February 6, 2007 by Amy

Congrats to Beanie and Shawn!

Well it’s about damn time, I know you’re saying out there. I mean, really, how hard is it to update your stinkin’ blog?

Well, when you have your sister’s wedding and a small child battling stomach flu in the same weekend, it’s darn near impossible.

First up: recap of Bridal Beano’s Big Day. It was fantastic. It was better than fantastic. It was superb, and lovely, and fun, and romantic, and and and… Let’s just say it’s been a long time since M and I have had that much fun. From the girlies getting their mani/pedis Friday to cutting up at our rehearsal dinner table to hair and make-up on Saturday to the actual wedding to the party bus for several hours between the wedding and the reception to the reception…it was all good. All of it.

My husband danced. A lot. Fast and slow. He actually came and got me a couple times to dance. For those of you who don’t know, my hubby is a straight-laced, fairly conservative, plan-it-all-out-in-advance-and-graph-it-in-Excel engineer kind of guy. Who typically doesn’t dance. This should be your first indication of how much beer he consumed throughout the day.

I gave my toast without too much crying, which was good, I think. It’s never fun when the maid of honor is a blubbering idiot and you can’t understand a thing she’s saying. So, I take pride in the fact that I was understandable. Here is my toast, not exactly as I said it, because I did the whole “I can speak in public fairly well on my own thankyouverymuch” thing and didn’t read straight from the text. I know, I know, I’m supposed to outline what I’m going to speak on, but I don’t operate that way. I’m not an outline kind of person. Except when I’m making my grocery/things to do lists, in which case I prefer to use the outline format as it’s way more anal retentive that way, and we all know I likes to be that.

So, here’s my toast:
I’ve been writing this toast in my head for months now, ever since Katie asked me to be her maid of honor, trying to figure out the best way to send my sister off to the great voyage of marriage with wisdom and grace. Then I thought, “Hell with it, let’s just tell funny stories about her.”

I could tell you about the fight where one of us ended up with smashed glasses and the other with her underwear hanging from the tree in our front yard. I’ll let you guess who was who.

I could tell you about how we’d fight over the invisible line in the backseat of the car, which was ridiculous because we sat in separate, bucket seats.

I could tell you about how hilarious I thought it was that I got my baby sister to shove peas up her nose at dinner one night, or about the day she came downstairs covered, head to toe, with band-aids simply because she loved band-aids.

But I decided that mortifying my sister on one of the most important days of her life probably wasn’t too great of an idea, and so I won’t.

Instead I’ll remark about the woman who is a constant source of inspiration to me, whether she’s getting me to donate blood, or modeling how to be a great mother, or reminding me to always look for the best in others and count my blessings.

She’s got a heart as big as the world, an innate sense of caring that most people could only dream of having, and our father’s wicked sense of humor. And she herself actually set the events for this day in motion almost 10 years ago.

Way back then, Katie convinced me to donate blood to the American Red Cross. That donation led to my volunteering and then becoming paid staff. Eventually, I had to plan an event for 1,500 people to eat dinner on Ead’s Bridge. I recruited my family to volunteer, including Katie, who was tasked to be a First Aid volunteer because of her ER background.

And so it came to be that evening that she was decked out in her sexy Red Cross sweater vest and first aid fanny pack, that she met the love of her life, Shawn, who just happened to be on duty for the city.

I had no clue when I was making arrangements with the city to have medics on hand, which I thought was a pain-in-the-butt requirement designed solely to make my job harder, that I was ultimately arranging for the addition of my new brother-in-law to my family.

Shawn, I couldn’t ask for a better guy to be my new brother-in-law, and I’ll be eternally grateful you were able to look past the dorky Red Cross sweater vest and first aid fanny pack to see the beautiful and special woman who is my sister and best friend. I’d tell you to take care of her, and of Joey, but I don’t need to, because I see that you already do that, and with tender love and affection. I thank God every day for bringing you into my sister’s life, and into our family.

Let’s raise our glasses to Katie and Shawn. May you have a lifetime full of love and laughter, and auspicious Ead’s Bridge moments.

So that’s it. It may seem a little long in the tooth, but given my penchant for rattling my speech out like machine gun fire when in front of hundreds of people, I think I managed to squeak it all out in under 45 seconds.

Congratulations to Beanie and Shawn!

So, as wild and crazy as our evening was, it was somewhat tempered by the news that our little girl was tossing her cookies, multiple times, all over her grandparents. Yak #1 was at their house, in the highchair. Yaks 2 and 3 were in the car, first on the way to the reception and then on the way home, having never made it to the reception due to Yaks 1 and 2. There may have been a fourth in there but I don’t know for sure. Say there wasn’t, which makes Yak 4 the one where she hurled all over herself and her sheets while sleeping in her crib. God bless my in-laws, for they worked tirelessly to clean up not only our daughter, but also our car, carseat, Zozo’s coat, hat, gloves and clothes, the sheets and the mattress pad. There was a bath in there somewhere, too.

Needless to say, Zozo didn’t have a great weekend. We camped out on the floor of her room that night, just to be close and to monitor her. By Sunday morning, the vomiting had stopped, but was replaced with an equally disgusting affliction that came out the other end. This was also accompanied by a fever of 102.9. A call to the exchange gave us the instructions we needed to ride it out, but mostly she just needed cuddles and love. Which is what we gave her. All day Sunday, and 95% of Sunday night/Monday morning.

Having gone through two nights of no sleep (giving your toddler at bath at 3 a.m. is just odd, and completely throws off your sleep cycle), we decided it was in our family’s best interests, and the interest of our respective workplaces, to stay home today. We wouldn’t have been productive in the slightest, and so it would have been entirely unfair to our employers to show up for work and pretend to care. A day of vacation for each of us gave Zozo our undivided attention.

She’s doing much better now. We got the fever to break (thank you infant Tylenol and Motrin), and she kept down her “bland food” today, so tomorrow she should be good to go on her regular diet. She was actually up to playing some this afternoon, and we even got smiles and giggles tonight, so I’m confident she’s well on her way to a full recovery.

That’s about it from the Z house. We geeked out on West Wing episodes while holding a dozing Zozo today, so if her first words are “judiciary committee” or “legislative agenda,” you’ll know why.