Bring April Flowers...

Jack helped me arrange our new flowers. Yeah -- I love spring!! How can you help but be in a good mood! Jack is doing a good job of helping me tend our new blooms -- we'll see if he turns out to be a great gardener like his Grandpa or loses interest after a few days like his Momma.

April Showers.....

Jack loves his umbrella. We are doing our best to instill in him the good Visick tradition of not being afraid of a little rain. Rain! Heck! We love rain!!

Down on the Farm

On the way back from Uncle Jeff's, we dropped in on Nanny and Docdoc on the "farm". Jack and Docdoc (my stepdad) have always had an incredible connection. Jack and I first visited when Jack was about 3 months old (Mum started chemo and radiation the day Jack was born, so she'd been unable to visit, and we'd been a little busy ourselves!) From the moment Docdoc first picked him up, and ever since, Jack would be (is) quiet and calm in his arms. They sort of melded together and now they sort of pal around in this lovely quiet way. I snapped this picture of them off swinging together. Docdoc will often take Jack out to the barn to show him the mower (always a hit) or they'll wander the field a bit. Like old friends.

A bit later we all headed out on an adventure to the "caravan". My grandparents in England had some land where we'd have bonfire parties, and there was always a caravan on it, that smelled like old caravans do. So a trip to Nanny's caravan is in order. It's out by the pond, and Jack informed us of the danger of the sharks in the pond, who apparently can sometimes come out in search of lunch. We took shelter in the caravan but were soon set upon by what we thought was a large, hungry shark. Luckily it turned out to be a large, hungry docdoc. We "had tea" (the English kind, as in, a meal, and an imaginary one at that!), Jack took some memento photographs, and we headed in.

The problem with being an only child with a very chatty mother and grandmother is that things get boring. Mum and I were holding forth on another of our lengthy topics about something or other, when I happened to glance out the window and see this....

It's Jack, dragging python out of the basement and up to the kitchen, where we are. Python was knitted by Mum one winter, about 8 or so years ago. Why, one might ask? I think, perhaps, because she was bored. And really only knows how to knit a cylinder. She divised a contest prior to Christmas where we all had to guess how long the python would be by Christmas holidays. (I won, I might add,a t something like 39 and 1/2 feet!!) She also had an image in her head of her grandchildren playing with it one day, and finding it in different places when they came to visit. So the fact that we saw this vision played out was very sweet. The fact that Jack just went off and found python and then invented some reason to drag him out of hiding was even sweeter. And what really brought a tear to my eye is this : I remember that winter of the python vividly. We had been trying to have kids for years already. We'd had a miscarriage earlier that year and were about to find out that our third procedure since then had failed, too. I remember that winter feeling like I would never be a mother, it would never be MY children that would play with python. And here he is, my beautiful, miraculous little boy, here and so much more marvelous than I ever could have imagined, the physical realization of all that hope and faith, the repudiation of the fear and pain that told me to stop, to give up, that hope was futile. Here he is in all his marvelousness, and he's dragging that python that seemed to taunt me with the futility of all I was striving and dreaming for. There's a lesson in there somewhere, but it's for someone more profound and more eloquent than me to describe it. All I know it that it was breathtaking.

Sam's First Communion, Taylor's Sixth Birthday

Mid April took us down to Uncle Jeff's house for a joint celebration of Taylor's birthday and Sam's first communion. The former was a big hit, as it involved tons of playtime for the cousins, a bonfire with s'mores AND a pinata. Notice the crazed gleam in the kids eye in the cousin shot. Believe it or not, they all really did sleep later that night.

Next day it was time for us all to gussy up and head to the First Communion. Jack was really happy to be sitting in a pew next to his cousin Zoe. Unlike last time we were in a Catholic church, he did not spend 20 minutes staring straight at the crucifix. (It was just after Easter, and we'd talked a lot about the crucifixion, but I think maybe there's something about a life-sized, fairly realistic version that brought it home in a different way.) He DID however, head up to the altar for communion. In our church, everybody does take the sacrament, and he's fairly well trained to follow in a line, so when the rest of our family headed up to the altar, so did Jack. The priest looked at him, made the sign of the cross, and sent him on his way. He got back to me in the pew and looked a little disappointed. I asked him if he thought he was going to get the bread and water, and he said Yeah, with more than a little miff in his voice. I think he thought the priest was just being selfish or something!

A Boy and His Dog

Shelby is the most amazing pup ever in the history of the world. She was rescued, as a pup, from a cemetary on the coldest day in February, with her litter mates. Taken to a beautiful farm/puppy sanctuary in Southern Ohio. We came along a few weeks later and it was love at first sight. For her, anyway. Or should I say, love at first nibble. Jack had a gummi bear stuck to his bum and ALL the doggies fell in love with him. But only Shelby stayed after the gummi bear was gone. She followed that little boy all over everywhere and he thought she was the best thing since , well, gummi bears. She was a scruffy gangly thing, and I had gone there with a chocolate lab puppy in mind. But Shelby is no dummy -- once she had Jack enthralled, she zeroed in on the true softie. She climbed into Mike's lap and fell asleep. Try as I might to get Mike interested in the rolly polly little chocolate lab, he'd just shrug his shoulders and say, I can't move, she's asleep. And so home she came with us. We couldn't decide on a name, so we enlisted our nieces. They came up with Shelby, and it stuck. Sounded a bit southern, which we liked. And I've always liked the writer/historian Shelby Foote, and Shelby had the biggest feet around. Felt like we would NEVER get her potty trained. I cursed the day we met many a time, as she just couldn't get it out of her head that the appropriate place to poo was the basement. Time passed and we got over that hurdle. We took her to visit my mom on the "farm" and she loved it -- but came in limping. We man-handled the poor thing trying to find a break, or a cut, or a bite. She never made a sound, would only sometimes wince and pull slightly away. This is where her true nature came through. Turns out she had dislocated her hip! And all that time we were moving her leg around trying to find the issue -- must have hurt like anything. We found a great vet and a great charity that helped us put her back together and she embarked on life again. She's had a lucky life, and we feel really lucky to have her. She's one in a million. She and Jack are growing up together (she's part lab, so her growing up may take longer than his!) and they are the best playmates ever. She's his forver sidekick -- Army dog, Batdog, Spiderdog. He insists on her being in his room when he goes to sleep. He pets her, washes her, sprays her with water, enlists her in any and every scheme and she always goes along willingly -- though sometimes I'll catch her looking at me and rolling her eyes.


Forgive my ode to my dog -- but those of you who are dog people will know what I mean -- there's just something about a dog. And there's something even better about a boy and his dog.

Operation Nanny Uplift

My Mum's spent an inordinate amount of time in the Cleveland Clinic this spring. She went in on Feb 28th to have a bowel resection (yum!), which initially went really well. Then she managed to get some sort of infection which boiled up (literally, again, YUM!) every week or so and caused her to hurry herself BACK to the Cleveland Clinic. We all got pretty used to the lovely drive to Cleveland, and enjoyed marking the increasing signs of spring everytime we went. The first trip, in February, was during a driving snow storm. The latest (and hopefully last) gave us a chance to enjoy the blooms and blossoms of Spring as we drove through Amish country. Quite nice of the old girl to give us a chance to get out and about, but we're quite hoping she'll STOP giving us excuses to gallavant around the countryside now, too.

Much of the time I got to do the drive myself while Mike and Jack stayed home. Even the Cleveland Clinic with its miles of tunnels and skywalks and the thrill of a Nanny attached to various bits of tubing isn't enough to make a 5 year old think much of a hospital -- not for long, anyway. But Jack loves his Nanny, and there's no medicine in the world like a visit from a grandson, so a few times our whole family made the trek. Nanny and Jack both lit up when they saw each other. Jack had a quite heart-racing search for the "monster" making the noise behind the curtain (turned out to be Nanny's room-mate snoring.) Jack became quite advanced at operating the elevators (it's a hobby.) And we managed to get infected by zombies in the basement (well, not really, but if you'd been there you'd have understood. If there's a place more likely to house zombies than the basement of the Cleveland CLinic, I don't know what it could be. Nanny and I were trying not to let on how creepy it was, but neither one of us fancied getting out of the lift. If ever called on to prove a moment of good-momhood, I will recount the fact that I did get out of the lift to retrieve Jack from the hallway, and WOULD have sacrificed myself to the zombies had they shown up. Luckily for me, they did not!)

After a bit of playing around which included accidentally taking Mum to the palliative care ward (whoops!!), and gave me to opportunity to explain in detail to Jack exactly why we do not run or yell in the palliative care wing, Mike (who, as usual, deserves Dad of the Millenium status) took Jack off to enjoy a day around Cleveland while Mum and I nattered away about whatever it is that came to mind. Highlights of their day include finding a big ship down on the docks, chasing around outside the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame and (possibly the biggest highlight in Jack's mind) sliding down a slide that had a large muddy puddle at the end and having the bums to show for it.

Ahhh, yes, almost forgot. Jack really loves to take pictures. He particularly likes it if you pretend to be dead or make a funny face or what have you. So, as Daddy took out the camera to show Nanny what the two of them had been doing all day, Jack asked to take pictures. Here are the lovely one he took of Nanny, and then mine. No, wait, I mean, the zombie.

Jack, being both a polite and an honest young man, when he saw me looking at this photo today, just laughed a tiny bit under his breath. Do you know who that is, I asked. Yes, it's you, he said, completely deadpan, as if there were nothing in the least bit wrong with the photo. Do you like it, I said. Oh, yes, he said. Then he paused a moment, Kinda creepy, actually, he said. Gotta love that kid!!

Ahhhh....spring

Spring Madness


I remember when I was riding horses, the spring weather would invariably spur them to kick up their heels and get a little crazy. Good naturedly crazy. They'd be extra playful, have more energy, pal around in the pasture together. There just seemed to be an energy that the warming temperatures and lengthening sun would bring. Turns out it has the same effect on little boys. Jack's friend Cregan and Clay popped round for a bit today, and begged for the sprinkler. We (more sane) adults thought it was a bit cold, but really, how can you turn down that kind of enthusiasm. Jack, who absolutely ADORES being the in water when it's his idea, and who will spend hours in the bath splashing around, for some reason gets insensed when he gets sprayed with water when it's NOT his idea. Thus, the first turn of the sprinkler brought shrieks, and not happy ones, tears and a bit of a tantrum. His two friends looked at him like he was crazy, shrugged their shoulders, and got on with the fun. Luckily, peer pressure works on the side of good as well as evil, and Jack soon gave up the whining for the fun of running through the sprinkler. When all three were shivering and blue-lipped, though they swore they were NOT cold, we sent them inside. It took them about 3.4 seconds to realize the bedroom window was open and poke their heads out to see what the parents were doing. And about a nanosecond more to start hamming it up for the camera. Notice who is leaning out and taking up most of the shot!