@MandyLeigh1123 I certainly won't put down tall folks. My dad's pretty tall actually. But I much prefer being short. :)
— Patrick Stump (@PatrickStump) February 8, 2014

Life goes on...

Apparently it doesn't matter if I post on here or not, things continue to happen. My children continue to age and, unfortunately so do I. Yesterday my sweet little nephew who I consider to be my surrogate child and whose appearance in this world changed my life for the better, turned 14 *gasp*. My oldest kid will be 12 in just over a month. He is now in middle school and has braces and a girlfriend. No one asked me if this was okay. I had this realization a few weeks ago, which may seem really stupidly obvious to everyone else, that my children will be men someday. Men. Not sweet little snuggly boys. I am not sure I am comfortable with that. I guess it is good that they are so far apart (9 years, 6 months, 11 hours, and 10 minutes to be precise) because as the big one gets less snuggly, I still have one I can smother with attention. For now.

Daycare sucks

I feel like I should be doing a better job of keeping up with this, because someday, when I am gone, my children will read this and have fond memories of their mother. I don't keep a diary or scrapbook, I haven't been working on my memoirs in my spare time; so this is probably all they will have.

Somehow, I turned 35. I have two awesome kids, a great husband and am slightly over-employed as I work two jobs. It sounds worse than it is. I stopped working full-time at Target after Owen was born, because, well, daycare is obscenely expensive and I would probably be working there just to pay for it. Fortunately for me, my father decided it was time for him to retire after 40+ years of preparing taxes. So, now I work for him with the idea that, eventually, I will take over. I do still work for Target, but only have 10 hours a week and it involves me going to Wal-Mart to compare their prices on certain items with ours. It is a pretty sweet deal since I don't actually have to work in the store (no red & khaki!) and I still get the discount. Plus, I can go whenever I want, and take the baby if I need to.

Last tax season Owen came to work with me. He was small, immobile and slept most of the day. Now, a year later he is still fairly small, but extremely mobile and not so much into that whole sleeping thing. Since the end of last tax season, I have been working in the office only one day a week and it has been extremely challenging getting anything done with a toddler rifling through your trash and pulling the books off the shelf. So we made the decision to send him to daycare, which the company is paying for so I don't have to put my whole paycheck towards that. It sucks that he is not here all the time for me to snuggle with, but, honestly, he doesn't snuggle much anymore and I would never be able to get anything done.

We eased into the transition to daycare, as much for him as for me, and it went good for the first few days. Then one day he realized what was going on and that when Mom went out the door, she wasn't coming back for a while. He sobbed and clung to my legs. I made it to the car before I lost it and had to pull the car over on the way to work so I could cry uncontrollably. Since then it has gotten a little better each time. Now, he just looks at me as I leave. He will only be there full-time until the end of tax season. I have a countdown on my desk calendar already.

I was really lucky with Miles, I was able to work nights, which meant I could stay home with him. I didn't send him to daycare until he was 3, and then it was only so he could be around other kids and i could have some quiet time. It was hard leaving my baby with someone else, but he seems to really like it there and has a good time once I leave. Still, I can't wait until April when I will get spend more than a couple of hours a day with him.

83 days.

time flies...

The first six months of Miles' life seemed to last, at the very least, a year and a half. He was a phenomenally cranky baby, didn't want to go to sleep, allergic to milk and, therefore, rashy and itchy until we figured it out. It was probably the most stressful time of my life. I loved my baby, but I had no idea what I was doing and it was so overwhelming. So why have another one? Because the second one is so much easier. I want to clarify that my desire to have a second child was not based on any false modesty on my part in thinking that I know what I am doing with this whole parenting thing. I don't, I make it up as I go along. However, it does feel gratifying knowing that my oldest child has made it to the age of 10 without any major trauma along the way. None of us has run away from home (as tempting as it seems sometimes) and we all still like each other, most of the time.

So I tempted the fates and went through hell and back to have my second baby. And...it's true. He is the best baby ever. It kind of makes me feel bad about how crabby I was with Miles, but he seems to have turned out okay, so I can't stress about it too much. And now Owen is 9 months old. I honestly have no idea where the time has gone. I feel like time is flying so fast I am afraid I am going to miss something important. He is already crawling and standing. He has teeth. He eats semi-solid foods. He will be in high school by next week, I know it. As I am typing this he is upstairs in his crib calling to me. When I go in his room he will be standing up waiting to greet me. Yay.

Almost ready...

So, I haven't posted in a dog's age, but I feel compelled to do it now. In less than 39 hours I will be in the hospital giving birth to my second, and final, child. A lot has happened since I posted last. 2009 was a pretty shitty year all around. Erik's beloved grandfather who was best man at our wedding and basically his best friend, died in March. It was the worst thing ever, it all happened very quickly - a matter of weeks- which in a way is a blessing, but also tough to deal with. In the fall my aunt Janice passed away and we had to put our beloved Brain to sleep. I had Brain for 12 years - almost her entire life- and I really am not sure I will ever be able to think about her without tearing up. She was with me through a lot of stuff; two states, multiple houses, two husbands, good times and bad. She got sick very suddenly and there wasn't anything we could do without causing a lot of suffering, which may not have helped anyway. Making that decision was the hardest thing I have ever done and I am crying now just thinking about it. I was with her at the end and that makes me feel better, but it still hurts.

At the beginning of 2009 I had made a pact of sorts with myself that if I wasn't pregnant by the end of the year I was going to give up. In November I turned 33 and we had been trying for another baby for 4 years off and on. I finally went to the doctor and figured out what the problem was, but it still wasn't happening. I have the mindset that if something is meant to happen it will and I decided that if it hadn't happened by then, that was the sign I was meant to just have one. So, imagine my surprise when, two days before Christmas I peed on a stick and saw two lines! I was in shock, I had lost count of how many tests I had taken up to that point and they were always negative. So here we are with another boy coming the day after tomorrow. He is not due to be born until next week, but I am having a scheduled c-section at 7:45 in the morning on Tuesday August 24. We are ready for this baby to come, but I am still scared and nervous. I haven't had a baby in almost 10 years, hopefully I haven't forgotten how to do everything.

We never found out ahead of time what we were having with Miles, I really liked the idea of a surprise, but also we lived in a one bedroom apartment at the time and, therefore, had no nursery to decorate. Most of the things we had for him were hand-me-downs, so there wasn't much choice for us even if we had known. This time I thought I would feel the same way, but I decided very quickly that I wanted to know and Miles absolutely insisted we find out. We were anxiously awaiting my 20th week when I had an ultrasound scheduled so we could see if it was a boy or girl. Fate, however, stepped in when I had a abnormal test result that made it necessary for me to have an amniocentesis at around 16 weeks. They did an ultrasound along with it, but were unable to see any important parts during that. When the test results came back they first told me that everything was fine and then that we were having another boy! We are all very excited, especially Miles who is happy to have someone to pass his toys along to.

Who knows when I will have time or feel the need to post again. For now, I am off to put my feet up and enjoy the peace and quiet that will soon disappear.

Brain

I miss my cat. :(

Thanksgiving sucks

The day after tomorrow is Thanksgiving, my least favorite holiday. Why do I hate it so much? Probably because my birthday occasionally falls on it and that pisses me off. I strongly dislike having to do things I don't want to do on my birthday. Speaking of that, yesterday I turned 33. So far it feels the same as 32 did, but I am sure it will set in eventually. I've been feeling old for a while now and I was cheered to realize that when my mother was 33 I wasn't even born yet. My child is eight, and he is only nine inches shorter than me. He is definitely his father's child.

So on Thursday there will be 9-10 people eating dinner at my house. I honestly prefer having it here to going to someone else's house, that way I know I am getting what I want. I have many things to do in preparation; pies to bake, cleaning to do, and other crap I don't need to do, but probably will anyway because I am obsessed with making everything perfect.

Right now Miles and Erik are in the living room watching 'The Wizard of Oz', which is, quite possibly, my least favorite movie of all time. It's weird and creepy with flying monkeys and midgets dressed up in rainbow-colored clothing. I am avoiding that room at all costs.