It's Been A While

You know how it goes. Busy, busy, boring and busy, the life of a mom.
Topic one: I’ve been baking a lot. A lot. A. lot. It’s been fun and time consuming and relaxing and so inconvenient all at the same time. I love to bake, I’ve recently figured out. I know I can make things that some people really enjoy, it’s not for everyone, I know, but I can do some things for some people that can sometimes make them happy. Baking is one thing I can do. I’m trying to expand on what I can do. I’m going to be trying to put aside the box cake mixes and make my own cakes. I’m starting this week in developing my own recipe, one for yellow and one for chocolate so that from there I can make all my own flavors. I’ll be baking a lot and throwing away a lot unless there are folks that need cake.
Topic two: Erik has been working a lot. A lot. A seriously ridiculously stupid amount of work. And I hate it. And I miss him. And I hate it.

Topic three: Elaine. My angel. She’s so terribly two years old it’s driving up a wall. I can’t eat at a restaurant, I can’t shop for groceries, and I can’t go to my mom’s house without it ending in a shouting match or a spanking. She is so much more determined than I am. I have yet to win an argument with her and I fear it’s only a glimpse of what’s to come.
So far there is no convincing her that mommy’s right, there’s no making her do what I want, there is no mommy says baby does. Laine rules my home with a tiny iron fist. Of course she is spoiled, was there any doubt in anyone’s mind that I wouldn’t spoil the crap out of her? I want her to have every thing she wants; no matter how extravagant or insignificant I want her to have it all. Even the things that I can’t give her I want to encourage her to strive for everything she wants, however I’m starting to walk the fine line of raising her to expect all things instead of hoping and working for all things. I know that she’s only two but I really should have been doing a better job from the beginning. The person she will be when she’s older isn’t waiting to be made; she’s already halfway done with the process. Her building blocks are set into a foundation already; the only thing left to add on is experience. So when she screams for Fruit Loops at 1:30 in the morning I should be able to make it into a learning experience, a lesson in patience and respect. But 1:30 in the morning isn’t the time for me to be thinking like a teacher. It’s the time for me to be thinking like a working more or less single mom who got woken up only three hours into her sleep with only four hours left to go before morning. I do hope I can learn to take a moment and breath and remind myself that she’s not there at 1:30 in the morning screaming for Fruit Loops to annoy me; she’s there because she’s hungry. She’s not there at 2:00 in the morning pulling my arm and yelling my name to make me angry, she’s doing it because she’s had a bad dream or she fell out of the bed and she want me to talk to her until she calms down again.
I want to tear my hair out thinking about all the times I’ve turned a moment that could have been wonderful into something that is miserable. Do any mom’s ever get it right? It’s dumb that we can’t be perfect.

I Need More Cheese

Work has been so busy lately that I haven’t had two seconds to myself in three days. I don’t have the time now but I’m taking it anyway. If I can eat and work I can eat and blog. But what to blog about? Well I’ve lost 5 pounds officially. I gained one then lost it again this weekend but what can I expect with cake and sandwiches in the house. I enjoyed myself with good food so I’m not going to stress the small things. And one pound is a very small thing. Five pounds however is a very large ting and I celebrated by spending money, like I do, on Laine at Old Navy. Mom spent some money on me, like she does, and who could stop her? No me and I didn’t want to, I got a super comfy dress from her that I wore for two days strait.
Erik told me that he’s finally done working at the church on Thursday, then he went back to finish up again on Friday. I’m expecting him to have to “finish it up” a few more times before he’s really done. He’s completely incapable of leaving a job in regular working order. It has to be perfect. And that’s a good thing, it just takes longer and I miss having Erik at home.
Last night Laine and I were waiting for Erik to come home and he came around 8:00 at which point we went upstairs to put Laine down, which is laying in my bed until she falls asleep. Erik saw I had things covered and went downstairs but I made him come back up and sit by the bed within Laine’s eye line. Part of the problem I have with Laine is that she is so clingy with me all the time. If you know me you know I love it, I need her as much as she needs me, more even, and I never get enough hugs from her. But at the end of the day with I’m trying to get dinner made or do housework, I really can’t do it with her on my hip. I mean I can but it’s hard. So it would be nice if she would go to Erik when he is home but she won’t. When we are out of the house, at the park or church or anywhere she is such a daddy’s girl but at home it’s all mommy all the time. So I made him help me put her to bed by just staying in the room with us. I think part of the problem is that Laine doesn’t see Erik as a part of out nighttime routine so he doesn’t belong there to her. I’m trying to change that. I’m changing a lot of stuff lately. I haven’t cooked dinner even once this week yet. I wait to eat until after Laine is asleep and Erik had been eating sandwiches and soup leftover from this weekend. Laine’s meals are so easy, steam some veggies and cut up an apple and she’s set so it’s no work to feed her, then we just play and cuddle until bedtime.
I’ve been getting overly stressed out at nights. I know I’ve got it so much easier than most other people. I have a great kid and an amazingly helpful husband, but around 9:00 every night I’m breaking down into an angry frustrated puddle in the kitchen stressing about the dishes that haven’t been washed since Monday because I don’t have the energy to do it or the laundry that’s been in a pile since March because I can’t get the motivation to not just wash the same three outfits over and over again. It’s not like I’m crying all the time or pulling my hair out over it, I’m just fed up with it. I want to throw all the dishes in the trash and pack up all our clothes and drop them off at the Goodwill. I’m not tired of doing it all I’m just tired of doing it on my own. I want my husband home. I want him home to be there to sit in the kitchen and talk to me as I do the dishes. I want him home to hand me hangers as I’m putting away the laundry, I want him home to comfort Laine when she gets scared of the vacuum, I want him home to laugh with me over Laine trying to help me sweep the floors and dust the lamps. I’m tired of having a long distance relationship with my husband and I’m tired of my daughter being uncomfortable around her dad at night.
I’ve tried saying to myself, single mothers do this stuff every day and they get it done and if I were a single mother I’d get it done too. A huge chunk of my anxiety comes from the fact that I have a husband and he’s just not home with me. And of course he knows this but what can we do? His Job is his job and it’s not going to change anytime soon. I guess I just need to get over it already. I whine too much. That seems to be all this blog is about anymore.
And we are thinking about adding another baby into this mix. Maybe we need to think again.

Righteous Fits of Fury

I’m wondering exactly how many times I’ll write this same complaint down in this blog. I’d stop and just let it be understood that Laine doesn’t sleep well at night but every time I complain on here I end up getting at least one full night’s sleep directly afterward, so it’s worth it.

Sunday was a pretty good day all around. Church was good; Erik and I didn’t have to work in the nursery so it felt like we could take it easy. After church we drove to Kemah with the Whites and Schmale’s and the Woods’ and Momma and Daddy to eat at Backhaus Tavern, they have some pretty rocking Mediterranean food. I just got the basic gyro and it was scrumptious. At the restaurant Laine was very excited to be eating outside on the patio and it was a lot of fun, but it was kind of chilly and Laine wanted to run around. If it weren’t for Amanda and Amy we’d have lost Laine a time or two for sure. Nutty little thing is determined to make me and Erik crazy. Once we got home Laine and I laid down for a nap, well first I put her into her bed and she slept for almost an hour, I kept getting woken up because Erik was taking down the Christmas lights outside and apparently when you put the ladder up against the eaves in the front it vibrates the windows in the back of the house… now we know. After close to an hour of the banging Laine finally woke up in a righteous fit yelling “Daddy, no no!” and then crying for me and I let her crawl into bed with me while I finished waking up but instead we both fell asleep for another hour, almost. Erik came in the room and wanted to talk to me about the squirrels for a while. I wasn’t very into hearing about it. Erik then left to go to his parents’ house for a while to help move things again and Laine and I hung out in the living room, drawing and playing with the little singing bear thing that Levi and Sydney bought for her Christmas gift, and she was in a great mood all evening. She was laughing and eating, running and drinking tons of juice and jumping off her chair over and over again and I thought, “Yes! Finally I’m going to be able to wear her down and she’s going to sleep so peacefully and so will I! YAY!” but that didn’t happen. She went to sleep around 8:30. Erik got home and I read a book on the couch while he watched TV and we had an amazing time just being in each other’s company, but then at 10:30 Laine started crying, and I went up to calm her down. By 11:30 Erik had come upstairs to try to get her down to sleep again and failed oh so miserably, Erik finally went to bed around midnight and I stayed in Laine’s room rocking her and rubbing her tummy and hoping to God she wasn’t getting sick. The around 1:30, right around the time my last nerve frayed, I bundled her up in boots and jacket and put her in the car and drove around until right at 2:15 when she vomited all over herself and I had to pull over and fish the chunks from her throat. I sped home and stripped her down and jumped into the shower. Now the whole night she’d been noticeably uncomfortable and whiney, like a dog whiney. Just whimpering and then screaming and then crying and then whimpering again. If she’d been talkative or just crying it could have been another normal night but she was whimpering, like she was just so miserable that she needed my ears to bleed to feel her pain. However after she threw up in the car she stopped whimpering and crying. In just the three blocks to the house she’d calmed down to the point of just sniffing in that uncontrollable hiccup manner you do after crying for four hours non stop. When I ran her up to the bathroom and jumped in the shower with her she just laid her head on my shoulder and was so peaceful that no matter what I was feeling, back, head or heartache I just wanted to stand there with her all night. We only stayed in for about thirty minutes though because she started drifting to sleep. I got her out and dried off and dressed and bundled up in blankets and her deedee and her beebee and her bottle and I rocked her in the chair for a short while until her head started nodding and she started breathing steadily. At that point I took her to bed and curled up with her. I know that she probably would have fallen asleep much sooner if I’d just taken her to my bed at the beginning of the night but I need her to get used to sleeping in her bed. Mommy’s bed is Mommy’s bed again and it’s not going to change back to Baby’s bed until there is a new baby. And I do love her new toddler bed, its sturdy enough so I can lay down with her and just big enough to fit us both comfortably. So finally around 3:30 she fell asleep, this time deeply and solidly asleep, she didn’t’ even twitch when I hauled my self up from the bed and rolled into the floor and crawled down the creaking hallway and climbed into bed and curled into a ball and cried until I fell asleep. My alarm went off at 5:30 and 5:45 and 6:00 and finally I got up at 6:15 was out the door at 6:30 and at work by 7:20, I was 40 minutes early to work but that was 40 minutes to sit and breathe deeply the quiet air around me.
Monday night was better. She only stayed up for two hours from 12:00 to 2:00 and that’s fine. That’s heaven compared to the night before. I have an entirely different rant about Monday night that I’m not sure if it would be wise to share on here. Suffice it to say that, yeah, no I’ll tell you. I’m still pissed off about it.
Monday night I got home at 6:00 with Laine, I had just walked in the door, and I’m looking forward to trying to wear her down again so that maybe, just maybe I’d get some sleep when Erik calls me. Am I home yet? How’s Laine? Can I go pick up Kate from the High School? Of course I can and I do, I changed Laine’s diaper and gave her some juice for the ride and got her back into the car and headed for Friendswood. Halfway there she stars dozing and I’m all Oh No You Di’int! so I start blowing raspberries like it’s my favorite thing and she wakes up and blows them back, then I’m pointing to every thing I think she can see out the window and asking her what color it is, the I make her count to five a bazillion time and then we make every animal noise I can think of and finally we get to the school. I get Kate and she starts telling me about her day. About how she went to the doctor today to get an x-ray of her knee, the one that’s been bothering her for months, the one she’s been complaining about for months, the one she’s been begging to sit out of soccer for, FOR MONTHS! So today Jennifer takes her because apparently her parents couldn’t or wouldn’t and it turns out she has multiple tears in her ligament or tendon or something and, AND… she has a tumor. Not a cancerous one, but a tumor. A FLIPPING TUMOR. In her knee. And her mother wasn’t there for the MRI. Laine isn’t allowed to have a doctor even in the room with her without me there from now until she’s 18 and Kate had an MRI done all alone. Poor kiddo.
So we get to the house and as I’m pulling into the drive Kate just keeps saying “I can’t believe this, why would they do this to me” over and over, I look up the drive way and her dad and Jennifer are home already, but neither had been answering their phone’s or the house phone. Torben was taking down Christmas lights and Jenn said something about being on her way home from work. I just about lost it right there. Then Kate said she was hungry and was there and dinner. No, and no she can’t eat anything out of the pantry because SHE’S ON A DIET. Yeah. I put Laine down and made dinner for Kate, and for the rest of them. Though I wanted to throw it in all their faces and take Kate home with me. I’ve got a spare room. I’ll take care of her like she deserves. Kate can be a typical teenager and she gets on my nerves pretty regularly but I can still respect her as a member of my family and treat her like she’s someone I love and care about and want to take care of. It’s really the least that you do for a family member. I was beyond my limit with them on Monday night and I’m sure that having only two hours of sleep the night before didn’t help any and keeping Laine out of the house past 8:00 didn’t help any, and not being able to yell at them because they don’t think they did anything wrong didn’t help any, but Jesus help me the next time something like this happens. Kate will be brought home with me. And I will take care of her properly and they can pick her up from my house after she’s been fed and taken care of and made to realize that no matter what I would be there for her, just like your supposed to do with all children. I am so sorry they were douche bags, Kate.

Totally The Worst Epiphany Ever

Whole family around the Christmas tree
Dad: "We talked about it and we agreed to keep it simple; socks, undies, PJ's, maybe a few small toys. I'll be honest, I had my doubts."
Mom: "I have one more gift for you guys!!"
Kids open a Wii
Dad: I don't know how she does it, but she know's what she's doing. And everyday, she' s the reason why we're doing it."
Everybody dancing happily around their gifts.

That's the new Walmart commercial on TV tonight.
I cried.
That's the mom I want to be.
Because that's the family we are.

We are having to scrape together all the pennies we find in the sofa to buy anyone a gift for Christmas this year. I was crying not becasue I thought it was a sweet commercial; though it is for sure. I cried because I have everyone's gift bought and wrapped already.

Everyone but Laine and Erik.