My dear sweet boy.

This past week has had it's ups and downs. I made a promise to myself last Monday morning that I would not yell at Joaquin. I felt like everything I was telling him was negative and often in not the nicest of voices. I did pretty good for most of the week. But I hate to say it; he's a handful and a half and as the week went on my patience grew more and more thin.

I think we just really need to evaluate some things around here and how we interact with Joaquin.

I feel like our environment has turned into a "No" versus a "Yes" environment. There are too many things that I have to tell him not to do. I would rather he was physically in a place where playing, touching and exploring most things was OK. It's like no matter how much I clear out of this place, clutter takes over and he dives right in. He needs a yard to run around in, a room to play in, activities and toys that are kid accessible and not in a giant pile in a hot tiny room. Our house just feels so kid un-friendly it's kind of a bummer.

Also, I think we need to allow him to burn off more energy. We go out every day, but there were still moments this week where he was practically bouncing off the walls. I mean running around and crashing into walls, furniture, body parts, dogs etc etc. We just enrolled him into some soccer classes which I'm hoping will help burn some of his energy and I need to make sure our days always involve time for him to physically play, especially in the afternoons.

But even with the opportunity to burn energy, it's like he's missing a way to expell a certain kind of energy. It's like he NEEDS to feel physical touch. He tends to squeeze, wrestle and get really rough in his play. This mostly happens with us and the dog, but I'm starting to see it happen with other kids and even in his attempts to hug and kiss the baby. He's not hitting or being mean, just kind of aggressive with his attempts to show affection. I feel like I'm constantly saying "gentle gentle gentle" with him! Am I not hugging and loving him enough anymore? Is that what's suddenly causing this?

I'm also pretty sure some of this is attention getting behaviors. While he's not showing jealousy directly at the baby, I know it's there and these moment of craziness are his way of getting that attention that has been diverted from him. I really hope he will settle down and this isn't a case of baby induced ADHD. I mean, he can get pretty crazy lately...along with ignoring us and some plain old defiance. It makes me wonder "Where did my sweet boy go?"

I almost feel like resorting to sticker charts and behavior modification strategies. But it just feels so manipulative. Do we really need to go there? Can some adjustments to our environment, routine and our attitude make enough of a difference? I'm also hoping that if I start pumping, I can get in some dedicated Mama & Joaquin time...time that is just all fun. I feel like I'm not fun for him anymore.

Today he told me he wanted my sister Ceci, to be his mom, and that he wanted to live with her. He also never wants to leave my mom's house whenever we go over. I get that everybody else is way more fun, but am I that awful to him that he doesn't even want me to be his mom anymore?

I know the baby is only three weeks old and this is still all so new, but it still is a bummer. I was going to come on here and update our week and post some fun pictures and this just spilled out.

Sorry. I'll do my best to post some pictures tomorrow. For now, here he is being is old sweet self the other night...



Now it's time for bed and time to get in some cuddles with Joaquin...even if he is sleeping and won't remember me whispering in his ear how much I love him and how much miss him.

The car was fixed!

I should have posted this sooner, but thank goodness the car was totally taken care of. We were able to pick it up that afternoon...no charge, no hassle!

While it did cost us a good amount of stress that evening and the next day, at least it didn't cost us any $$$.

I guess they had to change the gear shift housing??? Something went crazy with it which caused it to shut down the battery, which shut down all of the electrical features, which is pretty much the whole car. Oh well, it's done and fixed. Time to move on!

*phew*

Because life with a newborn and a toddler is JUST TOO EASY!

Yep, I think that's the rationale Life has for me right now. Obviously, I was just doing too good of a job and everything was just wayyy too easy. So Life had to throw in a little wrench...you know, just to keep me on my toes.

Yesterday afternoon I was going to make a quick run to Henry's. I had the kids all loaded up and we were ready to go. I put the key in my ignition and tried to turn it. Nope. It wouldn't turn. I checked the gear shift. Nothing. I tried to take the key back out. It was effing stuck.

Really?!?!

My car was completely and totally disabled. Nothing worked. Nothing.

I called the dealer because my car is only a 2007 and they sent at tow truck to come and get it. The guy passed my house 3 times and then called asking me which way he should go on my cross street. When I said SOUTH, he said "is that toward the ocean?" Yes, really.

Obviously he did not have the ability to tow my car because it was literally all locked up. It wouldn't even get out of Park and into Neutral.

Today I talked to the dealer again, they sent out a competent person and the car is gone. Now I'm just waiting to find out what in the heck happened.

How does that happen to a car?!?! How does a car just completely and totally SHUT DOWN?!?! It wouldn't even give me back my damn key!!!!

I still haven't heard anything, but it all better be covered under warranty or you better believe I will go down there with BOTH kids and let them both cry and tantrum and wreak havoc until they take care of what needs to be fixed UNDER warranty.

Can you imagine if that happened while out and about?!?!

Ok...time to go breathe...

Hormones much?

I'm on the verge of a total meltdown at a seconds notice. I'm thinking it could possibly have something to do with hormones, but I could be wrong. I've pinned it down to three things that have and will completely drive me off a cliff lately (not in any specific order)...

#1...The stupid red gauze wrap of my imagination. I had this daydream of walking around the rest of this summer with my baby girl wrapped up in a bright red dreamy gauze wrap. Nothing too special or expensive, but a beautiful light and airy bright red wrap, with the sweet sweet baby all cuddled in.

It's summer, so I figured buying red gauze fabric wouldn't be too much of a hassle, I'd' find a 40% off coupon for Joanne's and I'd hem it if needed...cheap and easy, right? Oh no no no! Totally wrong. By the time I finally got my hands on a coupon, turns out they stopped selling red gauze, because that's a summer time fabric. And well, duh. It's freaking July, so of course summer stuff is already out and in with the fall crap. Duh! So I used my coupon of fabric for my sling. Fine.

Then I got the amazing idea to just buy white gauze and I could dye it the beautiful bright red of my dreams myself. No biggie! Yay! Well, as it turns out, by the time I got my hands on another freaking coupon, they're out of white gauze now. Yeah, and all three freaking locations I went to said they didn't know when they were going to get more.

Seriously. I almost cried in the middle of Joanne's this afternoon. Cried and screamed. I imagined throwing the bolt of one yard of white gauze at the head of the poor clerk as he looked on with sad puppy dog eyes. It took every single ounce of self control to not have a complete and total melt down. Seriously.

So. I've decided I'm done with this silly wrap day dream. I have a black *bleh* moby that I'm sure will be nice and warm this lovely summer. I'll just have to deal. I'm not going to spend a crapton of money to buy fabric online especially since the gauze will really only be the most comfy when baby is little. I'm over it. Kind of. At the moment.

#2...Dog Hair. OH MY FREAKING GAWD. Really? Must we live is such filth? Must I find a big black thick dog hair EVERYwhere? Really? It's seriously destroying my relationship with Bella. I have no love for her right now. The sight of her reminds me of all the bajillion hairs on her body that I will eventually have to sweep or vacuum up. There are two solutions I have for this, but both cost dinero and well, we don't have a lot of that lately.

A friend told me about her Roomba and how it saved her relationship with her dog. The problem? The thing is expensive! I'm considering setting up a piggy bank to save every nickel and dime I can get my hands on to towards this thing though. Pulling out the vacuum on a daily basis to have a semi-dog hair free home though is just not my idea of living.

Another thing we could, and honestly, should do at this point is take Bella in for once a month grooming. We're obviously not keeping up with it like we should and I just don't have the time nor the energy to brush and bath an 80 pound dog on a regular basis. But again, that's another monthly bill that I'm not sure we're up for at this point in time.

Last summer I almost lost my mind, but was OK with the daily vacuuming. When I had Joaquin, it was just past Bella's worse shedding season, so I dealt OK, but was on a constant hormonal verge. This time, combining my pre and post partum hormones along with the gnarly shedding season? I'm not sure how I'm going to cope, I really don't have any idea how I'm going to deal. Really.

#3...Being ignored. Maybe it's because I'm pregnant and most of my very close family members think anything coming out of my mouth is the equivalent to hormone induced white noise? Or maybe it's my imagination? Or maybe I'm spot on. But if one more person ignores me, I am seriously going to throw something. Again. Hard.

A fabulous mom friend taught me a lovely strategy for dealing with it with Joaquin. She did it with her son at playgroup yesterday and so far I've used it like 50 times with Joaquin and it works like a charm. Basically I ask Joaquin a question, like "Do you have to go potty?" And he'll just keep doing what he's doing, pretending that I don't exist. Then I say "If you hear mama, touch your nose." He giggles and touches his nose. Then I say "If you hear mama tell her if you have to go potty." Then he tells me that yeah, he does and we go on with our merry little world.

It works for him just great so far! But I really don't see it going over to well with the adults in my life. What to do? I have no idea. But I've noticed that throwing things have so far become quite the attention getter.


All of this due to hormones? I have no idea. But I do know that I'm trying very very very hard to stay as calm and centered as I can. It's not easy. It really isn't.

Will I have enough room?

I was laying next to Joaquin yesterday while he was napping. I was just staring at him, studying his little lips and nose and eyelashes. He looked so calm and innocent. I kissed his dirty forehead and sweet fingertips and all I could think was "I'm so sorry". He has no idea how upside down his happy world is soon going to become.

I love him so much, I just can't help but wonder how in the world I'm going to fit in enough love for two of them. Will my frustration and lack of patience for him grow and my love for him drop? Will she never get the same amount of love I feel for him? Will they constantly be at battle for my heart? I know it all seems so silly, but I'm just so afraid I won't be able to love them both enough.

I'm afraid that Joaquin's sweet sweet world will just explode all around him and I will be the cause of it. Will I resent the baby for it?

He seems so excited for her to join us. When I told him this morning that I was tired becuase the baby was going to come out soon, he got so excited. "The baby is coming out! Hurry up baby!" If he only knew.

I am excited, I do want to meet her. But I'm feeling so sad too. So sad that I'm going to lose this amazing thing I have with my son that I love so much it hurts.

I'm afraid that when he looks back on these photos, at how excited he was, he's going to mutter to himself..."if I only knew".





Or maybe he's onto something with his excitement. Maybe he, in his heart, knows something that I don't. Maybe he knows I have enough room...I hope I do.

ouch.

This morning as I was getting dressed to go to playgroup I heard a loud crash and thud from the living room and then a "OH SHIT!" from Dan and then screams from Joaquin. I ran out in a panic looking for blood, thank goodness there was none. Dan had Joaquin in his arms while he screamed in pain.

My heart stopped as I saw white chunks of something spilling out of his mouth which I thought they were his teeth. Turns out he was spitting out pieces of the string cheese I had just given him. I still didn't know what had happened so I pulled him to me and sat down on the couch searching his body for injuries and pleading to Dan to tell me what happened.

Joaquin was watching Sesame Street and went to lean against our end table. His eyes were on the tv and not on the table so he was standing a bit too far from the table. His arm missed the table, but his head didn't.

I thought he had hit his forhead, but didn't see much. He was still screaming and I was panicked so I offered him some mama milk. It's been over two weeks since we last nursed, but I just wanted him to be OK. At first he refused and I continued to search his body for bumps or blood. He slowly started to calm down and leaned against me. Dan, from the other side of the room said "Ohhh, look at his ear."

The table caught the top of his ear. It was turning blue and swelling quickly. We tried to ice it but he refused. He refused arnica too but finally asked for milk. I was happy to have something to comfort him.

After about 40 minutes of cuddling and me searching for signs of a concussion he was up and ready to go to playgroup. He's been fine ever since. He's just got a fat ear and scared the shit out of his parents. This was one of our first BIG ouches that we've had to deal with and it wasn't fun. I'm not looking forward to what is sure to come!

A house full of sickos.

I swear, at least one of us in this house has been sick ever since Thanksgiving. What is up with this season? It seems like everybody is sick!

At least before we were all taking turns.

At the current moment all three of us are sick. Actually I should say four. I heard Bella snoring last night so I'm assuming she's a bit stuffed up as well.

This last wave started with Joaquin and an ear infection. The second that passed Dan got a cold that I'm thinking has turned into a sinus infection. His snores are monstrous. They have gotten so bad, that I had taken to the couch in the middle of the night to get some sleep. I guess he felt bad, because for the past few days he is now just starting out on the couch.

Then Joaquin suddenly started with a runny & stuffy nose...again. The poor kid, he's been hit the hardest this season. He had a hard time sleeping through the snot, so things were pretty rough for a couple of nights there. Then the coughing started yesterday, but good thing he downed like three spoonfuls of honey and got some decent sleep.

As of yesterday, I started feeling it. By the end of they day I was officially sick. I'm trying all sorts of herbal/home remedies and will be getting some chicken soup for lunch. I really hope we all heal soon. I simply can't deal when we're all sick. But I'm not too hopeful, Dan has been sick for a couple of weeks now, I think this is going to be a long one.

Can we all please move on to Spring and away from the Winter colds please?

I wish...

I wish things were different. I really do.

A bit of an update.

How lame is it that I only have 3 posts under January? That must change so here I am to update you all, and bring my monthly posts to a whopping FOUR!!

So the past few months have been really really hard. I've had the morning sickness, the exhaustion and even the depression. My pregnancy with Joaquin was pretty easy, so I wasn't prepared for this. All of that on top of chasing a toddler and working full time was just too much. But this past week the clouds have parted and I can see the light! No more nausea, gagging and puking. I can make it past 8pm and I'm not a walking emotionless zombie. I am getting headaches though. It seems like as soon as the nausea stopped the headaches came on full force. I went most of last week without one, but woke up to a lovely one today. Hopefully it's a passing phase.

Life is interesting these days. Dan is working the tax season doing taxes so that is good. Unfortunately he's not making much dinero, but he does enjoy it. We're both hoping this leads to something beyond the tax season.

There were two things I swore to myself once we were pregnant and having another child. One was that I would stay home with both kids for a minimum of a year...minimum. The other was that I would have a homebirth. I'm not sure if I'm getting either. Well, I'm pretty much positive the homebirth is not going to happen and we're working on the me staying home thing, but I'm not sure how much time we're going to be able to pull off.

The realization of these two things have really taken it's toll on me emotionally. I'm trying to stay positive and worry about things I can control, but money, or lack of it just plain sucks.

So that's where I've been lately...sitting around gagging and crying over money. Pretty obvious why I haven't been in the mood to write much, right?

We'll see what the coming months bring...

The Puke

Joaquin is turning two tomorrow and we had a rockin little party all planned out and ready to go. Unfortunately he woke up this morning at 3:30 am puking his little brain out. It continued every 15 to 60 minutes all day. He nursed, he drank water, he even asked for some bread, but it all came right back up.



I knew I had to cancel the party, but I was in tears about it. It was going to be his 2nd birthday and no festivities. I didn't even think to postpone because every weekend in December is already full of obligations. Luckily I managed to g-chat with a sane and helpful mama that reminded me there were other days left in this weekend, and Sunday was suggested. So Sunday it is. Now I'm just freaking out that a handful of people don't check their email and show up to an empty house tomorrow morning.

We still managed to go to my mom's house for dinner. When we got there he was totally lethargic and super sad and pitiful looking. He hadn't puked in a few hours, but about 15 minutes after some nursing it happened again. I had him in my lap while I attempted to eat dinner and he just burrowed his head in my armpits. He still must have somehow gotten a whiff of the food because he started asking for some, I gave him little bits at a time and within 15 minutes he was a new kid. He ate off and on for the rest of the evening and was back to his old shenanigans of tearing apart my mom's house. Thank goodness.

I'm prepared for another puke or two tonight, but I'm glad to see it's moving along. It's too bad we had to postpone the party, but the last thing we need is 20 little people all puking in unison. That would not be pretty.

Hung over.

Last night Dan and I went on our June date night. Our friend's band was playing at a nearby bar and my mom so kindly offered to take Joaquin for the night. It was only his second time overnight with her but we were ready to give it another shot and willingly handed him over. He was so excited and all over the place when we got there, he didn't even have the time to say good bye.

When we got home I attempted a nap so we didn't end up eating before we went out. Big mistake. While at the bar I proceeded to have four Pear Ciders. Four. I can't even remember the last time I had one, so four was another big mistake. When it was time to go home neither of us really felt like stopping for food, my final mistake.

This morning when I woke up I felt like I had been run over by a very big truck containing lots and lots of Pear Cider. When I get this hung over, I can't keep anything down. So I threw up any liquids I tried to ingest. My head was pounding and my body was trembling. Nope, not a good thing.

I talked to my mom at about 9am and she said Joaquin was sleeping because he had woken up at 4:45 and didn't go back down until 8:30. My poor mom. So she said not to worry about picking him up until later. Thank goodness. I slept as much as my body would allow me, but by 11 there was no way I was going to get up and get Joaquin, so off Dan went.

He called me about an hour later to tell me he stopped at his parents to give me a bit more recovery time, thank you dear husband. By the time they got home, Joaquin was back asleep for his afternoon nap and I am now feeling much better. I can now keep liquids down and I'm seriously craving some greasy food. Another sign that my body is getting better!

So, note to future self....eat before you go out, don't drink 4 drinks ever again, and if you don't eat before you drink, please eat afterwards.