May Day May Day

When I found out I was pregnant with Emily, I cried for three months. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her–it was that I didn’t want to be pregnant. Becca was only seven months old at the time, and I just wasn’t ready to do it again.  She was a beautiful baby, with lots of hair. She slept so much that I had to wake her to feed her, and almost never cried. I thought the hospital gave me the wrong baby because of that.

Back in 1975, we didn’t have instant digital cameras, so I don’t have very many pictures of my last born child. But, this one was taken in the hospital on the day she was born.

She was a good baby. She didn’t have teeth until she was 14 months old, and I was afraid she wouldn’t have any. A trip to the dentist told me that although that was unusual, it was not unheard of.

By the time she was a year old her hair had turned blonde, and it was shoulder length. My father called her Farrah Fawcett because of the way her hair looked.

We liked to go camping when the children were little, and belonged to a hunting club. She was the little darling of the club:

Emily was a really active little girl, but she had asthma. She and I would wind up in the ER about twice a month getting breathing treatments. That went on from about the time she was two years old until she was about twelve. I could tell my the her breathing sounded that I would heading to the hospital soon. Even with asthma, it was hard to get her to sit still, so it is amazing that I have this picture of her sitting in the grass.

She was a um, typical teenager. She met a guy when she was 17, and I decided that he was not right for her, and I told her she couldn’t date him. She left that night. I was a difficult time for me, because it broke my heart that she left. I was sure she would get hurt. I was proved wrong, though, because she and Thomas are still together after 21 years. They got married in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in June 1997.

After she graduated high school, she worked at Wal-Mart while she put herself through West Georgia College, now called University of West Georgia. She graduated with a degree in Science. She worked as office manager for a pediatric group in Atlanta for several years, until she decided to go back to school to become a teacher. Since she had a degree in Science, she was able to get a teaching position while she went to school at night to get her Master of Education.

In addition to working fulltime and going to school at night, Emily has also given birth to two beautiful babies. Spencer is now 11 years old, and Parker is going on 4 months. And as you may already know, she had a stroke after Parker was born. She will be going back in the hospital soon to have her skull put back in, or as she said, have her head put back together.

While we have been at odds during our life together, I still love her, and she will always be my baby girl!