I Want My Baby Back, Baby Back, Baby Back. . .

My baby is all grown up!

GGma gave her two very nice dresses for her birthday, and she modeled them for me. Doesn't she look so grown up!

She also had her well-child this morning. Doing great, the ear tubes are almost out, and the doctor said they were so far out they were non-functioning. They'll probably fall out before swim season is over, but if they are not out in six months or so, we'll want the ENT to remove them. She's 48.25 pounds, and 47 inches tall.

My Baby!!!!!!! (sob.)

Alone on the Information Highway

Well, it's official. I always joked that only my mother and sister ever read my blog, since no one else ever leaves comments or tells me that they read it, but now I have proof! On the lower right of the blog I added a widget that tracks the city and state of who visits my blog. It's been on there five days now, and no one has visited. I never knew it could feel so lonely in cyberspace!

Well, our second troop of visitors has left. Amy, Will and Carissa were here from Thursday to Sunday. The girls thoroughly enjoyed meeting Carissa, and had fun playing with Will, although they weren't always fond of his rough affections. We did manage to make it to the pool one evening, and the kids had a great time there. Here's our photos of us with baby Carissa:


One of the reasons that Amy and the kids came to visit was Gracie's birthday and party. We went back to Pump-it-up, and we had a really good turnout for a summer birthday party. Our party was immediately after lunch time, so the kids had plenty of energy and bounced like mad.

We even managed to get Granddaddy to try the slide!
After we played hide and seek (Maggie is it - counting into the microphone) we did cake and ice cream and presents and then left for home and birthday pizza for dinner.We now have a lull until next weekend - then Mimi and Pepaw visit! The weekend after that some friends from Fort Worth are coming, and then it's time for school to start. The second half of summer is flying by much faster than the first. We are having lots of fun though, so I guess that's what makes the time fly!

Dancing Through Life

This morning Gracie woke up first and crawled into bed with me, which is a bit unusual. Usually the girls either wake each other up and they start playing and ignore me, or I am up before they are, or Maggie gets up first, and she's not a morning snuggler.

Gracie coming into my room is always a time I treasure. She always gets up and hops out of bed without fully waking up, so this morning, she stumbled in sleepily and climbed under the covers. She snuggled up so close, draping her warm little body over mine and I could feel her hot little breath against the back of my neck. At this early part of the morning she hasn't turned on the wiggles yet, and it's the only time, ever, that she is that still. She fell back asleep, moving away slightly as our combined body warmth overwhelmed her, but still maintaining some sort of contact. I managed to roll over and study her little profile. The amazing thing about Gracie is that she seems stuck in a bit of a time warp, like Peter Pan, refusing to grow up. Perhaps it's because she hasn't lost those tiny baby front teeth yet, but she still looks very much like she did when she was four. Now, as she sleeps against me, the big difference is that her feet are pressed against my thighs, instead of her toes tucked into my bellybutton as we doze together.

My thoughts drift and I think about the girls and their different personalities. Maggie is my grown up girl - six going on sixteen, if you know what I mean. She looks older and wiser, tries to know-it-all, and worries about things beyond her control. As I have recovered from surgery this week, she has tried to take care of me, following her Daddy's example of holding my hand as I began walking around, offering me support as I got up from the chair, and so forth. She is turning into a beautiful caring young lady, and I feel so blessed to see this transformation even as I want to keep her the little girl that I love so much. I lay there and think about my girls, so similar and yet so different, and look forward to watching them grow.

After thirty minutes or so Gracie's eyes flutter open, and we make small talk while we wait for Maggie to wake up and join us. I'm lying on my back with my left arm stretched out under Gracie's head, and she's lying on her stomach, with her right hand on my left, our fingers twined together. She turns her head towards me and says, "Some people's hands go like this when they are dancing, but we're not." I smile, and as think about the dance of daily life that we do I am struck by the thought that, indeed, yes, this is a very special dance, and I hope the girls want to dance with me for a long, long time.

I'm back!

Well, for all my nervousness leading up to it, the surgery was uneventful (just the way we like surgeries to be!)

Mom and Mike came to help us out, so on Monday the girls stayed home with their Papaw while Jerry, Mom and I headed out to the hospital. My surgery was scheduled for 9:00, but it was past 10:00 before they actually took me back to the OR. The anesthesiologist said, "Now this is going to make you a little drowsy. . ." and I was out.

The doctor came and talked to Mom and Jerry when it was over. He said everything went well, that the tube that delivers the bile from the gallbladder to the intestine was too small, and that's why I had low function. Everything else looked fine.

Once I came to in recovery I spent about an hour sipping apple juice and letting the pain medicine do its thing. Once I proved I could pee, they let me go home. We left the hospital about 2:15, and I went home and went straight to bed. I did wake up for dinner that night, which I ate in bed. It seemed to distress Maggie to see me 'sick', but I reassured her that I would be getting much better very soon. I'm glad that she has her Grandma here to help her through it!

Now it's Thursday, and I've gotten a little better every day. I'm still sore, of course, but feeling more my normal self, and Praise God!, no more nausea! I've got to be sure not to overdo it though, so now that the girls have left to go on a park/pool outing with Grandma and Papaw, I'm off for a nap.

Thank you all for your prayers!

Another day in Paradise. . .

Well, hello there! Have you been wondering what we have been up to? It's that process known as "settling in." Somehow my days seem to be crawling by as we unpack boxes (done) and put things away (not done.) Yet the weeks pass by in a flash, with the summer now past it's halfway point, and still, our countertops are buried in stuff, and I have no clue how I want to put this house together.

We are planning to get some new furniture for several rooms of the house - the den, Gracie's room, the kitchen table, the guest room. . . I know for some folks this sounds like the thrill of a lifetime - new furniture shopping! To me it sounds like a big chore. We've got furniture, although it is getting threadbare, dinged and dented. Still, it works, so I'm not very motivated to go out and get new stuff. Luckily, it's disappearing, thanks to Craigslist, so pretty soon I'll have to go get something new. I've tried to get motivated - I took the girls to Pottery Barn kids to look for a bed for Gracie, however, the kids couldn't grasp the concept that "bedding" and "bed" are two different things. Gracie liked the doll one, the flower one, etc. Now she insists that the bed she wanted was the one with the stuffed bird perched on the canopy. I can't seem to get through to her that the bird is separate, and can be had with ANY bed, not just that one. As long as she gets that bird, I could probably put her mattress up on cinder blocks and she'd be fine. (Sigh.)

This was our first Fourth of July in Oklahoma for the girls and I, as we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our arrival on the 7th. Our church had a big picnic after the local parade (we skipped the parade, but made the picnic.) The girls had a fine time in the bouncy houses and inflatable slip and slide and wet obstacle course. After they got soaked and we had a sno-cone we went changed into swimsuits and went to the pool. The girls have a base tan, so they did fine despite the full afternoon sun, but Jerry and I got mildly burnt despite 50 SPF sunblock. After that we took naps and the girls played in the front yard with squirt bottles. I thought squirt bottles would only get them a little bit wet, but when a little voice piped up, "Mama, can I pour this on my head?" I knew what was coming - a second set of clothes soaking wet! After a final change of clothes and burgers on the grill we headed out to the local fireworks display, which was very nice. The traffic afterwards was not so nice - we got home about 11:15 with two sleeping girls in the back! All in all, it was a nice Fourth.

I've been feeling a bit guilty lately for the complete lack of photos from this summer - or actually this entire year, if I'm going to be honest about it. I've found that this happens when I am horribly behind on my scrapbooking. You know, as if I won't be more behind if I don't take any more photos. . . Anyway, I did charge up the camera battery for the Fourth, but then forgot to actually take it with us to the picnic. Freudian, I'm sure. I made an extra effort for the next few days though, and actually came up with a few shots. Here you go:

We went to Home Depot for their Kids Do-It-Yourself workshop and the girls made birdhouses:

The kid's meal from Braum's had an activity using white flowers and food coloring that the girls wanted to try. Here's the end results:

Maggie turned her flowers purple, and Gracie's were pink, if you can't tell from the photo.

There you go!

Now, the big event next week is, of course, my surgery. I have to admit that I am a bit apprehensive about this, but also looking forward to the end of the symptoms that this is supposed to relieve. Mom and Mike are coming to help out the next week, so I guess I better run so I can try to get the house presentable before they get here! At least I know my mother has seen my housekeeping at its worst (think 1984 - 1989) and loves me anyway! I'll try to post during my recovery to let you know how it went!

Toodles!