Monotony

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

January kicks my butt every year.  The holidays are over, the weather is blah, we’re stuck inside all the time.  Seasonal Affective Disorder at its finest. Ugh.

This week there isn’t anything special going on.  We made a quick trip last weekend to Nashville for Mark’s company’s big yearly party.  The kids stayed with my parents.  Mark and I got about 18 hours to ourselves.  It was lovely.  The best thing about the party was that a lot of people seemed to think I was 20 years younger than Mark.  That would make me in my early 20s!  I’ll take it!

So far this week, I’ve done nothing exciting…just the daily routine.  Wake, get ready, drop-off kids, work, pick-up kids, cook dinner/clean, bathe kids, put kids to bed, a little online time, maybe a little Kindle time, bed…repeat.  The monotony is underwhelming.

Oh, but monotony is not exempt from over-analysis…at least not by me!  I’ve noticed that as I get older, I pick-up more and more things…I’m am somehow able to juggle more things.  I guess my time-management skills are still improving.  :)   Also, laziness is less of an option; procrastination is less of an option.  Do I still procrastinate?  Yes!  Am I still sometimes lazier than I should be?  Yes!  I’m not gonna lie about that!  Still…things are so much different now than they were almost 7 years ago when I moved into this house.  Laziness is just more possible when you don’t have 2 small children relying on you.  The biggest change overall:  cooking.  I don’t really like to cook, but I barely even think about it at all anymore.  There are very few nights these days when I just DO NOT want to cook.  Very rarely do I just refuse anymore.  The kids have got to eat, right?

I’ve done weekly meal plans in the past, and I think they’re great.  I have just never been good at really sticking with them.  I’m way to fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants for that.  So, I’ve been doing a very diluted version.  I try to make sure we always have a few staples at hand.  This time of year my staples include spaghetti noodles, rice, kidney beans (for chili), onions, garlic, chicken broth and mixed vegetables.  That’s in addition to things like flour, salt, milk, butter, eggs, etc that I make sure we have at all times no matter what the season.  I shop a 2 stores each week.  Let me preface this by saying – we have a serious lack of good grocery stores in our little town.  I do the majority of my weekly shopping at Wal-Mart, but I refuse to buy meat there…it’s just icky.  So I go to another, smaller grocery store for meat only.  I get the staples at Wal-Mart and maybe some produce if it looks good.  Then I finish up at the smaller grocery store.  I go through and choose the meat for the week first.  As I do that, I mentally make a menu for the week in my head.  I usually have one particular recipe (or maybe “recipe” is more accurate) in mind for each package of meat.  This week went sort of like this:

1) Ground beef – hamburgers, chili or tacos
2) Chicken breasts – chicken pot pies, chicken & dumplings, or chicken & noodles
3) Pork chops – BBQ, oven fried
4) thin “breakfast” steaks – almost always for fajitas, sometimes for steak & rice
5) Beef stew meat – Crockpot stroganoff
6) Thinly sliced pork chops – fried rice
7) Italian sausage – spaghetti/pasta bake

The ones I’ve actually made so far are in bold.  Of course, I already had plenty of things on hand to make these into complete meals…veggies, rice, cheese (for tacos), etc.  Tonight I had planned to make spaghetti, but I had failed in my mission to always have my staples on hand…I was missing the spaghetti noodles.  *Eyeroll*.  So, instead, I cooked some pasta shells, browned the sausage, mixed it all together with sauce, topped it with cheese & baked it for 15 minutes or so.  Easy.  Not too bad either.  The kids, who never eat all that well at dinner, ate it up without any prodding.  Anna even asked for more.  Whoa!

So, yeah, the day to day thing is monotonous at best.  Sometimes I just have to step back and marvel at the fact that I can (and do) handle it all.

 

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New and improved (with pictures!)

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

Well, since I typed it all out last night, I figured I would try to post some pictures tonight.  We’ve gotten so much done in the last 2 weeks.  I’ll start with pictures of the porch:

Ignore the child wearing ladybug boots in the mismatched ballerina costume…Here you can see the completed (except for one last coat of paint) drywall and the floor.  The floor still needs to be stained and sealed:

From a different angle, this is perhaps a truer representation of the color.  It’s a very light celery-ish green:

Moving on to Anna’s room.  Here’s her bed with her new quilt (that my mother made!) and her menagerie of stuffed animals:

And here it is from another angle…again, a better representation of the color:

And lastly, here’s the hallway that we just started this week…this is from the same angle as the picture I posted last night.  We still have another coat of paint to go:

And a close up so you can better see the texture of the wallpaper:

And there you have it…2 weeks worth of work on 3 separate rooms.  We still have so much to do, but the changes are rather amazing!

And just for fun, here are a few pictures of the kids engaging in one of their new favorite activities, dress-up:

William the giraffe (or is a llama?  We don’t really know.):

Anna the ladybug looking a little sheepish about the disaster area of a room she’s standing in:

And a little sibling love (Awwww).  Seriously, look at that room!  :

 

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Moving on…

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit.  I try hard to get at least one post a week in, but I am kind of struggling to do even that lately.  Long story short…things are busy around here!

In the last few weeks we have resumed our “big” project and worked on a couple smaller related projects.  We finished the drywall on the porch, finished painting the ceiling, put one coat of paint on the walls and put down the floor.  Still to do:  staining/finishing the floor, a second coat of paint on the walls, and hanging all the trim.  The trim…oh how I’m dreading it.  I don’t think crown molding is fun to deal with in any situation, but in our old, crooked house, it’s sure to be hell.  I’m so happy to have something that looks a lot like an actual room again.  We lived with partially finished walls, a partially finished ceiling and nothing but the sub-floor on the floor for the better part of 6 months.  It feels so good to walk on something really solid in there!  It also feels good to have walls – finished walls that even have COLOR on them!  I can’t believe how long we’ve drawn out this project!

Since we took out an interior window out, we had to patch a large section of drywall in Anna’s room.  We had the section of drywall fitted and screwed into place in her room in July.  That’s right…I said July.  When we began finishing the drywall after an incredibly long hiatus, Mark finished the drywall in Anna’s room as well.  This past Sunday we painted her room.  I had only intended to start painting in there on Sunday, but once we got so far into it, I was bound and determined to finish!  It’s pink.  Very, very pink.  We rearranged her furniture a little and brought in a big bookcase to help with book and toy storage.  I bought a shelf to go over her dresser so we can display some of her special things without the danger of them being reached by little hands.  I hung some of her pictures on Monday and am trying to think of some creative ways to frame some of her artwork from daycare.  The one big thing that is missing is an overhead light.  There is no overhead outlet in her room so we will either have to install one or I will have to get creative to make something else work.

This week we’ve been working on the small hallway in the center of the house.  It opens to 4 rooms:  the new and improved porch, Anna’s room, our room and the bathroom.  It’s been plagued by ugly wallpaper since I’ve lived here (and no doubt for years before that).  Ignore the pregnant belly below & just notice the awfulness of this wallpaper:


It seriously had to go, and go it did…last night.  Stripping wallpaper is a pain!  I bought new wallpaper on Monday – the paintable kind even though Mark swore he would never ever work with paintable wallpaper again.  We hung the new wallpaper tonight.  Tomorrow night we paint!  We still will need to redo the trim in this hallway, but we plan to do that when we do the trim on the porch.

Also, on the home improvement horizon – insulation in the attic.  We’re renting a machine to blow the insulation in…it ought to be quite an experience!  I’m so looking forward to the energy savings, though.  It had better be worth it!  I can’t imagine that it won’t help considering there is NO insulation in portions of our attic now.

There will be plenty of pictures to come, but that’s going to have to be all for tonight.  I made myself tired just typing that!

 

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A Sad Goodbye

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

My great-grandmother’s funeral was this past Saturday.  I wanted to write about it and thought a lot about what I would write on the 3 hour trip each way.  In the end, I had to just wait until I felt like the words were there.  I don’t know how “there” they are now, but I feel ready to write, so here it goes…

I made the decision to travel alone to the funeral.  The kids are too young to be at the funeral home, Mark would have had to keep them at my grandmother’s house the whole time.  I would have loved to have had Mark there to support me, but in the end, I think leaving him at home with the kids was the best choice for me.  I didn’t have to stress about keeping them happy and entertained in the car, I didn’t have to worry about how they would sleep away from home (which with William is a big worry!), I didn’t have to worry about them being upset by everyone around them being upset.  So I left Friday afternoon alone.  The drive is boring, I had plenty of time to think…probably a little too much.  There were long stretches where I was just fine and equally long stretches where memories of Mammaw would just flood into my mind.  My iPod did not help my cause.  I cried a lot.  I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.

In a matter of 3 hours I was there, at the funeral home…this was the part I was dreading.  I guess I just don’t get this particular cultural custom.  Or I just don’t like it (not that anyone really does).  It was one of those “ripping off the band-aid” moments.  I knew how much it would hurt, but I knew the moment would only last, well, a moment.  Seeing someone I loved so much for my whole life lying there…hurt so much.  I guess the seeing it makes it more real.  I was among the first of the family to arrive at the funeral home.  My mom was there at that point, my grandmother, 1 sister and her husband, a cousin or 2, an uncle and 2 aunts.  My sister was with me for that most difficult moment and I was glad she was.  It hurts to just think about it.

My dad arrived shortly after with my other 2 sisters.  He had (with the help of one of my sisters) made a slideshow of pictures of my great-grandmother and the whole family.  Soon, our focus shifted to the TV screen on one side of the room as we all watched the slideshow.  We still cried, but we smiled too.  We laughed at our bad 80s hair, we groaned at some supremely un-photogenic moments, we smiled at pictures of Mammaw smiling…looking how she always looked, I felt appropriately awkward when 1 lone picture of  my ex-husband and me flashed up on the screen.  Oops…that one didn’t get pulled!  It was funny, though…and Lee loved Mammaw, so he got to “be” at the funeral despite being in Kuwait.  :)   The pictures were wonderful…a way to celebrate and display what she was so proud of – her family.

She had a lot to be proud of…42 direct descendents, the youngest of whom was born very early Saturday morning, just hours before the funeral.  I know she loved us all, and to say we all loved her is an understatement.  She was such a special lady.  What I love to remember so much is the little sparkle in her eye…maybe a bit mischievous, at times maybe a bit contrary.  She was always so happy to see us, I remember how proud she looked holding my babies.  It breaks my heart that they don’t get to grow up knowing her.

In a nutshell…it was a hard weekend, a sad weekend, but there was a silver lining.  I’m pretty sure Mammaw made sure of that.  Mingled in with the grief, there was pride and love.  I tried to look at our family from the outside.  I don’t know that I have ever really done that.  If I were on the outside, though…I’d want to be a part of my family.  We are a closer-knit group than our geography would lead you to believe.  I am so proud of my family.  I can only imagine what Mammaw herself must have thought when we were all together, it must be amazing (and overwhelming) to see the huge family you created.

The moment from this weekend that sticks out the most was one of the hardest.  It happened right before the funeral actually began, when we, as a family, had a chance to say our goodbyes.  Mammaw’s children went first, my grandmother, her 2 sisters-in-law and her brother.  Then my mother and her sisters, my dad and uncle.  Then the great-grandchildren, my sisters and me.  We didn’t go one-by-one as I guess I expected us to.  We went together, our arms around each other, 4 across.  We did say our individual goodbyes (amazing how differently we all do that), but it was memorable to me how together I felt we were.  We sat through the service flanked by our parents, the 6 of us taking up an entire pew.  The six of us…my nuclear family of origin.  It’s so rare these days for anything to be just the 6 of us…now there are 3 husbands and a boyfriend, 8 children between 3 of us 4 girls.  I don’t mind all the extra family (that we’ve created) at all, it’s just hard to remember sometimes that it used to always be the 6 of us.
So, that’s what my Mammaw gave me this weekend…a reminder to not forget where I came from, a chance to feel the ties that are there between us that sometimes are ignored, and the opportunity to see that I come from some pretty good stock.  She reminded me that she’s there in all of us…She is there in me, she is there in my kids, and she’ll be there in their kids.  I couldn’t imagine a better spirit to pass on…Throughout the funeral…the minister kept talking about her life being a life well-lived, and it was…

 

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Posted on January 5, 2012 by

I really want to write something beautiful and profound…a tribute to my great-grandmother, but I just can’t find the words today.  I have been caught strangely off-guard by my emotions today.

My Mammaw Deweese, my great-grandmother, passed away early this morning.  I got the news on my way to work this morning.  I’ve written about her a few times in the past month or so, and if you’ve read those posts, you know we knew this was coming soon.  I guess I thought that would make me feel a little less sad or something.  This morning, I felt stunned.  Actually stunned!  I knew this was coming…even knew it would likely be this week.  The news still surprised me.  I held it together fine all morning.  I had told my co-workers what was going on, that I would likely be out for a day or two.  As I told them each this morning that she had passed this morning, they each said sympathetic things.  I would thank them and then counter with…”well, we knew this was coming” or something similar.  Maybe I was trying to remind myself of that, I don’t know.  It didn’t take long, though, for the lump in my throat to appear.  I didn’t cry, but that lump was there and I just felt kind of heavy most of the day.  Once I got the call from my mom with the arrangements, it got worse.  I’m not a crier, and especially not a public crier.  I got choked up talking to my mom, then talking to one of my sisters, then talking to Mark.  I had to go hide out in the bathroom for a few minutes so I could compose myself.  I just didn’t expect to feel like this exactly.  I knew I would be sad, of course, but she had not been well for quite sometime.  She was ready to go, and I know that.  I try to find comfort in that.  I just miss her, but then I’ve been missing her for quite sometime…I know she is better off, and in my mind, I see her happy and well again…reunited with my great-grandfather (who died when I was a baby) and her son who passed away a few years ago.

I have so many happy memories of her, and I know she wouldn’t want any of us to be sad right now.

I went searching through my pictures to find a few of her.  Rather than get myself anymore upset than I already am, I’ll just close with some pictures, these are all from within the last 5 years:

Meeting Anna for the first time:

5 generations:

Meeting William for the first time (oh, she loved that his name was William!):

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Same Auld Lang Syne

Posted on January 2, 2012 by

Yeah, that’s the title of a Dan Fogelberg song…what is this world coming to…
Lately my thoughts have been all over the place.  That makes blogging hard…There are 3 separate things I want to write about, but I can’t decide which direction to go.  So, rather than go no direction at all, I’ll just start typing and see where I end up.

The beginning of a new year is always sort of exciting to me.  It’s a chance to “reset”…start with a clean slate.  Obviously, I’m not the only one that feels this way.  I think humans just need beginnings and ends, starts and stops, a chance to start fresh.  So here it is, in the form of a brand new year.  I don’t really do resolutions anymore because they always seem to be forgotten by the end of January.  So, I’ll just say there are many things I’m working on, some big things and lots of little things.
2011 wasn’t too bad for us.  Things settled down with our jobs.  Neither of us changed jobs this year, which was a lovely change…We were talking about how many W2′s we were expecting before we could start getting our taxes together.  Just 2 this year…that hasn’t happened since 2007!  Either one or both of us changed job every year from then until now.  The kids have grown and changed so much this year, just as they should.  We continue to feel our way this maze of parenthood.  It’s always full of surprises!  We have plenty to be thankful for and just enough stress to keep things interesting (I guess).
We started off the last day of 2011 with a family trip to Lowe’s.  We have a project to finish!  We bought gutters for the outside (kind of stating the obvious…most people don’t use them inside) and lots of paint (for both the porch and for Anna’s room).  We picked up lunch on the way home and the kids sat on the deck (it was like 65 degrees!) and ate:

We had a pretty happy close to 2011.  We spent it at home.  I had a *bit* more sparkling red wine than was advisable, but…it wasn’t a bad way to end my year.

Sadly, it looks like this year will be starting off on a somber note.  My great-grandmother was admitted to the hospital over the weekend – pneumonia.  She’s weak and the doctor said it may only be a number of days.  My mother has been keeping the family (including me) updated via email and I was somewhat surprised by the emotions that last email brought to the surface.  I know she’s ready to go, I know her body is weak and tired, and I know that at just a month and a half shy of 99 years old, this isn’t exactly unexpected.  Still, it hurts so much to lose someone you love.  Right now, I just hope she’s as comfortable as she can be…and I hope, when it’s her time, she goes peacefully.

************************************

I have to totally shift gears now.  A bit abrupt, but there is just no easy segue from that.

Mark and I were both had the day off today.  The kids did have daycare, though.  As guilty as I felt sending them while Mark and I stayed home, I sent them anyway.  Mark and I had work to do, and we were very productive today!  We’ve picked up where we left off with our renovation project that we started in July!  We worked on the drywall all day long.  We put a coat of paint on half of the ceiling before we ran out of ceiling paint.  Almost all the walls have a coat of primer on them too.  It’s weird to see that room even this close to finished.  We still have to finish a spot or 2 of drywall sanding, finish priming, paint, do the floor and figure out how we’re going to do the trim.  Progress feels good though.

Over that door still needs lots of work…and that last picture just highlights the fact that there are NO right angles in our house.  Ugh.  Anyway, it won’t be long until we’re able to paint the room an actual color!  It’s a light sort of celery green.
We also got paint for Anna’s room.  Since we took out that crazy interior window we had to patch the drywall in her room too.  That needs a little more sanding and then we’ll be ready to paint in there.  Here’s is a very pale pink.  Now I’m all excited about making her room an actual little girl’s room.  She has no overhead light in there, so I’ve been searching hard for a swag chandelier for in there.  Mark thinks I’m nuts.  Part of me thinks I’m nuts too, but I just think a little white mini-chandelier would be so cute in there!  I’ve been burning up Pinterest looking for ideas!

And now, it’s finally Anna’s bedtime…time for me to wind down, get ready for tomorrow and, hopefully, find time to read a bit before I pass out from exhaustion…I am SORE from all that sanding!

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Lessons learned from Pandora (Part 1)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by

Oh, how I love Pandora!  I stuck it on the 90′s pop genre station yesterday while I cleaned.  The kids got acquainted with 90′s music and I had a lovely trip down memory lane.  I’m listening to it again as I type this.

Currently…Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve is playing.  Ah…the 90′s!  I learned some things yesterday while listening to this particular Pandora channel:

1) Sadly, I still know almost all the words to Ice, Ice Baby.  When does that go away?  Ever?  Does it make it more acceptable that I was in middle school when it came out?  Can that be my excuse?

2) William is a big fan of Jump Around by House of Pain.

3) Related to #2 – William has some serious moves for a 2 year old!  It was impressive!

4) Anna made me proud by having an appropriately negative reaction to The Spice Girls.  That’s my girl!  Whew!

***OMG – Pandora is playing Ice, Ice Baby again!  Sing along…you know you know the words too!  “Rollin’ in my 5.0, with my ragtop down so my hair can blow…”  I’m so sorry you had to experience that.  :/  Let’s pretend that never happened, ok?  Moving on…

5) There was some really crappy music that came from the 90′s.  What is Love by Haddaway anyone?  I can’t hear that song without thinking of A Night at the Roxbury.

6) Related to #5…William had an extremely horrified expression on his face when I started dancing to that song.  It was a completely appropriate reaction.  I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a dancer.  I was only doing it to make William laugh…unfortunately I may have scarred him for life instead. Maybe I should have thought that through before I did it.  Lesson learned.

Ok…that’s enough self-embarrassment for now!

I’ve been giving some thought to doing a 30 songs/30 days thing here on my blog.  I’ve seen it done on Facebook, but, you know, Facebook just isn’t wordy enough for me!  I’m thinking I’ll stick with the format, but not the timeline…maybe one a week…every other week, something like that.  Here’s the list:

30 Songs in 30 Days

  • Day 01 – Your favorite song
  • Day 02 – Your least favorite song
  • Day 03 – A song that makes you happy
  • Day 04 – A song that makes you sad
  • Day 05 – A song that reminds you of someone
  • Day 06 – A song that reminds you of somewhere
  • Day 07 – A song that reminds you of a certain event
  • Day 08 – A song that you know all the words to
  • Day 09 – A song that you can dance to
  • Day 10 – A song that makes you fall asleep
  • Day 11 – A song from your favorite band
  • Day 12 – A song from a band you hate
  • Day 13 – A song that is a guilty pleasure
  • Day 14 – A song that no one would expect you to love
  • Day 15 – A song that describes you
  • Day 16 – A song that you used to love but now hate
  • Day 17 – A song that you hear often on the radio
  • Day 18 – A song that you wish you heard on the radio
  • Day 19 – A song from your favorite album
  • Day 20 – A song that you listen to when you’re angry
  • Day 21 – A song that you listen to when you’re happy
  • Day 22 – A song that you listen to when you’re sad
  • Day 23 – A song that you want to play at your wedding
  • Day 24 – A song that you want to play at your funeral
  • Day 25 – A song that makes you laugh
  • Day 26 – A song that you can play on an instrument
  • Day 27 – A song that you wish you could play
  • Day 28 – A song that makes you feel guilty
  • Day 29 – A song from your childhood
  • Day 30 – Your favorite song at this time last year

Now that I’m looking at that…it doesn’t look all that easy!  I think I’ll give it a shot anyway.  Aren’t you excited?  No?  You should be!

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Santa Claus came to town

Posted on December 24, 2011 by

Christmas is a busy time for us.  We visit with Mark’s family on Christmas Eve.  We travel very early in the morning to my Grandmother’s house on Christmas Day.  So, I made arrangements for Santa to come to our house last night instead of tonight.  On the way home from daycare yesterday, we talked about what kind of cookies we should make for Santa.  Not long after we had gotten home, we started baking cookies.  Thankfully not too many!  Anna chose peanut butter blossoms:

I asked Anna if she wanted to leave a note for Santa with the cookies & milk…she said yes, so I wrote it for her and she signed her name.  Can you tell she’s easily side-tracked?  It says:  Dear Santa, Anna & William made these cookies for you.  Children like candy and treat bags.  We had Smarties and juice. (I helped get her started with the first line…she took it from there…they had Smarties & juice in their treat bags at school yesterday.  Oh, and she wrote her name backwards…starting on the right.  It’s a good thing Anna is spelled the same backward as forward!

This morning I expected Anna to jump out of bed all excited about Santa’s visit.  She was practically bouncing with excitement when I put her to bed last night.  Mark’s mother (Gran) was coming to have breakfast and watch the kids open their Santa gifts.  I was hoping they’d sleep late enough or that I could keep them out of the living room until she got here.  As it turned out, Anna woke at her usual time, but stayed in bed.  I peeked in and saw that she was awake, so I got in her bed with her.  We talked and snuggled.  Even when I reminded her about Santa’s visit she didn’t jump up to go running to see what he’d brought.  Instead, she pulled a chair in the kitchen to “help” Daddy make breakfast.  She went with me to get William up a little later.  Once Gran got here, they followed her into the living room…then the fun began!

And the aftermath (post wrapping paper & box clean-up:

There is even more stuff in the little kitchen.  I had managed to get them to put all their new toy dishes, pots & pans and play food away (amazingly).  I think Santa did well!

More Christmas to come…this afternoon with Mark’s family and tomorrow morning with mine.  I don’t know if this morning was as magical for the kids as I had hoped, but I do think I did everything I could to help it along.  In the end…I think it’s the kids that provide the magic.  And I know I can say for sure, whatever sacrifices we had to make to provide this Christmas for them…it was worth it watching them unwrap their presents.  It was worth it to see how they really enjoy certain gifts just as much as I thought they would.

Merry Christmas to everyone!  I hope your visits from Santa are as happy as ours was!

 

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She’s making a list…

Posted on December 13, 2011 by

Today started off wonderfully…it was all downhill from there!  You learn something new everyday…and today I learned (in no particular order of importance):

1) White wrapping paper, even if it’s patterned, and especially if it’s cheap, is useless.  If you can see every word on the box even after it’s wrapped then what’s the point?

2) My kids are really crabby when they have ear infections.  Thankfully, neither has one right now as far as I know.  BUT I learned today that I am really crabby when I have an ear infection too.  Because it hurts like a b!#$%.  Seriously.  I totally get their crabbiness now.

3) No matter how many times you tell your toddler(s) not to touch the Christmas tree, they will still continue to touch the Christmas tree every chance they get.  You can remind them that their Elf on a Shelf is watching, that Santa is watching, you can threaten them with just about anything – it’s futile.  They cannot help themselves, It’s irresistible to them.

4) Closely related to #3…to Christmas ornaments toddlers are the enemy.  We’ve had many an ornament casualty this year.  It’s sad really.

5) When your husband is sick and you have an ear infection your night will not be fun.  The toddler screeches will be more grating than ever…the sound will ring in your head.  You will wish desperately that they had the ability to cook their own dinners, take their own baths and put themselves to bed. You will also wish they had the ability to cook you dinner, but that’s just dreaming a little too big, isn’t it?

6) Just because you think you have all your Christmas gifts wrapped, does not in fact mean you actually have all your Christmas gifts wrapped.  It may just mean you were previously delusional.  Or something like that.

7) The promise of a daycare Christmas party is a powerful thing.  Your 3-year-old daughter may have a major hissy fit about going to bed until you tell her that she needs to be well-rested for her Christmas party tomorrow.  Suddenly it’ll be like, “well, why didn’t you just say that in the first place, woman!  Let’s go!”

8 ) Even if you once knew the words to every Christmas song imaginable, when your 3-year-old asks you to sing more than one Christmas song, your mind will go blank.  And I mean B-L-A-N-K!

9) When your ear hurts, a small cat purring behind your head is really freaking annoying.  And painful.

10) When your ear hurts, bending over 100,000,000 times to pick 100,000,000 small socks is painful.  And annoying.

11) When your ear hurts, you can think of nothing but how much your ear hurts.

Do we see a theme?  Also, how is it that I’m 35 and this is the first ear infection I can remember ever having.  Maybe I had some as a kid, but I don’t remember them.

Oh, and did I mention that my ear is a *bit* sore?  Night, night!

 

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Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

Posted on December 7, 2011 by

Tomorrow my baby boy will be 2 years old.  Two years old!

Of course I barely remember life without him in it, but at the same time, it doesn’t seem like it could have possibly already been 2 years since he was born.  It’s difficult sometimes to extract my thoughts on Anna (my first child) from my thoughts about William.  Those comparisons are inevitable, but he is certainly his own little person.  His personality has really emerged in the last year or so.  I once worried that he’d be so laid back that Anna (with her very strong personality) would run all over him.  He was such a laid back baby, but he’s shown us, without a doubt, in the last year that he can hold his own with his sister.  He is no pushover!

I can’t seem to think about William’s birth without thinking about the preceding 9 months.  I’m not just talking about my pregnancy, but the circumstances of life at that time.  Mark was unemployed when I found out I was expecting again…I had been at my new job for not quite 2 weeks.  The timing was terrible.  I was scared, Mark was pissed…it was not much fun at our house for a few weeks.  Even in those first few weeks, bad timing or not…I would have done anything for that child.  I felt a bond with him immediately…before he was even as big as a pea.  It was different than it was with Anna’s pregnancy.  I was already a mother this time around, and I knew how much I could love a child of my own.  I already knew what my own, personal brand of maternal love felt like and I loved him fiercely…immediately…even though I was scared.

I will admit, my pregnancy with William wasn’t much fun.  My body hadn’t had time to recover fully from having Anna (who was 9 months old when I got pregnant again).  Between work, stress (both finance and marriage-related), and having a 1 year old to take care of, I was beyond tired.  The pregnancy aches started earlier and were worse all-around.  I felt him move very early on, and he moved a lot.  I regret not taking (or having?) the time to enjoy those little movements.  I used to make myself try to relax and enjoy feeling him wiggle and kick or hiccup…knowing that, most likely, this would be my last pregnancy.  Gosh, suddenly that makes me sad.  :(

The morning William was born it was chilly and rainy…We woke very early because we had to be in the hospital in Jackson (an hour away) by 7am.  We got ourselves ready then quickly got Anna up and dressed.  It was still dark when we left.  Anna ate Cheerios in the back seat.  I looked at the Christmas lights along the way.  We ran into some traffic as we came into Jackson, by then I was starting to get anxious.  We met my parents at the hospital just before 7:00…I remember moving the carseat from my car to theirs…tightening the LATCH straps as tight as I could get them with my knee pressed into the seat.  I remember my dad saying something to the effect of “let me do that, you’re 9 months pregnant…go have a baby!”.  I cried when I handed Anna off to my parents.  It seems surreal thinking back on it now.  I’ll skip over all the details…you can read the whole story here.  The things I remember the most…the warm blankets they put on me just before they gave me my spinal block, Silver Bells playing in the operating room (he was delivered by c-section), how they brought him around so I could see him just after he was born and he was so, so tiny, the way he cried…just a small, whimpering cry for the first hour or so after he was born, the way his bottom lip stuck out as he cried…he still does that.  Can you see it?

That picture was taken in the recovery room…less than an hour after he was born.  My mom is holding Anna (who looks totally unimpressed), Mark is holding William.  Just look how tiny he was…just 6lbs, 3oz.

I remember holding him for the first time.  He felt unbelievably small to me.  I guess I had gotten used to holding an 18 month old as opposed to a newborn.  He wasn’t that much smaller than Anna was when she was born (6lbs, 12oz.).  He was so, so precious…

I swear he got even cuter as he grew:

One month old

6 months old

1 year old

18 months old

Almost 2 years old (this past weekend)

My boy is funny and affectionate.  He gives the best kisses and hugs.  He is also defiant and determined and loves to torment his sister.  When we first found out we were having a son, I wasn’t sure how I would do with a boy child.  It’s been fine – completely different than having a daughter, but I love his little spirit.  He’s been a surprise in every way.  He’s a crazy, rough, messy boy…but he’s so special to me.  Happy 2nd birthday baby boy!  I love my little William.

 

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