Good morning all! Buenos Dias! What a glorious day, the Lord is Risen! Even if you are not into that sort of thing, Happy Easter from my family to yours! We hope you have a joyous and blessed day with your family wherever you may be! A buddy of mine had a great quote this morning in regards to even if you don’t celebrate Easter and the Lord’s resurrection. He said “but everyday is a day to celebrate these days”! Facts, big facts! Everyday is a good day.
I am currently sitting in my patio, its 75 degrees with a breeze and I’m having a cup of coffee with a mimosa on the side :)Don’t believe me? Check out my gram, haha. Meg and I have a great brunch spread in the works, pics to come on our instagram page. We are finding the good in today and it is not that hard on a day like today. Albeit, I wish I was able to attend mass in person followed by going to one of our favorite places for brunch with friends and family, I know that isn’t possible right now so I choose not to dwell over it. Instead, I find the silver lining and we will make the best of today. We are in this together, we are all making sacrifices especially the essential workers and our amazing health care professionals on the front lines of this battle. God Bless our essential workers and our healthcare staff, you are in my daily prayers! These sacrifices are not easy, so it is ok to not always be ok. I’m not always ok, trust me! However, these sacrifices are for the greater good, they are for my girls and for one another. Jesus also made a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life so that we can all have eternal life, pretty powerful.
Our easter Sunday started with the Easter bunny bringing some gifts and goodies to our kiddos. They then had an easter egg hunt which you can see on our instagram page below. Gracie cracks me up, as they were opening their easter baskets, I can see her looking around getting a head start mentally on where the eggs were, lol. That’s my Gracie Girl!
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After some Easter Bunny fun, we got ready for the real reason of Easter and that is to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection! We streamed the live feed from our Catholic Church. It was a little odd but we got in our Sunday best and prayed and participated in today’s Holy mass. It was actually beautiful, the songs were great, readings were on point, we could hear our backyard birds singing as rays on sunshine illuminated our family room. Together, from our homes, we celebrated. My take away from the homily is that we will ALL RISE like our Lord did today and most of us will come out better Catholics, better Christians and better People on the other side. Amen! God Bless you and your families and once again we hope you have a great day, Happy Easter!
Happy Tuesday everybody! I hope you are all doing well and doing your best to keep your social distancing. The quicker we all do our part the quicker we all rage. I’ll leave it at that as I’m not going to let what’s going on in the world impact today!
Today and every 3/17 we celebrate Gracie girl coming home after ~4 months in the NICU. She came home 1 day before her original due date of 3/18. Think about that, she was supposed to be born on 3/18/2015 but was almost 4 months old when she came home, crazy, a miracle baby. It was a bitter sweet day back in 2015! After 107 days in the NICU, one of our prayers were answered and we were able to bring home one of our baby girls, Gracie. She has some Irish in her so may the luck of the Irish be with her on St.Patricks day and forever. However, it was a bitter sweet day, since we didn’t get to leave with Olivia and the girls were separated for the first time in their life. Talk about mixed emotions, I get teary eyed just thinking about it. On one hand we got to take home Gracie but on the other hand we were leaving Olivia behind. That was tough, we were almost complete. When we got home, we made sure Gracie was situated and introduced her to Bossman our family pitty. After a few hours of loving on Gracie, Meggy went back to the NICU that night to spend time with Olivia, tough!
I still remember that morning of pickup like it was yesterday. We didn’t believe it until we actually got her in the car as we were told a handful of times leading up to that day that today is the day, only to be told sorry she had a bad day or something came up and she can’t go home with us. Talk about gut punches and pure disappointment. I remember we were cautiously optimistic she would come home that day. It was a chilly, overcast day but it was such a beautiful day as one of our girls was coming HOME! We even laid out her outfit the night before, which I’m sure Meg went back and forth to make sure her girl looked good!
We had Gracie girls outfit ready to go! We had it all covered as we dreamed of this day and it was finally happening!
You can imagine the pure joy we felt when they said it is really happening, let’s get ready to discharge her! We didn’t taker her home right away as we wanted to spend some time with Olivia as well and then we went over all the paper work and what she was coming home with. She came home with some medicine, a feeding tube and she needed to see the audiologist again soon but we are blessed and grateful to have one of our nuggets home as we patiently waited for our family and household to be complete. These are some pics of the pickup.
That’s why Meghan and I love St Patrick’s Day, it’s a day we celebrate Gracie. Here are some pics of my Gracie girl! She is full of life! She is like daddy and is always looking for the party and planning the next one even during the current fiesta! Gracie, I fell in love with you at first sight, you were the cutest lil peanut I have ever seen. I was soooo scared for you but look at you now, you are going to pre-k, you are playing soccer, playing t-ball, making new friends, running, laughing, smiling, and just living! You bring so much joy, love and your personality fits just right in with all of us and our crazy and goofy home. Gracie you are so smart, so funny, so silly, so athletic, so beautiful, so perfect! Every day is a great day and I love how you wake up every day with a huge smile and I then thank God for that moment I have with you every morning. We love you more than you’ll ever know and we are so proud of how far you have come. Love you Gracie girl!
I challenge whoever reads this to never give up hope, we can all do our part to get through what is going on in the world. It will get better, keep the faith, be a good person and good things will happen. This helped us 5 years ago and I hope it helps you today. Be a good neighbor, I had a buddy yesterday text me and he said hey I’m going to the store do you need anything? I said, actually I do. He got me some stuff I needed and I really appreciated it. He knows about Olivia and how concerned we are and how serious we are taking social distancing, it was such a nice gesture. Even better, I sent him money and he said “I’m not taking your money, bro!” How about that? I won’t forget that and that is a good example of helping each other out during these weird times. Check on your friends and family, grab your kids, give them a hug, laugh, cry and enjoy today! May God Bless you and your family.
Happy Friday followers! I was going to have Meghan share a post as we like to alternate so you can read both perspectives navigating our special kind of life but then a special memory popped up. I often get flack for posting photos on Facebook but I always tell people, I don’t do it for likes, I do it for a repository of memories and a location to house some precious photos and moments. The memories section comes through yet again! This weekend I will be the one writing as I will follow suite to what Kobe mentioned in an interview in which he said “Girls are the best…Just be grateful that you have been given that gift because girls are amazing”. If you haven’t seen the interview, do yourself a favor and take 3 minutes to listen and watch it. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q570KiV_IFk
I feel you Kobe, as a girl dad, I know what you meant! The crazy part is our doctor once told us we were going to have at least 1 boy after looking at the ultrasound, therefore, you can imagine the shock I was in when a week later the nurse said congrats you are having two girls lol. Man, I am so happy that doctor was wrong, I love being a girl Dad!
Today, I’d like to focus on my Gracie girl. The photo below was 5 years ago and my Gracie girl was 2 months old and until that day, I only saw her through her incubator. Can you imagine having twin girls born and the only way to see them is essentially through a glass window?! I was scared to even try to grab their hands through the incubator as their immune system was basically non existent and this was peak time when every day they fought for their lives. I would love to go visit them but I remember being extremely nervous walking up to the NICU afraid of what the doctors and nurses would say. It was the worst roller coaster of emotions. As you can see in the photo below, I look mentally and physically exhausted. Meanwhile, my girls were fighting for their lives so I had to stay strong, strong for the girls but also for Meg. I still remember the first moment I got to hold Gracie like it was yesterday. I was able to do Kangooring, for those that don’t know what that is, it is where where the premature baby is placed in an upright position on your chest allowing tummy to tummy contact. The baby’s head is turned so that its ear is positioned above the heart. I never heard of that until that day. Hearing and feeling her heartbeat and warmth was the best feeling in the world. I wanted to hold her for as long as I can as I didn’t know the next time I would be able to hold her. I kept talking to my Gracie and would say breathe with me sweetheart, breathe with me and daddy loves you over and over again.
I was told how important kangaroo care is for premature babies as it has been shown to help them regulate their body temperature (preemies need help maintaining body heat because they have little body fat). Furthermore, it helps them feel less pain and stress during medical procedures, such as blood draws. Lord knows they got plenty of blood draws and medical procedures, smh. It also helps them gain weight. Talk about the best winning scenario ever. After learning all of this, I said can we do this every day and they said as long as they are healthy and having a good day. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to kangaroo care that much and I had to wait even longer to hold Olivia for the first time. However, this day was a good day. I will never forget this moment, she was soooo little, she had the prettiest eyes, she was perfect, she’s my Gracie girl.
If you have a baby in the NICU, kangaroo away and stay strong and positive. Pray, cry, ask questions and never give up because your baby will never quit! Also, if you feel like you are missing out on having a boy, be grateful you have healthy kids and instead of wishing for a boy or girl, wish for a full term pregnancy and a healthy baby and that mama bear is healthy. That is what is important. Kobe also said; “I would have 5 more girls if I could, I am a Girl Dad!” I feel you Mamba, I love my son to the moon and back and I also love my girls and I love being a #GirlDad!
Hello friends and fam! Sorry I took so long to respond or have a new post, it’s been a crazy and busy time in the Garcia household. Work has been really busy lately and hectic. I thought I was changing teams and dealing with what all that meant. Then, turning out it’s not going to happen and then several game features that I had to kickoff. I kicked off 4 features last week! For those that don’t know, I am in the mobile gaming business. I’ll touch on that later on, it’s a great story on how I pivoted from Finance to Gaming. Combine work with coaching basketball, practicing basketball and baseball with my son, plus our social events – it’s been tough to find an hour to sit, reflect and post but here we go!
Meghan had a great post last week regarding hearing the news approximately 4 years back in Chicago, when Olivia was first ‘officially’ diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Meg, mentioned she wasn’t surprised and although I knew there was a chance she would have more long term issues than just being deaf, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it and hoped she didn’t have any more issues. I still remember the day Meg called me and told me what the doctor said. She called and I am pretty sure she was crying or maybe she wasn’t, that part I don’t recall as I was focused on what she was about to say but I do recall where I was and how I reacted.
Let me take a step back as to why I wasn’t there. I didn’t go to the doctor’s office as I already took a lot of time off, I mean a lot shortly after Meg went into premature labor and I simply couldn’t go to every doctors appointment as it was 2-3 appointments a week for a long time. It was at that time, that I recently went from a Slot Machine Gaming Operations role into Game Development and learning the game development process. I was in that role for about a year when this all happened. My new bosses and those who knew what I was going through were amazing! I will never forget their support, they told me to take as much time as I needed, spend time with your family and get your twins where they need to be. I will never forget you guys. Meg didn’t really talk about it but she had a really good job with a lot of responsibility for a very successful company located in downtown Chicago. Without thinking twice as soon as the twins were born, she told me, “Rick I need to quit my job and focus on keeping our girls alive.” I 100% supported that idea, knowing I will support our family and the doctor bills and therapies that were going to come. Her boss was also supportive and understanding. Meg willing to put her career that she had worked so hard for on hold shows how dedicated Meg was to our girls. Also, at that time she was making more money than me, I am not ashamed at that, rather I was proud as she was making a name for herself in the Affiliate Marketing business. Meg works hard at everything she does and has always gone above and beyond in her roles, that applies to her favorite role, being MOM. She didn’t care about the money, knowing we would be fine with my salary and staying within our means. With that being said, I had to start going to work and continue to grow as Game Producer.
The Call. I was sitting at my cubicle and Meg goes “she has CP”. I said, what is that? “Cerebral Palsy”. I put my head down, started crying right there at my cubicle, pretty sure I hung up on Meg. I wasn’t trying to be nasty, I just needed some time alone to comprehend or try to make sense of what I was just told. I started crying for Olivia. Up to this point she hasn’t caught a break. I would be lying if I knew what CP was, so I Googled it and learned more about it. I was thinking to myself being Deaf is hard enough but now she has CP?! I was angry, I was sad, quite frankly I was afraid of the unknown. How serious is her CP? Will she go to school? Do we need a special car, house? I kept picturing my baby girl with these issues as a toddler, kid, adolescent and knowing this cruel world, I was scared for Olivia and her future. Can she go to recess, how can she play sports, can she use her legs, arms? All these questions were bouncing in between my ears as tears were bouncing off my keyboard. I gathered myself, wiped the tears away and I started thinking to myself, well she has issues yes, serious issues yes, BUT she is here so let’s focus on today and short term goals for our baby IYA as we like to call her. Thank God that she is here and everyday she is here is a good day. I called Meg back and said, “Well Meg, we will make sure she gets the best help she can get.” She made me feel better as she told me what the Doctor said, CP as we like to call it is simply a diagnosis and it does not define Olivia and it certainly will not determine her future. A diagnosis will help her receive the support and services she will need to gain strength and surpass all goals set for her.
On that day we knew we would do anything possible to have Olivia hear, communicate and walk. Little did we know the CP effects, that’s a different topic and another story for a different day. Little did we know how hard it would be for her to crawl let alone walk. Also, at that time, little did we know how determined and strong Olivia really is. Ever since Olivia was little she’s been moving and breaking barriers. One of a key responsibility of a good Game Producer is to remove roadblocks from the game team. Olivia would make a great producer as she literally navigates and removes daily roadblocks that stand in her way of getting where she needs to be. I love this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, it really resonates with us and I hope it does for you as well. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” Olivia can not walk without help or a walker, we are hopeful and knowing Olivia she will walk one day right into daddy’s arms. I dream of that moment and oh what a moment that will be, tears will be shed, tears of joy. Happy tears. Until then, we will keep moving forward and I will keep lending a helping hand and guide her the best I can.
I don’t know why but I feel the need to share my thoughts on Kobe and try to make some sense of it all and what we can take away from it, not as sports fans but as people. Like most, I couldn’t believe the news that Kobe died in a helicopter crash. I received the news as I was preparing to coach my son’s basketball team, oddly enough. I couldn’t even think about the game as I was just trying to find out on twitter what was going on and hoping it was a hoax. I was stunned, sick to my stomach and then it got worst as his oldest daughter was in the crash as well and then that really hit home as a father. To find out there were even more people in the helicopter that lost their lives, the news just kept getting worst. Here one moment and gone the next, just like that. Earlier that day in our parent session at church our table topic was how do we prepare/protect our children from the crazy world around us and how do we answer some of their tough questions. Well, little did I know Meg and I would have a difficult conversation with 2/3 of our children later that night which I didn’t plan on having. We discussed what happened to Kobe, his daughter and the rest on board and why we were so sad. They obviously don’t grasp death and mortality, they were just sad because we were sad.
To be honest, I respected Kobe the basketball player but never was a big fan of the player, just wasn’t my team and I had MJ bias. Most of it stemmed from the MJ comparisons. In my eyes, Michael Jordan is the GOAT and any comparisons was just silly. Kobe quickly became a super star and was well known for his Mamba mentality. There is no doubt he was an absolute beast, a unique combination of talent, work ethic and competiveness and I did enjoy watching him play. He wanted to destroy teams and his opponent. He wanted to guard the best player and shut him down. He was a winner but what I admired the most was he went from being a boy to a man and learned from his mistakes and he was from all accounts a great father. That’s the saddest part, a wife lost a husband and daughter, and 3 little girls lost their dad and sister. Nine lives taken way too soon! After retiring, he was still using that Mamba Mentality for all his business ventures but he was most excited to be a dad and his daughter’s basketball coach.
That’s
the part where I can relate to Kobe. Coaching Ricky is one of the greatest joys
in my life and can’t wait to coach some of Gracie’s teams. I love our one on
one time and coaching him and his team mates are some of the best moments in my
life. I also have a special father/daughter relationship just like he did. I
can only imagine their final moments, what his wife is going through. If anything,
this tragedy teaches all of us to love those who are close to us every minute
of every day and not take each day and health for granted. Strive to be great
and go get your dreams. Be the best person you can be, seize the day, always! Yesterday,
I made sure to tell my kids and wife I love them over and over again. I gave
them extra hugs and kisses. At dinner, I appreciated the beautiful sunset and
even gave a toast to some friends we were with at dinner to appreciate this
moment and to love your loved ones.
In conclusion, my thoughts and prayers go out to the Bryant family and to all the victims. This one will hurt for a long time. I hope you find happiness and healing knowing they are together in heaven. Kobe, you are a legend and legends never die. I will talk to my children about you and your Mamba mentality to apply to not just sports but life. May all the victims rest in peace.
