My Emily

Dearest Emily,

You were and still remain a gift to me. You are priceless. You are beautiful inside and out!

On this day twenty years ago I was VERY excited, ecstatic actually. The night before I hardly slept because it was so much better than Christmas!

We were at the hospital around now, ready for induction which was a miracle since my amniotic fluid had been leaking since 19 weeks and they had stopped my labor many times.

My labor with you was easy in contrast to my first because I was not at a navy hospital. Before I felt any real pain they gave me an epidural! After a very short labor you eased into the world, peacefully and quietly and just looked around to see what was going on. You were and are so very sweet, loving and gentle.

When you were little you just wanted lots of hugs, snuggles and smiles. I was happy to oblige. I just wanted to sit and hold you and stare at the miracle of YOU!

Mark came along and you two became like twins. Sometimes I noticed that the two of you seemed to be communicating silently, through "eye language". As I have told you, you were very observant but were saying very little (after all you had to compete with Lindsey for speaking time) until one day I heard you burst into a song with all of the lyrics completely correct, singing an "I'm Sorry" song to Mark when you accidentally bumped him.

You also showed us how brave you were. You were in children's choir and couldn't have been more than 2.5 or 3 years old. This was your first time to sing in front of a church and this was a fairly large church AND it was packed that day! There may have been 500ish people there. Every one of you were nervous. All of your eyes were huge as you whispered your song. Miss Lynda kept motioning for you all to get louder. Suddenly one little voice rang out, like a solo with back-up singers. It was YOU! My best friend and I were in tears. Everyone came up to me after church and said, "Was that Emily? I've rarely even heard her speak before this!"

As people I am certain that some of our qualities are "nature" and some are "nurture" but somewhere along the way we choose. And I am so glad you have chosen to be a loving, committed, compassionate person.

Remember, your life is a book and so far only a few chapters have been written. The rest are empty pages, what will you write?

I am very proud of you and being your mom has been wonderful. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

I LOVE YOU!

NOT ME MONDAY!

Unofficial therapy for bloggers!

I did not, would not, could not, consult Dr. Google regarding every symptom that I have been experiencing to find out what I may have. I would not resort to the Internet for a diagnosis. NOT ME.

And I did NOT skip a meeting tonight so I could blog. That's ridiculous.

NOT ME. And I did not get enough pumpkins for the kids to carve one each (and me)...Nope. NOT ME.

Lastly, I did not respond to a local political ad that invited people to email to get more information on the local political environment and the candidate's opposition. I did not! Not me ;) And said candidate did not write back and tell me way more dirt than I ever needed or wanted to know. Actually it's not a "not him" so yes, he did. :)

If it weren't so disconcerting, it could prove entertaining....at times...well, maybe. Each day seems to hold some new odd symptom with the exception of today. Just the usual muscle twitching and a little cramping and pain in my knees and feet. I want an answer but am in no hurry except for when my legs just don't want to cooperate by either getting up from sitting to a standing position, climbing the stairs, walking normally or speeding up. Otherwise, I'm okay. I am okay. I have a PMA. Probably just a pinched nerve :)

Today was a good day. A friend of ours became an Eagle Scout. It was very moving and it was so amazing to watch the power point slide show and remember how he used to be. He has grown up so much and we are very proud! He is also our daughter's boyfriend now :) Now if they just won't want to date until she is 18, we'll be good.

why am i so weird?

Currently we are going through the "Aw Shucks" cycle as a friend of mine calls it. Each test that we go through that comes back "clean" means another level of testing. We are going through the process of elimination first and then it's the tough stuff...

So those tests I was dreading....well, looks like I'll be having them. My neurologist has ordered an EMG and NCV. He says it's necessary at this point. Basically they are going to stick needles into my muscles and test my nerves to see what is going on and another MRI, this time on my lower spine.

He started me on Baclofen due to muscle "fasciculations" (twitches) and cramps. I was up for close to two hours last night with ONE thigh cramp. Then my knees felt like noodles today (and I mean the cooked kind).

Everything else is good. I'm ready for life to return to what it was-pain and symptom free.

Thank you for checking in! Enjoy your health :)

Not me Monday

This week I did NOT wipe the glue off of the table with my jacket sleeve because no wipes, towels, or anything else could be found at the Daisy Girl Scout meeting-not me!

I did NOT figure out exactly how much more candy and magazine subscriptions Rae would need to earn all of the badges, the teddy bear and the inflatable chair and order them myself, deeming them Christmas presents for others-not me!

I did NOT eat fried snickers, cotton candy AND caramel apple slices at the pumpkin patch! I'm on a DIET for Goodness Sake so...NOT ME!

I did NOT cry over nothing because I needed to purge. Nope, not me! I'm not a cry baby!

And last but not least I did NOT edit this post to say that I did NOT do this right, surely I did link correctly and I did link you to this beautiful family's website and did NOT forget, okay?

Presents/Presence-Take your pick!

This week has been so FULL! First I had yet another doctor's appointment and will be taking even more tests....which I am actually undecided on at the moment. Then three of my children had an assignment for school that I was honestly dreading.

They are all three in Spanish I. We've been doing PowerGlide Spanish for years but needed more "immersion" so I signed them up for classes. They love it! This particular day they were to make a dish from a country where Spanish is the primary language. This meant a recipe, a grocery list, and cooking...one of my least favorite things. But do you know how you sort of dread something and then you do it and discover that it was actually GREAT? This was one of those times.

It wasn't the cooking that changed my mind. It was the time together. They are such great kids, and I say this humbly because so often I believe it is "in spite of me", not because of me. We just had a wonderful seven hours. Yes, 7 hours from the time we chose the recipe, went shopping and cooked the dishes. Later I will post the details. This morning I have somewhere to go.

I am going to the SMA walk. You can read more about it here: http://www.tuscaloosacuresma.com/ and here: http://www.curesma.com.

I am walking in honor and memory of my nephew who passed away at 9.5 months.

And that brings me to presents and presence, the title of this post, can you guess why?

In life we often wonder "why" these things happen, illnesses and deaths in particular, whatever the cause.

But I decided that I am going to try to live life like it's Christmas morning. Remember when you were a child and you ran to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning? Remember opening the presents and being amazed? I don't remember a single Christmas where I sat and felt bad that Santa had left something off of the list. I wasn't a perfect kid, not by a long stretch, but I was so amazed that I had all of those things, whether it was three or ten, large or small and then what was the best part? After opening those presents, one of us remembered the stockings!

We took each thing out of the stocking and looked at it, marveled at it and took bites out of the edibles, enjoying every second.

What else did we do? Well, we yelled for our siblings to see and even our parents. Remember that Santa brought it so they had not seen it yet!

Then one of us remembered it still wasn't over. There was Grandmother and Granddaddy's house. There were more presents there! But better yet, there were the cousins to play with all day!

So I'm going to look around for the presents today. Whether it is a hug, a cute thing a child says, a lone flower, or a meal.

I am also going to cry today. We will see children and families affected by SMA. Families that have to say goodbye to a small baby long before "time" and yet we will know that our small baby is in heaven! And yes, another present to look forward to at the end of this journey!