September Playlist + Meet My Niece!

Hello everyone!

This past month has been pretty crazy and I’m happy to be done with it honestly.

The beginning of it was interesting though, my sister has expected contractions throughout her pregnancies, but she went to the hospital more frequent with this one, and the most recent weren’t necessarily had anything to do with my niece. She had some issues with her breathing and her feet were very swollen, and she was told to rest more and put up her feet, and she tried to do everything the doctor requested but she still had complications, so she went to the hospital to be checked out and when she came home over two weeks later, we had welcomed our newest member into the family!

💗 MEET KIMBER MAE 💗

In my baby announcement back in May, I mentioned that I wasn’t going to share her name until she was born, mainly for the suspense but I also didn’t know whether or not her parents would change it last minute.

Kimber is a preemie, like moi, but at least she didn’t weight like two pounds and have to spend roughly 70 days in the NICU! Despite this though, she actually weights one pound less than her brother Nolan. We are all in agreement that we definitely don’t remember Nolan ever being this small! Nolan was a chunky baby but she’s very petite. A big difference between she and Nolan is that Kimber loves to be swaddled whereas Nolan has never enjoyed being wrapped up. He’s even four years old and he does not sleep with a blanket on him!

Since she came so early, as she was supposed to be born in early October, we had to make some adjustments to our plans of having my nephew come to our house while Blondie was in the hospital, we assumed it would be like two days, but it turned out to be two weeks. He went to his dad’s house on certain days but for the most part he stayed at our house, and he was a very good boy. He was very helpful to us, especially my dad and I, with our issues lately. I watched a LOT of toddler based educational shows like Paw Patrol, Blippi, and Cocomelon. By the end though, I was growing to be a fan of Blippi’s videos at Children’s Museums and Zoos. And at night we switched between Bluey (another favorite of mine!) and Muffet Babies. He seemed to enjoy having a sleepover in Aunt Meg’s room.

When Blondie was officially allowed to go home, she came to our house, and I finally got to meet her after almost a week after she was born. I was thrilled as this meant that I could have her on my bed like I did when Nolan was a baby. My mom got her a bouncy seat thingy in the beginning of her pregnancy, and we got to test it out and we found out that even though she enjoyed sitting in it, she seemed even smaller! I swore she gave me a little smile that next morning too!

Now let’s move on to the sad part of this post. I was hoping to write a separate one, but I thought it would look strange since I included Kimber’s announcement in this one.

I am very sad that Her Majesty the Queen has died. She was the reason why I became obsessed with the British royals and other monarchs in Eastern Europe, as I was curious about why she had the Roman Numeral “II” behind her name and that’s when I discovered my love of the Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties.

I have watched many documentaries on the Queen’s 70 reign in the last few years. I’ve enjoyed seeing her all dressed up, doing engagements out in public in various colors and her signature smile, hat and bags. She always seemed so interested in everything! I will forever enjoy the opening of the opening ceremony of the Olympics in 2012, where she walks the walls of Buckingham Palace with James Bond and her corgies, and acts like she drops out of the helicopter into that arena, I knew it was fake but it still shocked me they would do something like that. She must’ve had her say in the way of the segment too, after all she is the Queen, she wasn’t going to do something that showed her in a negative way, and joining Daniel Craig, allows us as the audience and fans to see her playfulness and overall sense of humor!

After 70 years of her reign, we now have a King and will probably have one for quite a while as after King Charles is William, The Prince of Wales, and his son Prince George of Wales. This part is a part weird, but I’m sure I am not alone in my thinking, but I am curious on how the British royals will evolve into this new order, and still be able to be caring human beings to themselves and others around the world.

---

As you can imagine, having to experience all of these new changes in a matter of two weeks, I haven’t been able to listen to music nor read my books as much as I normally do, I am finally trying to keep up with my stuff but I’m trying to take it easy as well.

This month saw a lot of good and bad things, but I still had my music to get me through it. So, I hope you enjoy my Top 20 below. If you’d like to play the entire monthly playlist on Spotify, click here

Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac
Fallin’ For You by Colbie Calliat
Sometimes A Prayer Will Do by Celtic Woman
All She Wanna Do by John Legend
Late Night Talking by Harry Styles
Brand New by Ben Rector
Love Me Anyway by P!nk featuring Chris Stapleton
Vegas by Doja Cat
Choke by The Warning featuring grandson and Zero 9:36
Shivering by Illenium featuring Spiritbox
Kickstart My Heart by Halocene featuring Shershen&Zaritskaya
Bow Down by Rain Paris
Toxic by Charlotte Wessels
Try Again by Aaliyah
Come, Little Children by Clovet Mae
Godless by BANKS
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost by Eklipse featuring Melissa Bonny
Bom Bidi Bom by Nick Jonas featuring Nicki Minaj
Black Widow by Fame On Fire featuring Twiggy

What were listening to this month? Name your top three favorites in the comments!

August Playlist

Hello my friends!

August hasn’t been one of the friendliest months; lots have happened, but as long as my niece decides to keep inside her cave just a tad bit longer, we’ll deal with it.

Speaking of her though, we had a nice baby shower for her, and we all had an excuse to dress up, Blondie wore a rose-pink dress, kind of fitting considering she wore a bright ocean blue for Nolan’s shower! Originally, I wasn’t going to want to wear a dress, I tried to talk my mom into getting a jumpsuit or romper, but she talked me out of it, and I found a nice olive-green Maxi dress instead. I’ve been really obsessed with my clothes in the color green these past two years and I have yet to figure out the reason for it! I was going to leave the leggings at home but even I saw right through that idea! Whenever I wear dresses, I tend to wear shorts underneath so I can talk verbally and physically with my legs without flashing the poor people in front of me. I have done this on accident in the past, so it is just better to wear leggings or something.

Anyways, we had a great time, celebrating my sister and my little niece. Nolan had a blast too! He absolutely adores baby socks and the “bow ties” (which are the hair bands!), hearing him “ohh” and “awe” over the gifts was so sweet! He is thoroughly excited about his baby sister, and I am thinking of placing bets amongst family members to see how long it lasts because he does not have the patience for things, so a lot of us know it’ll be an interesting adventure for him.

A week later, my little dude decided to grow up and start preschool!

The first day was a bit odd, he didn’t want Blondie to leave him, but it seems after she left, he had a great time! He came home with first crafts he had made in class, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing bits and pieces of his morning activities because he was playing with his toys in the living room. We’re all still trying to wrap our brains around the fact that he’s even old enough to attend “big kid” school, but nothing really prepared us for it like the second day, he pretty much told his mommy to go away as he walked up to his teachers and new friends. The other day they came over and brought his Spidey backpack inside to show us some of his assignments and a fairly large magazine full of book fair goodies! I definitely don’t remember this in my preschool days, but since with COVID, they just send home these catalogs for each student and my dad and I went through that whole thing on our own because that was our favorite thing about school, although I never bought books home, so to see Nolan point out certain books or magazines was very touching to me! He loves his books like his mimi and mommy!

And then all hell broke loose, my mom came home from work a week later not really feeling well, and as she tried to start her second shift on Sunday, she was sent home with COVID within half an hour later.

As much as we tried to quarantine in our house, it didn’t really shield us well enough, especially when one of us is like me and needs assistance on a daily basis. I had some sickly symptoms the same day she was tested but I didn’t voice it until that Monday because I was utterly terrified to say anything to my folks, they are both vaccinated but I chose to not get it. I am not one for needles/shots, but I also didn’t know what kind of side effects would present itself later on in life, so I just chose to forgo it entirely and my parents were very aware of my feelings toward it on both reasons, and they haven’t said anything about it. I know it contradicts my thoughts I wrote about in the post I wrote back when this mess started but even then, I still knew I wasn’t getting the vaccine.

My symptoms were mild in comparison to my folks, the one thing we all had was the disgusting taste in our mouths, and we found out it was caused by our medicine, and what seemed to make it disappear were fruity candies, especially Life Savers. I would keep them on my bookshelf so I can chew/suck on it for a bit of time and it would help so much for us! My dad was the last in the household to get it and he used those cinnamon candies and I remember thinking, “why torture yourself like that?!” and my mom would actually eat butter scotches and they worked, but I liked the fruity flavors to keep me occupied for probably 15-20 minutes. We were all thrilled to be done with everything and Blondie and Nolan were allowed to come over again. It was pure torture to be separated from him for basically two weeks, and as he started school too.

---

All right, so everything aside, this month’s music has been somewhat interesting. In the beginning, I was trying to keep up with the newest releases and the first Monday afterwards, I went through my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify, and I proceeded to put every song onto the main playlist. I ended up listening to three albums, the first was Hollywood Undead’s “Hotel Kalifornia” which came out a couple of weeks ago. I loved it! I have like eight or nine favorites on it, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to! The second was found by accident and it is called, “Aventine” by Agnes Obel. This was also great but very different compared to HU though! And the final was Demi Lovato’s “HOLY FVCK” and I surprised myself with this because I did not think I would enjoy it, but I was wrong and it’s probably one of her best releases in a while.

Here is my Top 20 songs for August! If you would like to check out the entire playlist, click here.

Meteorite by BANKS
Hands of Gold by Delain
Weight of Everything by Ill Factor featuring Katie Garfield
Blow by Eva Under Fire featuring Spencer Charnas
Every Man Is A Warrior by Lena Fayre
The Promise by In This Moment
Valiant by Nightcity.
Thunder by Imagine Dragons
Cake By The Ocean by DNCE
How Soon Is Now by AG featuring Dresage
Dorian by Agnes Obel
This Is What I Live For by Graffiti Ghosts
Kings & Queens by Ava Max
The Champion by Carrie Underwood featuring Ludacris
Let You Down by Sleeping With Sirens featuring Charlotte Sunds
Crazy Train by Joseph William Morgan
100 Little Deaths by Lilith Czar
Pink Venom by BLACKPINK
Happy When I Die by Hollywood Undead
Sound of War by Tommee Profitt x Fluerie

What were you listening to this month?

Becoming An Aunt…. Again!

Hello there!

I did not think I would ever write that sentence “becoming an aunt” because my sister was adamant about how she wasn’t going to have any more children after the birth of my nephew four years ago. It’s definitely been a long time since those days, and we need to discuss some things before we get too involved into this post.

Sadly, my sister and brother-in-law separated and eventually divorced in 2020, they just grew apart as some couples do and we wish nothing but the best for them. We still love Brandon and see him from time to time, the most recent was when Nolan was playing T-Ball back in mid-May, as he helped coach his team a little bit, I always felt bad for when he was out on the field with Nolan and his little teammate directing their next movements.

My sister had started dating last fall, and we got to meet her boyfriend Zach (who is now her husband!) on Christmas. They didn’t have the kids that day, so it was a bit awkward to see them hanging outside in like 75 degree weather! I say “kids” because Zach also has a four-year-old son, named Isaiah, and he is literally the splitting image of his daddy. It’s still weird that I have also gained a second nephew through this part. I am happy to say Nolan and Isaiah are the best of friends, Nolan considers him his “brother” which he proclaimed one afternoon sitting at the table with us, and we almost started crying because it was so adorable to say something like that!

SURPRISE!

And then, January came around, and everyone was thrown for a loop when my sister announced to us, she was pregnant. Since her pregnancy with Nolan and everything that happened afterwards went a little topsy-turvey, we just assumed she couldn’t get or even wanted to become pregnant again, so this was a surprise for some of us. I wasn’t too shocked by the news honestly, although I didn’t expect it at all! I had respected her thoughts on not adding a sibling for Nolan in the future. Although this is a totally different pregnancy, it hasn’t been an easy one either. She’s been having contractions since late February I think, which is what happened last time. She’s been put on bed rest, monitoring her heart rate, blood sugar, etc. all throughout the ordeal.

BOY OR GIRL?

Towards the start of spring, we were very anxious to learn the sex of the baby. Despite the similarities between each pregnancy, there has been some odd things happen with this one. She has a better appetite in the beginning, but she’s also had a lot of heartburn too. This was sign number one that we could expect a girl, and it didn’t really settle until she began hearing the heartbeat early on and it was very fast, which is another telling point for when mothers are expecting a little girl, so we all called it around 16 weeks it would be a girl and we were right. They will be welcoming a baby girl in the fall.

Now, let’s discuss what her name will be, but first we have to go back to February and March, because at this time we still didn’t know the gender so there were many name combinations passed back and forth between the early months. I think I might save her actual name until she is finally here and do a whole post about the labor, delivery, and bonding with the boys. However, I will tell you the boy names that were in the running though, because I seriously doubt they will ever be used with them; never say never though!

THE NAMING PROCESS

Anyways, they had a fairly large group of names in the beginning.

After the second or third doctor’s appointment, they started to think of certain names, and they had a boy combination from the start and it didn’t really change that much, the first name never really went away, they still enjoyed the full name but thought using part of it as a good nickname. They were very attached to Jaxon Emery, and honestly, I was thoroughly impressed with this. I mean, I’m the namer in the family and yet I wasn’t asked for assistance!

We were kind of surprised that my sister wouldn’t want to use our papaw’s name: David. She explained they weren’t going to honor anyone because both Nolan and Isaiah have their fathers’ middle names. I understood this but yet it was a bit of a bummer to leave him out of this child’s name. Well, obviously, I wasn’t the only one who agreed with me on this and within a few weeks later they switched everything to Jax Morgan. We actually approved of this! The name Morgan was our papaw’s middle and his mother’s maiden name, it was on the list while she was pregnant with Nolan too, but for a little girl instead.

Speaking of girl names, this was another pairing they had picked out in the early days. They had watched the show Euporia when the second season had begun back in late January, and they were thinking of using Rue, but they had only switched it when they decided it was too close to our dog name’s which is Rumer. Later on, they were talking about Remy Mae, and I was not a huge fan of it. I mainly thought of Remy’s popularity in general, and that’s why I enjoyed Nolan so much because it hadn’t exploded in the naming charts, of course it did surge a bit after he was born, but I hardly ever see it now! For a solid four months they were set with it and I just hated it. I was fine with “Mae” as that is one of my sister’s middle names and another name that is huge on both sides of our families too, so it just seemed likely to come up than any other name, and it’s the only one that had stuck throughout this pregnancy and it does fit well with her first, so I can’t wait to see how much she manages it in the future.

NOW WE WAIT…

As I said in the beginning of the post, Blondie has had contractions all throughout this pregnancy, but we are hoping for little miss sweet pea will keep inside the womb a bit longer. Once my sister makes it to around 32-36 weeks, her doctor will just let her go on with the early labor like she did with Nolan. I was also an early bird, but I was born three months in advance. We still don’t know why I wanted to break out so eagerly–hell, even I don’t know the answer to that question! We just hope she will be content, just a tad bit longer..

I do really want to meet this little babe and teach her the same things I taught her big brother, but I know the longer she keeps in the den the stronger she will be out here. Since she will have a pair of brothers going into preschool this year, she’s going to need all of the good fortune around her and mommy too. The boys are very excited to meet her, Nolan has been really curious of her while in Blondie’s belly. He’s already said he won’t change any dirty diapers though! Apparently, Zach will be in charge of that department! It’s going to be interesting to see how they react when she gets her first poopy diaper too…

I think I will wait until she is finally here to give you another update and tell you her name as well once she’s born and we’ve adjusted to the chaos of having a baby around again. Now if you’re on my Instagram, you might get a little treat as I may announce her welcome to the world on there. If you can, please send my sister and the baby some positive thoughts and prayers starting in early September to help ease the labor and delivery process for everyone involved.

Do you have any guesses as to what her name will be? Also, if you know, please don’t ruin the surprise of others commenting on this post.

OOTD: White

Howdy!

Okay, I think I should explain why you don’t see my pretty face. My aunt and uncle made a surprise appearance on yesterday afternoon. They rarely tell anybody they’re coming down, they just show up and everybody tends to be 10x happier! I got a small text from Blondie that afternoon if I wanted to go over to nana’s to visit with them. I said sure, so dad came in and got me dressed. My outfit was on point but my face looked hideous so when I had my sister take the picture at the end of the visit I just told her to crop out my face. It was a nice time. It was like 5:30-6pm and we were all hungry. Dave, Katt, and my grandparents had their normal pizza for lunch when they first got there. So they couldn’t exactly have it again, even though Dave did! It took all 7 of us about 30 minutes to figure out what we all wanted and honestly I was craving some cheese pizza. So luckily the place where we ordered food served personal pizzas. I had one with extra cheese. It was so good! I also had like two handfuls of french fries too. I’m a fatty I know, shut up!

In my family, there are different relatives that understand that I like to do things for myself. It usually doesn’t matter which wheelchair I’m in either, I like to help out as much as I can. Something that I like doing for myself is being able to eat at the table. If I’m at the right height I can feed myself with my mouth. I can go at my own pace and I don’t have to sit and wait for somebody to stop talking to give me another bite. With my family, they are used to this and I hope it no longer embarrass them. Whenever I go over to my nana’s though, she’s usually feeding me and I’m the one who never wants to shut up to eat. So I kind of like these moments but while I was eating my second batch of fries my papaw decided to do something pretty adorable. He’s always been one of those family members that would do it for me than risk me getting hurt or something. I can’t pick up things off the floor for him or else he gets mad, so I guess it goes both ways! Anyways, he came over to my plate and picked up some of the fries and dipped it into the ketchup and proceed to put it in my mouth while everybody in the kitchen stared at us. He did this twice before I went told him politely that I could do it. He said “I know it” and then gave me the rest of the fry. He’s so cute!

Now onto my outfit of the day! My dad doesn’t usually dress as much as he used to, but he always puts me in the same clothes as my mom does. That’s the one thing these two have in common. So when he pulled both of these items out of my closet I was a bit taken back. Who knew I had this much white in my closet?! The shirt I’ve had for a while, I got it from Hot Topic. The front of it says “Without Music Life Would Be A Mistake” this was the first non-band tee I’ve bought from the store. My pants, I say with a big smile on my face are brand new! My mom came into my room Wednesday night saying she had a surprise for me and told me to close my eyes. She pulled out these and another pair she got from Wal-Mart. If you can’t see what the pattern is on them. They’re brightly colored cat faces!! I am in love!! They aren’t leggings which was interesting. They are straight up trousers, they fit my legs so good. They go down to my heels which is a good length for me. They’re really comfortable and incredibly soft.

What do you think of my outfit? 

Home Away From Home

It’s happened again. I still feel like its May and the summer’s just starting, instead it’s ending and my sister is gone to her new school for the year. This time, she’s a little bit closer to home but it’s still pretty difficult to wrap your head around as she’s been at home since the first week of May and had a job. Now she’s gone somewhere else to sleep and be for the next six months until Christmas break comes around. I’m sure she’ll come back before any of the major holidays but still though. I was for sure that by the time we left the house this afternoon to get her settled into her dorm room, my mom was going to lose it and just start bawling her eyes out. Well, she did but it was for something else or so she told us. Blondie seemed to do better this time around though, her face turned red but that could’ve been the heat warming up her cheeks too. Yesterday, it was a beautiful calm and somewhat cool temperature wise kind of day, today it was the total opposite and hot as hell. Thank god there was a breeze or else the three of us could have melted into a puddle just packing her stuff from the parking lot to her dorm building. Getting there wasn’t the problem, it was happened while we were trying to find a way to bring everything inside in one load that pushed us to our limits. 

I’m pretty used to my family using my wheelchair as a mule and carrying their heavy bags and stuff, but I just thought that’s all I would have to carry inside. Uh-uh. My sister had to have like four pillows, a large black blanket, and her St. Louis Cardinals teddy bear that I ended up carrying inside the building. Oh my gosh, I had the blanket behind my back and I had to lean back to make sure it wasn’t going to slide right out of there. My mom put the two medium size pillows on my lap and I held her teddy bear in between my hand. Somehow I managed to keep everything in their places until we got inside and then everything started coming undone from their places. My mom carried a large size box and my sister had the doyley and that had like four different things on it. So you should have seen the two of us going up and down ramps from crossing the streets. It was an event let me tell you! When we got inside, there were people inside but it wasn’t too packed. We got in there and my mom and sister were trying to figure out where the elevator was as my sister was trying to get her key for her room. They didn’t have an elevator in the building, at least not a public elevator. Some random guy that was helping out the incoming students fill our their forms and get their keys asked rudely up in my mom and sister’s faces and asked, Why do you need an elevator? My sister put him in his place quick with My sister’s handicapped and she needs an elevator to get up there to help us. I couldn’t help but think to myself and wonder if I had too much stuff on my chair for him to think I was driving a wheelchair into the freaking building. They let me use the maintenance elevator and considering the size of it I felt like I was back at school again.

It was incredibly small! I remember the elevator my Elementary used to have to get up and down the stage in the gym was pretty small. I’m pretty sure this sucker was smaller though. I had to follow these two people, now the guy that I rode with I never asked what his name was and I asked him a lot of questions and sadly that wasn’t one of them. Darn it! The girl though, her name was Patricia and she was nice, they were both very nice. She asked me while we were walking to the elevator, where I was from and I told her and she asked us about the drive and I told her it was pretty short than the last time and then she asked about random things about my hometown, the question that made me feel very weird was when she asked me if we had a Wal-Mart. I told her no and then she started naming off different places and I kept saying no, but I told her we had a JayC’s. I had never felt more like a hick in my life. I’ve NEVER felt like that before getting those questions and I wonder why we get made fun of on a daily basis. After we got upstairs, to me the whole dorm looked and felt like a prison. I mean, the room was nice and everything but it just felt weird and it might be because Blondie’s first dorm building was brand NEW and so it had that fresh feeling about everything to it. Mom and Blondie unloaded my back-end of my chair and I went back downstairs with this awesome no-name dude who ends up being a firefighter. If you’re wondering yes, he was cute!

When we got back downstairs I voted to stand guard of everything by the doyley and watch my mom almost trip on herself going up the damn stairs. I didn’t even see it per se, I just heard her say softly “shit” and quickly recover and then I realized what happened. While they were gone, I was basically trying to keep to myself but be polite to everybody coming and going into the building. During the third time they went upstairs, this guy came up to me and his name was LeRoy and oh my god was he cute! He actually came up to me and started talking to me and I was very impressed with myself, I didn’t stutter my words like I usually do. He asked me some of the same questions the girl did, but I told him that I tried to go there at the school once. When he asked me what I was going to major in, I felt embarrassed to say it in front of him but I told him that I don’t get along well with music theory. I was going for Audio Recordings. His friend and another staff worker, came up to me and introduced himself to me and he was so nice and handsome. He even gave me this Christian kick off party slip and I think I freaked him out when he tried to put it in my head and I lifted up my foot instead. It’s always nice to freak people out especially when they’re good about it too. He put it in my foot and I held it there for a bit before giving it to Blondie as she’ll be going there and not me. When we finally got everything unloaded, we left and went across to Financial Aid which was in it’s last hour before closing and then we got everything set up for her parking too. I think we were there for three or four hours but since it only takes like an half of hour to get there, it wasn’t that big of a hassle.

I find it every year that we do this, even though this is the second year we’ve done this. I’m REALLY glad that I’m not going to school. I know that I say that every day of the normal school year, but I still don’t want to go back to college. It’s been four freaking years since that first year and I still have very clear memories of how I acted towards my family and how much I hated everybody for not giving me the chance to do something that THEY knew wasn’t such a good idea. I wanted to live on campus REALLY bad, but to me like everybody else. My mom knew that I’d only want to live on campus to go to the parties. I wanted to get out of the house bad. I wanted to start living on my own, but since I’m stubborn I couldn’t see all of the things it takes for me to even be left at home alone for thirty minutes. Now that I’ve realized all these different things that goes on, I can’t just think of my “wants” and “needs” there’s so much more than what I think, or in this case thought. Blondie isn’t handicapped but she still has lots of things she needs to know before getting herself into first. Sometimes I feel like the more she lives this house, the quicker the time will be before she’ll get an apartment or a house one day and I’ll still be at the same place. Maybe one day things will change and I’d figure out what I wanted to do in this world, until then I’m pretty comfortable with blogging and listening to music.

I took this just before we left and this was my mom’s backseat and this picture doesn’t even give it justice as to how full it was back there, but it wasn’t as bad as Plummer.

My mom found this in the hallway. At least they knew that everybody will eventually go to a college party in their lifetime.

I found Blondie’s room a lot bigger than her room up at ISU honestly and as you can see, they have carpet. Another difference!