Flashback Tuesday

Do you know where I was in September of 1996?  

Well...the Scout Master and I had scored some pretty amazing tickets to a handful of events at the Atlanta Olympics, so we had just spent a good chunk of the previous month trudging up and down Atlanta streets in 100 degree weather, and attending various Olympic venues.   We were also preparing to move out of our little apartment and into our first house.  I was working for The Home Depot Real Estate Dept and totally loving my job.  And the Scout Master was working for Atlanta Casualty (the predecessor of his current company, Infinity Insurance) and attending classes at night at Georgia State University.  

Oh...and we were also very, very pregnant with our first little baby!

I was so miserable when I was pregnant, it's not even funny.  Not once over the four years that I spent carrying babies did I ever do it gracefully.  So, by mid September of 1996, I was ready to move on to what I thought had to be a million times easier than being pregnant...the part where I got to bring home an actual baby.  Motherhood wasn't quite what I had envisioned, and it was definitely NOT easy in those first few months, but if I had to choose, I would have 10 more newborns before I'd ever agree to be pregnant again!  

The Scout Master and I left our apartment in the very early hours of September 26th, and I stayed in the hospital just long enough to miss all the moving the Scout Master had arranged.  Flowering Buttercup and I came home to our cute new house where she had her own little room (which I don't think she actually used for about 6 months.)  

That little house and those first months of motherhood seem like so many years ago.  I'm so grateful for the things each of my babies have taught me, especially Flowering Buttercup.  She always refers to herself as the "guinea pig" because everything we do with her is a test run.  I'm sure that's the reason she's remarkably resilient and independent.  I am constantly amazed at the things she knows and the young woman she's becoming.  It is such a pleasure to be her mom and to have had 16 wonderful years with her in our home.