A week of firsts

[NOTE this post was drafted several weeks ago]

This was a week for the record books for Little Eason.
Thursday ~6:00pm - First Independent Steps
Thursday afternoon, I went to pick him up from the Bazemore's. Momma B was playing with him on the floor in the den. Since, he was standing, I sat down on the floor a few feet away from them and reached out for Eason. My precious little one has begun to get so excited when he sees me that he almost jumps into my arms. Momma B released her hold on him and he took three stumbling steps and then fell into my arms. What a wonderful event. And I praise the Lord that He allowed me to be the witness and recipient of such a momentous milestone!


Saturday at 10:00am - First Parade
Saturday morning, Warren, Eason & I got up and headed to Camden to watch the Kershaw County Christmas Parade. Julie, a dear friend from work, owns and operates the lovely and historic Greenleaf Inn of Camden, located right on Broad Street, a prime location for enjoying the parade. This was Eason's first parade. He really enjoyed all the horses and the fire trucks. Although, he did not appreciate the fire trucks' sirens and horns.



Saturday at 1:00pm - First Haircut
Over the past few days, we have had several people call Eason a girl. I will admit that as of late his hair has gotten a little out of control. In the back, he had grown a little mullet. The precious curls on the sides of his head were almost wings enough to allow him to fly away. But it was the ever-increasing references to him being a girl, that spurred us on to set the appointment. Julie called her hairdresser, Melissa, at New Dimensions in Camden and set an appointment for us. After the parade & a delicious lunch at the Inn, Warren, Eason & I walked down Broad Street toward the hair place. Since we had a few extra minutes, we wandered into a guitar store. I was pouting more and more & my mood was souring as we came closer to the haircut. As we were questioning whether it was the right thing to do, the owner of the guitar store asked, "does that little girl play guitar?" ... Warren smiled politely at the man, as his eyes gave me a "see" look, and I almost broke into tears. I love his curls!!!

Finally an update

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a most blessed Thanksgiving, I know we did. Well, there is no possible way to provide a thorough enough update, so I will try and hit the high points since my last post (which was roughlly a decade ago). Perhaps the most rediculous fact is that Eason is now over a year old! It has been the fastest year of our lives for sure. We are still researching ways to prevent Eason from growing up, but to date have not succeeded. I will have to renew my statement made at his birth, that Eason is THE most precious gift the Lord has bestowed upon us, next to His own Son. It is amazing to watch the world through his eyes. Eason is such a happy child and we know we have many thanks to give for that.

Breif update of milestones to date:
6 teeth, eating real people food,
Cruising, but not yet walking,
Loves music and to dance (this makes Daddy very happy!),
Signs "more," "please," & "all done"
Clasps hands to pray (oh, how that warms my heart)
Talks up a storm!
First word was "Da Da", but of course everything is Da Da;
One of his favorite words is "tur-tle" (this makes Mama very happy!)

Being all boy he loves "caaars"
All clocks are "Coo Coos", because his Bazemore grandparents have coo coo clocks that he really enjoys;
Daddy B's collection of Coca Cola, causes all bottles and red labels to be "Coca"
Grandmother Bazemore has been giving him daily piano lessons and has already instilled in him a love for books.
Favorite books include:
devotionals (Bible stories), "Where is baby's belly button" and "The Hungry Caterpillar."
All in all, Eason is so precious and I love him so much I often wonder how my heart does not explode!


Warren & I are doing great as well. The Lord has blessed us with a new home just blocks away from Warren's parents, who amazingly are still keeping Eason each day for us. I LOVE IT!!! We are set to close on our old house on Dec. 10 and would appreciate any and all prayers for that to complete. We had a prior contract that fell through for various reasons, including the fact that a car ran into our old house. Yes, you read that right and that is a story for another day.
Warren's job is going great, the Lord is blessing him there and I really enjoy my job, but miss our boy a lot! I found out last week that I get to prepare to argue before the Supreme Court of SC. That is exciting and terrifying altogether. ("exciting & terrifying")

Murray loves his new back yard and his new playmate. They often enjoy watching as "caaars" go by on our street.



We travelled to Charleston for Thanksgiving and had such a wonderful time with eveyone. we love you all so much!






We are so blessed by our heavenly Father with His love, our friends and family! Thanksgiving is not sufficient to cover it. PRAISE BE TO GOD!

What a Wonderful Day

I am really enjoying my job, and one of the best parts about it is what we call AWS. AWS stands for alternative work schedule. It allows you to work the equivalent of one full day's hours over 2 weeks. The result, is that every 2 weeks I have a day off! I've also been helping out with our coastal office some, so that is bringing me down to Charleston more often. My Mom (aka Zani) loves it, because when I can, I bring Eason down for her to babysit while I work in Chucktown. Well, I had a meeting scheduled for this past Thursday and Friday was my AWS. So, I planned to come down with Eason. The tough part about coming home, is that there is never enough time to see everyone. It's even more difficult now that I have to work around nap times and meals (Eason's of course). When I come down, I often have to chose to either see family or friends. And now it's more like 1 family member or 1 friend. This past Friday I was determined to see Nancy. I called almost a month in advance to get on her schedule. Of course, the week before I come my meeting gets canceled, but I was not to be swayed from my playdate with Nancy and her boys. Nancy is one of my dearest friends in Charleston and life keeps us from spending as much time together as I would like.

Anyway, Eason and I came down after work Thursday night and stayed with my sister Elizabeth, Jason and the ever-entertaining Libby. Friday morning we got up and Eason & I dropped by Elizabeth's classroom to watch her in action. Elizabeth is an amazing teacher, truly gifted in her abilities to work with kids. It was fun to watch her interact with the kids and to see how much they enjoy learning in her class. After a yummy cupcake from the Latin club bake sale, we were off to Nancy's.

It was a beautiful day, 80 degrees, sun shinny. I mean perfect. And, since it was Friday, Nancy had playgroup, and we got to go too! Many of my high school friends still live in Charleston. Over the years, I have gotten to know some of the other women that the Lord has brought into their circle. We all converged on this precious little park along the river. I cannot get over how everyone's children are growing up. So precious and so much fun.


Girls we had a wonderful time with all of you and will definitely come back on my off-Fridays, when possible.


After the park, Nancy and I returned to her house with our boys. Mills and Bose settled in for a nap and I fed Eason. That gave Nancy and me some much needed time to catch up. Then Bose came back down and played with us. He is such a precious child as is evidinced from Nancy's blog. He is so articulate and willingly shared his toys with Eason. Nance, thanks for lunch and a wonderful day!

Go GAMECOCKS!

Two Saturdays ago Warren and I took Eason for his first picnic on the Horseshoe. It was such a perfect day. His Daddy dressed him in a cute hat and shorts outfit that his cousins passed down to him. Michelle, one of God's blessings in my life, came by for a little bit. And Warren's parents met us down there as well. After enjoying our lunch, Warren, Eason and I took a tour of campus with his parents. It was so special. You know Warren and I met while we were students at USC. Well, so did his parents. We walked all over campus, reminisced, and talked about how much had changed since each of our times as students. What a perfect day! Thank you Lord for precious times with family & friends and precious memories. And thank you Lord for bringing my precious husband into my life!!!

A Friend to Walk beside You

God is so good to bring people to walk beside you during different times of life. Two of our dear friends from college, Chuck and Sara Jenkins, found out they were having a baby a few weeks before we found out we were expecting. Then we found out the Lord was blessing both our families with little boys. How blessed we were to go through pregnancy together, and now we have two precious boys who are three weeks apart and destined to be best friends.

Can't you see these two getting into all kinds of trouble together?

Chuck and Sara are moving to Atlanta this week and we are going to miss them sorely, but that just means there will be many roadtrips in our future.

Update on the Boy

Eason is 5 months old and change. He is really becoming a little human now. No longer content to be left alone if others are in the room. He wants to talk and he responds and interacts and it all warms my heart. Much of this must be attributed to his grandmomma and granddaddy who keep him while I am at work. They talk with him and teach him all day long. How blessed we are to have them! Thank you Momma & Dad for all you do and for all of your love which never seems to run dry! He learns something new to do almost daily: sucking on his bottom lip, sticking his tongue out, grasping the spoon when I feed him his cereal, holding his bottle, chewing on 2 fingers, fake coughing, standing, flirting, and the list goes on and is constantly changing. What a fun and sweet time. You love to smile and giggle and it can entertain Daddy and me forever. I am addicted to your smiles and laughter!!! Once you giggle, I find I will do almost anything to keep you laughing.

God is so good the way He washes away the pain of labor and even the struggles of those first weeks (months). I have had 3 breast infections and Eason did not put his birth weight back on for a few weeks after he was born, but let me report the stats from his 4 month checkup. We have a little chunky monkey, though he is only in th 35th percentile. The biggest shocker was that Eason is in the 95th percentile in length. He shot up, so fast, that the nurse actuallly measured him twice to be sure. Daddy told him not to get used to that. :)

Praise God for all of His faithfulness!

New Years

Ok, so I'm a wee bit behind on my posts, but such is life.

Over New Years we got to see our Band Family some and it was so nice. For those of you who do not know, Warren has been in a band for the past 10 or so years. At some points, they were traveling over 200+ days out of the year. These folks are truly family, as they know each other better than some blood relatives do. The Band family has expanded over the past few years, through marriages and babies. Eason is the second "band baby." The first is his beautiful girlfriend Lilian Jacobs.


Time with the band is precious and few these days, because we are spread over four different states now. Warren, Eason, & I are obviously in Columbia, as well as Chris; Jason, Sasha and Lilian are in Florida; Shane and Trisha are in Charlotte; and Marcus and Katie are in Nashville.
When we got together we were reminded that our lives have certainly changed...we now look for less smoky places to matriculate...some of us have the new names "Mommy" and "Daddy"...we have mortgages. Ah, life has certainly changed.
We had such a wonderful time with all of you & love you so much!
Thanks for making our lives richer!

Trish and Shane gave Eason and Lillian their first pair of Robeez. What great shoes!!! Eason's so appropriately have little red crabs on them. He already loves the ocean and all its wonders! (whether he knows it or not)

All manner of living things...

I have been told by my wife to write this post. The majority of the posts will be from Sara because she will say all of the sweet motherly things that you want to share with family and dear friends. This event, however, was mine alone to bear and therefore I must be the one to tell it.

I have never liked cats. I have never been what is refered to as a cat person. They are sneaky and quiet and I like to know when something is about to take a swipe at my ankles. For Sara's accomplishment of finishing law school we agreed that a just reward would be getting an orange cat for HER (notice emphasis) enjoyment. We named him Aslan after considering Leroy and other catty names. He has brought much joy to Sara and therefore I endure him. But Warren, one might ask, how can you be so certain in your disdain of cats? Please continue reading.

Two nights ago Eason woke up for his 4AM feeding. Sara had her first day in court the next morning so I did the honorable thing and fed Eason his bottle. It was a relatively quick affair and Eason was asleep and content in his crib at 4:45. Throughout the early morning hours I had heard our dog Murray barking at something in the house. I have learned to completely ignore and give no value to any noise at night that is not a screaming child. When I was walking back to our room from Eason's nursery I again heard Murray going nuts in our bathroom. I walked into our bathroom to see Murray and Aslan standing on either side of the dark wood shelves where we have a clock and books and candles and all other sorts of things appropriate for a bathroom set of shelves. As you have read earlier in the blog, Aslan has a love for bringing in lizards as presents to us. At least this is what Sara says to keep me from letting our dog eat our cat. So I bend down to view this lizard, take account of the size, surroundings, etc.. and make a plan for a proper exodus for this newest present from our cat. When I get a good view underneath the shelves I see a tail hanging down but the body of the lizard was out of sight, stretched up the wall behind the first shelf. I have to decide wether or not to grab the tail of the lizard or to move the shelves and grab the lizard off of the wall. I decide to do the latter as lizards are prone to drop their tails in defense. When I move the shelf their is a flurry of movement and I see the big gray mouse. Let me say that again in case you missed it. It was no lizard but rather a big gray mouse. It is the grace of God that stayed my hand and kept me from throwing the shelves to the gorund and smashing every breakable thing in the bathroom out of shock. Do we live in a barn? Are we in Egypt during the time of the plagues? Do I have to keep the cat? Anyway...upon my pulling back of the shelves, Aslan allowed me to witness the suprisingly quick death of our intruder. Murray was barking at the top his his lungs as the cat just looked at me in complete satisfaction. Sara was sleeping. I proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes cleaning the bathroom floor like it has never been cleaned before. If you had lit a match our entire home would have been an ash heap.

Later on during the day, call if you want the full story, Aslan brought in some sort of grasshopper/locust hybrid that I was forced to deal with. Capping it all off, however, was when Sara was feeding Eason late the next afternoon. While sitting on the couch with our newborn son, the picture of tranquility, Sara hears a chirp. The chirping then begins to grow in volume. Sara then sees a shadow moving toward the pet door and is thinking that the bird is going to fly into our house. She was wrong. The bird was being carried into our house in the mouth of HER cat. With the proper amount of screaming by Sara and crying by Eason the cat never fully made it into the house and was forced to relinquish the bird. I promise I am not making one bit of this up. Seriously.

I do not even know how to end this post because it is all so over the top. But maybe that is a fitting coupling with our arrival as parents. I think that it is safe to say that while I am adjusting to the schedule and duties involved in being a Dad, I am not so adjusted to the role of cat owner.

A First

Christmas Eve was not all pooh and spitup. That morning while we were getting ready for church, Eason shared with us his first honest-to-goodness laugh. Twice in fact. His daddy was dressing him and Eason was lying on the bed. They were playing a game that his grandmomma often plays with him when she keeps him. Warren goes "clap, clap, clap," in front of Eason. Then he takes Eason's hands and repeats the sound and action. Warren let go of Eason's hands, which Eason promptly flung apart, and Warren cheered. For some reason this morning that game tickled Eason enough to muster up a true chuckle. I was walking out of the room when I heard it and ran back to the bed in time to witness a repeat performance! Oh, what a wonderful Christmas present! Those sounds are so precious!