Suburban Momma

Oh my goodness, a new year and I haven’t updated this thing in forever. Life does get in the way. Things are moving steadily forward and I’m hoping to see some changes in 2007 but I’m taking it one step at a time.

Kiddos are getting bigger and bigger. Maggie celebrated her first birthday at the end of November with a little family/friends party. I can’t believe my baby girl is one! She is an incredibly happy, easy-going little girl but lately we’ve been seeing a bit of demanding diva thrown in and she has quite a stubborn streak so we know that we might be in for some trouble in the future. Jayce is heading very quickly toward his 3rd birthday (still trying to figure out what we’re going to do for that). He potty trained back in October and while there are times I find it terribly inconvenient I’m pretty happy not to be changing toddler diapers anymore. He moved up to the 3-year-old class in daycare and is loving it. I really love watching him grow and blossom at that school.

I’ve started a new project for 2007. It’s a challenge to take a photo a day for 365 days. I started a bit late so it’ll by 361 at the most but we all know I won’t be updating every day. My goal is to really try to stick with it and look back a year from now and see where my photography skills are. My photos are over at http://suburbanlife2007.blogspot.com/

Every day or so I’ll think of something that I want to write down in this here blog - be it something cute Jayce did or Maggie’s neverending “talking” or just life - but by the time I get a moment just to sit down and write I can’t think of a single coherent thing to put on this page. So a few notes…

Jayce:

I just don’t understand how this child can be so difficult so often and then say or do something that just melts my heart and more than makes up for all the difficult times. Jayce has hit something akin to the terrible twos lately and it’s driving us all kind of crazy. I keep hoping he’s teething or that there was something easy to explain his behavior but I’m pretty sure it’s just his idea of how hard life is when you’re two. The biggest problem we have is him not listening. I find myself just saying his name over and over and over sometimes. Jayce, come here. Jayce, don’t touch that. Jayce Allen… Ugh. Just a quick trip to the store and everyone knows my kid’s name before we walk out. Problem is, I don’t want to be that mom. The one chasing her kid up and down the aisles screaming his name as he runs off laughing. But right now I’m just not sure what the answer is. I read all these articles about being consistent and just leaving the store or whatever but honestly if I’m submitting myself to taking both kids to the store by myself then that trip was important enough that I’m not walking out of that store without what I went in for.

All of that being said there are moments like this morning where I realize that it’s all completely worth it. This morning Jayce woke up excited that I had bought cottage cheese at the grocery store. He told Richard that’s what he wanted for breakfast. So then when they came out of his room and into Maggie’s room where I was getting her dressed Richard asked Jayce “What did momma buy?”. Jayce burst into this huge grin and said “Momma bought me cottage cheese!”. Then ran into the room, gave me a huge hug and said “Thank you, Momma! Thank you for cottage cheese!”. I mean, seriously, does it get any better than that?

Maggie:

And then there’s my Magpie. She is just so incredible there’s not much else to say. She smiles at you any time you smile at her. When a stranger smiles at her she’ll usually smile and turn her head - either coyly or shyly - you pick. Her smile can literally light up a room. I swear during the next power outage I’m going to take her with me everywhere because her light shines from inside. She’s hit the stage where she wants to move. She’s been scooching herself around on her belly and rolling to get places but this weekend she started trying to use her legs to propel her forward. It’s kind of comical at the moment because she’ll get a knee up under her and propel herself face first into the floor. This doesn’t seem to phase her as she just keeps trying. It’s truly amazing to watch the determination of a 6-month-old.

Over the last couple of weeks Maggie has just started to develop a bit of stranger anxiety and seperation anxiety and I think she’s also working on her bottom teeth all which mean that Maggie has cried more in the past two weeks than she has since she was a couple of weeks old which I’ll tell you just isn’t a whole heck of a lot. But then, even her cry is cute. She scrunches up her face and sticks that bottom lip out and these big crocodile tears run down her face. Can you tell I’m in for a bit of trouble in the future?

Life in General:

We’ve been making some changes financially in our household the last month and it’s been very hard on me. As of the first of June we’ve stopped using our credit cards. It’s one of those things that we had to do, we’ve known we had to do for a long time, but we were just ignoring the obvious. So I went cold turkey. Seeing how I was spending our paycheck on bills, especially credit card payments, and then living off the credit cards this caused a bit of a crunch. Last week we were officially broker than broke and then Citibank double charged my card and charged Richard’s card a week early and we fell into a big hole. We’re slowly climbing out of the hole and things are looking just a bit brighter but the list of things that we need to do/get that we’d usually pay for with a credit card is getting pretty long and it looks like things will be tight for a while. There are a couple of silver linings in all this:  we’re now strongly working on moving our debt in the right direction, we’re eating out only once or twice a week instead of about 14 times per week, and I’ve lost 4 lbs. in 2 weeks. Some of that was from all the worrying but most of it was from eating planned meals at home where I’m better at controlling portion size and what goes into stuff. I may not cook the healthiest of meals but they have to be better than what I was eating at all those fast food places.

Whew. Now if writing all that isn’t incentive to write more often I don’t know what is.

The quickest way to get your kid to do something - be it bad or good - is to tell someone, especially a large group of people like the internet, that your child doesn’t do it.

Maggie is on the move. Three weeks ago I could lay her down just about anywhere and be fairly confident that she would be right there when I came back. Now that’s just not the case anymore. She started rolling from her back to her tummy a couple of weeks ago and now no raised surface is safe anymore. She rolled from her tummy to her back a couple of times that first day and then it was like she forgot how to do it. This past weekend she has been working on that skill. I see her log-rolling around the house very soon. She wants to get to things when she’s on her tummy and considering what a mess my house is and the fact that there are wonderful choking hazards everywhere this is just not such a good idea. She will scoot and turn herself in circles on the floor and I just know she’s going to get ahold of something she has no business having very soon. I’m NOT ready for this!

This past weekend Maggie also started sitting on her own. She has always wanted to sit upright and would do baby-crunches any time you tried to lean her back - even in her car seat or her swing. This girl wants to see the world and her big brother. She just soaks it all in. Well sitting on her own is definitely a step in the right direction in her opinion.

This week Maggie started eating solid food - just a little rice cereal - but “real” food nonetheless. While it is really quite amazing to watch her gobble food down just like her big brother did, I still find it so sad that she’s growing up so fast. It feels like November was just yesterday and here she is 5 1/2 months old. How did that happen? Her personality is blooming all the time and she’s absolutely the most relaxed, laid back baby I’ve ever met. She seems just happy in her own skin. She is not reaching all the physical milestones as quickly as Jayce did - rolling over, sitting up, ordering us to feed him something other than formula - and I am so incredibly thankful for that. She’s working on rolling over right now and I know that very soon after that comes mobility which I am woefully unprepared for.

Maggie eating:

Jason says she looks like Bobby Hill in the last one. I can definitely see the resemblance. But at the end of each day this is what I get…Perfection.

I have already established that I do not like the David book that Jayce absolutely adores. It’s got  a really ugly little kid who does awful things that I’m worried my child will think are really cool things to do. To make matters even worse, this particular book gave Jayce his very first black eye. I’m sure he’ll have many more in the years to come but try explaining to people at daycare, work, etc. that your child got a black eye from a book. Yeah, he was walking into his room, book held out in front of him. He tripped on his name blocks and fell face forward onto the corner of the book. Sounds very plausible, right? Sadly, that’s exactly what happened and he now has the shiner to show for it.

Between that, the very large scrape on his back where he slid down our textured bedroom wall, and the numerous random bruises on his arms and legs I can only hope there are no calls to CPS in our future.

About a month ago Richard was working on a rainy Saturday morning and I was trying to find something to keep Jayce entertained until naptime. I took him to the Donut store (which he now recognizes every where we go) and on the way home I asked him if he wanted to go to the library. He got so excited and said YES! while practically jumping out of his seat. We had never been to the library before and we had definitely not discussed what the library was all about so I had no idea why he was so happy. Then he says to me “David be quiet in library, Momma”. I misunderstood him and said “Yes, Jayce does have to be quiet in the library” while trying to figure out how he knew to be quiet in the library. I correctly guessed that it had to do with daycare. He then repeated himself - “No, David be quiet in library”. I asked who David was and got the standard “huh?” answer. I told Richard about it and a couple of weeks later he finally remembered to ask the daycare about who David is. Turns out it’s from a book called “David Goes to School”. David started creeping into our lives…

“Sit down, David” 

“Wait our turn, David”

So on Saturday I was at the bookstore and Jayce pointed at a book and told me the boy on the cover was David. That reminded me to go find the David book so I could see what he was talking about. Turns out it’s one of the ugliest books I’ve ever seen in my life. David is a little monster child who is always getting in trouble - there’s a whole series of David books starting with No, David and including David Gets in Trouble. Jayce absolutely loves this book and no matter what page I turn to he can tell me what it says. I’m now positive that there is no accounting for the taste of a two-year-old. I also now have to worry about Jayce trying to emulate little David.

Here’s the David Goes to School book:

The funniest part is that this is the book that Jayce pointed at and told me that David was on the cover:

See the resemblance?

On Friday I went to a conference for work all about medical devices and the FDA. It was touted as a “networking opportunity” which is one of those things I am particularly bad at. You mean you actually want me to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger? Not likely to happen. Remember, I was labeled very early as “does not work or play well with others” and it has been true my entire life. I’m not sure if it’s just one of those self-fullfilling prophecies or what. I just know I have issues and this is one of them.

So as part of the “networking opportunity” everyone was encouraged to dress in business casual. I usually dress very casually - as in I’m doing good if my clothes aren’t completely a wrinkled mess that I pulled off the rocking chair in my room. I figured since I was attending the conference with my boss I’d look the part of the professional QA Manager and actually iron my clothes and wear something other than khaki pants and a t-shirt. Well strangely enough I find that when I dress up for work or to go to one of these things my confidence gets a boost and I actually find myself talking to complete strangers. I felt good about what I was wearing and that made me feel good enough about myself to be able to speak. This just makes me realize that even as a momma I need to pay closer attention to what I wear and how I present myself. It’s so much easier to just throw something on each morning and not give a shit what others think of me but I have to realize that it is affecting me and how I deal with things.

I was just trying to make myself go to sleep after a very long day that was only one part of a very long week when I heard Jayce rustling over the monitor next to my bed. My ears perked up when I heard him speak but I was unable to make out anything he was saying. Then I heard in the smallest toddler voice “play baseball at baseball field?” and I knew all is right with the world.

A month or so ago someone posted a thread on a messageboard I frequent about getting your toddler dressed. In it the question was asked about whether or not your toddler was picky about what he or she wears. I was stunned to read that only a handful of two-year-olds really cared what they wore each day and most of them were girls. And then there’s Jayce who is completely picky about what he wears both to school and to bed. He’ll frequently tell us he doesn’t want to wear something we’ve picked out and pajamas have become a real struggle. Now he sleeps in day clothes or some hybrid of day clothes/pjs because it just wasn’t worth the fight to get him to wear pajamas. It’s one of those pick your battles kind of things. He has certain shirts that he would wear everyday if we let him and some that he just doesn’t like but we have no idea why. He absolutely refuses to wear onesie-type shirts and overalls anymore. He has names for most of his shirts and will frequently tell us which ones he does or doesn’t want to wear that day. Any given morning you’ll hear something like this coming from his room:

“Here are two shirts for you to choose from.” 

“No want cookie monster shirt”

“okay, then you can wear this soccer ball shirt”

“no want soccer ball shirt, want golf shirt”

“You’re golf shirt is dirty. Do you want cookie monster or soccer ball?”

“Nooooooooo” like the world is ending.

“Jayce you can choose one or I will choose for you.”

“My no want soccer ball shirt” in the smallest, whiniest voice he can muster.

“okay, cookie monster it is.” and screaming ensues as the shirt is placed over his head.

While I know that this is all about control I just can’t help but ask myself if this is only the beginning. Is he later going to decide that his backpack needs to match his shoes and belt? Are we raising a future diva?

I have been told since Jayce was born that my children look just like me and all I can think when I hear that is “poor kiddos”. So I recently asked my mom to bring me the one baby photo she has of me (second child syndrome) so I can compare. I see it a little but not as much as I thought I would. So now I feel there is definitely some hope for my beautiful little ones. Now I really want to get one of Richard’s baby pictures to compare but he was the third child and his mom doesn’t even know who’s who in the baby pictures anymore.

So here I am:

Here’s hoping my kids aren’t completely doomed.