Year: 2007

  • What to do in case of emergency

    Saturday night, we had some new friends over for dinner. Their little girl is in Caroline’s class and we’ve gotten together to play a few times, so I thought it would be fun to have them over.

    We grilled elk burgers (of course) and had a really enjoyable meal. After dinner, the girls headed to the playroom to play.

    About five minutes later, Caroline comes running out of the playroom and announces to us that her friend is “coughing”. We all run in the room just in time to see the little girl cough up a piece of candy that she was choking on. We were all relieved that everything was okay.

    Later, after our friends had gone home, P and I were talking about how proud we were that Caroline knew to come and tell us what was going on. P called her into the kitchen and said “You were so smart to come and tell Mama and Daddy that E. was choking. That’s exactly what you should do anytime someone is in trouble, go tell a grownup”.

    Caroline listened and when he was done talking, she sighed, “Yes, I KNOW that” with a world weariness that indicates she is so tired of these adults she lives with stating the obvious.

  • Five is so big

    Five years ago this morning, I woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to Austin. Gulley was having labor induced bright and early and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. I was nervous and anxious, after all this was our first baby and I had no idea what to expect.

    As I walked into the hospital room that morning, Gulley was sitting in the hospital bed with an I.V. in her arm demanding that someone better turn Kelly Ripa off the T.V. before she ripped that I.V. out of her arm and walked out of there. I guess the combination of contractions and a bad reaction to an epidural will make you a little cranky. It didn’t help that her husband J was offering beef jerky to everyone in the room.

    We waited all day long. Those poor nurses thought they could keep us in the waiting room, but they were no match for the family. That was our baby being born in there and no way were we waiting down the hall. I’m sure they loved us.

    While we were waiting, I got hungry so Gulley’s mama offered me a Weight Watcher’s brownie that she had in her purse. I will always remember it as the worst thing I have ever eaten. Ever. Then finally, nine hours and one bad brownie later, the doctor came out to tell us that Jackson was here with a full head of red hair.

    I’ll never forget that I loved him the moment I saw him.

    Five years later, I’ve watched him grow from a baby to a sweet little boy. I’ve watched him take his first steps, say his first words, eat his first birthday cake. I’ve changed his diapers, rocked him to sleep, held him when he’s cried, and seen him learn to ride his bike without training wheels. I’ve watched him become Caroline’s best friend in the whole world.

    I’m as proud of him as if he were mine. He lives life to the fullest and is always looking for his next adventure. As Caroline would say “Oh Jacks, you are SO GOOD at that!”.

    I bet you’re going to be great at being five. Happy Birthday sweet boy.


    And yes, tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled non-birthday posts. January is a big month.

  • This could be my life motto in one sentence

    Gladys Hardy on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

    My sister sent me this and it is hysterical. It reminds me of my neighbor Tillie, who I’ll be telling y’all about sometime this week.

    Enjoy! And Amy, thanks for sending it.

  • Escape from Arctic Blast

    The last week has found all of us at Casa de Big Mama homebound and stir crazy for days on end. By Wednesday, I was so desperate to get us out of the house that we kept a scheduled playdate with one of Caroline’s friends, in spite of the fact that I had to start my car thirty minutes before we left just to thaw the ice off of my windshield. I had reached a point of desperation and honestly, would have put us both in snow shoes for the one mile journey to our friend’s house just to get out. We were in dire need of a change of scenery.

    After our playdate, Caroline had her first trip to the dentist, which went really well. All that guilt my pediatrician laid on me about Caroline having her paci until age two (actually she had it until she was three, but I started lying to the pediatrician around her two year appointment, but lying is such an ugly term so let’s just say I didn’t fully disclose) was completely unfounded. The dentist said that Caroline has great, healthy teeth and the best part is that she has great spacing which means that she may never have to endure the orthodontia hell that her Mama is currently undergoing.

    The dentist said “Wow, she has really great spacing so you probably don’t have to worry about flossing her teeth” and I said, “Oh yes, that’s why we haven’t really flossed her teeth” while what I was thinking was “WHAT?! I’m supposed to floss her teeth?” I thought I was up for Mother of the Year because I manage to get them brushed at least once a day…most of the time. Don’t throw flossing at me, I’ll short circuit and our entire oral hygiene routine will go out the door. It’s just too much.

    On Thursday Caroline was finally able to go back to school (is that Handel’s Messiah I hear in the background?) and I had tons of work that I needed to get caught up on after having a holiday on Monday and then two ice days. By Thursday afternoon, I was missing our leisurely days of doing nothing and we still had a birthday party (which I still have to tell y’all about, but it needs its own post) to attend that evening.

    We were so tired after Thursday that we all slept in until 9:00 Friday morning. This may not sound like anything special to y’all, but it is the first time in the history of the free world that Caroline has slept even remotely late. I’m sure it’s not a trend, but it gives me hope for a brighter future filled with mornings that start a little later than 6:30.

    So Friday morning after the sleeping late, P mentioned that he wanted to head down to the ranch for the day and asked Caroline if she wanted to go with him. God bless her little heart, she was so excited at the prospect of going to the ranch with her daddy that she immediately ran into her playroom and started packing her camo hunting bag (don’t all three year old girls have camo hunting bags?). She packed her toy gun, her binoculars and her magnifying glass. Here she is packing.

    I watched her pack her little bag as she chattered excitedly about everything she was going to see and how she and Daddy were going to shoot some ducks, and I got a little teary eyed. I’m not sure what choked me up the most, the fact that my little girl loves her daddy so much and was so excited to spend time with him or that FINALLY the day that I have dreamed of lo these three years, has finally come and I get the house all to myself while the two of them go off to enjoy a day at the ranch.

    It was a little piece of heaven here on earth…for all of us.

  • Driving Miss Caroline

    One of the things that I love about raising a child is seeing all of the little things she does that are like me or like her daddy. It’s so amazing to see things in her personality come out . P and I spend a lot of time saying “Oh, she is so your child today” or “She gets that from you”.

    When I was pregnant with Caroline, I read an article in Martha Stewart Living that talked about DNA and how sometimes children will actually have more traits in common with a grandparent than their parents due to recessive genes that skip a generation. I could give y’all the whole rundown from 10th grade Biology about how two green peas always make green peas, but that would be impossible since all I remember from 10th grade Biology is that dissecting a pig completely grossed me out. I was so thankful that I wasn’t in Honors Biology because that would’ve required dissecting a cat and since I was in school in Beaumont, no telling where that cat might have come from originally.

    Anyway, the point is that this evening I realized a trait that Caroline has received not only from me, but from my daddy, otherwise known as Bops.

    Road Rage.

    Bops and driving are a legendary combination. He is the most mild mannered, laid back guy y’all could ever hope to meet, but you get him behind the wheel of a car and it’s as if his whole personality changes. All of a sudden everyone else on the road is an idiot that can’t drive fast enough or doesn’t go soon enough when the light turns green. It is an amazing phenomenon to observe.

    I could write a horror novel about the two weeks that we spent driving all over Sicily with Bops behind the wheel of an eight passenger van. We curved around the highest mountains I have ever seen at speeds that defy human logic. My poor brother- in -law had to just hunker down in the very back of the van with a book because he couldn’t bear to look. He could just tell from our screams when the driving had gotten especially perilous.

    At one point we were driving down some small country road when all of a sudden Bops realized he needed to take a right. You haven’t tasted adventure until you’ve made a sharp right in a top heavy eight passenger van at 70 miles an hour. I literally saw my life flash before my eyes.

    But here’s the thing. Bops is a good driver, he’s just an adventurous kind of driver who gets completely frustrated by drivers who aren’t paying attention to what they are doing. I have many fond memories of riding in the car with my dad while he taught me phrases like “they should just bomb this whole freeway” or “that guy ought to be shot for driving like that”. It shaped my childhood.

    However, those that live in glass houses can’t throw stones. I have inherited this tendency towards road rage. There is nothing that makes me angrier than someone driving 40 mph in the passing lane on the freeway, or being slow to go at a red light, or the mother of all my pet peeves, backing up and pulling forward 85 times to get out of a parking place when CLEARLY they have enough room to just back up and go.

    I have conversations out loud with these drivers and I’ll admit they are not always friendly, although let me state for the record that I am good about keeping my mouth shut when Caroline is in the car because y’all know that little pitchers have big ears (and no, I don’t really get what that means except that they repeat everything they hear usually at inopportune times). I’m not saying I’m proud, I’m just saying that I realize I have inherited a tendency toward road rage and no, I’m not packing heat or anything, so don’t get nervous.

    Lately, I have noticed signs that Caroline has inherited this driving gene. It all started a few weeks ago when we were driving home from church and she was beyond upset that there were cars ahead of us on the freeway and insisted we needed to “Beat those cars Mama! Go FASTER, Mama, they’re beating us!”.

    Then tonight on our way to a birthday party, which I’ll tell y’all about tomorrow, it was confirmed that as far as driving goes, she is like her Mama and her Bops.

    We were stuck in traffic due to the fact that we live in a city where everyone needs to stop and look at every orange cone on the side of the road, when I hear my little backseat driver say “We’re NEVER going to get there because of ALL these BAD drivers. I’d like to kill ’em”.

    And the people said Amen.

  • You don’t look a day over 62

    Gulley’s mama has been in Bryan visiting Nena, so y’all know that I love to be able to share a good Nena story.

    Nena and Grandaddy are about to celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary. Sixty-two years is a mighty long time to spend with a person. In fact, Nena sent me a note a few years back and mentioned in the note that Grandaddy was driving her crazy. It made Gulley and I a little sad to realize that even after 62 years, there will still be times the husbands will drive you a little nuts.

    Anyway, Nena wanted Gulley’s mama to drive her down to THE newspaper so that she could give them a picture of she and Grandaddy to commemorate their 62nd anniversary in print. As they were waiting in line, Nena started to chit chat with a young girl standing in line in front of them.

    It turns out this girl was there to turn in a picture for her engagement announcement (I guess no one has ever heard of putting anything in the mail or even better, sending it ON THE COMPUTER). Nena shared that she has been married for 62 years.

    The girl said “Oh my! You’ve been married 62 years? How old are you?”

    Nena replied, “I’m 82”.

    The girl said, “Well you look great! I would’ve thought you were just 62 years old!”

    Nena smiled at the girl, handed her picture to the head picture guy at THE paper and they left. As they were walking to the car, Nena looked at Gulley’s mama and said, “WELL, I would feel a whole lot better if she had said she thought I was 52!”

    Gulley’s mama said “Well Mama, she gave you 20 years!”

    Nena said “Well, of course she did, do you see how good I look?”