Because we don't see enough of these guys

My Cats, Sebastian and Oswald

They are in love :)




Happy Friday!

On Child Spacing (or having more children in general, and when)

****Disclaimer**** This is written in the form of my train of thought which is a bit crazy, but I think it illustrates my point in the best possible way.

Before I had kids I always said that I wanted four, and I knew exactly how I was going to do it. I would have the first two close together, while I was in my early to mid 20’s, about 2.5 years apart. Ed and I were married when I was 23, and I was pregnant with Eddie soon after I turned 24, right on schedule. I was 25 when he was born. As it happened, Caitlyn came along when Eddie was just 19 months old, but it was close enough to “the plan” for me. I was 26 at the time.

Part two of the master plan involved having babies 3 and 4 in my early 30’s. Baby one and two would be safely off to kindergarten and beyond, eliminating previous childcare costs and it would be like starting over again. It would be perfect. Right?

Then Caitlyn turned 2 and my drive for baby making once again went in to overdrive. OVERDRIVE! But only some of the time. I go back and forth between 2 extremes…the first being MUST MAKE MORE BABIES!! NOW!!! and the other being I can never have any more children. EVER! Two is MORE THAN ENOUGH! I’m using caps to stress how strong the emotions are. And there’s never an in between----I either want them or I don’t on any given day.

I want more kids more often than I don’t though.

I’ll be 29 in 2 weeks. (oh my gawd, TWENTY NINE, barf) All this does is focus me on the fact that soon I’ll be 30. (soon I’ll be 30, I don’t want to be 30……I’ve got some big plans could well have some big hands… [bonus points to anyone who gets that reference (besides my mother)]) {Am I a parentheses genius or what?----no, I’m pretty annoying----I digress} Part of me says “wait until after you are 30 to get pregnant because you can get trashed and forget you are turning 30 for like two weeks!” (Because that is responsible behavior) “Or take a vacation with your best friend to celebrate!” The other part says “probably being pregnant when you are 30 will be a terrific diversion to the fact that you are turning 30. THIRTY!!”

On a completely off the wall side note---I vividly remember my mother turning 30. She was given Oil of Olay, for her wrinkles, because she was old……30. I will knock anyone’s block off who gives me Oil of Olay.

In any case, I anticipate having baby #3 sooner than later. For one, we use no reliable and consistent birth control. The pill makes me feel like ass. And the desire to have another baby completely overwhelms me most of the time. But also, I don’t know. The thought of having these older kids who do their own thing and go to school while I spend all of my time with a baby makes me kind of sad. What if I neglect them because they really don’t need so much attention? The nice thing about having Eddie and Cait so close was that Eddie was so young he still needed a ton of attention. It forced me to be able to balance them and attend to both of their needs almost seamlessly. Maybe this is an irrational fear because I know that I thought I could never love Caitlyn like I love Eddie……and I don’t love them the same because they are totally different kids….but they do share my love equally….you know? Swistle seems to be doing a great job with the balancing of older and younger children, and she has 5 kids (FIVE KIDS) and that reassures me a bit.

In the end what will be, will be and I’m sure that I’ll have a different perspective on the situation once I’m in it. And maybe, just maybe, I need to be in the situation to put it in the right perspective. Until that time though, I’ll put up with the daily freak outs and questioning every aspect of what could possibly be as well as continue with the “third baby envy” of No Whey Mamaand Devan which has pretty much sent me over the edge.

I’ll also count my blessings though because I have to two most amazing and perfect kiddos in the world and if I never had another baby I’d still be the luckiest girl in the world.

Non-Post Thursday

1. I got my hair cut yesterday---complete with bangs. Nobody has even noticed. I haven’t had bangs since like 7th grade. They’re the long sweeping type bang. I think I like it. I’d like it more if I had touched up my roots and perhaps blow-dried and styled my hair this morning….and we all know that wasn’t going to happen.
2. Have I mentioned that Ed has been staying home with the kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays? He is and is doing a great job. (plus it’s saving us like $160/week on daycare) As long as I leave out clothes for both and diapers and wipes for Cait. All hell broke loose this morning because I forgot and apparently he was unaware of Eddie’s aversion to any pant that is not a wind pant. I directed him to the wind pants (Eddie’s dresser) and the crisis was averted.
3. I have had entirely too much coffee to drink today.
4. I am wearing a pair of those new trendy super dark jeans. They’re cute, but also stink like dye. It’s annoying. I’m also wearing heels with my jeans which I have never done before. I’m such a trendy mom.
5. I’m considering traveling to Georgia in May by myself for my cousin’s wedding. There is no way Ed and the kids could go. I wouldn’t be totally alone as my parents are going but I’d be traveling alone---which is weird.
6. We’re going to The Bill’s game on Sunday as I won free tickets from work. Ed asked if someone was mad at me and compared winning them to winning a pile of crap. He’s pretty much right, but we’ll go and root for them just the same.
7. The reason for this non post is that I’m working on like 4 other entries based around the following:
• Pooping at work
• Child spacing views and how mine don’t fit in with missing this:





• The fact that I’m pretty sure I’m a compulsive eater
• My review of season premier week (I love TV)

Ok, I have much more to do on my lunch break, starting with going to the post office. YIPPEE!

I'm aware my header looks ridiculous. I'm working on it.

Here In My Car

Ed drove me to work today which afforded me the opportunity to do one of my favorite things….people watch. It amazes me how people are lured in to this false sense of privacy while they’re in their vehicles. In the 20 minutes we were in the car I saw:

o a man reading the news paper
o a man gingerly stroking his moustache, no doubt marveling at his manliness in that he can grow facial hair
o a woman talking on the phone and applying mascara
o several people in animated phone conversations
o a man shouting in to a walkie talkie style phone while holding a cigarette and steering with his other hand
o The DHL delivery guy attempting to light is cigarette while wearing his leather delivery gloves

As I was watching (and pointing and laughing in my mind) it occurred to me that people are probably doing the same thing to me on a daily basis. I too, for some reason, feel completely uninhibited when I’m in my car.

Here is a random sampling of the things you may see me doing on any number of (ok, probably most) days:

• Turning around frantically to make sure that I actually did drop both kids off at daycare
• Jamming to The Wiggles because it didn’t occur to me to change the CD after dropping the kids off
• Laughing hysterically at (and talking back to) Howard Stern
• Singing at the top of my lungs to either Meatloaf or The Monkees while pretending that I won a contest to be able to sing on stage with them because I know ALL of their lyrics
• Screwing around with my satellite radio (and not looking at the road) because I have horrible reception
• Filing through 100 CD’s (while not looking at the road) to find “the perfect one”
• Having my own animated phone conversation while trying to hide the fact that I’m even on the phone because I don’t have a hands free device.
• Running my fingers through my hair to determine whether or not I brushed it after my shower
• Sniffing my armpits to make sure I am properly deodorized
• And oh crap….did I brush my teeth? I really need to be more organized. I check out my teeth in the rear view mirror
• Trying to figure out how I am going to eat the pumpkin muffin from Starbuck’s that is full of cream cheese without making a huge mess
• Cleaning up the smeared cream cheese from said muffin from the side of my face

But you can’t see me anyway. Right?

Recipe Monday

After coming home late from Ed’s Aunt Rita’s 90th birthday party on Saturday, we got a late start yesterday. The kids slept until about 8:30, and Ed let me sleep in until about 10:00. We weren’t even done with breakfast until after 12:30. The kids took an early nap and when they got up we decided to take a walk in the park near by that has several nature trails. We saw deer, chipmunks, several types of birds and a ton of wild turkeys. The kids could have taken it or left it, but it was nice to get out and walk.

Target is right down the street so we stopped for “just because” and because I can always use something from Target, and we ended up buying this furniture, (the book case, coffee table and TV stand) and Eddie’s Jeff Gordon Halloween costume.

When we came home I made this recipe and it was delicious! I can’t wait to eat leftovers for dinner tonight. (Paula’s recipe calls for cream of mushroom and sliced mushrooms which would not fly in my house)

Sara’s Variation of Paula Deen’s Chicken Boudine

1.25 lbs boneless chicken breast (cooked and torn in to pieces)
2 lbs egg noodles (cooked and drained)
1 2.25oz package of almonds (toasted in frying pan for a few minutes)
¼ cup drained pimentos
8oz frozen baby broccoli florets
3 cups cheddar cheese
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
¾ cup chicken stock

Toss together chicken, broccoli, almonds and pimentos. Add soup and stock and stir. Fold in 2 cups of the cheese and the noodles. Top with remaining cheese.

Bake in a 350 degree oven about 30 minutes, until bubbly.

(Yes, Ed eats pimentos and almonds…I find it as weird as you do…)

I served it with french rolls and it was SO GOOD!

This is Kind of Neat....

First of all, please check out my vacation post below. I spent forever on it. :) Secondly, this is too cool not to share. :)

The Vacation Chronicles

I don’t feel exuberant and wistful looking back on our vacation this time. We had a good time, really we did, but I don’t know, it wasn’t one of those vacations you look back on and wish you were still there. As I said before, traveling this year was a whole lot different than last year, and entertaining Eddie and Caitlyn proved to be troublesome. When we were out and doing things, it was great, but being in the car, or in the hotel, or even in a restaurant pretty much sucked. The kids were bored, we were frazzled, and everyone was exhausted.

We were on the road by 4:45 AM on Wednesday and we were both surprised at how easy and uneventful the drive actually was. We made it in to New Hampshire before 5:00 PM and we had stopped several times during the drive. We headed straight to dinner, swam in the hotel pool and were in bed fairly early.

I think we were all surprised to have slept in until almost 9:00 AM on Thursday. [ The hotel, by the way, was not nearly as fancy as their website made it seem. (This is where we stayed The marble finishing in the bathroom was silly; the extravagant bath products were the same that I actually own from Bath and Body Works, and the whole place smelled like bleach. (On our last night there the showerhead actually fell off while Ed was in the tub) It was a decent hotel, juts not what it was made out to be.] But anyway, we had breakfast at the buffet in the hotel and decided to drive up Mount Washington.

In the brochures, The Mount Washington Auto Road appears to be paved and safe, but in actuality, it’s a freaking death trap. The signs say it is wide enough for 2 cars to pass in opposite directions at any given time, but these must be compact Italian cars or something. There is no way that two SUV’s or minivans could have passed through at the same time. There are no guardrails; there is nothing other than your own seatbelt to keep you safe during your drive. So as extremely responsible parents, we drove right on up. The scenery, while beautiful, did not make up for how nervous I was the entire way up there. Caitlyn screamed until we were physically inside a cloud because it was so sunny out. And oh yeah, it was 32 degrees at the top of the mountain.










After driving down and grabbing a snack, we headed over to The Lost River Gorge and Boulder Caves, which is gorgeous and breathtaking…..and has about four million stairs. Ed had to carry Caitlyn through because she would have seriously held us up. Seriously. Eddie took a few photos while we were there:




And of course we captured some of the scenery and the kids.





We ate at The Muddy Moose that evening which is so incredibly cute, but unfortunately my scrod tasted like garbage. Or like garbage smells I guess. Then again, that’s probably what I get for eating something called “scrod”

We slept in again on Friday, and checked out of the hotel before we went on The Hobo Railroad. The kids loved the train ride, which came complete with a hobo lunch and bindle souvenir.










Afterwards we went to Clark’s Trading Post, which I just love, and shopped for a bit. We also bought fudge….Oreo fudge to be exact which we haven’t seen anywhere in years. We ate so much of it that it actually makes me nauseous to think about it now.

We headed in to Maine that evening and arrived around 6:00 or so. Maine for me was not anything spectacular, but maybe we just weren’t in the right area. We decided to keep the kids up late that night and grabbed a late dinner with Melissa and caught up for a while since we hadn’t seen her since I was 9 months pregnant with Cait. We made plans for the following day and called it a night.

After breakfast in the hotel on Saturday, we took a ride to see Lenny, the world largest chocolate moose, and then drove down to the ocean in the rain. We checked out a few shops and then went back to the hotel to get Melissa. It stopped raining, so we went to The Maine Wildlife Park, where I finally saw a live moose. Half joking, I asked Ed to climb the fence and take a picture for me so there wouldn’t be fence in the way, and he did it. The kids really enjoyed it, Eddie especially, but only because he thinks we peed in a garbage can. There was an outhouse in the middle of the park, and the toilet was actually a long metal cylinder with a seat on top of it, hence the garbage can confusion. If you ask Eddie what his favorite part of vacation was, he’ll tell you peeing in the garbage can.










That evening we dined at DiMillio’s Floating Restaurant, which was really good. It’s a huge old boat on the Portland waterfront and we ate while watching the sunset over the water. We drove around downtown a bit that evening as well. It was really nice to see a place with a developed waterfront that was booming.

Sunday, our last day there, we took a ride on The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad, which was horrendously lame. We did get a few good shots of the ocean while we were there though, and cute photos of the kids as well. Afterward, we went to The Desert of Maine and then had lunch in Freeport. After a stop at Ben and Jerry’s and a great little store called Cool as a Moose, we were ready to head back.












We packed up that evening, and left for home at 4:00 AM on Monday, and actually made it home at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

It was a good vacation which left our bank account very much depleted, but in the end, we scored some pretty sweet shot glasses, took some great photos, and don’t forget, Eddie peed in a garbage can.

Haggard

Traveling with a 2 and 3-year-old is a whole lot different than traveling with a baby and a 2-year-old. The pictures will tell you that we had a good time.

My face today would tell you otherwise because I am just BEAT!!

I will post this evening from home with pictures and all that jazz if I can keep my eyes open after work.

TTFN....

Five

There is just so much that I want to say today....SO MUCH! But the fact that I have a million things to do before vacation is leaving me a bit stifled. So here is what I'd like to talk about, in list form, that I may expand on this evening after the children go to bed.

1. Friday is my 5-year anniversary. 5 years. I went in to my old blog to see what I might have written that may be nice to copy over here....but there was nothing usable. The whole thing basically read "me me me....blablabla....the photographer insulted my parents....the reception kicked ass....and apparently everything made us 'piss our pants' " I guess maturity at age 23 is not so much mature. I was looking for something with substance; something about how much I loved Ed and how happy I was to be his wife.....but there was nothing. I do love him though, and am so glad that we got married (and have now been together for 13 years) He is an amazing husband and father and tries so hard to make all of my dreams come true.

2. I become insane when vacation time rolls around. INSANE!!! Despite the ever-present state of disarray that my home is in, it must.be.spotless before we leave for 6 days. I can't have a mess hanging over us the whole time we're gone. (I get this from my mother) I also make list on top of list on top of list, and I check them and double check them and triple check them before we go. I'm a nut job. If only I could apply such drive to my every day life.




3. Daycare is really PISSING me right off....she has overcharged us every week since we moved over, to the point where with our vacation days we are paid up through the end of next week. When I checked with her this morning, after having spoken with her about vacation time daily for the last week or so, she scratched her head and said "are you sure you had the vacation time to use?" and she's lucky I didn't jump over the counter and strangle her. Seriously. I told her hat nothing can come out of our account on Friday.....no questions asked. And I will remind her again when I pick the kids up this afternoon. And I will probably send her an email tonight. And Wednesday morning before we leave.

4. I'd really like to have time to do TFM's Monday Mission today. It sounds very fun, and you know how I like to post pictures.

5. Ok, too much to do, I have to go!!!

Honesty

I'm not going to write about my feelings as to whether or not I wshed I was pregnant....or how I feel about the whole thing. I'll tell you this honestly.....the list of pros and cons reads exactly the same. Pro---we would have 3 kids and be a fmaily of 5!! Con----we would have 3 kids and be a family of 5. I guess what that means is that I would love it if it happened, but I'm probably not looking to be knocked up again right now.

So since we are speaking honestly, tell me what you think of this headband I bought. I think I love it, but that it might not look good on me.




See how it has the tie thinger in the back? I might return it.



And since we're on the subject of me.....what do you think of my glasses which apparently are never going away as I rely on them more and more each day....

Sooooo.....

I did buy a test, but never had a chance to take it. My period came yesterday....8 days late.

So here we are. :)


Just thougt I'd update that real quick, I am getting ready to go visit my friend Staci and hr new baby boy.

Update---but not really

So, still no update from yesterday and I’m probably not going to waste any more money on tests since I’m going to the OBGYN on Tuesday. I’m just going to wait it out. (what this means is that I’ll probably break and buy 8 more tests on my lunch break today….) I’m uneasy because there were 2 negatives and one (sort of) positive. And to answer Swistle’s question, I took the test and waited for about a minute, got bored and left. After about 10/15 minutes I was back in the bathroom and there was the faint second line. All 3 tests came from the same box……maybe they were duds. I don’t know. Ed politely suggested this morning that I should perhaps drink some orange juice or pop a vitamin or something. I’m still waiting it out.

I took the kids to Target yesterday because Eddie outgrew his sneakers overnight, (and purposely didn’t buy any tests because how embarrassing would that be with 2 small children) and for the first time ever Caitlyn threw one holy hell of a temper tantrum. I’m talking red faced, screaming at the top of her lungs trying to tip the shopping cart over angry. I thought about this post. Wasn’t I so high and mighty? Talking it out always works for us, but my angels NEVER throw temper tantrums. BS. So how did I react you may ask? Bribery. Flat out bribery. Cait got a sweet pair of brown Mary Janes with gold bumblebee charms on them, a package of M&M’s and we stopped at McDonalds on the way home.

…….And I got a tub of ice cream for the inconvenience.

So, you know that whole “I have my period and I’m miserable” post from last week? It was a false alarm. I spotted for 2 days and then it was gone. That’s actually kind of par for my cycle, spotting for a few days starting Wednesday, taking a few days off then coming back full force by Sunday. The only thing was that it didn’t come back on Sunday. And still has not come back as of today which is a full week from the spotting.

I’ve taken three pregnancy tests.

The first was negative.
The second had a faint second line.
The third was negative.

I don’t know what the hell is going on, but to say the least I’m still quite miserable. Some sort of delayed PMS perhaps? My boobs sure are killing me though. Regardless of what happens I have my annual with my OBGYN on Tuesday and I’m sure we’ll figure it all out then.

Autumn Change

So let me ask you this? How is it September already? Where, oh where, did the summer go? I certainly have no idea. It seems like just a few days ago I was buying swimsuits and adorable tanks for the kids, and now I’m evaluating their autumn wardrobes to see what can be used and what needs to be bought.

I do love the change back to cooler weather though and not just because it is so beautiful, and the air is so crisp. Not just because the leaves will turn soon, and we’ll go out trolling through Letchworth Park, and picking pumpkins, and going through corn mazes or clearing the abundant heaps of chestnuts from our driveway and yard……or preparing for Halloween. I love all of those things, and autumn is truly my favorite season. When I close my eyes and think about it, I can actually smell the dried leaves and feel the change in the air.

The best thing of all though is fueling my addiction to cataloguing.

I love packing up the children’s clothes and filing them in labeled banker’s boxes. “Caitlyn-Summer 18-24mos” or “Eddie-Summer-4T (and some 3T)” and then packing them on the shelves in our basement. The clothes are categorized by size and gender from newborn on up. And once the old are packed away, I go to the gigantic green Rubbermaid tote, and pull out the new. These are clothes that the children got for Christmas or previous birthdays, that were a size or 2 too big (rather than exchanging them, I pack them away for the next year), or the hand-me-downs from Ed’s cousin and my boss. This year was the first time that I bought on clearance to fill their wardrobes for next year, so as I took the stored fall clothes out; I had new treasures, still with tags on, to add to my collection.

I don’t know why, but I feel such a sense of accomplishment in doing this all. For a brief moment it feels like we are starting fresh, a new season, a new outlook, and of course, new clothes.

Eddie and Caitlyn at Letchworth 2006