Thursday, February 25, 2010

Inspiration.

One of my Facebook friends posted this link in her status this morning.

I don't know this person but I just spent over an hour reading her blog. The story she posted about the birth of her youngest daughter was just inspiring and beautiful. I hung on every word and cried throughout, some tears cried out of the beauty of the way she writes and some of actual content of her post....but mostly because that could have been us, that could be anyone...but it was her.

My heart aches and smiles, both at the same time, for this woman that I do not know. Actually, I read the story three times because of it's unique beauty and each time I found something new to smile or cry about.

This woman has no idea how she just impacted my life. This is the passage that hit home with me:


When Lainey was in the hospital with jaundice, I remember hugging Brett and crying. I told him if God would make her better, I'd do anything. I'd live in a box, I'd sell everything we had, I'd be happy with nothing...just make her better. When she did get better, that feeling of raw gratitude was real, but it wasn't long before real life set in and I was complaning once again about the dirty grout in our cheap tile and how much I wanted wood floors.
I've often thought about how quickly that feeling left because we have a perfect, healthy little girl running around that erases all the painful memories of when we thought something might be seriously wrong.
I felt that feeling again last week. And as the pain has slowly disipated, I've realized...I will always be reminded. My Nella, my special little bunny, my beautiful perfect yet unique girl will be my constant reminder in life. That it's not about wood floors. No, life is about love and truly experiencing the beauty we are meant to know.

We all take things for granted every.single.day. Today is the day that I realized how much I have taken for granted since the day Lily was born... all because I read that blog post from someone that I do not, and will not ever, know. 
I have a healthy baby, which sounds so simple, but it is indeed a miracle. I have kissed Lily more today than I have since the week she was born. 

There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the day that I spoke to the nurse at my OB's office who said, "You have a positive for Down's Syndrome on your genetic test" (if you want the full story, read here). Not because it was so traumatizing but because it was the day that I knew exactly how to love unconditionally, without hesitation and without even meeting this person living inside of me. 

Although I now understand just how grossly inaccurate those genetic tests are, that will forever be a defining moment in my life and I will be forever grateful that God had that lesson for me. No, I am not a religious person, per se, but spirituality will find it's way into your soul when you have a child.


Friday, February 19, 2010

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday to my beautiful mom. 
You are such an amazing person and I thank God everday for your love and support. You've been wonderful to not only me but my little family. We are so lucky to have you.
I hope your day is wonderful! Have fun with my little girl this weekend!
Love, Ness

Saturday, February 13, 2010

In with the good, out with the bad.

Or, is it supposed to be "In with the new, out with the old"? Eh, whatever, they both work.

Monday morning I woke up to this email:

I happened to stumble upon your blog. I saw in one of your post you had some wonderful things to say about your grandmother, especially when she is dying! Seems like you take after her in regards to her "attention grabbing ways." I hope for your grandmother's sake she doesn't read your blog. I learned a lot about the person you are from reading your blog. The cursing was especially helpful to show your character not to mention all of the complaining you do. I think you hit the nail on the head in your post about your cars in stating you were a brat. That is probably an understatement. Oh and it takes a real woman to say her dog is her best friend, above her child and husband!
And finally, I WOULDN'T EXPECT ANYTHING LESS FROM SOMEONE THAT VOTED FOR OBAMA!!! Next time educate yourself about the platforms for each candidate or do us all a favor and DON'T VOTE! Hope life gets better for you and you can stop your bitching and realize there are billions of other people that have it worse than you. YOU SELFISH BITCH!!!!

Although this person pretended to just "stumble upon my blog", I know exactly who sent it. I have ways of knowing things. It is the age of technology. 
She is a ex "friend", who I barely knew. Her and I had a falling out months ago because I was choosing quality time with my husband and child rather than talking to her on the phone. Shocking, I know. If that makes me selfish, then yes, yes I am selfish and proud of it.

Anyway, I have a very weird reaction to things like this. I obsess about them. Maybe because I have this eminent need to be right, or maybe because it really hurts me and I want people to like who I am. Maybe both?
My initial reaction was to defend everything she said, in a response email; something like, "OMG. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME OR MY GRANDMA OR MY POLITICAL VIEWS OR WHO MY BEST FRIEND IS AND I'M NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING A NEGATIVE PERSON. MY GRANDMA ISN'T DYING!!!11", etc., but I thought that would be a bit defensive. Plus, I realize that I do put these posts on the world wide interwebs so I do open myself up for judgment and ridicule, which is a piece of this that I can't ignore.

Instead, I took this opportunity to figure out why I'm not great at processing these things, aside from the obvious of just being too sensitive. I really wanted to learn something from this and not react inappropriately. I know most of you are rolling your eyes, if you haven't stopped reading already, and saying, "Who cares! Let it go!". I wish I could, but I'm not built that way. Most of us say we don't care about what others think but I don't believe that to be the case. I think most of us really do care, in most situations. Maybe that's just me though.
Above all, I really want to teach Lily how to deal with things like this properly. Conflict management has never been a family forte.

So, this whole week, I thought about it, reread it a couple of times and analyzed what she said to me. I thought about my old relationship with this person, where it started, where I was in my life, what our friendship was like and how we interacted...which is when it really dawned on me...sometimes, it's the people I'm choosing in my life that are the issue, not really the situations that arise from knowing them. (This is probably quite obvious to some but I'm a slow emotional learner sometimes.) Not to say that these are bad people, just not the right people for me to be engaging with.

I once read that when you have a child you, knowingly or unknowingly, purge the people that shouldn't have been in your life to begin with, and the relationships that should have been there flourish. I have found that to be absolutely true. There just isn't any time for being petty or investing any emotions in negative energy.

So, what I brought out of this is that it really isn't conflict management that I need to instill in Lily as much as learning to identify people with good character to embrace. You have to find people that match where you are in your life and if you end up taking different paths, that's ok. Learn how to still cultivate that relationship and if that isn't possible, let it go.

This all sounds very simple on paper. How do you teach someone to do this? Lead by example, I suppose.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Crazy driver.


Here is what Lily does with her time. She's a busy girl these days....





A huge congrats to the Danielo family! They welcomed baby Ty on Tuesday afternoon. He is so precious and we're so lucky to be a part of his life!