A milestone on Thanksgiving...

Baby C rolled over today! Right in the middle of our Thanksgiving celebration he did it. We have known it was coming for a couple of weeks, as he has been getting WAY up on his side, and today he did it. I think he knew it would be even MORE exciting if he did it in front of a whole group of people :-) And then he did it again. And again! The look on his face the first time he did it was priceless...like "Whoa! How the heck did I get like this, Mom?!" and then "Hey, I'mma do that AGAIN!" He got a little scared at the roar of everyone cheering for him, but then he was right back at it.

Ahhh, they grow TOO fast! Soon, we will be chasing him everywhere, wishing he would be IMmobile for just two minutes ;-)

Hope everyone had (or is having, I guess) a wonderful Thanksgiving.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Every day on my way to work, I drive past a billboard for our state lottery. It is one for the BIG lotto game, where the jackpot never is less than 20 million. It changes whenever someone doesn't win to show the new estimated jackpot amount, and says things like

'25 million ways to thank your parents'

or

'85 million less minutes you will have to spend at work'

The game draws winners on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so AT LEAST 2 times per week I end up looking at the sign and I start day dreaming about what *I* would do if I won 20+ million dollars. I have to admit, I really like that dream.

I would travel to warm, exotic and interesting places with my immediate family, as well as take my closest family and friends on a group vacation somewhere fun and far away.

W could go to college - I would LOVE to see him be able to not work and just go to a 4 year college. He would do SO WELL with learning now. He has always been smart, but could have cared less about learning when he was younger. NOW, though, he would just soak up all of the knowlege to be had, I just know it. He would kick some college learning ass.

I would take some photography classes to get some formal schooling in that photography shit that I love so well, and I could open my own studio, and if nothing else, take free photographs of my friends and family.

I would put money away for each of the boys for college. I would make sure there was plenty there - who the hell knows how much college is going to cost by the time they are that age.

I would have AT LEAST one more baby. And maybe I would just go on having babies until my uterus fell out, who knows? If I could afford them I just may, because I KNOW I could LOVE them.

I would pay off my parents' bills and get them on their feet, and do what I had to so that they could retire and just enjoy their years. I am only being honest when I say that neither of them are going to live so long that if I won 20+ million dollars I wouldn't be able to support them until they died. Although, if I had that money, I would pay for my Dad to go to rehab. The BEST rehab. And hopefully it would work, and it would give him more years than he has on his current path.

I would help my brother - probably pay off his mortgage at least, so he could relax a little and not have to be so stressed.

I would help a few of my bestest friends who are SO deserving and could use a little hand up. I would hope I could do it in a way that they would not feel insulted, or inadequate or whatever; I hope they could know that I only wanted to help them a little because I LOVE them, and because they do SO deserve it.


I would pay off my house, and replace the windows and siding, put in central AC, replace the flooring in the kitchen / bathroom / entry, put up the retaining wall that is needed in the back (because our house is slowing sinking in the back - you can see that the addition on that side is slowly falling away from the rest of the house - yikes!), fill in the old cistern that we have discovered back there, put up a new garage (which is also falling down), and then sell it. Probably for cheap to someone who could really use a nice starter house. I would buy a bigger house - probably twice as big, around 3000 sf would do us plenty. Probably an older home that has been restored - we love that old charm.

I would buy a new car - probably a Nissan Maxima. Sweet :-) And I would give my car away to someone who could really use it.

I would give to charities that help impoverished people in our own country, as well as abroad. I would give to charities that help children who are dying realize a dream before they die. I would give to charities that help animals.

**SIGH** I sure do love that dream...

I love that dream because, above all, 20+ million dollars would buy me so much time. Time that, right now, I don't get to spend on the really important things, such as my family, because I am busy working to pay for things like food and shelter. And less important, but still desired things like cars, toys (for big and little kids alike), vacations, etc, etc. It would buy me time to persue hobbies, and to volunteer and time to just enjoy LIFE that doesn't involve working for a greedy boss to scrape by.

W says that it would be the worst thing that ever happened to a person; that it would RUIN a person. But I say only if you let it.

Maybe one of these days I should start buying that one lottery ticket per week that I always say I am gonna buy so I could actually have a shot at that dream, huh?

Funny, and yet not...

Someone just reminded me of this story, and I had to share it with y'all, because it made me laugh hard and shake my head at the same time.

So W is still a full time smoker. Of cigarettes. I quit smoking when I got preggo with L over 3 years ago. Although, between you and me, I still have one once in awhile - like if we go out for the night, or when we were at the cabin sitting by the bonfire at night, or once in awhile if it has just been an exceptionally stressful day at work. What can I say, I always did like to smoke. It's relaxing. But I have REALLY no desire to go back to it on a regular basis. I find I smell much better now. Not to mention the health benefits of NOT smoking. But anywho...

So anyway, W and his mom are sitting in L's playroom the other night, L is riding around on his little indoor trike (I was cleaning up the kitchen) and I hear Gramma tell L to ride to the store and get her some something or other. So, L rides out into the livingroom and back into the playroom and they must have done this a couple of times pretending he was getting different stuff, and all of a sudden I hear him say

'Here's yer 'mokes dad, I got you some 'mokes at da store!! Here Gramma, here's yer licorice!"

Funny! And yet so.NOT.funny...

Feeling like crap

I am feeling like crap today. Head cold. Continuously running nose, sneezing, sore throat, sinus pressure / headache, watery eyes.

It started 2 days ago, but today is decidedly worse. Hopefully this will be the worst day and it will get better from here. L and the baby both have a little cold too...L was coughing all night - at least he is big enough to use Vicks on him, which did help.

I don't think you should be allowed to get sick when you have kids. There should really just be a law against it.

I know it was a hell of a lot easier to deal with being sick before I had kids when I knew that at least if I made it through the day at work, that I could go home, tell W to cook for his damn self, plop on the couch and sleep for a good 12 hours before I had to get up and do it again.

Ahhh, 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep sounds like heaven!

Now, I have to look forward to going home and dealing with a toddler and an infant, and if I am lucky, getting to sleep by 9pm. I can't really tell them to cook for their damn selves. Although we are just having pizza, so W can handle that, and hopefully I can at least lounge on the couch and just nurse the baby.

And maybe I will just leave the office door closed after I finish pumping and sneak in a 20 minute nap...that would help a bit too.

Hard

This is when it's hard.

When I am here, in my office pumping. Thiss is when I cannot help but think of his little self. If I close my eyes, I can picture him down there suckling. I can smell him and I can feel his fuzzy little head cupped in my palm like it is when he nurses. His chubby little hands resting on my breast, or wrapped around my finger. his little jaw moving; suck-suck-swallow...

I can see his face when his belly is full and he pulls of, looks me in the eyes, sticks his tongue out and smiles and coos at me. So content and full and happy. His new thing is blowing raspberries when he finishes. He lays there looking up at me smiling and blowing raspberries.

Yeah. This is when it's hard.

What?!?

So, awhile back, when C was probably around 6 weeks old, my sister in law had asked me how things were going with him, and I happened to mention that things were good, except it didn't feel like we were really falling into a napping routine during the day as much as L seemed to have been by that point. She has 3 babies, her third being just 2 months older than baby C. She mentioned she wanted to borrow me a copy of a book to read that she felt would help me. The book was Baby Wise. I had heard of it, and was interested in checking it out.

So I took it, and started reading it but I didn't get very far - it really turned me off from the start. I dunno why, I guess it just felt preachy and superior. Like, they would say they didn't think the 'other' way was wrong, but really it felt like that's exactly what they were saying. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I really just didn't think I liked where it was going.

She had asked me for it back the other day, so today I grabbed it and was heading over there. Before I headed out the door, I flipped through it quickly, thinking maybe I SHOULD have read it; maybe I would have gotten something useful out of it.

So I flipped to this one page, and it was talking basically about tending to your baby whenever it cries, and how if you give the baby attention right away every time it cries, then it will learn to expect immediate attention and they won't ever have any patience and will expect everything right away, etc etc. THEN it went on to correlate this idea to breast feeding, and that if a mother breast feeds 'on demand' whenever the baby wants to that the baby will learn to associate food with comfort, and that this could very well be a contributing factor to the obesity rate in our country!?!?!?!!??

WHAT?!!?

Ummm, yeah, pretty sure I personally was not going to find much useful information in THAT book. Not much that I could agree with anyway.

SERIOUSLY?! They honestly believe that nursing on demand is a contributing factor to childhood / adult obesity?! I find that absurd. I really do. Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is - I haven't done any research on it - but my gut instincts tell me that is absurd.

And I was reading something else the other day about babies that sleep through the night early on, but then start waking in the night to eat again, usually around 4 months. One camp is of the opinion that the mother should NOT give in to the baby and feed them in the night, because they obviously CAN go for 8, 10, 12 hours without eating, as they have been doing it previously, and so the baby (a 3 or 4 month old baby, mind you) is MANIPULATING the mother.

WHAT?!!?

SERIOUSLY?! A 3 month old? Manipulating? Really? I mean, the baby couldn't possibly be HUNGRY, right!?

I don't buy it. Nope. Not drinking that Kool-aid.

C has woken up the last 2 nights at right around 3AM to nurse, even though he has been sleeping from about 7:30pm until anywhere from 6-8am for 7 weeks now. And I am sorry, but you cannot convince me that he all of a sudden decided that he was going to *manipulate* me by making me nurse him just for kicks in the middle of the night. That baby is H-U-N-G-R-Y! He burns through both breasts and then lays back down and falls back to sleep.

I just don't get some people's mentalities when it comes to young babies. I have witnessed a mom letting a 3 month old 'cry it out' at nap time, and I just don't get it. Don't get me wrong - we resorted to some modified 'cry it out' stuff with Logan, but not until he was older, and I KNEW he was indeed old enough to try and 'manipulate', if you will, to get his way. But this was a THREE month old. And I could see that it was killing the mother to be there, listening to her baby cry and cry and cry in the other room, and not going in to comfort her. And it hurt ME to watch the entire scene. I know she was trying to 'train' the baby, because some book told her if she didn't 'nip it in the butt' now, that her baby would run her life forever, but I just don't get that. Not with a 3 month old.

Don't get me wrong. I *DO* believe that it is our job as parents to create healthy habits in our children, and I do know that it doesn't take long for a baby to get into the 'habit' of something, but I don't know. Those types of methods just seem so cold and UN-NATURAL to me.

Not comforting a baby when it cries seems wrong and unnatural to me.

Not feeding a baby when they are hungry, because some book or some person along the way said they should only need to eat every three hours seems wrong and unnatural to me.

Making a baby cry himself to sleep in an effort to train him to comfort himself seems wrong and unnatural to me.

I don't know - to each their own I guess, but all that crap just doesn't feel right in my heart and in my gut, and I am thinking I am glad I didn't waste my time reading that book. There are just so many books out there saying 'do this' and don't do that' and for every book that says one thing is the 'right way', there are 3 that say the exact opposite.

And, ya know, I am such an anxious, type A, Capricorn person and I am always worried that how I am raising the kids and what I am doing is going to 'screw them up' that sometimes, SOMETIMES, I think maybe those people are right. Maybe they are right even though my heart tells me it's not so, and maybe I AM going to screw my kids up by loving them and coddling them and not making them wait when they cry and nursing them when they want to nurse, and so I worry.

But I know, I KNOW what I really need to do is just listen to my heart...

November 2009

For Kori :-)

Click here to view these pictures larger

Day three...

Third day back at work, and things are okay. Only okay. But that is better than terrible!

Evenings are 10X more hectic with two than they were with just the one, and the hardest part is that baby C is extremely worn out, a bit cranky, and sleeping within an hour and a half to two hours of me picking him up from daycare. BEYOND FUCKING SUCKY. I have hardly seen his coo-ing, smiley, happy personality at all this week. And I know it will get better; he will get more used to all the stimulation and will adjust and won't be so tired in the evenings, L went through the same thing. But for now it really sucks. SO I have been letting him fall asleep on the boob and just holding his sleeping little self for a bit before laying him down in his crib.

This morning was a bad drop off...Baby C was crying, L was whining, I was running late. I tried to comfort the baby while helping L get his shoes off, but ended up having to turn the baby over still crying, and in all the commotion I didn't even get my hug and kiss from L and didn't get to tell him I love him and to have a good day. Not a good way to start my day.

On top of it all, today is 10 years since my friend Paul shot himself. I do not mourn him any longer; in fact I think I have stated before that I think things are better for many people, him included, the way things are, but it is still a tough memory. I still remember the day like it was yesterday, of course.

So yeah, today is another tough day. Soon I will stop posting crappy, sad, whiny posts, but that's all I got for today.

Back to work

Tomorrow, I go back to work.

It is really making me sick to my stomach, and so sad.

I know it gets easier, but it is SOO hard at first, and right now, I REALLY don't want to do it. Today cannot go slow enough. The boys and I have been playing playing playing all morning, and right now, the younger is taking a little nap, and the elder is having a bit of lunch, and I am wishing the day would drag on forever and ever.

If shit wasn't all messed up at work it wouldn't be quite as bad. Last time I was on leave, that place was toxic when I left, but things had changed while I was out, and I returned to an altogether different place. BETTER different. This time, it was decent when I left, but is almost more toxic now than it was the last time. I really have no desire to go back to that. I am keeping my eyes open and looking for something else, but there just isn't much of anything around here in my line of work...

I have always said I didn't think that I want to be a full time stay at home mom, but this time, I don't know. If we could afford it, I probably wouldn't go back to work. It just feels different this time. I know FOR SURE I could go for only working 3 or 4 days a week - that would be a perfect balance. I could still work outside the home, which I DO honestly enjoy doing, but also get ample time at home with the boys...

I have been holding baby C as much as I possibly could for the last week or so. I honestly don't care if it causes him to get used to being held and causes issues for my daycare lady; he will adjust. I have just needed to keep him as close to me as possible these last few days of our undivided time together. I have even been keeping him in bed with me when he wakes up for his 5 or 6 am feeding; nursing him laying down, both of us falling back to sleep together when he is done. I NEVER did this with Logan, but I can see the draw of co-sleeping - how wonderful to snuggle next to my little one. To hear the measure of his breathing and feel his breath on my chest. The smell of him while I sleep. To wake up to his rooting around and grunting and to see him smile when my face is the first thing he sees upon waking. *SIGH*

So yeah. Tomorrow is going to suck big ass. As will probably the next 2 weeks, until I can get back into the routine. At least Thanksgiving Holiday is coming up fast, and in only a couple of weeks I will get 4 straight days with them again.

Wish me luck.

The elder is done eating, so we are gonna play some puzzles before his nap, and then I am gonna snuggle the younger and hope the afternoon and evening drag on.