Captain's Log: Week 199

Okay guys. I worked WAY TOO MUCH this past week. Four ten hour days and two eight hour days in a row made me really cranky at the end of it all!! Good thing my family is pretty quick to forgive me. Especially because this coming week I have to work five ten hour days. Sigh. Just glad they aren't all in a row this time! Too bad that all of this wonderful overtime money has to go to make the car insurance payment. I think all overtime money should just be fun "blow it on something dumb" kind of money.....if only my budget could agree with me lol.

Pretty sure that I took both of these pictures yesterday, on my blessed day off. Even on a day off though, I had to spend way more time than I liked cleaning and doing home improvement stuff. Ah well. It feels good to actually get things done around the house, and live in a clean place. I need it to stay sane. At the end of the day, I felt totally accomplished with what got done and enjoyed some well earned TV time with my feet kicked up. Hopefully the house stays in decent shape until I can attack it again on Thursday ;p

 Jayson loves chocolate milk and his dragon costume. I love his chocolate milk mustache and crazy long wavy hair that desperately needs a haircut! Glad that I managed to get a picture of him this week :]

Yes I let my children watch Dora. As a matter of fact, she is my favorite babysitter sometimes! Especially when we are working on picture hanging--it's only at least a month overdue lol. Anyway, this is one of my new picture arrangements. It means a lot to me, because I love my children to death (even if they drive me to an early death some days)! All three of them. I will always miss and think about Zoey. It's been almost three months since we lost her, and I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't think about what pregnancy would be like right now (at nearly 27 weeks), who should would have been, or whose features she would have been lucky enough to take after. She is just as real to me as the boys are, even if there will never be any physical evidence of her in this life. 

I haven't given myself permission to speak very publicly about my deeper feelings involving Zoey, mostly because I felt shame at the fact that I might still be grieving three months after a 14 week miscarriage. Imagine that! It seems that society puts such a strange timeline on grief for a miscarriage. It's like I should just instantly bounce back because I never held her or felt her kicks from the inside. Or because she never took her first breath, she was never alive and consequently doesn't deserve much more than a second thought. I've decided that I'm not buying into that mentality as of this week. 

Ever since I found out I was pregnant with her, I was embarrassed to admit the truth to people--that I was mostly excited about having three children so close together--because I was afraid of what they would think about me having another child, when I already worked so much. I was more afraid of what others thought of me and my parenting, than taking time to be proud of my future son/daughter. If I could go back and change things, a big one would be telling people the truth, and not caring so much what they thought. I was scared to death of how to handle everything, but already absolutely positively 100% in love with my new child. Instead of telling them that, I told people she was a surprise and that I had no idea how we were going to make do. While true, it makes me so sad now to think that I couldn't be more honest about my excitement. And so I've decided things are gonna change. I am done hiding behind those kind of feelings. I am done not ever talking about her, just because it might be socially strange. I am her mom, and I want to let the world know that I will always be proud of her and love her, just like I would have been if she grew up in our home! I want to honor her memory and remember her always, so that is why her "going home outfit" will always have a place on my wall. Maybe this was a little personal for everyone to read, but thanks for going there with me, because I really needed to get that off my chest.

In other fun news, Max still has an ear infection. Pretty sure it's getting worse. Now that he has tubes, and I can see the stuff that drains out of them, I feel so terrible to think back to all of that being stuck in his ears pre-surgery; no wonder he was so miserable a lot of the time. Of course our ENT doctor is out of the office this week, we sure can pick great times to be sick. We just get to keep doing the eardrops, along with an oral antibiotic. I hate those, cause they equal diaper rash pretty much. I wonder what they are going to do to help Max get better, or if there is anything that they can do. I really pray there is. From what I can find online (and there isn't a ton) if kids keep getting ear infections after tubes, the next step would be to get the adenoids out. I've kind of been championing that the whole time, but the doctor said his adenoids weren't enlarged, so I let it go. Thinking it's time to get back on that horse and suggest it again. I don't know if we just got really lucky, but after Jayson's tonsil and adenoid removal, he didn't get nearly as sick as before the surgery. We will see how it all plays out next Tuesday I guess. In the meanwhile, I'm praying that he is not too uncomfortable and heals some.

P.S. On Saturday it will be 200 weeks since Sam and I got married, woohoo! I'm thinking this calls for some kind of fun celebration soon :]

Captain's Log: Weeks 196/197/198

Boy have I fallen behind! The last two Mondays at work have been jam packed with stuff to do (this is usually when I find time to blog), so I haven't gotten around to writing. Since today is technically considered a holiday (thank you President's Day for time and a half pay!!), I will enjoy it being slower and catch up with what's been going on with us :]

Max is officially one year old now! For his birthday I bought him an adorable onesie at DI that would tell the world it was his special day, all for the great price of 2 dollars. Bad news is that Max is a giant and I couldn't even snap the onesie because he's too tall (funny thing is he's entirely average when it comes to height on the growth charts). Good news is that he wore it as a shirt of sorts--funny what we make work for a cheap price huh? Anyway, he had a really good day at daycare, and daddy was nice enough to let him get his first taste of sugar free chocolate after dinner--I was told he enjoyed both eating AND wearing it! Unfortunately I was not home to get a picture of him being all cute and messy, but before you get too sad, I did snap a birthday onesie picture for your enjoyment.

Max and I at daycare on his birthday. We both apparently need a nap!

So now that Max is one, he thinks that he's all grown up. Since he's mastered walking pretty well (except for those times when he falls randomly and gives himself a swollen purple eye) he occasionally tries to run. Jayson does it, so why can't he? All I can do is laugh, even when he falls, because it looks so funny! Max also does chores now: he has appointed himself in charge of taking out the garbage. And by taking out the garbage, I mean taking random objects out of the can that's inside the house, and marching around proudly with his gross new-found treasure. Maybe we should consider getting a lid for it?? My favorite "helpful" thing that Max does is turn his bottle upside down and laugh as formula drips out drop by drop onto my floor (or worse yet, carpet). Since sippy cups don't drip so magically, he has no real interest in them. Sigh. He really is a good kid for the most part though. I absolutely love when he shrieks with excitement and "runs" toward you, like he hasn't seen you all day (and it's only been five minutes) to give you a big hug and kiss. He's honestly such a joy when he's happy.

Max enjoying a nap in his carseat, after his ear tubes follow-up check. Isn't he getting so big?? And don't you love his reddish hair? I most definitely do :]

I didn't get any new pictures of Jayson on my phone these past couple of weeks. It might be because I've been so busy trying to keep him entertained and out of trouble. It's not so much the troubles I used to have with him, like getting into the poison or playing with the toilet water (some of Max's latest schemes that Jayson use to love, in case you were wondering). It's more like trying to potty train him and keep him from doing chores for me (he's an eager helper, but the mess most of the time is just SO not worth it). I've come to the conclusion that Jayson is definitely not potty trained, and right now he's being quite rebellious about it, but we are not going back. I think it is best to hold our ground since we've been out of diapers for so long now. We of course try to get him to go, but if he's just going to wet himself, we're just gonna do the laundry and wait for it all to click. I'm not going to be super forceful all the time, because that's just as stressful as the accidents. It would just be great if everything clicked soon....I can wish right?

To top everything off, Jayson has been hounding us to feed him all of the time lately, even right after he's done eating a meal. It drives us crazy, because every denial for food leads to a huge temper tantrum. I'm pretty sure it's a reaction to being bored, which makes me feel awful. We apparently are not as exciting as his two-year old buddies at daycare (go figure lol). Plus, we had our Idaho cousins visiting last weekend, and it's been hard for him to come down from that fun; to not have five built in playmates when he is home. I need to find some friends his age in the neighborhood that he can play with on the weekends. It just gets hard when I'm not home to take him, because he's potty training so we can't just dump him off. Plus on the weekends I work, Sam doesn't necessarily want to go hang out with the other neighborhood moms (I don't blame him, because I wouldn't really want to go hang with the dads). We will have to figure out something though, so the poor kid doesn't go too crazy. Point in case: this morning Jayson chose to hang out with me, and feed me my cereal. He insisted on feeding it to me, one little piece at a time. We must have been entertained for twenty minutes! Sure sign that he's going crazy haha. I do love how sweet Jayson can be sometimes, and look forward to finding more of that once we leave this stubborn streak he's currently stuck in.

Sam and I are hanging in there, I guess just pretty much doing the same old same old routine. Work, watch kids, clean house, repeat. Valentine's Day this year was kind of a fun break from the mundane though, even if we did have to work. We ate Panda Express for dinner, which was a real treat--I haven't had it in forever! I gave Sam a new wedding band (his sadly and mysteriously got lost not too long after we moved). He got me a beautiful arrangement of my favorite flowers and some delicious chocolate. Plus I got to enjoy a nice quiet bath, and go to bed before the kids did (I had to work early the next morning) all courtesy of Sam. My favorite part of our gift givings is that we didn't spend a fortune and we still both got things that made us happy. Sweet success if you ask me.

My gorgeous Valentine's day gift! Gerbera daisies are my favorite flower, and Sam remembered that. I don't usually rave on and on about flowers (I'm far too practical) but every time I look at this arrangement it just makes me all happy, and I have to tell Sam (or call him). He's probably never going to get me flowers again if I keep calling him up all the time lol........

The cats have been up to a lot. Tonka went missing for a whole week.......pretty much the worst and longest week ever. He got out on a Wednesday morning when we left for work (certainly taught us to ever leave any house doors open), and was gone until one of our neighbors found him on their back porch the following Tuesday afternoon. That Wednesday night when Sam got home, Tonka didn't come to greet him as usual, and after a thorough check of the house, we determined he must have snuck out. Of course, it snowed that night, so we felt dreadfully sick that he was freezing somewhere. We went to the animal shelter the day after and put out a lost report for him. It did no good though. Days passed, and he was absolutely nowhere to be found. By Tuesday I had given up, but a miracle happened, and I was able to get him back from under my neighbor's back porch, where he went and hid after laying out in the sun. I think he weathered all of the storms under her warm house....don't know how else he survived two brutal snowstorms! Other than being really hungry, he was no worse for the wear. Sam and I taught him a lesson by bathing him the next day, because he stunk like dirt and outside. Tonka definitely did not like the bath, but his fur has been clean and soft ever since, so it was worth it. We are SO relieved to have him back home with us! Gidget has finally started eating food all by herself again! She might even be putting on a little bit of weight. We are totally thrilled for this development, and hope that soon she can get that darn feeding tube out. She's been scratching at it like mad lately, so I bet she'd be quite glad to get it out too. She's gotten quite feisty since feeling better, and tries to instigate fights with Tonka. Hopefully they can get along better, because they are both stuck with us for a long time :]

That's pretty much us in a nutshell. These next couple of weeks I am selling my soul to work, so I don't know if I will have a lot of exciting updates. It will be exciting if I can make it through work without falling asleep! It will also be exciting to have such a big paycheck come March, so we can pay more bills......gotta love the cost of life. Sigh. Have a great week, and hopefully I can update next Monday again :]