A year in the life of a ladybug...

Hi, my sweet girl. Mama here.

A long, long time ago, your Daddy and I decided that three just wasn't the right fit for us. Four? Four would feel divine. And so we set out to get ourselves a baby.

We had to wait so long for you, we'd all but given up hope. We wanted you so, so much, but it just didn't seem to be in the grand plan.

Then one day, there you were.

I marveled at every heartbeat, every flutter. Every second that you spent in my belly was a miracle (Okay, except the moments you opted to do jumping jacks. Those I could have lived without). The world's most patient ultrasound technician, who saw us every two weeks (lucky us, getting to see you so much!), said "Girl." "Girl?" we said. "Girl." she said. Whatever would we do with a GIRL?

Oh, but whatever would we do without a girl?

July 17, 2007, at 1:29 PM, my heart grew fourteen sizes, at least.

I had no idea how much I needed you. How much I wanted you. How much I loved you. You came into the world too beautiful to be mine, and you continue to prove that every day.

You gave me your first smile at three and a half weeks.
It melts me every. single. time.

That's not your only face, though.
I don't know how your teeny little body holds all that personality.

You are sunshine, you are surprise, you are magic. I can't believe you're mine. I'm the luckiest Mama in the world.

A whole year has passed, and that makes me kind of sad. I want you to stay my tiny little ladybug forever.

But here you are, taking lots of steps. You've got lots of words, like "Stop" and "Bird" and "Bubby" and "Bah-bull" and "Bye Bye" and "Baby." Stuck, and Daddy, and Papaw, No, and Good, and That. My favorite, I'd have to say, is Mama, but I'm probably a little bit biased.

You've gone from being barely able to drink from a bottle to feeding yourself--or trying, at least.

I love that you say "Hi" to everybody and blow kisses on command. I love that your favorite music is bluegrass and how you try to snap your fingers to the radio. I love that you sit in the middle of the living room floor and yell for your brother to come play. I love that you know exactly what you want pretty much all the time, and you don't let the fact that you're not as big as the other kids keep you down.

I love that you are so happy. I love that you stick your tiny little toes in my mouth and demand "wee wee wee!" (we'll revisit that subject in a couple of years when your tiny little toes stop tasting so nice...) I love that you can't keep your tongue in your mouth, ever, because it reminds me of my own mama and lets me know that you've got a part of her in you.

Everything about you makes my heart happy.



I wish you a hundred more years just as happy as this one has been. I hope that for the rest of your life, this day is as beautiful and magical as the day you were born.

I love you, my ladybug. I always have, and I always will.

Happy, happy birthday.

Cleanliness is next to selfishness...

I washed my cell phone.

Oops.

So I just ordered myself this:


Everybody needs something to look forward to, right?

(squee!)

A quiet kind of crazy...

I said the other day that I don't have a lot to say right now.

Silly me.

I've been down this road so many times before, I should have recognized the spiral. You know, the downward one, the one that sucks you in to the pits of, if not quite despair, then at least blahness.

I'm feeling incredibly insignificant lately. I've had a couple of those weeks where I just can't do anything right. Work's a bust, my eldest spawn is having issues, I've been having far too many "mother of the year" moments with my youngest spawn, I feel like I can't say anything right when it comes to my friends (note to my readership: nobody, and I mean NOBODY has made me feel like that--it's a personal issue, I promise), and I don't even want to get into the direction my marriage is taking.

One of my dearest friends and I used to have these conversations about how if life were a boat, and if that boat were sinking, and each person could only save one other person...who would choose US to save?

Uplifting, those conversations.

To sum up my brain at this point in time: I feel like noone would choose me to save.

It's a horrible feeling, a horrible mental place to be. I used to visit this place more often, so maybe that's why I didn't realize I was headed here again.

I don't talk about it with anybody, because it's hard for most people to understand. When your brain turns against you, it's hard to convince the people you love that they did not do anything to make you feel this way, nor can they do anything to make you stop feeling this way. Sometimes you'll come back in a day, sometimes in a week, sometimes a month.

I'm not allowed to have feelings in real life, unfortunately, so it may come out here. I apologize in advance, but I have to move up a few notches on the emotional scale, and soon. Please bear with me.

Anything you ever wanted to know about LB

Can be found in this face:

Oh no they didn't...

Flipping through the guide on TV just now, I noticed that WGN is showing "Alf" for the next two hours.

I refuse to turn it on, because there's a good chance I wouldn't turn it back off.

(In case you hadn't noticed, I don't have a lot to say these days.)

And so it begins...

I'm sitting here watching my children fight over Goldfish and strawberry kiwi water.

LB is winning.

Good for her.