Motivation

Yesterday another form of Happiness arrived in the form of our Christmas present from my in-laws. It is a beautiful mission style secretary and I set it up in our foyer and moved the little table we bought off craigslist to the dining room. It was so beautiful in fact that it motivated us to finally hang all our pictures that have just been in stacks on my desk. If I were really motivated I'd have taken photos and posted the beautifulness that is our secretary and the hung photos, but right now I'm tired and I'll probably only have half an hour of Charlotte's nap left to sleep myself. Ahh, the joys of pregnancy.

Happiness Can Be Bought

I was sort of happy to pull out my maternity clothing from last time and get to wear some of the stuff again. Especially this one blue sweater. It's so comfy, and kinda stylish. I love it. Then I remembered how hard it was to find jeans that fit the length last time. I tried on the two pairs of jeans I wore last time and realized that at some point I must have given up hope of ever finding jeans that fit me.

Determined that just because I am pregnant doesn't mean that I can't find long jeans I went shopping. I went to the maternity store in the mall and tried on, I kid you not, at least 20 pairs of jeans until I found them. My new and favorite pair of jeans that would never leave my body so long as I was going to have to have a huge belly. Then I took a look at the price tag and all hopes were completely shot. Why would the sales lady ever even think of giving me a $210 pair of jeans? A pair of jeans that I would not even wear longer than 6 months max! I'm sure the type of mom that has the money and will spend over $1000 on the phil and teds deluxe double stroller probably doesn't bat an eyelash at a $210 pair of jeans. I'm clearly not that mom. When I told the sales lady there was absolutely no way I was purchasing a $210 pair of jeans, even if it did seem like they were made just for my body, she said, "Well, we do have an in store credit card that you can apply for. Every dollar you spend goes towards in store credit." Needless to say there's no way I'm going into debt for one stinking pair of jeans! I left the store and my spirits were low. Very low.

The next day I went shopping with Daniel to a different mall. Spirits high after a good night's rest I went in confident that I would find what I sought that day. We went to GAP maternity. GAP carries long pants so I should be able to find something there right? WRONG. They do not carry one single long pair of jeans in the maternity section of the store. I don't know why, but this made me feel like a complete mutant who nobody wants to dress. This was the total opposite feeling I had wanted to achieve in my pursuit of a simple pair of jeans.

Then, today, Happiness arrived via the UPS man. My angel of a mother went to GAP maternity online and purchased for me one pair of long maternity jeans in my size. I put them on and they brought a smile to my face and a dance to my feet. And now I know that, sometimes, Happiness can be bought.

The Marathon

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the reaction I get when I tell people that I'm having my second child this close to my first, and, oh yeah, my husband's in his second year of medical school. Unless it's one of the many great people I think of as my medical school community, the reaction spans the spectrum from the look of shock, to bewilderment as to how I could actually do this, to, in one really unfortunate interaction, disgust.

I feel like the choices Daniel and I are making are helping us. Yes, our choices make our lives more difficult. They stretch us farther. Daniel's schooling is harder than if he were a single man. It's harder to be a wife to someone that simply can't always be there. I do have to find ways to be self reliant, and self sufficient. Although these stresses are hard to handle, they are our choice. We didn't stumble upon our life path right now. We sat down and planned each step we've taken so far.

Plus, although I've never trained for a marathon (and don't plan to) I've seen people close to me do it. They put calculated stress on their bodies and with that stress their bodies get stronger, leaner, faster, and more able to handle the extreme stress that a marathon puts on them. I feel that the calculated stress that we are putting on ourselves right now is helping to get our family stronger individually, and as a group. Do I think my husband will be a better doctor for it? Certainly I do. Do I think I will be a stronger, more confident, and more capable person for it? Of course. Do I think my children will grow from this experience? Yes. And you know what? I also think that our family will emerge from medical school and residency the better for our experiences during this time.

The Kind of Friend I Want To Be

You know how I talked about Daniel and myself soldiering on through colds? Well, I'm going to admit something to you right now. I'm a liar. I don't really naturally soldier on through colds. Really truly I don't. My husband, however, thinks that he never gets sick and it works too! His colds are never as bad as mine. In fact he wont really admit that he's sick at all right now. All he's got is a runny nose. Which I define as a light cold, but I guess it's all in how you look at it. Since having a baby I've been trying to pretend like I'm not sick when I really am and seeing how it works. I can't say I've got a 100% success rate, but I think my colds are less severe and shorter than they were before. Let's face it, moms don't get sick days.


Unless you're me.


And unless you have amazing friends.


A few weeks ago I watched a friend's little girl for the day so that she could go clean someones house/make a few extra dollars. She told me that she expected me to call and have the favor returned, which I fully intended to do, I just wanted it to be the right day at the right time so that I could have a day of just playing. The house needed to already be clean, the budget balanced, my daughter healthy and happy, and all my errands run. I wanted to spend the day doing nothing but sewing, reading, sleeping, and watching movies.

Then yesterday hit. I woke up with the same severe sinus headache that I'd had the night before when I went to bed. I decided enough was enough, I'm not pretending to be healthy anymore. I'm going to buy some cold medicine. In my foggy state I found the paper the doctor gave me about which medicines are safe to take while pregnant, packed Charlotte into the car and went to the grocery store. When I got to the cold medicine isle I wanted to cry. Do you know how many cold medicines there are? And they all happen to be at just the right height for a toddler to put them in your basket. I finally just had to go ask the pharmacist (whom I will forever love now) what I could take. I must have looked pretty pathetic because he got out from behind the counter and walked with me and asked all about the pregnancy and my plans for getting things done that day. He was very helpful.

I ended up choosing Tylenol cold daytime because I still wanted to get stuff done. I went home and took the stuff. At what point in your life does medicine go from being cherry or fruit flavored to making me want to throw back up what just went down my throat? Approximately 20 minutes after taking the daytime medicine my body decided that it could no longer stay awake. I called my friend, giving her zero notice about watching Charlotte all day and she dropped all plans she had and took Charlotte.

So my day off wasn't spent sewing, or reading in a clean, quiet, orderly house. My day off was spent passed out on top of my bed, still fully dressed, in the messiest my house has been in quite a while. And you know what? I loved it. Because I'm a mom and I still got a sick day.

Why Did I think of That?

Well, TRS, you really hit the nail on the head with your last comment. Sunday Dan, Charlotte, and I all came down with a pretty solid head cold. Head colds aren't bad for Dan or myself, we just soldier on through it, but when Charlotte gets sick she usually works herself up coughing, and wheezing all night until she barfs. (This time though I apparently slept through the whole episode. Except for cleaning the sheets today.) Anyway, I was really not in the mood to do anything this morning. Do you know what saved me? A jelly jar with a slit in the lid and buttons. Lots and lots of buttons. That kept her occupied for an hour! Until she decided it would be fun to try and chew on the buttons and then they had to go away, but still it was amazing. So now during nap time I think I'll be making sewing sewing board type things that she can play with along side of me. So anyway, TRS, you're my hero!

Update: After posting this I went and checked some other blogs I like to read and then came back and laughed out loud at my title. It's supposed to read Why didn't I think of that? I was going to correct it then thought you might also like to have a little chuckle at my slip up.

Goals for the Week

Last week I felt like I pretty much tanked it the entire week. My daughter was unhappy because Mommy wasn't paying attention to her, at all, I was unhappy because my house was a mess and there was no way I was ever going to dig myself out of it, and there seems to be a huge pile of sewing that tugs at my thoughts and heart to do, but never any time to do it. So this week I made some goals:

1. Be an awesome, attention giving mother to Charlotte. This means instead of finding activities that would distract her from me to actually find activities that we would enjoy doing together.
2. Clean this house.
3. Finish the hand stitching for our tree skirt that I really, really, really want to be able to use this year.

So today I was taking stock of my week. I'd like to flatter myself that I've done pretty darn good on goal number 1. There were a few lapses, but for the most part I've noticed Charlotte is acting out a lot less. That usually means that I'm giving her enough postivie attention that she doesn't need to do bad stuff. Goal 2 has been successfully done well since I had a flurry of activity on Tuesday that nearly killed me on Wednesday. I also feel like I've done a pretty good job of connecting with my friends and helping them out when they need it. (I really hope I'm right on that one because I want to be the kind of friend that people feel comfortable calling for help.) Sadly, have I even touched the tree skirt since Sunday? No. Well, you can't win them all. And Christmas will come and go and be just fine without a tree skirt if I don't get it done.

House Progress

Since we haven't really done anything to the house since school started I haven't really posted anything here. But because I had a streak of creativity this week I decorated two new parts of the house:

Here is Daniel helping me hang the curtains. You can't really see the blue on the bottom, but they're really pretty and I'm so happy that all my planning worked out.

And here:

I decorated our dining room mantel! It's beautiful isn't it? I love it, but this photo is a little dark.

Here's another view of the mantel in which I show that the rest of our dining room should also probably be decorated, but I'll get to that in time. I also need to paint that room. I do like the color now, but it's just too dark for the lighting in that room.

A Sense of Humor

It's the little things that make me realize that Charlotte's not a baby anymore. Today for example. I was in the basement, changing loads of laundry when I hear the door to the basement slam closed. I walk up the stairs with my load of clean laundry. I open the door to see what's happened. As soon as the door swings open, Charlotte pops her head around the corner and yells, "Hey you!" and then laughs and laughs. Apparently she scared me and it was really funny. She's such a big kid now!

A sigh of relief

I thought I'd post about our progress with Charlotte's bed since I've said everything else so far. A few days ago (or was it last week?) we were finally able to take the baby gate off her door without her feeling like she needed to get up and walk out of her room. We also were able to mostly close the door so walking by her room doesn't wake her up anymore. Also she's now started to mostly sleep from the time we put her down at night until 6:30. We did have to move the bed across the room from it's original spot because it was right in front of the vent. Great in summer for the AC, not so great in winter for the heat. Also she'll go down for naps without screaming bloody murder, really without any fuss at all. So were back to where we were before! Hooray. Only it's better because when she wakes up in the morning she'll just get out of bed and come in my room without tears. I can then have her lay with me in bed (if I'm feeling really lazy) or get up. Guess which one I do more often? Because I'm a good mom like that. I am now so, so happy about her progress towards a big girl bed. Which will probably be just a mattress on the floor because have you seen how expensive beds are? YIKES!