And Then I Became "Mama."

My biggest passion in life, above all things, is my family. I'm a small town girl that got married at nineteen, pregnant at twenty one, and became a mama at twenty two. That's really freaking crazy, especially if you knew me in high school. If my sixteen year old self heard that at twenty three, she'd be working at home dreaming of a big family with three or four kids and writing How To articles about storing sweet potato pies properly for income while trying to become a published author, the sixteen year old self probably would have laughed. Hard. Or put her cigarette out in your eye, then laughed.

But it's true, and it happened, and here I am living the simple life and dreaming of a second baby and a book deal. I must be crazy. I BLAME EDMUND.

When I met Edmund, life became something fun to experience and explore as opposed to a noisy over-emotional clusterfuck of a thing to get through with temporary pleasures. Accepting happiness is much harder than it sounds, especially if you felt like you were doomed for a life without it at one point.

The fears that come with having a baby are knee-buckling, especially if you have an anxiety disorder. What if she chokes on her food and dies? What if she rolls over with her face on a pillow and dies? What if she gets SIDS? What if she falls and hits her head, or pulls the bookshelf on top of her, or eats this shitty Manager's Special chicken and DIES?! You get the picture.

When Lily was a few months old, she hit herself in the face with her rattle when I wasn't looking and her lip became bruised. I was at my brother's house. When I looked at her, all I saw was a blue mouth and I flipped. I was crying, it was late at night, and I called the doctor's hotline and told them that my baby's mouth was blue, so they transferred me to the doctor's AT HOME line. I was probably half way through my hysterical plea when I held a flashlight up to her mouth and realized that it was simply a bruise on her lip only. I think I literally stopped halfway through my sentence and just went, "oh..it's...it's just a bruise, I think. Sorry."

Yeah. Embarrassing.

But time passed and life kept happening and I slowly but surely got more comfortable and less scared. Lily has taught me, above all other things, to just relax and go with the punches. It's been one of the most valuable things I have ever learned, and she'll never know how much of an impact it has made on my entire life, and changed the way I look at everything. I'm seriously digging the family life.

Then a week or so ago, I realized that the idea of getting pregnant again didn't scare the shit out of me anymore.

In fact, it sounds pretty damn good. (Well, having a second child in the next year does. Actually being pregnant, not so much.)

(Here is a picture I took early this morning with Lily. Please excuse the greasy hair and no makeup. BUT LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL BABY. ---------------------> )

So, Edmund and I have officially opened the doors of fate. With Lily it took six months to get pregnant, so I'm not crossing my fingers for anything immediate. And on another note, I miss Mama Blogging. I should do it more often.

<3