[This post is dedicated to my family, who wasn't able to be here for her first birthday]

My baby is one year old.

Unbelievable…

The morning of her birthday found both Ben and I a basket case of emotions. Remembering her arrival into the world one year ago, the 11 days overdue that we awaited her coming, the intense 17-hour labor, then finally meeting a chubby 8 pound, 6 ounce little GIRL when we thought all along we were having a boy (not that we were told that, we just “felt”).

I remember holding her in my arms for the very first time, looking into her round little face, her eyes squinting around at the big bright world she had just entered. I didn’t quite believe she was really mine. My very own baby! I remember feeling so excited before she was born but also sooo scared sometimes. But the moment I first held her all fears disappeared and all I felt toward her was love. A more intense love than I ever imagined a mother could have for her child.

My mother was present at the birth, and afterwards she asked me if I was even excited when Zoe’ was born, because I hardly said anything (I guess that was unusual, for me to not say anything). But oh yes, I was excited. And deeply moved. All I could do was sit there and cry, holding my baby tightly, whispering, “Baby, baby, baby…” The miracle of experiencing a child of my own being born,  being birthed through my own body, made me speechless. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I fell in love that moment.

So reminiscing all those things (Ben very early in the morning, me at a more reasonable hour) brought both of us to tears. That’s putting it mildly. It was more like weeping and wailing. But so very thankful for this beautiful little treasure God has entrusted to us… She has enhanced and enriched our little family, and love having her in our family!

———————————————————

The day of her birthday proved to be rather eventful. Eventful, that is, if you are a one year old child. And eventful if you are the mother of that one year old child.

We started out running errands in the morning, getting a few things together for her party in the evening. I had asked Ben earlier if I should just be a practical mother and buy an ice cream cake ( I’m not a huge cake fan anyway) or if I should be a vain mother and try to make her a cute cake. He liked the vain mother/cute cake idea, which scared me badly, because I’ve never decorated a cake before. But I’m one of those that believes if your authority condones something, it’ll be blessed, so I attempted it.

So we came home around noon, with Zoe’ taking only a 5-minute nap in the car. I started on the baking immediately. Meanwhile, I took Zoe’ potty, but that was unsuccessful, so, because of her diaper rash, I let her run around the house without a diaper on (I know, BAD idea). She immediately ran to a “no-no” area, and dug around under the kitchen sink, pulling out any supplies she could find. In doing so, she dumped a huge pile of dishwash soap on the floor, and attempted eating it. After checking that Joy with Bleach doesn’t kill babies if they eat it, I cleaned her up  and she continued playing.

I was busy baking/making icing so I wasn’t being an attentive mother, even though she was in the same room with me. I checked on her a while later, and saw she was playing in a puddle of water. I wondered how in the world she had gotten water, because there was none available to her anywhere. She was playing pat-a-cake and splashing all in it. Much to my horror, I discover she is playing in her pee! Off we rush to the bathtub, taking a quick bath while the cake is baking.

She still wasn’t ready for a nap after all that, so she played for a while again. After finding her in a bucket of peaches, I decided to sit her in her highchair, out of trouble, with a fresh peach to eat. Knowing she was out of trouble, I hardly checked on her except to talk while she was jabbering.  A few moments later, I look to discover this:

Peaches everywhere. The picture does not do justice because there were peaches in her hair, on the wall, on the string of balloons on her high chair, on her balloons, on the floor… She had eaten a few bites of the peach but then taken her hands into it and threw chunks and peach juice all over the 4 ft’ radius around her. So off we hauled to the bathroom for bath #2.

It was finally bedtime, and with a sigh of relief, we both went to bed…

She later had bath #3 because she was in the bathroom while I was showering, getting ready for her party, and she got so wet from trying to get in the tub that bath #3 we gave her…

——————————————————–

Her party was a happy time. The tears were over, and it was celebration time.

The cake turned out lovely (for a first-time cake-baker. AND I must confess that I bought a cake mix and I bought a fondant icing to make things easier for me. After that Eventful Day I knew why I had the urge to do so!) Two 6-inch cake pans of cake mix stacked on top of each other.

The ribbons are just that – ribbons. The dots are buttercream icing, and the smooth look is fondant icing (box from Walmart! ha!) Really, it looks more glamorous than the easy fixes I took!

The tiara didn’t last long. We managed to snap a few cute pictures but that was it.

After I had already made the cake I was worried that it wasn’t the kind that she could really dig into. We quickly found out that wasn’t a problem! She devoured that cake.

In fact, she must have had a huge sugar intake, because she was wired and so hyper after that. She was racing around the house until 11:30, when we finally fell asleep in her crib. Her normal bedtime is 8:00.

Some of Ben’s family was able to be here, and we had a lovely time with them! I am so glad that we have one side of family living close to us!

So, my baby is one year old!
Cheers to Baby Zoe’!

——————————————————-

I tried to put piggies in her hair the other day… and laughed for about 5 minutes straight after that because it looks so cute/ridiculous with her little amount of hair.

Ben’s only comment was this: “You either look like the mom who thinks her baby has more hair than she has, or that wishes she had more hair than she has.”

Either way, I got a giggle out of it!

Catching up. That’s been my goal around the house the past few days. Not getting much more done than that, but it’s okay… I’ve hardly been on the internet the past 2 weeks, so I’m sorry to some of you that I normally comment on – if I’ve missed your site lately it’s because I haven’t gotten around! So much newsy  news to catch up on in the xanga world. It took me several days of little computer snippets to even read part of it! And it was way more fun than posting my own thing, so I’ve kept putting it off. I go from feast to famine with this xanga thing, I didn’t realize it’s been almost a month since I updated…

I’m normally in bed by this time. In fact, I was so tired when Ben came home from work that I declared I would be in bed by 8 (highly unusual, btw). Kind soul that he is, he took care of Zoe’ the rest of the evening – including bathtime, bottle, and bedtime. I was so rested and rejuvenated from those 2 hours of free time that I suddenly am not tired after all! And my poor kind husband is exhausted and in bed. So rather than laying there tossing and turning I thought this might be a good time to write a bit…

Zoe’ has been teething, and also picked up thrush when we were in PA. She never had that before, and it’s cleared up in her mouth but now the yeast infection went to, um, other parts. The poor child is miserable from the combination of the infection and teething, and is quite a little bear. She’s not her happy little self… She used to be soooo happy when she’d wake up from her naps, play and talk and sing until I’d get her. Now the instant she opens her eyes she starts WAILING until I come into the room. And I dare not wait until  2 minutes after she wakes, because by that time she’ll have big alligator tears just a-rolling down her cheeks, nose a-dripping. Ben says she comes from a long line of overreactors, so why shouldn’t she act that way? Oh dear…

It’s been a busy few weeks for us, so I’ll post a few things here and there rather than one huge entry. Ben and I celebrated our third anniversary the end of June! Yes, our third. I can’t believe it’s been that long. It’s kind of sad we’re counting years instead of months. I mean, it gets better, definitely, but we’re out of that “newly wed” stage that everyone looks at and thinks you’re so cute, and now we’re in the “young married” category. But because marriage has gotten better for us the longer we’ve been married, I really wouldn’t want to go back to that first stage… It’s just a psychological thing, I guess…

We were quite busy over the time of our anniversary, and reaaaalllly debated about whether to even go away. We could just stay home and have a relaxing time here, we thought. But no, we decided that if we’re already talking about not celebrating it, then we for sure won’t celebrate if we have a couple more children and it just gets harder to get away. So we opted for Savannah, just a short drive away, but far enough to be away from home.

We were going to take Zoe’, since we had never left her behind for the night. I have a hard enough time even leaving her with a babysitter - I just feel like I’m missing out! So I packed her bags along with ours and we headed toward Savannah. Ben’s mom called just before we left, and offered to take care of Zoe’. I thought it was a very sweet offer, but didn’t think I could leave her behind! But before we were out of town we decided it would be a good thing to have time with just the two of us, Ben and me. We don’t get that very often anymore, and while it’s a new normal to have a child in the house with us all the time, it also takes a lot more effort to stay connected than it once did. So, we left Zoe’ behind, a very happy Zoe’, I might add, and a very weepy mama went driving down the road. The initial stages of letting go, realizing she’s not mine for forever, and she can actually do without me for one night. Without a problem at all. I was the one having a problem with it!

But it turned out to be a short, but wonderful weekend. I LOVE visiting Savannah, the gorgeous old city. This time we decided to do something different than the River Street we normally go to. And no, we did not go to the mall shopping, because this husband and wife have discovered it doesn’t cause marital oneness to go to the mall together! Husband gets worked up because of all the money Wife wants to spend, and Wife feels like they might as well leave if all they do is window shop.

So, in the beautiful city of Savannah, with the myriad of shopping centers and 2 malls and quaint shops along the riverfront and old town, we. went. goodwilling. Ha! We laughed at ourselves all day, because here we were in a place that has anywhere to shop you could ever want to, and we went to Goodwills! We hunted them down like you wouldn’t believe, got a map and circled all the streets that the phonebook had listed for a Goodwill. Some of it was a wild goose chase, must have been an outdated phone book, but we had so much fun! Even Ben, who doesn’t like shopping, was having a blast. He told me it was because of all the cool bargains he was finding for so cheap! We did find some things for him, which I was really happy about. I’m a Goodwill fanatic, and was so excited to be shopping at some again, a rarity for me now because our town doesn’t have one, neither does the next one, or the next one…

But we did manage to snap a few picutures of things other than Goodwill. We didn’t even get one of the two of us together though. That’s something that hard to get when it’s just the two of you, you always have to ask someone to take it for you. So the one of the two of us together actually came from a few weeks later, in Pennsylvania…

We spent Friday evening after dinner at the Macaroni Grill at Barnes & Noble. We used to go to that bookstore so often when we lived in PA, and it was so fun to go back, just the two of us.

My husband, eagerly digesting his Civil War reader.

We didn’t stay at a fancy, shmancy hotel, but the bed was delicious… Lots of fluffy pillows that made me want to get rid of our ratty, flat ones at home.

Some cool museum we passed. I can’t remember what it was…

One of the Main Streets in Savannah…

We happened to see this bride and groom pass in a darling little Cinderella carriage! The picture is not great quality but I snapped it from the car, trying to squeeze it in!

This old police car was awesome… I think I would like policemen if they would still drive cool old car like this!

We passed this DARLING little telephone booth, and I begged Ben to turn around and stop the car so I could snap a picture. It just reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of London, too cute for words. And it’s RED!

Ahhhh, and that was our little getaway! A wonderfully refreshing time, makes me want to do it again! I dearly love little getaways like that, spending time together, time to talk and share our hearts… Sometimes we’re so used to having Zoe’ with us that when we actually have time with just US it feels wierd. That is not a good thing. So this was a great soul refresher and we were ever so glad we opted to get out and do it!

Happy 3rd anniversary to a wonderful husband! I am so blessed by the Lord with the husband that I’ve been given! Such a godly man, such a wonderful daddy to Zoe’, and so much fun to live with!

I am so grateful.

And we almost didn’t get together. Our story is a very long story, one where we fell in love, then thought it was over due to the Lord’s leading, then of getting back together when we thought there was no way! And Ben is a very brave man – he asked me twice! Not brave because it’s me he asked, but brave because no man likes to be turned down once, must less risk it again! But through that time of separation God did a work in both of our hearts, and although it was a very difficult time for both of us, and circumstances painful not only for us but for others,  God proved faithful. And looking back, we know that He knew what He was doing, even if we didn’t understand. The separation was a refining time for both of us, purifying our love for the Lord, the way we viewed marriage and each other, and made us ready to give to each other vs. only take.

It’s good for me to be reminded of the miracle of us being together. To remember that it was God, that He has a purpose and a plan in bringing Forever to us. And that He is faithful to walk with us through Forever.