Paul Harvey

One of my favorite memories will always be the summer that I was 15 and working at Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta. I rode in with my dad in the mornings. He would drop me off at Mary Mac's before he went to work and pick me up when he got off.

The two things I remember most about those morning drives are the smell of Daddy's freshly starched shirts and listening to Paul Harvey on AM radio. I loved his voice and his stories.

My aunt sent this to me in an e-mail recently, so I decided to share it here. You may have seen it before. I love it, and I wish for all (well, most) of these things for my children.

There is a riddle at the end, and I'm sure I've seen the answer to it several times, but every time I am faced with the riddle I can't figure it out. I used to be good at that stuff, but you know how it is. So, if you know the answer, tell me!

Paul Harvey Writes:

We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better. I'd really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would.

I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.

I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.

And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.

It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.

I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.

I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him.

When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him/her.

I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely. On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as un-cool as your Mom.

If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.

I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.

When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.

I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy\girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn hat ivory soap tastes like.

May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.

I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend.

I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.

May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.

I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.

These things I wish for you - tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it's the only wayto appreciate life. Written with a pen; sealed with a kiss. I'm here for you. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for you.

RIDDLE: What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it, you'll die?

Marathons and Manicures

I sat in the floor for a good three hours today doing nothing but watching Jon & Kate plus 8 episodes. I don’t know if it was a marathon or if they always play them back to back all day on TLC (I don’t usually watch TV during the day). One reason I did that was because I was just feeling particularly lazy today, and the other reason is because I was letting my nails dry. Have I ever mentioned that Josh has a nail fetish? And no, I am not being overly dramatic by calling it a fetish. He is abnormally obsessed with my nails. He’s obsessed with women’s nails in general. We’ll be watching a movie, TV show, commercial, whatever, and there will be a really attractive woman with large breasts and nice legs and Josh will say to me, “Did you see her nails? Mmm.” Yeah. He’s a weirdo. But hey, whatever floats your... boat.

Anyway, so my nails have always been pretty nice and he’s always loved them, but ever since I got pregnant and was blessed with good ol’ hormones, they have been super duper nice and he goes crazy over them. Well, before pregnancy and after, he has always been on my case about keeping them painted. For some reason, I just don’t. Even when he asks me to, I don’t. The reason? Because it takes them too darn long to dry! You can’t do anything for the next two hours unless you want nice little smudges or creases in them. Especially if you do a French manicure, which is Josh’s favorite. There are so many layers of paint that it takes them forever to dry. Well, I don’t really have two hours to spare in a day to let my nails dry completely, and I don’t have one of those nifty little dryer thingies they have at the nail salons and I don’t plan to spend money on one (yes, we have had this conversation). There is just too much other stuff that I need to get done. I have tried doing it at night and just leaving my hands out of the covers and neatly placing them on my legs or beside me, but not surprisingly, they don’t stay there long enough to keep the sheets from making a nice little impression on each and every one of them.

Well, today I took the time and actually did it right. Josh stayed with a friend in Atlanta last night because he had an early meeting this morning, so I kind of missed him today and decided I’d make him happy when he got home. My nails looked nice, but I guess to go along with that I probably should have put on some makeup and done something with my hair other than letting it air dry and then pulling it back into a tiny little ugly ponytail (my hair is not quite long enough to put in a ponytail). Oh well. I can only do so much.


p.s. It’s snowing. :)

You Win Some, You Lose Some

I'm losing the food battle. Actually, yesterday was an improvement, but in order for this title to work, I need to tell you about the losing battle I've been fighting for about a month now.

Bennett is eating table food now, and has been for a few months. When he first started, he was a champ. He would eat just about anything I put in front of him. We did go through a bit of a rough spot where he only liked to eat food off the floor, but that's for another day. Anyway, he was my perfect little eater and I was so proud. He would eat carrots, broccoli florets and stems, whole grain bread, fruit, beans, spinach, collards, anything.

Well, not for long. I don't know what happened, but just all of a sudden he didn't want anything to do with any type of food I tried to give him. I tried everything. He wouldn't even eat tater tots. All kids love tater tots! After many attempts to get him to eat the table food, I finally decided that I'd have to go back to the pureed stuff. Well, not only did he not want the table food, he didn't even want to be spoon fed. He'd eat maybe a couple bites and then realize, "Wait, what am I doing? I'm supposed to be refusing this stuff." And he would eat no more. All he wanted was to eat graham crackers all day long. Incredibly frustrating.

I know they say not to give up when your child goes through a phase like this, but do you know how exhausting it is to fix a breakfast, lunch and dinner for your child every day and have him not eat it? Not only fix one, but fix a second just to try and get him to eat something, and then have that pushed back at you too. Very, very tiring. And wasteful. I even tried taking him to "the trough," as Daddy calls it. The two of us took him to Golden Corral to see if we could get anything in him. They have it all. If he didn't eat something from there, he wasn't going to eat anything. Well, he did okay, but it was still pretty much a losing battle.

I think part of this came with the sickness he has been struggling with since we got back from Winston-Salem on new year's eve. It's just a little cold, but it has been dragging on forever now. So, I'm sure part of the food refusal is due to that, but it started well before he got sick.

You're probably asking what the winning battle is. Well, it is this. Since he has been sick, his nose has been stopped up. So, when he nurses (yes, I am still nursing him. My goal was one year. I have been very nervous about weaning him, therefore I have been rather lazy about starting the process, but just read on), he can't breath. He can take a couple swallows, but then has to pull off and gasp for air. I can imagine how frustrating that is for him. He finally gets fed up and just pulls off. Rather than sit there and try to make him nurse, I just go on and put him in the bed. To my surprise, that usually suits him just fine. He's not nursing for the nourishment anymore, it's just a comfort thing now, so it's not like he's going down hungry.

So, I am pleased to say that I am totally winning the weaning battle! What an incredible relief. Because if I was having to deal with him fighting me on that one while also fighting me in the food battle, I'd probably not have any hair left.

The Gibson Christmas

Okay, here we go finally. And, I know you're probably over Christmas, but this makes me happy, so I'm posting it.


This is our tree. This is the first year we've used an artificial tree. I hated to do it for Bennett's first real Christmas (his first was last year, but he was 8 days old - doesn't count), but with everything that was going on, we just didn't get a real one. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it was going to.

Christmas morning was very low key. It was just me, my hubby and my boy. We didn't even make breakfast, because we knew we were having a big lunch and dinner. Bennett had no idea what was going on, of course. I got him dressed in his little red and green "Santa's Helper" shirt anyway. We didn't really do any gifts for him this year because he had just gotten a bunch of new stuff for his birthday, and, again, he had no clue what was going on. He was thrilled with the ribbons and tiny little pieces of wrapping paper, as you will see. We did get him a rocking horse (thank you, Goodwill and Clorox wipes). Notice the tiny bit of wrapping paper in his right hand.

He liked his horse, but he liked the wrapped gifts with ribbons more.

He helped Mama and Daddy open their gifts. This was the first year in a really long time that Josh and I have given each other gifts. We just kind of stopped doing it. Christmas, birthday, anniversary... no gifts. Dinner. We always go to dinner for any special occasion, and that's it. I don't know how it started this year, but we just got each other stuff. It was a welcome change.

Daddy opened the gift Bennett had been toting around, so he had to settle for another small piece of wrapping paper.

At lunch time, we were off to Grandma and Grandpa's (or Arlou and Dude's if you prefer - my parents, either way). (My) Grandmother and Grandaddy were there; Greg went and picked them up from their house in Alabama. Jeff was in town from Florida, so it was good to see him. The afternoon was fairly low key. We had a great lunch and exchanged our homemade gifts, which is always entertaining. We started a tradition a few years back of drawing names, and you have to make the gift for the person whose name you drew. Not only do you have to make it, but you have to make it out of things that you already have. You cannot spend any money whatsoever. You can use items from your environment, like in your yard, or things that you have lying around your house. It's always quite funny to see what everyone comes up with.

Bennett and Elizabeth entertained themselves by unraveling Grandma's tree and tormenting the cats.

We got back home in time for Bennett to take his afternoon nap and for me to put the Lasagna I had pre-made in the oven. Pop and Gigi (Josh's parents) came for supper. They noticed Bennett playing with this at Nana's when we were in McDonough the week before,

so they got him this for Christmas. How perfect. He loved it.

He enjoyed watching Josh and Steve put it together, but soon went back to his old ways and found the tiniest piece of wrapping paper he could find.

Steve and Lynn actually wound up staying for a while, and it was really nice. The four of us just sat and talked for (literally) hours.

On the 28th, we went to Grandmother and Granddaddy's house in Alabama for Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Bennett admired the tree,

visited with his great grandmother,

and us big kids got to play Dirty Santa. (Pardon Daddy's yawn)

Then, on the 29th we were off to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to visit Josh's dad's side of the family. Bennett got to see his great grandmother, Mema, his great Aunt Linda and great uncle Larry, distant cousins Allison and Caroline, and of course Pop and Gigi, Aunt Lauren, and first cousins Mac and Rachael.

I love this first picture. I was just trying to get all three of them in the shot - I had no idea I'd be lucky enought that they would all look at the camera!

Bennett and Mac playing the piano - wait, no. Mac playing the piano, Bennett playing with a tiny piece of paper.

Bennett and Rachael (chunky monkeys) playing with the talking teapot. Much to Josh's dismay, this was Bennett's favorite thing at Mema's house.

Bennett got stuffed in a giant gift bag. But he's cool. You know why? Yep, he's got some paper. It's all good.

Mema with her grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was hard to get a good picture. The kids were kind of done.

So, there you have it. Lots of great family time and just a really nice Christmas holiday. Thanks for humoring me and letting me enjoy posting this. :)

That Darn Cat

I just had to post these pictures. Let me first say that poor Stewie has run out of places to hide. He tries his hardest to find a spot where he can get comfortable and be sure that "that kid" won't find him and start messing with him. Well, he found a rather strange new lounging area.

This is the cabinet where Josh and I keep our plastic grocery bags (obviously) until we take them to be recycled. I apparently left it open one day and Stewie thought he'd give it a go.

"Ah, yes. This is nice. This is definitely the new getaway. No distractions, no loud noises, no poking, prodding or pulling from that darn kid they brought home last year..."

"Aah, *%@#."

The First Lemon

Is every parent like me and can't decide how long to wait before you get to have your child suck on a lemon? I have been wanting to do it (for my own enjoyment, of course), but haven't known when would be the right time.


I remember my nephew, MacKeane's first lemon experience. Well, I say it was his first - it was the first time I had seen him with one, at least. We were on vacation two summers ago and Lauren or Matthew gave him one at the Blue Parrot (the restaurant where we were eating). It was quite hysterical. Lynn got lots of great pictures of it. Sour face after sour face; it was so funny.


Bennett did not give quite as good a show. We went with Mama and Daddy to eat at a new little cafe in town this morning, and I decided it was time to introduce the lemon. He held it and played with it forever. He would tease us by putting it close to his mouth and then taking it away like, "Just kidding!" He did that several times. I thought the only entertainment we were going to get was when he put his fingers in his mouth once he was finished playing. Well, he did finally put it in his mouth. He gave us a few pretty funny sour faces, but then realized he really liked the lemon and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth. I quickly retrieved it to keep him from choking himself.


Anyway, here are the few pictures I was able to get. Maybe we'll try it again another day... especially since he seems to enjoy it!






*Correct me if I'm wrong, Lauren, but didn't Mac really like them, too?*

As Slow as Christmas

I haven't posted anything about Christmas yet, and there is a reason for that. I have lots of good photos that I could post, but Josh's mom has so many more, and there are a couple that I definitely want to include. So rather than go ahead and post what I have and then have to add more later, I'm just waiting until I can get those photos from her and do them all at once. And, you know, write about Christmas in February.

I will say this: Christmas this year was awesome. Of course, Bennett didn't know what the heck was going on, but it was still so wonderful. Nothing big and exciting at all; just a very nice, relaxing holiday spent with the people I love the most.

Next year, I imagine, will be much more chaotic. A two year old and a potentially pregnant Mama. Yes, Josh and I do plan to have more children. We're thinking of starting to try again around July. We'll see what happens.

So, check in with me in a few days or so, and maybe I'll actually have conquered the Christmas post.