Where'd the study go?

Hey, everyone! My apologies for falling behind on the Biblical Motherhood Study. My brand new hard drive crashed again and turns out that the NEW hard drive I bought was a bad one. Seriously?! What are the odds of that happening?

But, I can totally tell the difference this time between the new (bad) hard drive and the new (good) hard drive. Not all the files would load on the bad hard drive, even with the disk – in fact, quite a few of the important drives/files wouldn't load, only I didn't know that. I just knew that the back ground, start/programs area, everything looked different.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your information backed up! (CARBONITE!) I almost lost all of my pictures of Emily from birth. I DID lose a whole lot of documents, well they're not lost but it will cost several hundred to get those and the current pics of Em and most of the pics of Nate off of the original hard drive – that went KAPUT after only 2 years. Thankfully I did have several pics of Nate and Em on either Facebook or MySpace (really happy now I never cancelled my MySpace account last year!) that I was able to copy over and I do have the pics of Em since literally birth saved on a flash drive that I'd forgotten I'd had them saved on there. So, got my new hard drive up and running Monday night and trying to re-load everything is a real pain in the patootie – plus Nate and I have been sick. The molds are beyond off the charts here in Austin and both of us have been running fevers and feeling miserable in general and now I have a sinus infection and the start of an upper respiratory infection.

Nate got his two bottom teeth in last weekend and the top two are going to pop through any day! He's a relatively happy baby, but this has him down in the dumps a bit. Still happy, but more quiet and observational instead of participatory and he's actually fussy on occasion instead of never being fussy. My poor baby!

We got Emily back early on Monday night b/c apparently her dad's baby mama had their baby a month early and with complications, etc. she's recovering and the baby had to go back in the hospital and it was just "too much" for Em's dad to handle. This is the 3rd child they have together since he got her pregnant while we were still married. His 5th child altogether out of 3 different mothers. Someone needs to be fixed. Just sayin'.

I'm beyond thrilled to get my baby girl back early! She is the light of my life and the joy in my heart. When she was a baby I felt a bit removed from her b/c her dad was all, "MY baby!" and really didn't leave much of the parenting for me and when I tried he would start to push me out of the way so I never really got that mommy/baby bond with her even though I craved it. I can remember him telling me how he couldn't wait to have another baby with me so that way he could teach Emily and the new baby to gang up on me with him and show me how much they hated me just like he did. He said this within earshot of my mom.

Why did I put up with that unbelievably spectacular brand of BS for sooooo long?

Emily and I are closer than probably most moms and daughters are these days. When I kicked her dad out and finally divorced him I got to know my amazing and wonderful daughter the way I always wanted to. She is kind, compassionate, generous, sweet, honest, Godly on top of having a real heart for God, respectful, a real helper, loyal to a fault, creative, fun, witty and super intelligent. She's so many other things that it would take several paragraphs to put it into words. She is the child I always dreamed of. Even when I felt like she and I were estranged as she was a baby b/c of her father's actions and attitude, I prayed for her and over her. God answered my prayers in spades.

And now I have a new baby to love from the beginning, just like I always wished to have with Emily. They both are my little miracles and my total answers to prayer. How blessed God has made me with both of my babies!

Oh, and Em was gone for almost a month and she grew from just above my chin to the top of my mouth – she's only 8 and I'm 5'7". WOW!

Anyway, back on subject. We have our 4th FPU tonight and this is the biggie about dumping debt so chances are I won't be able to do today's Biblical Motherhood study either AND we're having to get ready to move in July AND we'll be out of town this weekend – hence packing for the trip, I'm going to postpone this week's Biblical Motherhood Study until probably next week. Since we'll be headed back on Monday, which is my birthday (can you believe I'll be 37?!), I probably won't post until Tuesday.

I might post one more time before we go but if I don't, HAPPY 4th of JULY everyone!