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When we moved to Long Island we knew there would be instances where Troy would have to go to Miami for doctor appointments and it would not be possible for the whole family to go. Troy & Atil took their first trip—father & son—to Miami this week. Troy had two major procedures–CT scan on Friday […]
We are having a lot of action with a 6 year old and two 18 month olds. Everyone loves it when I pull out the sofa bed (except for grandma or the babysitter who are waiting for an accident to happen) and they can bounce around (or daddy can lie down), the top bunk is another favorite destination and we have had to put the ladder away so no more climbing up there.
They are not able to share a my lap, especially Troy and Claire who push each other off. Dino is always pointing to the kitchen counter and making sounds to ask to sit up there. And every morning the twins go to the cabinet with the cat food and exclaim “mama”, they each get a half cup of food in a paper cup, go to the balcony and feed the cats. It is super cute! Other words they are using:
One of their first words has been “Ay de” for moon–correct turkish is “ay de de” do they are close.
Cat, or closer to saying “kt” for cat
When Claire cries Dino says “agla” (cry in Turkish). When Dean cries Claire wrinkles her nose and makes a fake crying sound.
Claire call her brother “ba” and says “Ba gel” (gel means “come here”)
Claire uses baby sign language—for “cookie” and “more.” I am trying to teach “please,” Claire screams and Dean smiles.
Dean says “bo” for fish (balik), boats, and birds.
They refer to food and water as “mama.” I am trying to reinforce the word water or su but they have not picked it up. Claire has 5 teeth on the bottom Dino has two!
I will say they understand everything we tell them. So the words should come pouring out in a few weeks/months.
Troy is making huge gains with reading and writing. He brought home an excellent report card last semester, and his teacher has said he is making good effort with creative writing. For example, he was supposed to color a picture and write a story about it. The picture was of two kids on the seesaw. He did a sloppy job of coloring the girl in the seesaw all pink (pink hair, face, dress, shoes). In his short essay he wrote “The girl on the seesaw is seasick.” That’s effort!
Today I was cleaning out the fridge and the two babies were crawling at fast speed towards the open door. I gave them two cabbages from the fridge but then they were so cute playing I stopped cleaning the fridge!
The first Friday morning in January we woke up excited that the moving truck was going to arrive. But it didn’t.
We were waiting that Friday morning for the moving truck to pick up our household items in Virginia and drive it down to Florida. Atil was going to drive the car and I was going to sit in the back with the kids for the two day drive to Florida. We needed to be in Miami on Monday. When the moving truck did not show up a few hours later we decided to check our credit card to see if we had been billed the deposit. Not only had the deposit been charged but the trucker had also overcharged our card by $1,000. The first thing we did was cancel the credit card, the next thing was rent a truck, and then we started getting ready to drive to Florida.
Whereas I had imagined I would leave Virginia Beach sitting in he back of the car looking out the window and holding back tears, instead I was driving our car with three kids in the back seat.
It was a nice drive the first day (Saturday)—eventhough I was lost for two hours. Atil (driving the moving truck) and I had agreed to meet somewhere in South Carolina on I-95, and on the GPS I typed in “Savannah, GA shortest route.” But the shortest route was NOT from I-95 so I ended up in the back roads of North Carolina, without phone service. Atil, when not able to reach me, called my cousins in DC in a panic declaring “Ayse is missing!”
We spent 9 hours in the car Saturday. At a truck stop Troy saw the DVD for “Rise of the Planet if the Apes” and asked to buy it. I said “NO WAY am I going to let you watch that in the car while I am driving” and that became a joke on the way down. Troy helped me so much on the ride down, giving his siblings their bottles, listening to music, making jokes. At rest stops he helped the cats with their breaks, too.
It was the second day of driving (11 hours) that he began to lose patience. His baby brother had crying fits starting at 7PM, we stopped a few times on the road, including one stop at a Cracker Barrel and sat in the rocking chairs. You can see the fatigue in my eyes, the crying baby and the smile on Troy’s face–staying positive!
We made it to Miami at 11:30 PM—the 3 kids were sleeping so I parked in front of the hotel and went in the lobby to check-in. When I came back to the car all 3 kids were awake and crying! Troy thought I left him in the car and went up to my room to sleep!
I can’t say we had a good nights sleep because our mind was on the next day. We had a container to load in time for the ship’s deadline. At the ship yard the workers told us they had never met a family loading their own container! I didn’t even bother telling them how the move started from Virginia Beach to the ship yard.
If you were to ask me what song is in my head as we close 2011, the song is “It’s so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” Cheesy how pop culture is always in my head. My father’s death is the reason for the song in my head. The doctor had given him 3 to 5 years after he was diagnosed with Pick’s disease, he died in the fourth year. The last time I heard his voice was in 2009 when he asked Atil the time Saat kac?. The past 4 years have been spent under the dark cloud of my father’s illness and Troy having CF–they were both diagnosed in 2007. But kids sure do see the brighter side of things. My father’s illness didn’t stop Troy from communicating with him–from the time he yelled “Habuz! Habuz!” when my Dad walked away from the group (Troy was just 1.5) to the letters he wrote his Dede this past October. 
I told Troy of my father’s death and he said, more than once, “I loved your Dad I am going to miss him.”
Thanks to everyone who attended my father’s funeral on December 25 and continue to send in their condolences. This obituary will be up until 2013:
http://memorialwebsites.legacy.com/yavuz/homepage.aspx
We lost two other very close family members in 2011. Atil’s grandmother, Sevim Aksu, to pancreatic cancer on November 6 and my grandmother’s sister, Semiha Pistar, on December 14 to age related complications. Both of these amazing women were from the brightest era of modern Turkey. They are the reasons we have ties to our roots. Plus they both knit so many shawls and scarves and vests for us, who else in the family will do that?
We remember these loved ones as we enter the new year. Happy new year to you!
We’ve had a long and wonderful fall, December 22 starts winter–wow! Raising twins in the first 5 months has been incredible. Their grandparents were here from their birth up until December 7 being extra hands and loving arms for our babies. For the past two weeks it has been just us two adults, a 5 year old, and 5 month old twins. And we are doing fine! Even finding time to rake the leaves and pack up for our sabbatical.
Have I sent greeting cards?–No. Is the tree up?–No. But we visited Santa, exchanged a few xmas gifts, decorated the outside of the hou
se.
I received greeting cards from two of my good friends from New York–now in different parts of the country with kids of their own. I love getting messages from them (especially since I am not on facebook and it’s hard to stay in touch when everyone else is). Everyone in the house is at my side and I am typing with one finger, we just want to wish you a wonderful holiday and new year.
Shopping lists in hand, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving shoppers were in groups of two or three hovered around the spice section, baking section, and meats department. I was able to fetch a fresh 19lb turkey–it was the smallest one in the fridge filled with 24 lbs turkeys. To brine or not brine was the question when I got home, and I decided not to brine. I found a turkey roasting method by the barefoot contessa, cross checked it with Claire Robinson’s 5 ingredients or less–lemon, onion, garlic, butter, rosemary–prepped the turkey at 10 am, it was in the oven at 10:20, and out of the oven at 2:30–rested 20 minutes, and turned out good! Accompanied by side dishes prepared by Ipek & myself–stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, peas & corn, mashed potatoes, squash, pasta (firinda style with spinach and cheese), salad with pears we had a feast! Troy drew wonderful name plates for everyone at the table. Each guest had a unique identifier–Atil’s was fishing, Dede’s was a hippo, Babaane’s was an ay dede, Mike’s a bear in a cave, mine an ax (what did he mean??), Dost’s was a caterpillar, and Ipek’s was Ipek pouring tea! He made us all laugh with his creations.
It was a very rewarding Thanksgiving. While preparing if I was in a rut I stopped and asked “What would Ilknur do?” and moved forward! We missed my parents this year at the table, but had Atil’s parents with us. We are blessed that all our parents are alive. We lost Atil’s maternal grandmother in November to pancreatic cancer; his mother could not fly back to Istanbul for her funeral. It has been a testing time, and so true that, as the saying goes, God broke our hearts to prove to us He only takes the best. Sevim anneanne truly had a heart of gold, a voice to warm the heart, and hard working hands that helped all the generations in her family. While the twins will not see her, the sweaters she knit for them hugs them.
The weather in Virginia Beach has been beautiful, time is flying by. In December we are starting our travels. More on that later!
My previous post included comments on Troy’s attitude towards my pregnancy, including pangs of jealousy (“I wish I was a pregnant lady so people would ask me how I am doing” he even said!). One day, in the later weeks of my pregnancy, I told Troy: There is a saying in Turkish “Pabucun dama atilicak“–it means “Your shoe will be tossed onto the roof.”
“But why?” he asked, tears swelling up in his eyes, “I need to wear them.”
“We will only toss your old shoes,” I replied, to which he said “But then my brother won’t have shoes to wear.”
I have known Troy is an emotionally sensitive, empathetic child ever since he was 3 years old and asked me not to sing “You are my Sunshine.” He said it made him cry because of the verse “Please don’t take my sunshine away.” Knowing this, I never refered to him as my “Number 1.” In the back of my mind I thought if we had more children, I didn’t want them to argue over who is favorite or who is # 1.
So, I call Troy my Number 4.
Number 4–odd number you may think, but Troy knows who comes before him. #1 is Penny, our 13-year-old pit bull, #2 is Komur, our 7-year-old black cat, and #3 is Ringo, our 5-year-old orange tabby cat. I tried to squeeze Max, my brother’s dog, somewhere in that line up, but we setteld on calling him “Uncle’s number 1.”
That makes his brother and sister numbers 5 & 6! But will they fight over who is number 5 and who is 6? Should we call them 5A and 5B, but B comes after A. Maybe Bumblebee-5 and Butterfly-5?
Everyday I wake up thinking of my numbers 1 – 6. And I am so happy to take care of them.
I wrote an earlier post about Troy slapping us with funny one-liners –“But I love hot sauce,” was one of them. There have been alot more, his one-liners are precious to me because I am 39 weeks of pregnant! Yes, soon this blog will entertain stories of Troy’s siblings. But before by mind is swamped with the details of newborn care, here is a look back at the funny comments Troy has made over the past few months.
“Two baby boys…Just like Luke!” This was Troy’s comment during the first ultrasound we went to check for heartbeat. Luke is a friend of his with two baby twin brothers. Later I noticed all the twins in Troy’s preschool are same-sex twin boys. Fast forward 25 weeks when we learned the genders of the babies–a boy and a girl. As people asked gender, Troy gave them a short and sweet “We don’t know yet” reply. But then he heard us say “One of each!” Finally, he took me aside and said–“Stop telling people it is twins, it reminds me that it is not two boys. Say brother and sister.” On one hand I wanted to tell him to just accept it, but on the other hand I admired his logic!
Going back to the time when Troy thought he is having two brothers, he suggested the names Simon and Says. Then he added Robin, Daisy, Layla when he came to terms with having a sister.
To communicate with the babies Troy tells me to open my mouth, then he yells into my mouth “Hello babies!”
One night at the dinner table I told Troy “When I was a little girl my grandmother told me that the food will cry if left on the plate.” he replied “My grandmother says we can put it in the fridge for next time…”
Finally,. just the other day he said “I wish I was a pregnant lady so people can care about me….” Lately he has been walking around with his baby picture saying sadly “I miss being a baby….” As parents we accept that these are normal statements for a first-born child who will have siblings at the tender age of 4. But we do not accept him jumping in front of the camera when we want to take a picture of me pregnant!
When Troy was diagnosed at 3 months old in January 2007 with CF, we read everything available on treating and living with the disease.We read two studies that perked our interest and that Atil could relate to as a freediver. One stated that saltwater therapies, such as surfing or spending a day out on the ocean, help ease the symptoms of CF. The other stated that exercise improves the lung function of individuals with CF.
Atil came up with the idea of raising awareness for CF through a fundraiser centered on his favorite sport—freediving. You spend the whole day on, and in, the water exercising! It is an extreme sport, so he teamed up with Diving for a Cause to bring together some of the top freedivers in the country. The event is July 16 to 23 and is a dream come true for Atil, when Troy was a baby he said he wanted to do this someday when Troy would be old enough to enjoy the event.
As his parents, we strongly believe exposing Troy to watersports is good for breathing in saltwater air, and also his self-esteem and emotional happiness. Below is a youtube link about the fundraiser we are organizing in July. If you are on Facebook can you post it on your page? More then donations it is awareness about CF that we want to raise.
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