she came in through the bathroom window

...sometimes, when you have a feeling you should do something, you should take that as a warning and go ahead and do it. case in point, just last week, i had the feeling that we should remove the lock from our bathroom door before cadence locks herself in there. that thought went in one brain cell and out another (such is the plight of a working mom who has no interest in being an ALPHA working mom). well, sure enough, we had some of my high school friends over last night, and while all the grownups were busy yakking away, cadence managed to shut herself in the bathroom and turn the deadbolt.

i managed to hear her banging on the door and yelling for me, so i went to see what the ruckus was. at first, i thought ted was in there with her, as he hadn’t been w/ the rest of us in the dining room. then when i saw that he was in the living room doing magic tricks for my friend jen’s 5 year old son vinnie, i knew we were in trouble, everybody, which included my friends josh, connolly, olarn, jen, her son vinnie, ted and myself, immediately crowded around the area outside the bathroom door.

by this time, cadence was hysterical and screaming and crying in a way that almost made ME lose it. she just kept banging on the door and desperately rattling the doorknob, even though we kept trying to get her to turn the lock. she just didn’t understand what we were saying, or was too frantic to follow instructions. i’m sure if i’d been on the other side of the door, she would’ve just played around until she figured out how to turn the lock again. i guess when a child is that little and that terrified, they just don’t think straight, and i don’t blame her.

in the meantime, we tried unscrewing the doorknob, which did no good as there was no keyhole behind the encasement of the knob. we didn’t want to kick down the door (like they do in the movies) because cadence was on the floor right behind the door, and we didn’t want to hurt her. i called my downstairs neighbor diane who used to own the building to ask her if she had any idea what we could do, but it being a deadbolt, she didn’t have any suggestions. we decided the only thing to do was to tear the doorframe away, so connolly and i ran down to the basement to find a crowbar. i don’t know what i would’ve done if connolly hadn’t been w/ me, as i was so frantic that i couldn’t even find the light to the tool room. connolly found it, thank goodness, and he had the presence of mind to locate the crowbar too. i didn’t even know what a crowbar would look like, let alone locate it in a tool room i’d been in a total of once before.

cadence had exhausted herself and fallen asleep by this time, as evidenced by a lack of response from the other side of the door. of course, being the paranoid freaked out mommy, i was ready to jump out of my skin because i couldn’t somehow walk bodily through that door like a ghost (or jesus) and scoop her into my arms and make sure she was actually alive and breathing. well, with the help of the crowbar and the sheer muscle power of my friends and after what seemed like HOURS, we finally managed to pry the door open.

i rushed into the bathroom and found little cadence, asleep facedown on the cold tile floor right behind the door. i gathered her up into my arms and she woke up and immediately resumed her hysterics where she had left off. i started crying too and had to go into the living room to compose myself. she sounded so sad as she cried in my arms—a mixture of residual fear of having been abandoned and relief at being reunited with and reassured of mommy’s love. she soon calmed down and kept saying over and over, ‘i’m okay. i’m okay. the door. the door. i’m okay. i’m okay.’ she told us in the few words she had that she’d been sad but now she was okay, and she was so sweet and tender with everybody who had taken part in the rescue. she even kissed the door as a gesture of goodwill and forgiveness before going to bed that night, telling it she was okay now. i swear, that kid KILLS me with how sweet she can be sometimes...

...in retrospect, i am intrigued by how primal my urge to claw through the door was. the helplessness i felt at the time was just devastating. i knew that cadence was safe and that we’d get her out, even if it would mean calling in the fire department. still, it was unbearable to me that she would think we had abandoned her and that we wouldn’t be coming to scoop her up into our arms and that she was being LEFT. ALL. ALONE. we have never let her cry-it-out for sleep training purposes, and she has always had at least another comforting adult (grandma, uncle, church friend) to hold her if we weren’t around when she was crying. so this was literally the first time she’s experienced a sense of abandonment without the availability of a shoulder to cry on, which i think would have made a world of difference.

...anyhoo, i am so thankful that my friends were there to help keep me calm and to reassure me that it was all going to be okay soon. i’m sure if it had just been ted and me, i would’ve been absolutely no help. most likely, i would've assumed the fetal position on the floor and rocked myself back and forth until the whole ordeal was over.

suffice it to say, that lock will not be going back on the door…

jesus on the metra

...on most work days, i take the metra train to and from my company out in lake forest. coming home, the train is usually so crowded that people who get on near the end of the line have to stand in the aisles and vestibules. yesterday, a young woman got on at the evanston davis street station. by this time, it was starting to feel like a can of sardines on the train, so she cheerfully asked a hispanic woman and her two young boys if she could squeeze in with them. they were sitting at the front of the car, where two seats face each other. she sat down next to the mom and faced the two little boys.

as soon as she was seated, this young woman began talking to the boys, who were bashful and somewhat puzzled at being paid attention to by a complete stranger. the younger boy didn't understand english too well, so his brother spoke for the both of them. for the next eight minutes until the boys and their mom got off @ the Rogers Park station, this young woman asked them all kinds of questions, like what they were for halloween, did they get a lot of candy, did they go to school, etc. etc. she didn't speak in an exaggerated high-pitched condescending voice like some adults do w/ kids. she spoke to them like they were her fellow human beings, and as deserving of attention and respect as her peers. she didn't ask questions just to ask questions. she actually listened to the answer and commented. in other words, she actually held a conversation with these boys.

...i was amazed as i witnessed all this. these boys, who were around 3 and 7 years old, were usually somewhat loud and unruly, but this time they were polite and behaved beautifully for those eight minutes. i saw that their faces were lit up, esp. the older boy, who has probably been around long enough to have been ignored and belittled and barely tolerated by most unfamiliar adults.

as i walked home from the train station, i couldn't stop thinking about that woman and those boys. even though it was freezing outside, i felt a strange, sweet warm sensation inside, like i'd just partaken of a hot frothy latte from metropolis. i had a smile on my face, which is unusual for me by this time of evening when i'm normally pretty tired and grumpy.

and then it hit me, and it suddenly made sense. i had just seen JESUS on the metra, and he was a young woman wearing a diamond stud in her nose and gray and red striped textured tights on her legs. of course! jesus LOVES the little children! it's been his plan all along that the kingdom of god would belong to the smallest and weakest of them all!

...wow. sometimes, god likes to take the form of an old man to play skee ball on coney island, and sometimes he, or SHE, goes for a ride on the metra and talks to little kids. you just never know...

all souls' day

...although i am not catholic (in the roman sense of the word), i do want to point out that today is All Soul's Day, which you can read about here in the Catholic Encyclopedia. i don't quite get the gist of the holiday from a catholic perspective, but i think any time is a good time to remember those loved ones who have passed on.

of course, the first person who comes to mind when i think of the dearly departed is my dad, but since i eulogized him quite a bit six months ago, i would like to take this opportunity to remember my grandma, my dad's mother.

it was almost ten years ago when my mother called me at work to inform me that my grandmother had passed away the previous night. i remember that phone call vividly because i basically lost it on the spot. i had never experienced the death of someone i cared about, so i wasn't prepared for how it would impact me. to make things worse, my grandmother had been suffering for a long time with alzheimer's and ill health, and a few days before, i had had a dream about her.

in that dream, she called me on the telephone, which may not sound all that significant except for the fact that she had lost her ability to speak some time ago due to a stroke, so when i heard her voice in this dream, and that voice was strong and clear and healthy, my heart sank and i asked something like, 'but grandma, how can this be?' and she answered me, 'i'm okay now!' and then i started weeping on the phone, because i understood that to mean that she had passed away, and that her bodily sufferings and limitations were no more.

i woke up from that dream disturbed and determined to go visit my grandmother as soon as i could. however, i waited a few days too long, and i got another phone call, this time in real life, when my mom called me at work to notify me of my grandmother's death. i was so upset that i hadn't gone to see her before she died, not to mention a little spooked at having that dream so soon before her death.

i wasn't particularly close to my grandmother, even though she and i shared the same room during much of my youth. there was a language barrier between us, as she never learned english and i forgot my korean. she didn't seem particularly fond of children, at least not on the outside, and she always seemed so stern. i remember as a little kid pining for a cheerfully plump snowwhite-haired granny wearing an apron and silver-rimmed spectacles who would bake chocolate chip cookies with me and pour me a tall glass of milk and tell me stories of the good ol' days.

...my grandma didn't have many good ol' days to reminisce about. she was born in north korea in the early 1900s. during an era when women around the world had few opportunites outside the home, let alone in a culture that expected quiet submission from its women, she managed to get an education and to become a practicing dentist. she lived through the fear and humiliation of a japanese occupation. after the end of WWII divided the korean peninsula between north and south, she lost contact with her family in the north, since she had married and settled down in the south. then after several years of peace and prosperity for her family (both she and my grandfather were dentists), the invading armies from north korea forced her family to flee to the south and to live as refugees. their prosperity was now reduced to poverty. during that time, she worried daily how she was going to feed so many mouths (including children from my grandfather's previous marriage, she had i think 7 kids or so to look after).

my dad told me that my grandmother's mother was the first person to convert to christianity in her village in north korea. she passed on that faith to her daughter, and she in turn instilled that faith in her own children, although a few of them didn't come around to it until much later in life. throughout her life, it was that faith that sustained her, through the violence and uncertainty of war, through poverty, through personal heartbreak and tragedies, through coming to a new country with unfamiliar customs and an unfamiliar language.

i wish i had more time with my grandmother while she was alive. and even though my faith today may not look a lot like my grandmother's own faith, nevertheless, her legacy of faith and fortitude continues to inspire me, and i am honored to remember her today.

autumn in the city

...we had the perfect autumn weather in chicago this past weekend—deep blue skies, fluffy white clouds, enough wind to make the falling leaves dance spiraling downward to their demise, cool crisp air to remind us we were definitely in the depths of autumn, and bountiful sunshine to warm us from head to toe.

... on saturday, the cultural center was having a huge halloween event for kids including a couple Chic-a-go-go parties. we met up with my friend Lori and her family who were in town from grand rapids, mi. lucky for me, lori is a super photographer, or i’d have no good photos of cadence in her black kitty costume. that’s lori in the photo above with her super cute son SuperDev. the next few photos are by lori.

the cutest kitty cat of them all, originally uploaded by lorilea.

i realize that cadence was a kitty cat last year, but i was way too lazy to find her another costume this year, and since she has not yet learned to ask for things that require purchasing power, i figured we’d give the meow suit one more chance. it was a little small for her, but nothing some holes and a shoelace couldn't handle.

kitty in a sea of crazy costumes, originally uploaded by lorilea.

one of the quirks of chic-a-go-go (besides their host miss mia) is the way it attracts adults as well as little kids. on a normal taping of the show, it’s not unusual to have a room full of hipster twenty-somethings and indie rock parents mingling with all the kiddies. at this particular show, cadence was mesmerized by a full-sized bug-eyed alien and a mexican wrestler dude dressed a la Nachos Libre. i think all the different costumes made cadence wonder what the hell was going on, and she spent much of the time lost in the midst of surreality just staring at people.

two tired toddlers..., originally uploaded by lorilea.

our visit w/ lori and scott and dev was short, as both our kids were needing a nap after the chic-a-go-go excitement. next time, though, we’ll have to get lattes @ metropolis, right, Lori?

...we put cadence in the stroller in case she wanted to snooze, and we went over to millennium park. i figured as long as we were downtown and the weather was as glorious as it was, i wasn’t in any hurry to get back home to the northside. due to the beautiful weather, the park was full of happy smiling people lollygagging leisurely. it’s amazing the effect a little good weather has on the moods of people who’d just spent the past couple weeks freezing their butts off.

...i have to admit that i’m a little bored with millennium park by now. notice that i am not posting any photos of the bean. it’s always fun, though, to people watch, and there were plenty of chances to do that saturday.

...cadence, who should have been napping by now, was energized by the vast green lawn behind the pritzker pavillion and ran her dad ragged. for almost an hour. nonstop...in this photo, she may appear to be running to give someone a hug, but be ye not deceived! she's actually trying to steal a stranger's frisbee.

...we had to leave around 2pm so that ted could get ready for a show that night with tim lowly. they were playing a show again w/ emo boys sleeping at last, this time at moody bible institute (the christians like the nice clean positive lyrics of SAL, i guess), which i found humorous. esp when ted told me that they had posters for the show that said "SLEEPING AT LAST w/ Tim Lowly". i'm still chuckling about that one.

...so cadence and i spent the evening together, just the two of us, as we often do when ted's out rehearsing or recording or playing shows or doing chi-gong. unfortunately, the only nap she'd had was the 50 minutes or so in the car ride home, and she started telling me she wanted to go to sleep really early. i was on the phone w/ josh when he reminded me about the time change the next day, which meant that i had a nearly asleep toddler on my hands at what essentially would be 6 pm, once i accounted for the hour gained the next day. since i didn't particularly enjoy the thought of cadence waking us up at 4am for her waffles and elmo, i spent the rest of the evening devising ways to keep her awake. in addition to a bath, which is always good for an hour of awake time, we built a menagerie of toys with both her sets of nesting blocks, we created a half-pipe for her matchbox cars, we played catch, we emptied out all her toys and then put them away again, we sang some songs, we did some dishes, and finally i put her down for bed at 10pm, or 9pm with the time change, which meant she'd sleep until at least 7 the next morning. whew!

...anyhoo, the extra hour of sleep sunday morning was greatly appreciated in our household, as we had to be at church by 9am for a parenting class we've signed up for. sunday was another beautiful day, and we went for a long walk in the woods at the grove in glenview in the afternoon. we went over to my mom's afterwards, and she was nice enough to offer to watch cadence so ted and i could go out for dinner by ourselves. as much as i love taking cadence everywhere with me, the one place i get really stressed out with her is at restaurants, so i was totally happy to take my mom up on her offer. we went to the yard house in glenview, which has like a gazillion beers on tap and had a nice quiet dinner. the perfect ending to a lovely weekend!

quickie

...this is just a really quick post to declare my membership at minti.com, a sort-of myspace for parents, minus the sleaze and band whores. my profile is at sierraromeo.minti.com. i admit i am totally a joiner. friendster, myspace, flickr, now minti. maybe it has to do with being raised in a cult that i'm perpetually pledging my allegiance to various groups. anyhoo, if you want to be my mintister, i'd be happy to oblige!