It just hit me. I mean, it JUST hit me. It not only brought me to tears, it nearly brought me to my knees. I'm going to be a grandma in a few days time. This could change my life forever. Chances are, it WILL. This tiny bundle of of sweetness and joy, this wriggling pink bundle of cries and whimpers and funny faces will make me a totally different person. I'm so scared. And yet, so excited for the precious journey.

Come on in, little one. Others are wating for you.

...to take you fishing and reading you stories. Your father always loved Green Eggs and Ham. And you must meet our little friend Miette. She'd be curious, but leery nonetheless... We want to take you to the park, swimming, teach you about the butterflies and the birds, teach you about Zibby and others like him, teach you so many wonderful things! See there's so much for you to do in this world, that we are so patiently waiting for you to join us. Most of all, we just just want to love and cuddle and snorgle you!!

Not to mention you'd probably be the love of our lives. ...our precious little one.

This is a very strange time in my life. I supposed I expected it to be more even and slowly fall into the differences between "young and old" and "parent and grandparent." It seems to happening all at once with me. ...well in a sense, anyway.

My job has disappeared. I have to sell myself to the "new" office. I have to prove that I have the right to be there. I have to come up with "new" skills, a new title, and sell it to everyone else. I have to make myself important. The teachers pull in clients just by being teachers and talking to the students and their parents. How do I make money?

How do I do that? That is the question?

My life has suddenly become complicated in so many ways.

My boss gives me all the credit in the world. She used the word "backbone" and said I was very important to the company. But now I have to learn a whole new job. To be honest, it's a job she has picked with her very own hand. ...one to keep me 'busy' and one to keep me motivated so that they could see my importance. She wants me to stay, and she wants me to be important to this new company. She wants to see me shine. She knows that once given the chance, there is no doubt I will shine.

(Well since I first started this draft, I've decided to try a couple of "work-at-your-own-pace" kind of interactive classes on web design, graphic arts (though this is already my specialty), and networking and such. Boss has said she will pay for these self-paced classes, but I still have to take 4 weeks off -- unpaid -- this summer.... :( )

If only I had the courage. If only I had the confidence that she seems to have in me.

One day, one crisis, one stressful situation at a time, I suppose. And in the meantime, hope the money holds out and the bills get paid.

Everything is just a leap of faith.

And I'm praying that my parachute works....

Just a couple of pics from how I spent my Sunday...



Here we are walking to the local "squishy" place for some icy refreshment after a long day of cleaning out baby's room.



This is the Pack and Play that we bought for them, and she and I assembled. I just loved that it had a 'bassinet', a changing area, and became a full fledged play area when he was too big for the bassinet!! Too cool!!! Those things are trickier than you think to put together, though!! :D



This is the crib. Though it was put together a bit, we had to take it all apart again so we could raise the mattress up. It was nearly touching the floor the other way, the side bars don't move, and mom is quite short, so it just wouldn't have worked at ALL. But we fixed it.



And here is the expectant couple at the foot of the finished bed! (Mom has in her hand earlier mentioned icy refreshment!!) ;) It's done in all Classic Pooh. We really got a lot done that day. We filled up the empty dresser and put lots more things in the closet. We put all the diapers and wipes in their place, and now have room on the floor for more things as needed...

All in all, a very long, exhausting day. But now the room is ready for baby!! (I might have said Gabriel, but the last few days, they've been changing their minds a bit on his name. As we last spoke last night, it was Robert James, calling him Robby. But who knows...? We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.)

This song changed my (our) lives about six months ago. Bowling for Soup is usually crazy, goofy, and an all-around fun band. I really like their music.

But I love this one....

Bowling for Soup - When We Die

On this Memorial Day, remember those who gave their lives for our freedom.

Thank you for all you've done for me and my family. ...and for all of us.

Thank you for defending our country.

I love this song...

...and this one.

She's due to give birth in less than two weeks. The nursery isn't even ready. I went over the other day to pick up son so we could run some errands. I opened the door to the nursery, and all I saw were boxes and piles of things. Gabriel is due in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!! (According to her OB, it could be any day now! To me, she already appears to be "dropping.")

I made the offer to son that if she had the time, maybe she wouldn't mind if I came over this weekend and helped her set up the nursery. He thought that was a good idea. I'm worried, but yet I want to do all I can do to help. He asked her and she thought it was a good idea, too. I just want things to be ready for him.

It isn't the lack of a nursery that bothers me. Lots of babies are born into homes where there is no nursery at all. All they have are a bassinet (or something similar) in mommy and daddy's room. And there's not a thing wrong with that. It isn't likely he will notice these "things," but if there's just a sense of instability in the household, I believe he'll pick up on it. If there's a sense of unease and stress, I believe he will be able to sense it.

I see so many things in them that worries me. (I've written and erased so many things I wanted to say on this matter. I don't want to be negative where they are concerned. I don't want to rant.)

This is truly going to be a long, hard road for us all... I'm so worried about this little one.

Congratulations to David Cook
for winning American Idol!!

He was my favorite from the first day!!

Look what son brought today...

(These were taken 3 weeks ago.)

This could have been 3 or 4 posts!!

Something has been making me a bit emotional lately (as if you couldn't tell from some of my earlier posts...). I've been moved to tears more easily than normal. I seem to wear my heart on my sleeve most days. Though there's nothing wrong with being emotional, it does leave me feeling quite vulnerable at times.

The only thing I can gather so far is that it's been an ongoing thing since just before my birthday. ...the day I was born those years ago. It reminds me that I'm adopted (click her for that). But it also reminds me that someone else wanted and loved me so much that she gave her all for me.

Most of you don't know all the story. So to make a short story long, I'll fill you in a bit.... (Sorry it's SOOOOoooooo long.)

I was adopted at 4 months old. I know that I have an older brother. He is four years older than I. I've never known him aside from those first four months of my life with them. I don't know if he remembers me. I don't know if I haunt his dreams today. I don't know what kind of nightmares or inadequecies it causes in him knowing that one day, one child disappeared. What does that mean for him? And was he abused, too? That terrifies me. They ran with him so quickly when my mom tried to keep us together and adopt him, too. That confused me greatly as I grew up. Where is he today? My birthmothers name (at the time) was Evelyn White. (She was between 24 and 26 years old -- about 5'4".) My birthfather's name was Ronald Brady. He was a 30 year old, about 6'4", and a mechanic at a university in Jacksonville, Florida in 1966. It was a "friend of a friend" private kind of adoption. There was no real information there. It was truly a "private" adoption. Even if all the records in Florida suddenly opened up like a book, it is likely mine wouldn't be in there. It was THAT private.

When I was 4 months old, my (adoptive) mom heard that a family had just given birth to a daughter. They didn't want her. They'd already planned to place her with another family with two young boys. At the last minute, that family had decided they'd rather not adopt a child at that time. (The mother decided she'd rather go back to school.) So she was left to look for someone, ANYONE else to adopt this baby girl. It doesn't mean she was evil (as I soon learned), it just mean she may have been desperate. ...desperate to get me out of that situation and into a safe one.

My mom was married to an evil man when she adopted me. She was told she couldn't have children. As soon as the adoption process started with me, she became pregnant with my sister. I'm not sure he was so mean in the beginning, but this man was a drinker and became horrifically abusive. She wanted to leave him. It made him so angry that he threatened to kill her two daughters if she talked of it anymore. One day, he came home drunk and waving his gun around. She said she had to leave. He told her she would not -- as he gathered up her two daughters. Now understand that he considered my sister his only "real" child, so he pulled me into his arms and put the gun to my four year old head -- threatening to kill me. She screamed and cried and begged for him to stop. Luckily, God intervened and he 'passed out' before he could finish his job and end my life. My mom grabbed us both and ran to a neighbor's house, begging him to drive us from Florida to her mom's house in Kentucky. And the beautiful soul agreed to help her. She literally left everything behind, leaving with only the clothes on our backs. She was welcomed home with open arms. But he wasn't to be deterred. He found out where she was and followed her there.

My only memory of that first Christmas with my extended family in Kentucky was him breaking in the door on Christmas Eve, waving his gun around. It took a couple of uncles and cousins to gain control of him, but not before he shot a hole in the floor (of course that wasn't what he was aiming for). The sheriff came and took him away. We were forced to visit with him because he was still our "dad." His lawyer (literally) tried to bribe us to see him by putting two or three pocketfuls of change on the table and saying we could "go for ice cream"). Even then, our four and three year old minds were still terrified of him and would not be bought. So he did what he considered the next best thing. He kidnapped my sister. ...literally. Right off the street. He walked up behind mom, who always held us both by each hand as we walked down the street, and grabbed her and ran in the opposite direction. He did give her back later, but it was still terrifying.

He came into my uncles house while we were visiting him once. There were four uncles there playing cards, and they moved toward him as he came in the door. He raised his gun to aim, and three guns pointed back and shot. They shot three of his fingers off in an attempt to make him drop his gun. And he continued this until we were older as well.

One of the last times I remember seeing him, he was driving toward us in his car while my mom and I (I was 12) drove to the grocery store. He realized who we were, and drove straight toward us, opening his car doors to make sure he ran us off the road. He still wanted us dead, no matter what. I haven't seen him in years, and I do believe he has died, but my mom's protective nature has never once wained. She literally put herself in front of us anytime it was necessary. She would have given her life for us. Of that I have NO doubt. And on Mother's Day, I always remember that. She was/is one of the fiercest mama bears of all when it comes to her cubs.

I did see him once again when I was much older and had my own cub. He looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. And can you believe that just looking at him at about 80 years old while I was in my early twenties and was also with a buff, totally strong military man, didn't make me one less bit terrified? I almost peed myself just looking at him.

There's a poem I read once about giving flowers. The person was talking about the fact that they would much rather receive flowers while they were alive and could enjoy them instead of on their grave when they couldn't. I've sent my mother flowers at least on Mother's Day and her birthday every year since I read that poem. It's the very least I can do. And she enjoys them so much that I wish I could afford to send her flowers every month... But at least I have the knowledge that she is "enjoying her flowers now."

My mama has been a "mother" to me in every sense of every word that could be used to describe mothers. She has scrimped and saved. She has made sure we always had food to eat and a roof over our heads -- even if that meant she had to do without -- which she did often. She worked menial jobs to raise us. They never seemed menial to me. She always taught me the value of money. We would ask for so many things, as children do, and she would reply that the money "just wasn't there." When I said I didn't understand (didn't she have money in her purse even as we spoke?!), she sat me down with the bills and what money she had. She made a list for me and had me add it all up for her. Then she subtracted the money she had so I could see that there was truly nothing left. We couldn't go without elelctricity or rent. We couldn't go without food. To be totally honest, I was eight years old, and that's when I truly understood money and where it goes, and why we can't just spend money because we have it.

She never, ever treated me any differently than any of my sisters. As a matter-of-fact, I received my greatest compliment a couple months back. I was speaking with my younger sister about something that involved heredity. She warned me that we all had to be aware of certain hereditary diseases that seemed to run in our family. I reminded her that I was adopted and still wasn't sure about what I had to be wary of getting. She said, "That's right. You're adopted. I keep forgetting." See what I mean?

I hope I followed in some of her lessons. I believe I've been the best mother possible. And maybe that's what gets to me sometimes. I hope and pray that I taught some of those lessons to son. Now, in about 3 weeks, I'm going to be a grandmother. I just hope I can be as good a grandma .

So now a day (or two) after Mother's Day, I'd still like to say to my own mother, "Happy Mother's Day, Mama!! Thank you ever so much for being my mother. You mean the world to me! You are my heart. You deserve SO much more than I can give you. You deserve the world. But you have all the love that I have in my heart, and somehow I'm not surprised to know that that will suit her just fine! I love you, Mom!"

Mother's Day

Guess where the kids took us for Mother's Day?! Just one clue...

Son knows I love to go to Scarborough Faire on my birthday. This year, it has rained every weekend (they're only there weekends), and this past Saturday it was 95º!! That's too hot to be walking around for hours and hours in the sun. (Even I have a limit! :P ) So he cooked up this plan to take me to Medieval Times for Mother's Day! It isn't quite the same, but I haven't been in 12 years, so it was GREAT!!! The show had changed and gotten better, and the food was better! We had a wonderful time!

Here are the Knights lining up and getting ready to "battle it out."

Our Knight was the Black and White Knight. (I thought he looked like Bo Bice a bit! :P)

Here they are competing again...
(They had a net between us and the "competitors" in case there was any flying debris. That's why the picture looks a bit strange.)

As you can see from the shot below, he did have a slight resemblance to Bo, but I think it was mostly the hair. These guys were great to let us take as many pics as we wanted. (A couple of them are even son's friends!!)

Tammy is just happy to be here! Can't you tell?!! (Actually, it was nearly pitch dark in there. I'm surprised I could lighten this pic up enough for you to even tell it was me!)

I have many, MANY pictures! I will take some time to weed through them, and post more on here when I can!

And here are the four of us who went out. Starting from the right is me, son, son's wife and her mother.

Hope you all had a very happy Mother's Day, as well!!

Dang... I think it's either 14 or 15 days in a row of 4-5 hours of sleep a night... Max.

Don't know what the problem is as of late. Even meds aren't helping me. I might go to sleep, but I wake up again within an hour or two.

Thank goodness for coffee...

**Edit
By the way, I think the new Sonic "Java Chillers" are out of this world!! Yummm.... And I'm actually a bit surprised by the caffeine kick. Whoa.
**End Edit

Now I'm beginning to realize why I don't watch movies as often as I'd like. They can be so emotional. I seem to be attracted to emotional movies more often than not.

I should watch happier movies...

But even this kind has a "good" ending.

He was an only child and his father did everything he could to keep him alive.

Which movie is that?

Well, it's here again. Today is my birthday. It always does something to me internally and emotionally.

Being totally honest, it has nothing to do with my age. Ever since I was 19 years old and gave birth to my own child, my birthday has affected me differently. When I get to within a few hours of my birthday, I wonder if (42 years ago now) she was in labor at this time. Does she remember that she was in labor all those years ago? When it becomes May 5, does she remember that she gave birth on that very day? Does she think about me? How could she NOT?

Granted, I have come to terms with this the last few of years. Don't get me wrong! I love my family. They ARE my family, but I still wonder. How can you give birth, and not remember or think about it every year? ...every day, even?

You see, when my son's birthday comes around, I always remember everything I went through then. I remember being in "false labor" (umm, sure. I was still in pain!) for 3 days before I went into the hospital and my labor stopped. They didn't believe me until I insisted they check me out -- and how shocked they were that I was already 2 cm dilated. I remember him being a "dry birth" because the doctors didn't believe me when I told them my water had broken. Just because it wasn't a huge splash of water in the middle of the grocery store (or wherever), they didn't think I knew what it was! I remember being induced and being given too much medicine at once. I remember pushing. I remember his little tiny body leaving mine. And again I wonder. How can you go through that and not remember? ...not think about it?

Maybe she does. I don't know. Maybe it pains her. Maybe she just doesn't want to think about it. Maybe she wonders where I am. Who knows? I have no ill will toward her at all. I definitely think she did the right thing and saved my life. I hope she realizes this still. I hope it brings her peace instead of heartache.

But yet, I can't stop wondering about it all on this day...

In case anyone is interested,

I've updated Zibby's blog!!

Click on the pic and you'll go there!