We Have a Walker!!!

I just have to post this for the sake of record keeping... Noah is now officially WALKING!!! He took nine steps in a row yesterday morning and that's the first time he's taken so many steps without plopping down on his cute little bum, then today he walked all the way from Emma's room into the living room!!!! I was so super excited.


And YES... I've been doing everything in my power to capture this wonder on video and so far I have about thirty minutes of him taunting me recorded. Everytime I pull out either my camera or the video recorder, he blatantly REFUSES to walk for me!


Little terd.


So, anyway, I'm trying to capture it for all to see, but just for the record.... July 11, 2009. The day my love muffin started walking! :)

Speak to My Heart

There are movies... movies that speak to me, that never fail to grip my heart and bring me to tears. They are my life, in so many ways... they echo my experiences and fill me with longing... happiness... and sometimes even pain.


We are our experiences. Everything that happens to us in life makes us who we are. The way we are treated, the way we are loved. The people we love... the way we love them... the passion with which we love. These are the things that make us who we are. At least... that's what I believe. Life can be so difficult and yet... so lovely. All at once, wrapped up in the same package. I've thought so much about life since my birthday. Turning thirty really brought life into perspective. I never gave my age or my days much thought, but for some reason, that big birthday laid it all out there for me. Like, you know.. this is really serious. This is it. Your life. It is what you make it.


The Notebook is a movie I can always watch if I want to be filled with nostalgia, it brings so many feelings to the surface for me that I try to bury deep. And lately, another one of these type movies has been coming on... Pearl Harbor. It affects me so deeply, makes me feel so many things. Is this normal? Am I the only one? I'm watching it right now and I just feel so many things.


I don't know. Maybe I'm just having an emotional day. Maybe I'm hormonal. I don't know. All I do know is that sometimes I can be happy without effort... I can push the lonliness away and pretend it doesn't exist and sometimes.... sometimes I just hurt. I have all this family around and of course, my wonderful babies, but my heart is lonely. My life... is lonely. But tomorrow will be better. It will be different. It always is. But tonight... I am lonely.

Yuck All Around

It has been a gross week around here. I do not wish for weeks like these ever. Thank goodness they don't come about very often. We've all been sick. Emma started it. She woke up Tuesday morning all cruddy and coughy and... whiny. I started feeling it coming on a little that night. You know.. that dreaded tickle in the back of the throat.


But Wednesday, I woke up really not feeling well. And neither did Noah. Great. As if I'm not a big enough baby when I'm sick. Ugh.


So, anyway, Thursday was worse. I felt like death when I woke up and Noah.... when I went to get him out of bed, both his nostrils were completely clogged with dried mucus, as was half of his face... smeared with dried mucus. And his sheets. Green, yellow... mucus. Gross.


So, I cleaned all that up. I had to melt the stuff out of his nose with a hot washcloth. Poor boy. His nose is so sore.


Then today has been the worst!!!! Oh my gosh, I woke up so nauseated and my head felt so wobbly... bobbly that I thought it was going to just roll off my shoulders. Ugh. It's been rough.



But tonight, Mama took Emma home with her, which is the only reason I have enough presence of mind to write this blog and Noah fell asleep on my chest a while ago. I laid him down... reluctantly... but he keeps on coughing from his room. Poor boy. He's had a high fever too, and he sounds horrible. His voice is all husky and rough. I'm worried about him. :(


I hate being sick. I just want to lay somewhere and occasionally eat something and occasionally drink something and take a shower and watch tv. That's what I want to do when I'm sick. Oh well. I'm grown now. I guess I have to act that way. Even if I am sick. :)

Relentless

If you like to read and you like suspense novels, you should read this!!! I thought it was amazing. And the characters were just awesome. Picture a six year old genius little boy who rivals Einstein with his inventions and a very quirky dog. This book is full of humor and suspense all at the same time. Really. Dean Koontz never fails. His stories persist and are filled with constant happenings. I loved it! Warning, though... it is quite scary. I had a hard time cutting the light off to go to sleep a few nights. :)

The Importance of Having a Voice

My mom and I were talking about this last night. She is the kind of person who when she's angry at someone or is hurt by someone... she tends to bottle it all up inside of herself and let it fester and brew. That's just not me. I don't always choose to be directly confrontational with everyone who hurts me or fills me with the kind of anger that makes you just shake all over with rage, however, one way or another I will have my voice heard.


I think bottling things up inside of you only does bad things... first of all, it causes the anger to grow, which stresses you out (at least it does me) and stress is bad for your heart.. your body in general and has been said to significantly shorten your life. And since I'd like to live and enjoy my kids and family as long as possible, I don't think those that cause me anger and hurt are worth the energy it takes to bottle up that hurt inside of me. That only hurts me more and causes me more problems. Therefore, I will always have my voice heard.


I know it's not "politically correct" to some for me to host my occasional venting sessions on here, however, that is not really a care of mine. Even when I am at my highest point of anger, I rarely say things that I don't mean a hundred percent. I may say them in an angrier voice than I would if I wasn't angry, but if I say it.... odds are I mean it.


But I'm thinking I am going to go ahead and do what a couple friends of mine have done. I'm going to open a seperate, private blog to put anything that is not fluffy and happy on. There are people in all of our lives... well, hopefully just one person, because honestly, more than one would be completely exhausting... who live solely for the purpose of causing trouble. You all know one. I hope I'm not the only one who knows one. Even if they live nowhere near you, they will find their way to cause trouble. Therefore, I'm just going to post my low moments where only those who can handle that kind of information like an adult can read it. I think that's best because I don't want this blog to be private. I like it being public. I love getting comments from nice people I love, like, and even from ones I don't even know. It would be great if blogger would come up with a function that would allow you to block readers from just a certain place.. like a city or even state... or address.. something, I don't know... but since I'm not a person in charge at google, I'll have to deal with the fact that public really means.... EVERYONE! :)


And if you wonder why I must write my low feelings out somewhere rather than just saying it to someone... well, Tony's not here, my house is me and two little ones and I would most of the time rather vent to someone my own age rather than to my grandma or my mom. They're the only two adults that I see on pretty much a daily basis. And I'm not a huge phone person. I loved talking on the phone before I had kids, I could talk for hours on end, but these days I just don't usually have time for long phone conversations. Don't get me wrong, I love getting calls from my lovely friends, I just usually don't have huge slots of time available for lengthy venting sessions. :) Also, I love writing. It's one of my very favorite things. Definitely top 3 on my list of how I prefer to express myself, so therefore, I will almost always write about my annoyances, hurts, pains, guilts, happy times, joyous occasions, and the like. It's just me and I won't change to suit someone else's personality. :)


Sorry if my honesty offends anyone, that's me... take it or leave it.... :) At least you don't ever have to wonder if I'm lying to your face. I can promise you.... I won't! :) Anyway, I"m a horrible liar. You can always tell when I'm lying. My voice totally gives me away. :)

Busy, Busy Week

I'm sorry I've been so absent on here over the past couple of weeks. I think of you guys all the time. Literally. I miss hearing from you and I miss reading your blogs. Last week was so busy getting ready to go to Dallas to train with Amy and then this past week, I was so busy implementing what I learned from her that I have had absolutely no time to post on here. Well, I could've posted something, but I'm not usually great at short posts.



I have had an amazing week, though, I'm happy to report! I spent two afternoons/evenings with great friends ( Alison, Garrett, Jack, and Collins & Heather and Miles :). I'm so lucky to have friends like you guys in my life! Thanks for always being there. :) And not to mention that a friend that I've known half my life drove from Jacksonville on Tuesday for me to take pictures of her and her four boys. What an amazing time we had! We started our shoot on the Bullard Farm because they'd just baled up hay and the boys had a blast playing and being themselves out there. It was a great time and so wonderful to see her again and catch up. I'm pretty sure we hadn't seen each other since 9th grade!!! Life is good when you get the pleasure of being reunited with an old friend from the past like that. :)

And these boys.... AMAZING. I completely fell in love with them! I'll have more of their pictures on my GJP blog this week, so keep an eye out! :)

And tonight, we got to cook-out and spend the evening with my mom for the fourth! We thought we were going to be alone for this holiday, because my mom was at the beach, but she ended up missing us and coming home early. So, thankfully we were not alone this fourth of July.





My mom wanted some pictures taken of her, because she never gets pictures and she likes updating her sites she's on, just as we do, so I snapped a few pics of her tonight after we cooked out. All I have to say is that LORD.. I hope I look like her when I'm her age. I mean, seriously. She's turning 50 this year and you would never, ever know it! I'm going to post a bunch of her on my blog this week sometime, but those of you on my Facebook have already seen a couple of them. Here are a few of my favorites so far...

All I have to say is... LORD, I am SO thankful that half of my DNA came from HER!!! :)

Hope you all had a happy fourth, friends, I"ll try not to go another WEEK without posting! What a slacker I am. I'm sure a few of you are on the verge of putting my blog in time-out. :)