Giving Thanks

On this day before Thanksgiving, I figured I could take a few minutes to give thanks.

I am thankful for my husband. Sometimes it seems as if he irritates me to no end, but he is a good guy with a caring heart and I know he loves me and the family we have created. I am thankful that he can make me laugh. I am thankful that he works an on call tow truck driving job and a little weekly paper route on top of his regular job to help make extra money. Doing all of these jobs means less time he can spend with us, yet he never complains...he is happy to be able to be helping make ends meet. When it gets tough, we always say that "someday it will not be like this, and money will not be such an issue", and we just keep going from there.

I am thankful for my kids. Milton is a happy little ball of energy and you cannot be in a bad mood around him. He just makes you smile. Britta is such a sweet little baby that loves to snuggle. I can't wait to see what she is like as she gets older and develops her little personality. Kids are time consuming, but are so worth it. I am blessed to have two healthy kids that are also good kids.

I am thankful for my career. I got it started much later in life than I had planned, but I did it. I am thee and can only go up from here. I am thankful for the firm I work for and all of the people there. They are amazing. It feels more like a little family than a job. The people lift each other up and support each other, everyone wants everyone else to do well. That is uncommon in many work places these days. The work is challenging and engaging. I never dread going to work on a Monday morning. . .Sundays are no longer depressing thinking about Smithers week of work. I am truly lucky to have found a career that I love and a place to work that I love.

I am thankful for my wonderful friends and all of my family members. I am blessed to have these people in my life. I am thankful for so much, just like anyone is. I hope you can take a moment to reflect on what you are most thankful for this holiday season.

The Hardest Thing

I know there have been millions of babies born and millions of parents that have experienced the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn. I knew all about it going in. But with Milton, he slept through the night the first night we brought him home from the hospital...he was such a sound sleeper that he would not even wake upon getting hungry. I ended up having to set an alarm for the middle of the night to wake and feed him...that surely did not constitute as sleep deprivation as I know it now...

Enter Britta. Before she was born I was hoping that I would not have to set an alarm to wake her up at night to feed...I was hoping she would do what babies do and just wake up when she needed to eat. I take it back!!!! At least with Milton I knew I was going to get a solid 4 hours of sleep, get up for about 45 minutes, and then back to bed for another 4 hours. Britta is totally unpredictable...what I can predict is that at about 9:00 p.m. she wakes up and wants to stay up. She also wants to eat about every hour for two or three hours. And she likes to pretend that she is sleeping in your arms after those few hours, so you set her down, turn off the light and climb into bed oh so quietly, and right when you think 'ok I am going to get some sleep'...BAM the crying starts...and not just little fussy cries, full on screaming 'how could you lay me in this cold pack n play???' and you pick her up and she just wants to be held...eyes wide open, but at least she is quiet.

So this has been my life for the last three weeks. Running on 4 hours of broken sleep. I still have to get up at 5:30 or 6:00 to make sure Mike gets up and off to work on time. People tell me to sleep when the baby sleeps. I say it's not that simple. During the day I have 3 hours give or take between feedings, between the time she will wake herself up to eat. I have never been a napper, I find it extremely difficult to nap during the day. Sleeping is reserved for night time. And it doesn't matter how little sleep I got, I just cannot nap. Being home on maternity leave also makes me feel like I should be able to get all of the routine cleaning and laundry done, as well as extra projects I wouldn't have time for. I blame that on the perception that American moms can care for their kids, tend to the housework, nurture a marriage and work full time all on their own. I never realized how true that is until having kids. Just as a woman you feel you should be able to do it all, add becoming a mom and that feeling increases threefold. And there is no time for yourself, and you don't even consider taking time for yourself, you feel guilty. I feel guilty when I cannot get the normal cleaning done. I need to work on that. I did actually plan to take some time for myself on this leave and I have appointments for a haircut and a pedicure. But I know I will feel guilty and anxious to get back to the homestead while I am at those appointments. I just can't help it.

Back to the issue of no sleep, which was the point of this post. It's freaking hard. I am very worried about how I will function once I get back to work in a few weeks. A couple nights this past week she has slept for a stretch of 5 hours at night but it's been from 10 to 3, so I am still getting up in the middle of the night to feed and not feeling rested when I have to get up for the day. I told Mike last night that the sleep deprivation is so hard that had Milton been like this, I don't know if I would have had another baby. Mike sometimes helps overnight but he has his own issues with sleep and needs to use a c-pap machine so that makes things difficult for getting his help. I would almost rather he got his sleep so he was not crabby during the day when I can use his help more. I can be sleep deprived and not bitch about it, him, not so much and it's something I don't care to hear about from him when I have had two hours of sleep and he got up to change a diaper once at 1.

In the middle of the night when she is up, I just tell myself that it will not be like this forever and am thankful she is not screaming and that we are getting extra cuddle time. Which is very hard to do in that blur of being half awake. During the day I just drink my coffee and carry on and keep busy...

2 Kids Sleeping

I know it's been quite awhile since I graced this blog with my thoughts but give me a break...I have been busy cooking baby number 2!!! Yes, I am the mom of two kids now. Which when I stop and think about it, really think about it, I cannot believe it. And they are both sleeping right now and this is how I m spending the blissful quiet. To be fair, I was already online looking up chicken recipes since I am in charge of dinner tonight, the one night a week when the hubby is on call and I get to be in charge of dinner. . .most usually it's "Can you pick up (insert fast food restaurant here) on your way home from the tow?" (he drives tow truck on call Thursday nights.) But I am getting of track here...

The point of this post is that I have two kids before the age of 31... Yes 31 is only about two months away but still. Forever I thought I would have all three of the kids I wanted by the age of 25. Yes you read that right, 25!!!!! So I had apparently planned on being married by like 20 years old. . .not that there is really anything wrong with either scenario, but for me it would have been hell. At 20 I had the worst boyfriend I had my whole life, but he was so hot, and I obviously didn't see how bad he treated me...I didn't see that until he mysteriously just disappeared and then after a couple of weeks of no contact he had his new girlfriend calling and texting me about how great their sex was. Ugh. Via facebook stalking I found out they ended up getting married...I am SO glad I dodged that bullet with him. I was also working at Cub Foods part time...certainly neither situation would have been conducive to trying to raise a child.

I remember when 25 came and went and I thought I was so old and that time was running out for getting married and having kids. I think Mike and I had been together for a couple of years at that point but marriage was still a little ways off and kids...I was so worried about being the oldest mom! It is funny the path that life takes. You can make all of these plans and ideas and timelines and it almost never seems to work out the way you plan. Yet we all continue to keep making theses timelines for ourselves. I didn't get my career started nearly as early as I would have liked, but the point is that it happened. Same thing with the kids, they happened right when they were supposed to. I apparently wasn't supposed to have three kids by 25...maybe three will happen by 35 if that's what we end up deciding. And the point to all of this being that there is no way I was ready for marriage or kids or home ownership when I was 20...with everything I know now at 30 that I didn't at 20, I would have been a train wreck and probably very unhappy that I had "missed out" on my 20's. And I don't say any of this to offend anyone whose life took a path similar to what I thought I wanted, I am just saying that for me, I am so happy that life has worked itself out on its own and not followed the timeline that I thought would be good for me. 30 certainly is not old and life is not over...it is just beginning again, providing for and nurturing my two little ones and I would not have wanted it any other way.