Happy Belated Anniversary to Me! Happy Early 4th of July to You!

I am a little behind in writing about this, but we celebrated anniversary #6 last Sunday on June 22! I'm not exactly a party animal at this point in pregnancy, so we just had a low key evening at Stoney River.....yum! This past year has been a tough one, with all the adjustments that having a child, buying and selling a home, getting pregnant with another child, and a hard economy on a salesman can bring! We have definitely felt the strain and stress of life in our marriage! I feel like we are coming out of it in a better place....a place where our marriage seems a little deeper and a little stronger. I love this man with all of my heart. He is the most perfect match for me that could exist. And as he says, I am the most "perfect, imperfect person for him in the world." I am so proud of the man he is and continues to become, and I'm thrilled to celebrate another year with him! I can honestly say that I love him more than ever before!

On another note, here is Molly dressed in her 4th of July dress for church today! Her Meme (Scotty's mom), who works at the Mart in children's wear (how lucky is that?) gave it to her!

Happy 4th of July!

33 weeks and counting

This is my baby belly at 33 weeks. If I were really gutsy, I'd post an exposed belly picture, but no one really needs to (or really wants to!) see that! (Who hates the word belly? Heather? Sorry about that!) I pulled out a picture from my pregnancy with Molly, and this is as big as I was at 39 weeks with her! I ask my doctor every visit if he thinks this baby is as big as it looks and feels! He said it feels "bigger than average", and he will probably do an ultrasound at 36 weeks to see just how big we're talking. While I'm a little frightened about pushing out a big baby, I'm a little more frightened that it might NOT be a big baby and all that tummy is just ME! Yikes!!!

Lesson in patience???

***special note of thanks to HH and CS for their GREAT advice on my last blog!!!! I appreciate it more than you know!!!**

So apparently I'm being taught a lesson in patience, something I have basically NONE of! I renewed my agreement with AT&T and upgraded my phone 7 days ago. Got my new phone, and it was awful...sounded like the person on the other end was in a tin can. So I called, they called it defective and sent me a return label for the 1st one and mailed me another one. Well, the 2nd wasn't any better, so it must just be a BAD phone. So I called back and said thanks but no thanks, I just needed to get a totally different phone. They said fine, you send us the 2 we sent you and we'll send you a new one. I asked what I was to do in the meantime with no phone. They said, duh, we don't know, we'll ask....so a manager says the easiest thing to do is to go to an AT&T store where they will happily take my phones and give me a loaner phone while I wait for my next phone to ship. No problem! So I left this morning at 10am for the store they told me to go to. After waiting for 30 minutes (with Molly in the stroller), the guys says, "we are a franchise. You need to go to a corporate store." WHY did they send me there then???? "They don't know which stores are corporate." Are you KIDDING me??? So fine, I leave (after telling him how dumb I think this is, of course!) and go to the corporate store he tells me to go to. They say, "We can take the phones back, but we don't do loaner phones anymore." Again, are you KIDDING ME???? WHY do the people at customer service NOT know these things???? He is absolutely no help at all, so I ask him to get customer service on the line for me. After 45 minutes (again, Molly in the stroller!), I get connected with a WONDERFUL woman named Heather who is 6 1/2 months pregnant and understands that I can not take anymore!!! So now, I have the phone I want being shipped to me overnight, and I can just send the other 2 back. WHY was this so hard????????? I literally thought I was going to break down and cry in that store! A lesson in patience maybe? I don't know. As a side note, Molly was ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!!!!! She sat like a champ in the car and in the stroller for all that time with hardly any fuss! I am so so so grateful that of all days, she had the patience of Job! Thank you Lord!

On a totally different note, I haven't included any pics in a while, so here are some that I just uploaded to the computer.

Molly loves to get in Scotty's car when he gets home from work!

Scotty giving Madelyn, Carleton, and Molly a bath at the mountain house. So fun!

Saw this mother and her baby in my backyard yesterday during breakfast. So sweet!

Molly is absolutely in love with her crayons! New favorite thing to do!

It's HOT!

I know I'm stating the obvious, but I just have to throw that out there, because at 31 weeks of pregnancy, I don't know that I can stand one more day of 90+ temperatures. I promise that for every degree it goes above 80, my body is multiplying it times 2! I just want to sit in the pool in the shade all day long with a cold glass of lemonade! My precious husband volunteered to help my dad in the yard today. They worked their tails off in this 95 degree heat from 9:30 this morning until 4:00 in the afternoon.......and I'm complaining???
Onto another thought, I'd love to hear from all you moms out there about how you handled going from 1 to 2. I've noticed that my anxiety level is kind of high lately in general, enough so that I talked to my dr. about it at my last appointment, just in case he thought I might need some "chill pills"! He attributed it to the fact that as a veteran parent, I know what is coming my way, and that it is hard. I think he is more right than I would have guessed! I'm nervous about a lot of things, and of course being pregnant all of my emotions are heightened anyways. But I'm nervous most about these things:

• The effect a newborn has on marriage
• How is Molly going to take this?
• The effect a newborn has on LIFE.

I am just starting to feel like I have some freedom to my life. Molly is at the stage where it is easier to take her somewhere and let her just play, so I feel like I can really visit with my friends (something I can't get enough of!!!!). I am pretty free to go wherever I need to go, and only have 1 naptime to get home for (which I need myself, so that works out well!). I feel really nervous that I'm about to completely lose my life again, before I even really feel I have it back. I realize that sounds a little selfish, but I know that anyone who is a mom would understand. Any advice???? Did y'all feel this way too????

Weekend Away!

Scotty and I took a MUCH needed vacation this weekend to our favorite bed and breakfast in Hamilton, GA. It's 8 miles down the road from Callaway Gardens. The owners are more like family than friends, and they serve the best breakfast you've ever had!!! We basically did a whole lot of nothing. We slept a lot, sat on the front porch a lot, and ate a lot! The most ambitious thing we did was to see the new Indiana Jones movie (which, incidentally, we hated!). It was a great trip, and a really great reminder that I am more than just mommy. It actually took me a day to adjust to that! It felt strange not having my little peanut around, and I felt a little lost not being in mommy mode. It is really interesting to see how easy it is to forget what just being in "wife" mode is all about. I almost felt awkward at first, sitting there with nothing but time on our hands and each other to pay attention to. But that passed, and it was a GREAT time to talk and bond with Scotty. We talked about our different thoughts and feelings about life, new baby coming, us, etc. I came home with a renewed desire to pay more attention to my husband and to keep a check on balancing mommy mode with wife mode. I only have about 9 1/2 weeks left until I'm thrown back into new baby mode, so I have to make the most of it!