Happy Birthday Nolan!

Hello!

So today is a very exciting day as it is my nephew Nolan’s first birthday! As far as I know, we are not seeing him today but this weekend we will be together, with both families, so that should be both chaotic and fun at the same time!

I really can’t believe it’s been a year already, I mean, it just doesn’t seem right. The memories of us being at the hospital past 1am waiting for him to make his debut is still very fresh in my mind. The day (and night) was a long one! Blondie was a real trooper though, she was definitely the one who was the most uncomfortable especially before she received the epidural, that’s for sure! I do remember she was absolutely terrified to have that done, which I would be too, but I think for her I know she didn’t like the fact that Brandon wasn’t allowed to stay in the room with her. Another thing I know she absolutely hated was how many times they tried to stuck her for the IV. Despite her love of tattoos and piercings, she really doesn’t like needles that much! So, this was not something she looked forward to by any means.

When he decided that he was ready to come out officially, my dad and I were forced out of the room. I was okay with this, because honestly somebody needed to stay with him as he was wreck for most of the night! He does not like to see us in any sort of pain, so his youngest daughter going through labor almost put him over the edge quite a few times! As we were making our way out, it finally came to me that once we leave the room, she wouldn’t just be my sister, she’ll be a mommy to a little human. It was such a profound moment for me, because I kept thinking in my head of the times we had together, growing up, and even though I quickly accepted her moving out of the house and eventually marriage to Brandon; she was literally giving birth to her son and my nephew, I realized how different things would be but I was completely at peace with it.

Once we were told he was here, we rushed to the door before telling to stay out a little longer, which was a little cruel because we could hear him just crying as loud as his little lungs would allow him. After like 20 minutes, we were told to come in, but the air suddenly felt different. Of course it did, a baby was just born! I think we were there another for 20 minutes after the birth before going home, but we were back the next day to take more pictures and hold the little guy.

Fast forward now 12 months, and he is a thriving little dude!

Nolan and I have formed a nice relationship. My nickname for him is “cutie pie” and when he was a tiny baby, I would literally sing those words to calm him into dreamland while he was on my bed . Sometimes it worked, while others didn’t, but that was okay! He still likes it when I call him that, everytime we FaceTime each other, he always breaks out a smile to me. He is obsessed with me! He likes to do things with his feet, and I really adore his hugs! He’ll just wrap his arms around my neck and just stay there a few seconds which makes me so happy considering I wasn’t able to hold him as a baby like everybody else, so this makes up for it entirely!

My dad has already told me that he sees us getting into a lot of trouble later in life. I can agree with that in some firm. However, for the most part I am pretty strict with him, especially when it comes to my wheelchair–which is another thing he loves!–I don’t want him to get hurt by tilting over his walker or “car-car” so I have to basically grow another spine and tell him “no” and that’s definitely not one of his favorite words, everytime he gets told that he’ll instantly put his hands over his ears, and make his pitiful face at the same time, so you instantly feel guilty afterwards.

Nolan is a smart cookie though. When he was about six months old he started pointing at things, that one index finger gets a good workout considering the amount of things he tries to touch and mess with, and through this we figured out he really loves the color red a lot. My seat belt has the word “PRESS” in that color and he knows if you push it, something happens. So, he already has that curious mind to discover new things. He loves a number of other stuff besides of getting into things he shouldn’t, like fruit, animals, books, and water.

When his parents first started him on solid foods, he wasn’t really into a lot of different fruit. However, he really loves bananas, blueberries and strawberries. We recently figured that whenever he says “nana” it isn’t for my mom, which she is called “Mimi,” he might actually be asking for bananas! It took us a few months but whenever we talk them amongst ourselves, he starts saying that a lot!

As far as animals go, when he was first born, I found this cute book that was about baby animals and it included spots of various textures, like faux fur on the bear, lamb, and lion cub. This is where we saw that pointer finger coming out because he loved feeling them. Since his household is basically a zoo, Chipper and the cats have grown to love their non-fur brother. Unfortunately, our dog ChiChi is still not a fan of him. She still growls and runs away when he gets too close to her on all surfaces! There are a couple of times where he has had a chance to pet her on accident when she is close to any of us, but it is always a brief moment between the two of them!

Lastly, he loves water! After he was first born, like all babies, they’re very unsure about taking a bath. He’s never enjoyed the fact that he has to take off his clothes and put on a new outfit afterwards, because he loves being a “nakkey-baby” so much, but getting into a bath is literally his favorite thing ever. Blondie and Brandon are still not very confident about letting him in a tub by himself, so someone is usually in there too. He loves to make waves and splash like crazy! He even enjoys laying flat in the water, and recently he got to go swimming in a pool and he thoroughly enjoyed that too! My sister was the same way, she loves being in the water for a couple of hours swimming and talking with friends.

This first year has flown by, but I have enjoyed seeing the transformation he’s made so far. I absolutely love him, he makes me excited for the future. He has a brought back a part of myself that I felt was fading away, so I owe him a lot for giving me my hope back. I also hope as he gets older he’ll actually want to watch basketball games, because we have yet to do that, blame Mimi because I frequently hear “he doesn’t want to watch that” on too many things I try to play on the TV. So far to her, he doesn’t like basketball, Ed Sheeran or Celtic Woman. I’m just trying to expand his interests in the best way I know how, and she is ruining our fun in that department! I really hope he doesn’t lose his curiosity and continues to be a very happy little guy!

Baby’s First Easter!

Howdy!

It has been a really long time since I’ve blogged about a family gathering or in this case, a celebration. I keep wanting to kick myself whenever we babysit Nolan because I have good opportunities to snap a few pictures of whatever he’s doing, so the night before our Easter festivities, I had my mom charge up my camera because it’s been a couple of months since I’ve last used it and I felt like this was a good idea because I’ve been in the middle of something and all of a sudden my camera goes black on me. This way, I knew I would be good for two hours or so, depending on what I think was worthy because that in itself is a totally different story. Since my nephew has become very mobile either when he is in his “car-car” or army crawling on the couch or floor, the booger is fast. and he changes his reactions quickly that I needed a lot of juice in my camera so I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone else for help if it dies on me.

Nolan is at the age where not only does he put everything in his mouth, but he is very aware of things. When it comes to holidays though, I think we all kept going back and forth whether he would be interested in going on a makeshift Easter egg hunt. He loves colors, mostly red, so we figured he’d enjoy that part but there was the fact that they’re somewhat slippery and they can split apart. These are two things that he hasn’t experimented with a lot lately, so there was a slim chance that he could ignore my mom and I’s best efforts to make the living room into a sea of shiny colors!

When they first arrived we basically fell in love with his little outfit and gushed on him about it. Blondie and Brandon looked very nice too, but they didn’t get as much attention as him, which I think they were pretty fine with anyways! Personally, I thought he looked like a little farmer with his overalls, and since the redness in his hair is starting to push through more often, he looked like an Irish farmer! After obsessing over how cute everyone looked, we took some family pictures and surprisingly Nolan actually minded really well. Once he noticed the eggs all around though, he began to lose interest with family pictures pretty quick, but we managed to get everyone together before we released him to check them out.

One year, Blondie and I had to settle for an inside Easter egg hunt and we even did one for Halloween too (only because it rained for four days straight!). We weren’t happy about it at first, but I actually enjoyed it because I was allowed to get on the floor and scoot around to the candy. When we officially decided on this idea I was really pumped to bring it back for him. It’s in a controlled environment and leaves clothes very clean afterwards, or it should. I think Nolan enjoyed himself, that is until somebody tried to take away one egg so he could look for others. He didn’t really like that part, but he was obsessed with the eggs though! He played with them all day long.

Nolan also received a couple of baskets from the Easter Bunny as well! The one that came to his house got him a backpack instead of a basket, because the next day he was to start going to the babysitters and it would be an easy place he could put his toys in, and honestly it’s a freaking adorable idea! The backpack came with a few various sizes of Hot Wheels cars that not only can he enjoy but his daddy and his Aunt Meggie can too! The Easter Bunny came to our house too, and asked his MiMi (my mom) to decorate his basket. Next year he might want to consider asking me instead and you’ll understand in a minute what I mean. He got a very cute soft lamb that says the Jesus’s prayer for children. He was also supposed to have a sippy cup but Pa-Pa apparently couldn’t wait and let him try it out a week in advance. He’s known to do this, I was supposed to receive my first cell phone on my 16th birthday but he couldn’t wait anymore and gave them to us two days prior! He’s a soft-y when he wants to be!

After that, we had lunch, the adults had lasagna but Nolan had half an avocado and almost a whole banana! A couple of weeks ago, he decided that he was done with baby food so now he only drinks formula and people food. My dad has never been happier!

I think he had a lot of fun! I know we all did that’s for sure! Nolan has a lot of energy, and I love playing with him. I swear he gives out that energy everytime he comes over. Everything is innocent in his eyes, he’s not scared of anything, he’s not jaded as we are and I think this is a time to really cherish because as he gets older he’ll lose all of that and fear most things and can be influenced in other directions. We’ll get to all of that in a later  date though, right now let’s focus on these moments.

How was your Easter weekend? What were your traditions growing up? Do you have an alternatives when it comes to a rained out egg hunt? Let me know!

Life Lately | Hello Spring!

Howdy!

Since this is the last full week of April, I thought it was only right to blog about life.

Last week I mentioned that it’s been a whole month since I had blogged at all, and I don’t really know why I decided to do take such a long break but it happened. This year I manged to come up with three separate series, two of them are on here and the other on my blog’s Facebook page. I did a lot of work to get everything organized that I think I started to expect a lot of myself that the pressure mounted so much that I began to feel overwhelmed by everything, but once I stopped blogging for a couple of days, I just all of a sudden felt better about things and I didn’t look back.

I’d like to say I got a lot of other things done while I was on my hiatus, but I didn’t. I think the only real thing I worked on the whole time was my “name pairings” Pinterest board! I didn’t take advantage of the time off to read or anything so that’s one thing that makes me angry, because that would have been a perfect hobby to do! I didn’t even watch that very many movies or TV shows either. I was pretty much consumed by Pinterest! It’s so sad to say out loud and of course read it on here too!

One thing that I’ve been really enjoying lately is our weather. Well, technically we had a few strange days where it was producing late spring weather, where the temperatures were like in the 60-70’s and unfortunately, our new house does not have an air conditioner yet. So, for a large number of days we had to rely on opening our windows and leaving our fans on all day long just to cool down. For 4 days alone, my room’s temperature was around 78-80 degrees! At night, it was miserable because when I have my fan pointed one way, but if I wanted to lay on the other side I was hot as hell! I actually spent one day completely in a short sleeve shirt with a pair of very tight shorts. On the day I wrote this post, the temperature had calmed down so much that it was 39 degrees outside! It was also very comfortable in my room too!

A feature about our house that I am starting to really enjoy is I get to see the morning sun. I’m such a nature girl at heart, so the morning sun makes me extremely happy! Now there is one bad thing about my room. Since it’s placed so far back, I am around a lot of trees so whenever it storms, I am in a constant state of paranoia because we have some very tall trees in our backyard and we have had some limbs crash down in various places in the past. One large branch was responsible for tearing a hole in our trampoline! So, being surrounded by trees has its bad notes too.

I have been spending a lot of my time hanging out with my nephew Nolan. He’s grown so much since my last update. I have thought about creating another one, but it’ll be his birthday in about two months so I have decided to hold off until then, but I doesn’t mean I can’t share anything with you though.

Do you remember when he was like three or four months old and he was obsessed with my hands? Well, now he’s starting to fall in love with my feet! When he was around two months and he used to sit in this seat, and he would watch me get a drink and put on my blanket – I literally told him once that I would treat him how I do that. At seven months old, the little goofball learned how to put on his own blanket with his feet! He’s such a smart cookie. He loves grabbing things with his feet, and I’m surprised with myself because I figured I would be offended by the fact he was using his feet to do stuff, but I’m not. I’m just proud to see him paying that much attention to what I do because I think it’s just part of my daily life, I don’t like to think of it as a special thing, but he’s made me think about it differently now.

Whenever he was really little though, I was often upset that I wasn’t able to hold my cutie pie (my nickname for him!) the only way I was allowed to be up close with him was when mom or Blondie would bring him into my room, to take a nap on my bed. We would wrap up in fleece blankets and while he got to sleep next to me, I was making mental images of my little buddy. Now he’s somewhat mobile, since he can army crawl around I haven’t had that one-on-one time with him. Well, he recently exchanged that with giving Auntie Meggie many, many hugs! Yes, he is a big hugger! I love it. In a way, I think that makes up for the fact that I couldn’t physically hold him as a itty-bitty baby too.

Well I think I’m done for now. What is your favorite thing about spring? What is your favorite activity out of your normal routine that you like to do?

A-Z Disability Challenge | G : Long Term Goals

Howdy!

For today, this post will hopefully be lighthearted; the kind to make you smile with some of the things that I’ve been collecting as part of my long term goals to accomplish in the future. It’ll have the same format as the other post about my goals for 2019, but I’ll explain a little more about each one, so you will understand why they are important to me.

I like to think there’s a big difference between a bucket list and long term goals. In my Pinterest board for my bucket list things, are not very realistic. You’re wishing to do them rather than actively trying to seek them out. Now, I’ve seen a lot of people who make bucket lists and actually cross off certain ones, but not everybody is that lucky. I’ve never thought about having or even listing out my own personal long term goals like this before, but since I wrote out my other top five goals for the year, I figured maybe I’d be lucky and actually push myself a little bit to actually make a dent in my list. I’m hopeful that’s all that matters to me!

When I created this list, I tried to list them in some kind of order, but we all should know that life doesn’t always follow this rule all the time, but at least it’s organized for me to explain each one for you below!

Write A Cookbook 

I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, between being my dad’s guinea pig for years and the beloved recipes that my nana was taught by her parents, and then papaw’s family, I just feel like this is the next step! What I find interesting is that I have these big plans of writing it and including inventive gadgets that could help other disabled aspiring cooks and/or bakers, but I still have yet to actually do anything in the kitchen.

When I was with my nana, I could convince her to let me help her mix or pour the various things into the bowl, but I can’t even do that with my own parents! Recently, I went out into the kitchen to watch my mom make broccoli and cheese soup and she would not let me do anything. In her defense, she hadn’t made it in a long time so she was basically panicking making sure she had everything and it was all coming together. I was basically there to express my cooking knowledge with her, which that part was fun, but I yearn to actually do something. I’d love nothing more than to make my parents dinner one day, but these two goofballs won’t let me!

Go To The AMC Convention 

In 2012, I found out about the Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita Convention. This was also the same year, I found the whole mother-load of fellow AMCers and the fact that we even had an awareness day for us! I was extremely happy because I love to talk to people, especially family members of kids that have various types of disabilities. Parents and guardians are always looking for others that may have experienced similar situations, and I enjoy being a voice to the younger generations to gain some independence and be who they want to be. This was one of the main reasons why I created my blog in the first place!

It wasn’t until 2017, when the AMC group basically announced to everyone where they were going to host the next convention – because they go to a different state every year, so it keeps things interesting for everybody that attends. Well, I usually like to look on their Facebook page on the last day to see where they will be going to, and for 2018 they were going to Louisville, KY. I was happy! I showed it to my mom, who basically told me “if you can talk your dad into it, then maybe.” Now this came out at the end of July, my sister announced to us in October that she was pregnant and that she was possibly due at the beginning of July… So, my nephew was the reason why we basically dropped that idea from ever happening.

I would love to go to the convention one day, which is why I have included it onto this post. I would love to meet other people to see how they’ve managed to do things. I also think it would be a good thing for my family too, because I’m always hoping that they’ll want to help other families, especially my sister, she’s very helpful and I think she’d enjoy meeting the siblings and basically talk to them about her experiences of being the younger sister of someone with such a physical disability. I just think it would be a great experience for all of us!

Speak On A Panel At AbilitiesExpo

A couple of years ago, I heard about the AbilitiesExpo. I know there is one in Chicago and the other is in Los Angeles. I saw a vlog on YouTube of an attendee that jacked a tripod onto the foot pedals of his wheelchair so he didn’t need somebody else holding his camera for him. I was stunned at this, and I immediately showed it to my dad, we’ve been tempted to do something similar to mine. Anyways, I think the expo is very cool! It is usually for three days, and includes small sections of different companies for fashion, wheelchairs, biotechs, etc.

I have had the same recurring dream of speaking on a panel with other wheelchair users, it usually included Tiphany Adams, Jordan Bone, and myself. These ladies are very special to me as they’re always talking about their experiences of becoming a wheelchair user, and what keeps them going and thriving! I think being able to speak to a large crowd with several other fellow disabled ladies would be interesting! We could discuss real topics like sex and relationships, and give people another outlook to women with disabilities. I don’t know if AbilitiesExpo has ever done anything like this, but I thought it would a cool idea to do in the future!

Visit England

I think everyone knows about this one. I actually didn’t have it in the original line-up, I had a totally different goal but I realized that it kind of went with the first one, so I switched it out.

I’ve talked about how much I love England, and yes, most of it goes with the royals, but I have become kind of obsessed with the overall history of the country. I love the cities, London being my favorite! Bath and York are two of my favorite cities that like to show off their impressive structures, from the cathedrals to a row of houses.  Recently, I’ve been loving various pictures of the countryside. The villages are beautiful, they’re completely different compared to what I see here in the United States. Buildings and houses that were built in the 1600’s still being used to this day, the architecture is gorgeous! If you’d like to know all of the places I’d like to visit one day, click here.

Have A Baby

For a long time, this was the only long term goal I ever had and as the years go by, it continues to go further down the list. I’ve talked about this in the past, so I’m going to attempt to keep this as short as possible.

Years ago. I did include the words “get married” before it, but I’ve sort of lost my interest in wanting to do that. Even though I have my parents and sister’s marriages to look at for inspiration, marriage as a whole in this day and age doesn’t appeal to me. People make vows and sign a certificate but will cheat on their spouses anyways. I don’t want to say because of my disability, I’d always be faithful, because I am not invincible to anything, especially my own temptations.  However, being attached to someone that could be the one to give a child frightens me, because they could always come up with a story that I could be a bad mom, adding to the stereotypical image of people with disabilities can’t bear and raise children.

I’ve always wanted to be a mom. My maternal instincts come out whenever I am around young children. I want to teach them how not to be afraid of someone like me. It is hard sometimes to be around my sister and nephew together, I still get fairly jealous that she has a son to call her own, but I also have to tell myself that I get the easy job as an aunt, but I’ve always wanted to do the things that she does on a daily basis. I have met with other disabled moms out there and they do ease the questions of whether or not, if it’s possible to have a child, but it’s getting to that point where I can fulfill that dream of mine that feels impossible. Hopefully one day it will happen.

Do you have any long term goals? What have you done to try accomplishing them?

Favorite Blog Posts Of 2018!

Howdy!

Yeah, I’m a little late writing this post, but it’s January so I’m still okay with getting these types of posts up! It’s also been three weeks (or so) after I first put up my last post of 2018, I asked everyone at the end of it if you wanted to see my favorite posts of the past year. Although I didn’t get any replies for it, I just decided to do it anyways!

A lot of bloggers will do these posts of only talking about their most popular posts of the year, but I don’t like going that route. Some of my most viewed blog posts are full of grammar and spelling mistakes, so the fact that get any reads at all kind of freaks me out!

Here are some of my favorite blog post of 2018!

Goals For 2018
Shuffle The Music Tag
NYE Shenanigans
Are There Two Babies
3/4
What I Love About Afternoon Tea
My Worst Fear
Favorite Dance Films!
Why You Should Blog Now?
The Disabled Blogger Tag
Baby Shower
Top 11 Life Mottos To Live By
How Do I Stay Organized?
Nolan’s Nursery Tour
Why I’ve Never Joined A Book Club
Becoming An Auntie
4 Favorite Female Stand-Up Comics
Summer Playlist 2018
The Assassin
What It’s Like To Be A (Disabled) Blogger
6 Halloween Movies For Adults
5 Favorite Shows About Nature & Culture
The Baby Name Tag
Basketball Is Back
Routine Or Nostalgic?
Bad Kitty

I think 2018 had a lot of informative pieces. I wanted to give new bloggers some tips that have helped me over the years. I also wanted to be a voice for the disabled people who might be thinking about creating a blog, that talks about their lives as well. I think having more than one perspective on a disability is good for everybody, because we have our differences but always looking into resources to help one another too.

Despite being sick at the start of the year and going through a major depression spell at the end of the summer, I managed to get a lot of interesting posts written up for you guys. And here I thought, it was just all about movies, but nope. I talked about various things that go with all three of my niches: disability, lifestyle, and music.

I even tried to bring back a couple of old stuff too! I really do miss doing those flash fiction challenges. All of the ones I used to do have ended and blogs have all but disappeared. So, I’ve had to search on Twitter and Pinterest for various prompts, and I’ve been successful. When March came over, I wrote my first story on here since probably 2012! It was great to be back doing some free writing again. I’m hoping to continue on them for 2019 too!

One last thing that I did this past year was talk about babies. Between my sister and cousin Kristi, it was baby central on the blog! Since Kristi and her family now live in Louisiana, I will not be able to do a lot of intimate blog posts about Joseph and her new baby! However, I will eventually do the post about her second child’s arrival. I still feel extremely guilty for not being able to get that up in November! Of course, I will be talking about my nephew this year. I think we’re due for another update on him and I will work with Blondie to see what kind of pictures she’d like to share with you.

What were your favorite blog posts of 2018? Is there a topic you’d like for me to discuss on a future post? Let me know!