I've been a bad, bad blogger.

Yeah, I completely fell off the wagon, I'm having a sort of "down" period again where interaction with anyone other than my husband or my baby just falls to the wayside.  I'm trying so hard not to let myself slip into that funk again, but it's so easy, I have so many things weighing on my mind right now that maybe don't seem like a big problem to people who have bigger problems (and trust me, I always well aware of the fact that really, my "problems" can be pretty insignificant) but I'm just sick of them holding me down.

First up - Baby Jacob's first birthday is on Friday.  I've enlisted the help of Eli's sitter and her good friend to make the cake as my friend just really couldn't afford it.  They of course offered to do it for free because they are amazing people, they did one of Eli's birthday cakes and it was perfect!  My friend is so thankful which makes me happy and makes me feel like, even if it's just a small thing like a cake, I took just a tiny bit of her burden in probably one of the hardest weeks of her life.  But because I'm me, and I like to over analyze myself to the point of exhaustion to find the selfish act in everything I do, I can't help thinking it is probably selfish of me because I get a bit of happiness out of helping her.  It doesn't leave me that the reason we need this cake is for his balloon release, that is always forefront in my mind, but I want to help so badly that even this small thing makes me feel like I'm doing something.  I don't know, I know nothing I or anyone else can do will take the hurt away, that will never go away, I just want to make it a little more bearable.

Second - I am terrified of this new baby, to the point where I sometimes wish I hadn't gotten pregnant.  I know that sounds horrible but I just wonder if I've made a mistake.  Have no doubt that this baby will be loved beyond words just as Eli is, but knowing that I'll just have to leave and go to work for 12+ hours a day and essentially leave my baby to be raised by someone else breaks my heart.  I wonder if it's fair at all to my children because I don't feel that it is, and I know that is time I will NEVER get back with my babies and it kills me.  Or maybe, I'm just extremely emotional right now and everything will just work out, I really doubt that will happen because as the months tick by I feel more and more guilty about dropping Eli every morning to spend the day with someone else.  He doesn't even call me mama anymore, he calls me Jessie (his sitter).  That being said, there isn't another person I could think of whom I would leave my children with for that amount of time, I trust her with his (their) life and really that's the only saving grace of this whole thing.  This was never the plan, though, but then life happened.  Husband and I had always discussed my being a SAHM and him working, that is how he was raised and that is how we want our children raised, but then the company he worked for went under, the economy tanked and there were no jobs, and we got screwed and scraped by until recently.  I don't hate my job so that isn't the issue, but I hate the commute.  I hate the 1.5-3 hour drive (depending on season and weather) one way, I hate that I see my little boy for about 2 hours a day, I hate that he depends on someone else for everything he needs, and I find myself being angry at the US for having the least amount of care/tolerance for mothers of young children.  Mostly I'm just frustrated with the whole situation and I feel like I should be able to give my babies more and I can't, and that sucks.

Third and last - General crappiness that really doesn't matter but still contributes to the stress.  I have to drive the SUV to work today because the breaks on our other car went out, yay.  Husband didn't have to work until noon today but he spoke with them and will probably go in later and just try to get it fixed right away.  Eli is popping at least 6 teeth right now so he's been incredibly crabby and whiny (poor baby), and now has a cold on top of it which he just gave to me.  Sleep has been nonexistent between him and husband keeping me up all night and I'm sure it contributes to my general feeling of crab/anger.  Husband and I have been very short tempered with each other lately due to the stress (he makes a comment about me just sitting around all day not watching the baby and I shoot my mouth back at him), I can't be expected to be helicopter mom when the baby is perfectly fine in his safe baby proofed area upstairs and yet I'm the one to always get up and herd him back into the living room if hubby is home because God forbid he go out of sight for two seconds.  I get annoyed with the constant criticism of my mothering abilities when 90% of the parenting falls to me.  I'm not allowed to get frustrated with the baby when I'm changing him and he kicks me in my extremely uncomfortable/sore stomach/boobs/wherever because then I'm a bad mom, but try to get husband to change a diaper?  Yeah, sure.  Ugh, I didn't want to go on a husband rant because he's really not bad, we're both just so stressed right now and unfortunately we're taking it out on the other.

I didn't get anything I planned to do done this weekend and I hate it, but that comes back to me doing the bulk of the parenting and never having a chance to just buckle down, babyless, and get the job done.  I have a tiny little human constantly attached to my legs or arms or back that makes it impossible to do anything for any period of time, but honestly I would rather cuddle him than do laundry anyway.

So this blog post hasn't been any fun and I don't blame anyone if they don't read it all the way through, I wouldn't want to, but I have to get these toxic thoughts out of my head.  I don't want them anymore.

November 11th

Um, I think I've been numbering my days incorrectly, ha ha.  Oh well, not the end of the world.

My doc called me today to tell me that I am not a carrier for cystic fibrosis so this baby is good to go!

Today is Veteran's Day, please just take a moment to thank the men and woman and families who sacrifice so much to keep our lives comfortable.

That's all for today.

November 9th

Today was an emotional day, and I don't really know why.  Lots of things brought back lots of memories and strong emotions and it has left me feeling drained, not that that's much of an accomplishment come 8:30 pm nowadays.

I have found myself with a shorter temper these days, or maybe just less patience though it's basically the same thing.  I get much more easily frustrated with Eli and his strong-willed ways and I will snap at him now and then and immediately feel guilty.  He's just a babe, he doesn't understand, and to be honest he's really pretty good for a toddler, he just knows what he wants and he is determined to get it.  No matter what I do, or what my reactions, I always make sure to give him hugs and kisses immediately afterwards to let him know that I still love him regardless of his actions, I don't really know if this is a good or a bad thing but I think it makes both of us feel better in the end.

Baby Jacob's first birthday in heaven this year is November 25th, he was born on Thanksgiving last year and there will be a balloon release this year on black friday.  Seems pretty fitting.  I just wish I could take some pain away from my friend, I would gladly take the burden off of her if I could but that life sentence is without probation and there is no appeal.  Sometimes life is just a bitch.

I've been clinging to Eli lately, I don't want to let him go, I want to sleep with him in his room, or take him into my room to sleep next to me like he used to.  I just want to hold him all the time, he is my baby, he will always be my baby and I NEED him.  I'm sure every parent feels the same way but I don't know how I lived my life without him before he was here, he is my everything.  If I cry he comes up to me and touches my leg and looks up at me and says something in his baby talk that will always make me smile.  If I am mad at him he will come up and cuddle me or do something goofy to get me to laugh.  He's the best thing that has ever happened to me, he's exactly what I need to cheer up when I feel myself on the verge of a breakdown.

That's all I can write for now, I tend to work myself up more when I'm just trying to work it out.  Time to go lay down and take deep breaths and remind myself how everything will just work out, one way or another.

November 9th

I keep thinking - if I had a child who I birthed, lived with for however many months, and then lost, would I be able to bury that baby?  I don't think I could, I think that my arms would long for that baby so much that I would want to dig it up just to hold it again.  I bet this is very morbid, but just thinking about how I long to hold my baby when I can't sleep at night and he's just in the other room makes me think that I wouldn't be able to control myself.

I think that I think about losing my babies too much, more than I should.  Or maybe I'm just not that naive anymore and I know what can go wrong.  I also think it makes me really appreciate what I have that much more.  I had put the chicken to bed last night after a few minutes of cuddling and then went to get ready for bed myself, as I was doing so he was in his crib playing with his animals and making noise.  I went back in there about 15 mins later and rubbed his tummy as he smiled up at me, and then he got up and wanted me to hold him so I did.  I stood next to his crib rocking him and rubbing his back and thinking to myself "I will never get these times back, when this moment is over, it will be replaced with other moments and eventually he will be too big for me to rock and cuddle".  It just makes me cherish all the time I DO have with him now instead of getting upset that my back is killing me and the chicken wants to be picked up for the millionth time today only to be put down and picked up again.  I hate baby loss, I hate thinking about it, but I can appreciate what it has given me in terms of being gracious for the time I am allowed with my baby because too often that time is cut short.

On a happier note, I am finally feeling somewhat regular movement from new baby which relieves some of my anxiety.  It's always nice to feel that reassuring "bloop" just to tell me that baby is still kickin in there.

Also, WE DIDN'T GET SNOW LAST NIGHT!  I'm so happy.  It's not that I hate snow, I just hate driving in it.  I am really dreading my commute this winter and I'm hoping that the snow goes easy on me.

That's really all I have for today, hope everyone out there has some happiness to reflect on.

November 8th

Nothing very significant about today.  We took the chicken into urgent care because he has these tiny red bumps all over his body and consistantly spreading, but they haven't been bothering him.  Turns out it is just from the cold he had, he has a tendancy to get the "virus rashes" that exhibit in young children when they've got any sort of virus running through their body.  Normally I wouldn't be bothered but he's never had one that long lasting and fast spreading before so we figured better safe than sorry.

Yesterday I went in to get my blood drawn for Cystic Fibrosis...again.  I had it done over a month ago with my normal pregnancy quad screen and all that but the lab forgot to run it so here's to waiting another week.  Since we already know that husband is a carrier I'm kind of anxious to find out whether or not I am as well, I need to know whether or not I need to freak out.  If I am a carrier, this baby and any other child we would have (if that's a route we ever would choose to take) has a 1 in 4 chance of being having the disease.  I would never terminate based on the outcome but I need to know how prepared I'm going to have to be to possibly care for a child with a potentially fatal disease, and to know everything I will need to do to give my baby the biggest chance of survival and a happy long life.

We go for our anatomy scan December 6th, I'm kind of excited to find out what we're having but more than that I just want to know the baby is heathy and thriving.

With that being said, what is everyone's guess as to what I'm having?  Heartrate is hovering between 150-160, I haven't taken any of the silly gender prediction tests and I have no other information really to pass on to anyone.  There will be a prize of knowing how awesome you are at guessing if you guess correctly, won't that be awesome!

Talk to you all tomorrow!

Fail version 2.0

So yesterday was a busy day.  Husband and I live in Wisconsin, but we both work in Minnesota.  Yesterday he had to work to we decided that we would ride up to the cities together, he would work, and I would look around at the shops and maybe visit some friends and that's exactly what the chicken and I did.  I need to find a pair of Ugg like boots for the winter since my feet swell so horribly with pregnancy and will not fit in to much less than a giant ugly nondescript boot type thing so we went to the shoe store.  I'm going to have to get something that comes above my ankles due to the massive amounts of snow we like to get around here and I found a couple of perspective options, the trouble is that I have such a hard time spending money on ME.  I will go in somewhere or poke around online and immediately I am drawn to baby stuff, I can't help it, I just want to give everything to my child(ren) that I possibly can but I tend to leave my own needs uncared for.  But I digress. 

Eli and I went to my friends' house and they have an almost 1 year old who is in the pulling up to standing phase which could be considered Eli's worst nightmare.  For a little background - there was a time period at daycare where one of the other kids would always come up to Eli and grab and bite him.  He came home multiple times with bruises and teeth marks on his body, this has thankfully come to an end but I think it still makes Eli nervous when little creatures are grabbing at him.  He eventually learned that if he climbed up on the couch she couldn't actually pull on him so that made things a bit better.  It does kind of make me nervous about how he's going to react with a new baby in the house but I really think he'll be okay, he did end up warming up to Zoe towards the end, it just took a while.

This morning as I was leaving for work it was starting to be light out, and I secretly did a little happy dance.  I get so tired in the morning having to drive at least half of my commute in the pitch black of night that starting when it was already partially light and only getting lighter made all the difference in the world.  I guess we have to be thankful for daylight savings time in at least one aspect, though I do dread the darker evenings, however as anyone who has a baby knows, babies do not take well to the time change.  Eli goes to be earlier but also wakes up earlier and this is a problem for me.  It's one thing when he was waking up at 7-730 in the morning, but waking up between 6-630 on the weekends is just unacceptable to me.  I know it'll take some adjustment on both of our parts but it'll work itself out eventually (probably just in time for another time change).

So in essence, this post is a very round about way to say, you know what, I was super busy yesterday and forgot to post before I went to bed.  Then by the time I went to bed and remembered I had to post I didn't want to get out of my bed so I tried to post from my phone and I was denied.  Shot down.  So no post again yesterday and I am failing at a post a day.  I'll work up to it I'm sure.

Already, I have failed.

Remember this post just a couple of days ago?  I think I've proven my non-writeyness by forgetting to do a blog post yesterday.  Yep, only 4 days into November and I'm already missing posts, ha ha, it's not looking great for the rest of the month.  In my defense - I was going to write one at work and then I had some impromptu meetings that I had to attend to I figured I'd do it at home, then when we got home we decided to take the chicken out to eat as a family and then it was bedtime for him, and for me as I was exhausted.  It just slipped my mind which sadly is pretty par for the course in my head right now.  Prime example - I was going to take a couple of hours for makeup time on Monday so I could take him out trick or treating before it got too late, and like a jerk I completely forgot.  I think pregnancy brain combined with super long work day brain combined with preoccupying my remaining day time with the toddler brain is just wreaking havoc on my poor tired mind.

I had the chicken all to myself today, husband had to work so didn't get home until about 5:30.  Normally I love days like this where we just get to play and bond and cuddle but one of my ever frustrating migraines hit today.  That combined with the excitable craziness of a 16 month old chasing the dog and cat around the house made for a long 9ish hours, but I loved it nonetheless.  I got some good cuddles in this morning while feeding him breakfast (yes, he always sits with me in the living room, usually on my lap and I don't care, I love it), got some great play time in today complete with actual book reading and learning.  It's amazing how much that kid picks up on now, his new favorite words (that he actually understands) are baby and bye and when he hears a cat meow he'll meow back (super cute because he sort of bends down and leans towards the kitty), he's trying to say I love you but it pretty much turns into a jumbled mess which I'm pretty okay with, I mean he's not even a year and a half, I really don't feel the need to push all this stuff on him.  I'm not exactly trying to "teach" him anything, I just talk to him like a person, explain everything and show everything I'm doing (he loves being next to me when I'm cooking, he gets his own pan and spatula, I usually throw some dry food in the pan for him to stir).  I'll admit that I'm pretty much stumbling my way through this whole motherhood thing, but I look at him and see how happy and healthy he is and I think "I really can't be doing that bad of a job."  He may not say the most words for his age group, he may not call the dog "dog" (he has his own word for the cat and dog, it sounds like cguh, but he knows that is what he calls his cat and dog), but he's figuring it out and having a great time so I can't feel too guilty about that.

So that's my post for the day, just some ramblings on a day in the life of little ol me, nothing too exciting but it's my happy little life and the good days should be documented.  I get too caught up in the bad times and I need to remind myself all that I have to be happy with sometimes.

Until tomorrow!
Harlowe.

I'm Not A Writer

Day 2 of writing a post every day for Nov. and I figured I would just throw that out there.

I am not a writer, like, at all.  I'm creative in my own way, but it's all in my head and it doesn't really translate to paper (screen?).  It's mostly just images that flow through my boring psyche to keep me entertained during my boring day, and even those have been failing me lately.  I think I am literally at that point of exhaustion where it is taking what energy I managed to regain during the restless night just to keep myself functioning on a day to day basis and that's no fun at all.

The reason I bring the latter up is the fact that I miss me.  I miss who I used to be, before I was completely fed up and stressed out with my job, before I had anxiety problems that make me want to hide under my bed/table/desk, before I had trouble sleeping again, before I was too all of the above to really appreciate my family.  And don't get me wrong, I love my husband, and my little boy is my world, but there is so much stress in my life that I can never just sit there and enjoy what I have.  And I miss it.  All in all, I know this is temporary.  I have so many things happening right now and mixing them with the hormones of a pregnant woman who is terrified for this pregnancy and it's all just seeming a bit to much at the moment.

I'll take it one day at a time.  Goal for today?  Make it home with my baby safe and sound.

NaBloPoMo

So, I'm going along with all the other awesome blogs and riding on their coat tails and doing National Blog Posting Month and posting a blog every day this month on whatever comes to mind (sooooo, you might want to tune out this month, it's sure to be boring).   HERE GOES!

Lets see, it's November 2nd, a dark and dreary day in Wisconsin/Minnesota area which I just so happen to be lucky enough to grace every day of the work week.  My morning commute has gotten a bit more gross thanks to some more lane closures on I-94.  Isn't road construction season over?  Oh, it's not?  Going until the end of the month, you say, and starting back up in the spring for the same project?  Color me excited!  Wait, where did my sarcasm font go...

In other news, Eli had a good and fun Halloween.  If blogger were cooperating with me I would post more than this picture of him in his chicken costume:

But that one will have to do, and it's a pretty cute one if I do say so myself.  I figured since chicken is his nickname I might as well dress him up as one while I still can do whatever I want to him.  That time period is dwindling more and more each day as he becomes just as stubborn and pig headed as my dear darling husband.  Whom I couldn't love more, of course.

In other other news, we have the anatomy scan for New Baby (official name) scheduled for December 6th.  I will be a whopping 24 weeks along at that point and I'm pretty sure I'll hold the record for latest anatomy scan in the March birth club on BBC, I wonder what sort of prize I get for that...  Probably looks of pity and one or two pats on the back with an awkward hug thrown in there.  The thing is, I don't really care what we're having, if husband didn't want to know I wouldn't even find out.  I'm just annoyed at having to have a c-section, nothing about my pregnancies is ever a surprise and I hate that.  I guess with Eli at least we were waiting to see when I would go into labor (which was quite literally never) so the induction date was a surprise as I went into my appointment and they were all like "hey!  let's do it today!"  I was fine with that at almost two weeks past my due date with a large baby who had no intentions of making an appearance anytime soon.  (We eventually came to find out that he wouldn't descend possibly due to a cord issue, he was basically stuck.)  So this baby will be planned down to a T, birthday and all.  I guess I'm all for better safe than sorry and with all the issues last time just doing the section will hopefully cut out all the badness I went through before.

I love apple cider, it's seriously delicious.  But it can't be too sweet.  Basically, anything hot cannot be too sweet or it's seriously disgusting, like for reals.  I'll get those little packets of fake apple-y goodness and only put 1/3 of a packet in the cup or it'll make me gag.  Just saying.

I am incredibly self conscious of my sentence/paragraph structure and of how my sentences involve a lot of commas and portray a very quick, clipped tone.  I guess it just really reflects how I speak to real life people but it doesn't make me edit any less.  I'm always trying to make my sentences different and somehow make them seem more "normal".  I don't think it'll happen and I'm actually quite fine with that.

That's all for today, folks.  Tune in tomorrow for a much less exciting post about the nothing happening in my life!