You Capture - FRESH

Fresh flowers are something I actually don't like to receive. It took me about five years to tell my husband that. I know, I'm not your typical girl. For some reason it just seemed wrong to take something so beautiful, cut it, put it in a vase and watch it die. Fresh flowers in bloom are another story. I don't know what kind of flower this is, but it's growing on a bush near the parking lot in my condo complex. When the whole bush is in bloom it's beautiful and was one of the first things that came to mind to photograph for this week's theme.

You Capture: Comfort (FIRST POST)

This is my first attempt at "You Capture" and I'm screwing it up royally. This is an old picture and my husband took it, but it is the very first picture that came to mind when I read that the theme was comfort. This was the most comfortable time in my life. I spent most of the first weeks of my son's life in this recliner chair or in bed just nursing and cuddling. Thinking of those times brings me great comfort when I am dealing my now very loud, energetic, no-time-for-cuddles toddler.

Oh, and coffee. Drinking coffee with a friend while looking at the Blue Ridge mountains is also brings me great comfort!

Grammar and this exact Blog

I suck at sentence structure, spelling, grammar, and anything related to the these things. Please, please, please, if you notice something wrong, correct me. For instance, did I use the commas in the preceding sentence correctly? I'll bet I didn't. I used to know this stuff, but I don't anymore. I need someone to teach me. I'm too lazy to google "proper grammar" and teach myself. I swear, I will not be offended. Correct away!

Also, this blog is still a work in progress. I'm really enjoying writing in it, but I'm not happy with the way it looks. Hopefully, I'll figure it out soon!

More on Brennen

This is Brennen when he was barely a week old. Still a bit jaundiced. I've been reminiscing about his "tiny baby" days so much lately. He's grown so fast and he's only going to get even bigger. He can now climb out of this stroller.. while it's moving!
They didn't have you where I come from
Never knew the best was yet to come
Life began when I saw your face and I hear your laugh like a seranade
This quote is from a Dixie Chicks song and the first time I heard it, it made me think of how I feel about him.

Love and Marriage

This blog is inspired by an on ongoing conversation between my friend, Jessica, and I that will probably span the decades if it has not already.

The subject is marriage and people that have known me for a long or even short amount of time know how I once felt about marriage. I never dreamed of it and I never saw the point. I'm not religious, so I felt no pull to have my relationship recognized in a church and if you aren't religious, well what's the point of getting married? Tax purposes?

I'm sure this sounds very cynical and skeptical and not very romantic at all, but it's just how I felt. I knew you basically signed an official document, had a ceremony, maybe a reception and a honeymoon and then spent your life honoring and adoring each other. It didn't sound so bad and I definitely understood why people wanted to do it, but it still wasn't for me.

I believed then and still believe now that people change. I think we can all agree on that. So (and this is the conclusion I came to during one of my "conversations" with Jessica) I never wanted my relationship with Josh to come to a point where we'd both changed so much that we didn't want to be together, but we had no choice because we'd signed that paper. I truly, wholeheartedly, want Josh to pack up his things and leave me if a day comes that he does not love me anymore. The thought of either of us sticking around together simply because we committed forever to each other at one point is just heartbreaking. The dissolution of an unhappy marriage is so much less a vulgar idea to me than two people staying in a loveless marriage. Don't get me wrong. We've been together for a long time and have experienced the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, but even in the darkest times love still remained.

All this being said...

I now wear an engagement ring AND a wedding ring on my left hand. Well, not right now at this exact moment, because I was just doing the dishes, but you get the point. I have a marriage license in my filing cabinet drawer in a folder labeled "important documents". My last name is the same as my husband's last name. I'm married.

I had an epiphany one day, shortly before I announced to Josh that I would indeed marry him. Yes, we may change. We WILL change. That is inevitable. We will encounter highs and lows. Happiness and maybe some devastation. At some point, one or both of us may fall out of the love that we've enjoyed and nurtured over the past seven years. But we're in love now at this exact moment and at the moment that we committed our lives to each other, forever didn't feel like long enough. That's what it's all about to me. I don't know what the future holds for any of us, but I know what the past held and what the present feels like, and that's enough for me.

Marriage, like Motherhood, is something I just never knew I wanted. It's something I have embraced. Embracing these changes in my opinions and views is turning me into a more accepting and less judgmental version of my former self. It excites me to think of how much more I'm going to grow in the future.

Sweat Pea

This is my baby boy, Brennen, asleep on the couch. He is almost 18 months old and the absolute center of my entire universe. Just watching him sleep peacefully can always put a smile on my face and put the things life throws at me into perspective. It almost looks like he has his hand down his pants. Ah, like Father like Son. I just had to snap this picture because he NEVER just falls asleep, unless he's being rocked or nursed. This was such a precious moment.

Rolling with the Punches: Me and Motherhood

Growing up I didn't have the same dreams most of my friends did. I didn't play "wedding" or think too much about becoming a Mother. Honestly, I never saw the appeal. Even as I got older and most of my friends were getting married and starting families of their own, I still didn't have that yearning to have a child or walk down the aisle. It's really hard for me to admit this, but even as I watched the little pink line appear on my first positive pregnancy test, I still wasn't sure I really had what it took to give this little person everything they needed and wanted. I knew I'd have this baby and I'd love it, but I wasn't sure if that was the path I'd chosen if things had gone differently. I knew being a Mother required a type of selflessness that I wasn't sure I could muster up.

I'd sometimes joke to people that I really didn't like children. It was the truth. I preferred adult conversation. I wasn't comfortable interacting with kids. I didn't enjoy it. I thought I'd feel tied down and maybe even trapped. I'm sure some people might read this and think I'm a horrible person. I'm just being honest. I really want to convey that it'd be hard to find someone as unsure about parenthood as I was. Josh would talk about wanting to start a family and I'd firmly say that it wasn't happening until I was at least 30! I just assumed that as I got older it'd hit me and I'd want a family.

Fast forward to now.

It still baffles me, the path my life has taken, and where I currently am at. I'm a married woman and a stay at home Mom. If someone would have told me 10 years ago that this is where I'd be at age 26 I would have told them they were insane. This is never a life I pictured for myself. It's certainly never a life I thought I'd enjoy. Yet somehow, it's the only life I can ever see myself being truly happy in. I was supposed to start nursing school when Brennen was four weeks old. Throughout my entire pregnancy, I prepared for it. When the time came though, it just wasn't right for me. I couldn't leave him. I desperately wanted to be the one to raise my son. It's been an indescribable journey. I've changed more in these past two years than I did my whole 24 years prior to becoming a Mother. I finally understood the absolute joy everyone was talking about, just from seeing your baby smile. It really is intoxicating. This experience alone has changed my view on life tremendously. I still don't believe in fate or that everything happens for a reason, but I am a more positive person. If I hadn't gotten pregnant when I did, I may not have had the opportunity to be a stay at home Mom. I was in school, so Josh and I were living off of his income already. If I'd been working, it might not have been possible for us to lose my income. There are a million other ways things could have worked out, but the worked out this way. If nothing spectacular ever happens to me for the rest of my life, I really can not complain. This is enough to suffice me forever. I have embraced every aspect of being a Mother. Even the stress and lack of sleep that I never thought I'd be able to handle. I was being prepared for this job my whole life and I didn't even realize it.

My point here is really not write about how much I love being a Mom. It's more about rolling with life's punches. It sounds so cliche', but I never fell for it before this. You can think you have a plan. You can know , without a doubt, what you want out of life and where you are headed. Then, all in a matter of minutes, your world gets yanked out from under you and replaced with something you never knew you wanted so badly. It's a beautiful thing.