Back to Good

Phew.

I have looked at this blog, this empty page so many times over the past year. Started to write and stopped. Phrased a sentence in my head and deleted it again. I just...didn't want to put anything down until the danger was, at least, mostly past.

So, life is back to normal. Wonderful daughter, healthy baby boy due in a bit less than three months. Amazing huzby who is doing so well. Managing swim lessons and getting ready for summer, which is keeping me super busy. Planning two fundraisers and adding on teaching a sewing class. And, of course, getting the house ready for the new addition - a lot of stuff? Yes.

But damn, I am happy it is all good. Lucky (20)13.

This weekend's focus: house prep. It is ASTOUNDING the amount of crap we have accumulated. When we cleaned out my parent's house, we ended up with a lot of stuff in the "we shouldn't just get rid of that, we will go through it later" category. Almost 6 years gone, later has caught up with me. SO MUCH STUFF. We had a yard sale in the fall where we sold/sent remainder to Goodwill a full first floor worth of crap. Over the holidays, we gave away the final few unwanted wedding gifts (married in '06!) in White Elephant exchanges. I found someone who had a baby girl and really needed clothes - then gave them 5 trash bags full of pink frills to keep her fancily dressed through age 2.

The living room is full of bags of stuff, headed to here, there and Goodwill again. There are quite a few more boxes upstairs for me to go through - but there is an end in sight. I have moved all my sewing stuff to the dining room in the hopes I can make a bunch of projects and use up fabric...which is going very slowly. The class should help, though.

Writing has gone slow, but this new laptop (WHEEEEE) is helping. Also, I feel like once I get the house down to its essentials, I won't feel so overwhelmed with things to do all the time, and can take the time to sit and write. I have added to my outline for my book - and changed the storyline significantly - but way too much still sits in my head instead of the typed page. My plan for the summer: set up Penny and Baby ? on the deck to play/sleep, pull out the laptop, and write to my heart's content (with a glass of wine by my side in the evenings...I miss relaxing with a drink, especially when going through all this old crap and deciding what to part with).

But for now...I can take a breath. After the tight-chest that comprised most of 2012, it is a wonderful feeling.

Bigfoot Comin!

I have spent the last two hours being chased by Bigfoot. He has eaten everyone's fingers and toes, plus some knees - both those in the house and all of Penny's friends and relative. Penny has hidden all her babies in her laundry basket, plus assorted doggies and even some monsters. Bigfoot is now her invisible friend and she is carrying him - make that him and his mommy, around the house. Now it stopped raining and Bigfoot and his Mommy went outside. No, back inside, we are now closing all the doors and windows to keep him inside. Bigfoot is riding around on Penny's head. He seems to keep changing sizes. Bigfoot just fell down, Penny is helping him up, now following him around the house, yelling "Bigfoot Come Back!" "Where Bigfoot go, Mama? Where Bigfoot?" Now crying because Bigfoot is crying. --- If it turns out I have an invisible alien in the house, I am going to be really ticked. I love this game - no idea where Bigfoot came from, at all, other than she possibly picking up on a Monsters from the Deep special while at Nana's house.

Stress

All the major events are past. This makes it better...except that every day there is some phone call that brings it back, something to think about now, and it changes the tone of the day. Mornings are good, but the day seems to always regress to the point of stress.

I am so ready for it all to be over. Except it won't be, for at least a year it seems.

I need to find a way to contain all of it somewhere, keep it out of the "back to normal" life I am trying to lead.

I had a bad...month.

I don't want to complain. No one even reads this, but I don't want to be that person. So here is a quick rant, to get it off my chest, and then I am moving on. I think I want to start doing more audiobook reviews.

But first...I lost the baby. At almost 18 weeks. It is still extremely hard to even say - I try to brush it off, to turn the conversation when someone mentions it, because if I focus on it for more than a moment I will start crying, then sobbing, then just break down. So I focus on other things, and try to think about the fun I am going to have for the next few months while I recover before I can try again.

And then there was plenty to focus on, because my grandmother who had been in the hospital never recovered. She somewhat woke up one day after 3 weeks, then sunk back in. A few days later we decided to take out the feeding tube, then I simply went every day to sit with her for another week. It was miserable, on top of my existing feelings about the baby and the operation only a week earlier.

It is all over now. In the long run, everything will be calmer now. I miss my grandmother, and I especially miss my unknown baby, but it will be all right. I know it will. It has to be.

Today is My Favorite Age

I hear all the time from people - mostly with children well into adulthood - about their favorite age. "Oh, my favorite age was when they were 6 months...they just were happy you were in the room!" "Oh, I love one year olds...always something new." "Oh, it was never as good once they hit two."

I...kinda want to hit people when they say this.

I love this age. But, I really can't think of an age I have not liked yet. Of course there have been days that have not been the best. There have been days where I could not wait for bedtime so that the day could start. There have been days when I purposely chose a difficult recipe that required wine so I would have an excuse to open a bottle and "taste it for appropriateness" before it was really happy hour. But for the most part, I have had amazing experiences as a parent every day.

Right now, I love how Penny comes up with her own games. Constantly requesting "Say More!" when we are talking, whether it is just listing her friends' names or pointing out things while we are driving. How she asks Matt to always "Touch ceiling!", meaning to lift her up so she can touch the ceiling, something Mommy can't do. Even how she constantly repeats "No Try It!" while trying new foods, or even things she has nibbled at for years, like carrots.

I hope every age is my favorite age. I have no doubt things will change - and I know, as a former offender, that teenagers can be dicks - but I hope I find something to keep this perspective.

And I hope this continues with Salamander, currently insude my tummy, due to arrive July 31st.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...

Well, today is the 4th, but tomorrow I have a knitting class then off to get supplies for Christmas presents then get ready for an actually FANCY 40th birthday party, so....light the fireworks, guys!

Side note: not pregnant. At all. Anymore. Or wasn't. I dunno. A lot of fairly invasive tests (and probably a tall stack of medical bills on their way) later, that is the conclusion. Hopefully soon. But, at least, not now. Which I finally feel ok about. It was a rough few weeks - to say the least - but I really can face it now with a positive perspective, which has been lacking.

Otherwise, life is lovely. Penny had a wonderful Halloween, and now every time we go outside wants to go to "one more house. Teet." In fact, every time I mention a treat, she yells, "tick teet! House! Go!" It is confusing to try to explain to a 2 year old what Once A Year means. She is still the best sleeper ever - going to bed almost always without complaint around 7, still napping a good 1-2 hours every day, and generally happy with lots of sleep (just like her daddy). I think bedtime (most days) is my favorite time of day. A little before 7, we head upstairs - earlier if a bath is required. We head to the bathroom for teeth brushing and potty time - a new addition that is going quite well - and then into the bedroom for socks, feetsy pajamas and reading. Daddy reads a few books, always ending with our favorite, "Chugga Chugga Choo Choo", which we can recite and Penny even knows most of now. Then Daddy turns out the light and I sing, "Hush Little Baby" while rocking, and then Penny goes to her bed with a few babies. But I can't express how sweet she is when I rock her. How she gives Daddy big "movie" hugs and says, "Night Daddy" when he is walking out the door. How she tells me "Night Mommy" when I am walking out a few minutes later. How some nights she plays in her bed for 30 minutes or more, just talking to the babies and settling in, before quieting down. How sometimes when I hear her in the morning and go in to get her, I ask if she wants to get up and she says, "No!" I then leave and wait to hear her ask for me - I don't want to interrupt her personal time, her playtime, or whatever she is doing in there!

It took a few weeks - and a few glasses (bottles) of wine - to get perspective, but everything is really good.

Hello to No One!

The best thing about absolutely no one reading this blog (except for the Googlebot saving the internet for posterity - hi Googlebot!) is that I can say things here that I can say nowhere else. So...I'm pregnant! Wheee!

It is super early - between 4 and 5 weeks. But I am so amazingly excited. It's just been a few months, but I was so ready. Penny will be almost exactly 3 years older, which  is as far apart as I wanted them to be. And over the summer and last few weeks, I have drank wine, imbibed beer, gone abroad, eaten lots of stinky cheese and done all those good things I'll be staying away from the next 9 months.

I also want to keep better records - not just of how I feel, but of life.

Here is to another good year.