New Beginnings

2008 has been some year. I spent the first few months of it trying to recover from the sudden, overwhelming loss of both my grandmother and my 10-year old dog Sheba. Later came the suggestion from my kids' pediatrician that I should have my son evaluated for a couple of potential developmental issues. So I spent the first half of the year extremely distracted. I wasn't able to function at work the way I had envisioned early fall of last year. I was on a roll back in Sept 2007, and figured I'd be at a certain point by Sept 2008 that would seriously catapult my career-path. However, I spent most of my time dealing with the heartbreaking agony of death and focused on ensuring the mental health and development of my children to the best of my ability. I have been emotionally exhausted overall. But the Lord has carried me through all of this, no doubt about that. I wouldn't even be able to type this, let alone function normally these days otherwise.



Tomorrow, I will be working from home, and Tuesday begins my son's first day of Pre-K in a new Christian school in our area. I will be praying for his continued health, safety, growth, development, and protection everyday of his life. His classroom will be on the same hall as 2nd and 3rd graders. He will be taking his lunch to school and eating in the cafeteria. He will be going to the library for quiet reading time! My little 4-year old baby boy!! My daughter just started a new school last Wednesday; I will continue praying the same blessings over her life. Both kids' schools are within minutes of our home, and will thus cut our daily commute time by an entire hour and a half!! I'm getting an hour and a half of my day back to spend with my family instead of sitting on the roads of Atlanta cursing out stupid non-driving morons and asking my kids to stop whining on our LONG drive home everyday! Thank God.

I feel like with these new opportunities comes the opportunity for growth in different areas of my life (family, job, church, friends). I will continue to pray over this and do the best I can to stay focused on the heart of God and live as a true example of His grace and love as much as possible. One thing we know for sure...tomorrow on Earth isn't promised to any of us, and I'm going to start living like it!!

Faith in the midst of confusion

I'm sure that I've posted before about my faith in God. Always the optimist, I never cease to believe that good will come out of every situation. As a parent, I have come to realize that no experience in your life good or bad can affect you the as much as anything involving your child. I'm pretty sure that when I'm touting positive messages for people to hear and even to affirm these things to my heart, mind, and spirit, it's because I don't really have a lot to lose in any of these situations. There will always be someone to bail me out emotionally (my hubby), or financially (my parents).

Right now, I am in the middle of dealing with something centered around my son. Please don't be alarmed. His health is great, and we are all doing fine. He loves school, he and his little sister get along great, and continue to be a joy to all of those that they are around. But I am now learning what it's like to REALLY have faith in God. My son is going through a series of exams based on a referral from his pediatrician. Again, this isn't related to his physical health at all. This is all I feel comfortable saying about it in such a public forum at this time, even though only about 2 or 3 people read this.

I feel like I have butterflies in my stomach. Lately, I've been in a state of constantly holding back tears so that I don't have to deal with real possibilities. My son goes in for an exam tomorrow morning at 9am. We have to drive 45 minutes northwest of here for an exam, another hour back to his school, and then 20 minutes to my job. I'm not so much whining about all of the driving, as much as I am pointing out that I'm not going to be in the best state emotionally tomorrow. It's almost 11:30pm right now, and my son and I have to be leaving the house in 8 hours. :-S

So, now it's time for me to put up or shut up. I honestly don't believe that life is just some place for us to congregate for 75 or 80 years and have fun, fun, fun. I believe that we all have a purpose that is revealed to us in due time. And I do believe that God wants to have a relationship with Him, and for us to trust Him and His word. I don't have any problem trusting Him. So why do I feel so scared? I am not terrified for my son at all; I know that he will be fine. But will I? I am so confused sometimes about how to be a good mother to my children. Time is tick, tick, ticking away, and things are starting to be revealed in my children that I believe are a direct reflection on me as a mother.

I'm really worn out. These visits to the doctor with people asking all of these repetitive questions about my son are starting to take their toll. Our lives are already somewhat hectic...adding this log to the fire my just do me in, I don't know.

:SIGH: Hopefully, my post tomorrow will not find me so emotionally weak and exhausted. Good night.

Really?

If you're a parent (especially a mom) you can probably appreciate this quick story. Our house was a complete and utter disaster over the past week and a half. I woke up with a vengeance on Saturday morning eager to get the house back in order. I actually got up at 6:30am to wash dishes. Yes, our dishwasher conked out on us about 3 weeks ago. The same day my cheap-a** Ford Explorer also started giving me problems and my family and I had to carpool all over metro-Atlanta for 3 hour daily commutes.

We decided this weekend to completely wean my daughter off of pull-ups. She'll be 3 years old in June, and she already knows how to potty. I refuse to keep paying $17 every couple of weeks for her to wear just in case she has an accident. Not when gas is $4 per friggin' gallon. But of course, my daughter decided yesterday to keep doing a #2 in her underwear. Of course she NEVER does this when we have pull-ups on her on the weekends as we usually do. So this behavior is the opposite of most kids. Usually, the fact that they are wearing non-absorbent underwear prevents them from "pottying" on themselves. Not my daughter...she's always got to be a challenge. :-) She pooped in 3 sets of underwear yesterday, I believe, and I kept having to take her to the bathroom, wash her off, give her clean underwear to wear, and new pants to put on. One pair of poopie undies she actually placed in the dirty clothes hamper in our washing area without my knowledge. So when I'm going to town washing clothes and getting things clean, I don't even notice that I'm loading a pair of underwear FULL of poop in the friggin' washing machine.

So when I go to unload the washing machine, I notice that the clothes smell HORRIBLE! What the heck?! It occurs to me later that my daughter must have got her poopie undies in the load. Shoot. So I reload the clothes, and restart them in another load with extra washing detergent. An hour later, I go to unload them again expecting to smell nice fresh clothes. They smell even worse this time!!! What the heck??!! I start picking through the entire load this time to figure out what the heck is going on. I figure it out in my head before I actually eyeball the reason right in front of me. The poop wasn't washed from the underwear in the first load. In a nutshell, I just washed poop into ALL of mine, my hubby's, and the kids' nice clothes. Washed poop INTO the clothes?? Come on!! Life is busy and tiring enough...who has time to wash a load of clothes 3 times? I completely lost an entire day of washing due to this incident.

As I was in the middle of typing this post, my daughter ran into my room and said, "Mommy, I pooped on the potty!!" I ran into the bathroom and she pointed proudly into the toilet to display her feat. I gave her a high-five and a big kiss on the cheek! Those kids know how to turn things around and turn Mommy's scowl into a happy smile!! :-)

Stuck inside...again

Well, I guess I'm finally living the more realistic life of a parent. The kids are still battling these fevers. My son seems to mostly be over his, but my daughter woke up blazing hot this morning. The kids slept in the bed with my hubby, and I slept on the sofa because I'm too finicky to deal with two congested children, and a boxer within feet of me all at the same time while I'm trying to get some sleep.

Back when Chris and I had our son, my parents were SO available all of the time. My mom even spent a full two weeks at our house after we brought him home from the hospital. (As a side note, I suggest that new parents get the full experience for about a week by themselves before calling in the grandparents; you'll be able to appreciate them a lot more if you actually get to see how tiring it can be to care for a new infant - otherwise you'll probably constantly tread the line of "Hey, I'M the mother of this child so stop telling me what to do!")

But I digress. If you read this blog regularly you know that I lost my grandmother a month ago. She first got sick back on October 25, and my mom began caring for her 24/7 while she was hospitalized, transferred to a nursing home, etc... Before this, my parents have always been available to keep our kids (and my sister's kids) at a moment's notice. About once a month (sometimes twice) my hubby and I would get to have some time alone. I often found myself wondering how realistic this was. Many times I would cringe at having to call my mom and ask her if she would keep our kids overnight...again...after just keeping them two weeks ago, and keeping my sister's kids the previous week. You see, I'm of the belief that you have to be VERY careful what you ask of someone, and that you should never ask of someone else what you are not willing to do yourself. As it relates to my parents keeping our kids, there are a couple of reasons why I have always thought we should pull back on bugging them every other week or so:

1) Yes, I understand that grandparents LOVE spending time with their grandkids. It's really easy if you think of it that way. But ask yourself this question, When you become 50 years old, are you going to want to have toddlers at your house for the entire weekend for 3 weekends out of a month? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. If you are one of those few people that would answer, "Yes, I would LOVE that!", then you're in the clear. :-) However, if you are the person that's always trying to find someone to watch your kids on the weekends, then you are the type of person that wants to have your own time a lot...that doesn't change just because you turn 50 and have grandkids, people.

When my sister and I were little, we NEVER had babysitters. Even though my grandmother lived in my parents' house, my mom and dad NEVER left us overnight. They really enjoyed spending time with us. They would find things for us to do on the weekends together as a family. So, of course, as grandparents in their fifties, they haven't changed. They LOVE having the grandkids around on the weekends. That's the kind of people that they are. But we are all different. If you find someone to keep your kids overnight once or twice each month while you (and maybe your spouse) go off and do your own thing, it goes without saying that you aren't the kind of person that will want to spend 2 or 3 weekends out of the month watching your kids' kids. Yep, that's right, if you have more than one child, that's at least one grandchild per week. Something to think about huh?

2) Another reality that I am finally opening myself up to. We live in Atlanta, and it has finally become almost completely saturated. I know so many people who are entering fields that don't leave very many options in a small, but heavily populated city such as this. Many of these people are having to pack up their families and leave Atlanta. I have always been adversely opposed to this option. My husband has known since we got engaged not to even go where with me about leaving Atlanta. I was raised this way...you don't ever leave your family. Heck, living 30 minutes away from my parents was enough of a shock and jolt, so I couldn't imagine what would happen if God forbid we moved to another state! Not to mention the fact that we wouldn't have anyone to watch our kids overnight anymore. In fact, at this point, that is the only thing stopping me. I don't leave my kids with ANYONE except for my mom and dad. NO ONE. So if we moved away, my hubby and I would never have any alone time and that was a thought that I couldn't bear! Until now.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, it's been a little over 3 months since my hubby and I have had any time at all together to ourselves. We haven't even gone out to dinner together or anything. So, now, I know that we can bear this kind of reality if we have to. We have been forced to. We are tired all of the time, but we have just become more creative about things to do with the kids on the weekends. While the kids nap, we nap. We have become smarter with our free time. When my husband graduates from law school, if the best offer he receives (and by best I mean salary + hours + responsibility) is in Florida, or North Carolina, or somewhere else, we will have to at the very least consider it. For the first time in my life, this is an option for us, and makes things less stressful for my husband and his pending job search.

I know that this is an extremely long post, but I've been thinking about this for a while. These are the types of things that I don't have anyone to talk to about, so I just spill it all here. :-)

Yucky Colds

It seems as if EVERY SINGLE TIME I say out loud "Wow, the kids haven't been sick in a long time; maybe their immune systems have built up more!" ...they always get sick within 2 days of my saying this. Every single time.

My son's class had a field trip to the Atlanta Children's Museum this past Thursday morning. My mom went with him as a chaperone. He began showing signs of being sick while they were at the museum, but the field trip didn't end for another few hours. My mom called me at work to let me know what was going on with my son. The Children's Museum is mere blocks away from the CNN Center where I work, so I just hopped in the truck and picked them up to take them back. The next day (Friday) my mom called me around 3pm to tell me that his fever had jumped up to 104.5! I was horrified. After that, my mom started pushing liquids non-stop and cycling ibuprofen and acetaminophen every 2 hours. My mom kept him at her house over night so that he wouldn't have to get out in the cold.

I decided to let my daughter sleep with me last night since her brother wasn't here and she was noticeably sad about that. As she was fading off to sleep, I felt her back and it was slightly warm. By 2am she was blazing hot. I started pumping her with liquids and acetaminophen. She woke up with a yucky sounding dry cough, but the fever was gone. My hubby gave her some more medicine before he headed off to school this morning (yes, he has class on Saturday morning). My mom called and said that my son is doing better this morning. They were supposed to be going to their cousin's birthday party this afternoon. I think that Elmo is going to be appearing there. I was SO looking forward to this. My daughter LOVES Elmo!! And it would have been nice to be able to see the family; they are always fun to hangout with.

I guess we'll be holed up in this house all weekend. Oh well, such is the life of parent's of young toddlers. :-)

I dare you not to cry

The three things on video that will always make me cry, in no particular order:

1)Children
2)Animals
3)Soldiers

Once you start combining them you're really messing me up pretty badly.

CNN.com has video here

New mom

If a Motherhood 101 class actually existed yours truly would be the first person who would need to sign up. Today was not good. I needed it though, but it has become clear to me that I don't have a clue how to raise my children properly.

My son had a field trip yesterday morning to The Center for Puppetry Arts. Things went from bad to worse throughout the morning. His behavior was simply deplorable. Yes, he's only 3, but his behavior was bad even for a 3-year old in my opinion.

I won't get into details, but I will say that yesterday was a major turning point for me. The way that my children behave is a direct reflection of how I raise them. At some point in the future I will hopefully look back upon yesterday with a slight chuckle and think to myself, "I had no idea what I was doing back then!"

Things are gonna change around here. :-)

Maximizing the weekends

I'm so glad that it's Saturday. For the past 8 or 9 months, I have found myself dreading the weekends because I know that I will be alone with the kids by myself for almost the entire time while Chris is away studying. As much as I long for and thrive on time with my little munchkins, being with them by myself for hours and hours for a couple of days in a row just wears me out. This is entirely because I am not a consistent person. The previous statement describes every aspect of my life, including my parenting skills. The kids know this, and take advantage of it most of the time. Thus, I end up doing a lot of yelling in the form of, "Stop it! Put that down! Go to bed! Stop hitting your brother!" and not the Alec Baldwin form of yelling, if you know what I mean.

Well, lately, I've been enjoying Saturdays a little more. Instead of sitting around a house that is a pile of chaos topped with disorganization, I have started maximizing my Saturdays and Sundays. Friday evenings, I get all of the obvious clutter cleaned up (laundry that needs to be put away, mail all over the kitchen table, kids toys in places they shouldn't be, etc...) This means that when I awake on Saturday morning and begin looking into the possibilities for Saturday, I'm not completely overwhelmed with clutter everywhere in the house. Therefore, thought of getting the kids out of the house to go visit friends, to a park, or wherever doesn't feel like such a tiresome event. Last Saturday, we took the kids to the park near our home. We had a GREAT time! Today we went to a Family and Friends community event that my brother-in-law had at his church. It was an all out blast!!

It took me 3 1/2 years to figure this one out!