These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I feel like Oprah!  Today's Show Us Your Life is about our favorite things/things that make you happy. It might appear as though that's the same thing, and there is some overlap, but my favorite things aren't always what makes me the most happy, and vice versa.  These days, what makes me the happiest usually has something to do with Spencer and my favorites things are usually about/for me.

 My Favorite Things:

• Diet Coke-  Without my morning DC, I am a friend to no one, ha!
• My DVR - Mine is currently not working and it's killing me, especially since we can't watch Dora whenever we (Spencer) want.
• My Camera - I got a Canon Rebel when Spencer was born and I have never been more thankful for any possession in my life.  The pictures I've taken with it are so important to me and I'm so grateful that I have so many amazing pictures of Spencer.
•  The Internet/Blogosphere/Laptop - Since I'm the worst scrapbooker in the world, having this blog to document our lives has been so wonderful.  And the community and friends I've made has really been such an amazing source of support and information. 
• My Mema's wedding ring.
• Pull-n-Peel Twizzlers
• Rainbow flip flops that are worn in - I have a very high arch and they are the only flops that provide it enough support. But it takes about two weeks of constant wear for them to get "just right."
• Vintagey Accessories
• My Kappa Kappa Gamma pin and anything with the Fleur-de-Lis - they remind me of all my wonderful college memories
• Fiber Wig mascara - If I can only wear one item of makeup, this is it.
• 100 Calorie Chocolate Covered Pretzels - The perfect combination of sweet and salty without many calories
• My Papa's Bible - It has all of his little notations written in it and marked passages that were important to him.

Things That Make Me Happy 

She makes me the happiest.

• When Spencer takes a nap
• When Spencer tells me she loves me and that I'm her "best best friend in the world."
• Successfully making a trip to Target, or any other store for that matter, without having any major meltdowns or temper tantrums where people are staring at us.
• When people tell me that Spencer has nice manners.
• Thunderstorms
• Pedicures
• Completing the Sunday crossword puzzle
• Getting to read a really good book that has nothing to do with school
• Getting to see my W&M friends
•   Sappy romantic comedies with happy endings
• March Madness
• Unexpected surprises in the mail
• When Spencer takes off her shoes, puts her feet in my face, and says "Smeeeeell!"

So what are your favorite things and/or what makes you happy?

My Sky Was in Love

Yesterday was my Papa's birthday and my mom, Spencer, and I went to his grave to put flowers on it and sing happy birthday.  He is buried, alongside of my Mema, in the military section of the cemetery, as he was a Decorated Seaman who served in the Navy during WWII.  Since his birthday is so close to Memorial Day, his flowers always have a patriotic theme and we add a little American flag- that's what my Mema always did for him and so we continue to do it in her place. I took out the older flowers that were already there and put them on a grave with an empty vase.  That was what my Mema always did- she hated to see someone's resting place without any flowers as if they were just forgotten.  Carrying on these little traditions that are relatively small in the big scheme of their lives, somehow makes me feel the closest to them.  It's the little, probably inconsequential, things that I think they wouldn't want me to forget.

On the drive home Spencer kept singing Happy Birthday to Papa and I joined along with her.  A storm was coming in and the clouds started rolling quickly in the sky. That's when I saw it: my sky was in love.
 

 It started off small and a little undefined, but I knew in my bones what it was going to be since I'd seen one once before- and I was right

 It started to take it's shape, growing a little, but never getting very big.

.  

And then the sky started to lighten up and my little cloud of love started to roll away just as quickly as it came in.  And I knew, I really really knew, that it was my Mema and Papa saying to me Thank you for remembering. We love you.

I Heart Faces - a la Yellow

The theme of this week's I Heart Faces photo challenge is "Yellow."  I think I will call this picture "Sunny Sliding Spencer" haha!  Out of the thousands and thousands of pictures I've taken of Spencer, this is the only one that has the magic combination of her actually looking at camera and being in the presence of yellow.  For some reason that combination has never happened before- weird, huh?  And she looks so happy!

She's a Big Girl Now

This time last year my little Spencer looked like this.

She was just starting to lose her baby face and I knew it wouldn't be much longer before she was a little girl instead of my baby. And now it's happened.

It's all happening too fast for me.

Virginia is for Lovers

 

This week's Show Us Your Life topic is about our hometown.  I have lived in the Richmond Tri-Cities area for almost my entire life- minus the four years at William and Mary and the one year we lived in Minnesota.  Richmond is not always the most exciting place to live, but it is ripe with history and that's my favorite thing about it. So here is the brief, two minute historical tour of RVA.

Patrick Henry gave his famous "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech in St. John's Church in what is now the Church Hill area of downtown Richmond.  When I was in the fourth grade we went on a field trip to the church and if we had memorized the speech, which I had, we got to say it where he had once famously stood and given it.  That was pretty cool.

Richmond is also quite famous for being the capital of the Confederacy.  That was the home of the CSA's President, Jefferson Davis, which is now a museum.

Jefferson Davis is buried in the famed Richmond Virginia's Hollywood Cemetery, where US Presidents John Tyler and James Monroe are also buried.

This is the Poe Museum, where poet Edgar Allen Poe lived and wrote many of his famous works.  

This is a shot of the current Richmond skyline. If you look closely to the right and in the back, you will see the James Monroe Building.  It is the tallest building in Virginia and I worked there for two summers on the 23rd floor.  My first year working there was the summer of 2003.  Because it was the tallest building in VA, and just miles away from the Fed., there was a lot of concern about terrorist activity. (This being a fairly recent post 9/11 world)  So they would often have emergency drills where we all had to exit the building via the stair well.  They didn't tell us when these drills were going to be, all of a sudden lights would flash and the lights would turn off and then "you'd know" that you needed get outta Dodge.  Well, let me tell you, going down 23 flights of stairs is NOT an easy task.  You'd think that since it was going down, it would be easy, at least that's what I thought until I woke up the next morning and my legs felt fire ants were eating my muscles from the inside out.

I do love Richmond, but I have always wanted to live in small town. My fantasy is a Southern version of Stars Hollow!  If you know where that is- please let me know, haha!

The Day I Almost Cried in Target

Friday afternoon Spencer and I took a trip to Target.  She's been pretty well behaved the last couple of times we've been, so I wasn't expecting anything different.  Everything started off fine and dandy until we got to the toddler clothing section.  You see, Spence has her own ideas about which clothes she'd like to wear and they don't usually jive with what I think she should wear.  She picks up anything and everything that's magenta and/or has sequins and/or an animal print.  If she had her way she'd be dressed like one of those New Jersey Housewives 24/7.

So after I took one of her selections from her hands and put in back on the rack, she smacked me.  I took her hands and held them, leaned in close, and whispered in my fiercest-I'm-not-messing-around whisper, "DO NOT hit me!" She looked at me and promptly yelled at the top of her lungs "DO NOT HIT ME MOMMY!"  As soon as the words left her mouth all eyes were on me to see if I had in fact hit my child in the Target toddler's clothing department.  I don't think my face turned red, I'm pretty sure all the blood drained out of my head because I felt light headed and I started stammering something like "I didn't hit her, I never hit her, she hit me..."  I pretty much wanted to disappear.

To be sure, it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.  It was also one of those instances where I had no idea what to do to discipline Spencer.  I still don't know what I should have done.  What I did do was high tail it out of the store and I put her in time out when we got home.  I told her why she was in time out, but it was like 30 minutes after the fact, which I'm pretty sure is too long to make a connection between the "crime" and the "punishment."  Most of the time I try to learn a lesson from these types of experiences, but I'm not sure what I learned from this latest debacle. For now, I'm just glad that from my house there are like five Targets in a 15 mile radius.

My Favorite Books

This week on Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Life, the topic is our favorite books.  I've already done a post on this, so it might be old information for some of ya'll, but not everyone!  I have a few favorites- there's the intellectual snooty one, the predictable one, the classic one, the fun one, the motivational one, and the mysterious one. I've read them many times over and have multiple copies of each- in my opinion, a book can't really be your favorite unless it never goes out of style with you.

My Favorite Book

To Kill a Mockingbird

It's my all time favorite book and I can read it over and over again. I've also never seen the movie because, to me, the book is perfect just as it is.  My dad gave me his first edition copy when I was in the 6th grade.  I started reading it that night and every spare minute I had went to finishing it.  This was the book that first made me want to be a lawyer, specifically a pro bono civil rights lawyer; before that I was going to be a doctor just like my father.  I know it's technically a book for younger students, but I don't care- I love it, and it really changed the direction of my life.

And the Rest of My Favorites

The rest of these are in no particular order, but see if you can match them to the above descriptors!

Pride and Prejudice

Some of my favorite quotes are from this book.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all."

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

Savannah Blues

It was the book that made me fall in love with all things old that have a story behind them.  It also has the most wonderful take on Southern women and the rules we're supposed to follow.



Gone With the Wind

I first saw the movie when I was in the fourth grade and I made my mom take me to the book store that night so I (she) could but it for me.   It took me six months to finish it- not because it was a slow read or anything, it's just that Gone With the Wind has 1037 pages and I was only 10 years old.  I've read it many times since then and I still keep hoping that when I get the last pages that the ending will be different...

The Red Tent

I thought I was going to hate The Red Tent when it was assigned to me in my Discovering the Goddess class during my Senior year at WM, but I was so wrong!  I couldn't put the book down and I was profoundly sad when I finished reading it, because it was over, and I just didn't want the book to ever end.  I've also listened to it a few times on CD and the lady reading the story has the most wonderful, soothing voice.


The Know-It-All

This book will make you smarter while also forcing you to realize that you really don't know anything at all when compared to the amount of information that's out there.  The guy that wrote this, also wrote the book The Year of Living Biblically, where he spent an entire year following every single rule in the Bible, including the arcane ones like stoning adulterers, not wearing mixed fiber clothing, and not shaving his facial hair!

And that's a wrap on my favorite books, but I'd love to hear which books are ya'll's favorites.  I'm always looking for new books to read and finding new things to learn.

One Pound of Miracle

One pound of miracle is how his father describes him.  Baby Robby was born yesterday weighing just one pound- no ounces.  Robby is such a little fighter and seems to be thriving against the odds.  Please keep praying for him and his parents- I just can't explain how hard it is to see my friends go through something like this. If you haven't stopped by their site, go visit and keep praying!  In the mean time, here's Baby Robby.

Please, Please PRAY!

Please pray for my friend Todd, his wife Wendy and their little boy Robby!  Wendy went into the hospital last Saturday with pre-eclampsia and they are delivering their son tonight at 5pm; she is only 25 weeks along and he weighs only an estimated 1lb 5oz.  Please pray that baby Robby is at least 1lb 6oz, as this is the weight the doctors have told them that he needs to be in order to survive.  Todd is my best friend, Sara's, little brother and the son of my pastor.  This is their first child and they are just devastated.  You can check their CaringBridge site for info and updates.

Also, if you have a few minutes, leave a message on their page- they really need the encouragement, or ask anyone you know to be praying.  Todd and Wendy are wonderful people and they believe in the power of prayer.  Thank you all SO much

A Rose by Any Other Name

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked the story behind my daughter's name.  Many times I'd sit down to write a post on it and then it would somehow end up in permanent draft status.  One of my favorite things about Show Us Your Life is that it gives me the opportunity to write about things that I usually put off for a rainy blogger day.  This week's topic is about how you chose your child's name and/or future names.

I was one of those people that began thinking about my baby names as soon as I could name my dolls.  When I was a little girl I was sure that my future daughter was going to be Natasha!  As I got older I went through phases, but a few things have always stayed the same- the most important being that I didn't want to name my kids any names that were trendy or very popular.  Also, I like unisex names for girls, but not for boys and I think a middle name should be what it is- a middle name, and not what you call your child. (just my personal preference)  In middle and high school my favorite names were Jocelyn, Kayla, Grace, Savannah, and Vivien (yes, that's now my dog's name).  But then I outgrew some of them and the others become too nom de jour.

During my government/politico days, I was unequivocally naming my two daughters (I was only ever going to have daughters, ha!) Reagan and Madison after my two favorite presidents.  This was before Madison became the most popular name in the world.  When I realized how many people had started naming their kids that, I reluctantly decided I couldn't use the name.  I never put too much thought into boys names because, like I said, I was only going to have girls- and even if I did, I figured I'd let my husband do that naming since I'd done all the rest. haha. 

And then I found myself to be pregnant.

When I realized that I would actually be the one responsible for naming my child- it was no longer just "in theory," I was kind of overwhelmed.  I mean, this would be one of the only things that would stay with them for their entire life.  The wrong name and you end bearing the brunt of many a playground taunt.  One of my best friends growing up hated her middle name.  And when I say hate, I mean loathe and despise to the point that her mom even thought about having it legally changed.  She wouldn't tell me what is was for years and when she finally did, after being sworn to secrecy, I couldn't believe that was the name she hated so much.  To me, it was lovely, but to my friend, it was the worst name her mother ever could have bestowed upon her.  I'm sure her mom never thought that when she gave her daughter the-worst-middle-name-that-ever-was, that one day she'd dislike it so vehemently.  This was the story that kept replaying through my mind as I thought about the life long responsibility of naming my child.

I had never been particularly inspired to use family names when I used to think about the monikers for my future kids.  I think it was probably because my name is Katherine Elizabeth, which comes directly from my both of my grandmothers. From the very beginning they decided to call me Katie, which was the name of my great-grandmother.  When I was younger it used to bug me that there was nothing original about my name- it was just a copy.  But when I found out I was going to have a baby, that I was going to be a mother- all of a sudden it seemed monumentally important to me- I wanted the name to have a connection to our family history. Unfortunately, I wasn't all that fond of any of the female names in my immediate family. 

And then I found out that baby wasn't an "it" it was a "she!"  I did a lot of reading and family history research and I came up with two names:  Mayson Elizabeth and Spencer Kathryn.  I didn't tell anyone what my choices were except for my mom and my bestie, Sara.  It's always been my experience that when you tell someone the name of your unborn child that they're more willing to criticize the name.  When I was still in the narrowing down process, I made the mistake of telling some people close to me what my top choices were.  I didn't think that they'd tell me if they didn't like the names... but they did.  And then I could never think of them again without remembering their criticism; effectively ruining any chance that they would become my daughter's name.  Hence why I chose to keep my final two choices to myself.  A lot people didn't like this and I was constantly being asked about her name, but I stuck my guns and I'm glad that I did.

When my daughter was born I still hadn't made up my mind and I thought that I needed to see which name suited her best.  Since we had an extra long stay in the hospital, I had a few more days than normal to make my decision.  I had a really hard time finally deciding because I wanted to give her name that was both unique to her, but also connected to our family.

After three days of being "Baby Girl White," she was now Spencer Elizabeth White.  Spencer was my maternal-maternal great-great-grandmother's name and Elizabeth was my Mema's middle name as well my middle name.  Her initials SEW, obviously spell out sew, and my Mema was the one who taught me to sew, knit, and crochet.  When I was laying there trying to figure out what to do, I kept thinking that this might be the only child I ever have and I want her to share the name Elizabeth with us.  But I'd started thinking that "Mayson" might be too trendy, which was why I switched the names around. To me, her name was the perfect way to give my daughter a link to my beloved Mema who had just recently passed away. 

These days I don't think too much about baby names too often.  Mostly because every time I fall in love with a name it becomes super popular.  But I do have a few that I know I'll use if I ever get married and have another child. WARNING:  Don't Steal My Names or Else! (just kidding.. but...)  If I have a boy his name will be Anderson and call him Andy.  I know Anderson is a little trendy, but I don't care- Anderson is my mom's maiden name and everyone called my Papa "Andy" for short.  Other names I currently like are Finley, Pryce, Marlowe, Ellery, Beckett, and Bennett.

Everything I've learned about naming  a baby has led me to one conclusion:  a name is important, but it's not everything.  Like Juliet once said: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

** Please pray for my best friend's brother and his wife tonight.  He is the son of my pastor and more like a member of my family.  His wife was admitted to the hospital on Saturday with pre-eclampsia and is currently 25 weeks pregnant.  They were hoping that they'd be able to keep from delivering their son for at least another month, but the way things are looking, they're hoping for just another week now..  You can visit their CaringBridge site

My Mom

 Me, my Mom, and my Mema- the last picture ever taken of us all together.

My Mom has lived in the same town for her entire life;  all of her homes have been within a 10 mile radius of each other and within a 5 mile radius of her parent’s old house.  My grandparents were very strict with her; strict even by the standards of other devout Baptists circa the 1950's.  She was not allowed to go to any school dances, concerts, wear makeup or skirts that were more than one inch above her knee (my Papa often brought out his measuring tape if there was any doubt in his mind). My Mema made almost all of her clothes for her until she was a teenager- then my mom was old enough to get a job and she decided that she'd use her money to buy the clothes she wanted.  Although they weren't really the outfits she wanted since they had to conform to the above mentioned rules.

My mom would tell me these stories over and over again as I was growing up, as if she were willing me to understand how different her life had been from mine. I couldn't believe she was talking about the same people who were my Mema and Papa. I never understood why she always followed every single one of their rules- didn't she ever just want to be herself?  But she never did; my mom was the quintessential good daughter who truly loved and respected her parents.  If they said no, she wouldn't do it. 

Her parents were both larger than life types, with dominant personalities, whereas my mother was more submissive and eager to please.  She never rebelled against them or disobeyed,  always showing them the proper respect.  But she dreamed of one day becoming a mother and doing all the things with her daughter that she did not get to do.

My mom thought she would love her daughter in all the ways she had felt unloved by her mother, and in return, her daughter would love her in the way she had unfailingly and loyally loved her mom.  I think she saw the first crack in this dream when her only daughter, me, informed her at the tender age of two that she didn't want to be rocked to sleep anymore.  She tried for the next week to keep rocking me, hoping it was a one time thing, but I kept telling her no until she eventually gave up trying. A few years later she signed me up for dance lessons and after the first class I begged her to not make me go back.  As a child she'd always wanted to take ballet lessons, something she never got to do.  Naturally, she assumed I would feel the same and be excited about it.  These types of occurrences would happen again, many times over, as I grew up.

As I got older I became very close to my Mema and I could tell that our close bond sometimes upset my mom.  Being the wonderful daughter that I was, I would often flaunt this in front of her. In my mom’s eyes, the relationship she had longed to have with her mother was the one I had with her and the relationship she had longed to have with her daughter, her mother had with me.  I was nothing like the girl she had imagined having; I was more like her mom, minus the uber strict moral code.  My Mema and I, we just had a different relationship- I think granddaughters and grandmothers do, it's just how it is. But to my mom, she didn't have the mother who appreciated her or the daughter.

It was always an issue, especially after my Mema died.  I remember the day that the funeral home gave my mom my Mema's possessions that she'd been wearing when she passed-  one of which was her engagement ring and wedding band.  My mom clutched it in her hand, looking down at the ring she had stared out for a lifetime on her mother's finger. With tears rolling down her face she took a deep breath and handed it to me, saying that my Mema had told her she wanted me to have her ring.  She could have kept it for herself- she loved that ring- but she didn't.  That's not the kind of daughter she was.  My mother always did what her mom wanted and asked her to do and death certainly wasn't going to change my mom from being the daughter she had always been.  

Naughty Nights

At one time in my life this title might have meant something very different than it does now.  The only naughtiness that fills my nights these days is that which involves my little Spencie.  Ever since we got rid of her noonie, or since I got rid of her noonie for her, nighttime has been an uphill battle filled with lengthy back scratches, leg tickles, and "I just want to give you one more kiss[es], Mommy!"

For the first couple of days I totally fell for the one-more-kiss line. But then my little sweet-talker picked up on my weakness for her displays of affection and all of a sudden I was getting and giving about ten to twenty kisses.  Kisses turned into hugs which turned into her telling me "your my best best friend in the world."  She came up with that line all on her own and it just melted my heart into an oceanic sized puddle,  Or at least it did until I heard her tell many other people that they were else her "best best friend in the world."

Even after I realized her new nighttime lovey-doviness was just a ploy to stay awake longer, I was having a really hard time resisting her charms.  During the day, Spencer is, well, not so fond of the PDA.  She is fiercely independent and wants to do everything with no help from me.  So when she turns into that sweet little smooth talker as soon as she realizes it's getting dark out, I'm putty in her hands. 

Or at least I was.  Tonight I put my foot down after 20 minutes of her attempts to try and "love me" into letting her stay awake longer.  It about broke my heart when she said "but I just want hold your hand!"   But we'd already held hands, done our kiss routine, sang songs, etc.  One more hand holding would turn into two more hugs and she'd be no closer to going to sleep.  I felt like the worst mother in the world.

But I had to do it, right?  I feel so guilty about this whole thing- everything was fine with her sleeping habits until I put an end to her pacifier.  I knew it was going to mean that nights were going to be a little more difficult for awhile and that I'd need to be patient and understand during the transition process- but that was in the middle of March!  Isn't the transition period over?  My answer to that was yes, but now I'm starting to question whether or not I'm wrong here.  I don't know- what do ya'll think?  How would you handle this situation?

Endless Summer

The last few days (and nights) I've been lost in a sea of human anatomy.  I was supposed to take my final on Saturday, but do not the testing center's incompetency,  they overbooked the spots and had to send three of us home.  I had gotten myself all psyched up to take the exam and be done with it, only to have the wind knocked out of my sails in the form of "an extra two days to study."  That was how the testing center tried to positively spin their screw up: it did not spin me.

I have this problem with details- when there are too many, I start to miss the big picture and focus on the minutiae.  But I know this about myself and that's why I like to write a paper the night before it's due- if I give myself too many days, I'll just keep over thinking and re-writing it until the last minute.  So with these two extra days to study, on top of the last few days before that I'd spent studying, I started to go to the "bad place."  The cards were just not in my favor to avoid it.  We had over 350 slides and another hundred pages of labeling diagrams that were fair game for the final with NO study guide!  Not even an outline of things "to know."  With that much information, I really need some kind of reference to keep me from obsessing about everything that I don't know, especially if it's not even going to be mentioned on the test.

Can you tell that I feeling kinda "all work and no play makes " Katie a dull girl? haha! But I'm very happy that it's over now and I can relax for at least a day or two.  I think I would have done better if I'd taken it on Saturday, but there's nothing I can do about that- hopefully I did okay.  I have my sociology final next Monday night and then I'm done.

One of my favorite things about going to school is that it makes summer so much sweeter.  Whenever I think about the summers of my teenage and college years, the soundtrack in my mind is always "These Are the Days" by Van Morrison.  My favorite lyrics are:
 

These are the days of the endless summer
These are the days, the time is now
There is no past, there's only future
There's only here, there's only now...

These are the days now that we must savour
And we must enjoy as we can
These are the days that will last forever
You've got to hold them in your heart.

The old feelings of anticipations are starting to come back- it makes me feel young again.  I am ready for my endless summer.