It's been a year

Tomorrow marks one year from my due date (Not that I actually delivered a baby on my due date. That would come days ... what felt like weeks ... later.) I remember it so clearly. I remember sitting at work and angrily working on the paper for my due date thinking .... This is totally not fair. 

I remember my due date coming .... I remember it going. 

I remember the day after my due date when the doctor told me it looked like we would be sticking with our induction date.

I remember later that night after eating a giant buffet and deciding the best place for me would be Wal-Mart.

I remember my water breaking. In Wal-Mart. In the baby section.

I remember waddling my big butt to Wal-Mart's bathroom while my mom was in hot pursuit.

I remember my twin brother and his wife with the look of confusion on their face while all this was happening.

I remember pulling my shirt down over my butt and waddling as fast as my giant swollen feet would take me out the door of Wal-Mart.

I remember INSISTING on going home first. 

I remember telling them at the hospital ... I think my water may have broken but I'm really not for sure.

I remember the feeling when my water OFFICIALLY broke at the hospital. And thinking ... Thank God THAT didn't happen at Wal-Mart.

I remember the feeling of excitement waiting for things to get started so my baby could be here.

Then I remember the pitocin ... and things changed.

I remember Mark finally getting there after work all smiles while I was in the middle of a pitocin contraction.

I remember the epidural. 

I remember LOVING the epidural.

I remember Merrick being born.

I remember Mark leaning down to lovingly whisper to me ...

What's that honey? NO his head will not ALWAYS look like that!

I remember my new world clearly like it was yesterday.

The hardest wait ever

37 weeks 3 days

The room is complete. The bags are packed. Everything is ready. Now we wait. Will he come tonight? Will he come tomorrow? Or will he make us wait until Aug. 11? Or even later? Hardest wait of our lives.

I was pretty sure I would never be ready for labor. Ever. I was pretty sure I would never be ready to push a giant, living being out of my body. Well....I'm ready. I'm ready for it all to begin. I've never been more ready to experience pain in my life. How did I get to this point?? Me the girl who cries over a splinter is ready to give birth.

I'll tell you how this happened and it's not because my feet don't even fit into flip flops anymore it's because of this ......

This is what I see every time I go to the bathroom, our cabinet full of baby bath supplies! It's pure torture. And yes I realize I have way more baby soap than I can ever use.....people like to give baby soap as gifts!

I also wanted to share my favorite part of the baby's room. His iPod dock!!! It changes color. So now we're able to download his music (Baby Einstien :)) or white noise straight to our iPods and hook it right up in his room. Mark's even got lullaby versions of some of his favorite rock bands ready to go. And those in front are his baby legs :) Love them too.

So now I sit here on the couch with our bags packed, hair washed, belly full and wonders......when's it going to be ???

Sweet little furbaby

I thought I would talk about Mack. Over the course of time he has turned from something I wanted to return to the pound to someone I can't wait to snuggle with at night. But some days I love him and some days I still want to make him sit on the patio.

Mark and I adopted Mack the summer before we got married. We were buying a house and decided we needed a dog to go into said house. Well we went to the shelter and picked out this little, jumping, hairy thing. (I wish I had a picture of him. He looked HORRIBLE. He was so matted he had hair falling off of him. He had to be shaved and start over once we got him home.)

So after getting Mack from the shelter of course the lady we were buying the house from backed out on our deal. This left us without a house and Mack homeless again. At this time in our life, Mark worked at the car place and didn't get home until 4:30 a.m. I brought Mack home with me to my mom and dad's house. Upon meeting my family and my mom and dad's wonderful Shiz tu, Mack tried to pee on him. Yes that's right. Mack hiked his leg on my beloved little Shiz tu that I helped raise and train. He did this not just one time but EVERY time he came near our beloved Max.

Mack was banished to the garage for the night.

After crying all night long (on both mine an Mack's part) I told Mark we had to find somewhere for him to live. So Mark rented our lovely (not) duplex that we live in now and took Mack with him.

Our first cue that something was amiss should have been when we were trying to get Mack to come tous, we found him crouched under our kitchen table snarling at us. We just thought he was adjusting to the situation. NOPE.

Pretty soon Mack had bitten most of our friends and a few relatives. I invested in a Beware of Dog sign to hang in our living room. We had a monster on our hands here. And we also realized our dog had been mistreated in his past life before us. Not only would he bite at the least notice, he was so protective Mark couldn't even touch me when I was laying on the floor or throwing up in the toilet as was the case when our duplex became filled with carbon monoxide (that's definitely another post!) Mack literally jumped on top of me and growled and snarled at Mark while I was hunched over the toliet. He has also climbed on my back while I was doing push ups on my exercise ball and Mark got a little too close. The things someone can do to a little animal just infuriates me.

The worse part was this little monster who I had to knock across the living room because he was ravaging my friend's arm would then punish himself by growling all the way to his kennel where he would stay for a while. He is always so remorseful after being bad.

It's been 3 years now since we adopted Mack. I will admit he is 20 times better than he was when we brought him into our lives. Mark can now come near me. And we can have people over again. Now he will give a warning growl before he clamps down on your hand, arm or foot. But he will also climb in your lap and try to hug you when you sit on our couch. That's right even though Mack has bitten ALL of our friends, he also loves those same friends with all his heart. Mack just wants to be your friend but he DOESN'T want you to touch the person you are sitting next to!

Now if we could just stop him from Hungry Hungry Hippoing out from under our bed with the intent of snatching our toes off our feet when he's mad.

Happy quilting

Another quilt done. This particular one is going to my cousin's baby. This baby will be here anytime this month. I wanted to make sure the quilt was done before she was born so the goal was to have it finished by the first of August. I almost made the goal. I'm very happy with this quilt overall. I used lots of the fabric that I had used in other quilts I've made. This was my first time using a patterned binding. (It has little white butterflies) The only think I'm not very happy with is where my binding connects. There is a noticeable bump. I cut one side too short and left the other side too long and tried to 'make it work.' It didn't work too well. It would be WAY too much work to redo it so I'm leaving like it is. I think for most it would be perfectly fine but for my 'Monica' tendencies it's definitely less than perfect. And you know us with 'Monica' personalities have to have things perfect. Overall I love this quilt. The backing I used was an accident. I bought a remnant at Wal-Mart and thought it would be enough to use in the front of a quilt so when I started on this quilt I drug it out to see how much was there to start cutting it up. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was exactly enough for the back! I really hope the new baby likes it!

More vintage planters

I got my first ebay purchase in the mail today. I was super excited to open it and see that it was all the vintage baby planters I ordered! I absolutely LOVE them. Mark is going to be so excited to come home and see them all. (not really) My favorite is the little lamb. I plan on definitetly keeping that one and the others I'm going to put back to use as centerpieces when I throw baby showers. I love to throw a party and every party needs a theme. Vintage planters is going to be mine!