The 6 Hour Project

I could have titled this “Why Are You Such An Idiot That You Put All This Off Until 6 Hours Before Your Family Arrives” but that seemed a little wordy.  So, my Uncle and Aunt are driving down from Maryland today and true to my procrastinating nature, I have put off cleaning my house all week until….um…now.  Before I met Abram and had kids, my living space would NEVER have looked the way it frequently does now for more than a day.  I hate clutter and mess and tripping stepping over stuff.  But having a toddler and a 7 month old quickly changes your priorities.

But back to my project.  I have roughly T-minus 6 hours until my family arrives and this is what I’m working with:

And my incredibly adept team of helpers????

So, 6 hours from now I will take photos again and we’ll see how much one Mommy can get done with a 2 1/2 year old and a 7 month old while fitting in quick meals for all and a shower for her (by then) desperately needing self. Wish me luck.

Yeah. I Made That. Part 2.

So, after I got all handy with Charlotte’s chalkboard table I felt pretty smug and decided to take on her little dresser. Yet another hand-me-down from my Grandmother’s house after she moved into her nursing home, it was bland and cheap looking and just icky. Don’t mind my horrible “before” picture….her room wasn’t even close to being complete. Oh, I decided to take the before picture after I already started painting, but the drawers are still the original ugly wood. So you get the idea.

I’d never done anything like this before but after seeing John & Sherry’s dresser re-do for baby Clara, I felt inspired. So I dove in. Primer, paint and veneer when you’re super prego…probably not highly recommended…but I made do. The worst part was getting the chevron pattern on the top like I wanted. Blue painters tape was the key (after failing miserably at trying to cut a stencil). In the end it turned out pretty great and I was proud of myself for making something for Charlotte that she can have in her room for awhile.

Yeah. I Made That.

No, i’m not bragging about my kids. Although I am super awesome for making them too. But in this instance I’m referring to my little attempt at DIYing something for Charlotte’s room. And there were a bunch of little components to her room and it’s still not complete because…um…I had another baby and feeling fat and useless and like I’ve taken NyQuil all the time isn’t conducive to getting all the shit done that I have planned.

Onward.

Little project #1 — Charlotte’s Chalkboard Table

First of all, the whole shebang was my Mom’s when she was little, and my Grandfather made it by hand. Then of course it was passed down to me when I was little and then I grew up to be a completely manageable and obedient teenager and decided the family heirloom really needed a decoupage makeover with all my favorite (at the time — don’t shun me) band CD covers. I rocked. Can’t you tell? So, fast forward 15 years and I once again have the table and chairs (and shame) and want to give them to my daughter. Honestly, I researched removing the decoupage and it sounded harder than I was ready for at 8 months pregnant, so I decided to cover it in fabric. But not just ANY fabric — Chalkboard fabric! Genius right?!

I don’t honestly think I came up with anything new here — but for the cost of a can of bright turquoise spray paint ($5) and a yard of chalkcloth ($10) I had a table that entertains her for hours! All I did was spray paint it and let it dry overnight and then stapled the chalkcloth to it with heavy duty staples. Follow the instructions for “curing” the chalkcloth and your done. Easy peasy.

Reality

So, I have a son now. It’s taken me the 7 weeks since he was born to find the right way to express how I feel about being a Mom again. I would like to write about the birth and all that, but it was really boring as births go. It was much easier than Charlotte and I really only pushed a couple of times before he slid out on his own. He was 9lbs 2oz — big, but still lighter than Charlotte was by 8oz. He’s beautiful, and sweet, and healthy.

I had these delusions of how having another baby would be — challenging, but totally do-able. I’d morph into super Mom and be able to keep my house clean and organized while still playing with Charlotte and breastfeeding my little boy on a perfect schedule. I’d go for walks with the kids and do projects with Charlotte. I’d be blissfully wrapped up in being a Mommy.

It’s not like that at all. I feel terrible for feeling like I miss having just one kid but some days, like yesterday, I feel so overwhelmed and fed up that I want to cry and punch something all at the same time.

Not getting a shower for 3-4 days
Picking up shitty diapers the dogs have chewed
Realizing that I can’t breastfeed because I’m too lazy/selfish/emotionally defective
Not knowing why Owen won’t stop crying and just SLEEP
Wanting a nice healthy breakfast but only drinking coffee and water until Abram gets home from work
Watching the laundry pile up
Watching the bills pile up
The stretch marks aren’t magically invisible
Missing the closeness with your husband

blah

It’s just nothing like fantasy I had in my head. I know I probably built all this up while I was pregnant…how everything would just fall into place and I’d get it. “IT” — being this supermom. But I’m failing and it sucks.

I Heart Faces “Pets” Entry

Here’s my entry for the Iheartfaces.blogspot.com weekly photo contest.  These two are best buddies!  I’ve never seen a more patient dog than Cami.  She lets Charlotte use her as a pillow, a drum, and a chasing pal.  I’m so happy she’ll get to grow up with such a sweet natured puppy.  🙂

Inflated

Good god my boobs are getting huge!  I’m talking Punkie Brewster getting reduction surgery huge.  Who knew they could be so unwieldy and annoying?!  All this before I even have the baby and get even bigger….lovely.

Bra shopping is super depressing when you’re in the DD category.  Everything is ugly and no bras come with straps less than an inch thick.  Ugh.  It’s like wearing a thick tank top under your clothes.  So far, this is one of my biggest pet peeves of being pregnant.  With Charlotte, I didn’t have this much….volume…to begin with.  Now, I’m longingly watching Abram do his workouts and actually chomping at the bit to have my postpartum time done so I can get back down to a reasonable weight and non-freakishly enormous boobs.

In other, unselfish and self-centered news, the baby is doing well.  I went to another check-up and everything looked good.  The doctor walked in (an OB in the practice I hadn’t seen before) and the first thing she said was “you’re daughter was how big?” and I told her “9lbs 10oz” and she blanched and said she thought it was a typo on my chart at first.  Then she told me that second babies are usually bigger and that if this little dude tops out past 11lbs she’ll have to do a c-section.  Um..yeah..I would hope so.  I’m not pushing that out.  Seriously?  We have to make it 11lbs?  I’d be fine with say, 10-10.5.  Really.  My lady parts cannot take another ravaging by a giant baby.

Charlotte has been exhausting today!  Or maybe I’m just more easily exhausted at 29 weeks pregnant — either way it seems like every step forward I take in cleaning and organizing she comes behind me and pulls me three steps back.  She’s been increasingly needy, grabbing my skirt and whining to be picked up constantly (and with her at 25lbs and me with a sore back and bulging belly….ugh!).  She’s obsessed with watching me write her ABC’s for her.  I’m so proud of her for wanting to learn her letters at 19 months old, but every time she sees a pen in my hand or a crayon on the floor or ANY paper surface (a bill, a book, a magazine, etc.) she wants me to drop everything and write her ABC’s out for her.  It was cute the first ten million times, now it’s almost obsessive and certainly distracting.

She’s usually such a well behaved toddler, but on top of the neediness she colored all over some furniture today that had me gasping and sternly telling her “bad girl!” — to which she promptly started walking around saying “baa goo” in an adorable, heart melting little voice.  It was impossible to stay mad at her longer than it took me to clean it up.

Tomorrow I tackle the no-sew curtains al-la Young House Love for Charlotte’s bedroom.  I’m using the original fabric I bought for her nursery but never used because we moved in such a hurry so while it’s not what I want in her room permanently, it will do for a few months until I can get something else.  I suppose I can’t complain at having 8 yards of cute Alexander Henry fabric to work with….

I’m determined to have her room finished by the end of the month — sooner if she decides to stop clinging to my leg like a monkey every second of the day.  Those pictures of the progress are forthcoming as any photos I took now would just show a pretty much empty room….curtain pics tomorrow though.  Wish me luck!

I’ll take two please…

On Decor8 today —

Pretty sure I’ll be needing this on my kitchen wall which is in dire need of something pink (who knew?)…..

via 8 Hour Day - Sugar In Pink

And this on my guest bathroom wall…

via 8 Hour Day

And the prints are super affordable…

for people with jobs…

which does not include me.

So, I’ll just pretend they are on my walls.

Control

I never thought of myself as much of a control freak, but the older I get and the more “stuff” that gets piled onto the plate of my life, the more I feel the need to just CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL.  My husband will tell you I’ve been like this since he met me, and my Mom will probably tell you I’ve been this way since I was born and I’m pretty sure my best friend would just tell you stories about how bossy I was when we were growing up — the point is, I never saw myself as this in control person.  As a matter of fact, I never felt like I really had a plan, and my life took a completely random track right about the time I was allowed to start exerting some sort of control over my own destiny.  I was all over the map.  But in retrospect, I guess I did end up doing everything I set out to do and I did it on my own time table and without requesting permission for most of it.  So I guess even in being an out of control teen (who dropped out of high school and went straight to college), played around with a lot of people/things she shouldn’t have, moved from parent to parent, etc. I was still somehow in control of my own life.  I didn’t make a lot of compromises, and I’m pretty sure I got/get called selfish a lot.  But it’s worked out well for me.

Wow.  I guess that sounds a little self absorbed — but now that I’m older and have a family, I’m finding that being uncompromising and controlling can help in a lot of ways and be unnervingly infuriating in others.  Apparently I’m a planner.  I like lists.  I like to know the schedule of the day.  I like to know times.  I like punctuality.  I like accomplishing the things I set out to within the time I set to accomplish them.  It sounds so nurotic and crazy and very “who the hell wants to hang out with that person?!” when I see it in writing, but in reality, I only function that way on a really basic level.  High priority things get shoved to the “freak out and control” level of my brain.  Say, this whole having another baby thing and being completely unprepared and planning the room moves and what we have to buy and promising to visit people before the baby comes and holy shit that’s only like 2 months away!  That kind of stuff?  Way up there on Jessica’s code Red control panel.  Coincidentally, things like the laundry, the dishes, the toys scattered around my house, feeding the dogs, cleaning the car, planting my flowers, etc. are nowhere on my planning/control list.  They are the every day things that I know if I put my massively annoying control trait towards I could knock out every day and probably be a hell of a lot less bitchy.  But alas, my oh-shit meter only goes so high and the little things (daily chores) seem to fall away while my higher level brain function dwells on baby, finances, job, registering cars, travel planning, why my house smells like animal urine, why is this stretch mark here already (?!), did I give Charlotte lunch yet, and the like.

Actually, this whole post was prompted by the fact that I had PLANNED on leaving for South Carolina with Charlotte and my mother tomorrow morning and with that plan a lot of other little things had been planned (like registering the new car so Abram had a way to get to work while I was gone, lots of laundry to prep, packing/unpacking from our trip to Maryland this past weekend, coordinating other family members meeting us in South Carolina to see Charlotte) and then at the 11th hour my mother calls and tells me to unpack our bags because she has bronchitis and conjunctivitis and some other -itits and she can’t go.  So, while I’m sympathetic that she’s sick and damn glad she didn’t give it to me or my daughter, I’m silently fuming that my plans have fallen through.  I’m fuming, and feeling selfish for being mad that my mother is too miserable to go on a completely leisurely trip.  I’m just plain annoyed, and then self-analyzing what kind of selfish, controlling person feels that way in this situation.  Hence this post.  The end.

Bump in the Night

image Why Me by rosiehardy via Flickr

Abram left on his business trip to Alabama yesterday and while I always know he’ll be back before I know it, this time I knew it would be different since I’m not out of the house at work (distracted) for 8 hours a day.  The first night always sucks the most.  Getting ready for bed after I lay Charlotte down kind of freaks me out a little when Abram isn’t here.  I go through locking up the house in a much more paranoid way, which is silly when I think about it since Abram isn’t bionic or anything and couldn’t do much more than I could if someone actually really broke in or something.  Of course, he could serve as the distraction for Charlotte and I to escape, but that’s morbid and I hate thinking of it like that…but yes…knowing my husband would sacrifice himself as cannon fodder for whatever crazed ax murderer that breaks in helps me sleep better at night. Sue me.

I shower faster, not liking that I can’t hear any noises out in the house, I make sure the dogs are in the bed with me, and even leave extra random lights on around the house.  Oh, and I swapped out the cheap-o alarm clock with one that has a radio so I could hear someone else alive and talking as I tried to fall asleep.  And the bathroom light stays on, door cracked, you know, so I don’t trip in the middle of the night.  Riiight.

I’m really not this much of a wuss normally.  It’s only since becoming a mom that I’ve gotten more and more cautious.  I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve laid awake, even with Abram next to me, thinking about the fastest escape route from a psycho or what I can easily reach for to use as a weapon in an emergency.  Can you tell I’ve watched too many horror movies?  Typing it out makes it seem more OCD than I realized, but I can’t help it.