Brides and babies

Many, many years ago when I was a blushing bride, one of my bridal showers was shared with a pregnant co-worker. It was a funny mix of people and emotions...I remember opening a gift, suprised to find lingerie inside, and then a few seconds later even more surprised when my co-worker said, "That [pointing to my lingerie] leads to this" as she brandished her new bib. Not what I wanted to think about four weeks before my wedding...I remember thinking, "I'll die if I get pregnant! That would be horrible!" My how times have changed...

I took this trip down memory lane as an intro to this post which will largely focus on brides (Janelle - my best friend from college) and babies.

First Janelle -

Two weeks ago my other best friend from college Katie and I hosted a lingerie shower and bachelorette party for Janelle in Charlotte. We had a blast and it was a) my first night EVER to not put Charlie to bed and b) my first time "out" since becoming a mom. I was definitely a little rusty - I wore a turtlenck and jeans (as compared to Katie and Janelle's cute little tanks tops); a man walked by, apparently looked at my um, "bottom" (according to Katie) and I panicked, backing furiously into a wall; I only ordered 2 drinks for the entire 9 or so hours we were out; I complained about the smoke all night long and I began yawning at promptly 10pm (I didn't get to go to bed until 2am). Katie and I came up with some "tasks" for Janelle to perform throughout the night, my favorite being the one where she was supposed to jump in and play an instrument with a band. Since we ended up at a club with a DJ, Katie and I had to "help" her with this one - we coerced the DJ to play "Like a Virgin" and announce her name. Oh - and the 3 of us danced in the cage during the song. :) Don't believe me? See below...

And isn't Janelle just so cute in her paper veil? For you Covenant folks out there, the big day is November 18!

All in all, it was a great night - the food was fabulous (probably the best mexicon food I've ever had), the club was fun (crazy '80's dance party) and the girls were really fun (some I knew, some I didn't). I enjoyed my time away from the demands of motherhood but I also found myself thankful for where I am today...being a wife and mom - cooking, cleaning, general caretaking - and realized that I wouldn't trade it for the wild and crazy fun of single life for a single minute!

Now babies:

Last night I spent an hour or so after Charlie went to bed searching boxes in the garage for my china. I am so sad to say that my beautiful Lenox Pearl Platinum china has been sitting in boxes in the garage since we moved, along with all my various other treasured kitchen "essentials." I did this because tomorrow I'm hosting a baby shower at my house for a friend in my small group. I am so excited to put my china to good use. And now Ryan can't say that I never use it. I bought a set of those china storage bags/boxes at Bed, Bath and Beyond today, and plan to use them to store the china in the linen closet, so hopefully I'll use my china more now that it's packed in boxes. I'll have to take a picture of my set-up before the shower tomorrow. I'm sure you are all dying to see.

Now I must get to work. Get to work on my "real" job, which is not party planning, unfortunately. I worked until 1am last night, am working now and will likely not be finished until 1am tonight. But that's another post...

Babbles and a time crunch

I have so many things on my mind and heart right now, many about which I'd like to share...insights from my reading of What is a Family? by Edith Schaeffer, pictures and tales from Janelle's fun bachelorette party, my thoughts on my career, and others. However, the business of my day and week in general does not allow time for such. So instead, I'll post a few pictures. These were taken last night, on our family outing to the local pumpkin patch. Perhaps I'll find a few spare hours in my week to carve it...I've never carved a pumkin before so it should be um, interesting (halloween and all its associations were of the devil in my childhood).

Perhaps later this week I'll be up for profundity (musings from Edith Schaeffer) or silliness (Janelle's bachelorette party) but for now, I'm off to cook dinner. Turkey tenderloin is defrosting now and there are baby limas waiting in the crock pot...

Prayer Request

I sent the email below earlier this week...some of you may have received it. But just to cover all our bases, I wanted to post it here as well.

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to ask that you all pray for Charlie. Our therapist and pediatrician have become more concerned in the past week or so about Charlie’s lack of physical progress (meeting milestones) and the slow progress of his therapy for torticollus. We spoke to his doctor this morning and he will getting a CT scan next week to check for possible issues with his head (big words I can’t say – check with Ryan if you are curious J) and he may have to be sedated for this test. Please pray that sedation won’t be necessary. Then the next day, we have to go to the pediatric neurologist to discuss the CT and his other developmental issues. Based on this meeting, we may likely be referred to pediatric surgery.

Our pediatrician is also working to get PT and OT scheduled for us in our home. Apparently kids sometimes respond better to therapy in their natural environment so please pray that this works out as well.

Also, please pray for Ryan and me as our hearts are breaking over this situation. Pray for Charlie’s healing, of course, but also pray that we will be able to trust God and praise him no matter what the outcome of all these tests.


Thank you all for being such good friends and for the prayers that I know you will offer up on our behalf.

Baby Gear

Babies require a lot of gear. Anyone with kids knows this firsthand. Charlie has so much gear that it's starting to take over our home. And now...we are in need of something else - a jogging stroller. Has anyone out there researched jogging strollers? If so, which one should I buy? :) I have tried to make myself do my own research but I'd much rather do other things (like read blogs :)). So if anyone one out there has any recommendations, please lemme know!

New Year's Resolutions

I'm sure your first thought after reading the title of this post was, "What is Emily thinking? It is most certainly not New Year's!" And you're right - it is most definitely not January (it is, after all, 88 degrees outside!). However, as September draws to a close I'm starting to look back over the year, evaluating my successes (giving birth) and looking for areas of improvement (not wasting so much time online, ahem) and I'm forced to evaluate whether or not I will meet some or all of my New Year's Resolutions. Unfortunately, it is looking like I will NOT be meeting my one professional resolution, which is to read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which incidentally was an '04 resolution as well (*sigh*). I am "iffy" on one of my big personal resolutions...to run 3 5K races by the end of '06. I made this resolution when I was 6 months pregnant and I thought that by committing myself to these 3 races, I would somehow become inspired to become the recreational runner that I am not and get back into shape while I was at it. So fast-forward to today (actually to about 3 weeks ago when I first started thinking about 5Ks), 6 months post-partum, realizing that if I am going to even come close to meeting this resolution, I'd better get on the ball!

So I started the Couch to 5K Running Plan. My new treadmill makes this running plan very easy since it has one-touch speed control (I press the "6" and I'm suddenly running. I press the "8" and I am full-on sprinting, I press "4" and I can breathe again, you get the point). Now I am not my friend Maryanne who still runs daily in her 8th month of pregnancy. Nor am I my friend Amy Claire who decided to train for a triathalon while nursing a 9 month old AND growing Baby Number Two but so far, so good. I'm on Week 3 and am running more than walking for the 25 minute workout so that's good. And I'm not pushing myself to maximum levels of exertion during the workout, which is also encouraging. So after realizing that I could indeed run again, I began searching for 5K races. Given the fact that I've waited until October, I did not find very many options...so I-dum da dum dum dum-signed up for the Savannah River Bridge Run (picture above) on December 2. Now the curvature of this bridge may not be visible to the naked eye but this 5K run includes 1.4 miles of 5.5% grade. Yikes. So the plan is to finish the a Couch to 5K Running Plan, which is 6 weeks long, and then start to work on hills. This is going to be interesting...wish me luck! And if anyone out there wants to run with me, I'm looking for a partner! :)