Keep a Smile on Your Face

I know the answer already, but I'll ask anyway. Do you ever feel like you just can't catch a break? I'll spare you all the long and probably boring story of how I spent two weeks trying to get an appointment with my perinatologist, whom I love and who has taken care of my previous two pregnancies and delivered both my girls, so it's only natural that I would do everything I can to have him take care of this one and deliver this baby, only to find out that my insurance company will NOT budge on the whole "referral" from a regular OB first, who I couldn't get into in the first place for the referral because everyone was either not taking new patients or not giving referrals or couldn't see me until January, or whatever their excuse was, so I finally told a small, tiny, little fib to get into a doctor who happened to be almost an hour away, and when I got to the office for my appointment I had already thrown up three times that morning (before 9 am), had a killer migraine headache, and discovered NO ONE was in the office because they schedule MY appointment at one office and the doctor was seeing patients at a different office (another 30 min. away) that day; and after he tells me he WILL refer me to my beloved doctor and I finally get in to see him, I discover the first doctor does not want to turn over the total care and delivery to my doctor, the one I want, but only wants me to see him periodically for higher level ultrasounds, so now I'll have to fight with him to give me up as a patient or drive an hour down to his office every couple weeks, which I'm not willing to do. Okay, so I spared you nothing. Deal with it. (My English teacher would have KILLED me for that paragraph!)

Actually, I really was talking more about The Man. He works so unbelievably hard (and long), and sometimes it seems like it's all for nothing. He spends twelve-hour days at the office, only to come home to cranky kids and an emotionally exhausted wife, lately with no dinner on the table. Then when the girls are in bed, it's off to the "honey-do" list or the office to spend some time desperately trying to accomplish the goals and dreams he's set for himself. Finally, somewhere between midnight and 2:30 a.m., it's the long-awaited and short-lived bedtime, where he battles with sleep apnea and terrible sinuses as he tries to get some quality sleep so he can wake up at 5:00 a.m. and - dare I say - be ready to do it all again. Saturdays and Sundays are usually no better as they most often begin with a raging migraine. (Aren't we a pair?!?!) He'll fight it off so that he can get up and "get something done," like the backyard (which is now done - yeah!!!!), preparing his lesson for his gospel doctrine class, take care of logo clients, and try to spend time with me and the girls.

Sound fun yet? Sound like a lot of complaining? But it's with good intentions. I write this post to let The Man know that I really do see the gazillion things he's juggling while he still manages to be a fabulous husband and daddy. I am unbelievably grateful for a man who is willing to kill himself working so that I can stay home with our children. I am even more grateful that he's a man who, after six years of marriage, still loves me, even though he probably knows way too much about who I really am. I am lucky. I am blessed. I am so proud of him.














A friend of mine and I were talking about what we would do if our husband's died. I know, morbid, but I'd like to know what my plan is just in case. Anyway, she was talking about how they've planned for her and the kids to be taken care of financially, and that her husband thinks that's the most important thing. She said he's worth more dead than he is alive. And she said how she told him, "I'd pay twice that much just to get you back." I'm sure we all would.

But it got me thinking about money and the routine of our lives and what we're actually working for. We work so that we can earn money to live in our nice houses and buy the things we need and want. If I lost The Man tomorrow, I would not care one bit about where I was living, what car I was driving, what I was going to wear that day or if I was going to go out to eat a nice dinner. My friend was right; I would have everything taken away from me - everything - if that's what it took to keep him. And I would do it with a smile on my face.

I'm Not Your Mom Anymore

Miss Priss has had quite the attitute lately. Lately? What the heck am I talking about? That girl was BORN with an attitude. Not sure exactly where she learned it, but she's recently pulled out the "I'm not your sister, then!" to Devil Child whenever she gets upset with her. I hear "I'm not your sister anymore" and "I'm not your friend anymore" ALL THE TIME. Each time we have a little discussion on how that's not being very kind, and how it hurts people's feeling to say such things. Obviously it hasn't worked so far.

The other night she was upset with me for, oh, I don't know, maybe it was because I'm the meanest mom in the entire world because I asked her to pick up her dirty clothes and get them in the laundry. Or no, maybe it's because I'm the meanest mom in the whole world because I make her brush her teeth before she goes to bed. Wait a minute. I know. It's because I'm the meanest mom in the whole world because she doesn't get dessert if she doesn't eat her dinner. That's it. Anyway, she starts up with the crying first, then the dirty looks, then the snide comments of, "That's rude, mom!" So, being the meanest mom in the world, I tell her she may not speak to me like that, and she can go up to her room until she's ready to stop crying, change her attitude, and say nice things to me. As she's running up the stairs, now hysterically crying, she yells, "FINE!!! I'm not your mom anymore!"

Do I laugh? Do I cry? No, I say, "Good. I don't need another mom." But of course I know what she means, and it does hurt me a little. My little baby girl, a child I would give all my life and more for, is so upset with me in that moment that she says she doesn't want me to be her mom. Ouch. But I'm over it because a little while later she's back downstairs, wiping away tears and ready to apologize. We have another little discussion about kindness, and how important our friends and family members are to us. All is well in Zion. I'm hoping this time she really does understand.

A few nights later The Man comes home from work, and utter chaos breaks loose in the house. I don't know why he keeps coming home. The excitement of "DADDY'S HOME!!!" lasts a whole five mintues around here. Then it turns straight into the whining about wanting to play outside, or not wanting what I made for dinner, the spilling of drinks that happens at EVERY meal, crying that they can't watch a movie, and more whining about getting ready for bed and actually having to go to bed. So after a nice bout of crying for who knows what, The Man is fed up and decides to take action. He turns to Miss Priss and tells her, "If you don't obey and get up there to get ready for bed, you'll get a spanking, and then you'll STILL have to get ready for bed, even if you don't want to!"

She turns to run upstairs, and shouts on her way up, "I'm not your dad anymore!" It's sad, but at the same time a little humorous, that she still hasn't got it through her head that that's mean, and that she's got it totally backwards.

We're Baa-aack

Whew! That was a close one. But problem solved, and pretty easily. Thanks to everyone for looking into this to help me. When I logged on yesterday to post, all I could see when I went to view my blog was a pink screen. I thought it was a fluke, or that maybe there was too much traffic at that time, causing some delays or difficulties. So I waited an hour or so and tried again. Same pink screen. Then I started to get worried. I tried again another hour later and, you guessed it, same thing. AAAAHHH!!! My blog disappeared! I typed in a couple links I knew by heart, and got to your blogs with no problem. So then I knew mine was in trouble.

I emailed Blogger this morning and told them my blog was gone, and asked if they could help. Not too long after I received an email with a couple of links to some information on fixing "broken" blogs. It also suggested that if I could get to my dashboard (which I could) but not to my blog, to try republishing the blog. I tried that and ... voila! It worked!!! I'm back up and running.

Now, for the second part of my inquiry to Blogger. I asked them if there was a way to backup our blogs to prevent completely losing them, and if there's a way to get a hard copy of them. Haven't heard back from Blogger on that yet, but a couple people have suggested some alternatives to that problem. We could write our posts first in something like Word, where we can save them, and then copy and paste them onto Blogger. In that case we would have our text, but not the pictures (which most times is what really makes the blog). But text without pictures is far better than nothing at all; right? Or, I was told that after you write your post you have the option of emailing it. So you could email it to yourself to have a hard copy. And last, there is probably a way to burn it onto a cd, in which case you would have the entire thing, pictures and all. But honestly, how often would we really do that? After every post? I don't know about you all, but I don't want to waste all those cd's by burning a new one everyday.

If Blogger comes up with a better suggestion, I'll let you all know. In the meantime, do whatever works best for you to keep a copy. What a shame it would be for any of us to lose it all.

What's Up With Us...

Miss Priss had her first day of preschool today. We were all very excited. She did great, as I knew she would; just ran into the classroom when the teacher opened the door, and forgot all about me and Devil Child, who were left standing there on the playground just waiting for a wave goodbye. I'll take that in a heartbeat over her screaming, crying, and clinging to my leg for dear life. Wow, I feel bad for those moms. We decided on afternoon school, as the girls take after their dad in their morning routines. We literally have days when I'll go into Miss Priss' room in the morning, and she groggily (is that a word?) looks at me, then scowls at me and shouts, "You woke me up, mom! I was sleepy!"

But I was happy to have the morning to get ready, seeing as it takes me ALL morning for breakfast, baths, dressing and hairstyling. We were up and outta here early (for us) to spend some time at the park before school started at noon. We've got a great park right up the street from us. The playground is awesome, but I love the scenery the most. And now that school is in, it's not crowded at all.

Here are some of the pictures we got. I've discovered that our pictures turn out better when the girls aren't looking at the camera. That's partly due to the fact that they're not completely cooperative, and partly due to the fact that our camera has like a 10-second delay. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but still, it's terrible.






I've been feeling better the last couple of days. It's been nice. I made it to church, but really only because it was Miss Priss' very first Primary Program. Maybe it's because I'm pregnant, maybe it's because I'm a sap, but there's something about seeing your first baby up there on that stand the minute she spots you, and her eyes light up and she jumps up out of her seat and shouts hello to you while waving her arms frantically, as if you're going to miss her. I cried. Unfortunately, The Man was home with a migraine, so I was on my own with Devil Child. Needless to say, I missed the entire program. I was in and out of there at least 20 times, trying desperately to watch my baby sing and hold her pictures up right on cue. She came down from the stage twice during the program crying, "Mom, I couldn't see you. Where are you?" It was awful.

I want to send out a huge congratulations to Bama and her family. We just found out they're having twins, and we are so happy for them (and even more happy it's not us!) We wish you all the luck in the world. You're probably going to need it.

Signs and Symptoms

It's really real. For the few weeks we've known about the new baby on the way, it hasn't really seemed real yet, other than the fact that clothes aren't fitting very well ALREADY!!!

But it hit me the other day when I was in the car on the way home, and listening to the radio. I flipped to the country station and heard the last verse of a song I liked. I waited to hear what was coming next to decide if it was worth my time. Reba came on next singing 'Fancy.' Haven't heard that in forever. By the time she reached the last part of the song where she sings, "I mighta been born just plain white trash, but Fancy was my name," the tears were rolling down my face. That's right, I was crying because of a song where a mother basically turns her daughter into a hooker. When the song was over, I wiped my face and took a look in the rear-view mirror. There sat Miss Priss and Devil Child, looking a little perplexed. Sorry, children, mommy has no good reason or explanation for this one.


So here's me now (minus the cute little tanktop jammies). Luckily the throwing up hasn't started yet. I just feel like I'm on the verge all day long. Sometimes I don't know which is worse; actually throwing up (but at least getting rid of the feeling for a while), or constantly feeling like it's coming any second. And usually the thought of eating alone makes me want to hurl. But I'm in good spirits. I'm so happy to be having another one, and I know this won't last long. And it's totally worth it.

It just bites knowing that I'm barely choking down one meal a day, sometimes only a piece of toast or a couple crackers, and yet my clothes get tighter and tighter every minute I'm in them. This stage is the worst, where you feel like you're bursting out of your regular clothes, but you're not really showing, so maternity clothes look ridiculous.

So forgive me if the posts come few and far between for a while. I'm busy laying on my couch while my kids watch Strawberry Shortcake 20 times a day. Yep, mother of the year, I know.