Year: 2006

  • Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!


    I’ll never forget the day I realized I was pregnant with you. I’d been through the longest miscarriage experience ever (a story for another time) and been told I needed to wait 3 more months to get pregnant again. Well, your dad and I are obviously not efficient planners because I turned up pregnant with you a little shy of our 3 month waiting period. I remember telling my doctor that I didn’t know how this had happened and he smiled and told me he could get me a book that would explain everything.

    I was excited but with a little caution because of what I’d been through. I had been given some pretty strong drugs and I prayed fervently that they were truly out of my system so that you wouldn’t have any extra arms, legs or toes.

    The doctor appointment confirmed my pregnancy but said they were a little concerned about my hormone levels. I had to wait a whole weekend to get my test results back and find out that you were okay. During that weekend, I prayed like never before. God gave me peace and helped me realize I needed to enjoy this time and not spend it worrying over what I can’t control.

    The afternoon you were born your daddy and I were driving to the hospital and he said “well I guess this is the last time we’ll be alone for the next 18 years” and I burst into tears. I don’t think the reality of impending motherhood hit me until that moment. Understandably, your daddy kept pretty quiet the rest of the drive.

    The moment I had you, after a labor that involved no epidural until it was time to push (not my decision, nurse error) I was just in awe. I couldn’t believe that here you were, my daughter. I had dreamed about you, thought about you, but could never have imagined how you would change my life.

    You are truly my bright shining star. I love to hear you say “mama” even though you say it 10,000 times a day. I’m so proud of who you are and your independent spirit. I love to watch you nurture your baby dolls, “cook” breakfast in your kitchen, and serve tea with lots of milk and sugar. I love when you end every sentence with “you remember?” I love that when you’re asking for something that I’m probably going to say no to that you let your voice drop down real soft so that maybe I’ll agree to your request without really hearing it. I love the way your face lights up when you see your Mama or Daddy come into the room. I love the little dance you do sometimes before you jump off the diving board or something else that you’re really proud of yourself for.

    I feel so blessed that God gave you to me. My prayer is that I will never get in the way of you becoming the woman that God intends for you to be. When I was pregnant, God led me to Isaiah 44: 3-5.

    “For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
    and streams on the dry ground;
    I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring
    and my blessing on your descendants.
    They shall spring up like green grass,
    like willows by flowing streams.
    This one will say ‘I am the Lord’s…”

    You belong to God. He has all the plans in the world for you and my job is to help you get there. I am so proud that He chose your daddy and me to be with you for this journey.

    **Speaking of little girls that belong to God, Addison, Sarah’s daughter, is having open heart surgery this morning. If you think about, you might want to say a prayer for their family today.

  • That salmonella will get ya

    Three years ago today, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with the worst stomachache I have ever had. We had gone to a church dinner at a friend’s house earlier that evening and as I was lying in bed in complete agony I kept thinking that surely I was dying of salmonella poisoning from the chicken spaghetti.

    Because I am so in tune with my body, it never occurred to me, until about 2 hours later, that MAYBE I was in labor, seeing as how I was nine months pregnant. Now granted, it was two weeks until my due date but the fact that I thought I had food poisoning instead of a baby on the way was basically complete denial.

    I waited until 6:30 when I heard P. start to stir, to tell him that I thought I was in labor. His first question, filled with the utmost care, was “do I have time to take a shower?” His second question was to ask what the date was because Gulley had predicted that I would have my baby on August 2nd. When I told him it was August 2nd, he said “That Gulley, how’d she know that?”

    We spent the morning calling our families to let them know that we maybe, kind of thought that the baby might be on the way. P.’s mom was already planning on coming over to help me get my kitchen set up, because did I mention that we had just moved back in to our remodeled house 2 weeks before and had new countertops finally installed the previous morning? My kitchen consisted of thirty boxes that needed to be unpacked.

    My mother-in-law came over and we proceeded to unpack all of the boxes and I would stop every 9-10 minutes to have a contraction. Like a crazy woman, I kept insisting that I would not even CONSIDER going to the hospital until the kitchen was finished. My logic was if it didn’t happen now, my baby would leave for college after having spent a life at home eating on dishes pulled out of boxes, which probably wasn’t that far from the truth.

    Around 4 p.m., P., his mom, my sister and her husband, and Gulley basically forced me into the car so that I could deliver this child at the hospital instead of in my newly organized kitchen which would have wreaked havoc on my hardwood floors.

    Caroline was born at 2:14 a.m. the next morning, so really I had PLENTY of time.

    Speaking of pain, some of you know that I am currently going through the hell that is adult orthodontia. This morning was my monthly visit to my orthodontist who really should just put his foot on my chest so that he can get these things a little tighter.

  • Be afraid, be very afraid

    For those of you who receive the J.Crew catalog, please refer to page 39. I believe you will find what we refer to as pinchrolling happening to a pair of jeans.

  • School days, school days…I don’t know the rest of the words

    There’s something about August that always makes me a little excited. August is a big month in our house because we have Caroline’s birthday, my birthday and our wedding anniversary. I know it’s hotter than blue blazes, as my grandfather used to say, but to me it signals the beginning of the end of summer. As much as I love summer, I get ready for it to be over.

    Caroline and I went to Target this morning (Oh Target, how I love you, the ultimate friend of moms everywhere) and the aisles were lined with new notebooks, backpacks, pencil holders and new school shoes. It took me back to the days of going school supply shopping with my mom. I loved getting fresh new crayons, pencils with erasers yet to be chewed, clean notebooks. It’s not that I loved school that much, in fact I was known to play sick numerous times throughout my academic career, it’s just the newness, the freshness, the beginning of a new year.

    Once I got to college, I loved August because it signaled the start of college football season. There is nothing better than walking across campus and hearing the band practice and seeing the football team on the field getting ready for the upcoming season. It always made me so anxious for the glorious three months of Saturdays where all my friends and I would be in the stands at Kyle Field.

    Now, I love August because it’s the month I had my daughter, it’s the month that I know she’ll be going back to preschool giving me two free days a week, it’s the month when the sports page starts reporting on Aggie football, and it’s the month that as hot as it may be, lets me know that summer and this heat will eventually end.

    So, welcome back August my old friend. It’s good to see you again.

  • She has saved me a fortune in therapy bills

    My friend Gulley has been my closest friend since we first met in college over fifteen years ago. She was a freshman and lived in the dorm (or the “D” as we called it so it wouldn’t sound so dorky). I was a sophomore and lived in an apartment off campus. We were both Diamond Darlings (bat girls for the baseball team at Texas A&M) and bonded over dinner at our Christmas formal where we were competing for who had the worst date. I promise you I won, hands down, because my date was wearing a sweater vest and that’s the best thing I can say.

    Together we survived our wild college days, graduated, moved to different cities, met the men we ended up marrying (neither of whom wears sweater vests), and are now blessed enough to be raising our kids together because we live less than 2 miles away from each other.

    If one of us hasn’t called the other by 10 a.m. it’s because it’s either a weekend morning so we’re spending quality time with the family or the phones aren’t working. I don’t even want to talk about the phone bills we ran up back in the days we lived in separate cities and long distance wasn’t free.

    So that’s who Gulley is and I’ll be referencing her quite a bit because y’all she is funny and various members of her family could be a blog entry all by themselves. My husband’s friends make fun of me because for the last 10 years that I’ve known them I’ll start a story with “My friend Gulley says…” and they’re like “yeah, we know you have a friend named Gulley”.

    Now at this point in my blogging dynasty, I’m sure most people reading know exactly who Gulley is, but there’s a little background for y’all that don’t know “my friend Gulley”.

  • My delicate flower


    I have become increasingly aware throughout the almost 3 years of Caroline’s life that she is not quite the girly girl I thought she would be. Now don’t get me wrong, the girl can wear a tiara and carry a purse like nobody’s business. She’s also picked up some of my expressions so that now some mornings when I’m getting dressed she’ll say “Turn around, Mama. Oh, that dress looks just darlin’ on you!”

    But the biggest part of her personality is definitely not a frou-frou kind of girl. She will pick up any bug, dead or alive, to examine it a little closer. Let’s not even talk about my horror watching her carry around her new pet roach. She loves to get dirty, wet, messy, and will definitely tell me “no bows today, Mama”. She really is the best of both worlds. In fact, for her birthday party this week we are having hot pink polka dot cupcakes at her request, but everyone will also be wearing pirate hats


    A couple of weeks ago she spent the morning with her Daddy and when I got home from running errands, she ran up to me and showed me this snail that she had found. I said “Oh, isn’t he sweet. That’s real nice.” (That’s not really what I was thinking, but I’m trying to be supportive of her interests) Then she says “watch what I can do, Mama” and she proceeds to put the snail on our sidewalk and smash it with her tennis shoes. She thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.

    Then this morning we were looking through this coffee table book of animals from Africa. She usually just likes the lions and elephants, but today she noticed the cape buffalo. “What’s those, Mama?”. I told her those are big buffalo. She said “I’d like to shoot that puffawo and eat it for dinner”. Her daddy will be so proud.