Helpful to remember

After a week of nasty sister drama, immeasurable stress, and a pretty nice visit from some cousins, I am certain I have the best husband in the world!

Un-sleepies

My 5 month old baby has been on a kick, a waking up kick. Every 20-40 minutes until I come to bed at night. So many thoughts go through my head.

She used to be a good sleeper. Did I mess her up? Contaminate her with un-sleepiness? Come rescue her too son? What did I do WRONG?

Is she ever going to be easy to put to sleep again?

How do I fix this?

Is this really from crawling or teething or some now permanent bad pattern?

I cannot handle going in there one more time. I just can't do it. I'm going to wither and die if I have to sing one more song. Feed her one more time.

Of course, she wakes up, and I go in again. Lullabies, calming. This is the life of a Mom.

Baby Town

It is really high maintenance to have a baby, everything else takes a back seat to baby and lately that's a lot of stuff. Emaline care, my husband and my relationship, house maintenance, all of it has to wait most of the time. Hannah is much more needy when she's teething which is a big part of it, but even when she's easy it takes a lot of time to care for a baby. I need to remember this when I'm trying to figure out why things are so hard these days, why getting anything done is truly an uphill battle. We are in baby-ville, the Brown family. We are not in preschooler land like some of my other friends with one child/older children, we have a baby too. So I won't be heading out for as many fun things as them, nights out, or outings with Emaline. I won't be getting involved in extra projects, volunteering my time, dressing well, or even appearing like I have it all together. Or even mostly together. This is what having a baby is like! It's hard to remember sometimes.

indeliberate

Would be how I'd describe a lot of my parenting, especially the last few weeks of my pregnancy. Physically, it is really tough to wrangle a toddler and a new baby! Hannah is 3 1/2 months old now, and its easier having a new baby and being Emmi's Mom than being pregnant. I regret yelling at Emaline and others during that hard time, hormones also really make it hard to be even keeled. Note to self: remember this when your girls are teenagers, awash with crazy hormones of their own. Have sympathy. Teach them Grace (something they both are named, Hannah also means grace) and how to apologize for their mistakes.

Emaline is 2 1/2. She has reinvented herself yet again as a person, and now converses in sentences. She knows all her colors and is learning letters and numbers. She has make believe discussions with her "Bert and Ernie." Yesterday she was giving pretend shots to Sesame Street characters, telling them it would feel better. I asked her what would help them feel better afterward and she said "ice cream cone!" So I think when we get her shot next week, thats what we'll do.

The shots: we are catching up on her vaccines for preschool. Yep! April 3rd she is starting a mothers day out program, 9-1 on T and Th.

(this is a post from Martch I never finished)

I've decided to post things here in tiny snippets, like I do on Facebook. Because maybe then I'll really do it regularly.

I was thinking the other day, Man, my children have aged me (while looking at a photo of myself). Then I thought, well it really started when I broke up with my boyfriend in 2004, that's when I got my first gray here. and then I realized, that was 8 years ago and I'm just getting old!