Capital P

Daddy’s girl

When P and I found out we were having a baby, lo these many years gone by, most people had the same reaction which was, “You better hope it’s a boy!” The general consensus was that P is a guy’s kind of guy, a man’s man, and would be utterly hopeless and lost if called to raise a daughter.

I’ve always been a daddy’s girl myself, so the bar was set pretty high for me. I know what it means to have a dad who wants to give you the world and thinks you’re about the greatest thing ever. A dad who will instill in his daughter that she can do anything she sets her mind to. A dad that wouldn’t trade having a girl for anything in the world.

And so does Caroline.

So, to my dad, I wish you a Happy Father’s Day. Thanks for setting the bar high.

And, to P on Father’s Day, watching the way you love Caroline makes me love you that much more. She is blessed to have you as her daddy. All those people who thought you wouldn’t know what to do with a little girl couldn’t have been more wrong.

Happy Father’s Day!
Get your elk here…fresh elk

Last week when I wrote about P’s great new fashion accessory, he told me that I could mock if I wanted, but that hat was going to be the key to him shooting an elk with his bow. We made a deal that if he got an elk with his bow, I would post a picture of him with his trophy. This will now fall into the category of be careful what you promise.

If any of y’all are a little squeamish or anti-hunting, then at this point you may want to click away or invite your husbands to come take a look if they’re into this sort of thing.

Now remember, this isn’t EHarmony or Match.com. P, his elk, and that hat are already spoken for.

The elk weighed 600 pounds. That’s right…the house of Big Mama now has about 200 pounds of elk meat to get us through the long, harsh South Texas winter. Apparently, P wasn’t kidding about the hunt for FOOD!

All I can think about is the scene from Forrest Gump where Bubba talks about shrimp. We can have elk kabobs, fried elk, elk steaks, elk sausage, elk burgers, elk jerky, elk stew, elk po-boys, elk chili, elk burritos, elk tenders, sloppy elk joes…and I reckon that’s about all we can do with elk.

It also makes me laugh to think that some poor bow hunter will google “bow hunting elk” and be directed to Big Mama. They’ll never know what hit ’em…much like that elk.

Congratulations, P.
It’s what we do

When P and I started dating eleven years ago, he didn’t know much about females. And by not much, I really mean nothing. It’s not like he hadn’t dated a few girls over the years, but when faced with choosing between listening to someone talk about her “feelings” or going to the ranch to hunt deer, I’m just saying that the deer hunting won out every time.

Every single time.

In fact, he was so clueless as to the female personality, that for the first year and a half we dated, he’d break up with me anytime I cried. He was convinced that something must be wrong with me because why was I crying? I finally had to tell him that sometimes girls just cry…it’s what we do, like putting on lipstick to go to the grocery store or trying on 47 pairs of shoes and not buying any of them.

The week before our ultrasound to find out if we were having a boy or a girl, P had been in charge of a ski trip for his high school students. At the last minute, his only female chaperone became really sick and couldn’t go on the trip, which left P with a busload of kids, two male leaders, and more importantly, about twelve 14 year old girls with no female leader. Since I was 5 months pregnant and not about to contort my body into a seat on a bus for 17 hours, he became their leader.

Every night during the trip, he would call and give me the report. One night the girls had convinced him that it would be fun to do everyone’s hair and he had ended up having his hair gelled, blowdried and straightened. Then he said someone pulled out a pair of scissors and they started actually cutting each other’s hair and naturally, one girl ended up in hysterical tears. I laughed and told him he was crazy. Everyone knows that you don’t let adolescent girls handle sharp utensils. No good can come from it.

A strange thing happened during that trip. P really began to appreciate how fun a group of girls can be, granted he also learned that they talk ALOT and can be slightly emotional especially in the face of a hair crisis, but when he came home he told me that he felt pretty sure that we were having a girl because this trip had obviously been God’s preparation for him.

Sure enough, we found out two days later that we were having a sweet baby girl.

Last night that sweet girl got in trouble for throwing a big, huge crying fit and later, when she had calmed down, P took her aside and said “I don’t want to punish you but you have to listen when we tell you to do something”.

She looked right at him and said “I know Daddy, but sometimes a girl just has to cry.”

That’s all I’ve been trying to say.
Now that’s what I call a good day

Okay, first of all, the Aggies won. We beat a previously unbeaten Missouri team that was ranked #19. I wasn’t sure we had it in us, but I’m so proud we did it. Gig’em Ags!

Secondly, thanks to Susie at Bluebird Blogs, Big Mama has a fancy new look. Hope y’all like it because I sure do.

Lastly, P brought home flowers for me for no reason at all (well, other than I’ve been a little stressed out) and that was the best surprise of my whole week.

Have a great Saturday night!
Incredible with a capital eye

I mentioned in my previous post, with utmost sympathy and concern, that P was having Lasik eye surgery today. What I didn’t know was that I was going to be able to watch the surgery happen live on a video monitor.

Now because of my job, I read alot of articles in medical journals so I am well aware of the advances that have been made in medical technology. Did you know that a study came out this Spring that showed that a certain drug can actually reduce the amount of plaque in your arteries and that they discovered this by sending a teeny tiny little camera through peoples’ arteries? I find it unbelievable that modern science is now at the point where it can undo years of eating at McDonalds and that they can send a teeny tiny camera through your veins to prove it.

Anyway, my point is that when you read about this stuff it’s one thing, but to see it was incredible.

When we arrived for the surgery they offered him a Valium, which he declined. If I had known what I was going to see, I would’ve asked for it but I wasn’t thinking ahead.

So he heads into the little room with all the big scary looking machines and I stand outside the door watching the whole thing on the monitor. Y’all they sliced into his eyeballs like they were pearl onions. Just watching it made me cringe and make noises like “Ooohh” and “Owwww” which probably explains why they didn’t let me be in the actual room. The whole thing lasted 20 minutes. I kid you not.

Now it’s 4 hours later and while his vision is still fuzzy probably due to all the slicing and lasering, he can already tell that his vision is vastly improved which seeing as how they diagnosed him as legally blind is probably a good thing. Y’all he couldn’t even see the huge E at the top of the eye chart and tomorrow he has a 98% chance of having at least 20/20 vision. I think that’s incredible.

I’m editing this to include the email that P sent out to his friends pre-surgery because I think it’s funny.

I am going in for my Lasik at 1:30 today and would appreciate your prayers that all goes well. Statistically there is a 98% chance I will have perfect vision and 70% chance that I will have better than perfect. Please pray for the better than perfect. Recovery is supposed to be nothing and they say I can drive tomorrow if I think I can see well enough. Thanks for the prayers.

P

p.s. If I write yall tomorrow to give an update and it looks like this: uevn lnfvkbne foip nvoe;fnvj eqnd nqduj docndn doiqnnqd c vqo d qoivjr . You know it didn’t go so well.
Speaking of belles of the ball

Last night was Caroline’s big debut at Cat and Dave’s wedding. A ham is born. She strolled down that aisle only taking time to turn so that she could make sure everyone was admiring her. I don’t know where that comes from.

The two ringbearers walked straight to their mamas, but oh no not Caroline. She went right up and stood with the bridesmaids until it was time for her to come sit with me. She knew that candy awaited so the minute she sat down a feeding frenzy of marshmallows, lifesaver gummies, and M&M’s began. It was our version of the Holy Trinity for the 25 minutes the service lasted.

Her daddy was performing the ceremony, so all I could think about was how embarrassing it would be if she got too loud and I had to take the walk of shame down the longest center aisle known to man to get us out of there. But our sugar fueled bribe worked perfectly and I got to enjoy the whole service. P. did a great job and I’m not even being biased.

After the ceremony, they took pictures and Caroline announced that she was “a little bit TI-Red” but we headed off to the reception. She thought it was a great party, even though they didn’t have a pinata. It was an outside reception and other than the heat (good gracious, the heat) it was beautiful! There were twinkle lights everywhere and it looked like a fairytale.

We danced for awhile, but inevitably our little flower girl started to wilt. Mimi and Bops tried to get her to come to their house, but at that point she was beyond overtired and overstimulated. So, P. and I brought her home and got her to bed about 11:15 and didn’t hear a peep out of her until 6:15 this morning when she decided she was up for the day. Can you say the law of diminishing returns?

Bops told her at the end of the night what a good job she did and said “I could just eat you up!” and she told him “Bops, you don’t eat kids, just food.” But seriously, isn’t she so sweet that you could sop her up with a biscuit?