Memories

This past weekend I made many memories, memories that I will never forget.

We packed up our little family of 3 and headed down to Beaufort. Although, with all the luggage we had you would've thought that we were staying for a week. I can't help it, I over pack because I like to be prepared.

Beaufort is a place that Freddie and I have visited often, and we couldn't wait to take Kameron. Beaufort is a beautiful city. There are huge old trees draped in Spanish Moss, old houses that I can just imagine women sitting on the front porches in their hoops skirts trying to fan away the heat and dozens of little cute shops that I can't wait to visit one day when I have more time.

Kameron has never been to the beach and I couldn't wait to see what her reaction would be. Would she be scared? Would she fall in love with it as I have? She loves outside, but would the beach be too much for her to handle? No, she is a true Southern girl and she loved it. From the moment her little toes were covered in the lovely beach sand she was in love.

She loved the water, she loved the sand and she loved seeing all the birds. I will always remember the way her little face lit up as she took it all in. And I will always have the memories of her trying to draw in the sand with a reed and eating the sand off of her little green rake. We all had a blast, and I am so glad that I got to make memories with my little family.

Kameron checking out the sand.

Checking out the water and waves.

With the infamous green rake. 

Treasure

Sometimes you forget to treasure the small things. The things you take for granted could mean the world to someone else.

There are days that I am so wrapped up in my stress of life and my stress of being a mom that I forget the days of when I longed to be pregnant, and to be a mom. The days that I wept at night because I could not get pregnant, and I would cry out to God to PLEASE bless me with a baby. “All I want is a baby!!! Why can’t you give me the one thing I want so badly?!?!?!” Now I have the one thing I wanted and I am not always thankful for her.

Why? Why would I not be thankful for the most wonderful thing in my life?!? What is wrong with me?!?!?!?

And my answer is…..

I have no freakin clue! The only answer I have is that there are days that the stress gets to me and I long for the days when I could just paint my toenails and not listen to a whining baby. These are the days when I try my best to make myself stop and remember the days when my heart was empty and all I did was long for a baby. I try to think of the many people out there that do not have the joy I have with my sweet baby. People like my friend Kelly who lost her baby at 39 weeks. She has recently started blogging about her experience. She is so brave to do this, and I am not sure if I could do the same. When I read her blog it opens my eyes more to the fact of how blessed I am to have Kameron. I need to learn to treasure EVERYTHING about her…the sweet times, the whiny times, the hilarious times and the times I want to pull my hair out! My heart is full and my arms are full, what do I have to complain about...not a DAMN thing!!!!! My life is all I ever I wanted it to be, and I couldn’t be more blessed. Thank you Lord for the true treasure I have in my daughter. Nothing can bring me joy like her sweet laugh and her beautiful smile. Nothing warms my heart like her running up to me to give me a hug. She may try me, but she is the greatest joy in my life. She completes me, and drives me to become the best person and mom I can be. She is the sweetest thing in the whole world, and I could not ask for more!

Did you say potty?

Yeah.....I said potty. For about 2 weeks now, Kameron has been letting us know pretty often when she has pooed in her diaper. She will come to us and pull on her diaper and start whining, and if you ask her if she needs a new diaper she will typically run to her room to get her diaper changed. As of yesterday, she started letting us know when she is just wet. So, I figured let's break out the potty!

Several months ago my mom bought a little potty for her and I looked at it with my lip turned up. I admit that the idea of letting her pee/poop in this little bucket and then me having to dump it out does not please me very much. In fact it grosses me out!!! Poo in a diaper is bad enough...poo in a bucket is REALLY bad!!!!! Despite the fact I don't wanna mess with this nastiness it is a necessity. So, every evening before her bath, I put her on the potty while I run her bath water and I read to her. She sits there pretty good, but if I didn't have that book she would be off and running. Did I mention she is not even 16 months old?!?! Yeah, my lil girl is awesome!! But it is very possible that she could be sitting on the potty and doing nothing for the next year. Let's hope not!!!

So....here's to the possiblity of Kameron peeing on the potty!!! :)

My love affair.....

....Okay I have to admit, I have a love affair with books. I love books, I love the way they feel in my hands, I love the way the pages smell and I love the joy of reading what is written on the pages. I love discovering a new book, one I think that might have the possibility of becoming a new treasure to me. I love bookstores and libraries....I could spend hours in them. To me there is nothing like them.


Ahhhh....this is my heaven on earth.

 When I was a young girl I did not have this wonderful love for books, in fact I could've cared less. Until one day my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of reading. When I was 10 my parents decided to take me and my sister out of public school and home school us. This was not exactly the best experience, but I did get something out of that year. Up until that point my reading skills had been pretty sad, so my mom decided to get me to read out loud and to read more often. Once I picked up a book that year, there was no turning back. I read everywhere.....in my room, in the bathtub, on the porch, in the woods and occasionally up a tree.

Reading allows me to escape the everyday things. To me, reading is like playing a movie in my head. I love a book with details, one that allows me to picture the scenes in my mind to the smallest of details. I love sad books, romance books, history books, fantasy books. As long as it can entertain me, I 'm going to read it.

Recently my mom turned me on to a new wonderful series. I personally like books that take me into an imaginary world full of vampires, werewolves and all that stuff. And these books are full off it, and to top it all off the main character is one bad a$$ chick. I would love to be like Anita Blake . The author of this series is Laurell K. Hamilton , and her writing is awesome. If you like a book with a lot of meat to it, you MUST read her writing. It's awesome..or at least I think so! =)

yep....these books have definitely become my guilty pleasure, and lucky for me there are MANY more in the series.

Thanks, Mom, for getting me to read and creating this love I have for books. And thanks for letting me borrow the countless books you have loaned me!!  Love you!

Training: Day 1

So, after many failed attempts to actually lose weight and exercise I decided that maybe I should set a goal to achieve that would maybe help me to exercise/lose weight. After many minutes thinking I decided...............to................RUN A 5K!!!!!!!! No, I have not lost my mind, but I am really hoping that this will work. I was supposed to start training last week, but it didn't happen. And even though I am currently sick, I still started training today. YAY me!!!

The program I will be using is Couch to 5k cause I am basically going from the couch to running. Today wasn't too bad....a total of 25 minutes on the treadmill, alternating walking and jogging. I was wore out when I finished and I still feel like crap, but I did it!!! The program has you only working out 3 times a week so on my off days I am planning on doing yoga to help me strengthen my back. Since I had Kameron I have had severe back pain and spasms, so I finally went to see a neurologist. Come to find out I do have some osteoarthritis and a condition (that I was probably born with) that causes my vertebrae to flex further than they should. So, the best solution for me is to exercise in order to strengthen my back muscles. So, hopefully this will work so I will stop hurting.

KAMERON UPDATES:


Kameron is getting so big!!! She will be 15 months on Friday. I still have a hard time believing that she has grown so fast. As of last Thursday she weighed 21 lbs, and I'm thinking that she is around 30 inches tall. Yeah, she's still short, and I'm not sure there is much to do about it since she got my genes. =) She is talking up a storm!!! She says several phrases "All done." "Some more." "thank you" "sit down" "stand up" "bye bye". And she is trying to say I love you!!! : ' ) It always makes me tear up. If I had to estimate she probably says somewhere between 50-75 words. She is a true chatterbox!! She has learned how to give hugs and it is so sweet!!! She knows what several of her body parts are called (ears, hair, eye, nose, mouth, belly and toes), and she can point them out to you when you ask her to. And she completely understands what I am telling her even if she doesn't act like when I am telling her "NO!". She will go to her room when I tell her it's time to change her diaper, and will head straight to her bathroom when I ask her is she is ready for her bath! She loves her bath!!! Right now her new favorite word is chicken, and everything is chicken. Cherrio's = chicken, Noni (my mom)= chicken. She is so silly and makes me laugh everyday even when I am trying to discipline her.

I will try to update this a often as I can, but it may be difficult as we are trying to sell our house. As of tomorrow it will be listed with Lauren Porter Wilbert at Exit Real Estate. We are very excited about this, but nervous as well. Please be praying that all goes well for us. Until next time..........

It's been a while!!!

I haven't blogged in a long time now. Life has been so busy and I have my hands full with Kameron constantly being on the go. She is up to running now and is into everything!!! She had a good first birthday, first family vacation and has started so many new things.

Everyday she is doing something different to the point that I can't keep up. She says 20-25 words now. She is so smart!!!! Often times she will come up to me and she sounds like she is having a complete conversation with me; however, I can't understand her.haha I just act like I completely understand what she is saying, and her look of pure seriousness is adorable!! She has gotten so good at saying thank you, but she has also learned how to throw a tantrum. *sigh* She now knows how to whistle, wave and say bye-bye and to blow the fluff off dandelions. Just in case you don't know what that is here is a picture....

She is now 13 months old, 20 lbs and 28 inches tall. Yeah...she is short just like her mom!!! She is STILL teething. UGH....will it ever be over?!?!?! Her eye teeth are coming in (typically babies don't get these till they are 18 months or older!) and she is not happy about it and neither is mommy!!! I hope to wean her soon, but she is not happy about the attempts I have made so far to begin this process...hopefully we will get on the same page soon. That's not to say that I'm sad to see this part of our relationship to be done with, it really breaks my heart to think about weaning her. But I believe it is time for this to take place. Not because someone has told me that she is too old to still be breastfeeding (personally I don't care what anyone thinks about it or the fact that I have done it this long), but I'm ready for her to be independent. She needs to learn how to soothe herself and to not always use mommy to do it. I am so proud of myself for making it this far, I truly believe that I have done a great thing for her and I will never regret it.

I can't believe that I celebrated my second Mother's Day!! I had a very good day that had some interesting aspects to it. We all went to the lake, laid out, ate chicken salad (that I made for the first time)and I got burnt!!! Oops!!! I put sunscreen on Kameron & Freddie, but not myself. I also yelled at the people next door because they weren't controlling their dogs (one big one, one little one). They rushed at my mom when she was holding Kameron trying to put her to sleep, thanks to that Kameron didn't go to sleep. And then after that, the little one came back, rushed at us again and tried to take Kameron's favorite stuffed animal. That was the last straw!!!! I stomped (yes stomped) over to their house and yelled at them..."EXCUSE ME!!!! YOU NEED TO COME GET YOUR DOG!!!! I HAVE A YOUNG CHILD AND I DON'T WANT HIM AROUND HER!!!!!!!!!!" Now, I don't have anything against dogs or animals in general, but I'm sorry, if I don't know the animal I'm going to be cautious around them with my child. The next part of my day turned out be very much like a soap opera, and is a very long story. The short of it, my father-in-law had been unreachable for almost 24 hours by his girlfriend (girlfriend was in VA so she couldn't go look for him), so she called Freddie for help. After two hours of looking for him it turned out that he had Tiger Wood's syndrome (Freddie's words) because he finally showed up at his house with his other girlfriend. OH THE DRAMA!!! But in all I had a great Mother's Day. : D

Here is picture of my beautiful girl!!!!

One Year Later

Wow! It has been a year since my little girl was born. I am still in shock at how fast it has gone.

This time last year, if someone had told me that a little 7 lb 5 oz baby would totally turn my world upside down, I 'm not sure that I would have believed them. My life is so completely different than it was before, and I wouldn't change a thing. I am completely blessed.

Before I had Kameron, my life was empty. I had a great husband, but I felt like something was missing. That missing link was my child. I tried for so long to have a baby, and I had begun to think that it would not happen for me. I was devastated just thinking about the possibility that I couldn't have children. Then something wonderful happened...I finally peed on a stick and the result came out positive. From the moment that positive sign showed up I loved my child. I didn't know if "it" was going to be a boy or a girl or who it would look like, but I knew I loved it.

As my belly grew and we found out "it" was a she I fell even more in love with her...my little Kameron. When my water broke I shook with fear and anticipation of finally meeting her. I had to labor for 36 hours and end up having a c-section before I finally saw her. She was beautiful, but I didn't get to hold her until I got to recovery. Once in recovery, the child I had longed for was finally in my arms and she was breastfeeding like a champ. Finally I was a mom. From that day things have continued to get better. Sure, we have had our bad days, but I can't complain.

I'm a mom....it's my title...it's my job description...it's my life. I sit here with tears streaming down my face in awe of the fact that God blessed me with such a sweet, lovable, beautiful girl. She is my very own. There is nothing better than her laugh, her smile, her kiss, her arms around my neck. She has my heart....she IS my heart. I would do anything for her.....she is my world.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my sweet little girl! I will love you always!!