BABY… Congratulations to Jeannette and Chris on the birth of Ellis!!
BLOG… Charity has a new blog. Go check out the wedding day pics of this gorgeous bride and be one of the first to comment in her new blog space.
BEANS… The garden has finally been planted and, according to my father-in-law, it’s not too late either! So here’s hoping we’re eating green beans, snap peas, broccoli, radishes, carrots, green peppers and tomatoes in August.
Jeremy and I celebrated seven years of marriage on Monday.
Happy anniversary, sweetie. I sure do love you.
My love for my daughter is such that, after putting her down to bed and seeing an oddly-shaped shadow beside her, I picked up the darkened object without hesitation or second thought as to it possibly being a spider, piece of poop, or other item of an unseemingly nature.
Tonight, to my relief, it was a piece of cheese.
Hey blogging friends! I apologize for the pathetic, infrequent blogging. I’ve been terribly uninspired to post personal information. In fact, I’ve been teetering on the verge of deleting the blog (don’t worry, won’t happen!) or just never updating it again. After some encouragement from my favorite webmaster, I decided to keep plugging along, recording personal thoughts on the WWW for who knows what reason.
I feel like I’m just emerging from a haze of activity which has kept me busy and focused for weeks. After Charity’s wedding in mid-May, we celebrated Memorial Day weekend with picnics and barbeques. Then a good friend from St. Louis flew up last weekend (Hi, Lorin! It was so fun to have you here!). And finally, I held my first ever garage sale last weekend. I learned that garage sales require more energy than weddings, social engagements and visiting friends combined. Running the sale with my buddy Julie was definitely the way to go… I can hardly imagine how lame it would’ve been to sit by my lonesome for two days, selling off the mounds of junk I’ve been hoarding for way too long. There was a moment on Friday when I questioned our collective sanity: What were we thinking to have a garage sale while watching three children under two years of age??? And then there was the rain, too, but Saturday turned out to be a nicer day for many reasons (husbands were around to watch the wee ones and we had intermittent periods of sunshine), so the sale went well afterall. It won’t be an annual event, however. I need time to garner that much junk again.
In late spring our catalpa trees produce lovely blossoms that eventually litter our yard in the most beautiful fashion. Considering the timing of the flowering, and the way the blooms eventually drop onto our grass, I call the catalpas wedding trees. When the weather is hot, the flowers will last only a few days and you have to keep an eye out for them, otherwise you’ll miss this pretty stage. But this year it’s been unseasonably cool (says me in my non-weather forecaster opinion) and the trees have held their blossoms for longer than normal. Recent storms ended up strewing flowers about the yard, resembling the aftermath of some wedding celebration. I think the wedding trees are particularly fitting around here where we’re enjoying the unions of many dear friends.
I highly recommend:
As we walked through the cosmetic aisles at Dillards today, I told Livia, “Yes, all these things can make you look prettier, but you don’t really need them.”
I don’t want my daughter to fight the same battle I fight: the Comparison Wars. I hate the fact that I compare myself to other women. I hate the internal dialogue that still exists despite the beautiful words that flow from my husband’s lips. I hate the way that I don’t practice what I preach.
You see, I absolutely believe that God created each of us in His image. And each one of us is stunning in her own unique fashion. I really do love it that some women are “larger-boned” and very womanly in their curves, and that others are slender with nary an extra ounce of fat. I am delighted when I see a woman with curly red hair who embraces it and doesn’t constantly complain that it isn’t blond and straight. I am oddly proud of the professional basketball player I saw on television yesterday who wore three inch heels despite being amazingly tall at 6 feet, 6 inches.
I want to shout from the rooftops: Women of the world, be PROUD of who you are!!!
But still the whisper creeps in, only audible to my own ears, only pressing on my own soul… It tells me that I need to wear trendier clothes, to lose fat and gain muscle, to buy undergarments that either give me more oomph or slim down the oomph I already have, and chiefly, to look very much like models in magazines and celebrities on tv.
Ugh.
God, give me strength to conquer the sin that tells me I’m not enough in the skin I’m in. I want to practice what I believe. I want Livia to be stronger than I am.
Babies truly can learn sign language. Yesterday I asked Livia if she was “done” with lunch; she then repeated me and signed “finished” with her little hands. It was awesome! I’m not sure if I was more excited about her saying “done” or about her signing it, but you combine the two and what you get is a happily freaked-out mama.
Then, this morning she said “all done” completely on her own, without prompting from me, and waved her hands around in the air again. When Jeremy left for work she squeezed her left fingers together in a wave. She waved once before about a month ago but hadn’t done it since, so I was thrilled to see her do it again.
We’re having Livia evaluated for her motor skills next week as she’s a little delayed in the pulling up/crawling arenas. She’s obviously one sharp cookie, though, and I’m grateful to see how bright her mind is. Her physical movement is coming along, however… This morning she stretched and reached out for a toy on the kitchen floor, then smacked her face on the linoleum when she lost her balance. She has a little pink welt as a thank-you for her efforts. No wonder she doesn’t want to move—look at the consequences! ;)
7:00:00 – Alarm clock alarms.
7:00:05 – Jeremy turns alarm off. I imagine we’ll skip the early service and catch the late one.
7:09:00 – Baby begins to babble across the hall.
7:09:05 – We’re going to the 8:15 afterall.
