I Am NOT a Morning Person

Not in the slightest. I love the beauty of a sunrise, but I'm just as apt to hit the sack again afterward as to actually start the day. I've always been a night owl, despite multiple attempts to change my schedule around. I just do better in the afternoon and at night.
My kids, on the other hand, are usually awake by seven-thirty. I know, there are moms right now looking at the screen and laughing at me because they're up by dawn, but when you're up till midnight or thereabouts the night before, it can really drag on you! Especially since we're STILL bottle-breaking, and these two wake up once or twice a night, SCREAMING, and won't go back to sleep without us getting up to comfort them. It's so...frustrating.
Well, so far, I've just about gotten them bottle-broken during the day. Cups only, though Esther refuses to drink milk from a cup. I try to make sure she gets her vitamins so she doesn't lose out on calcium.
Anyway, this kind of crazy schedule means that more often than not, one of us ends up waking up on the wrong side of the bed. With my hormones going whacko, it's usually me! It is so hard not to be grumpy, but what does one do about it? I'm NOT going to take depression meds, not with the horror stories I've heard. And besides, I tried them before and ended up borderline suicidal. No thank you.
I guess I just have to tough it. As tired and cranky as I am, I have to remember not to take it out on the kids. It's not their fault that I got so wasted from morning sickness. I still have to be there to be Mommy. Esther tries so hard to be my shadow, my little sidekick. Today she even "helped" me sort stuff off the desk. I hand it to her, she sticks it in the bin I name. And she loves it. I guess I should nurture her helpfulness before she becomes a teenager!
But it still wears on me. Her speech is clearing up more and more, and she is a chatterbox, but when I'm grumpy all I want to do is sit and be left alone. Talk about a personality clash!
I don't have any sage advice for this one. I haven't a clue what to do except to tough it out until the pregnancy is over, then find a solution. Right in time for SADD! Oh yay! Oh, I so hope I don't get serious postpartum. Eesh. Any ideas on this one?

Life is what happens when you try to plan...

Saturday. Jeff and I had been talking all day Friday about what we wanted to get done. I have even posted a list of Fall things-to-do-before-it-snows. We were looking at doing some rearranging and organizing in the kitchen, which would be difficult because there is only so much I can help Jeff move, it's all too heavy in my present condition.
So I get up Saturday morning and decide to fold some laundry that was sitting in the basket for a few days. Jeff had been feeling kinda punky on Friday, so we were modifying plans and deciding to just clean instead of moving things around.
Then it hit me. Like a brick wall.
I was just standing there, folding stuff, and I starting to feel weak and clammy. Not an unfamiliar feeling, I've had mild hypoglycemic problems all my life. But this was bad enough that after a minute, I sat down quickly onto our bed, and called Jeff in to ask if I was pale. Yeah, I was. I felt like I was going to pass out if I so much as stood up again. After a few minutes, I mustered enough strength to fold the few remaining items in the basket, then I went and collapsed into my dish chair in the living room.
I drank a bunch of milk, and waited to feel better. It wasn't happening. What was worse, Jeff was sick and weak too, so we started to wonder if it was flu or something. Not good. Both of us down, with two active toddlers, is a recipe for disaster. But until I knew what was wrong, I didn't dare call for help when it might just make someone else sick.
Then, stage 2. Not vomiting. The other end.
Food poisoning.
No, we didn't get an official diagnosis, but that is sure what it felt like. We were weak, sick to our stomachs, did NOT feel like eating AT ALL, which for me is hard with the baby. I can't just skip meals when I feel like it. We were in the bathroom constantly, and we only have one, so that was fun.
There went our plans for the day.
Sigh. Well, I guess I can be grateful for one thing. It hit on the weekend, so Jeff won't likely miss any work. We are saving all of his PTO for the birth, his company has no paternity leave, so he would have to take time unpaid. We can't afford that.
Let's hope we'll all better by tomorrow. Oh, yeah, I have an OB appointment tomorrow as well, so I have to try to be better for that. I will have to find a babysitter though, I do not think I have the strength to drag two toddlers to an office that has a reputation for being snail-slow.
So much for the weekend. Oh well.

Of cribs and diapers and sleeping in...

Oh yes. We slept in this morning. And paid for it.
Well, two of us did. Esther always bounces out of bed by eight or so, comes in and sticks her face right in mine and says "Wake up, Mommy!" This morning, because Taea was up late last night for no reason other than that she couldn't sleep, Taea was still out. So I got up, settled Esther in front of Noggin with milk and cereal after changing her diaper, then I went and crashed again. My bedroom door is right by the TV, so i can hear if Esther has a problem, I wasn't worried about it. Esther came in a few more times to try to drag me out of bed, but I just rolled over and ignored her. (I'm such a mean mommy, I know).
Then, around nine-thirty, Taea woke up. Screaming.
I kinda figured what I would find when I went in to get her. I thought she and the crib would be soaked. I was half wrong.
Her diaper had exploded out the back.
I immediately laid out a towel on the changing table, got her wiped off as best I could and plopped her in the tub. After a quick scrub and a fresh diaper, she was her usual smiley congenial self, so I gave her a cup of milk (working on bottle breaking still, only doing bottles at night now, yay!), and headed back in to do battle with the crib. I dumped everything onto the soiled sheet, gathered it up, and dropped it on the washer. I took some sanitizer wipes and cleaned up everything that hadn't hit the sheets, buried the plastic mattress in sanitizer spray, and put on a new sheet.
Y'know what's actually good about the whole thing? I had the energy to do it! So sleeping in ain't all bad. If I had gotten up earlier, I probably wouldn't have had such a mess because Taea would have been changed sooner. But then I'd be exhausted through the whole day.
So how the heck does one decide?
I think a lot of it has to do with your body's own signals. It is a good thing to listen to your body, particularly when you're sick. You keep thinking "I should get all this done now or I'll regret it later," but then you never get to rest. It never ends! There is no such thing as "done". So when you have absolutely hit your limit, you have to stop, or your body will start to fall apart, and then you'll REALLY have regrets! It's hard for Mommy to care for everyone else when she has nothing left to give.
Do I regret sleeping in? Naw. Do I want those hours back when I could get more done? Well, maybe, but if I hadn't slept in and tried to get stuff done while exhausted, I probably would have been moving slower and making more mistakes anyway!
Balance, people! It's all about balance!
Just make sure you have plenty of wipes.

Crazy Firsts (and Hopefully Lasts!)

Y'know, I can't remember ever, in my lifetime, having to mop a ceiling.
Well, I guess technically it was more like sweeping, because I used a broom, but it had a towel wrapped over it.
But still, it's not what I wanted to wake up to. There are so much easier ways to clean cobwebs.
And no, that was not the reason. Taea was having a very hard time breathing last night. So much that Jeff decided to plug in our warm-air humidifier. This morning, when I went to change Esther's diaper, she pointed to the ceiling and said something about stars.
They don't have stars on their ceiling.
I looked up, and sparkling like stars on the ceiling was a bunch of water droplets. The light fixture had a small puddle in the light cover. The window was soaked.
Ack!
So I finished changing her, grabbed the broom and a couple of towels, and mopped the ceiling. Esther was highly entertained. It didn't even get all the moisture, it just got the worst of it. I opened the window to vent out the room, and chalked it up to a learning experience. Next time, we crack the window.
This was after I spent all night dreaming I was in some weird castle that was supposed to be Hogwarts, but definitely WASN'T, being chased by Voldemort. Only in this case, Voldemort more closely resembled Emperor Palpatine. I haven't even WATCHED those movies in months! This pregnancy is screwing with my head.
All in all, not the way I wanted to start my day. I think I'll take it as a sign of stress and just relax today. We're still dealing with summer heat, and it's wearing me down. Supposedly we're supposed to have rain this weekend, but that's what they said last weekend, and it didn't happen. I'm not holding my breath, though I could certainly use the cleaner air!
Anyway, that's how my day has gone so far. Hope yours is going better.

Post "Party" Syndrome

Yeah, we didn't spend the weekend partying. Instead, we spent most of it working. We did get some vegging in, Sunday we rested most of the day after church, and Monday we spent some time relaxing after a trip to Home Depot to get some stone for the front yard.
But otherwise, we worked our tails off!
It is great, really, to have the stuff done that we did. Granted, none of the projects we worked on are completely "done", but we made great progress. The girls closet is cleaned out, their drawers are organized, I pulled out all the too-small stuff and made room for the newborn stuff we'll need for Rebecca. Their room is the cleanest, most organized in the house. We also pulled out a few bins of stuff that shouldn't have been in there in the first place.
However, we're not done. Esther has a platform bed with a large void under the right side. We've been using that to store boxes of...stuff. Not sure what is in there, that will have to be done before we can claim to be done. But since I don't have anywhere to put anything, I think it can wait.
We got a bunch of stuff picked up in the kitchen. It is so sad to me when I consider that we have a nice, clean kitchen, all the pots and pans are washed...and tonight it will all be dirty again. Ergh. Oh well, it's either that or we starve!
We organized a bunch of stuff in the basement, too. You know how it goes. You come home from a caseload sale with a bunch of stuff, you get downstairs, one of the kids starts yelling, you drop the stuff on the floor with a promise to organize it later, and then you promptly forget about it. Well, we got it organized, evicted some bins and boxes to the garage, and now I can actually reach the food down there. Yay, let the cooking experiments begin! Well, actually, continue. I've been working on it for a few weeks.
So, with all of that, and laundry, I'm tired. Very tired. But it's a good tired. I have a bit more room in here, I can see what else needs to be done to get ready for baby, and everyday items are a bit easier.
Did we get everything done that we wanted to? No. Did we get the one day of work and the one day to party that we wanted? No. With a sick kid, going somewhere probably wouldn't have been a good idea anyway. But we got stuff done. Sometimes, that's all it takes to improve your mood. You accomplished something. CELEBRATE IT! Don't dwell on what you did not get done! Focus on the fact that everything you accomplished makes it easier to get your remaining projects done. I'm thinking of the fact that I have two empty bins available now, through some strategic merging of partially full ones, to clean my office.
Now I just have to do it. Wish me luck! Time to accomplish!!!

Balance

Y'know, we have a three day weekend coming up.
I asked my hubby if he has that day off. He answered yes, and then asked if I had a bunch of stuff planned.
Truthfully? No.
My honey-do list is fifty miles long, thanks in part to the pregnancy. I just can't do as much as I used to, not so much because of my baby bump, but because of the sheer exhaustion and muscle wasting from being sick so long. I can't BELIEVE what a wuss I've become!
Then, also, it would not be fair to take up a rare vacation day with nothing but work. He has worked so hard, he needs a day for some fun. We may have a rainy day that day, but still...
However, it would also not be fair to just play the whole weekend. I mean, c'mon, if it doesn't get done now, it will just get shunted to some other weekend, and the longer we delay, the more frantic and stressed we'll be. We have to do SOMETHING.
So where do you strike the balance? Obviously, we're not working on Sunday. That's the Lord's day. Neither are we going off to play that day. That isn't right either. So we have Saturday, and Monday.
Well, the obvious choice to me is to get starting on the work Friday evening, finish it off Saturday, and then play on Monday. But what if that doesn't work out? What if it rains? Taea and I are already sick, too, what if he get sick by Monday and we spend all day lying around miserable?
Ah, decisions, decisions.
I guess that's just the chance we take. We have to make a list, and make sure we get the items of highest priority done. What is surprising is that those items may not be the obvious ones. You'd think that getting the house spic-and-span would be top priority. Granted, we need to make sure the basics are taken care of, like dishes and laundry. But then, there's the clutter all over the house. And with two kids, any mess that is cleaned up is re-created in five minutes or less.
So...what to do with them? Send them outside? Natch, that's an obvious answer for most homes. Unfortunately, our yard is not fully fenced. The perimeter has an okay fence, half chain-link, and half chicken wire. The wings, however, (the distance from the sides of the house to the property line) have no fence. Ours is one of the older homes on a narrow lot where the driveway runs all the way to the garage in the back. So the driveway and the other side yard are both wide open.
Okay. So there is a priority. In order to make our lives easier in other areas, let's fence off those two sides!
Fencing a driveway properly is no easy task, but when you're trying to contain a couple of energetic toddlers rather than a full-grown Great Dane, it's not as hard as it could be. We're not putting in a full 6-foot fence. Not yet, anyway. We bought two three-by-eight picket panels, which we will hinge and hang on 4-foot pressure treated posts. To keep them from sagging, we bought some gate wire kits. The kind that run from the top hinge corner to the bottom inside corner and keep it more or less square. If that is not enough, we'll attach wheels to the bottom. That will allow us to keep the full opening of the driveway, and yet we can keep the girls in the back.
Whew! Problem solved. And that will also allow us to do more without worrying about them getting out.
Funny, isn't it? How you think one thing is of such great priority, and yet you can't get very far on it because of a complication. The answer is often staring you in the face. Solve the lesser problem first, and that paves the way for an answer to the biggest problem.
Will having a fence instantly make it a breeze to do all my work? No. My kids are not cattle, I cannot just send them out for the day and expect them to stay out of trouble. But at least now I can weed and prune and work without worrying about them escaping. Jeff and I can clean the garage without constantly asking "where's Taea?", "Is Esther in front?", "where are the girls?"
Next year, I will have three to chase. I get the fence in now, instead of later, and save myself some hassle.
Balance. Consider your priorities. What are the problems you face? Would solving a lesser problem help solve a greater problem? Would signing your kids up for school lunch actually be cheaper than sending them with one, because you won't have to buy baggies, and pre-packaged drinks, etc, thus helping your family budget?
Are you wasting money every year tossing clothes that get damaged because you don't know how to sew? "But I don't have time for that!" you might say. It's not as hard as you think. And besides, what is quicker-spending five minutes doing up a popped seam, or spending two hours with your teenage daughter trying to replace that one-of-a-kind shirt because she refuses to wear anything else?
Lost weight lately? How much would you save if you could take in your skirts instead of buying a new wardrobe?
That is just one example! Balance your life! Try to find the areas where taking just a little time learning a skill will save you oodles of time and money in the future.
However, balance also includes taking time out to rest. We're human. We get tired. We can't just keep going constantly. In this recession, how much have we heard about taking a stay-cation instead of going somewhere new? Depending on where you live, chances are, you have some fantastic attractions within reasonable driving distance of home. Just make sure that if you plan a stay-cation, you STICK TO THE PLAN! Don't make a plan of going hiking in the local state park, and then the next day to the water park, and then a day museum-hopping, just to wake up the day of the vacation and dig into those storage boxes you've been meaning to sort. If you plan to relax, stick with the plan.
Is it wrong to work during a stay-cation? No, not really. Not if you plan for it. If you're planning on playing for most of the stay-cation, but reserve the last Saturday for that backyard patio you've been meaning for three years to put in, fine. Just make sure you don't wait until Saturday to get your measurements, and the materials, and rent the equipment, etc. Get all your plans in order BEFORE the work day, and it will go more smoothly.
Balance takes planning, but it also takes flexibility. Have a plan B in case that state park hike is washed out. Try a roller-skating rink, or go to an indoor pool. Go restaurant hopping, where you have a different course in each restaurant.
Try to find the balance you need in your life, and I think you'll find things going much smoother. Does that mean that if you plan everything, you'll have no problems? Not a chance! Life has lots of problems. A sign of good balance is that you're able to handle those problems without having to pop a pill, or spend the day in a mental institution. The whole trick of it is making sure that in your planning, you include ALL needs, not just the obvious ones. And make sure you prioritize properly. If you are stressed out, and it is really the niggling little problems that bother you more than the big ones, solve them first. They tell you in a disaster that if you have minor injuries, treat them before helping others. Why? Because they don't want those minor problems to turn into major ones! How dumb would you feel if you ignored a bleeding cut, and ended up being one that needed a stretcher because you nearly bled to death?
Find your balance! Make a plan! And try to have some fun on the way!