Proof

Remember when John freaked out about the doll ? Well, here’s proof .

The youngest plays with  cars too.

Bad Parenting

So Zach was being cute and funny in the car. Plus I have a new Droid phone, right? So I snap a picture. I put it on Facebook. And two days later I realized that I immortalized my lack of Mommy Power on the internet. WHERE ARE THE FUCKING  CARSEAT  STRAPS AND HOW DID HE GET OUT OF THEM?????
And the worst part? It took me days to even notice

Dear Me: A Letter to Myself on My 35th Birthday

Dear Me,

You know, there is something surreal about turning another year older as the clock strikes midnight and the calendar starts over again. As if one is given a fresh new start, every single year. And every year, you swear it will be better than the year before. In the veritable shit storms you have endured, you have said that it has to get better. And for the most part, it has. 2011 brought stagnation, sort of. No big career moves. No earth-shattering events. No big changes. Just life. Work and school, kids getting older, John by your side. Though 2011 brought the great Asperger drama with Evan. Still, nothing earth-shattering.

How fucking boring.

You are getting older. 35. It is time to shake things up.

What do we hope 2012 will bring? Finishing the undergrad degree, already. Grad school. That damned GMAT. Failure is not an option for any of those if you ever want to get the things out of your life that you have hoped for all of this time.

You need that Audi you have wanted. You need a damned MBA and an MBA salary to get that, you crazy bitch. So do it.

And you know those bad habits you have? Yeah, those. Well, what once was cute and quirky in a 25-year-old is no longer cute with the addition of a decade. And the problem with your bad habits is that they will eventually kill you. Your habits are a reflection of irresponsibility now that you are older. It is time to fix them so you can be here when the kids grow up. You bitch and whine that you never get time off, but there you have it. When they are grown, you will have time. If you survive. Fix that shit right now.

This year you will work harder. You will be better. At parenting the boys. At being a wife to John. As a therapist. You will because you need to be. You know how we get when we get bored, and in order to prevent boredom, you need to find some sort of a challenge. These are your challenges. While you need to prepare for the future, you need to bank some of your time and energy on the present. Before the present is the past and it is too late to do anything about it.

You will write better. You will read more. You will get fresh air. Maybe your stressed ass needs to take up yoga again before you kill the planet.

And speaking of the planet, maybe you could recycle a little. Isn’t that your duty as a citizen? Why don’t you? It’s a small step, but a step nonetheless. No more excuses.

Learn to crochet or something. Maybe you can make tacky doilies for everybody or something. No, really. Everyone can do it. You are a smart bitch. There is no way you are incapable. Just teach yourself. And then don’t get all extra Andrea-OCD on the shit and refuse to stop until a project is finished. It really is okay to put something down and come back to it later. This will teach you patience and give you something to do that will distract you from breaking those bad habits.

The treadmill is not a clothes rack. Take it out. Use the damned thing. All of that studying you do? Well the beauty of the treadmill is that those enormous textbooks perch quite nicely on that rail right in front of your face. Quit being lazy.

Some people are pretty. Some are thin. Some come from money. Everyone has some sort of advantage in this life. And life is a game of learning to exploit your advantages to get what you want out of life. Your advantage, other than big boobs, is that you have a brain. You can figure shit out. And that is what you need to do. You have survived some hell that we cannot even speak of right now. You can overcome these shortcomings.

And you will. Because you are now 35-fucking-years-old. And it is time to quit playing and get real.

Peace Out, Yo.

Andrea

 

And to the rest of you, sitting in your homes, reading this crazy shit that is sure to get me committed:

Happy New Year. May you have a wonderful, full, amazing 2012.

Update

Everyone–and I mean everyone–in this house is on winter break right now. It is sheer chaos. I had all of these rosy visions for the time off. I was going to get to spend time with Evan putting up the tree, baking Christmas cookies. You name it, we were going to do it.

So what has really happened?

Evan has driven us crazy. As soon as he woke on the first day off, he was “bored”. I find myself giving in and surrendering my laptop so the kid will at least do something to amuse himself. Essentially, I hae turned into the mother I swore I would never be.

Speaking of Evan–He is now on a second medication. I hate it, but she swore it had less side effects than the others in its group. Seroquel. If you don’t know, it’s an antipsychotic. Not that Evan is psycho, but it is supposed to calm kids with ADHD and possibly quiet the Asperger meltdowns a little. It’s too early to say, but it may be working a little.

Zach has me worried to death. He still isn’t speaking very much at all–way behind where he should be. We have started the process to have him evaluated by the state’s early intervention program. I’m a little frustrated because they have told me that they will continue to adjust for his prematurity until age 2, rounding up to the next full month. So Zach was almost 7 weeks early, and they round that up to 2 months and subtraact that from his chronological age to determine that he is 17 months old, adjusted. When really, he is going to be 20 months in a couple of weeks. This means that while he is more delayed for 20 months, his delay will be more mild when he is assessed as a 17-month-old. And then they have to be so far gone before they qualify for the state’s free services, meaning if I want to get him help, I will have to pay out of pocket. Lovely, thanks. And then there is the worry that Zachy is doing exactly what Ev did at that age, and while I used to say Evan was fine, now I wonder about this Autism Spectrum stuff. And that their pregnancies were remarably similar, down to the drugs I was given. Whatever. I can’t think about that right now.

I’m still working on GMAT, and am hoping to take the exam on the 20th of January. Odds are in my favor for my top choice school, given my GPA and assuming I do okay on the exam.

John is still…John.

We are looking for three-bedroom houses. We cannot make this one work much longer. Zachary, who has shared a room with us all of this time, is becoming less of a baby and more of a little boy. Andd his little boy things out-number our things. And as he gets older, his toys get bigger, which really is a bad combo. Don’t believe me? Well, wedged in the corner of my bedroom, where the tv is, there are 4 ride-on toys, as well as one of those massive grow-with-me trikes he got for Christmas. John has to leap from the bed to get over the stuff in the morning. His toy box is overflowing, but we have no room for a second toybox, and the large toys are sitting on the floor, blocking every area other than the walkway between his crib and our bed. Yeah, we’ve outgrown this house. As far as the house search goes, that is another post entirely.

I think that’s it. I’ll be working on some other posts I’ve started as well. If anyone is still reading this my suckage at life in general.

 

Taking the Bait: The Kindle

I posted earlier about my reluctance to buy a Kindle.

I did it. It was only $79. I practically had to buy the damned thing. It’s been a little over a week since, and I have actually had a few minutes to read because the thing fits so easily in my purse. I am on my third and final book of The Hunger Games trilogy, which is yet again a series designed for young adults that really is for adults. Love it. So far, I have bought 10 books for a fraction of the cost I would have been able to buy the hard copies. And I have downloaded 15 of the classics for free or for less than a dollar. Titles like War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Les Miserables…. After I finish the book I am reading, I hope to tackle the ambitious IQ84.

What do I love about the Kindle? Well the price of books, for one. The ease of reading–the small device is less cumbersome than a 500+ page book, and the fact that you can adjust the font to a comfort level for your eyes translates to very easy reading and the pages fly by. And while I scoffed at the portability of having one’s entire library in their purse, the convenience of it is hard to pass up. The battery life is amazing and in over a week, I have only charged it once. Even then, it wasn’t really needed, but the battery was only at 3/4 life and I am so used to how other batteries work (laptop, phone, mp3 player), I plugged it in to charge out of habit. I haven’t charged it since and it is only half-gone.

What do I dislike? I’m not crazy about the “special offers” that come on the cheaper model. They don’t bother me that much and only appear as a small, non-intrusive banner ad on the home screen and as a full ad when I stop reading and the device is idle. I hate the commercialism of it, but they don’t bother me other than that. The only other complaint is some of the content for the Kindle store. It seems that there is this entire self-publishing movement out there and that anyone with any sort of resources can write a book and put it on the Kindle store. The problem is that not everyone is destined to write the next great novel, and there is some real crap floating around out there. I stumbled upon a little of it, not realizing this.

I will still try to post a little of the stuff I read. I suspect there will be more of it now. But anyhow, speaking of reading…

I’ve been very busy, as you are about to discover in subsequent posts. I am still visiting and loving all of your blogs, but things have been crazy, and thus I have been catching up via my Google Reader on my phone. And I hate typing on the thing, so that is why there are no comments.

Just for a Moment

Just for a moment, I got to put my feet up. A brief 5 minutes over the course of 13 hours of work. And as you can tell from the photo, I got to check my blog. Just for a minute, before ventilators started alarming again and patients started to have trouble. It has been an exhausting weekend. Exhausting. And now it is Monday, and I am off of work only to be immersed in papers and presentations and reading for school. And in sticky handprints and peanut butter sandwiches and vacuuming up Golfish crackers that have been ground into a pulp in the carpet.

Sometimes, when you want it all, when you aspire to have everything, that is exacly what you get.

 

(Almost) 18 Months and a Return to a Familiar Place

Zachy will be 18 Months next one week from today. As in halfway between one and two. I don’t know how this is possible when his birthday was jus yesterday and he was born just last week. But there it is.

He is so different from his brother. He loves being outside. When we go anywhere, he has to walk and be free. This has been the month where we had to buy refrigerator lock, make sure that the bathroom door stays closed, install more reliable cabinet locks. We have to take the knobs off of the stove after cooking, too. I thought they quit making stoves with the knobs on front for this reason, so that just tells you that the stove in this house is old as dirt. Today, I loaded the dishwasher, which I seldom use, only to have Zach keep turning it off. Which leads me to the most redneck thing I have done in my life.

Duct Tape. Duct tape is our friend, Y’all. I mean, we all know that it can be the hillbilly fix-all. But did you know that it is an excellent baby-proofing cure-all in a pinch? Turning the dishwasher off? Cover the dial with duct tape. Opening the oven door repeatedly? Duct tape on the side of the door buys you time until you can get to the store and buy a door lock for the oven. Playing with accordian closet doors, despite having just pinched his fingers? Wads of duct tape in the seams where the panels split keeps them from closing enough to squash tiny toddler fingers. There you have it: Redneck Parenting brought to you by Bitchypants.

I’m trying to come up with a list of new things he has mastered, but they are starting to blur together. Remember our sippy cup woes? Well, he finally will drink out of different ones. He is trying to use a spoon and fork, though he makes the biggest mess and eventually gives up. He still isn’t talking much, though I see a pattern with certain syllables and sounds. When Evan was this age, we were worried about his lack of vocabulary to the point that we had him evaluated by our state’s early intervention services. Turns out he had assigned his own nonsesne words to everything, and what sounded like jabber to us was actually a language he invented and mastered to represent the world around him. When he did start talking, it was with words that no toddler should even know, let alone pronounce and use in the proper context. I have a feeling this is also what is going on with Zach. He knows everything we tell him. He understands. The other day, I was looking for my stethoscope to leave for work. I kept asking John and Evan where it was. Zach ran off and came back with it in his little outstretched hands. What baby knows what a stethoscope is???? And he babbles the same sounds and syllables when we pass by businesses that we frequent locally. I think he may have more in common with his big brother than we imagined, and so I am trying not to worry. On the other hand, Evan was, after all, diagnosed with Asperger’s, so maybe I should be worrying…

So what are his likes and dislikes? Hmmm.

Likes:

Baths, Outdoors, Teddy Bears, Elmo (much to my dismay–I hate the commercialism of characters), chicken nuggets, V8 Fusion juice, jumping on our bed, puzzles, looking out the window, climbing, running, dancing to any kind of music, his GloWorm, the damned pacifier, yogurt of any kind, broccoli, books, ripping up paper, any toy trucks and making the vroom sound, McDonald’s (I’m so ashamed of that, but I assure you he has had it sparingly!), The Sesame Street theme song, and the damned J.G. Wentworth commercials–you know, “Call JAAAAAAAAYYYYYY GEEEEEEEE Went! Worth! 877 Cash Now! To which he will run to the tv, I swear!

Dislikes:

Getting dressed, diaper changes, his carseat, being carried anywhere, getting his teeth brushed, getting his nails trimmed, not getting his way, long car rides, riding in his stroller for too long, riding in a shopping cart for too long, mashed potatoes, when mommy reads or does any kind of school work, anybody being on the computer without allowing him  to sit on the desk and watch, being worn in the sling (this one makes me sad!), wearing bibs.

Okay, I think that’s it for now. Moving onward…

Not Meant For This

To be poor, that is.

It all started with the pregnancy. Not only medical bills, but the aftermath of the breadwinner being grounded for months on end. So when I went back to work, I had not only current expenses to pay, but had to play catch up with every damned bill I owe. The end result of that is that I have no safety cushion at all. Still.

So now we are at the ugly end of the spectrum. I never prepared for what would happen if Evan were to be diagnosed with Asperger’s. I was just worried about him. And that my insurance would cover everything. It does. But when you pay a $50 copay everytime he sees someone, it adds up. I literally paid, between appointments and medications, over $700 in copays last month. It could be worse. I realize that. We could have not had any insurance. I could not make as much as I do. But the truth is that the $700 came from elsewhere in my budget, and now everyone is out for blood.

So now several accounts are passed due. And they all want their money. NOW. And work has cut down on overtime, so my pay is limitied to my base pay. It sucks. And I’m not talking about the gee-I-have-to-cut-down-on-spending kind of suckage. I’m talking about the oh-shit-are-we-going-to-have-water/electric/phone-tomorrow kind of suckage. I cannot stand it. I feel like I am on the verge of total catastrophe at any minute. I don’t like that I cannot just work my way out of tis one. That’s what I would normally do–work my way out of it. I would sign up for any little hour of work they would let me. I would let my coworkers know that, if they want to take a night off, I will gladly cover for them. I don’t take handouts. I work for everything this family gets. But this time, there is no work. There’s nothing.

I honestly do not see how people do this. I make good money. There are so many out there who make minimum wage and have the same life I do: kids, house, cars, bills. How??? What secret do they know that I do not? Maybe if I wasn’t taxed to death…Maybe if I wouldn’t have been on bedrest for the pregnancy…maybe if my kid wasn’t diagnosed with this crap…maybe, maybe, maybe.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry there are people out there without homes, without food, without medical care. I used to give to people like that. I used to be able to do so. Now? I am on the verge of becoming one of them. And I cannot stand it.

Happy Halloween

From the Frog, the Cop, the very tired Respiratory Therapist, and her Better Half.

Hope you had a great one, a safe one. And now I’m off to eat the good candy out of Evan’s stash.

Fall is in the Air

This? This is my absolute favorite season by far. Spring brings allergies, winter brings icy roads, and summer brings oppressive heat that makes me feel as if my fat cells are melting. But fall? Is there anything bad about fall? The perfect temperature for my favorite attire: a good ol’ hoodie and jeans. Leaves crunching underfoot. The smell of firewood burning from a neighboring chimney. College football rivalries and perfect cool nights for a good cup of coffee. Halloween and the fun of picking out costumes for the kiddos. You can walk around the block without dripping with sweat. I. Love. Fall.

Today, John is in class and Evan is at school. Since I am feeling a little bit better, Zach and I headed outside for some fresh air. It would seem Zachy loves fall as much as I do. He had a ball exploring and I giggled as I watched all of his cuteness toddling around, amazed at things we all take for granted: a bright orange leaf that had fluttered to the ground, the crisp green of shrubs, the chirping of nearby birds. Of course it only took about 45 minutes before he discovered that the sidewalk seemed to go on forever and he could run, run, run! And then he discovered the street, so after about 15 gazillion times of stopping him from running out in front of a moving vehicle, Mommy was worn out and we ended our excursion.

But not before I got some cute photos.

PS: I totally did not realize that I dressed him like the Lennox Air Conditioning man until I viewed these photos!

Happy Fall, Everyone!