Frickin Adorable Friday

Shenanigans

If you've ever wondered what it's like at our house, it's a lot of this.

In and Out

So I waited to post Annie’s 9 month pics until I had her stats from the doctor. The plan was to talk about how much she’s grown and I was going to plop down her weight in a glowing moment of breastfeeding triumph. And then I took her to the doctor today and the babychild has dropped down to the 25th percentile in weight (17 lbs 12 ozs) and 41st percentile (27.5”) height. . . what? WHAT? W H A T?

Okay, in the big scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. I know this. Just like the pedi said, she’s not skinny or underweight. I mean, she’s not a tiny baby or anything.

I mean, she’s the picture of health. (And absolute adorable-ness, no?) I know that her weight and growth are not medical emergencies or any indication of failure on my part. I know that there are small babies. I know all that. I KNOW IT. But DANG. I thought Annie was going to be that chubbalicious baby. She was HUGE at birth and I so reveled in how big she was, just as I’d worried about how little Amelia was. (Interesting fact, Amelia was bigger at 9 mos than Annie) And now that I’m looking at the above picture (please try to look at without smiling—impossible), I can see that she is a little juicy nugget. . . but the confession is that I was totally disappointed. GAH. I feel like I feed her ALL THE TIME. I’ve finally been able to carve some freedom for myself by cutting out a couple nursing sessions now that she’s eating regular foods, but I’m going to have to add another back. I just don’t want to worry about her weight or worry about her losing weight. It makes sense that her weight has slowed down because she’s moving around so much and constantly in motion now that she crawls . . . but I certainly don’t want her to lost weight or drop off the chart.

Our little runt. . .

 

 

  While I was taking these pictures, she (of course) started wriggling away . . .

And in just a tiny second, she was like this .

I’m glad I had the camera—that was first time she’s done that! As you can tell, she was pretty proud of herself. Over the past month, she’s starting pushing herself to sitting position on her own. I walked into her room one morning to find her sitting up and screaming. She had no idea what to do with herself. As soon as I said, “Look at you!” and started clapping, she smiled and celebrated too.  Less than a week later, I found her standing in her crib! Also screaming then because she was stuck and really didn’t know what to do with herself. lol. Down her crib mattress went to the lower level seeing as her progress appears to come quickly. I haven’t found her standing up again, but she is definitely pulling up on things. When I stand her up in the crib, it’s complete celebration on her part.

Seriously. She celebrates and celebrates.

Sometimes she celebrates so much that she slaps the crib rail and loses her balance. lol

All the same, standing on her own and against everything she grabs is just around the corner. Sitting still in mama’s lap is over and chasing the dogs, her sister, and toys is her thing. The big question for me these days is how soon will she walk? With Amelia, every milestone came on slowly and with much fanfare. Annie, on the other hand, just kind of does things and keeps going. There’s not a lot of warning with her progressions. Will she walk before her birthday?? I wonder.

At 9 months old, Annie is a little character. Probably the biggest part of her personality is how much she laughs. The kid thinks everything is just HILARIOUS. And everything her SISTER does is downright criminal in its humor. All you have to do is raise your eyebrows at Annie and she giggles. Or have Amelia say/do just about anything, and she’s in stitches. She finds happiness in the little things and shows her excitement readily. For example, when she’s eating something that she loves, she celebrates after every bite. She is not reserved with her happiness at all and I love that. I LOVE that. It’s easy to make Annie happy and excited and that is fabulous. It never get old, watching her bounce in her highchair every time she gets a graham cracker.

The second probably most prevalent part of Annie’s personality is her attachment to the Mama. That’s me! ha. This babygirl loves her mama. LOVES her mama. Without exaggeration, I can tell you that when I return home from working for a few hours, I open the door, and Annie bursts into tears. Every. Time. When I run to the bathroom to pee and change out of my work clothes (read: change out of my exhausted bra), she bawls huge, drippy tears. I have to literally run and change and run back to her and scoop her up. And then she’s quiet and smiling. Even with her dad whom she adores she gets cranky for mommy. And then once in my lap, quiet and happy. I know babies like that can be annoying to everyone else because nobody likes the baby who cries when anybody-but-mom holds them, but I’m mostly okay with it. :) I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a baby loving her mama, is there? *snicker*  In the morning (usually around 530), I bring her into bed with me to nurse and sometimes she just curls up against me and falls back asleep. With her mama. And even though I can never go back to sleep when she’s in bed with me, I relish the warmth of her little body against me and the sound of her breathing against my chest and I revel in the fact that we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. It’s pretty obvious that we are totally smitten with each other. And I have no plans for a change.

I have other pictures to post too, but it’s late and heaven knows my little alarm clock doesn’t really care if I go to bed late or early, if it’s Monday or Saturday. She’s consistent like that.

Wordless Wednesday: spring break

Breaking the Ice

So it turns out that being a working mother of two babies (under 4!) AND trying to have a single second to yourself is impossible. Impossible, I say. It’s been a rough 9 weeks since I went back to work.  I have not been alone once (not ONCE) outside of grocery runs since school started. I don’t know how mothering two has increased the work load so very much, but I find myself working almost nonstop on household chores.

The good news is that after an intense but brief bout with PPD, I am feeling back to myself in a lot of ways. I can’t explain it, but the clouds slowly began drift away and let me see the world in a broader view again. I am, at heart, an eternal optimist and for a while there, I just could not escape doomsday thoughts. I couldn’t get out of that head space to see things clearly or with any hope. Maybe I’ll talk about it more here some day. Maybe I won’t.

That’s not why I’m here today though. I am here, with an announcement.

You see this babychild? She’s 8 months old and as adorable as possible.

 

But she has places to go . . .

 

And despite that she doesn’t pull it all together on hand and knees yet, it became official today that she is crawling. Anticipation faded when I realized that she was getting across the room while I was waiting for her to crawl. ha. And the first thing she headed towards? Sister’s doll house of course. Where she was promptly reprimanded for stealing Sister’s toys. Bickering ensued. Even though Amelia has been begging for Annie to be big enough to play with her, she’s already annoyed by her baby sister’s presence at her treasured play space.

While she’s pulling herself around now, she’s probably less than a week away from the all-4 mode of transport. She’s up and rocking and reaching, just not all in the same direction at the right time. Amelia never actually made it to the all-4 method but army-crawled until she walked, so this is new. Kinda like everything else with this baby. Like how she hates baby food purees and insists on eating whatever is on my plate, spicy or otherwise. WTH? Or how she laughs at every little thing and wants nothing more than to be held by mama. All. The. Time.

This Week

It’s been a whirl-wind kind of month since Christmas. I’ve been unable to post about the girls’ every move, the holidays, or the milestones because there’s been this big, dark cloud of life happenings tainting my thoughts. I’m returning to work next week. I haven’t been in the classroom since May and as I march back into the working-mom-having-it-all-I-mean-DOING-it-all existence that I dread, I return to a helluva a work atmosphere. While out, I lost half of my classes. It’s of course illegal to say, punish a mother for taking maternity leave . . . and yet I find myself going back to work in a financially impossible position. Probably not punished in retribution for having a baby, I do feel confident that I lost classes because . . . well, because I wasn’t there to teach them last semester. They went up for grabs so to speak and found themselves new homes. I will, therefore, make just enough money to pay for the child care required for me to work . . . to make that money . . . to pay the child care . . . and you see the problem. I’m facing this semester with the looming threat of needing to find a new job. I mean, a new career. A new calling (is there such a thing as more than one?). A new identity. A new life away from teaching. It’s all rather unfortunate because I was never in it for the money. But there HAS to be some money in it. And there is only one thing that would make me jump ship and turn my back on this passionate-but-abusive relationship I have with teaching.

Well, two things really.

 

 

 

 

Through all of the bullshit I am facing with work right now, I’ve come to realize that I can’t keep dragging my family along on this dream of mine that is clearly not coming true. In fact, it feels like it’s falling apart, and breaking my heart into a million little pieces along the way.  Not only have I worked myself to the depths of possibility for this career, but I’ve built my life around it as well. I’ve developed my own sense of motherhood in this identity and schedule and have not one idea how to revise the vision. I never wanted to be the mom who dropped my kids off in the morning and picked them up in the evening every single day. It wasn’t in the plan. I worked full time AND stayed home full time. It was more than two full time jobs, but I did it willingly because it gave me the best of both as long as I could withstand all of the work, which of course I did.

As the semester has neared, I’ve found myself lost in a cycle of horrible negativity, depression, and anxiety—all of which I will have to discuss here at another time—mostly because I’m not out of it yet. So as I prepare for working again, I not only fear that I can’t love it anymore because of its abuses. I also fear that I shall love it more than ever because of our separation. And while I remember every single day that I have all of the things that money can’t buy, I also face a very real financial struggle for survival as I cross the bridge into unknown territory. I have never felt so financially prohibited in my adult life and here I sit with two babies, a family, and a whole life to make work.

At what point do you give up on your dreams? What is more detrimental to your children—you giving up? Or not saving for college? Leaving them at day care all day? Or pulling them out of preschool because of cost?

Where do you hold the line? I have no idea, but wish me luck as I begin to figure it all out, one shaky, unstable step at a time.

How Did This Happen?

Since Amelia is only in school once a week these days, we are spending a LOT of time together, her, Annie, and myself. It’s a daily struggle to keep Amelia stimulated, entertained, and loved while also caring for the baby—especially since she’s used to school lessons, projects, and friends several days a week. There’s been a lot of acting out, which I am assuming is a result of this sudden change in her daily life/schedule. Thankfully, Amelia is tremendous at keeping herself occupied with quiet projects or reading in her room for hours. But she needs mama too and desperately needs to get out of the house every day. Considering the babychild literally runs  to bed every night and runs out of bed every morning, she needs open space to just . . . run. Every. Day. At least this is what I’m realizing now that we’re all spending our days together.

We’ve actually fallen into a pretty decent routine each day while Justin’s working. Early morning is mostly survival and juggling, but once Annie goes down for a morning nap, I sit down and spend concentrated time with Amelia. We play a game or make a craft project, read books or bake a treat. It’s her and I time. When the baby’s up again, we all hang out as best we can (will be SO much easier once she sits up unassisted!) through lunch. After lunch used to be house nap time, but it took exactly a quick second before Amelia realized that if she didn’t sleep, she could crash Mama Time and get a solid couple hours to herself with me. She hasn’t napped since. So My Time quickly turned into Amelia and my time. (sigh) During this time, we now shower together, get a couple tasks completed and then hang out. Sometimes I remind her that it’s Mama Time and that she can stay up with me only if she gives me some space/time to work on my projects. This includes her hanging out with me while I sew, working on her own ‘sewing’ projects.  The ultimate privilege for her is to get to use a few of my sewing pins for her scrap fabrics. She literally sits at the table just beside me, follows me into the ironing room, and back to the sewing table, not wanting to separate for a single minute. It’s mostly very sweet . . . but sometimes exhausting too.

In any case, a major goal at the moment is to get her outside every day to run. You know, like a dog. I’ve been trying to get a trip to the park into my routine for a few months and now that Annie has been sleeping through the night, it’s finally doable. So we went to the park yesterday. Annie hung out well and happy while we indulged her sister, even though it resulted in her missing her nap (seriously, to give needed attention to one kid, it always seems that the other—the little one usually—suffers) and Amelia ran around climbing, jumping, sliding, etc. She was thrilled that we were all at the park ‘togever.” When she asked to get on the swing, I was stuck. I was holding Annie and didn’t have the hands to push her on the swing. I try to avoid saying things like “I can’t do that right now because I have your sister” so she doesn’t blame the baby for every inattentive moment she has with her mother. And then I thought about it . . . I bet Annie can fit into the swing! Hmmm. I wonder if she’d like it?

I plopped Annie into the swing, pushed a tiny bit . . . and she didn’t scream.

I think the verdict is still out on whether or not she enjoyed it. o’ hai.

 

Onto Amelia. Plopped her into the big kid swing. She was very excited to have Sister with her on the swings!

So I pushed her and stood back. And took this picture.

 

Didn’t think too much about it. When I got home and looked at this picture, it took my breath away. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that my heart began to pound loud and fast. It’s not staged or posed, but just a picture of them being kids. I think it’s the first picture of them just playing. In any case, it blew me away. I have two kids. Let me repeat. . . I HAVE TWO KIDS! Please someone, tell me when the hell THAT happened. Without exaggeration, I still find it hard to believe that I am a mother at all . . . much less the mother of two. And here they are. Dude, WHAT?! How is it possible that there are two people on the planet who rely on me as their mother—for all of eternity?

And now that the second baby is here, that’s it. You spend so much of your life thinking “someday when I have kids,” wondering what you’ll have, and then it’s a totally separate stage of your life in getting them here. And now they’re . . . here. And growing big. Amelia will be in school in a little over a year. And Annie is big enough to ride in a swing! And this is my life. It’s settled.  Mother of two girls . . . who will soon no longer be babies. Then I’ll just be a mom of a couple of kids, driving them to school, cheering at soccer games, and helping with homework. The weirdest thing is that I cannot tell you how or when I got here. It’s hard to explain these moments when your life comes into focus for a second and you don’t recognize yourself. And you realize that you’re getting older, heading to old, and that you’re a grown up and that there are people who will only ever know you as Mom, an old grown up. It’s not a bad thing, but it certainly catches me off guard every once in a while.

I’m sure there are many more of these moments to come. It’s only the swings now. I can’t imagine the heartbreak these two little babygirls will bestow upon their mama—just by growing up.