Belated Mother's Day and Update

I've been wanting to do a post all week about everything that happened concerning my Mother's Day, but have been so busy that it took nearly the whole week! I'll try to keep the wordiness minimal, but I do have tons of pictures and a bit more info that I wanted to share.

To start with, I used to live with my cousin and her two kids. I moved in in 2006 to help her after her husband left. She was working swing shift and trying to take care of her 3 year old daughter and 5 year old son. So, I moved in with her and after I worked my two jobs and went to school all day, I picked up the kids from their babysitter and kept them the rest of the night. I would feed them dinner and play with them, bathe them, and get them ready for bed. So, I became very close to these two precious kids. I lived there for a year and then got married, so I moved out. I still see them every few weeks when our family all gets together, but I try to make special time to spend with each of them as well. Knowing that Zoe, now 5 years old, has been wanting to spend time with me, I made the most of the opportunity to "kidnap" her brother Jaydon (who's 7 years old) and prepare a special Mother's Day gift for their mom. First, I took them to a nearby park and took pictures of them. Let me tell you that they picked out ALL of their own spots to take pictures and hey picked all of their own poses. I didn't tell them to put their arms around each other. I didn't tell them to smile or be serious or put their hands any specific way. Check out these extremely photogenic kids!!!

After we did our photo shoot, I took the kids to the store and had them pick out paint and supplies to make picture frames for their mom. I bought them lunch and then we went to my house to paint the frames. They painted everything completely on their own. Each kid painted a frame with his/her name on it and then they each painted half of a third frame for a picture of them together. (It didn't even occur to me to take a picture of their frames for you to see... oh well!) They left the frames with me to dry and after I developed the pictures, I put them together and brought them the next day for them to give to their mom. They did an awesome job of keeping the whole thing a secret, and their mom was so overwhelmed by the gift that she cried. I was glad to be able to do this gesture for her as her kids are still too young to initiate it on their own, and their dad isn't in the picture to assist.

As for my own Mother's Day, it got set off to a weird tone the night before. It's something that I just realized that day, but I think that many men often think of Mother's Day in terms of their OWN moms and often fail to recognize their wife as the MOTHER of their children. This began when Jesse and I got into a big upset about him not getting me anything for Mother's Day. I would've been surprised if he had actually done something, but I hoped he would so badly that when I found out he hadn't, I got really upset. It wasn't just that he hadn't remembered, but it hurt more that he did think of it and then just let it pass him by. And it wasn't just the lack of gesture, though. but it was his attitude about the whole thing. Rather than just saying he was sorry and offering to make the day the best he could for me, he made me feel bad about it all and made excuses for it all. I don't want to make this about bashing him. He is a very loving husband and I am thrilled to be with him. Normally he is very sensitive about my feelings. This was not one of his finer moments, though. You see, Jesse's own mother died when he was 5 years old. He spent the next 6 years or so with a single dad who was fighting his own battles with drugs and depression. He finally got into church and turned his life around, but when he married Jesse's stepmom when Jesse was about 11 years old, the boys were rebellious and had often been left to do whatever they pleased without discipline. Their stepmom came in and was really strict. This isn't accepted well by 11 and 12 year old boys who have never had discipline before. So, up until the time Jesse graduated high school, he faced a continual battle with his stepmom. He did learn a strong work ethic from her, but it seemed that whatever he did wasn't good enough, and his time was never his own. After moving out and living his own adult life, his stepmom hasn't really been a part of it. We see her every Sunday at church, but she's never come to our birthday parties, graduations, holiday celebrations, or even our engagement events when we got married. She seems to respect me a lot, but she doesn't understand why I married Jesse, so she still sees him as that little kid back then.

Anyways, all of these issues of losing his mom and feeling like his stepmom failed to be the loving, nurturing mom he should've had has left him jaded about Mother's Day. In his mind, it's a reminder of what he never had and is a holiday where he's forced to give sentimental gifts to someone who has let him down. It took a lot of discussion and a lot of tears to get him to see that Mother's Day isn't about his own mom anymore. I'm truly sorry for the hurt that he's experienced. I hate that he missed out on experiencing a loving mother of his own. I feel awful that she wasn't able to see him get married or experience becoming a grandma, but he has the opportunity now to celebrate the other mothers in his life. My own mom has totally adopted Jesse into the family and loves him as if he's always been her son. And, after a lifetime of wanting to be a mom and a year of infertility, I am finally experiencing Mother's Day with joy and anticipation. And it's a REALLY special holiday to me now. So, in the end, I told him that it didn't matter whether he got something for me or not. He could show me that he cared about ME on Mother's Day by his attitude about it the next day.

In the morning, things were much better. He wished me a happy Mother's Day. Then, in our Sunday School class, we had our students make Mother's Day cards, so Jesse made me one. The message in it was really sweet and I very much appreciated it. Then we joined my cousins and aunts for a big lunch celebrating all of the moms. I got a lot of well wishes from my family members who wished me a happy Mother's Day and that meant a lot to me. My mom also gave me a really sweet card and she told me that she wanted to get me a particular gift (like a piece of jewelry) to commemorate my special day. We are still in search of the perfect emblem, but I appreciated the thought from her.

We took a few family pictures too:

My first Mother's Day- May 10, 2009

I didn't realize how huge my belly is until I saw these pictures!

24 weeks, 5 days

My brother David, my beautiful mommy, me (& Josiah), and Jesse

My mom and her sisters. This was a difficult day for them since their own mom passed away just one month ago, but I hope that each one had a beautiful day with their children and/or extended family.

Me and my mommy.

And then, do you remember my chunky little cousin in this picture?

This is her 3 year old sister, and she posed for us in these pictures:

From there, my brother, mom, Jesse and I went to play miniature golf.

I also would like to say that I won with the highest score!!!

Just kidding. The highest score means you lost big time, which I did, but I had fun.

Afterwards, the boys (Ahem! men...) wanted to play in their band for a bit, so my mom and I went shopping before all meeting up for dinner at my favorite restaurant. All in all, it was a beautiful day and I felt very loved.

In other news, Josiah has been kicking and moving around like crazy. Jesse has been able to feel it a few times. I think he thinks it's cool, but weird. One night, the baby was kicking so I had Jesse put his hand there and he kicked REALLY hard. Jesse's whole hand moved and his eyes got REALLY big, shocked that it was such a huge movement. That was funny to see. Thursday night, I layed in bed really still and was watching my stomach move around and "twitch" or "spasm", all baby movements. I tried listening to his heartbeat on the doppler, but he moves around SO much and he kept kicking it too. He's an active one, for sure! My mom finally got to feel it for the first time yesterday. We were at a baby shower for another girl and Josiah started moving around, so I had my mom put her hand on my belly. As soon as he kicked, she screamed with excitement! In fact, she felt it about 2-3 more times in the next 15 minutes or so and she screamed every time. She was so thrilled to feel her first grandbaby move for the first time. Later that evening I was telling my brother about it. He said he didn't want to feel it at all- that he refused to touch my belly to do so. I thought that he was disgusted by the idea of it and couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to feel his nephew kick. But then he said that the first time he ever feels a baby kick, he wants it to be on his own wife's belly. I think that's a sweet sentiment so it's okay that he doesn't want to feel it.

I also forgot to mention last time that I got us signed up for our childbirth classes and the maternity wing tour of the hospital for expecting parents. These are all free to us through my doctor's office, and I've heard rumors that you get free packages of diapers by attending the classes. The classes are June 2, 9, and 16th. The tour of the hospital is June 10th. I have my glucose test and next doctor's appointment June 4th. And my baby shower is June 20th! It's going to be busy from now on!!!

On that note, I was thinking about Elaine who is adopting a baby. The baby is due around June 10th, I believe, but as the mom is almost 36 weeks along, she has already experienced some possible labor and she could easily have the baby any day. They have already had a few late night calls to the hospital and have to be ready at any time. Even though my specific due date is August 25th, I know that it's quite possible that I could have my baby anytime the last week of July or the whole month of August. And with today being May 17th, July 25th is really only 2 months away! That's going to come quickly!!! Of course he could be as late as the first week of September (although I'd be shocked if he's late at all as he's fairly big), but I know that we need to be ready by the end of July for Josiah to arrive at any given time.

Other than that stuff, life is busy and crazy. There's more that I want to share, but since this is so long, I don't want the significance of the other stuff to be lost in all of the stuff before it. Hopefully I'll post more about it all soon, although I haven't been so good at doing so yet. In general, though, things are progressing along, and I'm just going with the flow!