Long roadtrip with sleeping baby and quiet kids= lots of time to reflect. I was thinking back to almost a year ago today. I was nearly 8 months pregnant and just found out that my sister was pregnant as well. It was a really big surprise. They wanted another baby and Vince, their son was a year and a half years old, but they weren’t going to try for awhile and it was a really big surprise especially for them. I was thrilled that for that short time Cally and I would be pregnant together. I feel like it was quite by accident and miracle really if you knew all the specifics that we were pregnant at the same time. Not only were my sister and I pregnant, but we had 4 cousins on the same side of the family that had babies in 2010. I had Samantha in May and she was the second baby born in ’10. It is very poignant that Cally had baby Tyler in December and he was the last of the babies in the family to be born last year. God knew that Cally was going to have the hardest time of all of us with her pregnancy and delivery. She was going to need to have us ALL healthy and recovered so we could be there for her and Matt and the boys. My sister and I had opposite pregnancies and labor/delivery experiences, but had our own difficulties as well. I have had 2 healthy pregnancies and babies, however, with Tanner’s birth things got a little complicated. I labored all damn day without an epidural (stupid) and that boy did not want to come out. My body finally gave in to the pain after about 7 hours of hard contractions and I got my epidural which was the best invention ever in my opinion. Good thing I did too, because before I knew it, Mike was throwing on scrubs, 20 people, or so it seemed came running in my room and I was being wisked away into the operating room. I was terrified don’t get me wrong, but exhausted was more like it and before I knew it, Tanner was born via C-Section at 11:59pm on July 18, 2006. I do remember asking the Dr. if she was sure the time of birth was 11:59pm because that’s the difference of a birthday, and was it according to Sprint time or the clock on the wall because I will lay awake at night wondering if my son’s birthday is the 18th or the 19th every night until the day I die. The one thing that sucked about that day, I guess not the only thing, but a really big one, was the fact that Cally lived in North Carolina at the time where Matt played ball. She was my one crutch I knew I could count on to reassure me that everything was going to be okay, besides my husband (although poor Mike should have been given an epidural just for having to go through everything with me). She’s a nurse and I knew she would be asking all the right questions, making sure things were done correctly, but more importantly I knew I wouldn’t die if she was there, but I could if she wasn’t. This is how my brain operates. I’m the hypochondriac of the family and having a baby is no exception for my hypochondriacal ways, and everything you go through during labor I felt so vulnerable, so exposed. Your body isn’t yours anymore. It has another little person in there and your whole system gets out of wack. You realize laying in your hospital bed or on the operating table in my case, that so much can go wrong. It took me a good 3 years to get over Tanner’s delivery and emergency C-Section to decide that yes, I could try to do it again. Cally on the other hand had horrible pregnancies both times. The sickness got worse with the second one and she would get sick, really sick all the way up to Tyler’s due date pretty much. She always seemed to lose 10lbs or so in the first trimester or later. Vince (her first) was a hard delivery for her. Things were eerily similar to my experience with Tanner. However, everything turned out perfectly in the end, and mom and baby were healthy. I knew that I wanted Cally in the delivery/operating room with me my second time around. She was still having sickness from her pregnancy when I went in to have Sam, but she made it and having Mike and Cally there was the most comforting thing in the world. Now we had to wait another 7 months to meet our other little niece or nephew. We just had no idea that a semi truck was going to hit us head on. Our family has been through scary, tragic and trying times before, most of them being in the past 4 years, so it is hard to shock us out of our system. 3 years ago in January, Mike’s sister, Jennie was pregnant with their first baby, a boy that they already knew his name would be Caiden Michael. It was just a few weeks coming out of the holidays and I got the call that Jennie’s water had broke. That would be exciting, if Jennie was due, however, Jennie wasn’t due until the middle of April. This put her at 26 weeks. Ironically enough, Jennie and Mike live in Chicago, us in NE and my in-laws in VA. Not to mention her parents had just moved over to live in the UK while her dad was working on a project over there. I don’t even think my mother in law’s plane touched down in the UK yet before she was basically on another one coming back home. I flew out the second I got the news to be with Jen and Mike and to make a long story longer, with Jennie on complete bed rest in the hospital they were able to keep Caiden in her for 5 more weeks. It was reassuring to me and I think the new parents to be that Cally is a NICU nurse. They had an amazing support system at the hospital they were at and it was no surprise that Caiden would most likely spend some time in the NICU after he was born, but it was nice to hear from a family member who this is her job to take care of sick babies and nurse them to health. Feb 23, 2008 Caiden was born and weighing only 2 lb. 15 oz., he was so tiny but so determined. My sister once told me that babies fight harder than adults do to live. Caiden is a miracle, he’s our miracle and seeing that we are now arriving in Chicago to celebrate his 3rd birthday tonight, it brings tears to my eyes. It feels like so much time has lapsed yet time is standing still at the same time. Every milestone is important to us with all of our kids and tonight is a night to celebrate, sing Caiden happy birthday, and watch him open all of his presents. It’s also a time to reflect on how far he’s come since his first little breath on this earth. Things don’t ever go as we plan them, but we can take what miracles God gives us and celebrate them. More later…TO BE CONTINUED>>>

It’s naptime, which doesn’t mean much anymore because usually its just a time i like to call out loud so Tanner knows I expect him to nap. He’s not sleeping much anymore, but he’s awfully quiet in there today and Sam is asleep as well. I always tell myself I’m going to get so much done during naptime, but usually i just want to be quiet so I don’t disturb anyone, or check facebook, catch up on my DVR, etc. Today we went to Village Point mall which is somewhat annoying since it is an outside mall and there are limited places to park in front of the stores anyway, and it’s Christmas, and I took both kids minus the stroller. I see nothing wrong with flipping a partial u turn to park in a spot on the other side of the street as I am driving. I say, whoever gets there first, sees it, and has their blinker on for it, should be there’s. In retrospect, that is what started to happen today. I saw a lady leaving right in front of th store i wanted to go in, I stopped. I waited. Had my blinker on the whole time. This was perfect, because it was cold out and I’ve got the kids. I did not want to lug around the carseat all over so I would have had to drive around for a while waiting. Somewhere in there from around the corner and coming the opposite way a lady rolls up. I should have known she was trouble by the way she pretended not to see me with her (ugly) animal print coat. She has to wait for the car to back out, and while I am clearly inching closer and obviously waiting, she takes the bloody spot right out from under me. I almost cursed her out under my breath, but she’s lucky a spot on my side of the street also just opened up. As I tried not to make that big of deal about it and started to pull into the other spot, my very intuitive 4 year old says, “Mom? Did that lady take your spot?” Maybe I should have said, “No, honey, it wasn’t mine.” Or “That’s ok, we’ll park here instead.” But I preceded to tell him that she did in fact steal my spot, and how that wasn’t very nice. I almost wish he had yelled something at her like, “Did you take my mommy’s spot!??” Like he usually does at inappropriate times, but of course he didn’t. Tis the season for parking spot stealers.

Fa-la-la-la-laaaa-la-la-la-laaa! With the holidays in full swing I get to thinking to myself how blessed I am for all I have. It doesn’t feel very Christmassy in our house at the moment. Because our house still hasn’t sold, we are trying to keep the inside as neutral as possible which is hard when Tanner wants to put up a tree and all the decorations. It’s hard not to get caught up in the anxiety of house selling, but things could be worse, a lot worse. We have jobs, we can afford our house. We don’t have to sell it before a certain time, so we are blessed. Very very blessed. I have so much in my life I never thought I would have let alone deserved. Mike is the best husband in the world, and I don’t tell him enough. We have 2 healthy beautiful kids, what more can a girl ask for? This year, Tanner is 4, and he truly gets the Christmas thing. And while his cousin, Vince is singing ‘Dreadle, dreadle, dreadle…” he gets Hanukah and Christmas, but we won’t tell Tanner that until he figures it out for himself that that means not 1 day of gifts, but 9 days of gifts, and in our family with a set of divorced grandparents, it actually would average out to about 10 days of gifts, but whose counting? Tanner knows exactly what he’s asking Santa for, he knows all the Christmas songs and with how full my DVR is of all the XMAS shows he’s pretty knowledgable of all the movies as well. This year, we will be spending the night at grandma’s house XMAS Eve so the kids can have a traditional XMAS morning with a tree and stockings hung and the whole bit. Okay, so I can have a traditional XMAS. Hopefully this holiday season, everyone has lots to be thankful for, puts others’ needs before their own, and realizes the true spirit of the season which is helping those in need, doing something nice for a neighbor or a stranger. If people acted like they do during the holidays (minus the whole knocking other shoppers out for that black friday special) every other day of the year, I think the world would be a whole lot nicer.

2 kids, twice the mess, fun, memories, worry…Half the “me-time”. While I sit in this leather swivel chair with Samantha in the Bjorn, rocking back and forth while she sleeps, and typing away, I now have a new definition of the meaning “multi-tasking”. It’s a good thing I took typing 101 in High School or I might no be able to tell where the keys on the keyboard are, since it is also dark in this room. With 2 kids down for a nap and only the white noise of the fan keeping me company, I can’t help but to think about life before children. What the Hell did I do all day that kept me so “busy”? Thinking back to a couple of years ago when we had just Tanner and I decided to take on my biggest adventure yet and do something that I have always thought about doing when I didn’t have kids. With two kids under my belt now, I can’t possibly imagine going down to Florida or some other state by myself, for two weeks to try and qualify for a professional golf tour. It seems outragious, selfish and flat out exhausting just thinking about it. I struggle with this daily though and realize that I am not the only mother out there feeling this way, surely. Lots of moms I’m sure have such a drive and motivation to acheive all they ever wanted to acheive, kids or no kids. But Kid 1 rolls around and you still have 90% of that drive, but by kid 2 (for me anyway), the biggest drive you have for something is getting a nice hot shower in. In my house, showers are a luxery for me. I’m very lucky if I get a shower every other day. I don’t have time to think about how gross that is, and I know it will change once Sam gets older and doesnt want to be held all day long, and once I come out of zombieland. Do I get a bit envious of my husband because he gets to take a shower every morning before he goes to work? You betcha. It makes me really frustrated though to have these feelings of, I’m a mom, I stay at home, so I’m done with my dreams. It doesn’t have to be like that. I’m just as deserving as the next person who wants something big for themself. For me, my children’s dreams are the most important thing to me now, but how are they ever going to find themselves worthy of chasing dreams and wanting big things for themselves if their own mom doesn’t walk the walk? It’s crucial that I don’t lose sight on what is important in life. My family comes first, period. Wether I never pick up a golf club again, or pursue my golf like I used to, whats important is teaching my children through my actions and not just my words. That goes without saying in every aspect of my life. I can have that happy medium of family and all the things I love to do. I have to remind myself once in a while that my kids need me to be a healthy, happy mom, for them. My mom mever had a dream for herself and if she did or does, I don’t know about it. I never understood why and always felt she settled and sells herself short. I don’t want my kids to feel that way about me. I have changed as a person after I had Tanner and then Sam. My views have changed, my priorites have changed, and that’s okay as long as I don’t start talking myself out of doing things just for the pure fact that I am up to my knees in pee, poop, spit up and most likely dirty dishes most days. I’m still the same old me, and maybe I get lost in myself once in a while, but I always seem to find my way again. I love having two kids and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. The only thing that’s changed is that we will all be going on this adventure together now, this little thing we call LIFE.

So, with our second little monster on the way and due to arrive in May/June, we can’t wait to experience life with two kids, and a little girl to be thrown in the mix. Today is our 150th day of winter (or so it seems) and thanks to the groundhog, looks like we will be stuck in this season for at least more weeks. Between cleaning and fixing up and trying to get the house ready to sell, we do have things to keep us busy inside, however it’s just not quite as exciting as relishing in the warm spring sun in a pair of flip flops and a glass of lemonade. Tanner is so excited for his baby geel (girl) to come. I didn’t really know how to explain to him when she would come so I told him when the snow melts, it gets warm outside, and the the grass turns green, then she will come. Thanks for all the snow we have acquired over the past months I think I’m good since it’s not going to melt till May probably. He’s keeping busy with preschool two days a week and ice skating as well. Maybe I should tell him when he’s out of school for the summer she will come, hmmm. Life is always exciting here, even when there’s nothing to do, Tanner will usually find something to do. Whether it’s sticking an antenna in the light socket or hiding things around the house under his bed, every day is a new adventure, and usually I’m just thankful we get through the day most days without getting hurt. We have a few more months before the baby comes and it’s no longer just us three any more, but we will be a family of four, and HA, I won’t be out numbered anymore! Not that I ever minded anyway, but adding some pink and purple into our lives won’t be bad either.

I never saw myself as having a boy as a mom. I always pictured having a girl. Although I dreamed of having a boy, I never really new what that would be like nor could I picture it because I only have a sister and growing up it was just us girls, doing girl things and playing with girl toys. We played with barbies and dolls and kepts ourselves busy for hours, days sometimes, playing house. If ever there were a a brave little neigbhorhood boy who dared come over to our house during one of our so-called “Barbie and Ken” weddings, he was probably bored out of his mind watching us. We had no race cars for him to push around the room, unless you want to count the pink Barbie convertible. Now, having have a boy, I am really starting to notice the difference in the way boys and girls act and play and also the difference in the way parents of only boys act, and parents with only girls act. Since Tanner has turned 3, I think we have acquired at least 50 race cars, 10 trucks, 2 train sets plus the trains themselves. He will play with those cars and trucks all day and never get bored even though there is only a couple of make-believe sounds that you can come up with, one being a “VROOM-VROOM” sound and another being a “CRASH”. There’s only so many different ways you can say them (once). Although, he does not get bored playing with his cars, his attention span for everything else is miniscule. He craves attention every second of the day, and whether it’s good or bad attention, he will do whatever it takes to get it. I haven’t figured out if it’s a boy thing or an age thing. Probably a little of both but when I watch my friends’ with little girls as they sit and play with their dollies, compared to my boy who is maybe pushing the doll stroller but most likely racing it around the room..Or, throwing and breaking the chalk rather than drawing with it. I can’t help to feel a little jealous that I can’t make Tanner sit quietly for 5 seconds. Boys are just different than girls in every way. Little girls who are learning to talk will most likely not talk until they know exactly what words they are trying to say and how it is going to sound coming out. Boys will ramble on on and tell you stories all day in jibber jabber and then look at you like you’re supposed to know what story it is that they are telling. I’m not sure if I will every be so lucky someday as to have a girl too, but I am sure that if I do it will be completely different and interesting. One thing is for sure, and that is I’ll definitly have to change the lullaby songs that we sing at night, considering the titles: “Big Green Tractor” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. Yes, boys are different than girls. And for those of you out there who told me boys are easier than girls, you obviously forgot what it was like to have a 2 and 3 year old boy so I won’t hold it against you for getting my hopes up. I will say at this point, and maybe I am bias, but I think boys are more fun than girls (of course, I’m bias). I love my strong-willed, kind hearted little guy who loves to play with trucks and stomp in the mud, but he also looooves his mama. He’s taught me so much about life and he’s only 3. Even though the good days are great and the bad days are awful, I wouldn’t take back even one second with him and I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds for us…hopefully a really looong nap!

Days like these are physically and emotionally draining. I could write a Top 10 list of “You know you’ve had a bad day when…” I actually don’t have the energy or the alcohol in me to make such a list (kidding about the alcohol), but I do sit here pondering to myself, how and when did my (almost) 3 year old get smarter than me? We’ll start with the fact that I put him to bed at 6:30 tonight and not a minute later because he didn’t have a nap today. Whenever someone asks me if he’s outgrowing his naps, my usual response is “If so, then I’m outta here.” Half kidding. When Tanner doesn’t take a nap, bad things happen in my house, and the afternoon usually starts with me yelling and the night usually ends the same way. I hate that I’ve started yelling at my child. Good parents don’t yell at their kids right? Yes they do, because good parents can’t practice perfect parenting all the time. Anyways, back to the part where Tanner grew smarter than me. Tonight, I was trying to make dinner, and as usual when he doesn’t have a nap, he was a crab and a grouch and not listening…no I take that back, ignoring me and doing all sorts of ‘disruptive behaviors’ as Dr. V would call them. I just call them flat out naughty, but if we’re getting technical here. So, I put him in time out. Tanner has since learned that since we try to get him to go on the potty all the time that he is now going to use that to his advantage. In the midst of his time out and since he’s not wearing any pants, he stands up and says to me, “I have to go potty.” Before I can even tell him no, he’s gone in the bathroom and goes #2 on the toilet which is a very big deal in our house. “I DID IT!” OK, hit the pause button. Now what do I do? Yell at him for not listening, or praise him for going poo like I so desperately want him to do all the time? Of course I praise him! And then I put him in time out again. Is that mean? Before you answer that, let me also say that not 20 minutes later was he in time out again and decided once again to use this so called, “potty training” against me. I saw him looking down at the ground with that concentrated look on his face, and in the middle of me yelling, “DON’T YOU DARE!” he was peeing on my floor. 20 minutes after that, it was basically deja vu all over again, except this time I didn’t see him do it therefore stepping in a puddle of pee in my bare feet. I don’t know how I didn’t think of making sure he’s wearing at least underwear when he is in a time out, but I’m going to get smarter than him. I can’t see him peeing on the floor for very much longer considering I make him finish his time outs and the casually hand him paper towels for him to clean up his own mess. All in all, today was a tough one. They are few and far between, because he a sweet, lovable, funny, handsome little man who is all mine. When we have these days it definitly tests my patience and me as a person and parent. Of course I will go to bed tonight feeling guily for most everything I did today, but thinking of ways that we can have a good day tomorrow. There’s going to come a day, and I hate thinking about it, maybe in 15 or 20 years that I’m going to miss these bad days with him, and it makes me feel blessed that I do get these days with him.

In just 1 short week, our beatiful boy will be 3 years old! It hurts to know that my baby is slowly turning into a big boy (in his own mind). And with this transitional turn of a page, this turning yet another year older, there are really only two topics we need to discuss here: Tantums and Potty Training (or lack there of). I must admit that when only a few short months ago I was with at my wit’s end with the screaming fits of rage that would come out of nowhere and usually before I could down a single sip of coffee, the tantrums have somewhat subsided. I can thank our wonderful behavioral psychologist for his sudden changes. Maybe they’re more subtle changes but just because I felt they would go on forever, they feel sudden to me. Either way, with one gingantic bill from the Doc, and a few tantrums less a day, I would say it all evens out to me. Although, I don’t quite understand why 2 year olds’ favorite word is no. Me: “Eat your breakfast.” T: “No.” Me: “Pick up your toys.” T: “No.” But now, Tanner has a whole new phrase that he’s added into the mix. He really likes doing things himself. And when I say things, I mean everything. If I carry his oatmeal from the microwave to the table, he gets very offended that I did it, when he wanted to do it, and he’ll say, “NO! MY DO IT!” No, I did not make a grammatical error, he says, “MY do it” for everything. And if I God forbid do something that he feels cannot be undone, watch out. Let the flailing begin. I’m not quite sure where he gets his OCD from (daddy) but if I happen to unlock the door and crack it, but he wanted to do it,he can’t just start from where I left off, he has to start all over and complete all the steps. Close door. Lock door. Unlock door. Open door. As annoyed as this makes me, part of me has to laugh because I’m not sure if in his 2 year old (almost 3) brain he’s thinking he just wants to annoy us or he really does have OCD tendencies. I’m leaning toward the later.
So with the tantrums simmering, we have yet another big event happening in our home. Whomever came up with the title, ‘Potty Training’, first of all, can go to Hell. I was once clueless at this whole process but now I’m starting to catch on. I’m starting to get smart. You see, the phrase ‘potty training’ is not meant in terms of the child. I mean yes, you are teaching this young soul to go to the bathroom on the toilet…but it is meant for the parents. See, it’s the parents who have to come up with all the millions of steps taken to create a ‘perfect’ potty senario for our child. We have to ask the child repeatedly 100 times throughout the day if they have to go potty. When they say ‘no’, which in my case is every time, then we have to start the bargaining process. “If you sit on the potty, then you can have your snack.” “We can’t go outside until you go on the potty.” And when that doesn’t work, we have to bribe them. The books and all the potty training videos in the world are meant to just confuse us poor parents even more. Let’s face it, if you looked up potty training in the dictionary it would read, ‘The training of the parent to come up with their own ideas and solutions for making their kid go to the bathroom.” I do also think that those parents who came up with all those potty songs and dances are super smart, because when your backs up against the wall, you sing a song about potty and you make up a story about poop. Why? Because the kids listen to that stuff. For instance, if I want my child to go on the potty, I don’t ask him if he wants to go. I bribe and bargain and sing and dance about the poop fairy. All kidding aside, potty training is not a box of chocolates, but after a day of doing it, I find myself usually eating a box of chocolates. The moral of this story, is that I’m pretty sure that by trying to do everything right in the potty training process, I am doing everything wrong. I’ve now switched it up. If you go poop on the potty, you get a car. I don’t care how many times you go, but every time you do you get a car. Go poop. Then get in the car, drive to the store and pick out a truck. Judge me all you want, it works and I don’t care if I go in debt buying matchbox cars, first of all they’re a dollar and second of all he’d rather play with those than eat, so lucky for us we found our secret weapon. Happy pottying everyone!