Judecorp.

Tukey's first birthday party is tomorrow. I have been cleaning like a MoFo all day. Punk has been at a friend's house for most of the day (since about 11am) and I will be returning the favor by watching that friend this evening. Well, Jen will. Because I have to brave the mall. I want to pick up our Holiday Photo Cards and check out a couple of deals at Target. And later I need to run to the grocery store to pick up the food for the party. I'll be making a lot of chili. I hope all of the party guests like chili.

I am on a purging roll and want to get a lot of baby stuff out of the house. My cousin's girlfriend is pregnant and I'm really hoping they want hand-me-downs (and lots of them!). I want this stuff OUT. I also threw out my living room rug today, and the shelving unit from my bathroom. And replaced the flapper in the toilet. And reorganized the pantry closet. I AM ON FIIIIIIIIIRRRRREEEEE.

When Tukey wakes up I have to whirlwind clean his room before I brave the mall. And I need Punk to go through her room and put aside all of the toys she is going to donate before I will let her write her Christmas list.

So I almost never post anymore. The truth is that my life is incredibly busy and also incredibly boring.

I have had this LJ for 10 years now. It was 10 years in June, I think. Maybe July? Summer, anyway. 10 years. In the beginning I had a lot to say about a lot of things. Now I don't sleep, run around like an idiot all day, and collapse in an exhausted heap while making lists of chores. And you know, I wouldn't change a thing. Except maybe the sleep.

Next month my little BOGO baby will be one. ONE! Time sure does fly when you post once every two months.

Oh, and I started another little blog project. If you're on FaceBook you probably already know about it. If not (THAT MEANS YOU, auntiesiannan!!), let me know if you want the deets.

xo

Summer is winding down and going back to work is looming just around the corner. There is one more week of summer life before Labor Day. How is that even possible? We have had a great and busy summer, so I know the time has truly passed but I am not ready. I am clinging to summer kicking and screaming even as the leaves begin to turn and the tomatoes are plentiful on my kitchen counter.

We spent the summer living a simple life, accommodating the baby's naps and just enjoying each other. I treasured the snuggly television watching with my daughter while my son slept in his room for his morning nap. We made crafts and played with water in the sink. We practiced writing letters and completed workbooks. She is falling right into my childhood footsteps - little nerdlet in training.

My son began the summer as a mostly immobile little guy who was content to swat at toys on the play mat and is now a nine month old force of destruction. He can tear apart my clean living room in less than a minute, climbing up and pulling things down, dumping over containers, scattering toys with might and mission. He shrieks and babbles, pulls the cats' tails, and adores his sister ferociously.

We spent a bunch of time this summer watching Punk's BFF, and it was great (and restful) watching the girls interact and watching C grow into an honorary big sister, handing the baby toys and talking to him so sweetly. We took weekly trips to our CSA farm and the big girls picked tomatoes and beans, cut flowers, and helped me choose the plumpest vegetables. We had a number of play dates with school friends and other babies. And kept the living easy.

We are now entering a new chapter in our lives together, me and my two. The baby doesn't remember going to day care and has entered the world of separation anxiety, which is likely to make the next few weeks rough. We switched him from the big day care center to the lovely, cozy home day care that Punk attended when she was two-to-three. I think this will be better for him, to have his own area for sleeping and a mom's touch, not to mention being around the corner from my job so I can fetch him as necessary. Punk is headed back to her Montessori classroom but will add two more days of after-school care since the pick-ups in the afternoon have to shift to accommodate picking up the baby first. She is looking forward to no longer being the youngest child in the classroom and it will be good for her to have some new kids to mentor.

I am not looking forward to going back to work but it will be nice to see the friendly adult faces that sustain me throughout the work day. It is nice to be wanted at work and I have enjoyed the relationship I've made between my agency and my school. I will enjoy seeing how my clients have grown over the summer and see their sun-kissed faces at the start of their new school year.

Time seems to march quickly when the work week hits full swing and I'm gobsmacked to realize that I will soon be planning my son's first birthday party. To think we are mere months away from first steps and words. It is humbling to be entrusted with these sweet souls.

I don't know what the next year will bring for my children and me, but we are ready for it and will meet it all with love.

So the first thing I had to do was fill out a very involved survey with all kinds of questions about Tuke's pregnancy and birth, medical history, schedule, where he sleeps, etc. Of course since I filled it out two days ago, his schedule has changed. Isn't that always the way? Heh.

For a while he was getting up reliably at 6am. Then that started to become 5am (ugh) and then 5-10 minutes before 5am. So I decided that there was no way that 5am was going to become wake-up time, so I put him in the crib (he is usually in my bed at this point) and let him fuss until he is willing to let me rock him back to sleep. It usually takes a couple of tries but then he sleeps until 7. So now his morning nap and afternoon nap are an hour later... and his afternoon nap is right when I usually leave the house to pick up the girl I babysit. Now I need a Plan B.

Today I let him crank in the crib for a while (he was overtired) and he eventually fell asleep. I couldn't even believe it. I don't really ever let him cry because I am a big softie but I will let him gristle when he's overtired because it gets him in the frame of mind to be comforted to sleep. But today he fell asleep himself. Weird baby. :)

Tomorrow I will have a phone consult with the sleep coach once she goes through all of my info. You know me, I wrote too much. Then we will come up with a plan.

Hello, friends.

These days I "journal" so infrequently that it doesn't feel at all like journaling - more like a letter to some friends. So hello there, friends. I hope you are all well.

The kids and I just came back from 11 days in South Carolina visiting my brother, sister in law, and my mom and her husband. We stayed with my brother and SIL and it's almost like culture shock to be back here. Although I do love it here. It is familiar and comforting and full of hippies.

I kind of had an unplugged vacation. I did not bring a computer, only my iPod Touch, so aside from Facebook I spent very little time on the Internet. It was just too tiny to manage. I didn't check LJ at all. Did I miss anything? I also did not bring a camera. I didn't want to bring my huge DSLR because I couldn't fathom carrying it AND a baby AND wrangling a 4 year old. So, no pictures. It is like the un-vacation!

There was a big heat wave in the South so we didn't do as much as usual (stayed inside a lot) and I also tried to be accommodating to Tukey's naps because he slept like C R A P the whole time. Jen joined us for the last 4 days of the trip and thank God for that because I actually got 5 hours of straight sleep a couple of nights. And it was good.

We had a blast, though. We went to the beach once with my mom and her husband and Punk got to make sand castles and look for sea shells and pick up seaweed and all of that good stuff, and got hit by waves and laughed and danced on the shore and it was ace. We also took her to an amusement park that was more like a seaside carnival where she went on a bazillion kiddie rides and got to stay up late (til after 9) and even had her first taste of bumper cars (with my brother) where she shouted, "We are going to hit you, Mama!" about a gazillion times. Thank you, ride operator, for letting her on even though she's half an inch shy of 42". She went to Chuck E Cheese and I have continued my lie about how we don't have Chuck E near our house, only at Uncle Rick's. She had a great time there, too. She saw the Winnie the Pooh movie and ate out a bunch of times and had a lot of ice cream, so I'd say it was a total vacation success for her. I love watching her have a good time, even when she gets sad because the fun has to end.

Tukey started trying to pull up while on vacation and also sped up his army crawl so quick that I don't think he'll ever go to hands and knees. He still says "da da da" most of the time but now says "na na na na" when he is sad/tired/hungry. He is curious about life and into EVERYTHING. He is in that crazy alert phase where sleeping is for wimps and he wants to wake at all hours of the night and crawl and climb just because. It is exhausting yet delicious and sometimes I stop and have to catch my breath because he is growing up so fast and I will never have another baby in my belly and watch that baby grow into a person. This afternoon on the plane I got him to fall asleep in my arms and I held him, two arms full of great big baby, and could almost cry at the sheer enormity of my love for him and how we were meant to be together.

Punk is the greatest big sister ever, so attentive to her brother and concerned about him. She gets jealous when he gets attention but instead of acting out toward him or others, she gets jealous about people messing with HER baby and she has to go over and give him attention too. "That's my bruvvuh" is a common sentence for strangers. She also talks to him, which is deleriously funny. Today she told him, "Let's play a game called 'Baby Gets Nothing.' Tukey, you get nothing." Where does she get this stuff? I freaking love it.

She is four years old and he is eight months old and time is just flying, flying, flying.

I hope you are all well and enjoying your summer.

It has been over a month since I used this thing. Hi!

Tukey is 6 months old. SIX MONTHS! He is still kind of half-heartedly nursing, especially in the middle of the night. So that means we have been nursing for six months, which was kind of my pipe dream. Go me! He is also still getting over half of his daily nutrition from donated breastmilk - about 25oz of donor milk per day. (Any more than that and I would run out before getting more.) I have been very resourceful and scrappy in finding donors and picking up people's stashes and stuff, so I'm pretty proud of myself. I have one box of domperidone left and I'm not buying more, so I imagine I will lose my milk in about 12 days and we won't be nursing anymore. Sad about it but can't justify buying more.

There are a couple of weeks left of the school year and I am excited to be home with the kids for the summer, but nervous about being able to entertain them both all summer by myself. I'm sure I will get into a groove and am excited to be off work. (But the lack of pay will hurt.)

Why do I make babies who don't like to sleep? Why? I like to sleep!!

I am drowning. In a sea of First World Problems, but I am still drowning.

We applied for financial aid for Punk's fancypants Montessori preschool and they offered us a $2000 scholarship for next year. Unfortunately, that's not enough for us to feasibly send her to that school, the school she loves that has been very good for her this year in terms of keeping her stimulated and also encouraging her out of her comfort zone (Punk does not like to do anything that she thinks is "hard"). It was such a good fit for her and even though she is the youngest in her class this year, you would never know it and she is very comfortable there. But it is so expensive and with a second now in day care, there's just no way we can pay the price tag. We really needed $5000 off to make it work. I have her parent-teacher conference on Monday and I will probably bawl my way through it.

On top of that, going back to work totally sucks. I mean, the people at my job are happy to see me, and the kids I returned to are happy to see me, but my heart is not in it, my head is not in it, and I don't get nearly enough sleep to be able to effectively use my brain in that way. I am sort of floating through the job which isn't really working when I am taking countless referrals and doing tons of intakes, which generate tons of paperwork and involve tons of thinking/diagnosing/making treatment plans. I would really just rather be home with my kids, especially since I won't even be able to send Punk to the place I love next year.

Part of me would like to find another job, or go back to the Early Intervention stuff I loved and felt super competent at, but then I remember that this job gives me summers off to be with my kids and I feel like I have to stay there forever. It just all seems so heavy right now.

My most beloved cat, Daedalus, has recently started losing fur in little clumps on both sides of his body. It doesn't look like an allergy or a reaction or a fungus or anything, it is just falling out. And I am terrified that something is dreadfully wrong with him, so soon after Ralphie died. I don't think I can handle it.

I'm just in way over my head and I don't really know what to do. One foot in front of the other, I guess, but it's just so hard on so little sleep. I feel like I start the day already almost entirely out of coping skills just by having to haul myself up out of an exhausted stupor, and then to be totally swamped at work and not thrilled about where my kids are going to be, etc. It is too much.

(I feel dirty using a PC.)

So we all survived my first week of work. I can't really call it a "week of work" when I only worked three days, but whatever. I'm looking forward to hanging out with my little man tomorrow and smelling his cute widdle head. He really is the cutest thing ever, of course. Punk calls him "Tukey," and I'm not really sure what that means except that it is an adjective: "that tukey, tukey baby." She also calls him "tuke tuke." She is very protective of him and takes her job as a big sister very seriously. If I call him "my baby," she lets me know that he is HER baby.

He is a pretty laid back guy and it is such a different experience than with Punk, through and through. He hardly ever cries or screams. He has reflux but is mostly fine with it - he spits up a lot but it doesn't really bother him now that he's on meds. He puts himself to sleep and is only up a few times in the night. But with Punk I was able to be home for nearly 10 months before returning to work. Tuke has had his first week of day care at three months old. Poor guy.

Jen has to do the drop offs and she hates handing him over, and I can't say I blame her. They take care of him fine but it's not mama. And Jen goes to work super early so he's actually there a lot longer than I would like, but it wasn't feasible for me to drop him off and then take Punk to school in a different town. Too much hassle.

But I am just so totally in love with that little guy and can't wait to smoosh all over him tomorrow!

Pulled out the supplemental nurser today.

God I hate that thing but it was nice to nurse for more than 2 minutes. :)

We had a major poop blowout today. The whole back of the onesie was yellow, dudes!

Punk always had formula poop so we never had this issue. It was funny.