I’ve been singing Kelle Hampton’s praises for the past few weeks. I was given the link to her blog back in early February and I’ve spent about an hour a day since then reading her archives and looking forward to her new posts. She inspires me. Yesterday I sent her an email telling her how amazing she is and how much she inspires me. And I tweeted this:

I’m a major fan. I had to tell her. I didn’t think she’d read my email right away or even reply at all because I figure she’s gotten tons and tons of emails since her blog went from about the amount of readers my blog has to thousands and thousands nationwide daily. She’s a busy woman. So when she replied about 20 minutes later, I almost fainted. Screw Hollywood. Screw the celebs. SHE is a celeb to me. She’s real and honest and so sweet. AND SHE REPLIED TO ME!

That made my day. Her email was so sweet. She complimented this blog because SHE LOOKED AT THIS BLOG! MY BLOG! And she said my pictures were beautiful. Didn’t think it was possible but I love her more now. So I wrote her back and told her I’m a self proclaimed groupie and thanks for writing back so fast.  Y’all need to go read her blog. I promise you won’t regret it. It’s nourishment for your soul…for reals yo!

So staying true to form I had to take a few pictures of my youngest baby girl. She has found her reflection. And she loves it.

She’s also walking everywhere now. And yesterday, she even braved a run. It was more like a super fast drunk kinda looking walk but it was cute nonetheless.

The other night I got the DVD in of Livie’s first year that I made her. So we popped it in and we smiled and ooh’d and ahh’d over her as a tiny baby as she walked around the living room. If you watched the video I posted in her birthday post you know the song I picked for it was super sappy and slow. Total tear jerker. I cried a lot making that video. Hannah sat there watching it and then said “Anytime I watch something like this and it has sad music it makes me want to cry.” I laughed and told her “Man, you’re just like me sometimes.”

Most of y’all said that you like comments emailed. So that means y’all are like me! I think that usually when I comment IN my comment thread it’s cause it’s a reply that I think everyone should see. If I send an email, it’s more personal and one on one. Then again, like I said yesterday, it sometimes just depends on my mood. EITHER WAY, I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing. And just let y’all know that reply back in your comments without an email being sent with it, not everyone goes back to read the replies…me included. And that just makes it a waste.

I know that in Blogger if you have an email address entered when you comment on someone’s blog, they get an email stating who the comment is from WITH their email address. You can reply by email that way. The problem is that Blogger doesn’t require an email address to be shown to the blog author like WordPress does and THEN that author is forced to comment in their comments. I have an email attached to my Blogger account for when I comment on y’all’s Blogger blogs so you can email me a reply back because like I said, 9 times outta 10 I’m not going back to read the comments again. It sucks.

Just wanted to bring that all to light and get opinions which I did so yay!

I hope you all have a great weekend…we’ll be busy with dance competitions and family stuff!

So I want to know what y’all think about this stuff. Do you prefer replies to the comments you leave on other people’s blogs to be emailed to you or commented back to you IN the comments of the blog you commented in? For me, I prefer an email. I have it set up here in this blog that if I comment back to you IN my actual comments, you get an email. I love this feature SO much. The reason I like emailed comments is so that I don’t miss it. I rarely will go back and read your comment thread after I leave one. If you send me an email back with your reply OR if your comments are set up like mine to where I’ll get an email even if you comment in the comment thread, it’s DOUBLY as awesome. Sometimes I’ll reply to y’all in my comment thread…sometimes I’ll email you a reply. It just depends on my mood OR if I have a novel as a reply.

I guess I’m just asking this to see what y’all think or what you prefer….just to gather some insight I guess. I just know for me, if you reply to me in your comments and I don’t get an email from that comment (like how Blogger is set up) I can guarantee you I don’t read your replies. That sucks, doesn’t it? I started emailing people back after I realized that most people weren’t reading my replies to them in my Blogger comments. Then I moved to WordPress. WordPress lets us have that option to comment in a comment thread AND send an email all at the same time. Like I said, pure bloggy love for me.

Just gimme your 2 cents. Thanks!

If you’re a mom who works outside the home, you totally know how I’m feeling. It’s a constant battle for me- working full time, being gone 12 hours a day, and leaving my kids behind. Because that’s how it feels to me…that I’m leaving them behind. I know that I HAVE to work to have money to pay for the things that give them a decent life. I know that one day they’ll look back and appreciate it just as I appreciate how hard my mom worked to give us things. We barely saw her during the week but it was all for us. That’s how it is now with my kids but oh, does it hurt. I have family and friends that don’t work but their husbands have these big time supervisor jobs for oil companies and I secretly wish that Hubs would quit his current job and do something like that. Something that would allow me to stay home. He loves his job though and the last thing I would want is for him to be stuck working a lot at a job he hates. I hate working…but I don’t actually hate this job. It’s the fact that I have to leave my kids that kills me.

I took a day off in April to go on a field trip with Hannah. I did this because she asked me to.  What sucked was when she said to me “Don’t forget to ask your boss for permission ok?”

That stung.

The fact that I have to ask permission to be with my child. How is that fair? I mean, everyone who works has to ask for a day off. But still…chokes me up everytime to think that I have to ask to be with my kid if it’s a work day. It’s just not fair as so often many things in life aren’t.

So now I’m quite excited about this field trip. I’m excited that I get to go and be there for her since most days I can’t.

I was given this blog post to read yesterday and I cried through the whole thing. It gave me hope. It gave me some insight. Mostly, it reminded me of things I already knew. I’m not saying that I’ll ever get over this. I know myself and I know that I’ll always hate working all day and always hate the fact that I can’t be a stay at home mom. But to remember that there are other moms out there who are going through the same exact thing, well this is all for you.

For us.

I blog. It’s what I do when I’m happy, or sad, or anxious. Y’all know this. I blog all my emotions. Right now, my heart is breaking. I told y’all to pray for Layla Grace a few weeks ago. Today, she went to be with Jesus. I know she is no longer hurting and has no more pain.

But I know her family is in dire pain. They are hurting. They will miss their baby.

As I sit here at my desk stuck at work, my heart breaks. I want nothing more than to go home and be with my babies. To kiss them and cuddle them and tell them I love them. It doesn’t seem fair that we can’t instantly just leave our jobs when something like this happens. Why aren’t there ” I need to go home and see my kids” hours like there are sick or vacation hours? There needs to be.

Please pray for the Marsh family. They will need it. I can’t imagine having to bury my child.

Layla Grace, may you enjoy playing with the angels. I never met you. I never held you. And yet, in my mind, I did both those things. I don’t know how it’s possible to love someone you’ve never met or talked to…and yet I do. Rest in peace sweet baby girl.

(taken from Layla’s Flickr Page)