My Ticket Out!!

When Charley and I met and began courting/dating (whatever you wanna call our 'hooking up'), one thing we talked about was my desire to be a stay-at-home mom, and his longing to marry someone who shared that desire. Some conservative, Christian ladies (and men) today believe that a wife should ALWAYS be at home, regardless of whether a couple has children or not. While that is a fine conviction and works for some people, it is not our particular belief. We did not see a problem with me working part time while we waited for God to bless us with little ones. Therefore, after we got married, we decided that it would be most wise and beneficial if I worked, contributing financially and keeping myself somewhat busy, until we had children. God has always, ALWAYS blessed me with wonderful jobs - everything from working with the elderly, to dabbling in real estate as an assistant to a licensee. Being in the workforce has been really good for me, and taught me a lot. I've learned many great skills from all sorts of different industries, as well as came to understand how to deal/communicate/work with various types of people. But what I've learned the MOST is that I am NOT cut out to be a career woman. Frankly, I stink at it. It's become clear to me over the past few years that while I'm somewhat social, I LIKE being a 'keeper at home'. I've come to find that being in my little kitchen (actually, it's kind of a big kitchen), baking bread, cleaning out my fridge and re-reorganizing my pantry is more fulfilling -by far- than sitting at a desk 7 hours a day answering phones. Doing laundry and mismatching my husbands socks (not intentionally, I should add) is far more fun than peeling myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to go off and file papers. So, all that to say, back in October when I got pregnant, I couldn't help but be excited knowing that there was now a date in the distant future that I would get to finally go home. Being only 4 months away from little Eden's arrival, I called today to talk to my company's maternity leave department (they don't really have their own department, but I don't know what else to call the folks who I talked to earlier), to find out what's involved in taking my 2 months paid leave - even though I plan to quit shortly thereafter. They said that technically, I could leave (and be paid for) 4 weeks before my baby's born, through 4 weeks after she's born, which would give me the date of June 18th (two days after my birthday) as my technical last day of work! That's only three months away!!

ANYWAYS, this is probably painfully boring to you all, but my sister is bugging me to blog again, and seeing as I've been sick (thanks to her) for the past week, I haven't got anything else to blog about... and this whole coming-home-for-good thing is exciting to me- so I figured I'd share.

So yah, I'm really excited to have a date in the future when I know I'll finally get to be a stay-at-home wife/mom. :) I know (and most of you out there can attest to the fact that) it's not all peaches and cream, but I think I'll do alright at it. I don't like being told what to do by random bosses (unless it's God or my husband). I like to make my own schedule, do what I know needs to be done, and not have some guy looking over my shoulder all the time reminding me to fax this, or file that. Besides, I'll have a baby to play with ALL DAY! How is that not the funnest job ever??

Speaking of baby, even though I've had the plague for the past week (bronchitis-like virus and bad cold), SHE'S doing great! It's fun feeling her kick and move and wiggle. She likes it when I play the guitar, or when her Daddy comes home from work and talks/sings to her. She moves the most at those times... and at 9pm at night -like clockwork. It's interesting getting a feel for her different patterns and such. We've been slowly working on her nursery. Weekend before last I totally emptied her room out and Charley put everything that was in there down in the crawl space (mostly just a bunch of junk since we had used that room as more of a storage unit). Now we're just prepping it to paint. I'll show pictures as we make some more progress. I'll also post some pics soon of my growing belly. She's almost a foot long now (sounds like a Subway sandwich), and weighs close to a pound...which is sad, considering the fact that I've gained almost 20 (something's not lining up- but it's not MY fault that she likes chocolate chip cookies so much).

Here's what my Eden is looking like these days according to babycenter.com:
Okay, that's about it for now. Oh, Please keep the Lockwoods in your prayers as Jaynee is in the hospital right now at 32 weeks pregnant with a baby who could come any day. Pray that her little guy would stay put as long as possible and that God would just surround her with His comfort, love and protection. He is so sovereign and it's wonderful to know that He's got this whole situation under control.