Mistakes in Motherhood

As in the speed that time passes in my pregnancy seems to be directly linked to the space, or distance, of my husband.

The first 20 weeks flew by, the last two weeks have drug. Can you guess how long he’s been home?

This will not be the case for the remainder of the pregnancy though, I know for sure of three weeks he will be gone coming up. Plus summer is starting to wrap up, school will start next month and all three of my boys are attending. One starting kindergarten, one starting middle school, and one starting high school. At least for a few months, it will just be me and little one until the end of winter break, then it will be me and the little one and the new baby!

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want him gone, I want the pregnancy to fly by as fast as it has been ALL the time.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Pregnancy, School. | #

For the last three nights I have been having dreams where I wake up angry at my husband. In my dreams he has been cheating, lying, smoking, and abusing my kids and I. When I wake up I have been retaining those feelings which I have to work at to let go because he is just the opposite of how he is when he’s his dream self. Thankfully he’s not here when I am working out my issues and by the time I talk to him the dreams are just a faded memory of a dream. And no, I am not mad at hubby for anything in reality.

The part that bothers me the most about these dreams though is not what is in them, but what isn’t. Despite being almost half way through my pregnancy… I have yet to have a single dream about my baby. I am thankful how active this little one is because I would have a hard time believing there was really a person there. I cannot picture what my life will be like when this little gift arrives. I wish I could just start getting used to the idea in my dreams, so that it would spread into my daydreams.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Pregnancy. | #

We are home from vacation, and things are back to the way they should be. Our house desperately needs cleaned, laundry is at a healthy level. The princess is fighting with the littlest prince, she has learned to tattle in her little baby way. She points at something, glares at it, and then in gibberish tells me all about it. I have appointments galore, I need to make a trip to Costco and the regular grocery store, and Bobby is already planning his next business trip. Yes, life is how it should be.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Confessions, Domestic Diva, Family, Lame-o, Me, Vacations. | #

It is 6:45 and I have been up in a quiet house for 2 hours now. It was super hot last night so we opened at window, and some baby birdies outside my window decided I needed to be up before 5am. I shut the window, but the damage was done so I got up and showered, played around on Facebook, chatted with some friends, and did some laundry.

We are over on the other side of the state right now, we drove over for my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary at my parent’s cabin in Idaho. We came back into town to see friends, and will go back on the weekend for a family reunion before returning home early next week. We packed for the 90 degree Eastern WA weather, and ended up freezing our butts off in the cold Idaho-in-the-woods weather.

It is nice being in the same state as my sister and parents. It was even nicer that my other sister could come over from Montana and we could spend the weekends together. When we go home, I know we will all be sad, but it is nice to know we are only 300 miles from “home”.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Family, Vacations. | #

Since moving to Olympia, we have been missing chicken wings. We got spoiled in Colorado being only 4 minutes from a Wing Stop, and 6 minutes from a Wild Wings. Here, such places just do not exist. We have a Hooters in Tacoma, about 30 minutes away, so we decided to hit Tacoma to get wings, then head to the zoo. We had never taken the kids to Hooters, and the reaction of my 12 and 14 year old sons’ was hilarious! The 14 yr old said he wants to do his birthday dinner there next year. lol

Our trip to the zoo was horrid, traffic was a nightmare and when we got down there, there was no parking within miles of the zoo, reason being there was some festival down there. So we scrapped our plans and hit the mall instead to browse in the Apple Store. This evolved into a maternity shopping spree, two new bears from Build a Bear, and tons of window shopping. We also took the kids to Cabela’s for the first time when we got into town. As disappointed as I was that we had to skip the zoo, we ended up having a ton of fun yesterday and now know when we go back to the zoo next time, to get there when it opens and to go on a week day.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Family, Ramblings. | #

A frequent question I get is “where is Bobby now?” There is a good reason for that, since we moved and since he’s been home from Iraq, he’s been feeling the pressure of too much work for not enough people. Starting in April, he began a rotation of roughly 3 weeks gone for every week home. In April he was in Wisconsin, May was Louisiana, June was Germany, and now Oklahoma. Once we got used to the routine, it has been easier, but at first it was hard to have him back from Iraq and home for over a month, just to have him gone all the time.

Germany was quite an experience. He stayed in an amazing apartment that had a view of castle ruins from his balcony.

He was supposed to be there three weeks, but they ended up not using him like they planned so they sent him home early, however the sneak didn’t tell me and secretly booked his trip home, and walked in the front door giving me the shock of my life. He said my expression was priceless and it was probably the first time he has ever seen me speechless. I thought it was one of the kids walking in so I didn’t think much of hearing the door open, but when I looked up and saw him I could not even register it that he could possibly be home already. The reunion was short lived though, he arrived home on Thursday afternoon, and by Sunday morning (on Father’s day) he was back on an airplane to Oklahoma for a little over a week.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Lame-o. | #

What is eas-birth-mas? Doesn’t everyone celebrate it?? Well, since you asked (or didn’t), eas-birth-mas is a family celebration we decided we would have when Bobby got back in the states, to celebrate all the holidays dad missed. We had planned on making it eas-thank-birth-mas, but with us moving in a few days, I decided to put off turkey day for after we were settled in.

We started the day by distracting the kids with box-forts we helped them make. When I got my new washer and dryer, we asked them to leave the appliance boxes for the kids.



Bobby cut doors and windows in the boxes for the kids (while Austin posed for photo-ops) and then we let them decorate them or continue to cut them how the pleased. They ended up creating a tunnel and joining the two boxes.

While they were playing with the boxes, I wrote directions on sticky notes at each child’s level. For Austin and Chris I had a list of small chores that had a new hint at the end of it.

Christopher found his video game in the freezer when his last note asked him to see how much bread we had in the freezer, where Austin’s Blu-Ray was found in the dishwasher after the final clue told him to see if the dishes in the dishwasher needed started.

Matthew’s last clue simply said “tub” and Sophia’s only clue had a picture of a cat and she found her gifts in the scratching post.

For dinner we had dessert first, ice cream cake, and Sophie made a big mess.

She was so messy in fact, a bath was the only solution.

We also sold Bobby’s VW bug today too, so that was great news, since we can’t take it to WA with us, and the person who sold it will take good care of it I am sure.

1 Comment | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: Austin, Bobby, Christopher, Family, Holidays, Matthew, Me, Silliness, Sophia. | #

I feel like I should be afraid of anything that plugs in today, I really do feel paranoid and that it is out to get me. What next? Is my ice-maker going to start pelting cubes at me? Do I have the anti-midas touch or something? Karmic debt from frying a motherboard 10 years ago?

This morning I wake up to the smoke detectors going off, all 8 of them, out of sync. The 12 yr old decided to turn his bagel into a piece of charcoal. So I get up, life goes on, right? Call the bank for an issue, 24 minutes on hold I give up, decide the issue is not worth it. Hubby and I make a wonderful breakfast, go to watch some shows on the DVR, and the Medium I have been wanting to see stopped recording 20 minutes into it.

Ok, well then I will just hook up my Wii and play my new game, Wii Active. Find the new cord I ordered (red/blue/green, new TV only has one input for red/white/yellow). I get the cord plugged in and Wii working (unsuccessfully at first, no sound) to find that we already had the cord I just ordered and waiting a week for an overpaid on shipping for, it must have come with one of the aftermarket accessory packs. Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk. Put Wii Active in and my console tells me I need to update! ARG! I have a temper tantrum and get over it. I go to plug in my aftermarket Wiichargable (sorry, couldn’t help it) battery pack for my WiiFit board- no dice, the light won’t come on. The 13 yr old brings me batteries, no dice. I get new batteries and finally it works.

So I set up the game, strap on the leg holster for the nunchuck and immediately it finds the ONLY workout I hate, running in place. As I am running, the leg holster starts slipping off, I tighten it, and I can feel a shooting pain down my leg as it constricts my blood flow and I feel like I have a bad case of sciatica. I finish my “run” just to have the very next exercise require the same torture device. Oh well, I will just play another game, I have 3 or 4 of them.

I put in WiiFit plus, load my profile, and I get the message “To start, please step off me and press A”… ok, I am not stepping on you, but ok… press A it recalculates and says the same message again. Turn the board on and off and same message. So I find a forum talking about how to fix it, make it through all the steps just to have the controller die. Get a new controller, it too is dead, in fact all five of them are dead. I guess the universe wants me to give up and be slovenly; I will try again in a few hours of them on the charger.

With facebook not working right, I really should be using this time more productively… I mean I do have a house to pre-pack, and hundreds of pounds of stuff I don’t plan on moving gone through and tossed or donated. I have boxes to fill up to save money on packing. I have beef stew to start, a fridge and freezer to clean, not to mention an entire house to clean. I would really like to be out of here in a week, but is that realistic?

Alright, I need to wrap this up to get back to stressing, err working. This will be behind us soon, we will be settled and happy and it will all be a distant memory. We have moved before, and we survived, and we will move again, there is no doubt.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Family, Insanity, Lame-o, Moving, Ramblings, Stress. | #

It’s been about 18 days since Bobby got home and it is unbelievable to me that it wasn’t just yesterday. These last few weeks have been a blur of activity, and I feel like I have not even had time to exhale, yet alone process. He’s spending a lot of time working at home, and my routine of taking kids to and from school, cleaning, and going to appointments has resumed. But the craziest thing of this is that we are *still* in limbo. We still do not have authorization to move! Yes, here we are at 16 days past the day I planned to be gone, and we don’t even know when and where we are going.

I cope by knitting another row onto an afghan I have been working on for two years. I listen to Bob Marley and remind myself that “every little thing, gonna be alright”, I drink tea and sometimes wine, and take walks and watch documentaries on Netflix. But no matter how much I distract myself, I am still frustrated that we still don’t have the information we thought we would have at the end of December; and every other Wednesday I am thankful that he still has a paycheck, and insurance, and a job, even if he is at home driving me nuts.

I used to romanticize the idea of working from home, but if anything, the last couple weeks has taught me that working from home is the equivalent at working in prison, with between one to five noisy cellmates hanging off of you like a bunch of baby orangutans. I sometimes wonder if he volunteers to go to the store in the evenings just to get away from it all, and even then he usually has to drag along a few primates with him. I really respect that he hasn’t gone all “Here’s Johnny!” on us and redrum-ed the kids and I.

So whenever I complain to myself that I am tired, frustrated, or frazzled (the trifecta of mommy-hood) I just remind myself that not only is he dealing with the same triple-punch, but on top of that has deadlines and reports and real-actual-get-paid-for-work that he has to complete without a nice, quiet space to run off to. Sometimes the silver lining is obvious, sometimes you have to dig deep to find it, but know that it is always there.

1 Comment | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Domestic Diva, House Stuff, Insanity, Lame-o, Moving, Updates. | #

I have unofficial news!! Bobby should be home at the end of NEXT WEEK!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

TEN more days!!

T-E-N!

wow

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby. | #