Sugar and Spice

When Skip and I got married….I told him I didn’t want to have any more children and he was fine with that. Six months later after seeing how incredible he was with my boys I told him if he wanted…we could try and have one. The next 9 months were full of me specifically trying to conceive a boy as I didn’t have a clue what to do with girls. Finally…after 9 months of negative test I said screw it and we just tried to get pregnant without thought to what kind of baby we were making. That was the month that Tate was conceived.

I didn’t sail through this pregnancy as I had with my boys. It was more uncomfortable, I gained WAY more weight. I had it all set in my mind that we had in fact conceived a boy. At the ultrasound…I was shocked at the little frog legs we saw with nothing in-between. The girl was coming…ready or not. I cried for three days and Skip was ecstatic! I eventually got sort of used to the idea but my way of coping was to be determined that I would NEVER had a girly girl. No pink was allowed at the baby showers and we struggled to find a name that was both for a girl…but strong as well. President Regan died while I was pregnant…and for awhile..we thought that would be her name….but somewhere along the line…we put the kibosh on that. Her middle name had been decided when I was maybe 12 years old. My godmother had a daughter that had died of crib death many years ago. We would have been around the same age and I always told her that if I ever had a daughter, that I would honor my godmother with her daughters beautiful name….Irli..pronounced EARLEE.

Another thing that consumed me during this pregnancy was that she NOT have a popular name. Didn’t want to see it on the top 100 list even. Eventually we found her name…the prefect name that had been meant for her. Tate it was…and yesterday she turned seven.

Things changed when we brought her home. She turned this family upside down with her sweetness with equal amounts of raving lunatic thrown in. She’s as loving as she is bitchy and we are so happy she’s here.


Happy Birthday Sweet baby girl….you know where I keep you when you’re not with me? In my heart….that’s where.