The little one I babysit

Two days a week I get to hang out with one of my favorite people. She is not very talkative, and can be slow to get around sometimes but she is so much fun. The person I'm talking about is the 1 year old I babysit on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Her name is Daisy and she makes my weeks so much better and I look forward to my time with her. I have been babysitting her since June and I am kind of sad that I will graduate in December and move away from her.

But the best part has been watching her grow and become this little person with her own personality. She loves the color blue and anything she can carry around. Her newest favorite toy is the ball that came with the large play kitchen she got for her birthday. Now she does enjoy the kitchen as well, but the blue ball that came with it has traveled all over the house and back. The biggest change has been to watch her master walking and the new freedom that comes with it. She toddles (I now understand what that means haha) around the house like a pro. Two weeks ago she would take like 5 steps and fall down, but yesterday she walked from the kitchen to the front door, down the foyer and into the den without falling once. She has also begun to talk more. It's nothing that can be understood, but she talks up a storm in her own language. It makes me sad that I will not witness her learning to really speak.

Over the summer I would get to spend all day with her, from 9am to 5pm, and it was so much fun. But once school started for both of us my time with her was cut down to afternoons. Now it is nice to have that time to do some homework, but making her laugh and watching her grow is much more rewarding. My boyfriend doesn't understand the wonder of children, especially babies, but then I think that most men don't get it until they have a child. I tip my hat off to all stay-at-home moms because I know that it is hard to do and that most days things are left undone. But you get the experience of being there with your child everyday as they learn and grow into the person they are meant to be.

I would like to think that all of my babysitting experience (all 13years of it) may have prepared me to be a parent to some degree. But I know that it is impossible to ever know all that goes into it until you are one. I want to be a stay-at-home mom for my kids, when I have them. But more than that, I don't want to miss out on my child's first steps or words. I want to be there when it happens, and not have someone else tell me about it when I get off of work. Now I know that it might not be possible for me to stay home and not work, but in my perfect world it will be.  

My heart

Back in February I thought that my heart was so broken that it would take years to mend. I had just called off my engagement three months before my wedding, the same day that my wedding dress and all the bridesmaid dresses came into the bridal shop. I could not begin to express my sorrow at this turn of events. I went from planning my wedding the week before to having to tell most of my friends and family that there was going to be no wedding. There were milestones that I was supposed to be passing and I wasn't and that hurt. And yet it didn't hurt to see one my closest friends getting married only two weeks before I was supposed to. I helped her the week before her wedding and never once did I resent her or want to have what she was having because I knew that what I had done was the right thing. 

Marrying my ex-fiance would have been the worst mistake of my life and I so glad that my parents opened my eyes to that. He was slowly taking my life away from me and making it so that there was no one outside of him that I could turn to, including my family. For over a year he made me feel like if I put anything, including my education, before him that I was being selfish. That if I went out with friends or my parents without him, that I was trying to exclude him from parts of my life. He got upset if I didn't want to spend every waking moment with him, and he didn't understand that I needed time to myself. So I began to consciously lie to him about what I was doing, even about the small things like going on facebook. I knew long before I broke things off with him that I didn't really want to be with him. But I kept thinking that if I just held off until the wedding, just stayed with him until we were married, that it would all get better; that he would change and that we would be a couple who did things with other couples and not just stay home all the time. But I wasn't sure if I could ever find that in another man, for some reason I thought that a relationship like that was all that I could find. I don't know why I thought that now.

Because my broken heart has been healed by a wonderful man, who loves me and treats me like I deserve. I'm not sure if I found him, if he found me, or if we found each other through some grace of God. But it doesn't matter to me, as long as we found each other. Our first date was amazing, like something out of a dream (or at least it was to me!). We spent a whole day walking around downtown Charleston, I showed him a new place in Mt. Pleasant and we just talked the whole time. He didn't try to hold my hand (even though I wanted him to haha) or put his arm around me, we just walked and talked about everything under the sun. It was amazing. And when I finally had to leave he made his move (finally!) and kissed me. It was the best first kiss I had ever had. I forgot about everything around us and was completely focused on me and him and the way he was making me feel. I still can't believe how wonderful it was, and that he chose me.

I love this man more than I could ever say and I knew from our first date that I was going to marry him. He has put me back together, taken away my hurt, and healed my broken heart. He taught me to trust again, when I thought I would never be able to again. He showed me what true love is, and how amazing it is to give and receive it, but mostly what it means to be in love. Eight months after my heart was broken to the point that I wondered if it would every be whole again I have found a man who has taken all of my hurt and broken-ness and turned it into the most amazing love. Me heart is whole again, and so full of love!

College football

If there is anything that might test your faith it's football. For three months a year I am a total football fanatic, to the point that fall saturdays are meant for college football and very little else. But if your team is losing then it's hard to keep your faith sometimes. I am a Clemson and a South Carolina fan and as weird as that may seem there are more of us than people think. Last year Clemson made it to the ACC Championship game but are only 3-3 this year. Carolina barely made it to a bowl game last year and are 4-2 this season. I have sat through the 0-11 season at Carolina and the 2-9 season at Clemson, so I know what's it like to almost lose your faith in your team. But this year is really testing it because both teams have talent and good coaches, but they are not really capitalizing on it. That may be the most frustrating thing to watch.

But I still watch the games, and go when I can because no matter what they are my teams.

New to all of this

Why is it so important for people to say they have faith? What is it about those two words that can make people believe that anything will be ok?

I have uttered those words, or thought them to myself countless times over the past few months. As if simply having faith would get me through my most recent valley of the shadows. And yet I do not know if I would have gotten through the past months with out those words. To me having faith is the same things as God's plan for us or understanding that God knows everything and good will come from the bad. If someone had asked me six months ago if my life would be anything close to what it is now I would have said no. I was still hurting from breaking off my engagement and was not sure how long it would take to get over that hurt.

But I had faith that it would all work out. And in May I met the man who healed my broken heart and spirit and helped me to see that it will all be ok again. I was one credit short of graduating college six months ago, and now I will graduate with credits to spare, because I had faith that it would work out. All of this may seem small but to me they were the biggest things in my life, and will probably shape the rest of my life in ways that I do not know. Simply because I have faith. 

So here is it, almost midnight as I wait for my phone to finish updating and I'm beginning my first attempt at a blog. Love it, hate it, never comment, say what ever you want to but I hope that maybe someone will read it.