ATL

catherine guess what.

we found out friday where we're moving. i keep thinking there's some fun way to share this news, but i'm feeling even less creative and less articulate than usual this morning. so here you go:

we're moving to atlanta!

i have a LOT of different thoughts and feelings and emotions about this, but i mostly think it's hilarious. here's why...

georgia was home for the first 24 years of my life. born and raised there, except for the 10 months spent in california when i was 5 years old. same thing for donnie, almost. he moved to georgia when he was 7 and stayed until he went away to college. after he graduated he came back to love on his sick mama. then he married me. and we had only been married for 5 months when we moved to virginia. we lived there for 4 years, then moved to clemson. we will have been here for 13 months when we pack up and move again.

moving away was not easy but i desperately needed it. it was the best thing we could do to help establish our little family and decide what we want that to look like and how we are going to make decisions. i would encourage everyone, if they have the chance, to move away at least for a little while. my mama, along with mama's everywhere, probably want to give me a good elbow to the gut for that comment.

i guess all i should really say is that it was the right choice for us. and it was hard. especially that first year in richmond. i watched a LOT of friends on dvd. enough to give robyn a run for her money on the friends trivial pursuit game. (not really. i could never beat her. never ever.)

so now the funny part (it's really not that funny. just to me i guess, in that ironic "are you kidding me?" kind of way). for the past 6 years, i've been getting on board with and adjusting to living in states where our families aren't. learning (slightly) new cultures and how to thrive in a city where you haven't known anybody for much longer than 5 minutes and don't have a built-in babysitter that shares your DNA. i think we are proud of ourselves. well, maybe i shouldn't speak for your daddy. i'm proud of us. and donnie's proud of me. he was kinda used to being more independent and living somewhere very different from what he's used to and getting made fun of for his accent ;) new haven, connecticut had little in common with kennesaw, georgia...

so it's just FLIPPING HILARIOUS to me that after all of that, and after all the intentional excitement over what we thought might be a move to colorado or maybe even new mexico (or maybe even alaska?!?! thank you Jesus for sparing us that...), we're heading right back to atlanta, georgia.

when your daddy first told me that georgia state had called him for an interview i was completely silent for a minute. then i started laughing. then my mind started going CRAZY trying to adjust to the thought of moving back home.

and now i'm there. i'm adjusted to the idea. and excited about it. excited to know my nieces and nephews better and to live daily life with our brothers and sisters who we love so much. to let the people that we love pat my pregnant belly (whenever that happens again; no that time isn't now) and to pat the pregnant bellies of the sweet girls that mean so much to me.

and it's important to note that this move is expected to be permanent. the job at georgia state is practically perfect for your sweet daddy. it is no doubt a gift that God is giving us, that the first job daddy gets out of grad school is one that he could see himself in forever. we are so thankful...we feel that, through all the ups and downs of the last 6 years, God has put us exactly where He has wanted us. He's always taken care of us and we never doubted that He would continue to do just that. and although it's surprising, we believe that He knew this was coming and He planned for atlanta to be our next home, again. i like the way He is surprising and mysterious. i would find it very hard to trust a God that i could figure out. and predict His next move. i just pray that He would continue to teach us to hear His voice and give us the courage to follow where He leads.

we do love you Lord. we feel You in this move and are so excited to see what You have in store. thank You for your good gifts.

i love you sweet catherine. i'm so thankful you're along for the ride in this journey of ours. you are SUPER excited that we are moving to "jor-ja" because that is where gigi and grandaddy and grandypa live. that's all a little girl needs, right? grandparents to spoil her rotten??? ;)

mommy

ps-here are some pictures, because what good is a post without pictures??

here you are in the back seat of the car. next to your car seat. and you thought it was the coolest because you could pretend to be wearing the big seat belts and roll the window up and down. (i'd like to assure you that the car was in park in a legitimate parking spot. and it remained in park until i convinced you to get into your car seat and buckle up...)

i'm not completely sure what to say about this next video, but it makes my heart want to burst with happiness and love for this giggly little angel...

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

and here's a video of you and daddy looking for your easter basket last sunday...

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

and here's a video of you singing "head and shoulders knees and toes" in our hotel in atlanta (we got to keep daddy company when he went to atlanta for his georgia state interview...)


i love you sweet baby. off we go to atlanta...

wordless wednesday

i've never written a "wordless wednesday" letter to you. i guess it's where people post a picture or two but don't say anything about it. and when i took this picture of you napping today, it felt right for it to be a "wordless wednesday" picture.


well nevermind. this wednesday has words.

pictures of our girl

hi babe=)

here are some pictures from lately...

daddy plays on our church's softball team and let's be honest...he's awesome. he's played in 2 games and is 6 for 6 with 3 homeruns. i know it's shallow and superficial (and keeping with my shameful trend from high school) but he gets about 20 times more attractive to me every time we go to one of his games=) but my REAL point in sharing this photo was to see how precious you are with him. you yell "daddy! daddy!" the whole time and you run into the dugout to be with him every time i look away for 4 seconds. you want to be right there with him eating sunflower seeds and peanuts, and in this pictures you're holding on so tight to his leg. i think you're proud of him too;)

doesn't this look like i did it on purpose? like i have you looking still and i have daddy looking like a blurry image in the background by using some photoshop skills that i have? but i have no skills. this just happened. because you're standing there like a sweet girl smiling and daddy's dancing like a monkey behind you.

this is daddy's "i'm posing with my little girl" face. this makes him more attractive too;)



this is you and uncle nathan a couple weeks ago using your noses to make silly faces=)

Lord have mercy. i want to just eat you up. my sweet sweet angel.

i can't resisit ponytail pictures. yours is just about the cutest thing i've ever seen.

in other news, i'm feeling on the verge of crazy because i'm getting more and more nervous about your surgery every day. i've had a lot of things distracting me lately, and i'm very thankful for that, but yesterday dr gully asked me a few questions about the surgery coming up and it almost sent me into full freak-out mode. i'm just so scared. i pray that Jesus will keep you safe and the surgery will be a success and you will do great during the surgery and you will recover well and recover quickly with no complications. and then you can get on with your life and mommy can quit clinging to you at night before i lay you down to sleep. i'm stopping now because i'm afraid that talking about it will make me worse. Jesus knows my heart and He loves you more than I ever can. i'll try to focus on that instead.

in other, more fun, news, you wore panties to school today for the first time=) i think i've mentioned this before, but i am a super slow potty trainer. you're not necessarily super slow, but your mama is. but i think you've got it. so off you went today with your blue panties looking like a big girl and cute as can be. one of my favorite things you do is say "it's boverin' me!" when you have a wedgie. i tried to explain wedgies to you this morning but i was trying not to laugh the whole time so i'm not sure what i actually said. you little sweet thing. congratulations on the panties, though=)

i love you sweet baby. i wish there were words to express how much.

mommy

surgery news

hey sweet love=) we went to charleston last week for an upper gi and to see dr hebra and schedule surgery. i've been meaning to tell you about this since then, but i wanted to throw some pictures in here too and i keep forgetting to bring my camera to work. work is where all my internet time takes place...and i still didn't remember my camera but i decided enough was enough and to just tell you about the appointment already. sorry for that unnecessary introduction... the upper gi went relatively well: of course you hated it-screaming the whole time and clinging to me and terrified. i was worried you wouldn't drink the contrast that was completely necessary (the point of the test was for them to see what happens between your esophagus and your stomach-and they would only be able to see that if you drank a drink with barium contrast in it...) so we bought you a new cup for this very occasion and talked about it all morning...and i was standing at your head and holding your hands and your sweet little teary eyes were staring at me and i would say "take another drink and we'll be almost done" and every time i asked, you did it and they saw what they needed to see within about 5-10 minutes and it seemed easy as pie. well, maybe i wouldn't go that far. but you did SO GREAT and you were so brave and i was so proud of you and basically, it went much better than i expected. you even kept drinking the contrast after they were done. maybe that was because they flavored it like kool-aid and i don't think you had ever had kool-aid in all of your 2 1/2 years. and then of course gigi had a surprise for you for being such a big girl. so the best part of the upper gi was that it is NOT a hiatal hernia. which is great news (this means that there IS some sort of diaphragm between your esophagus and your stomach that's up in your chest). if there hadn't been any diaphragm there they would've had to un-do the nissen (the top of your stomach wrapped around the bottom of your esophagus to keep you from throwing up all the time-that surgery was done when you were about 7 months old) and they maybe would've had to un-do your g-tube and then re-do all those things. it would've been a MUCH more complicated surgery, and while it'll still be complicated, it won't be quite as bad as we thought. did that even make sense? it felt very confusing to type. onward. stomach and spleen and colon is still in your chest, and there is still some sort of "membrane" encapsulating those things so they're not flowing willy-nilly around your lungs, and that's a good thing. it may be some sort of mysterious membrane, or it may just be a very thin and weak diaphragm (as a result of the last surgery) that's holding the stuff down, but either way it needs to be fixed. so we scheduled your 11th surgery for june 10th. i'm trying not to think about it too much because you're doing SO WELL right now and it breaks my little mama heart to imagine you going through surgery and a week-long hospital recovery but i'm trying to remember to just pray for safety and success when i get anxious. it really does help. thank you Jesus=) in other news, we're moving in august. we have some hunches but we should know definitely where we're going in the next couple of weeks. more to come... i have failed at making a list of the cute things you're doing so i would have it right in front of me when i go to tell you about them. the main thing i remember right now is how you say things like "him is eating him's chicken nuggets" and i love your mis-use of pronouns. i know you'll fix that one day but i'm loving it right now. daddy and i have started talking like that too sometimes. i'm sure that's not annoying at all to any of our grown-up friends=) sweet baby. i love you so much. i'm in an "all-business" mood right now so i can't think of other stuff i need to say. but it will come. and so will pictures=) mommy