Emma is out on Christmas break this week, so I have less time for blogging and more time for playing! In that case, I just have one quick share today with the promise of much more in the next couple of days.

flowers for Emma from her great-grandmother after Emma’s flawless performance in their school Christmas program

Happy Mother’s Day …

* to the one who taught me what it means to be a mother … my mom.

* to the one who taught her … my mema.

* to the ones who teach me daily … my friends.

* to those mothers who have lost their precious babies and to those who are still working on becoming mothers.

I wish you ALL the most beautiful day full of live and love and everything you deserve.

Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.

Today is my mom’s birthday.

She taught me what it means to be a mom. How to love unconditionally. How to discipline gently. How to allow for individuality. How to leave everything behind and be there for my girls. How to set aside my wants for their needs.

[guess which baby that is!]

How to cook [although she is a MUCH better cook than I am], how to clean [again, much better], how to fold towels and sheets and t-shirts [there is only one right way, which makes it hard to let Ken do it since he does it ALL WRONG], how to garden [okay, I’m just now realizing how much better she is at everything], how to manage money wisely, how to swim, how to spend money on high-quality shoes and sheets and towels, and how to shop sales for everything.

She also gave me a strength and independence that makes me who I am. I’ve often thought back to the day I went into labor with Lucy, and how I remained calm under the circumstances … until I heard her voice on the other end of the phone. I inherited the ability to deal with stress from her, but it’s like I knew that talking to her gave me the option to allow HER to be calm and ME to freak out. And she, of course, calmed me back down and told me what I needed to do.

She is smart, funny, the most organized person I know, loving, caring, selfless, gentle, and one hundred percent amazing. She has always been there for us kids. She quit a high-paying job at the University of Georgia to work in the lunchroom at our school so that she could be home with us after school and in the summer.

She went without new clothes and shoes for years so that I could take piano from the best instructor in the area, so that Chad could play baseball and football, so that I could run track and be in the flag corps, so that we could go to a private, Christian school.

She used coupons and shopped sales and budgeted their money to send me to a private university … and I graduated with NO student loans.

She went on all of my school trips, and she was always the coolest chaperone there.

She has been at the births of both of my girls, even though they live an hour and a half away.

She raised a clean-freak boy to become a man who respects women, treats everyone with kindness, and gives more to the people around him than he would ever think to give himself.

She raised a messy and scatterbrained girl to become a woman who is independent, open-minded, loving and really really pretty. Oh, and funny.

In other words, she raised a boy and a girl with two totally different personalities. And yet, she embraced their personalities, let them blossom into a better version of themselves, and ended up with some pretty great kids [in my opinion].

I only hope I can do just half as good of a job with our two girls as she did with us.

I love you, Mom. Thank you for encouraging me to be who I am … I think all the good stuff is from you.

Happy 29th Birthday. Again.

Sorry I’m a day behind on this project … I was a little busy yesterday. Lucy and I headed down to Georgia to snuggle this little ball of cuteness.

And when I say “ball,” I mean it. My brand spankin’ new nephew spent his time inside the womb with his toe touching his forehead {no exaggeration} and he has spent his time outside of the womb pretty much the same way. It’s like holding a soccer ball!

A cute little soccer ball named Cooper Lee.

I never did get a good shot of his face, because he eats his blanket constantly.

Little stinker.

His big sister, Sydnei, is already a pro at snuggling her baby brother.

Anyway, I did get back home early enough to get a picture for yesterday’s Joy of Love prompt :: love to hate.

Emma does a lot of things that I love to hate. I mean, they drive me completely insane, but she just wouldn’t be Emma if she didn’t do them … so I love them at the same time. Honestly.

She tells knock-knock jokes constantly. Made up knock-knock jokes.

knock-knock
who’s there?
lucy
lucy who?
lucy chicken toes HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Multiply that by 328. Welcome to my day.

But there is one thing that drives me absolutely bonkers. If she has access to stickers, like these that she received from her great-grandparents, Mema and Poppee, she will use every.single.one.of.them. At one time.

I try my best to get her to ration them out so she’ll have them to play with for a while. But nope.

She must use them all. And she usually puts all of them on one piece of paper.

But that’s what she does. It would be weird to see a card with just one sticker on it. And I do love that about her.

today, the hubby and i are celebrating four years of wedded bliss.

(yes, that’s the ocean in the background — our wedding was amazing!)

we have our moments, but he’s a pretty great guy to put up with all of my crap. and i’m a pretty great wife to put up with his other wife.

her name is Sports. playing tennis and then watching pretty much any other sport on tv. or at the stadium.

some of our friends are getting married in september, and the first words out of ken’s mouth were, “i wonder what [football] game they’ll be missing?”

gotta love him.

and i do.

so very very much.

happy anniversary to my best friend.

The last 4 days have been go, go, go all day long. I am literally JUST NOW sitting down at my computer to catch up on the weekend emails/blogs I didn’t read on my Blackberry and also to finally go visit the bloggers who commented on my last You Capture post. :)

I kind of took a camera-free weekend. Mostly not on purpose, but we were literally going from one place to another so fast that our time at home was scarce, and I don’t like lugging it around just to leave it in the car, especially in the southern heat.

We took Emma to her first movie – Monsters vs Aliens 3D. She did really well for about the first hour, but then we ran out of popcorn, and she got bored. She was very quiet and non-disturbing to the other movie goers, but she liked flipping the seats up and down and looking at the exit lights on the rails. Overall, it went really well. A 30-45 minute children’s matinee would be perfect for her.

We also went to Georgia yesterday – kind of a surprise trip. My mom called while we were in the movies, so we literally ran to Target, bought some diapers, and got on the interstate without even going home. I’m sad I didn’t have my camera, because Emma got into their freezing cold pool and rode Pappa’s tractor for the first time. She is fearless – just jumps into any new thing feet-first without even flinching. I’m so proud of her independence and strength. She’s going to be an amazing little girl! And quite the tomboy. ;)

The weekend also included a fun bbq at Ken’s brother’s house, a trip to the new, improved playground next to the G’ville Zoo, tennis in the rain, and lots of time on our new Wii fit.

And fun w/ bubbles in the backyard …

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

We had a busy weekend full of family, yardwork, and Easter, so here are the highlights.

Friday: spent the day with my parents and my niece, who drove up from Georgia to celebrate Easter with Emma. Rain ruined our plans to go to the zoo, so we went to Frankie’s Fun Park instead.

They recently remodeled and added a Johnny Rockets, so we had yummy hamburgers before spending roughly $18 for Emma to ride a little carousel*.

* We bought a little token card and put $20 on it, and Emma used up almost all of it riding this little carousel. Poor Ken and Daddy just stood there as she went around and around and around … while Mom and Sydnei and I played games.

We had a wonderful time, and if Emma hadn’t needed a nap BADLY, we would have definitely done more.

Saturday: Ken had tennis at a local tennis center, and we went along thinking that they would have a playground. But they didn’t. And all the rain had really messed up the courts, so they were going to have dry them anyway.

We looked for earthworms for a while, but then they brought the big blower out, so we knew the earthworms were about to be goners.

To kill time, I took Emma to the laundromat to wash our big down comforters. They sure are pretty, but I am never buying another piece of bedding that won’t fit into my washer.

We were both SO bored!

But she was a trooper and made the best out of it – with some McDonald’s hash browns and corn pops.

If I had to be stuck at the laundromat with anyone, I’m glad it was my little munchkin.

Once we got done there, we went to Memaw & Papaw’s house to get the truck so we could get a load of mulch. The rest of the afternoon was spent mulching around the garden and all of the front shrubs & trees.

That night, E went to bed early while Ken and I collapsed to watch a few episodes of Rome on DVD.

Needless to say, the Easter dress that I had planned to make for Emma never got finished. Oh well.

Okay, Emma is DONE with me typing and editing pictures, so I’ll have to save the Easter pics for tomorrow.

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you can see most of the pictures there. :)

We drove down to Georgia on Saturday to celebrate Mom & Mema’s birthdays.

Everyone had a LOT of fun.

I’m still amazed at the difference between Emma now and the Emma 6 months ago. We honestly thought she’d never grow out of her separation anxiety, but now, she cuddles and snuggles and goes places with just about everyone.

She still needs time to get used to people that she doesn’t see often, but she is definitely coming around a lot faster than she used to!

Now, her and Sydnei play in their own room without Emma needing to check in with either me or Ken every 5 minutes.

I feel like she’s a normal kid. Not that she wasn’t before … but now I get to actually talk to people without having her hanging all over me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my baby … I love spending every second of the day with her. But sometimes, you just NEED to not be touched, talked to, whined at, or sat on.

I’m finally getting that quiet time, and I am just so proud of my girl.

Now if I could just teach her that crayons are for paper only.

We went to Georgia today to celebrate my grandmother & mother’s birthdays, and we got back a little after 10pm.

That was on the drive down.

By the time we got home, Emma was in full melt-down mode – she didn’t even want to get out of her carseat. But she went to bed and fell asleep pretty quickly, and we’re hoping for a little extra zzz’s tomorrow morning.

Happy Birthday, Mema!! We love you lots!

Twenty-four months ago, I looked like this …

27 weeks along

I loved being pregnant. Now, I was one of the lucky ones – no morning sickness, no obscene weight gain (34lbs), no stretch marks, light heartburn, little to no discomfort (other than my ribs). The only downside of being pregnant was that it couldn’t last longer. Oh, and the restless leg syndrome that had me putting bars of soap at the foot of our bed and doing crazy stretches at 3am.

on our babymoon to disney world

I understand if some of you now hate me and never want to read anything I write ever again.

And that’s okay. I understand.

I mean, you can hope that whenever I have baby #2, I’ll be sick as a dog 24 hours a day.

But please don’t.

Being pregnant for the first time was really amazing. In fact, it was so wonderful that I often think about trying for baby #2 JUST to be pregnant again. But then reality sets in, and I realize that we are paying our bills and that’s about it. Babies just don’t fit into the equation at this point in our lives. We’re okay with what starting our own business has done to our bank account, but we also know that having a baby right now just wouldn’t be smart.

But the actual point of this post was to say that twenty ONE months ago, I looked like this …

And then like this …

And then like this.

Even labor and delivery was a piece of cake …

6:15pm – water broke at our house
7:15pm – arrived at the hospital
11:45pm – got epidural
5:00am – started pushing
5:59am – Emma Grace arrived

Ever since then, life has been anything but easy.

But just as my pregnancy and then delivery was wonderful and amazing, so is our life with Emma.

She’s not the kid that’s going to entertain guests and make everyone laugh. She’s not going to be the kid who screams and yells to get attention. She won’t strive to be the center of attention or the class clown.

Instead, she will be the kid that everyone is drawn to because she’s so quiet. She’ll be the old soul that everyone falls in love with. She’ll be a listening ear and a strong shoulder for her friends. She’ll love everyone, no matter their faults or shortcomings. And she’ll be generous and kind.

Happy 21 months on this earth, my sweet soulful child.

You have brought us more joy and peace than we ever thought possible.