Merry Freaking Christmas

Argh!!! I am sick. So sick. I feel like turd run over by a semi.

I have some kind of sinus, sore throat, ear ache thing. I was so looking forward to enjoying our first Christmas with Aiden and all I want to do is go back to sleep for hours. I tossed and turned all night and had a monster fever, my clothes were soaked. What fun it is huh?

I am not looking forward to travelling and visiting all our relatives today. I just want to stay in my bed!

Merry Christmas everyone.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

I awake around 4 this morning with a god awful pain in my sinus on one side of my face. My throat hurts, my ear aches, and I feel like someone sucked all the moisture out of my sinus. It is so much pain that there is no way to go back to sleep until I find some kind of remedy.

Heed my warning, never look for something as important as saline nose spray in the dark! I didn't want to wake DH so I found what I thought was saline spray. I read the words "extra moisturizing" on the bottle in the dim night light and thought Eureka! That is what I need!

I spray two sprays and go back to bed. I lay there awake and in serious pain and wonder why on earth I feel no relief. So I stupidly take the spray and spray AGAIN. Then after a while I am still in unbearable pain and I wake DH and ask him if we have any more saline spray somewhere because this one isn't working. He looks at it and says, yeah babe this is a decongestant. This is only going to make it drier!!! AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Foolish! Foolish!! I ended up getting in the shower at 5 am to try to moisten up the sinus with steam. Then I crept into the babies room to steal his saline spray. Finally around quarter to six I fall back asleep to be awoken by Aiden at 6:40. *sigh* Its going to be a long day and my sinus still hurts.

Proof of my insanity

Dark chocolate with pecans
White chocolate with peppermint candy cane
Milk chocolate with Butterfinger
White chocolate with Butterfinger
Andes mint chocolate with cocoa powder
Milk chocolate with Heath Bar
White chocolate with Heath Bar




















*DROOL*

Why do I always go overboard?

A little bit goes a long way. Yeah, not in my house it doesn't. I think I get this trait from my mother, who else right?

I go shopping and I can't just get a few things. I always get more than I should buy. I made Christmas cookies last year, and most people make a couple dozen cookies. Me, I make 8 different kinds of cookies of about 2 dozen each. This year, to top off the great cookie bake of last year, I have decided to make truffles. Not thinking clearly, I quadrupled the recipe because, well I'm giving it to four different families so that makes sense right? Well, not only did I do that but I decided to make about 6 different kinds of truffles. All of them quadrupled. Yeah.

That is just too much damn chocolate for anyone! Who on earth wants a tin filled to the brink, two layers, of truffles? I am not exagerating at all when I say that I have hand made over 4oo truffles as of right now and I am not done yet! I still have more white chocolate ones to finish. Holy chocolate overload.

I never want to see another piece of chocolate again for at least a week and a half. ha ha!

A post that is not about my mother

I don't think I've written anything in a while that doesn't involve my mother. So what should I talk about then? Lets see. How about sex? That is something I wanted to discuss when I started this blog so here goes.

Its really strange to me how sex changes when you get pregnant and then have a baby. You go from having lots and lots of sex to try to get pregnant to pretty much none at all because you're sick or sick of sex. I know I was thoroughly sick of sex through my whole pregnancy. We did it exactly two times through the whole nine months. It was uncomfortable and just not pleasureable at all.

After you have a baby and you're given the green light to go at it again, I found myself in a state of confusion. Its weird having sex just for the enjoyment of it again. Its also weird having sex and being parents. Now you've got someone else in the house who might hear you. Now you're doing what your parents probably did (yuck!). I had a really difficult time getting my head around this new intimacy.

To be honest, I couldn't turn off the mom at the end of the day after the baby was asleep. It really took a long time to finally turn that off effectively. To not be humming baby songs in your head while doing the deed. To not be thinking that you'd rather be getting much needed sleep than doing it. Or worse, to coo at your DH during the deed. (yeah, I never did that no!)

Now at 8 months post partum I'm finally finding that old self again. The one that enjoys the intimacy and can have fun doing it. I don't know if its just that I finally got my period and that knocked my hormones back into whack. Maybe thats what did it. Anyway, all I can say is that I have the most patient husband there is because he put up with my sex issues and never complained once. I plan to thoroughly make it up to him because he totally deserves it!

Not a clue

The woman just will never get it. Did my husband mention my SIL anywhere at all in his e-mail to my mother? Nope. And yet she feels the need to go off on a tangent about it in her response, why? Because this is what she does best, she never lets anything go. She thrives on creating and fostering drama. Nothing will ever die with her, including this current argument and all those from the past. Inevitably it will be brought up again and again and again.....

The problems between my stupid SIL and I are something that she and I are working out by ourselves. We don't have our husbands involved in it and we certainly don't need my stupid fucktard mother involved. Yeesh! She really knows how to get me P.O.'d.

Here is her reply:


Thank you Chris for your honest, caring and kind writing. I truly appreciate your writing back to me. In a perfect world, the kind of motherhood you describe would be great and it is certainly something to aspire to. But each person experiences motherhood differently, according to her own life's experiences, heritage, family involvement, etc. As you said, I may not agree with every way my children raise their own children.

It certainly is their right to do so, but when I was there, I was not familiar with all the rules and schedules, etc. so I asked questions, and apparently they were asked many times - although I don't know which question I asked over and over again. We once had a standing joke in the family about how my mother repeated everything exactly three times, and we would laugh to each other when we would watch her do it. I must be getting the repetition trait from her.

There also appears to be a fine line between motherly advice and meddling on my own part. But it was when my own mother was treated so cruelly that I went up and spoke to Stephanie in anger. Up until then, I tried to keep quiet about the things that perhaps I would have done differently. Then things that normally would not have been worth it to bring up, were brought out in anger. I definitely spoke out of turn when I started pointing out the negative things.

You used some pretty good illustrations to make your point. In the recent past, I tried to reason with Stephanie using life's experiences as illustrations because of my own conversations with her. I've noticed from our conversations that there is a tendency to look for the negative in those of us who are family members and again I felt compelled to try to help because of these conversations. Past complaints about Stephen and Veronica, the grandparents, and so on appears to come from not being able to accept the differences and not being able to look at the positive qualities. Whenever I tried to reason on these things, there was always an argument followed by a period of silence manifested by not responding to e-mails or voice-mails. I never meant to treat anyone like a child but perhaps it appeared to that way because no one wants to have another point out that we may be doing something wrong. I wanted to help as I would help my best friend who was perhaps focusing on the negative traits that we all seem to have. I know that there is an underlying tension between Veronica and Stephanie that is not going to be bridged until both of them start focusing on one another's positive traits.

I try to view things more positively like the fact that Veronica loves my son and that Stephen loves his wife and they take care of one another, work together and do nice things for other people. I was so proud of Stephen when he grabbed a baseball bat and went over to your house because Stephanie called and said she heard noises, of course I worried about his safety as well, but he clearly loves his sister. Veronica is always looking for things for Aiden whenever we go shopping and she holds things up and says wouldn't Aiden look cute in this or that. She is hospitable and makes you feel so welcomed in her home. Stephanie is a great cook, something near and dear to my own heart and she has a wonderful sense of humor when she lets it show. She decorates her home nicely and when she feels a need to give gifts, they are well thought out and destined to make the receiver know how thoughtful she is. You are a great husband to my daughter and father to my grandson. You have a wonderful sense of humor and seem to be most tolerant of our family's idiosyncrasies. I just want my children to get along and not be so sensitive to a misstep or poorly chosen word.

Stephanie and Veronica are the same age but come from way different backgrounds and both of them have negative and positive traits. But I love my daughters - [and that is what they both are] - and it hurts to see them at such odds. This is the kind of things that my "mothering" was trying to help fix. I have said how I feel to Veronica in the matter and she has taken my 'motherly advice' with a grain of salt. She speaks up to me when she disagrees with me but never rejects me or makes me feel like I committed the unforgivable sin. She knows that I only want to see my children get along and be happy, as any parent would. I wish that Stephanie would not be so sensitive to suggestions from others regarding Aiden. She can always thank the person for their input but realize that she is still in control and will do what she wants to do. No one is taking that away from her. She will be so much less frustrated if she does this.
We can all improve relationships by focusing on the positive qualities of one another and overlooking the stupid things that we all do.

I love you all, but I am disappointed in the way this whole thing has turned out. But life is a learning experience and the good times and bad times shape us into who we are.

Thank you for the picture of Aiden. He is a beautiful child and I love him dearly. I really wish that someday you will come to our home because having our children visit with us makes us feel more like a family.

My dear husband to the rescue

I married one of the kindest, most understanding, and reasonable men around. The love I feel for him just gets stronger and stronger everyday, especially when I see what a wonderful father he's become. He has so much patience and simply adores our son. The beautiful thing is that he always wants to spend time with Aiden and help me out as much as he can. I really appreciate his support and couldn't ever do this without him.

Enough of that sap. Right? lol

My DH wrote a wonderful message to my crazy, insane mother last night. I think it is well thought out and right to the point. I can only hope that she takes what was said to heart and adapts her behavior.

Here it is:


Elaine,
These are my views on the subject of different stages of motherhood. I wrote this because I thought it would help all of us understand the situation. Please do not view this as an attack on anyone. It is simply some insight that I have gained from my own observations, experiences and mothering from my parents. Stephanie loves you, as do we all here at the Spelman household.
We value your caring and love. We don't always view the world the same, but as adults we respect each others differences. If we didn't have these differences the world would be pretty boring.
The first paragraph in your email highlights the root of the problem.
Stephanie is not looking for you to stop caring for her. She is looking for you to mature into the mother of an adult. A mother will always be "motherly". However, the role of mothering changes as your children grow.
Right now Stephanie is experiencing the first stages of motherhood. Aiden needs lots of help and assistance in helping to gain his basic skills to build from for the rest of his life. Pretty soon he will learn these things and will need less guiding from us as parents. Such as picking up food and putting it in his mouth. Right now he needs us to show, assist, and guide him on eating. When he gets older he will have learned this and won't need our help. This is an example of "mothering" in its early stages. If we tried to show, assist, and guide him on this same thing (how to eat) when he is 7 years old; I'm sure he would be pretty annoyed and confused. It would also make him feel like we don’t have confidence in his ability to feed himself.
However, if he is eating his food without utensils (like a dog or cat would) then we would guide him and show him the correct way to eat again. Hopefully, he gets a hang of it before moving out to be on his own.
This is where the next stage of motherhood begins. As parents you do to the best of your abilities and situation to prepare your child for the world. (I kind of view it like NASA sending off its astronauts into space; they work as hard as they can to provide their astronauts with all the tools and training before they blast off into space.) After a child moves away from home (blasts off like a rocket) they are starting their own journey into adulthood (space). Motherhood takes on a new role when a child begins life on their own.
Mothers will worry about their "baby" facing the world. Then a child will begin to put the mothers' worries to rest by living and learning using the tools their parents provided them as an adolescent. One of these tools is the child's (now young adult) ability to make their own decisions. Hopefully most of these decisions will be the "correct" decisions. But there will definitely be some wrong decisions made along the way, and that’s called learning the hard way. This phase usually took place from late teens to early twenties for myself. During this phase of motherhood moms will give their input from time to time, but learn to back off and let the child become a full fledged self guided adult who seeks guidance when needed.
At this stage unsolicited guidance on how to make life decisions would be taken the same way a 7 year old would take being shown how to eat. (annoyed, confused, lack of confidence).
There is still room for helpful advice here. However there is a difference between helpful advice and "your way is wrong, my way is right" advice. This is hard to juggle for an adult sometimes because an adult has more experience in years and situations so feels that they must be right. This is inevitable and can be seen in all adults as stubbornness as we get older. I know this because I can see my own stubbornness settling in and I only just turned 30! Hopefully I can continue to objectively see myself and recognize these kind of things as I get older.
Then comes the next stage in motherhood. Mother of an adult who has created their own life, mother of a bride, mother of a wife, and mother of another mother. This is also known as grandmother. You have raised a child who has become an adult and begun their own family. At this point they are your equal in the sense of being an adult. Guidance no longer comes into play. Mothering that was provided to an adolescent is no longer required. The child is now another adult whom you have an adult relationship with just like you would with one of your friends or peers. In addition to that you also have the pride of being the person who had mothered that adult who has now grown into their very unique self. At this stage of motherhood it would be very out of place to guide them how to eat as you would an infant. Just as it would be to tell someone, of age, how to make the right decision on parenting. There is still room for advice here also, but again there is a difference between helpful advice and "you're wrong, I'm right" advice. Another tricky part of advice is based on past advice given to an individual. Your history of advise will dictate how advise is perceived when given in the future.
Grandmotherhood is when you enjoy the good of children and don't have the responsibility to raise them or discipline them. In the same instance you must learn the parent's expectations of their child and help them in their expectations and wishes for that child, not instilling your own wishes. Your own wishes will translate through to your grandchild via the way you raised your own child. If different decisions are made they are to be respected just as if any other adult makes different decisions from each other.

Elaine,
These are my views on the subject of different stages of motherhood. I wrote this because I thought it would help all of us understand the situation. Please do not view this as an attack on anyone. It is simply some insight that I have gained from my own observations, experiences and mothering from my parents. Stephanie loves you, as do we all here at the Spelman household.
We value your caring and love. We don't always view the world the same, but as adults we respect each others differences. If we didn't have these differences the world would be pretty boring.
Here is a cute picture of your grandson, and our son...

WACKadoodle Doo

My mother needs some meds or something. Yet another e-mail begging me to be a better person. SHUT UP you freak show!


I have tried and tried but I can't throw away my feelings of being your mother, as much as you probably would like that to happen. I can't imagine that you would ever want to throw those feelings away regarding your child either. I hope you will try to understand that the motherhood feelings don't fade as your child grows and you never stop worrying about their well being, their future, and their lives. You will always want to help your child to improve and be happy and sometimes you are at a loss as to how to make that happen.
So each time as a mother, you think that you need to swallow your pride and try again to make things better. I am not chasing after you, I am just being your mother. And naturally, as your mother I want to know about your life. I don't think that will ever go away Stephanie. I am not sitting in tears crying over you, but I am sad that we have such a bad relationship.
Yes you are all grown up and have your own household and your own ideas on how to raise children and as hard as it is, I need to learn to respect that. But it is hard to stop caring and that seems to be what you want me to do. I wish my heart didn't hurt so much for my children, but it does.
Mothers will always look back and try to see what and where they could have done better for their kids. They seem to always say, I want my children to have a better life than I had.
I am going to attach the beginnings of a book that I have been working on.
It is primarily for my family - a sort of family history. It is not finished by any means as I am just beginning to sort out my childhood memories, but it might interest you - and it might not. Mary did something similar and it really helped her to let go of those demons in her head. It might help you to understand me and my struggle.

WWYD?

What would you do in this situation?

You go to your nephews 5th birthday party. You bring along your 8 month old son and some of his toys to keep him entertained. You of course remember to bring his most favorite toy, this little rubber book that he likes to gum.

At this party, one of your nephews school friends attends with his parents and 1 year old little sister. (The intentions of the invite were for one parent to bring the child, not the whole family attend) So the little girl decides that my sons toys are looking like fun to play with. Especially that rubber book that he has in his lap, why doesn't she just snatch that right up. Ok, so then what happens? Well, Aiden sees his favorite book and he wants it, he has tunnel vision, there is nothing else, all he wants in the whole world is his book.

What would you do? Try to distract him. Yep, didn't work. Then what? Try to exchange the book with another interesting toy for the little girl to look at. She takes more interesting toy, drops book, MIL gives book to Aiden, then little girl drops interesting toy and yanks book out of Aiden's hands. Nope, she wasn't giving it up, not when the baby is SCREAMING, WAILING, tears STREAMING down his face, REACHING for his book. So I take Aiden away to nurse him and remove him from the situation. Come back and the little girl is now playing with all his other toys, the rubber book discarded.

All the while the little tiff between the two is going on, the mother of the one year old just watches and DOES NOTHING!!! Hello? So am I wrong for thinking that the mother should have gotten her to give Aiden back his book? DH said that Aiden needs to learn to share, yeah but he is a baby! He doesn't understand that yet, granted the one year old probably doesn't either but its more probable that she can learn it better than Aiden can. My other problem is hey, I'm being nice and letting your kid play with my kids toys that I especially brought for him. I didn't bring enough to be sharing since I wasn't expecting other little kids. Why would you bring your child to a party for older kids and not bring anything to keep her entertained with?

I really had to stop myself from giving this woman dirty looks. After they left my SIL and MIL were both pissed at the whole thing.

Nursing

I've been wanting to talk about nursing for a while now. Its a subject that I feel anxious over for probably no real reason. It is such a sensitive thing for all new moms, you feel like you need to defend yourself if you do or don't.

I am probably one of the biggest hypocrites when it comes to doing it. I was 99.9% sure that I didn't want to nurse when I was pregnant. I thought it was weird and just not right. I couldn't disassociate the sexual aspect of the breasts. But agreed to give it a try, knowing in my mind that I would barely try and be like Oh well it didn't work.

When I had my little guy and I tried to nurse something just clicked. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to me to be doing it. It was really hard and probably would have been easy to just give up. I ended up supplementing since I didn't really read up on nursing beforehand to know the dos and don'ts. Now I know what to do better the next time around because I had to work my butt off for almost 3 months to stop supplementing.

What really drove me to keep going through the cracked/bleeding nipples and the constant pumping? The fact that a few of the nurses told me to give up. They could see that I was in pain. That just drove me to try harder, I had to prove them wrong. I made it through the struggle and have been nursing my little man for almost 8 months now.

Now comes the hard part for me, when do I stop? I've been toying with the idea of extended nursing. I think the only thing really holding me back right now is society. What will people think, my friends, the new moms I'm meeting at moms club, my family? I really want to stop when Aiden is ready to stop instead of forcing him to stop on my own preset idea of when he should. DH isn't entirely supportive of this idea, he thinks I will be uncomfortable if Aiden wants to nurse in the middle of a playgroup or something. Well so what if it makes someone else uncomfortable, I think to myself. But in the end, I'm not sure. I guess I'll just play it by ear, we'll see what happens when the teeth come.

So I met some moms yesterday

Why am I so bad with names? I can only remember about half the names of the people I meet.

I joined the local Moms Club finally. I really need to get myself some adult interaction or I'll end up losing some of my smarts. lol Plus its good for Aiden to hang out with other kids. So we met up at Starbucks yesterday with my sponser Kristy and her daughter -name? plus another new member Name? and her son Seth. Kristy's daughter is 7 months and Seth is 2 months. Aiden didn't pay much attention to the kids but he flirted shamelessly with the mommies. I think he likes older women!

Anyway, it was a really good time. I was a little nervous since I'm shy about meeting new people. Hell, I was shy when I met Julie and I'd been talking to her for over a year at that point. I'm really excited about joining the Moms Club. Kristy wants us to get a season pass to the aquarium, its only 15 minutes from my house and costs $50 for the year. I think I will. We can make it our regular place to meet up since its not crowded on weekdays. We're going to meet just the three of us seperate from the playgroups, but still go to the groups, its just that we're the only one with under 1 year olds.

I'm looking forward to this alot. It seems like they have about three activities a week plus a moms night out every month. This is going to be really good for me. Aiden was in a really happy mood yesterday when we got back, I think that was his way of saying thanks for getting me out of the house.

If any new moms or soon to be moms are interested in the Moms Club there could be one in your area - check www.momsclub.org

And then she comes to her senses

because her husband isn't totally crazy (he is only partly crazy because he married my mom). Yes, so if he says I made a valid point then I must have. But otherwise, in her mind, she can't see the reasoning. She is so mind numbingly brainless.

Subject: Paul and I discussed this...

He thinks your response was mature and had some valid points, which I already agreed with you on. He doesn't agree that distance is best but agrees that you have the right to decide who you will talk to and who you won't talk to. He also agreed that you have the right to decide how to raise your own child and as hard as it is for grandparents to keep quiet about things, we need to let you make your own mistakes with your children as we did with ours.
As hard as it is for me to agree with him on this, I am afraid that I have to because I respect who he is and what his insights are. He is a good and kind man. He sees my feelings as well in that I may not always choose the best of words to say, my intentions towards you have always been to make things better not worse for you. But he observes that we don't mix well and possibly never will.
But distance is what you are asking for and it is what you will have.
Please don't keep our grandchild's progress from us. If you can't bring yourself to send words please at least send us pictures of him so we can see him and love him from a distance.

Crazy is as Crazy does

Of course I got a nice long ass response to my e-mail. It wouldn't be my Mom if she didn't try to keep the drama going.

Here it is:

Instead of being so defensive, do you think that there might be a different way to handle this?
Don't respond if you don't want to, but Aiden did get put down for naps three times during our visit. As delusional as you think we are, both Paul and I saw it. Yes you have a right to make all the choices for your child as you see fit, and as evidenced by your reply, it is going to be without any help or input of your own mother.
As for my "demanding" who you were talking to, you are right, I had no right to know - I can only say that the way you were treating your grandmother was exactly like you were an angry child. I'm afraid I lost it when I realized how much it was hurting my mother to be treated so rudely by the granddaughter she helped so much - taking you to school when you refused to take the bus; letting you continue to use her cars even though you had accidents with them. And so much more. She did not deserve the treatment you gave her and continue to give her by ignoring her and not letting her get to know her great-grandson.
You acknowledge that you feel bad because you said nothing to your grandmother, not even showing Aiden to her on the way up the stairs and keeping him hidden from her view. Yet when you realized he was awake you sat in your room with him instead of being the kind and caring person that you could have been.
If you have truly grown up and matured, then you will handle this situation like a mature person instead of like a child who is not going to talk to me anymore until she wants to. I don't see the relationship ever improving and can see now that unless you decide to handle this maturely, I face years of silence from you as Paul has faced and continues to face from his daughter Amy. I am wondering why either of you really thinks we deserve this treatment?
As parents we both loved you both and cared for your needs during all your growing years. Yet you are both acting like spoiled children. And yet we feel as though we are at a loss as to how to help the daughters we've both raised and loved to see that nothing good will come from this anger, resentment and silent treatment. Neither of us were perfect parents but as I said before, we did a lot of good things for our children.
If you cannot repair relationships such as these, then how will you ever help Aiden to have good relationships in his life, especially when he grows
independent of you and starts challenging your parenting. That day comes
in almost every parent's life - even the best parents that there are. You are doing exactly what my father did to us kids. He kept us from having normal relationships with our grandparents and kept them at a distance because he could not resolve issues in a timely and peaceful manner.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Craziest Psychotic Mother of Them All?

That would be mine! I win! I win! What do I win for this great accomplishment? A lifetime of insecurity, headaches, ulcers, and needless stress. Whoop-di-do!!

Here is the lastest and greatest from my Mom:


I know that neither of us brings out the best in each other, but I would really like to see my grandson's progress.
Stephanie, we can't fix anything with hurtful words and anger. And unless you tell me what it is that bothers you so much about our presence in your life, we cannot even begin to heal. I think you know what bothered me about our last visit, so I don't have to rehash it play by play but it left some unresolved issues for us. If you go through life verbally attacking the folks who piss you off, or ignoring the things that need to be addressed, then I am afraid that you will have a lot more stress than you need. The stress is coming from within you yourself and that is why I said we would leave you alone. But I am still your mother and have invested many years in you and your well being. I don't put you down, or verbally beat you up. But this walking on egg shells around you has got to stop.
During our visit we tried to accommodate your wishes and we did not overstep them even when you were being unreasonable, but it was evident that you felt that you needed to be in control of every second we spent with our grandchild and that you needed to portion out those minutes so that we knew you were in charge and you felt that Aiden needed to take 3 naps during the six hours we were there, and had to be on that schedule during our visit. Don't you think it may have been a little unreasonable?
I could see it if we lived close by and were able to see him more often, but we don't live close by. And your treatment of your grandmother? Was that really necessary?
Aiden needs to learn to handle differing circumstances and changing structure. Everyone needs to learn those lessons in life. Many times they come at the hands of family members. The structure and control you want to exercise may in your mind be helping you, but it is hindering Aiden from being able to interact with his relatives so that he cries when he hears loud noises, and sees unfamiliar faces. I know this because I am a mother who raised two children and steered them through life's pitfalls as best as I could under the circumstances. That is nothing to discount or throw away just because you know your own child better than we do. But Aiden is not so unique from other children. He is a child who needs to be loved, coddled, played with and taught life's many lessons. Including tolerating unexpected noise even if it comes as a mistaken phone call at 5:35 am. And you should swallow your anger and look at the intentions of the person who has done something that you find so god-awful unforgivable and respond accordingly.
Chris once told Veronica that he thinks your relationship with me is like Stephen's relationship with his father. If that's the case, then it is that way by your choice. I was not an absent parent during the formative years. There are far more good times to remember than bad, and I wish that you would start focusing on those. Everyone's life has bad experiences - but those are what makes us stronger. If you think that notes like this are bad, then try communicating with me without making me feel like I need to defend myself to you or watch every little thing I say or do because something might offend you. I am who I am. I have not changed too much.
I am still the woman who took care of you when you were sick, went to your dance recitals, drove you and your friends around, had sleepovers for you, took you shopping, taught you to dance, took you to England, New York, and many other places. I raised you with a good foundation and tried to steer you in the right direction for what was best for you.
I will always love you, but right now, I am deeply hurt by the way you have treated me and your family members who have only done the best things we could for you. These are not meant to be hurtful words - they are meant to convey our truest feelings in hopes of a positive outcome if you really look deep inside and put yourselves in our places. We have certainly tried very hard to understand you and your feelings.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
And my response which DH, of all people, thought it was right on. I thought he was going to say I was being mean or whatever. Yay me!


This is not meant to be hurtful but I think you are delusional. Aiden did not take three naps while you were there. He took one and a measly ten minutes on the walk and was trying to go down for his second nap but you didn't want to give him that chance. I'm not going to make special concessions for anyone and that is my choice as his parent. You can accept that or you can blow up at me like you did. But just know that if you choose the second its not going to get you anywhere but where we are now.
I can not show respect for someone who does not respect my choices as a parent. You can say you do but if you truly did you wouldn't have come to me and asked me the same question three times and then yelled at me that I don't know what I'm doing as a parent.
Also, if you ever come into my home again and demand to know who I am speaking to on my own phone like I am some sort of child, you will not be welcome back. I am beyond the age where you can demand anything like that from me and I’m sorry that I need to remind you of that.
I thought for the most part that we were having a nice day until I brought Aiden back from the walk. Now, I admit that I should have come back down and said hello to Grandma, there I did make a bad mistake and I am sorry for hurting her feelings. But I don't apologize for anything else but I do not see anything else wrong.
I think it best if we keep this space between us for now. I will not be responding to further e-mails.
Have a nice night.

My own separation anxiety

I can't tell if its worse for me or for him to be separated. We've got this holiday dinner party coming up this weekend for DH's work. We go every year. Its great fun. Everyone gets totally plastered and we all laugh our asses off. But I feel that this year will be a little different.

DH called up our only babysitting option, my MIL. She totally rocks. She is one of the only people I trust with Aiden. I don't feel at all worried (well maybe slightly worried but less than I could be) when she is caring for him.

Anyway, she said that she can't come here and stay overnight to watch him like she usually does. My FIL comes with her and its like a mini-vacation for them, since DH's Aunt lives with them. But now they can't leave overnight because they heat their home with a wood stove and no one will be there to put logs on the fire, since DH's Aunt is totally not capable of doing that (she's afraid of the wood stove). So DH is like, ok, fine we'll bring Aiden and all his stuff up. We'll get ready early (yeah, and we won't get spitup or baby food on us at ALL) and we'll come up the next day to get Aiden and meet you for our nephews b-day party.

Does he discuss this with me? NOOOOOO! Am I cool with this? HELL NO!

Aiden is already going through this I don't like people who aren't Mommy, Daddy or Auntie Brenna. How is that going to make him feel to be in a strange place without us? Plus, its a super huge pain in my butt because of the whole nursing issue. I do not want to do all that pumping, its totally hard on the nips. Also, emotionally I just can not handle coming home to an empty house after the party and then waking up in our house without Aiden there. It would just totally make me a pile of mushy sobby pitifulness. We can't go pick him up after the party because its 45 minutes from here and DH will be in no condition to drive, plus it will be like 12 degrees or less out. Also, we've got to go up there on Sunday for the b-day party. That would be a lot of driving for us.

So DH asks me when will we ever be able to send him somewhere overnight. I ask Why do we need to? He wants me to work out a solution to the problem. Yeah, so I'll stay home and you go. Have fun! Arrgh! He also said that we need to work up to getting Aiden more comfortable with people, yeah I'm trying ok. We're starting MOMs club this week. He asked me when do I think I'll be ok with sending him away overnight (when he's leaving for college) and I say, maybe when he's 1.

So no real solution. Maybe I will be spending my Saturday night alone this weekend.

Its all routine

Why is it that for my DH is all routine? When I take care of Aiden, I watch his cues and follow his lead. When DH does, its what should I be doing now, he'll ask me? I think some routine is good for him, but if he isn't ready to eat at 6 am on the dot every morning should you make him?

Aiden has been whining off and on since 4:30 this morning. DH and I have an agreement that he will go in to Aiden if he wakes up during the night. So does he go in? No. Finally, at 6 (because this is the routine) DH gets up and goes downstairs for about 15 minutes, why it takes him that long to make a bottle, well I have no clue.

While he is downstairs, I think to myself, maybe he isn't ready to get up yet. He hasn't had real sleep since 4:30 so maybe he is tired and needs his paci and can't find it. I go plunk it in his mouth and he falls back to sleep. DH then comes up the stairs and starts running the hot water in the bathroom off Aiden's room to heat up his bottle. WTF?!?! Seriously! Snap out of the routine for a second and realize Aiden went back to sleep!

I run into the bathroom and turn off the water hoping he didn't wake him up. Then DH walks over and noisely asks me what I'm doing, all outside the babies room! Hello!!! So Aiden was then woken up and DH is now huffy with me because I told him my schpeal about routine and blah blah. I think he is ticked at me. Oh well. After 15 minutes of lying in bed hoping Aiden would fall back to sleep he asks me all snotty "Can I go get him now?"

Sometimes the baby doesn't need to be getting up at 6 am. Sometimes its good to give him his paci and encourage to go back to sleep for a little while. But no, DH wouldn't ever do that. No because 6 am is convenient for him to get up and get ready for work after Aiden has his bottle. So without a kick in his pants from me, he will never stray from routine.

SNOW

I've been sitting at this computer for about a half hour now and I finally just looked out the window and saw SNOW! The first snow to reach our coastal area this winter. Yay!

The first snow is always exciting. From here on out I will bitch and moan about it.

I want to remember this day

December 2, 2005
This is the day that a miracle has happened to one of my good friends, its actually the second miracle to happen in a matter of days. My good friend Lissa has just found out that she is pregnant, which has been a long battle for her. Also, a few days ago my very good friend Julie also found out she was pregnant, after two years of trying. They were both quite surprised, neither were expecting these miracles, as their chances were very slim per their doctors.

I am just so overjoyed and feel just pure ecstatic happiness for them both. I keep walking around the house with this huge smile on my face which alternates with tears of joy. I can not think of two people who are totally suited to motherhood, they are both loving, giving, wonderful women and I wish them and their husbands, happy and healthy nine months and easy, safe deliveries.

Yay for SUMMER BABIES!

(Beware of those Cancer people though, Julie. We can be very moody and dramatic *wink*)

Do I dare get into the subject of my Mom

How do I describe my mom - hmmmm. She is a psychotic, manic depressive, bi-polar, clingy, needy, freak. All my life she has turned to me to fill some kind of void in her life. She was always jealous of any friends I had. It was really hard on her when I didn't need her anymore. I think if she could have been the least bit supportive of my need to have friends my age and do things that the other kids did, like go to school dances or play sports, then our adult relationship would be a lot better.

As it stands right now we're not really speaking. I feel tremendous guilt but I really have to not give in to her, because if I do she will never change. I just don't need that kind of stress in my life. All I can hope for as my son gets older is that I can NEVER ever be like my Mom. Its sad but it is SO true.

Sometimes I wish I had the cool mom like some of my friends had. High school friends, Rachael, Vanessa, and Jessica all had cool moms. Rachael's mom used to let me pretty much live there and she let our boyfriends stay over too. Vanessa's mom also let me live there, she was so cool, she'd let us sleep off our hangovers (we worked for her as chambermaids at their beachside motel), Jessica's mom just never asked questions and let us throw parties at her house. Adult life friends, Brenna's mom is easy to talk to and she makes me laugh all the time. I think it would be enjoyable to have a mom that you could so easily talk to like that. Kaitlyn's mom comes to concerts with us and is so easy to be around. Tim's mom is so nice and fun and again, someone you can just talk to.

If I talk to my mom it always ends up getting back to religion. The woman is not capable of having a conversation with you without bringing religion into it. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness but it was really more forced than anything. I have a lot of resentment about it. My mom is probably one of the worst examples of a good follower of that religion. She comes and goes from it like it doesn't really matter. I think when we were younger she just used it to try and find a husband and make friends. She has left that religion and come back now 3 times. Everytime she goes back she gets this whole attitude - I'm concerned for you, I want you to be saved, It breaks my heart that you know the true religion and you don't follow it. Wah! I can't take it.

I guess I will make seperate posts aboout specifics incidents involving my Mom but I wanted to get this out.

This blogging really works

It really is helping me be less of a crazy person. I wrote all the things that were frustrating me last night and today I feel so much better. I did not jump all over my DH. In fact I didn't say anything to him. I decided to outlet my frustration by hoping on that super scary elipitical machine. I felt so much more calm after I got off of it (and totally winded). I come downstairs to find my DH making me dinner (pasta with butter) awwwww! and then while he is at the stove cooking HE brings up the fact that he was late and apologizes AND he says "I should have called." Yes, I would appreciate that next time, thanks. *SMILING*

I ended up having a very good night for a change. *wink*