As part of the blog blast featuring Microsoft’s Portrait of Mom I reviewed some of my favorite pictures over the years to determine which ones really impacted my journey through motherhood. This picture was taken when EBoy was just 4 months old. My brother and his wife had a lovely destination wedding in Hawaii which we were fortunate to get to attend.

My time as a mother had been wonderful for the most part (he was a very calm baby as long as I was within his vision, leaving him at any time for any reason was met with many tears and wails) and we’d even had a great 5 hour plane ride to get to Hawaii. I always loved on my sweet boy and spent much time talking, singing, and cooing to him. He had huge belly laughs and giggles anytime I kissed his cheeks but this picture captures the first time ever that he kissed me right back. It was a wonderful surprise to find out love can be communicated before words are even formed. As a mother there is no greater gift than the love of your own child and I will never forget this special moment, truly a memory forever etched in my heart.

Check out The Parent Bloggers Network for more unique portraits of mom.

EBoy had a very inspiring week at his elementary school leading up to earth day. A different activity focused on environmental responsibility was planned for each day including bringing a lunch from home that would contribute no garbage at all, learning to precycle, reducing energy use, and brainstorming on ideas to save the earth. EBoy was very excited to learn so much about helping the earth and has taken it as his personal responsibility to keep track of reusing items when possible (water bottles, etc) and placing things in our recycling bin. It’s amazing to see just how young these ideas are becoming ingrained in children and it makes me want to work even harder to make sure we leave behind a world they can continue to cherish.

In 2004 I celebrated my 2nd Mother’s Day (3rd actually since I demanded a Mother’s Day gift when I was pregnant with EBoy) amidst a cold that simply didn’t want to go away. I’ve always had issues with allergies so I wasn’t surprised when I started having allergy flareups in Atlanta. At the time I’d been watching EBoy and his best friend every day. I planned to incorporate regular walks utilizing our wagon to take the boys throughout the neighborhood for their fun and my getting in shape. However after my first long walk I had to return home within minutes, a sniffling red eyed mess with hives from my skin’s sudden reaction to the peaceful Atlanta spring I was so looking forward to enjoying.

It seemed like weeks on end that I suffered from this cold and allergy symptoms until one day it dawned on me that my “cold” seemed to appear at the same time my fairly recently returned period had completely disappeared again. So Mother’s Day saw me run around to Dollar General (closest store to our house to purchase a test) and on that day I got the best Mother’s Day gift yet:

A positive pregnancy test confirming that ETot was on the way!!! Turns out my sniffles and skin sensitivities weren’t seasonal they were all to do with being with child. Although at the time we really thought EBoy would be our only child, our little surprise turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to us.

If you’d like to check out some Mother’s Day gift ideas that don’t involve nausea or changing diapers try GetInHerHead. While finding out I was pregnant with ETot was my best gift ever, no more little ones will be announcing their arrival in the immediate future. Hopefully EDad will get some great new gift ideas from GetInHerHead.com

This was part of the Blog Blast: Gifts Gone Right, Gifts Gone Wrong with GetInHerHead.com from Permalink  6 Comments »  Filed under: ,

Amidst the last week of business we had EDad’s birthday (for which his parent’s flew in for Seattle), visited a German town to do a little fresh produce shopping, and made the hour long treck to visit my parents. My Pastor was speaking at my parent’s church and because we haven’t seen him years we jumped at the chance to hear him in person. He and his family are very dear to us- he baptized me and performed our marriage ceremony so we were so thrilled to see him.

During the church service I made sure to bring along a bag of goodies (thanks to the dollar bin at Tarjay) to try to keep the boys entertained. EBoy typically does well but ETot can be a bit to contend with at the quiet points of the service (he made sure to loudly reiterate the last word of each scripture as it was read during the service, it was hard to figure out if we should be proud or embarassed).

While his brother was performing his loud church speaking debut (at our church both boys are happily busy in children’s church so they are rarely in service with us) EBoy was diligently writing some things on a small pad of paper and then ripping them out. I didn’t notice until little shreds of paper were littering the pew so I asked him to please leave the paper on the pad and not rip it. He told me sorry but he simply couldn’t stop because he had to write a note for a girl. I politely asked him what girl and he proceeded to point to a teenager sitting down the pew from us. The content of his note?

To: Grl From: EBoy

Hi Grl you ar so btiful

(Hi Girl you are so beautiful).

He and his father are going to be having some very long conversations about the proper time to court young ladies- mainly when they are your own age (at least within your same decade) AFTER you’ve completed your college degree. It took all I had to convince him that it just wasn’t right for him to pass notes in church. A friend told me I should have let him just so he’d learn himself, but I’m not taking the chance of our pint sized Casanova getting any encouragement whatsoever. I am so not looking forward to high school.

So you know how last week I was just discussing how incredibly busy life has been and I have to learn to prioritize? Somehow I’ve managed to join the choir at my church and commit to being the technology chair for my sorority. Umm someone please teach me what prioritize means before I add even more to my plate. The one nice side benefit to all of this busyness is I’ve remained committed to eating healthy because I don’t have time to even think about junk- and my favorite jeans which I haven’t been able to fit in for over a year are fitting quite comfortably again! Now to figure out how to go on a diet from more commitments.