catchup

well, a lot has happened since my last post.  mama continues to exist in this plane of existence as she steams ahead towards her 92 birthday next january.  she has had a cold recently, and with such, there is always the chance of pneumonia settling in, but she is on the mend.  talking to her on the phone last night she said, 'i'm just not ready to give up yet."  too many things to look forward to:  grandson's wedding in november, granddaughter's new baby due in february, among a few other things on the horizon.  she doesn't want to miss out, she says.  i totally understand!

we welcomed our new granddaughter in march of this year, and she is a doll.  the most beautiful girl in all the world is our #ajloup :)  i hope to continue to write a bit in the old blog, and share some stories of our times together, since i am blessed to be able to keep her a couple days a week for her mommy and daddy to do their work.  she has learned to manipulate things with her hands, chews on everything in sight, and is starting to mimic, blowing raspberries and sticking out her tongue (mimi taught her that:)  we do it all the time.  i am a natural born goo goo gaga baby kinda person through and through.  i have no shame or inhibitions in this respect, and nothing is beyond me in trying to evoke a response from them.   i will make every sound imaginable, contort my face in a million goofy ways, and repeat sounds til the cows come home. there are very few, if any, complacent babies in mimi's wake!

fox is sleeping over tonight in our new children's room.  so excited about it!  this afternoon we went swimming at the YMCA, and he showed me all of his fishy moves (he just finished swimming lessons yesterday).  he is so good! and has lost his fear.  i am so proud of him!  then we went for his very first (and my first in approx. 20 years!) visit to chuck e cheese.  we ate pizza and used up our 20 tokens playing games to win tickets to redeem for the kind of junk you get in those little plastic bubbles in those bubble gum type machines for a quarter.  we ended up with only 69 tickets, since i let him choose and play all of the games by himself.  i did help with the basketball toss (he is good!).  he redeemed his tickets for a total of 2 plastic one inch spiders, one thin plastic bracelet, one silver plastic crown ring (?), and 4 stickers.  highway robbery if you ask me, but we had the time of our lives.  and that's what it's all about-ta. 

he is getting so big....6 in november!  his difficult ways have been replaced with the sweetest disposition with just a touch of mischief.  he has matured very nicely indeed.  i was thinking today about some of our small, yet memorable, adventures we have had. and his obsession with concrete towers (we used to drive down the road to the alma sugar mill and just park in an empty lot for 5 or 10 minutes and watch the black and white smoke belch out of the huge boiler towers.) his love of water towers (he knew the names on every one of them for miles around - and there are more than you think, because, well, who notices such things???)  we agreed that the new morganza water tower was the prettiest blue, and one afternoon when we had made a little trip to see mawmaw after i picked him up from school, i drove right up to that beautiful bright blue water tower.  the gate had been left open, and we got out of the car, walked right up underneath it and laid right down on the cool green grass.  what a view.  we speculated about how exciting it would be to climb the ladders right up to the top.  that was a good day and a memory worth recording in my book :)

i've decided to write down such memories as they come back to me, because they are all too easily forgotten in the busy-ness of life.  might sound silly to some, but to me they are, every one, more precious than gold.