85. i hate divisive statements, things, people. almost didn’t put the abortion one for this reason. decided giving my reason for it, outweighed the shocknawe of the statement.
86. i love letterman. not just a little.
87. i have terrible postpartum. i get down, but the real problem is, i get angry.
88. i don’t care what anybody says (here’s another one of those divisive statements…) zoloft in those times, is allowed by God to balance me. get help if you have the same problem. your marriage, your health, and the mental stability of your children is more important than if people tell you that you just aren’t “spiritual” enough, read, “i’m judging you in a time of great need.”
89. i love to cook.
90. i taught myself to cook.
91. i love to sew (quilt mainly).
92. i taught myself to quilt.
93. i’ve only flown once – and only from l.r. to memphis.
94. i giggled the whole way up.
95. i once road-tripped to dallas to interview to be a flight attendant.
96. i love the foo fighters.
97. i love sarah mclachlan. but only fumbling toward ecstacy. she kinda sold out after that.
98. i really want to go to a bon jovi concert some day.
99. i wear clothing as a covering for my body. i haven’t had enough money in 7 years to dress in any other way. i’ve just about conquered my coveting and my insecurities.
100. our dream is to start a diner/coffee/sandwich shop – me work the front, and pearl cook.

written in 2006

1. i have baby #4 growing in my belly!
2. this will be our last, short of a miracle.
3. i always wanted this many babies.
4. everybody said after i had one baby i would change my mind. ha ha. i said, ha ha.
5. i love coffee.
6. i have no sense of humor.
7. i married a man who is almost all sense of humor.
8. i get 4-5 hours of broken sleep a night.
9. i have a minimum of 6 years left of that much sleep.
10. i have made a conscious decision to have the last 3 babies. the oldest was a surprise.
11. i went to governor’s school in high school in literary arts.
12. i was an art major.
13. i wanted to animate for disney.
14. i used to sit in disney movies and make my friends watch the credits because, “my name will be here someday.”
15. my first car was an ’86 nissan datsun maxima, diesel, named ethel.
16. i can drive a standard.
17. i’ve had glasses since the 4th grade.
18. i’ve tried contacts and they hurt so much and were so dry that i quit.
19. i decided wearing glasses would be cool and that i would start a trend.
20. i have a purple frog tattoo from when i was 17 from a tattoo guy in a travelling bus.
21. i don’t regret it.
22. it looks more like a purple lizard after 3 nursing babies.
23. i do regret this. but find it pretty funny!
24. the worst thing i did at school my whole 12 years of school was refuse to dissect a fetal pig my sophomore year, because i didn’t believe it was right, and i told my teacher, “i will NEVER need to know this my whole life.”
25. i was right.
26. i got written up and my grade was dropped a letter, my gpa suffered because she believed i was just power struggling with her.
27. i graduated with honors in the top 30 of 300 students.
28. i was in the drama club.
29. i was in choir and can’t sing a lick.
30. i was in odessey of the mind.
31. i was in mock trial.
32. i was in quiz bowl.
33. i was in model u. n.
34. i was a nerd.
35. i have had several long-haired guinea pigs.
36. i have had a ferret.
37. i have had a hamster.
38. i have watched my pet mouse have babies.
39. i have had fish, and dogs, and cats.
40. i currently have hermit crabs. i said HERMIT crabs.
41. i have never had a bird, i always thought they were gross.
42. i hate heights, like cry, sweat, freeze up.
43. i hate spiders and bugs that go “pop” when you smoosh them.
44. i have a battle cry reserved for killing those things.
45. i was anti-killing anything in high school – bugs, deer, anything.
46. i once helped my husband “process” a freshly killed deer in our kitchen in our white sink. to save money.
47. i will never do this again.
48. unless i’m starving, and then i will not only eat my words, i will eat the prey.
49. i don’t believe in abortion. ever. i don’t believe God makes mistakes. ever. see psalm 139:13-16.
50. we almost lost boy1 when he was born.
51. for the whole 2nd trimester with boy2 we were bumped from one specialist to another believing he had spinabifida.
52. we were offered an abortion.
53. i still believed #49.
54. i have been date-raped.
55. i have forgiven. it’s amazing!
56. the year i became a Christian i read the whole Bible cover-to-cover in 4 weeks. and processed it.
57. i was a skeptic and wanted to know what it was that i was associating myself with.
58. i became a religious zealot.
59. then i discovered grace and not just the law.
60. since then, i’ve seen God bring my mom back to church, my sister and her husband start going to church and proclaiming Christ, and my dad go from almost anti-jesus to telling me “it’s all about glorifying Christ.”
61. these things had nothing to do with me, they were in spite of my bashing them on the head with a Bible.
62. i love some kind of wonderful.
63. and can’t buy me love.
64. and almost anything with john cusack in it.
65. i was basically josie grossy in high school.
66. i love watching romance comedies.
67. boy1′s name was decided by a movie, not the Bible.                                                                                                                   68. my huz has ALWAYS wanted a baby named Parker Parker Parker.
69. Parker P. Parker, P.P. Parker, P. Parker Parker, Parker P.P., Parker Parker P. the options are endless, he says.
70. i told him i would think about it on our last baby.
71. uh oh.
72. i love oreos.
73. i won’t drink plain milk, unless it’s to have oreos dipped in it or alongside a brownie.
74. all boys close your eyes, really skip this one, huz would kill me for writing it… i have never worn a tampon. i plan to never wear one the rest of my life. they’re gross. yes, i know i’ve had 3 babies, i don’t care.
75. i hate being around people who are not encouraging.
76. one of my favorite Bible characters is Barnabas (new testament somewhere) he is so the encourager.
77. one of my other favorite characters is Rahab – the prosititute that hid God’s spies, and was bold enough to ask for not only her life to be spared, but all her family. she was redeemed. i love it.
78. i used to be blond. naturally, then not.
79. i have been a red head.
80. i taught myself to french braid.
81. i love the animaniacs.
82. i have their c.d., several vcr tapes, and i wore a “dot” fake tattoo to my senior prom.
83. i love they might be giants. go look them up, now. i don’t want to figure out how to link right now.
84.i got tired and i’m going to bed. i’ll try to finish another day.

i would like to take a moment to address some concerns about having parker4. and i figured this was as good a place as any to do just that.FAQs
yes, it is hard. yes, it is even harder having several so close together (so i hear) although, i wouldn’t really know, since this is the only reality i have to draw from. no, they don’t get as much as they would have if there were only one or two of them. yes, i have to sacrifice – time, money, wants, alone time, sanity, sleep. yes, i do have my “hands full”. and my personal favorite – yes, i know what causes this.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVING KIDS
i always knew i wanted to work with kids. i just didn’t know what that looked like. i babysat. i majored in elementary ed. i worked/lived in the wilderness 8 weeks as a girl scout camp counselor with sixteen 8 year olds. i worked daycare as the only care-taker of nine 18-36 month olds. i taught 4 year old pre-k. multiple children in one place doesn’t scare me. i remember vividly praying when i was at college that God would teach me patience. He has been faithful. He put a desire in my heart to have a bunch of babies. and now He’s giving me the chance to practice.

WHY
why not just work with kids like i started out doing? that was not my calling. that’s not the desire in my heart. it just was never quite right. there was more. when pearl and i got married i knew i wanted kids. he knew i wanted kids. i knew he didn’t really want kids, but that he would compromise. neither one of us wanted them for a LONG time. hey, we had partying to do, yo. “maybe in 2 years” 2 years came and we still weren’t ready. but God had other plans and along came boy1. i wasn’t sure if i was going to stay home. pearl’s mom did, mine didn’t. i wasn’t sold. i was loving the downtown little rock high life. but i got laid off in the dot-com industry crash, and it’s hard to find good work when you’re 6 months pregnant. so i decided to stay home. pearl and his brother are 2 1/2 years apart. and i loved seeing how close they were. my sisters are 8 and 11 years older than me. i grew up an only child, kinda. with 3 moms, basically. not fun. i also knew i wanted several kids. so the equation was coming together. for my sake – i wanted several kids. for their sake i wanted them close in age. pearl’s best memories are of his first 5 years of life with his mom. this is what i wanted for my kids. i knew the inside of the daycare industry and i knew i didn’t want my kids there. my mom nannied when i was in high school and i saw those babies grow and call my mom “mama”. i translated for 2 and 3 year olds at day care for their parents who couldn’t understand their words, but i, a young college single, spent more waking hours with their babies than they did. these were not the things i wanted for my family. i’m not judging. i’m not making a statement about what should be for everyone. i’m saying this is the direction I was being led. and how we got where we are.

THE FIRST 3 PARKERS
boy1 came along and when he was 3 months old i was ready to go again. i got pregnant with boy2 (with 2 months of trying) when boy1 was 10 months old. when boy2 turned a year old and i wasn’t pregnant i was a little sad, but not quite ready yet. the morning we learned a friend’s baby was born – the fever hit. let me also back up. pearl didn’t want kids. and was petrified while i was pregnant with boy1. about 3 months after he was born he was sold. absolultely lovin’ the one we had and ready for more. same with girl1. he’s ready to be done now. i could keep going. so we’re compromising. one more.

DON’T MISS IT
why would i want this?
could i be having more fun? seriously. i LOVE watching them. learn, play, fight, grow. i love how much they’re teaching me. about love. love – watching my honey with them… could i be more in love with him? love – learning what unconditional means. love – seeing how discipline and love go hand in hand. i love the questions they ask. i love watching them sleep. i love nursing my babies. i love being pregnant. i love knowing God is growing a baby in there. that He’s knitting the details where i can’t see. i love the surprise of their birth. i love their smell. i love even the big-kids-playing-outside-top-of-their-head smell. i love how they interact with each other. i love how they love playing with their daddy. i love how they look packed like sardines across the back of the corolla. i love pick-ups, and hands-in-the-air-please-hold-me-mama looks. i love when they learn that first joke. and they realize the world is funny and they can create some that. i love the pictures they make and asking, “tell me all about it” because i can’t tell anything about it. i love their eyes when you tell them you got ‘em a surprise. i love seeing who they are and waiting to see who God made them to be. i love when they hold my hand and the softness of that hold. i love when they say, “i wuv wu mama” i love that they are as excited as me to get another brother or sister. i love how they make up games like catch the bouncy ball with the upside down bucket. i love when they discovered crisco while i wasn’t looking. i love how they take care of each other and then beat each other to a pulp the next second. i love the fingerprints all over everything.

WHAT I KNOW
i know we don’t have much money. i know that more babies puts a strain on the pocketbook and add more sleep deprivation. i know the chaos is not always joyful. i get tired, frustrated, fed up, and angry. the patience isn’t just handed over on a silver platter, after all. but it is given. i know that what i have is priceless at the end of the day. i know i wouldn’t trade what i have for all the money and time and sleep i’ve given up. i know this won’t last forever. i know it’s going faster everyday. i know God said they are a blessing from Him. i know He’s right.

i know i don’t want to miss this.