The Not-So-Divine Secrets of -Motherhood-

Dear Hayley,

March 29th, 2009    

Dear Hayley,

My dear sweet little girl, somehow when I blinked you turned into this beautiful little girl. You are so smart, so thoughtful, so loving, and so much fun. I just love every single day with you.

You are always so worried about your baby sister, it fills my heart to see that. I was so very worried after you had been the center of our world for so long that you would have a hard time sharing it. And maybe someday you still will, but for now you just love helping out with your baby sister and believe me, Mommy is grateful for the help.

You always ask "Where's my sister Sam?" when you get up in the morning. If she is still sleeping you whisper and tiptoe so that we won't wake her up. Sometimes when she is already awake you run in and climb up to peek in her crib. She always smiles when she sees you- I just know that she already wants to be up and running around to catch up with you.

Right now you really love watching Dora and Diego cartoons. You have learned to count to ten in Spanish just from watching tv. I wish I knew more Spanish to teach you!

You just love riding your bike, and playing on the swings and slide, planting things, and coloring. Oh and reading- you just love to read. I am so happy to see that as reading is Mommy's favorite thing to do. Right now your favorite book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?". Dada tries to trick you and tell you there is a monkey in there but you know there isn't- we can't trick you! And when we get to the page with the goldfish we ask you what the goldfish says and you tell us "Nothing- he just swims around!". You make us smile.

You help Mommy so much around the house- with the laundry, and the dishes, and of course with Baby Sam. I really appreciate your little hands.

You used to be my little punkin pie- but you are just growing so fast. I love you so much Hayley Bug!

Mommy

I think there's a booger on my laptop

If you are wondering, I didn't put it there. I just sat down and started typing when I noticed this dried crusty thing near the keyboard. I can only assume it is a booger. With a two and a half year old those pop up in the funnest of places.

So seriously, I think I started to post about being a single mom before I got sidetracked with the alleged booger. My husband went home to visit his family for five whole nights leaving me to single-mom it. I was not overly excited about the prospect if I do say so myself.

See, I'm just not that patient. I mean, I want to be. I try to be. I even take deep breaths and count before responding. But I am just not Michelle Duggar. Have you ever watched that show? She has like the sweetest little voice, I mean, why wouldn't you want to listen to her? Me? Not so much. My sweet voice is non-existent so that means you get my normal voice. And if you don't listen to my first pass then it elevates to embarassingly loud voice. After that it's run and hide voice. None of which seem to keep the attention of my toddler, so then it turns to smack your bottom voice.

I'm not a closet spanker, I will own up to the fact that my kid gets a lifter every now and then. Generally speaking though I do try to resolve my disciplinary problems without resorting to capital punishment but sometimes it must be done.

So for tonight and the next four nights after this I will be single mom'n it. Already let me give props to the moms that do this permanently. I adore you all. You rock. I don't know how you do it. If I could make up a witty "real women" song like the old Bud Light commercials (real men of genius) I would do it. But you don't really want me singing any sort of song, and that includes parodies.

Right now my girls are both in bed (where I should be also). I skipped dinner in favor of a glass of wine and a good night in front of my computer catching up on blogging and reading blogs. Although it is silent around here I was instantly reminded of how many ways my life has changed in the last few years the instant I sat down and noticed the booger on my laptop.

More fun to follow, of that I am certain. Stay tuned.

I thought I was going to die from the pain

The title to this post is not exaggerated. I seriously wondered if I was going to live through the pain- so let me back up and tell you how it all started.

You may recall me saying that I have been going to a local massage therapist (aka my "boyfriend"). He has really been good for me- I see him about every three weeks for an hour and a half. At any rate he has been able to work out the tension that I carry around and honestly I just feel better overall. I went for a massage the weekend before we went to Palm Desert and felt great.

When we were in Palm Desert we stayed at a beautiful resort/spa. I was scheduled for another massage while we were there and I figured for once I would be able to go for a relaxing massage instead of a strictly tension relieving one. (Yes, there really is a difference for people like me that knot up like a curly telephone cord).

I seriously don't know what happened but I think that guy really messed me up. He was by far the least professional therapist I have ever seen, but that's a different story. I think he was trying some new technique on my neck and every time he did it I flinched because it hurt. My main problem is that I just don't know how to say "hey, cut that out, it hurts". So I kept thinking that he couldn't focus on that area for very long and that it would soon be over. Except he kept coming back to my neck. Which was also the most random thing I have ever seen. He started with my feet. (Strange). Then moved to my neck. Then to my lower back. Then back to my neck. Then my legs. Then my neck. I couldn't really focus because there was no rhythm to what he was doing. And then there was my rebellious neck that was tensing up more and more each time his hand hovered over it.

So anyway, I left the massage a bit perplexed at what really happened. I left feeling like I had a small kink in my neck- like I had slept too hard in one position. You know the feeling? That feeling persisted all week. I chalked it up to coming home and sleeping in my own bed with Sam next to me.

Finally on Sunday I was getting the girls out the door to go to my sisters house and my head just exploded. I cannot even begin to describe the pain. I couldn't move my head to the right at all- although I could move it perfectly to the left. I couldn't look down or up. Stupid me, I still drove the thirty miles out to my sisters house. The problem then was that I could barely make it home a few hours later. I cried half the way home. By this time my head was so on fire that I thought I was going to die.

I got home with the kids and immediately started looking through the medicine cabinet. My husband had some muscle relaxers (so we thought) so I took one. An hour later it had done absolutely nothing so I started searching for something to relieve the pain. I located some left over hydrocodone (Lortab) from my c-section. Seriously, I didn't even take the pain pills after abdominal surgery but I wanted to down the whole bottle for my head-if it gives you any indication how bad it was. I took some and went to lay down.

Except I couldn't lay down. Because I couldn't move my head. Even keeping it straight was painful. An hour later the pain killer had no effect so I took three Ibuprofen. And if you are now shaking your head and calling me a complete idiot I will agree. What I did was extremely stupid and dangerous. I could have wound up in the news as some lady that OD'd. All of my friends would have gone on tv saying that they would never have imagined me doing something like this. So please, if you are reading this, DO NOT SELF MEDICATE. I repeat DO NOT.

And also- DO NOT BORROW OTHER PEOPLE'S MEDICATION. Which was the second thing I had done. See, it turns out those "muscle relaxers" my husband had were not muscle relaxers at all. They were pain killers. So I basically OD'd on pain killers. Lucky for me I did not die. But I wanted to. Because on top of the pain I was then sick to my stomach. Try throwing up when you can't move your head. It isn't pretty.

I was sick for a fully 24 hours. Literally on Monday morning I could not drive myself to work- my husband drove me. And I should not have been there. The problem was that one of my employees was on vacation for the week and I just could not leave her desk unattended. Not that I was much help that day but I did what I had to.

By noon on Monday, and I'm not lying, I was debating going to the ER. Except I didn't want to pay a big fat co-pay. So I went to Quick Care. I can't hack Quick Care. There were people in every single seat- half of them wearing masks or coughing into towels. I didn't want to come out sicker than I went in so I went to another Urgent Care. Except they didn't take my insurance. I was able to get a late afternoon appointment with my primary care physician so I just had to make it through the next few hours.

When I saw her she expressed an immediate concern that it could have been a slow leaking aneurism based upon the headache I had been describing so she ordered a CT Scan with Angio, stat. Except it had to be pre-authorized, so stat was really 48 hours. She did prescribe some (real) muscle relaxers and told me if they worked then we would know it wasn't a bleed in my brain. That was oddly comforting. Then she also told me if the headache spiked again that I was to go to the ER immediately. (If I lived). I am somewhat making light of this but it was all kind of scary.

Tuesday I woke up and thought I was better so I showered and was blow drying my hair when the pain exploded again. Except this time I knew it had to be a muscle because I could feel it snap when I moved my head a certain way. I loaded up on the relaxers and Ibuprofen and drove to work. Thank heaven for "blind spot assist" in the Mazda- since I again could not turn my head even in the slightest.

The long and the short is that I barely made it through Tuesday. I cried numerous times. It hurt worse than anything I have ever experienced in my life- and that included recovering from a boob job and two c-sections. But by Wednesday when I woke up it was manageable and by Friday I still had pain but I was able to manage through it without any relaxers or ibuprofen.

I went back and saw my boyfriend yesterday. He helped a little but he said he didn't want to massage it too much because the muscle is already aggravated. So I am still living with the kink and I am hoping that it will heal soon.

And the lesson I have learned is two-fold. First- if someone is doing something you don't like, just speak up. It is better to deal with the conflict than live with the consequences. And second, do not ever self medicate. Because the other part I did not tell you is that when I did get my prescription for muscle relaxers I read the insert (as I do with all of my own medications) and it stated in caps DO NOT TAKE WITH HYDROCODONE. Someone was watching out for me when I was mixing those meds earlier in the week. If that had been a relaxer and I had then taken the hydrocodone I could have been in big trouble. And then everyone would have said "We don't understand, she was a smart girl, why would she have done this?". And I wouldn't have been able to answer "Because I thought I was going to die from the pain."

Music to my ears

Right now it is 7 am and I am listening to Sam coo to herself through the monitor. In her own bed. This is only the second time this has ever happened, but as Megan commented, it will happen someday so I will take my little victories for now.

Last night (as it is every night) she had a major tantrum when I tried to put her in her bed. I rocked with her until she cried it out and then she did go to sleep on my shoulder and stayed asleep when I put her in her bed. She was up around 2:45 this morning so I fed her and put her back down.

At least she did stay in her bed last night. The night before when I tried to put her back in her bed in the middle of the night she was a screaming mess.

At any rate, baby steps, baby steps. I guess I do have to remember that technically she is four and a half months old even though she has been with us for six. So I am hoping sometime within the next six to eight weeks we will all be sleeping through the night.

Maybe I have said this out loud before and maybe not but I honestly have to say that if Sam was my first baby there could be a good chance she would be my last. Although I do suppose if she was my first baby this would have been a few years ago when I did have a bit more energy. Not that I'm like a hundred years old or anything but honestly I really am amazed at the difference even a few years has made. That whole "young at heart" thing means just that. You can be young at heart all you want- your body may tell you something different.

Anybody Home?

If you have been by my site lately you are probably wondering where I went on my blog-cation. The newspapers are piling up outside and the place has just had a feel of vacancy.

I've been here, just haven't had the time or energy to blog. Actually, we got home from Palm Springs and I felt like a million bucks. My sister in law, however, did not. Her youngest child is eleven I think so she was a little out of practice with the little ones but she did awesome.

Then we lost the laptop power cord and I was just too darn lazy to go in and blog in our home office. It meant I would have to actually sit at the desk instead of wherever I wanted, and that didn't work for me. We finally found the cord, and well, here I am.

But in the last two weeks we've kind of been through the ringer. I had been home for four days when I decided I just could not take any more of Sam's fussiness. Let me start by saying she is generally a very happy baby. All smiles- and she is very good around new situations, which makes me happy that we don't have to stick to a strict routine. But for some reason night time is the worst. THE WORST.

I don't mean like she has a fussy hour or two in the evening like all babies do. I mean she is so gassy and restless that literally she only sleeps for a few short hours at a time, if that. I suppose that since we had already been living it day in and day out for the last five and a half months we hadn't really been bothered by it. Until we got a break for four nights and got to sleep all night. Then it was like we got hit by a Mac truck when we got home. By Wednesday night I sat up in the chair with her all night and cried my eyes out.

Thursday morning I took her to the pediatrician who in his infinite kindness recognized that I was a Mom about to snap. He suggested that we increase her dose of antacid and that we try her on Nutramigen. The first night she did sleep in her own bed from 7:45-4:45 but that was the end of that. Every night for the next week she was still up at least once a night to eat- sometime between midnight and 3:30am.

I went back a few days ago for a follow up to that appointment as well as for her six month checkup. She weighs fourteen pounds two ounces and is twenty four and a half inches long. I'm pretty proud. Anyway, we decided that the benefit of having her on Nutramigen was negligible and that keeping her on Similac Sensitive was just the same.

I wonder if the child just has a super charged metabolism and literally is just starving in the middle of the night. We have tried Megan's suggestion about doing a feed around 10pm even if she is sleeping. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The problem for us is one of us keeping awake long enough to do it! Heaven, we ARE getting old.

We did start her on veggies now- she has been eating rice cereal from a spoon for about a month now. I will say this, the child loves to eat. She barely even batted an eye at the first scoop of green beans last night and tonight she ate half a container. I'm hoping she isn't a picky eater like her sister. (Who, incidentally since St Patrick's Day has wanted to eat green macaroni and cheese every single night for dinner).

I will try to get online more often- tomorrow I will have to tell you about the week I have had with my neck and my head issues. But other than that if you come knockin' around my bloggy world and it doesn't appear that anyone is home just know that we are. We just turned off the porch light and are hiding out in the back family room.

 

Child free for the weekend

You may remember, my sister in law volunteered, VOLUNTEERED I tell you, to watch my children so we could attend my husband's annual sales trip in Palm Springs.

We are here, child free. Oh my.

We left town on Wednesday and honestly, I was so afraid my girls would tantrum and my sister in law would wind up driving them here and washing her hands of them. Oh, I underestimated the power of my sister in law- the Pied Piper of small children.

I do believe the first 24 hours were rough for her but she quickly figured the kids out. As a matter of fact, we haven't even talked to Hayley on the phone since we left. We have called a few times but since she is always content we haven't wanted to rock the boat so we have figured that if she melts down they know how to reach us on our cell phone. Apparently she has been so busy playing with her cousins that she really hasn't noticed we have been gone!

So let's see, what have we done since we have been here? Let me start by saying, the weather is amazing. Beautiful. Like mid seventies during the day- but it feels hotter than that. We are staying in a beautiful resort hotel, which is always a bonus. And since this is the first sales trip we have ever gone on without any children I haven't had to stress out about keeping quiet. Our first trip was to Maui when Hayley was five months old. We stayed at the Grand Wailea, which is child friendly but it was tough to travel with a baby and all her paraphernilia. Our second trip was to Puerto Rico where we stayed at the Golden Door (I think) Resort and Spa. It was not as child friendly, and Hayley was seventeen months old. Just old enough to drive us crazy. And the room was this contempo style all done in white. So here we are in Palm Desert. This place would be ok for children although I really haven't seen many of them around.

Our first night here we were in an upgraded room- with it's own private courtyard and hot tub. It was awesome- although we got here so late we didn't use the hot tub and then we diddled around in the morning and didn't have time to use it before we had to go check out and check into our regular room provided by the company.

Thursday night was the welcome event for the company and I just don't know what I was thinking. I can't even count the number of Cosmo's- I just know that it was about two too many. Friday I woke up and thought I was ok- until I had been up and moving for about two hours and everything just came crashing down. Note to self- I can't party with the Big Dogs.

Friday I went back to bed for a few hours and woke up around 1pm. I headed to the outlet mall (my favorite) where I spent a luxurious three hours shopping- guilt free! Well, almost guilt free. I mean, I wasn't guilty about being there for three hours but you can do a lot of damage in three hours. I had to stop by and drop off my packages at the car three times. So one thing I did miss was having the stroller with me to use as a shopping cart.

Friday night we went to an adult dinner. With adult friends- imagine that! The kind of dinner that required reservations. We haven't done that since what we call "The Last Supper"- it was our last nice dinner before Hayley was born. So yeah, it's been awhile. I dressed up and felt great. I did not, however, drink. My stomach is still curling at the thought of any alcohol at all.

This morning I got up and have just been puttering. My husband is out golfing this morning- like he did yesterday. I have a massage scheduled for noon, and in the mean time I am doing nothing. At all. I bought a magazine and I'm looking forward to reading it from front to back without pages being torn out or having to throw the magazine out because it's been four months and I can't get through it.

I bought a lottery ticket. I hope we win.

So in a nutshell- if you ask what we have been doing- we have been living like rockstars. Child free ones. Don't get me wrong, I totally miss my children. Like crazy. As a matter of fact I logged on and saw my Wordless Wednesday photo and started tearing up- I can't wait to get home and snuggle my girls. But I also feel fabulous. Relaxed. Somewhat rested.

I really needed this trip and I just don't know how I will ever repay my sister in law's kindness. I mean seriously, money just isn't enough.

Wordless Wednesday

It's been an awful long time since I've done Wordless Wednesday but here you go!