hosted us perfectly- she slept in the tent with Aiden to give him an adventure and regale him with stories about his Hapa each night. We could hear them laughing out there every night from inside the house- probably the best sound I've heard in a very long time.

At Mahogany Hammock in Everglades National Park

Mama gator with a baby on her back- there were at least 30 all around her

Haley with "izzy lizzy" which we got her to calm her fear of seeing gators.  She eventually relaxed about them.

The week was full of fun and adventure for Aiden, with his first-ever snorkeling trip on a coral reef, animal watching in the everglades, and a guided backcountry fishing trip with his Dad. The snorkeling trip was out of Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, and because the weather was pretty calm, we got to snorkel on Key Largo Dry Rocks, the reef with the giant Jesus statue. Aiden was probably more impressed with the big statue than any of the fish he saw, though those were impressive too: filefish, parrotfish, seargent majors, tangs, jacks, and a french angelfish, to name a few. He did amazingly well for about 20 minutes of snorkeling, but then started to freak out a bit (a combination of barracuda trepidation, saltwater in his eyes, and some seawater snorkel intake)... overall a good first go at real snorkeling for a 6 year old. It's an overwhelming feeling to look down at a cavernous reef teeming with sealife and keep your calm... some of the adults new to snorkeling were freaking out too!

About to hit the water

Heading out of Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

Seafood Lunch in Key Largo

Aiden and his new friend Aiden- spelled the same way.  They spent 3 days in the pool together goofing around!

Sunrise over the ocean

The backcountry fishing was windy and cool, but yielded 10 keeper mangrove snappers, some of which we oven-fried for supper. Aiden and Andy had their "good luck" ice creams at 7AM, so Aiden didn't seem surprised that they were successful. He's definitely "hooked" on fishing in the keys and is already asking his Dad when they can go deep-see fishing for mahi-mahi sometime. (Hey, a boy can dream....)

Aiden with a sheepshead that he caught...they have teeth like horses, for eating coral and hard mollusks

The highlights of Haley's week were daily swims in the ocean and pool, and lots and lots of tea parties. Tea parties with seawater and sand-sugar, tea parties with pretend "air" tea, and tea parties with grandma and real hibiscus tea and orange juice and sugar! Grandma taught Haley how to pour a cup of tea without spilling, and how to be a gracious host and ask if your guests would like sugar, spooning and stirring it slowly into a teacup. We tried to get Haley to lift her pinky finger while sipping, but that she drew the line on that one- no way. She does love a teaparty though!

Tea, anyone?

Grandma and Natalie share real tea with Haley

Of course we got a bit of birding in too, here and there, and sampled some delicious local seafood, including fried lionfish, alligator schnitzel, mahi sandwiches, lobster BLTs and conch chowder. On our last night, we had a pizza party using the outdoor clay oven Mom & Dad built several years ago. Mom did an amazing job preparing the oven and baking the pizzas, which were solidly Dad's domain in the past. Everything came out perfectly though, and we had a lovely evening shared with Dora, Bassi, and Bassi's girlfriend Ella.

Aiden gets his fried lionfish dinner

The real deal, in a tank at Pennekamp

Now it's back to the frigid northlands, work and school. We'll daydream of our week in the Keys for quite awhile, I'm sure... until the weather finally starts to turn here and we can dream of summer once again.

Haley at Founders Park

Aiden pulled out his loose tooth- and got a "gold dubloon" from the Florida Tooth Fairy!

"Is this Florida, Mama?"

A flowering tree in the yard- I forget the name but very spectacular. These bloomheads are as big as your face!

Morning coffee on the dock

Cool at Bahia Honda Key

Bahia Honda

More Bahia 

Our last day- goodbye to Founders Park

King of the huge sandpile @ Founders Park

Back into the Stream

Well, I am back at this. After my dad died, everything just seemed too raw. It didn't seem fair or even possible to write about our daily life or post pictures of our smiling kids...who are kids after all, and incapable of staying in a state of devastating sorrow over a single event for very long. I didn't want to write about what we were up to, because for a good while there I wasn't feeling much of anything about anything. I also didn't seem to have the energy to write as eloquently as I wanted to about my dad and what his love and his life meant to me and to my whole family. To be honest, I still am not at that point yet.

But it is amazing how life goes on. It's amazing how something like a death can so totally devastate your life that you expect the whole world to crumble in on itself. It shakes your confidence and it leaves you in some alternate world where everything is standing still. But the world around you continues on. People are still shopping and pumping gas; the mail is still being delivered, Christmas still comes, and your dog still wants to be fed. At some point, you step back into the stream. The kids pulled us back in before we would have gone ourselves. It's one of the things kids do best.

I have missed blogging, though. And I am newly thankful that I've created this digital history of our family over the past 6 years. One day, if Aiden wants to, he can look back over these posts and find evidence of just about every significant chunk of time he spent with his Hapa since he was 6 months old. Every weekend in Vermont, every vacation in Florida, every sugaring season. This is a slight comfort to me, though it also makes me panic just a little about getting this blog into a hardcopy format too, in case the whole of internet cyberspace crashes into oblivion someday. I plan to tackle that project in the coming year, one of many New Years resolutions.

Aiden and Haley have been active and growing these past few months. They had a good Christmas holiday and are thriving, as they should. For the adults- between my dad's death and superstorm Sandy- Andy and I, my mom, Micah and Becky, and also Andy's Dad, brother Dan and sister-in-law Paulette have had a difficult stretch all around. I still feel like we are staggering about like a bunch of zombies most of the time, going through the motions of life with very few of the emotions besides grief and depressing sense that nothing will ever be the same again. At the same time I feel sure that life will improve, slowly, slowly, slowly... it already has gotten a bit easier.

November Beach Day

Our other chickens!

 Grandma Sally and HaPa dropped off our new flock a little over a week ago- three red hens and three white ones.  They've adjusted extremely well to their new coop and outdoor run, and were all laying eggs by their first full day here.  The kids really are enjoying their new "chore" of collecting the eggs and helping with the feeding duties.  We're learning by trial and error what types of vegetable scraps these ladies love, and which they turn up their combs at.  So far they love watermelon, tomatoes, and apples, but can't be bothered with bananas, alfalfa sprouts, or pumpkins.  I wonder if there's some rhyme or reason to it all (sweet things? seedy things? watery things? things rich in a certain vitamin?), but so far I haven't puzzled out their code.

Grandma (with homemade hat) and HaPa

They are amusing to watch, though, scratching earnestly at the leafy ground in their run, looking for grubs or a little leftover scratch.  When they see any of us, they come running with this comical waddle, looking for handouts.  And the eggs are delicious.  We are getting more than 3 dozen per week, so at this rate we're going to have to start finding egg eaters to give some to, or we'll all end up on Lipitor by the end of the winter.

Aiden feeding kale

Haley feeding "scratch" (cracked corn) - with her "new to her" ski goggles (?)

Kimball loves the chickens too- a little more than the chickens would like!

Little Green Chicken

We came so close to losing our little green chicken, Tupelo, this week.  She is our 12 year old quaker parrot who we have had since she was a newly-hatched chick.  Last week she somehow chopped off the end of her toe, or pulled the nail out (we're not sure which, or how) and very nearly bled to death.  When Andy went downstairs to open up the birds' cages after work, he found Tupe on the bottom with her head down and blood ALL OVER the cage.  All over the walls, pooled in her sleeping hut, everywhere.  You would not believe a small parrot even had that much blood.

We went into emergency mode in a flash.  Got her warmed up and started force-feeding her fluids to try and keep her hydrated.  I knew that there was no chance of getting her a blood transfusion (have you seen any blood drives for parrots lately?) so all we could do was support her with fluids, food, and heat.  The toe itself had scabbed over by the time we found her, but she was so wobbly she couldn't stand or do much of anything.  Over the next two days, she seemed to be getting better... slowly...and then on Saturday morning (of course, the weekend,when the vet is closed) she started shaking and jerking her head and body like she was having a seizure, and could not stand up again.

We rushed her to a 24-hr emergency vet in Concord, where they admitted they had little experience with avian medicine, but said they would see her.  The doctor there said he'd put her in an oxygen chamber for awhile and administer subcutaneous fluids, but cautioned us that the prognosis was not good.  We could tell that ourselves.  Birds don't just lie down unless they are literally on death's door.  Andy and I kissed her and whispered in her ear and left her there in the chamber while tears were starting to stream down both of our faces.  We truly thought we'd never see her alive again, and we cried pretty much all that day.  Aiden cried too, but I think more because he was so disturbed that his parents were both in tears for hours.  Haley provided a very small bit of comic relief by stating over and over that "People like to cry."  (Herself included, though not over Tupelo).  When we got a call from the vet that evening who said he thought she'd "improved considerably" we were totally stunned... "You can pick her up tomorrow" they said.  Oh, and don't forget the $830 you owe us!

Tupelo is nowhere near 100% recovered yet, but she's getting better every day.  She's still very very wobbly, due most probably to her extreme anemia.  At the e-vet they had drawn a small blood sample (a drop) to see what her red cell count was.  Normal is 40% red cells, and the vet said he'd never seen a (living) animal with lower than 20%.  Tupe's was 15%.  So she still has a long way to go.  She may also have had a small stroke because of her low blood pressure, and now has a head tilt to one side, which can't be helping her balance.  She is definitely improving every day now though.  She's clucking like a chicken, squawking at Zaitsev, and saying "Tupe-Tupe" again.  So far she's still being hand-fed and sleeping most of the day in her recovery cage in our room, which is handicapped-accesible with low perches and food dishes so she doesn't have to climb anywhere.  We are very happy to have our little green chicken back!

Hurricane Halloween

Hurricane Sandy turned out not to be a real problem in this area.  We did get a lot of wind and rain for several days, and lost power for a few hours, but that is nothing compared to the horrendous damage Sandy brought to many of our relatives and friends on Long Island.  Even though the hurricane did not impact our Halloween celebrations in New London, the thought of so many people we love struggling definitely put a damper on it.  The kids, as kids should probably be, were oblivious to anything but costumes, pumpkins, and candy, candy, candy.

Spooky fog in our yard

Haley was "Ladybug Girl"

Aiden was "Mario"

Donuts on Strings at the Kennedy's Halloween party

Before the hurricane hit, we went to a Halloween party at the Kennedy's house, which was lots of fun for all ages.  On Halloween itself, the streets were clogged with small imps and witches, and we made our way along them, house by house, as part of an entourage including 8 adults, 5 kids, two dogs, and one stroller.  We didn't cover much ground, but the kids were more than happy with their haul, and they also got the traditional free ice cream at Arctic Dreams (and their photo taken there so that they can see themselves all year long on the wall).  Although we didn't even attempt to hand out candy at our house (kept the lights off and everything so we could all go out together) we didn't even get egged.  All treats this year for us... feeling grateful all around.