That's right, she's one year old today. And for her birthday, she got a nice cold. Complete with puffy eyes. As if it's not hard enough simply with the way she moves, trying to get a picture between nose wipes adds to the difficulty of the task. But none the less, these pictures were taken on the day! I'll probably try to get some official one year old picture later. This time last year, I was working hard and praying for the epidural to come soon!
My mom and dad are here and Adam's parents and my sister will arrive a little later. We're just having a little family party but I will post pictures of the cake eating and the rest of the emotional roller coaster I'm on me because so many milestones are flying at me!
Woo Hoo. I feel so loved. Mandy at Life's About a Dream bestowed the Rock On Sistah Friend award upon me the other day. She is one of my new friends that I met via the internet before moving to SC. She's gotten me all the hookups including our little Maggie.
The Rules:
# If you receive the “Rock on Sistah Friend” award, you must post the button on your blog (in sidebar or in a post), and link back to Color Me Untypical. # Let Jia know if you receive the award from someone, so she can add you to our Sistah’s Who Rock Blogroll, and give them my personal “Rock On Sistah Friend!”
In the post on your blog, you must give the award away to 3 other Sistah’s who you think rock. Post links to their blogs, why they rock, and post the rules to the award. Also, let them know you’ve given them the award so they too can celebrate themselves and pass on the love.
Julie at The Best Times of Our Lives is a treasured friend that lived in WV when I did and she's an awesome photographer. We send e-mails back and forth all day long and we spend lots of time on the phone philosophizing over the worlds injustices, parenting and well just everything imaginable. We are faithful AT&T customers because if we didn't have free mobile to mobile we both have to stop being SAHMs because we'd have to get a job to pay our phone bills. Why our babies are napping of course ;) Susan at Griffies Growth is a much missed friend from college and fellow minister's wife. She has two adorable twin babies which my family has an invested interest in because we prayed for those two little blessings for a couple of years. She's a great mom and has the kind of self-discipline that most mom's envy and I just love peaking in on her to see what she's doing with those little ones. Plus, watching two babies with such different personalities raised by the same parents is an interesting study on the nature/nurture subject.
Jay at Janie and Me, Happily is a former student we worked with in youth ministry but now, friend and fellow mommy. She is such a passionate person. She works hard, plays hard, loves hard, and falls hard. But she never stops pressing on. She is totally in love with her little girl and embarking on a new and exciting part of her life and I just love looking in on her to watch her embrace life even when it's coming at her at a rapid pace.
All three of these ladies are ladies that I love having in my life because my relationship with helps me to be a better person. And I think I might just make up my own award because there are so many others here that I love in so many ways! But these three girls I know have had circumstances lately that they need to be honored for the classy way they handled them. Love you girls. Thanks for being my inspiration!
Here's another sweet little girl that's filling my days with smiles while Emma's at school. I have been babysitting Maggie for a couple of weeks now but I haven't posted anything about her because I kept forgetting to ask her mother if it was okay. I try to be careful not to post something about someones elses child without their permission. Anyway, my friend Mandy hooked me up with one of the teachers at Emma's school and I am watching her baby. It works out really nicely because it makes me only have school teacher hours. We won't have to worry about planning vacations around my job because we'd be planning them around Emma's school anyway.
Maggie is a sweet sweet baby and Chloe will have a nice little playmate in just a few months. Even though she's trying hard to get her up and moving now! And we're well on our way because she just started rolling over. Right now, I spend a lot of the days making sure Chloe doesn't kill her. But really she's doing well with her and they both seem to light up when they see each other. I have there naps staggered so they are only awake together about three hours a day and I still have two hours with both of them sleeping so that I can get some house work done. Maggie also indulges me and hams it up for the camera as you can see so I'm snapping away because I know that those days of her sitting still are limited!
Last night, I was preparing Emma's lunch for our big milestone today and as I was attempting to cut the most perfect heart out of a sandwich with a cookie cutter, I began to think about my friend Julie….
A little over two years ago, Julie had a baby prematurely. Jaden was born 8 weeks early. Julie just happened to be visiting her mother near Pittsburgh when she started having complications. She called and said that they were moving her from the small town hospital in her hometown to a larger one with a NICU in Pittsburgh and that there was a possibility that a cesarean would have to be performed. I called the next morning and she seemed quite dazed and she reported that a c-section had been done and she had become a mother of two, significantly earlier than they had anticipated. I am so happy to tell you that Jaden is now a very active, thriving two year old. But during the first days and then weeks after he was born, as a friend, I felt helpless as I listened to Julie’s feelings of helplessness. First, I will say that I marveled at how well she held it together so that she could do all that she could to help Jaden. She was strong but there was stress, and tears… lots of tears. She couldn’t hold him, she couldn’t feed him, but she could pump milk to be fed to him through an IV. So she clung to the one thing that she could do. She pumped and she took milk to the hospital for many, many days.
Later, she told me that she wrote on the milk bags, "To Jaden, Love Mom". She explained to me that all though nurses were taking care of him and she couldn’t, she needed them to know that she was his mother….
Now I am not trying to equate something that most mothers do (taking their children to Kindergarten) with something as traumatic as having a baby prematurely. But, last night, as I was preparing to send Emma off to Kindergarten, I found myself desperately trying to find a way to let these people know that I was not only leaving a student with them, but that they were also going to be taking care of someone’s heart; my heart. At that moment, I became all too aware that this is the beginning of letting her go. I feel like in many ways, this is the day I have been preparing for since the day she was born. I have always known that the day was going to come where she would spend more of her waking hours with someone else than she does with me. I pray that we’ve packed enough love and guidance in.. I pray that somehow in the best understanding that a five year old can have, she understands how proud I am to be her mother, that God trusted me with her. And, as she goes out into the world, that she remembers that even more importantly than belonging to her daddy and me, she belongs to God.
So, I fashioned a heart out of sandwich, and stuck in our family picture with a note that said, “We love you” in her lunch box. I questioned if I was giving her enough to eat and listened to Adam laugh as he told me she had never eaten that much food in one day much less one meal. I ironed her dress and fixed her hair. I took the pictures and walked her to her class. I made sure she looked me in the eyes as I told her she was not to leave that afternoon with anyone but me. She quickly got busy with a project that the teacher had given her. And after one last picture, I gave her a kiss and turned and walked out the door into the next chapter of our life. Adam and I said all the things that parents say… That time has gone so quickly. That we will blink and be sending her off to college and then with her husband. And, I know that the only thing I can do is ask God to help us guide her and try desperately to cherish each moment along the way.
Please excuse the drama. This is a very traumatic time for me. I’m not even going to go into how frightening it is to me to think of when Chloe goes off to school (I know it sounds like I’m talking about sending my kids off to college, I’m still talking about Kindergarten here) and I don’t have a child at all during the day but I guess there’s no sense in agonizing over that until we get to that point. Post on that coming sooner than I want to believe….
So now that you’ve patiently indulged me and read about my near emotional breakdown, I’ll tell you how it went.
Emma did great. Last night, I was teasing her and pretend crying and told her that I couldn’t do it and I thought we should keep her home for another year. She reassured me by telling me that she was excited but would miss me and that it wasn’t like she would never have a day off. There was a brief moment in the car where she told me that she was excited but a little scared. But we got to the school and she sported the confidence that she has become quite famous for and barely even noticed when I left. When I picked her up, she informed me that her card was on white all day and explained that that was where it was good to be. She exclaimed that she loved Kindergarten and that she thought it was going to be a wonderful year..
And I thanked God that this is only traumatic because I’m by nature a basket case and not because any actual trauma occurred.
It's a couple of weeks late but I finally got around to doing the Tag that my friend Lu challenged me with. Though random should be easy, these things are always difficult to me because I want to make sure I use this opportunity wisely. I know, so much thought makes things un-random... So here we go...
Six random things you may not know about me
1. I am a sheet snob. If you know me at all you know that I hardly buy anything new. I'm thrifty, frugal, cheap, however you define it. If you want to be friends with me, I'll be friends with you. I don't care how much money you have or what you look like. I'm more interested in loyalty, compassion, encouragement.. that sort of thing when it comes to friendship. I think it would be very difficult to call me a snob. Except when it comes to sheets. Over 400 thread count 100% Egyptian cotton. The only way to go...
2. I have the same birthday as my husband
3. I was the Alabama state champion in high jump my senior year in high school.
4. I usually have anxiety when I go into a crowd.
5. I used to have this thing for Kenny Rogers. But now he's tried to reinvent himself which I'm pretty sure involved some plastic surgery and I know involved a leather jacket. An old man trying to act like a young one... Totally unappealing. Dennis Quaid.. He's my new old hot guy. If you're the same age as Dennis Quaid, focus more on the hot part and less on the old part.
6. I always choose an older celebrity that I think is attractive. It's always one that is either graying or is gray. Adam is undoubtedly heading there but that way instead of feeling like he's geting old, he can feel like he's grown into my idea of hot. And it's true. I find gray haired men dignified and attractive. Maybe it's because my dad is gray. I mean I wouldn't call my dad hot but he's most definitely a handsome man.
Okay, there you have it. I would have to say that those were pretty random.
Lainey Wynn was born at around 12:30 a.m. on July 30. Since no one would send us a picture, we decided to go get some ourselves. If you were there visiting the Lowery family and didn't take the time to send all of us that live a little further away a picture, no worries, if my children look a little malnourished the next time you see them, it's because I spent our grocery budget making a trip over there. For those Ellis family friends that have been waiting on pictures, just remember who came through for you.
And without further delay, what you all have been waiting for... Our latest little beauty, weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs. 10 ounces and 21 inches
She became jaundiced and had to be under the bili lights. The last I heard they were going home this evening but that hasn't been confirmed. But us trying to see her while she was under the lights and our crazy trip that should have taken 4 and a half hours but instead took 8 to get home will make an interesting post once I get an internet connection but for now, my internet is down and I'm sitting front of the neighborhood park (which aparently has the internet) so I have to make this quick.
If you are trying to get up with me, try more conventional methods for the next day or so.
I entered a picture of Chloe in a photo contest. Click here to vote for her. They will send you a confirmation e-mail that you have to click on link to confirm. You DO NOT have to sign up for the adds. Just click the link and then wait for it to confirm your vote. You can vote once a day for the month of August.
