Allow me to introduce.....

My new niece
Paisley Grace Langston

(and her big sister Marley)
Born May 7, 2009
Wt: 7lb 2oz Ht: 20in

At 4:30am on Thursday morning my phone rings and my sister tells me she's on her way to the hospital. I tell her to call me back when she knows if they're going to keep her and I'll be on my way. It's right at an hour drive from Mobile, AL to Gulfport, MS so I figured I'd have time to make it before Paisley made her introduction.

By 6am I hadn't heard anything and neither my sister nor her husband were answer their phones so I called my mom and found out that they were keeping her and she was indeed in labor. I would have made it in time for the actual birth but I was going to be gone for 3 days and didn't want to leave without saying bye to Matthew. Unfortunately, once the On-Air light goes on at 5am he's stuck in the news room until 8, so I waited until he could come out to say bye before leaving.

I was about fifteen minutes away when my mom called back to tell me we had a baby! Well my sister had a baby, but she belongs to all of us you know.

I lived in Michigan when my niece Marley was born so I wasn't able to be there for her birth. I came to visit when she was three weeks old and fell in love. She is responsible for my relocation back to a southern state. I miss Michigan, but I wouldn't trade the time I get to spend with her for the world.

I won't make this long since I'm sure I'll be blogging about Miss Paisley many times in the future, but I will say that like her big sister she is beautiful and was incredibly alert just hours after birth. She also is going to have the best, most loving, protective big sister of any little girl on the planet.

Marley was in sergeant mode from the minute they brought Paisley in, telling people when (IF) they could hold "her" baby and making sure to let them know when their time was up because "her wants her big sister now".

Oh - and you know how people always say "Kids say the darnedest things!"?

Shortly after they brought Paisley into the room a nursing coach came in to talk to my sister and see if she had any questions about breast feeding. Marley was sitting in the rocking chair right next to the hospital bed and as my sister begins to prop Paisley up to feed her Marley says....

"The baby says - Give me that boobie momma!"

Weekend Recap

It seems like it's been forever since I've last posted and although I doubt you missed me I apologize for my brief absence.

Last weekend I went to MS to watch my niece and brother-in-law's 13yr old little sister Friday-Sunday while they were in Pensacola soaking up the sun and sand. June 13th was the bol's and one of my sister's friend's birthday so my sister, her husband, the friend, the friend's husband and a group of other family members and friends went to Pensacola for a combined birthday celebration weekend.

They stayed in a suite at the Hilton. Must be nice. I've tried my best to mentally enjoy their fun vicariously through the 23423452 pictures they took. It didn't work.

Seriously though, I doubt I would have traded places with them. I had an absolute blast with my niece for 3 days. I only get to see her once or twice a month so when I do I treasure every single second we're together. That child is my heart.

So over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday we watched Aladdin 3 times, The Little Mermaid twice and Finding Nemo.. well I lost count after about the 5th time.

I know. That's a lot of movie watching right?!

She likes to watch movies when she goes to bed, so it's a movie for nap time and a movie for bed time. Then during the day when we weren't outside on the swing, which wasn't much because it rained almost all weekend, or reading books, or playing with her tea set, we were watching movies.

I'd forgotten how much I LOVED Aladdin. It's most definitely my favorite Disney movie of all time. Kayla, my bro-in-law's little sister laughed at me because I actually rewound it once so I could hear part where they sing "A Whole New World" again.

Since Sunday was Father's Day I thought I'd help Marley make a special treat for her dad so we went to the store and got a big roll of sugar cookie dough.

My sister is like Martha Stewart on crack when it comes to baking and crafting so we had a bucket of cookie cutter letters to play with. I flattened the dough into little circles and let Marley put the letters on and press them out. We spelled out I love (heart) Daddy in sugar cookies.

I was impatient to get started and should have put the dough in the freezer for a bit so it was more firm but we had a blast getting our hands and Marley's face (she had to make sure it tasted OK) covered in soft gooey cookie dough.

While we were at the store I let Marley pick out what color sprinkles she wanted and after all the letters were cut and spread out on the cookie sheet she had the honor of decorating them. Here is a video from my phone of her putting sprinkles on.

I've got more pictures of her making the cookies but they are on my computer at home and I'm at work. Obviously not working.

In other news, I'm happy to say that I have fully and completely recovered from my bout with pneumonia and have a 3lb weight loss to show for it!! YAY. Hey I'll take losing weight any way I can get it. Now we'll just see if those few pounds stay off.

I wish I had more fun and exciting tales to entertain you with but in all honesty the last few weeks have been pretty mundane. I am looking into seeing what all I need to do to try and buy my first home though so as that progresses I'll keep you updated.

The Yahoo Personals experiment turned out to be a bust and a waste of $25.99. I had a few brief e-mail conversations with 3 guys, but they faded out and ended up going no where. No particular reason I guess, just not enough interest on either side to pursue. I'm thinking about giving Match.com a try for a month but I'm not so sure I'm willing to put out more money to try and find a date. We'll see.


So that's been what's up in my world lately. Not much I know, hopefully the future will being more exciting and humorous tales to tell!

Until then just pretend like you still think I'm funny or click here and go on over to Humor Blogs for some real side splitting reading! =)

Ewww Poopoo

I know umm gross right?

Well I'm sorry I just had to share. I talked to my sister this morning and my niece Marley, who just turned 2 in April has officially decided that she's too big to wear diapers. My sister, (who will heretofore be referred to as T) has been doing a bang up job of potting training.

She bought Marley some of those big girl pull-ups and now Marley has to be convinced that she tee tees when she sleeps just so T can put a diaper on her at night.

Marley is such a princess. She loves to play outside but HATES to get her hands or feet dirty. She has about 23423 pair of little flip flops and if she gets so much as a spec of dirt on it she'll take it off and bring it to you to clean it off- duwty, its duwty, she says.

She hasn't quite realized that it's not the shoe that's dirty but her feet, and walking across the yard barefoot, holding her shoe in hand is not going to help. She'll also walk up to you with hands out fully expecting you to sacrifice your pants leg or shirt hem for her to wipe them on if she gets something on them. She has a sandbox in her backyard. This happens quite often.

So she's quickly made the correlation that poopoo makes her booty dirty and is therefore absolutely not acceptable. T said that Mar (we call her Mar), I don't know why parents even give their kids full names anymore if they're only going to use a portion of it. Thankfully I was only ever Moll to one guy friend of mine in high school.

Back to what I was saying.. T said Mar came to her the other day and was like poopoo momma poopoo!! So T put her on the potty and there was the tiniest smudge of poo on her pull up like she'd been trying to hold it. So my sister put her on the potty and she pooed one tiny little poo ball. That's it. All done. My sister was like.. dang Mar, you could have just done that in your pull-up. Well like duh that would be defeating the purpose of potty training mom, and then you wouldn't have to stop whatever you were doing to run her to the bathroom. Sheesh.


I read that as I was typing and thought.. ok it's official. I've fallen among the ranks of mommy bloggers everywhere who talk about poo on their blogs. I apologize to all my readers who have no desire whatsoever to read about poop lol.

I guess I need to start a club for Aunty bloggers huh. Aunts (and Uncles) who talk proudly about their little nieces and nephews adventures in poo'ing.

Yay Marley!!

Sigh.. they get so big so fast don't they?

And the "You should have your butt kicked" Award goes to

The parents I saw at the park today.

I try to go to Mississippi every other weekend to visit my family niece and at least once a month plan something special just for Marley and me to do together. I've taken her to Chuck-E-Cheese, to see The Bee Movie, and today we went to the park. The park we went to is set up so that there is a play area for the bigger kids and one next to it for the smaller children.

The playground in the picture below is a bit different from the one we went to today but you can see how there is a scaled down version of the play area next to the larger one and most importantly you can see how high off the ground parts of the larger jungle gym get.

Marley is nearly fearless and thinks she is perfectly capable and should be able to do anything and everything anyone else does. The fact that she's barely (if even) 3 foot tall doesn't factor in a bit to her. So while I'm trying to explain to her that she isn't allowed on certain parts of the playground because they are for "big kids" only, she's pointing at the jungle gym and looking at me like uh huh, yea sure Aunt Mollie, so why is that kid who's smaller than me way up there where I want to be?

I look up and there is a toddler, maybe, maybe two years old, pacifier in mouth running full force up the highest part of this thing. There are wide open spots where a trip, wobble or just sheer bravery would immediately result in a 6+ foot plummet to the ground. I look around and the nearest parent is no less than 15 feet away.

I don't care if you're an Olympic gold medalist for long distance running. I don't care if you have broken every record there is in sprinting. There is NO WAY you're going to make it from where you are sitting your oblivious ass on the bench chatting with your buddy 5 yards away to where your child is precariously peeking over a 6 foot ledge before his head hits the ground if he falls. It's not going to happen.

See this picture...

This is Marley at the park today. This is also how high off the ground Marley got without me within ARMS REACHING distance. I don't consider myself the over protective sort. If a kid falls and are not really hurt I'm the kind of aunt, and will be the kind of parent who will do a thorough once over, make sure nothing is broken or bleeding and tell the kid.. it's OK, you're fine. I think parents who coddle and fuss over their kids for every scrape, bump and bruise they get are only setting their children up to be overly sensitive. I mean who of us hasn't had a scraped knee at some point in our lives. We were fine, and we reacted to our bo bo in a way that reflected how big of a deal our parents made out of it.

Marley fell at the park today, she was walking backwards and tumbled right over a little foot high ledge that was around the swings. I picked her up, dusted her off and checked her for injuries. There were none so I gave her a hug and very calmly told her that she was fine, everything was OK. She cried for about 30 seconds then went right back to playing. She was more concerned about getting her hands dirty from falling on the ground than she was about bonking her head.

But that doesn't mean I'm careless about her safety, nor do I believe any parent should be careless about the safety of a child, be it their own or one just in their care. A 6 foot fall for a toddler can result in serious injury, broken bones, severe lacerations, and if they land the wrong way possibly death. So what could a parent possibly be thinking, what on earth could be going on in their head to think, sure it's higher off the ground than I am tall, sure my kid is only 2, ehh I'm sure he'll be fine, I'll just go sit way over here on this bench and chat with my buddy. I'll worry if I hear a scream or something. Where is the parenting in that? Heck even if you aren't a parent, anyone over the age of 18 should have enough common sense to know it's not safe to let small children do certain things.

I didn't plan on today's post being a rant, but seeing that today just set me off. I also saw a 5yr old little girl who weighed every bit of 85-90lbs, which also really puts me in a foul mood, but that's a different lecture on bad parenting that can wait for another day.

Children are the most precious beings on this planet, it is our responsibility as adults to protect them until they are old enough to protect themselves. So for their sake if not your own, show some damn common sense people!

It's not really cheating...right?

It's day three of NaBloPoMo for May and I'm in MS today visiting my sister and niece. Marley is taking a nap so I'm taking a moment to post. Scratch that, she was taking a nap, she just woke up, so instead of a normal wordy post that you may or may not read I'm going to leave you with some serious adorableness that I'm absolutely positive you will enjoy!

My niece Marley and sister Theresa

So my sister says...

"If I have another baby are you going to love and spoil that one as much as you do Marley"?

This is a pic of me and my niece Marley from a few weeks ago. I moved across the country to be closer to her. She is my heart.

My sister has taught her to say "Cheese" when she's having her picture taken. The point of the whole say cheese thing is because your mouth forms somewhat of a smile saying the eeeese part. This works great if you're old enough to understand why you're saying it. Marley, only being 2yrs old, holds out the eeeeese part and you get pictures like the one above. Not that she isn't still cute as pie, but after about 3 seconds she just stands there looking really bored and then you miss getting pictures like these...

Who knew spaghetti could be so fun?

Her question got me thinking. If you're new to my blog then I'll recap some stuff I've shared previously, if you're not new sorry for the re-run I promise to make it short.

Last year I decided to get proactive in the direction my life was taking and created a 2yr plan for myself. One of the main line items on that plan was becoming a mother, either by natural birth or adoption. Natural birth requires well... a guy, or at least the use of a guy for an indeterminate length of time (until procreation is accomplished). There are no guys in my life. At least not any I'm confident enough in to be the sperm donor for a future child of mine.

Ideally I'd like to fall in love, get married and impregnated by the end of 2009. Ahhh the dreams of the delusional. But, barring a miracle on the off chance that doesn't happen, I've decided to try and adopt. Which brings me to the "got me thinking" I mentioned above.

I'd like to have a boy. I've always been more of a tomboy than a sissy girly girl. OK I've never even come sort of close to being a girly girl. I played sports the majority of my childhood and teenage years and was more interested in playing with bugs and climbing trees as a kid than dolls or dress up. I did have a Barbie head once, you know the kind that are just shoulders and a head. I loved cutting and styling hair. Which doesn't in any way make me a girly girl, some of the best hair stylists in the country are fe men ine. Yes I know it's spelled wrong. It was intentional.

I'd feel more comfortable and adequate teaching a boy about sports and cars and things little boys like than I would playing dolls and princess. Yes I know girls can like sports and cars too, but knowing my luck I'd end up having a girl who was only interested in wearing pink dresses and ... well I don't even know what else girly girls like. I don't even own a dress.

This may sound like an odd thing to consider as a preference for the gender of your child, but something else I don't want to do is have a girl and cause Marley to feel threatened or less important in my life. Granted my child will obviously be my first love and most important, but Marley will always be my heart and I'd rather just not give her or my child any cause to feel in competition with each other for my love and attention.

Maybe it's because I'm approaching middle age 32 and my sister was the better daughter once again had a baby before me that I've given all the love I've held inside for my own child for so long to Marley. Or maybe she's just one of the most beautiful, intelligent, lovable children I've ever had the joy and honor of knowing. Either way I couldn't love her more if she were my own child. I'm sure once I have my own I'll experience an entirely different deeper kind of love for him/her, but until then, Marley is the baby that gets it.

I had a point at the beginning of this, but I've gotten so sidetracked looking back at pictures of Marley over her short 2 years and marveling at how much she's grown that I'm a bit stumped as to where I was going with it. I think the main thing I was writing about is my questions and feelings about hopefully becoming a mother in the next year or two and my sister's question about a future 2nd child of her own.

I'll fully admit to spoiling Marley unmercifully. I don't mean that in a I let her get away with murder and act like a heathen kind of way. I mean that I use every chance and resource I have to enhance her life and further her knowledge in the things she's interested in. For example, she loves books. I buy her a book almost every time I go to the store. She's smart as can be and has an insatiable desire to know stuff. She's always asking,"What is that?". I buy her educational toys on a fairly regular basis. She grows like a weed, so if I see a cute little outfit and have the extra money, I get it.

So when or if my sister does have another child, will I have the time, energy and available emotion to love that niece or nephew as much as I love Marley? When I have my own child will the love and attention I give to her dim or lessen as I change my life to devote myself being a new mom? I hope not. I hope when these babies make their entrance, that God shows me the way to find some wellspring of love I never knew I had and that it will be more than enough for all the children in my life.

I hope they all feel equally love and important. I know how it is remember how it was to feel less lovable than someone else in a family.. and I hope to never ever be the cause of that feeling to a child in my life.