Ripe For Reader: Blog Tour - THROUGH INFINITY & THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES by Libby Austin

Through Infinity

By Libby Austin

Candice and Jason Woodruff had everything going for them: a strong marriage, the family they'd dreamed of, and successful businesses. When they made their wedding vows, they promised to love each other through infinity and beyond...but Candice doesn't remember making that vow. Candice doesn't remember the last eighteen years.

After a medical emergency, Candice awakens to find herself a married mother of four. She's surrounded by a loving family of strangers, but Candice struggles to claim an identity while learning to be a wife and mother.
Candice is no longer the same woman Jason fell in love with all those years ago. Can they learn to love each other in this new reality?

Through Infinity is one woman's journey as she rediscovers the love of her husband and children. But will that new found love be strong enough to carry them through infinity and beyond...

Previously Posted Review Link: http://ripeforreader.blogspot.ca/2014/11/through-infinity-by-libby-austin.html

Thanks for the Memories

by Libby Austin

Jason knew Candice's biggest Christmas wish was to remember the past eighteen years. As Thanksgiving approached, Candice retreated further within herself. Jason enlisted the help of their family and friends to grant Candice's wish. Each shared their cherished memories and placed them in a tin. Surprised to find the collection of tins, she couldn't help but wonder what was inside.

With each memory, Candice felt a little more connected to the life and people she'd forgotten in the wake of her accident. Each one brought a sense of fulfillment and longing. When Christmas day arrived, would Candice be able to say thanks for the memories?

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I Got This

Coming home when Rissa was already a few months old made me want to prove I could take care of her. Fortunately, for the most part, she was a pretty easy baby. I was feeling pretty confident. This fatherhood thing wasn’t as hard as everybody made it out to be. Oh little did I know.

A few nights after I got home from deployment, we went out to dinner with our moms before they flew home. We’d been at the restaurant close to an hour when Rissa started to get fussy. She didn’t want a bottle or a pacifier. None of the positions I tried were working. You reached for her, but I said, “Just wait, I gotta learn.” A minute or two later she quieted down. I’d found what worked, bouncing on my knee, or so I thought. Feeling a bit smug, I told you, “See, I got this.” You gave a small nod and smiled like you knew something I didn’t know. If I’d been a smart man, I would have heeded the warning from the experienced parent.

It wasn’t long before you glanced down and grinned like the cat who ate the canary. My chair was angled away from the table so I had room for Rissa on my lap. As you nodded your head toward me and smirked, you asked, “Did you have an accident?’

I followed your gaze and looked down at my lap to find a big wet spot seeping out from under Rissa. “She peed on me!”

“Ugh, babe, I don’t think that’s pee.”

“Oh, nasty!” I tried to hand Rissa to you, but you were having none of it.

You shook your head, held your hands up, and said, “Remember—you got this. So get to getting.”

Desperate, I looked to our moms for help, but I instantly knew they were on Team Mom and I was on my own. By this point, Rissa had started crying at full volume. After about five minutes of watching me struggle to get her out of the poop infested clothes and diaper, you took pity on me, or Rissa at least, and started changing her.

After bending her in half, which I didn’t know was possible, you had a fresh diaper on her before I blinked. To this day, I don’t know how you changed diapers that quickly. Although, I’m pretty sure most of the liquid poop was on my lap, so there wasn’t much for you to have to clean.

The front of my pants were covered in baby shit. I used every napkin we had at the table, then asked the waiter for more and another glass of water. By the time I was done scrubbing my pants, I looked like I’d pissed myself. The three of you thought it was hilarious that I had to walk out of the restaurant holding the diaper bag in front of me. Y’all had quite the time yucking it up at my expense.

I learned a valuable lesson; it’s okay to ask for help as a parent, and nobody has all of the answers when it comes to kids. But I’ll admit to some satisfaction when Xavier crapped all over you when he was a couple of weeks old. While I got it in my lap, he got you from head to waist. I also learned he who laughs last, laughs loudest.

I couldn’t believe that nobody helped him. My mom was a sucker for a crying baby, and his mom was a sweetheart. I couldn’t picture either of them letting Jason struggle or Rissa cry while she was covered in poop. This story needed to be verified.

The phone rang a couple of times before Marlene picked up. “Hello.”

“Hey, Marlene.”

“Hey, sweetie. What are y’all up to?”

“I just finished opening one of the memories.”

“Oh, really, are you enjoying them?”

“Yeah, they’re great. This one was one of Jason’s. He told the story about Rissa pooping on him in a
restaurant—”

“Oh, good grief,” she laughed, “he’s never gonna let that go—”

“It really happened? And he changed her at the table?”

“Oh the naiveté of the new parent.” Okay, no faulting her logic there, but seriously, why would you change a baby’s diaper where you were eating? Ewww “The restaurant was this little hole in the wall Mexican place. I have no idea how it wasn’t shut down by the health department. We would have probably needed a tetanus shot if we’d gone to the bathroom there. The spot on his pants wasn’t even that bad. If he’d of just waited until we got back to the house to clean his pants nobody would have even noticed.

“You’d would’ve thought he was the first parent to ever get crapped on by a baby. When we got to the car to go home, he pulled off his shorts & put them in a plastic bag from the trunk. Then he took a forty-five minute shower we got to y’all’s townhouse. Who would have thought that a grown man would be bested by one poopy diaper?”

One day some words came to mind, so I wrote them down. Soon the words became sentences, which formed paragraphs, which, in turn, formed chapters. Before long, those words had become a book.

When I'm not reading or writing, I'm a wife, mother, and business owner. I've lived on the Gulf, East, and West Coasts, but as a born and raised Southern girl, my favorite will always be the Gulf Coast. There's just no place like home...