Another year

So tomorrow is my birthday... Nothing special, after twenty one it stops being so exciting! lol
I figure I will be doing laundry and cleaning and helping my neighbor move to a new house, woot exciting right? And you know what bugs me just a bit, my husband of almost four years did not even think to get me a card. Now in a situation such as this I dont know if I am aloud to be upset or if that just seems tacky. He has NEVER been good at gifts, hell last year for Christmas I got a bath loofa... seriously a 99 cent bath loofa. Am I aloud to want more? Every holiday I try to put thought into my gifts for him, a sweater here a poem there things he would not do for himself. Is it too much to ask to get a little bit of that back?
I love him A TON and yes we are going out for dinner for my birthday but i made all the arrangements! I just am feeling a bit on the neglected side tonight. And it is not like I want diamonds or shopping sprees, (although it couldn't hurt!) he could even write me a love note or make me a mixed CD or something, hell I would take an e-card at this point. But every time I complain I feel bad, like I should not expect a gift, that its the thought. Well if it was always just the thought I could think my way through Christmas and have some peeved kids! LOL , seriously like "no really kids I would have gotten you new bikes but its the thought right?"
Oh yeah that would go over about a well as immunizations!
I dont think it is wrong to want to be loved and feel special at least one day out of the year, for your partner to acknowledge you for all you are and all you do....
UGH, I dont know I guess I will go on the date I planned and try to forget that once again I am the one singing happy birthday to me.

night all...

So fast....

My Little girl went to her very first day of preschool yesterday.... And yes I was a big old weeny and I cried and took like 50 pictures! How in the world did she get so big so fast!?!
I miss her being a baby, I even miss my 6 month old being REALLY tiny.... sure he is still small but I am talking about newborn small.
Dont you wish we could have the cute little baby days without the sleep deprived haze so we wouldnt feel like they just slipped away... (sigh)
So I am going to take pictures of the kids EVERY year on the first day of school and watch them grow...
I am SUCH a sap!
lol

Do you ever wonder?

I have been trying to get some sleep, starring at the walls thinking. I have been thinking of how life is so uncertain , so fragile. How our love may be unconditional but the ones we love could be gone tomorrow. How we could loose everything in an instant.
Have you ever wondered about car accidents..... How if you had left one minute later or twenty seconds earlier, if you turned left instead of right how everything could be different? I cant help but think of this, often its when my husband leaves for work bleary eyed in the morning. Or when the guy in the oncoming lane is on his cell phone. What if in one second in one action my entire life is altered?
My children are my everything and if I lost one of them I don't know if I would ever recover, how do you keep on living when a huge part of you is now missing? I thought about this tonight, we were in bed getting ready to sleep and I remembered I left my daughters window open today, I turned to my husband and asked him if he had closed it. He assured me he had, but then the thoughts started keeping in, did he... does he really remember closing it?
I could see her falling out, I could see the aftermath. I could even see me later in her room refusing to leave crying and wallowing in my guilt in my laziness that two minutes checking that damn window could have made a difference.
Why do I think cryptic dark thoughts like this? I don't know, I wish I could live "Leave it to Beaver" style and know that nothing will happen, no bad things can penetrate if I just keep my head up and my house clean.
I have been frustrated with my life allot in the past few years and as of late I have been frustrated with the stage my daughter is currently in. But thinking of loosing it sickens me and makes me take a step back from my own selfishness and realize what I have.
Some days I can understand what appeals to a hermit, a loner, and outcast. Never having to love means never having to let anyone penetrate your walls and attach themselves to your life. No risk of loosing anything, it must feel safer that way.
Obviously I would rather have my family but the thought of loosing them still reels me from the inside.
Maybe I am just paranoid but maybe i am just choosing to see life as it really is, a crap shoot.... a gamble. Tomorrow I will do better, I will love and live and move on as if nothing can go wrong. But inside I will carry my fear, inside I will wonder. For now though I am going upstairs and kissing my daughter and checking on my son... And yes I will double check that stupid window, because at least I can do that I can try to make a difference by not taking the chance. At least tonight I can try to turn left instead of right and love my family now this very minute.....

Good night

POOP on the walls.... why?

So my daughter has a long running history of pooping in her room and then spreading it ALL over.... It started when she was about one and a half years old and it has not stopped. Every few months she does it. Now she is three years old and I have to stop and wonder why.... why is she doing this? She knows what poop is, she knows it is gross she knows to go in the potty and all but then she goes and craps all over her room, using clean clothes to wipe herself and putting it on toys and furniture and walls.
I wonder when is the cut off age to start worrying about why they do these things? When can you say ok enough is enough you are WAY TO OLD for this!

She got a small spank and then she was put into the shower for a scrub down while daddy cleaned the room, then we made her help clean it and finally a time out while we steam cleaned the carpets (thank GOD for at home steam cleaners)

I have no real point to this except I just am frustrated and going out of my mind at times. She breaks into the kitchen, she steals treats from the cabinets, she trows toys out windows, she paints colors and draws on walls.... Time outs work temporarily but it feels like she has a two minute time span then she is back at it reeking havoc! I dunno what I am doing wrong...

Well I had no real point I just wanted to vent!

ttyl

Moms are special people

REBA MCENTIRE.......(im a survivor)

"I was born three months too early
The doctor gave me thirty days
But I must've had my mama's will And God's amazing grace
I guess I'll keep on livin'
Even if this love's to die for
'Cause your bags are packed and I ain't cryin
' You're walkin' out and I'm not trying To change your mind
'cause I was born to be

Chorus: The baby girl without a chance A victim of circumstance The one who oughta give up, but she's just Too hard headed A single mom who works two jobs Who loves her kids and never stops With gentle hands and the heart of a fighter I'm a survivor

I don't believe in self-pity
It only brings you down
May be the queen of broken hearts
But I don't hide behind the crown
When the deck is stacked against me I just play a different game
My roots are planted in the past
And though my life is changin' fast
Who I am is who I wanna be

Repeat Chorus A single mom who works two jobs Who loves her kids and never stops With gentle hands and the heart of a fighter I'm a survivor But I must've had my mama's will And God's amazing grace "

- photo of my Mom and I-

I get goosebumps every time I here this song.... I think of my mom, she raised us alone and worked three jobs to give us what we needed and wanted.
As mothers we unknowingly sign a contract the minutes we get pregnant to put our children ahead of ourselves.
In pregnancy we strive to eat well, not drink or smoke and overall take better care of ourselves for the sake of our unborn baby. Then after the birth you surrender your ENTIRE life to the well being of a small creature who is demanding and tedious. But we love them, I think we are wired to love them.
If someone were to tell you that in nine months an alien new to this planet would some into your house and demand all of your time, energy and resources you would probably call the FBI and have them ready with a SWAT team! But we willingly make preparations for the coming of these new little people. We dream of the colors of their nursery to playing in the park and going on first dates. We pick their names fold their onsies and buy them ever single item available to make raising a baby easier and more comfortable. (seriously do you REALLY need 2 wipe warmers in the house??)

And as they grow we give them not only time and resources but our knowledge and wisdom as well,
Like I said in my last post we strive to raise these children of ours to be confident competent adult and take the best of ourselves and give it to them and try to keep the worst away from them.

Dads are great to dont get me wrong but there is just something spectacular about a mother.

OK now launching off into a JMO- I have always wondered why it is that Mothers are automatically in our culture given the brunt of the child raising responsibilities, such as when a Dad watches his kids its "baby sitting" yet a mother is expected to watch them. And when sadly a couple divorces 9 times out of 10 the mother is expected to take the children and raise them herself. While the husband is allowed to roam free of his responsibilities minus child support and bi weekly visits. I think it all comes down to the fact that we as mothers are just plain better at it.
An example of this is my husband, who God bless him tries very hard, but just does not get it. He could sleep through a category 5 hurricane and not bat and eye, yet I wake if my baby sneezes, sighs, rolls around, or whimpers... Even in the next room! I even karate chopped my husband once for almost rolling on our infant, seriously from a deep sleep I awoke and bam chop to the head! lol He calls it my "mommy sense" and knows that when it tingles we should listen to it!

Ok back to the topic,
We as mothers need to give ourselves a quick break, know that you are doing the best with what you have and unlike the books magazines and other play group moms would have you believing we all try to make it day to day minute to minute. We all get frustrated and sad, depressed and exhilarated. Shit why skydive when you can just have kids! You get all the emotions with less danger of head splatting!
I just want all moms to know that even if you are not the same as each other we share a common bond, a band of mothers who joined a sacred club the moment they peed on the stick. We can make jokes to each other about almost anything baby related and get it, when our none baby friends may look at us like we are alien, and we just plain understand each other.

Speaking of non baby friends when was the last time you had a conversation not involving your kids? and do they ever get that deer in the headlights look when you bring up potty training or blow outs for the umpteenth time? Ah yes this is why we need like minded mommies friends to listen to our ranting of onsies and stretch marks, skinned knees and make believe.

Because again when you signed that contract, when you became a mother you gave up a piece of you to give to them, Will you ever get it back? probably not, but hey thats A ok with me.

What i love most about my children

What I love most about my children,

What I love most about my children is what they care about and what they don’t:
They don’t care about the car I drive or how much money we make
They don’t care who I was in high school or the mistakes I have made
They don’t care if I don’t wear makeup or I am a few pounds overweight

What they do care about is me
They care that they are cherished and understood
They care that they are warm and welcomed
And they care that they have someone who loves them back

What makes me sad is how the moments that mean the most are often the ones we let slip away
The hugs and kisses and adventures and cardboard forts
The trips outside the games played on living room rugs
The sweet sound of a newborn breathing
The innocent but sweet voice of a toddler full of self expression
These are all thing we should cherish yet we tend to associate them with the mundane
We take for granted that there will be a tomorrow, that we will have another chance to do what we should have done today
As a mother my greatest fear is losing my children, they are the dedicated force that drives my existence
A job that I was given to form and create and to nurture and teach
Who am I without them? They are a reflection of who I am while shinning as their own persons
Isn’t that the goal? To create passionate capable empathetic human beings?
To wonder whether the soft hand of my infant will someday be of use, will it be used to heal, or to fight, will it be covered in ink or in calluses? What we do every day, so called mundane is to shape the future and to provide memories and knowledge. So it is our goal our greatest achievement in life to create and mold the ones who will lead us into tomorrow. After all they are the ones who will be here once we are gone
They are depending on us, and I must never lose sight of that. Because not only do they depend on us but the world depends on us, the world depends on us to create the next generation of leaders and artists and scientist. Of lovers and warriors and spiritual guides.
For every great person is someone’s baby
So this is the task we are given as mothers, a job that is both easy and yet indescribably hard. Impossible and doable beautiful and tragic.
We pour ourselves into them in the hope that they will take what is best about us and learn from what is flawed and become better than we could ever have dreamed.
If someone had given me this job description, the one that is a mother before I had children I would have scoffed, I would have laughed and brushed it off, but the unsung hero’s of the earth are the mothers. Anyone can have a child but few can really be a mother.
Because what really matters is that when tomorrow become yesterday and next week become last year we have done all we can. Because that is all we can do, we can be a Mom to someone and pray we are doing it right.

Why cant you just sleep?

Its early..... too early,

Like every single night for the past five months I again have had little to no sleep. Why is it I seem to get the baby who wants to play at night? They say Breastfeeding is going to make him sleep less but you can sooth them faster which promotes sleep. I dont know much about all that except that in those first few weeks before I had really adjusted to the lack of sleep I was NOT being a productive parent AT ALL. Sure my kids were fed and changed and loved but I did not take care of myself.

I learned some valuable lessons about what matters though, and smelling like three day old spit up does not matter in the log run, and hell it serves as a form of birth control in those early months! And that dishes would eventually be done and that my husband can eat stofurs dinners and be just as happy as when he eats the dinner I slaved on for hours....

There are those out there who have decided that we should all just "sleep when the baby sleep" have you ever really tried to sleep when you new born is sleeping and your toddler is not? And on the miracle chance they both sleep at the same time your house may be smelling like the city dump and you haven't showered in a week, so sleep is once again thrown to the way side.

I remember the two worst sleep deprived moments with this baby. One of them came in about week 3.... I was laying on the couch rocking his swing manually because the batteries went dead and I could not drag myself up to change them, then he starts to cry and try as I might he wont stop. after an hour or so of me trying to sooth him I think I just fell asleep..... I slept through him crying three inches from me in his swing and I slept.....

I think that was a very low point for me but it only got worse as time went on, one morning I was up at four as usual and my husband came prancing down the stairs at five all bright eyed and bushy tailed. He smiled and said

"well your up early!"

To which I replied, " No you insensitive bastard I never went to sleep! But you would know that now would you? Go to work! Just go and enjoy the adult human contact!!!!"

Oh yeah those were the days.....

Now though i do get a decent amount considering 6 hours as decent and my two kids more often then not do sleep at the same time during the day. But for those of you still out there getting NO sleep know that this to will pass and sooner rather than later you WILL be able to laugh about it and move on.

Our kids grow so fast and in those early day I say fore the little things like having a perfect house and neatly folded laundry and SLEEP when you can and enjoy your Little baby while he is still so little.

For me though what did work was a mix of co-sleeping and having his pack and play in the room with us within arms reach. I also do breast feed which in those bleary middle of the night feedings is truly easier. I have been on both sides of that one. With my daughter I bottle fed after a few months and it was in my opinion WAY harder to have to actually wake up and find, mix and warm a bottle while she screamed for food. With my son all i had to do was pop a breast out and feed him in bed with us. I am now an AVID supporter of breastfeeding but really do what is best for you and your family. In the end a thousand people can tell you what worked for them but only you can decide what is truly best for you and your child.

And dont buy into the hype of the media based baby books when they tell you to put your infant on a schedule, think of it this way. If you were in a brand new planet with alien and foreign things everywhere and you depended on strangers to feed bath and care for you while you yourself could not speak or move how well would you do on their schedule?

There is a cut off in my house for the no schedule rule though. Around six months when we have more or less established a routine of sorts I do allow a little more rules and a little less winging it. But again this is what I do and for you co-sleeping may work till four years old or never!

AND ITS ALL OK

You are doing the best you can with what you have. Being a mother is the hardest job on the planet! One in which men have no idea about. So give yourself a pat on the back and do what ever you need to do to get to tomorrow with your baby and yourself in one piece.

OCTO...mom?

I just finished watching the Octomom special and I am moved to tears.... Not in a good way, I am not one to judge other mothers on their styles. But these poor children will NEVER have a chance at a normal life. I can see the therapists counting on their future earnings from that family.

Not to mention the ethical dilemma surrounding the conception and care of all 14 of her children.
What "doctor" would do this to a mentally unstable woman? Even if circumstances were ideal there is no way a family with ample money and time and TWO parents should be striving for SO many children.... But this woman has no PLAN no MONEY and no future for these poor children.

Also when I see the mother with her children I see a sad delusional woman who knows she has screwed her and her children's lives and now has no clue what to do. If it were me I dont know if I could even attempt to try to care for all 14 children.... What are they going to miss out on? Who can they look to for help and advice when their mother is consumed by the overwhelming task of having so many children?

I think the entire situation is sad and unfortunate. I ray that those children come through childhood and adolescence unscathed and become productive useful adults....

Ugh, I dont have much more to say on the matter. I am now off to bed

playdate

So, I take my kids to a weekly play date of sorts. It is held here on our base and it is hit or miss of weather people will actually show up. I have a few dilemmas about play dates though. First is that I always wonder why it is that "craft" time is made so that the craft is difficult enough that the Mom has to step in and "help"..... Then my kid looks like an art genius and I have glitter all over me! Lol why cant they just make the crafts at these things more accessible to the lil ones. Like i dunno edible glue and NO feathers.....

Also I have noticed a great number of mommies coming in and sharing the latest and greatest gossip while their little one plays. It becomes the cocktail hour for the wives here on base. We have found an outlet to let our kids run around like orphaned wild children while we find out about who has the most hideous shoes for the military ball or who's car was parked outside whos house when hubby was at work! Ok I wll admit I partake occasionally in conversations but please ladies we must leave some discretion and keep our dirty laundry where it belongs.... at home! :-)

And I am also a bit confused on edicate for the parent towards other peoples children. If your kid hits mine I have thoughts of an upper cut to that kids jaw! JK no but seriously if their child act inappropriately and they do nothing about it even when well aware what do we as parents do? Do we condone the act, tell our kids to hit back or do we take matters in our own hands and tell the little snot to back off!?
If my little girl lays a FINGER on another kid her butt is in the corner.....

But I notice many Moms like to be the Martha Steward of the play group, with their designer clothes and polished nails. Hunny I have No time for that crap, even if I did put away the nursing bra and pulled on some real clothing I could not keep it same from spit up long enough to make it in to play morning. I am lucky if my kids are fed dressed and wearing underwear, Some days it feels like high school all over again. Moms grouping with other moms getting the scoop and checking out the competition..... Come on! We all survived labor and birthing, we all raised them to the age that they can attend these play groups. So cant we just support each other and leave the kaddyness for the teen age group???

Well that is about all I have to say on play groups.... for now, I am needed by my son for a boobie snack....
I will be back with more questions and insight soon

Logging off
Liz

New to the blog world

Hi all,
This is my first attempt at a blog..... I guess I should start by stating who I am, my name is Liz. I am a dedicated Marine wife with two wonderful kids. Cady is 3 and Luke is 6months.

I grew up in Nevada and I joined the Marine Corps at 18, where I met my wonderful husband. We have been all over, to North and South Carolin, Japan, Korea, Arizona and now we are stationed in California.

I am currently a stay at home mom and I go to school on line. I am also training for a half Marathon!

I love horses and writing, painting and poetry. I have a brother and a sister who live close and my Mom is only a six hour drive away. I also own a Harley that i bought when I was sixteen! I still am waiting to be able to take it out again.

Mostly I want to write about the day to day life being a Mom a wife a student and a super hero... lol just kidding about that last one. But seriously I would love to share my life and maybe get some insight on thing I don't know much about.

I am not Martha Steward, I am not super nanny, I am just a Mom who does the best she can with what she has. I have goals and dream (most of which are currently on hold) and I am navigating this thing we called parenting using all the training I received in Marine Corps Boot camp! lol

So please let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy what I have to say!

Liz