Is that gas???

Or little baby kicks???

From what I've read, those little kicks start out as little flutters or butterflies.

And it's been said that this starts around 16-20 weeks.

Well, 21 weeks rolls around and I still haven't felt a thing!

But for the last few days, I've felt these strange twinges of gas, so I thought.

(I apologize if that's TMI)

So, I ignored it till last night.

I was cracking up through a movie and it was just too odd that those little odd twinges would hit me as I'm falling apart on the floor.

This is when it hit me, this very well could be my child!

Then, this morning, I woke up unreasonably early and to pass time, I decided to push on my belly.

Sure enough, those strange twinges pushed back at me.

This is the conclusion that I've come to since she kicks when I laugh:

She either has a sense of humor like her mother OR I get on her nerves (like I do everyone else with my sense of humor!).

Either way...I'm glad I can finally feel her.

I'm not sure if I can feel it from the outside yet but I cannot wait for Mark Dean to get home to see if he can feel it.

GRAND!parents

I'm not one to write about hard times or anything of that nature.

I tend to bottle all that up and pretend everything is ok.

I cry alone.

I hurt in hiding.

But lately, that has been hard.

My grandfather died last month. 

I've never experienced lose like this before.

The other day I heard Carrie Underwood's song "Just A Dream".

I cried then.

Alone in my car.

And now, I'm crying out loud.

I wrote this on my very first blog.

It sums up what my grandfather means to me.

So I realized...what the grand in GRAND!parents is really all about.

GRAND!parents are supposed to teach you memorable things - things that will guide you through life - things to build a strong mind and being - and in the end, leave you with things to tell your children but only after they learn them from their grandparents.

And I have come to realize, too, that mine are the best!

I can so happily say that my wonderful grandmother taught me to write a check, order from a catalog, and planted the love seed for the Home Shopping Network and other ridiculous home shopping programs...all this before I was 8 or 9. I can so vividly remember staying at her house and watching old sitcoms that used to be on Nick @ Nite (which are now on TV Land, maybe) and then moving onto the home shopping programs till 12 or 1 AM.

As for my grandfather, being just as wonderful as my grandmother, has embedded in me the silly love of simple science experiments and a love for maps, atlases, and road trips. I can remember standing in the kitchen where he showed me the split spoon experiment. I can remember standing at the kitchen table where he showed me how to look up the coordinates of a city in an atlas (and between my grandfather and my dad, I got it down pretty quick and owe a lot of geographical knowledge to them).

And with the love these 2 share, they created my mother, who I owe all of my being to (as if, I don't owe just as much to my dad). I envy the love that they share - that they share with each other, with my mom, and with me.

And the creator of my wonderful father - she was just as grand! Though she left while I was quite young and been gone for many years now, I can still say I learned from her. I learned how to argue and be very headstrong. This she passed on to my father first which then passed to me. And when I get the slightest whiff of some down home country cookin', I can't help but think of her - even then I didn't eat that stuff, I can still see my wonderful family sitting around her kitchen table.

Yes, they are grand! So very, very grand.
And they are the best because they are mine.