Great Grandson, Christian James Wilcox (and walking on streets of gold)

Isn't he a little doll?  His big sister, Anna, at the ripe old age of 3 is just like a little mama hen with him!  He is just too sweet and look at those muscles!!  His name wasn't chosen right away, for the new parents could not come up with a name that was good enough for him!  Now, is that cute, or what!!  I think he always needs to know this.  He just has to grow up knowing he was so precious to his mommy and daddy that there didn't seem a name good enough for this little boy to called.  Finally, they did settle on Christian and that does seem to fit him perfectly.  Christian Wilcox ... see, it has quite a ring to it!!!  I don't see how it is possible to have so much love in your heart for someone so little and tiny.  I love him soooooo much!!!

I have to tell you this about Anna.  First off, you never know what will come out of that little mouth when she opens it.  She is so funny.  The funniest thing is, she doesn't even try to be funny.   She is serious as she can be, turning her little head to one side, with both hands on her hips, she can keep you laughing all day long.  The other day Kristi asked her to please clean her room, to which she replied, "Mommy, my room is already clean."  Mom suggested she take a look at it, so off she went to give her room an "Anna inspection".  She stood in the middle of her room, put both hands on those little hips, turned that head to one side and said, "Sometimes I disgust myself!".  

I tell you, it is this sort of thing that keeps me going!!!  It makes not just my day, but my week, my month, even, I guess, my years.  About 8 years ago, the docs suspected I would not last much longer, maybe a couple of years at most.  I said, "Well, we'll just see about that!!"  I had recently become a great grandmother to Abigail, my very first great grandchild and I knew I had to stay to play dolls with her and have tea parties and love her.  I told them a couple of years later that I was going to be around to see her get  married.  They asked how hold she was and I said, "Two."  Well, the good doctor slapped me on the knee and said, "I'll give you this --- you are a trooper!!!"  I rarely speak of this and perhaps never will again but I had a sudden cardiac death on New Year's Day, 2008.   I was shocked back to life when I had no pulse, no heart beat and no blood pressure.  It happened twice.  Again, they gave my kids not much hope, but as usual, I have not aggravated them enough, so I am not ready to go just yet!!  I don't remember anything except one morning I was putting on my clothes and the next week I began to wake up in the Coronary Care Unit.  I didn't know it then, only that I was in the hospital for something and for the life of me didn't know why.  Well, anyway, now I had to have a pacemaker this time.  I had primacor treatments twice a week for half a day at a time for 3 years.  I have also been on oxygen since 2002.  I have numerous heart problems (it would be too simple to only have one), I have congestive heart failure, an enlarged heart and other stuff I can never remember or pronounce.  I also have COPD, degenerative disc disease and a host of other health conditions.  It is simpler never to discuss them, so now that I have, I won't again.  That is boring old stuff when we all know it is so much better to laugh and be happy.  Oh, I don't always make it, but I will always be caught trying.  I have lost my home, my savings, my car, everything I had due to the catastrophic illnesses.  My treatments alone were almost $70,000 a year, besides all the labs, doctors, hospitals and I won't even go there!!  The important thing is I don't even care, because I am rich with things money cannot buy and consider myself to be so very lucky.  I think we can choose how we feel inside.  I have riches that no amount of money can buy!!!  You can't put a price on the love of a child, you can't put a price on a gift made just for you by the loving hands of your very own daughter, you can't put a price on a hug from a grandson when he wakes up, saying, "Grandma gets the first hug."

Now, I sure got carried away for some reason, but you know ....    be sweet!!!