This past week brought two big events for our family. First Dad and John David (Taylor’s fiancee) made a week-long road trip from Arizona to Birmingham (with a LOT of stops in between) to gather furniture from gracious family donors across the south for their new home. Taylor is still in Arizona finishing up her internship, so that left Caroline, Kendall, and me to do the deep cleaning before the furniture was moved into the house. It really was not that hard of a job…you don’t realize how much easier it is to clean a home when there’s no clutter to get in the way. We scrubbed baseboards, dusted windowsills, swept and mopped. We did leave John David to the bathrooms–I figure love only goes so far 🙂
Once that was over, I gathered up my sisters and moved them over to my house. Mary Aplin’s baby dedication was on Sunday and I needed some help getting the house in order, lunch for 25 prepared, and 2 baby girls entertained. So they came, with good attitudes, happy hearts, and earnest spirits, to tackle the muck and grime that has accumulated over here. As we cleaned, and booty danced, and sang songs, and cooked, I became more and more aware of just what it was they were doing for me. You see, this was Mom’s old duty…coming up to Birmingham like a one-woman cleaning crew to help me prepare any time I had a party. It was our thing, and there was always that time the night before the party when we were delirious from cleaning, and we’d spend hours on end in the middle of the night making sure every serving dish was angled like it should be on the table and every flower was in its proper place and every dustball had been disposed of… This weekend, for me, could have potentially been very hard–doing it myself and missing her. Instead my sisters, without even realizing whose shoes they were filling, stepped in and worked their butts off, laughing all the while.
I can’t fail to mention that my Dad, after spending his vacation week moving furniture, wrapped it up by trimming down the massive growth in my front yard (that I mentioned before I have been scared to trim for fear of doing it at the wrong time and it not growing back), cutting the grass, and weed eating–all in the pouring rain. Jeremiah was on call, so Dad was all on his own out there.
My grandma made Mary Aplin’s dress out of lace that Jeremiah’s grandmother collected from travels during her precious life.
Bryan Johnson’s family came to celebrate with us and he took some shots…Can we talk about how excited I am?! I’ll post them as soon as he uploads them, and hopefully we’ll have a better family shot than this.
Mary Aplin is 9months old! It’s so hard to believe… She still hasn’t had her official check-up, but we did go in for her ear infection last week and she weighed 18 1/2 lbs and was around the 50th percentile for height and weight. Yeah!! All that nursing AND bottle feeding paid off. Just so you know, I gave up the nursing on her 9 month birthday. I had a cold (to put it mildly), I needed Jeremiah to give me some decent medication (besides Tylenol), and I just said OK I’m ready and so is she. There were no tears, no engorgement it was just time. Now let’s be honest, there’s a freedom that comes with going to the bottle. The bond of nursing is precious and sweet and a gift only a mother can give her little squeeze, but it also ties you to that little bundle and won’t let you go. So I loved it, but I am feeling some relief to be done.
Pace adores her baby sister still…most of the time. Its weird how every once in a while she’ll just hit her, not hard, she doesn’t even seem to be aggravated, its like she wants to test the waters. Last week, my cruiser was holding on to the part of the door jamb where the hinges are as she moved along the wall. I was sewing (and half paying attention) when suddenly Pace just ran up and decided to slam the door. Ohh, it still makes my insides ache! Those seconds it took to run and get the door open seemed like minutes and those sweet chubby fingers had a deep dent. My skin is crawling.
This past week, the phone rang, and it was a guy from the Birmingham news, asking if we wanted a free 1-month trial of the newspaper. I said, “No, Thank-you,” but of course he launched into his little spill about what a great deal the paper was and how marvelous it would be. I hate how they do that. How a salesman hears you say one thing, but just takes it as his opportunity to take away some more precious minutes of your day telling you about their product. So, determined not have my time stolen away against my will, I interrupted him, “We are blissfully ignorant about what is going on in the world, and I’d like for it to stay that way. So you see, we won’t be needing a paper.” I am not sure where that even came from, but it sure stopped him right in the middle of his sales pitch. He sat there for a couple of seconds and then said, “Would one month just be too much information for you?” Can you hear the sarcasm in his voice? So I said, “Actually it would, because its never just one month…Next thing I know, I’ll be getting a bill from ya’ll because I’ve inadvertently gone a week over my free month, then there’s the hassle of cancellation…Thank you, but again, no.” I hung up and laughed a little to myself thinking that that guy was probably going to tell all his buddies up at the newspaper sales center about the ignorant Southern girl he’d just talked to.
