Just Ask

Last night, after what was an incredibly long day, which didn’t go to plan at all, and after a tired outburst from me, my husband said something to me.  Actually, he snapped something at me.  He said to me “stop trying to act like a f**king single mother all the time and just ask me to help with some things.”  This was as he was busily setting up a new tv we bought.  A tv we didn’t need, but he decided he wanted.  A tv I didn’t give two sh*ts about.  My annoyance started because he was sitting there playing with the new tv while I bustled around like a mad woman hand washing a huge stack of dishes at 9:00 at night and still had to make lunches for me and Hunter, which is time consuming these days now that I can’t just toss whatever into a container and call it a meal for myself.  I knew it was going to be a late night for me and there would be no relaxing after a long, sort of fun, but tiring day.

The comment about acting like a single mother didn’t get a response from me.  I just turned my back and went back to the dishes.  There were so many things I could say because…let’s face it…probably 6 of the 7 days of the week I actually do feel like a single mother.  Now, let me follow that by saying that when Eddie is around, if I ask him to take Hunter off my hands for awhile or tell him I need something from the grocery store, he will always do it.  I know my days aren’t anything near what a single mother actually goes through.  But my workload and the amount of child care I do vs. the amount he does is significantly higher.  Every night the dinner and bedtime routine are always my thing to do.  I can’t remember the last time my husband gave Hunter a bath.   The last time he put him to bed was when I injured my back in August.  And he only did it because I couldn’t lift Hunter.  He never makes Hunter’s lunch for daycare.  Never puts Hunter’s clothes away…heck…he doesn’t put his own clothes away either!  Weekends lately have been him trying to get things done around the house in preparation for the winter which means less fun time with his son.  Although yesterday we had a full day of family time, which is rare.  But usually it’s me taking Hunter to the playground or the pool so he can be out of his dad’s hair while he tries to get things done.  He’s also deep in the throes of launching his first major project for his company that he just started so on weekends he’s often having to run off for an hour here and there to deal with things.  I know that this time will be only a blip on the radar and, hopefully, forgotten once he’s able to start hiring some employees in the next few months.  He will be able to be more involved.  To attempt to help make up for his busy-ness during the day on weekends, he lets me sleep in and he gets up with Hunter so they can have some alone time together for a bit.  So there’s that.

Anyway, I’m digressing a bit here.  The reason his line got to me and didn’t warrant a response from me was because one thing I have decided is that men truly don’t understand the power of the words “what can I do to help?”  When the wife is clearly stressed out and tired, and actually telling it straight to the husband’s face, why does a husband still have to be asked to help?  Why is there something in their genetic makeup that makes it so they can’t or won’t just simply offer to lend a hand to the person that they love?  Why do they have to see their wife at her wits end and turn it into an argument instead of just simply offering the help?  I know that my husband is not an anomaly and that there are millions of men out there who are exactly the same.  There wouldn’t be articles written about the burden on mothers that the husbands don’t understand or see.  I know this is something that clearly isn’t going to change and I should just learn to accept it and start asking for help.  But for some reason I keep trucking along, trying to be “do it all mom” and end up continuously annoyed with him because he isn’t offering to help me out.  And continuously bickering with him because he doesn’t see where I’m coming from and I don’t seem to want to see where he is coming from.

I definitely get it.  It’s so easy to just ask for help.  But why is it so hard for me to just do it?  “Hey Eddie, can you please swap the laundry over?”  See?  So easy.  So why don’t I just do it?  I know it isn’t fun to always be annoyed with him about this, so why don’t I try to fix it?  Is it my sheer stubbornness?  Is it the fact that we are both Taurus star signs and as stubborn as each other?  Is it because I don’t want to seem like I’m failing as a mother and a wife because I need to ask for help?  Or is it just my wishful thinking that one day he will come around and actually offer to help me out?  The other day I was annoyed that I had forgotten some stuff at the grocery store and he said he could go get it.  So maybe he is already offering to help do some things but I’m just not noticing it or picking up on it because they aren’t exactly the things I want him to be offering to help on?  When I’m stressing about having to do a huge pile of dishes and go to the grocery store and he says he can go to the store for me, does he realize that I actually like going to the store as it’s a break from everything and I would prefer it if he offered to do the dishes instead?  Or should I just take what he offers and be grateful that he has said he will take one thing off of my loaded list?

For my own sanity, and the sake of our marriage, I need to figure this out and I just need to woman up and start asking for help.  This can’t keep going on this way because I might lose my mind and my happiness.  My husband is more than willing to help out.  I just need to simply ask.

Freaking Out!

Freaking the fuck out a little bit here at the moment.  As I posted before, this Saturday marks 6 years since the hubby and I started dating.  He doesn’t know this, but I’m trying to arrange a babysitter so we can go out for dinner and a drink or two as just the two of us.  Every babysitter we’ve ever had has been a family member and we’ve had to travel into the city to make it so they can babysit and then we have to stay at my parent’s place so we don’t interrupt the sleeping child to haul him home.

I’m freaking out because I just sent a text message to a grade 11 girl who has come highly recommended to me by some ladies in my neighbourhood.  It took me all morning to work up the nerve to send the message to her, and now that it’s sent, I’m feeling all kinds of anxiety over it.  It’s an easy gig as I will make sure Hunter is in bed before she arrives and all she has to do is watch tv and hang out with the baby monitor and be able to call me if something happens.  Where I want to go for our date is literally 8 minutes drive from our house so we can be there in a flash if something does happen.  But, even though she’s been rated as highly mature for her age and has babysat so many kids in the neighbourhood, I’m still freaked out about leaving my son alone with her….even though he won’t even know she’s there!  When we started talking about finding a babysitter locally, we decided we wanted to be able to meet with them during the day, ahead of time and see how they interact with Hunter and how our overall feel on them is.  But if I’m wanting to surprise Eddie, then I have to do this under the radar and trust in other moms to help me out.  Now I’m sitting here nervously watching my phone for a text back (I was told to text her since she’s at school and can’t answer the phone) and part of me is hoping that she will text back and say she isn’t available, but also part of me is hoping she will be as this would allow for the first husband/wife only date for us since Hunter was born.

Ack!  So many emotions going crazy right now!!  Sending a simple text has been the scariest thing I’ve done in months.  That’s a little bit sad isn’t it??

 

Not All Weekends Are Good

Back in the pre-baby day it was easy to get into an argument with the husband and just walk away, get some breathing space away from each other and then, after we both cooled down, apologizing and getting on with enjoying the day together. But now, with a needy 1.5 year old around, it’s changed our grumpy with each other days completely.  Instead of it just being an hour where we are annoyed with one another, it becomes an entire day where we are bickering constantly.  I was thinking about it this morning when driving to work and I think the main problem is that only one of us can go and get some breathing space when we argue.  The other one is stuck because we can’t exactly both go and close doors and leave Hunter sitting out on his own wondering why mommy and daddy have locked him out of not one but two rooms.  So because only one of us gets to cool down, the other one of us (usually me) is still boiling over with annoyance because there is no breather.  And the circle of bickering continues.

We don’t have days like this often. We have days where we are momentarily irritated with one another but we rarely go full days where we just can’t get along.  Yesterday was one of those days.  It started at 6:30am and carried on until about 4:00.  Eddie was the lucky one to get the breathers, and at one point he was in the downstairs bathroom, where it’s the only door you can close downstairs, and Hunter stood outside the bathroom door patting it going “where’s dada?  Where’s dada?  Dada.  Dada.  Dada.”  It was the last place I wanted to be, standing on the other side of the door hiding the person I wanted to throat punch at that moment.  But because my sweet little boy wanted his Dad, I had to hang out there and tell him that Dada was just going to the bathroom and would be out soon.  I’m thankful that Eddie was smart enough to recognize he needed to push his own annoyance aside and come out of the bathroom and pretend to be fun and happy for his little boy who so desperately wanted to play with his dad.  We still didn’t speak to one another, but we made nice for the sake of our son.  When I took Hunter for a diaper change Eddie left to go do a few errands.  When he came back I had brought Hunter outside and we were playing in the cold sunshine with some bubbles.  I was still irritable, but Eddie had calmed down.  It was enough for us to remain moderately amicable with each other for the rest of the day.

The craziest part is that the things we bicker about are things that, pre-child days, would be not a big deal. It would be a discussion and then it would be done.  But because we are both tired all the freaking time, and we are both constantly dealing with a toddler who doesn’t stop and we are both dealing with the constantly meltdowns our 18 month old is throwing out because he’s in that fun phase of flipping out the moment he doesn’t get his way, it ends up making mountains out of molehills and the nit picking or bickering starts.  Twice yesterday I pulled him aside and said that we need to stop snapping at each other and that we are a team and need to get through things together despite how tired we are.  He would always agree, but then within 20 minutes one of us would be snapping at the other.

I am thankful that these days don’t happen often and that we both usually get along or else know when to bite our tongue when annoyed with the other and avoid turning it into something worse. I know right now we are in a difficult moment of life with him and his back injury and not being able to help out much and me basically doing 90% of the child care plus working full time, some major changes in eddie’s career soon, dealing with big deficiencies in our new house and the list goes on and on and on.  So there’s a lot of stress around our house and we just need to figure out how to manage it.  But it’s a completely different “ball game” when we have to learn how to manage it while also dealing with a little boy and staying sane.  It is true when they say that having a child really challenges a marriage.  It isn’t even always about the child that is causing the arguments, but usually about learning how to manage our own feelings/moods and not letting everything become too much.

4 more work days to get through then we are off to Hawaii. I just need to keep that in mind.  Four more work days.  Four more work days.  Four more work days.

Best Plans Go Awry

Sometimes weekends just don’t go the way you had planned them to. Especially long weekends.  We had a long weekend this weekend here in Canada and there were all kinds of plans for our family to spend the weekend together.  Afterall, the reason for the long weekend was “Family Day”.  Saturday was my day “off” where I went to a spa and got a massage and then soaked in the outdoor hot pool and had a good, long steam in the steam room.  Followed by reading my book at a café for about an hour before I headed home.  So that was great.

But on Sunday things went downhill. It all started with Hunter waking up at 6am instead of his usual 7:15 on a weekend.  I begrudgingly got up and played with him quietly while I let his dad sleep longer, figuring that on Monday it would be my turn to sleep in while the hubby dealt with the baby.  How wrong I was.  My husband went to the gym and met with his trainer as he usually does on the weekend.  But about an hour after he was there I got a text message (yes…a text message.  Don’t get me started on the argument we had when I said this incident deserved a phone call over a text message) saying that he injured himself at the gym and he was going to be a little while.  So after about 15 minutes of texting and text arguing, he confirmed that he went to the hospital and was getting his back checked out.  Long story short, he fractured his T12 vertebrae.  Greeeeaaaaat.  I immediately went into angry mode that this meant that I would basically have another “child” at home to deal with and essentially become a solo parent until he heals up.  I pushed it aside and carried on grumpily because what other choice do I have other than to deal with it?

So there was that. And then, just this morning, after the monster woke up at 5:30am (for perspective, he usually sleeps until at least 7:00 if he goes to bed at 7:00), I clicked that he’s just a few days away from turning 1.5 years old and that there could very well be a sleep regression for that age.  A quick google search and I had my answer. A big, resounding “YUP”.  And, to top it off, apparently the 18 month sleep regression is one of the hardest ones for parents to get through.  But piecing together the last three days of super early wake ups and only half an hour naps, I can definitely confirm he’s in a sleep regression.  I’m super thrilled about it  ßextreme sarcasm.

I drove to work this morning feeling sorry for myself. Dealing with an injured husband, a sleep regressing child, working full time and maintaining the house on my own made me want to cry.  I was honestly near tears about this.  But then I thought of something else going on in life that really put my issue into perspective.  A friend of mine’s husband was in a car accident and he’s currently in a medically induced coma with a majorly broken body.  My friend has a 2 year old and a baby at home with her.  She is dealing with parenting completely on her own, while also dealing with the intense emotion and stress with her husband in the hospital.  My little blip on our usual life radar is nothing in comparison to the life altering moment that she is handling.  I immediately felt guilty for feeling sorry for myself while she (and he) are going through all of this.  So, as I drove and looked at my sleeping little boy in the backseat, I agreed to myself that I would try my hardest (because I know I’m not perfect) and not complain about my son waking up early or my husband’s injury or my inability to keep up with household chores, and instead I will put that focus into keeping positive for K and G and hoping for things to start to improve for them.

Despite the lack of sleep he’s still a very happy little guy!

Single Parenting It Up

Today is day 1 of 6 being a full time working single mother.

Everyone thinks I’m crazy for agreeing to let my husband go to Hawaii for 6 days with two business partners of his. I have heard from a few people “back in the day fathers/husbands never would go away for so long on a fun vacation without their family” or “why would you let him go away for a trip when you don’t get to do the same yourself?”  A fair amount of questioning and judgement…which is always fun.  But I try to not let the questioning bother me because what works for me in my marriage might not work for others, and vice versa.  He didn’t just come to me and tell me he was going away.  He came to me and said that his business partner brought up the idea and he said he wouldn’t commit until he had a proper discussion with me.  We talked about it, I said I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but if we were able to come up with some agreements on it as well as some stipulations of things I would get to do in return, then he could go ahead with it.  The ability to compromise is often a strong point we have in our relationship.  No, I’m not getting my own hot and sunny vacation because, lets face it, most of my friends can’t just jet off to Hawaii like Eddie’s friends can.  And I’m not about to go off somewhere hot on my own.  But there are other things I have managed to get out of this agreement.

Am I insanely jealous that he gets to go on a hot vacation, with his buddies, with no kid and no cares in the world? Heck yes!!  What I wouldn’t give to have my own kid-free trip.  I would much rather it be with him and leave Hunter with the grandparents, but I would take one with friends too and leave Hunter home with his dad.  Am I jealous that he’s going to come back tanned and well rested?  Ohhhhh yeah.  He comes home late Saturday night, so I will take advantage of that nice, relaxed husband and shove the kid into his hands to deal with for a good chunk of the day.

The thing is. If our parenting of Hunter was as uneven as it was before I came back to work or even in the first few months of me being at work, I would have said “F*** NO!” to him requesting to go away.  I’ll be honest, I had a lot of frustration for some time about how I was doing absolutely everything with Hunter and he basically came home from work and only partially parented.  I won’t get into it as they were frustrating times and it will just annoy me thinking about it again.  But things have massively improved.  Sure, there are days where I want more from him.  There are days where my expectations are much higher.  There are days where I want to punch him in the face because he’s not reading my mind and offering to help me when I’m at breaking point but keeping it all inside.  But that’s normal in marriage + raising a child.  But things are significantly better than before, and they keep slowly improving.  He’s now helping pack lunches for me and Hunter.  He’s doing dishes without being asked and it’s not even a one off thing.  He’s helping (for the most part) to keep the house tidy.  It’s just better in general.  Does the fact that he’s more hands on with household and parenting duties mean he deserves a trip away?  No.  But it makes it easier for me to agree for him to go away.  I know that every time I say that I want to do something that would involve me being away for an evening or a full day, he never even blinks an eye.  He straight away encourages me to do it.  And I know, if the time ever comes, that I say I want to go away with some girlfriends to wine country, or something, he would be all over it and tell me to go and have fun.  So I have to give a little to eventually take a little.  Lots of people won’t get it, but, as I wrote before, it’s our marriage and if we are happy with the way we are doing things then that’s all that matters right?

SO, all that being said, I’m now at work, after dropping him off at daycare now and trying to figure out how I will get groceries before getting Hunter from daycare, then doing the 50 minute commute home and getting through our evening routine and getting him to bed. To top it all off, I also have a gross cold right now which makes things even more “amazing”.  But once Hunter is in bed at 7:00 that’s lots of evening left for me to put something super girly on TV, eat some dinner, relax, maybe have a hot bubble bath and then go to bed at a decent time and maybe even let the puppy sleep on the bed with me!  Sometimes time apart can actually strengthen a marriage!  Or maybe it will just make me desperate to have him home again that I will be begging him to return!  Either way, I’m looking at it all positively and am looking forward to seeing how this week goes!  I know I have a light at the end of the tunnel with dinner and a big glass of wine with a couple other mom friends of mine on Friday while my parents babysit to give me a breather.  Something tells me that after this week I am going to have even more praise than before for all the single full time working moms!!

 

Last night something unusual happened. It was so unusual I felt the need to post it in a funny mom’s facebook group that I belong to so other women out there could be shocked by what happened.  So unusual that about 30 of those women commented on the post and 60+ “liked” it.  So what is it that happened you say?  WELL, not only did my husband do one nice thing for me, but he did TWO nice things for me!!!  Say whaaaaaaat?

The first thing surrounded my need to watch the season premier of the TV show Nashville. It’s the one and only TV show I actually watch religiously.  We haven’t had cable TV in over a year.  We cancelled it to see if we could survive without it and just watch Netflix if we felt the need to watch something.  It worked.  We had no problem at all filling our time without TV or else with binge watching series on Netflix.  My husband did more of the latter.  When I needed to watch Nashville I streamed it off of a website I found.  But when we moved into our new home we were given a great TV and internet package for free for the first year so we checked it out and decided to sign ourselves up again.  But, part of the reason the package was so good was because it didn’t include all of the “smut” TV channels that I love (TLC, Slice, HGTV, W Network, etc) so this meant that I could not watch Nashville last night.  So I was happily sitting on the couch, eating popcorn and playing on my ipad right before Nashville was due to come on when the husband came over, picked up the remote and turned the TV on and started flipping it to the W Network channel.  I told him he’s wasting his time, that it isn’t part of our package, but he looked at me smugly and suddenly the channel was blaring away!  Turns out he paid attention to how badly I wanted to watch the episode so he secretly called our cable provider and had them add the channel as a surprise for me!  I might have clapped and flapped my hands with excitement when I discovered I know had two long hours of Nashville ahead of me to watch and it totally warranted the previous popping of popcorn!

The second crazy thing was, while I was flat on the couch indulging in some country goodness, I heard the dishwasher be opened and then dishes clanking around. At first I thought that he was just getting something out of it, but upon further side eyeing, I realized he was emptying it and loading the dirty dishes from dinner in!  This might seem like nothing to a majority of you….but in my household this NEVER EVER EVER EVER happens.  I’m talking once or twice a year phenomenon.  I was shocked he even knew where to put the dishes since he hasn’t handled any of them since moving into the new house.  I just quietly tucked myself back down into the couch and let him carry on.  I didn’t want to ruin the spectacle that was going on in there.  That miracle was somewhat short lived as, once my show ended, I went to turn the lights off in the kitchen and I discovered that he only put about 40% of the dishes away and stacked the rest on the kitchen island.  Apparently it was too difficult to take another five steps and put the plates and bowls into the cupboard and then a half step for the cups and another two steps for the cutlery.  I just laughed at this because it made me wonder what he would actually do with that stuff if I wasn’t around.  Would he put it away?  Would he leave it there until he needed it again?  Did he put it there thinking “Andrea can deal with this later”?  It’s baffling to me the thought process behind it.  It’s like he wanted the end goal of loading the dirty dishes but wasn’t prepared for what had to be done in order to make it so those dishes could be loaded.  I wanted to say something to him about it and about how I already have enough to do every day that I don’t need to finish something he started and couldn’t be bothered completing.  But then I thought about the age old advice of “pick your battles” and decided to just let it go.

Men work in weird ways. I will never pretend to understand a single thing about them.  But I know that if I had created any kind of a stir about the half completed job it would deter him from doing it again because he thinks “why bother?  She’s just going to rag on me anyway.”  Or it will end up like the other night when I told him, for the sixth time, to stop tossing the matches that he uses to light the big candle we have into the bottom of the sink.  That after he runs it under water, he can toss it into the garbage, which, ironically, is two steps away from the sink.  He just shrugged it off so I mentioned that I’ve now asked him to not do this 6 times and it’s starting to annoy me that I keep having to deal with it.  He then made some smart ass remark about how there’s things I do that annoy him and he tells me not to do but I still do it and I don’t hear him talking about it repeatedly.  So I asked for an example.  He just looked at me and said “I’m not falling into that discussion.  It won’t be pretty.”  Which, to me means that he has absolutely no examples because if he asks me to not do something, I simply don’t do it anymore!  Maybe there are things I do that annoy him that he hasn’t said anything about, but I can’t fix those unless I know about them.  But, I digressed a little here.  Basically I was trying to avoid the risk of chasing him off from ever doing nice things without being asked again.

All of this got me thinking. The fact that I felt the need to post a witty comment in a mom’s facebook page about how he either did something wrong or he’s going to ask for something, because he never does things like the two above items.  The fact that it was so shocking that he did it, I felt the need to share with other people who would be like “whaaaat??” about it.  It makes me laugh because the two things he did, are things I do on a daily basis.  Sometimes multiple times a day.  That dishwasher is emptied and loaded by me daily.  Almost daily I think of things that he would like that could be a nice surprise.  Yet…do you think that he goes and raves to friends about how amazing it is that I do these things?  Nope.  It’s so much of the norm in our house that these jobs are, as my sister would say, “pink jobs” so they are just something I do.  Of course I ask for help often and sometimes get it.  But it’s just something that is part of my routine and it’s kind of comical that it’s so celebrated and acknowledged when the man of the house does a “pink job”.  If it isn’t something that us women are celebrating, then it’s something we are questioning.  We immediately wonder if he did something wrong so he’s trying to make himself seem awesome so he doesn’t get in trouble.  OR he’s after something that he knows that by doing nice things for his wife, she will be more likely to say yes.  It’s hilarious that we don’t believe that a husband is capable of doing something out of the ordinary without speculating that something isn’t right.  I don’t think he’s done anything wrong, and he’s already been given approval from me to go to Hawaii at the end of this month with two business partners of his, so it can’t be him looking for me to approve something bigger than a frigging trip to Hawaii.  I’ve already told him what gifts I will require because I approved this trip and what day at the spa I’m booking myself once he is back.  Soooo what could it be?

I can think about this for ages, but I think what it truly came down to was, for the TV channel, he knew how badly I wanted to watch it and wanted me to stop whining that I couldn’t watch it. And for the dishes, it’s the novelty of having a big, shiny, brand new kitchen and he’s enjoying using it.  The novelty will wear off soon I’m sure!  It’s either two of those things….or the world is ending and he knows it but I don’t.  It’s the only logical thought I can come up with!

 

Since I have become more and more confident that I don’t want to have a second baby, I find I live in a constant fear of getting accidentally pregnant and ending up in a situation I don’t want to be in. I run the thought through my head of “how would I react if I took a test and it came up positive?”  Would I be happy?  Upset?  Angry?  Would I call Eddie in tears?

I think the latter is what would happen. Two nights ago I lay in bed thinking about it and I realized how strongly I feel about not wanting my life to change from what it is now.  I’m already tired working full time and raising my son and keeping the household only moderately clean.  I’m not even fitting exercise in right now.  I’m barely taking care of myself besides making decent eating choices.  I know this is the reality for a lot of working mothers, but I couldn’t imagine already feeling this way and then adding a newborn to the mix.  Or even pregnancy to the mix.  Millions of women, every day, have multiple kids and they manage to survive despite the exhaustion, so I try to keep this in mind when I’m grappling with the life decision of one and done or a sibling for our little monster.  I was reading something on one of my mom’s facebook groups and people were talking about age gaps in their two kids.  I would say about 80% of the comments back on the post people were saying that their first child was 3 or 4 by the time they had a second child.  They were saying it was the ideal age gap as at that age the oldest is more self-sufficient (and hopefully toilet trained) and controllable.  I would be ok with having the discussion with my husband about the possibility of then…but in hopes that he will be enjoying being diaper and small child free and not be interested anymore.

I digressed a little here. Back to the whole not wanting to be pregnant right now thing.  The hardest part about not wanting to get pregnant is that I can’t take birth control.  I get migraines from the increase in estrogen or hormones in my body.  I’m not talking something that can just be fixed by taking a Tylenol.  I’m talking full on, intense, vomiting, insane pain, dark room only, migraines.  I have medication to take when one comes on, but the last time one happened the medication didn’t work.  So, given that the pill or even an IUD mess around with hormones and estrogen, they aren’t an option for me.  My doctor, about a year ago, said I should try the mini pill as it doesn’t have the same estrogen increasing meds in it.  But I honestly am too scared to even try it.  I don’t want to go through back to back debilitating migraines in order to see if it works.  So, until I can get over that deep seeded fear, birth control responsibility falls on my husband.  He’s fine with that and we are always safe (when we actually do have the energy to get busy) which is great.  But something about it always leaves me fearful that we weren’t safe enough.  That something could have slipped by the goalie.  I likely wouldn’t have this fear if it had been a bit harder to get pregnant the first time.  But since that didn’t take much effort, the fear is stronger (not trying to be insensitive to my readers who have fertility challenges).  There is also the even bigger fear that if we do get pregnant, that we could end up with two babies and not just one more.  I’m a twin and, while they say it skips a generation, me and my sister came out of nowhere.  No twin genetics in our family.  So who’s to say that it would skip over me and I will be safe from conceiving twins?  Since having Hunter and my lady times returning I have had three times where I’ve ended up at the store purchasing pregnancy tests.  All usually for different reasons.  One time it was because I was queasy for a few days.  Another time it was because I had weird cramping going on.  The most recent time was because my boobs were aching (which was the first indicator that I was pregnant the first time).  All these times the tests came back strongly negative, which always caused a major feeling of relief.  But it goes to show how paranoid I am.  What could be just usual lady times symptoms, I’m now blowing out of proportion and going “oh my god I must be pregnant!!”  The most recent one I bought a two pack of tests and both came back negative.  I took each test two days apart, but because I still have the weird feeling in the boobs, I’m still paranoid…despite both tests having a very strong “not pregnant” pink line on them.  I’m not going to go out and buy another $20 box of tests because that’s just ridiculous, but it’s taking every fibre of my being to not want to.  I just need to wait it out and see if this is all connected to my lady times coming up.

Prior to deciding to start trying for a baby, I never worried like this. Which is kind of ironic because we were using the same level of birth control and we weren’t even wanting a baby yet.  Yet I didn’t worry constantly.  Maybe it’s because now I’ve experienced parenthood and I’m more firm in what I want so that makes me extra cautious, whereas back then I figured that if we got pregnant then oh well, we wanted kids in the future anyway?

Now, don’t get me wrong. If an unexpected baby does come our way, that kid would be loved just as much as our planned baby.  After the intial shock of having to adjust and accept it, I’m sure there would be some element of excitement.  I’m just not ready for that right now and really, truly want to enjoy life as it is.  Giving our full selves to our little boy.  Sleeping through the night.  Traveling easily with one kid.  Having our independence still.  Now I just need my aunt flow to show her face so all my nerves can be calmed!

Not going to lie….I was actually looking forward to coming to work today. Usually I’m all about the weekend and hate Mondays.  Don’t get me wrong, I still dislike Mondays, but after yesterday I was actually happy to leave the house this morning.

Yesterday I wanted to find the receipt and find out how I can return my son for a full refund. Maybe that’s mean to say, but he seriously was a piece of work yesterday.  For the entire.freaking.day.  It all started about an hour after he woke up.  So much fussing.  He would go from happily cruising along and playing to suddenly flinging himself on the floor sobbing.  If I went out of view of him, even if his dad was still in the room, he would come running after me, crying his little face off, little hands stretched up towards me to pick him up.  The moment I picked him up he would stop crying and go back to chattering away.  It became the routine for me to pick him up, get him to stop crying, walk back to the living room, sit down with him on my lap and then eventually he would slide off my lap and go play with some toys until the next mini meltdown.  He had to have had at least 20 meltdowns during the day.  I’m clearly his preferred person when he’s upset.  Eddie would try to pick him up and give me a break but Hunter would fling himself forward in his arms while his hands grasped air as he tried to reach for me with tears streaming down his face.  So back into my arms he would go.  When he went down for his nap I was so happy.  But it didn’t mean I got to sit around and do nothing.  We move into our brand new house in two weeks and packing up the kitchen took priority.  So I busted my ass doing the dishes and then got about 80% of the kitchen packed before Hunter woke up after only an hour nap.  This kid is down to one nap a day now, and for most kids this usually means a longer nap, but for him, his nap has gotten even shorter.  It’s driving me and the daycare nuts!  Once he was awake I attempted to feed him for the millionth time that day but he kept throwing everything onto the floor.  He barely ate a thing yesterday.  I managed to buy myself some sanity time by packing him into his rain suit and rain boots and took him outside so he could puddle stomp and I could just tune out and follow him around.  It was cold and rainy.  It wasn’t fun…for me at least.  After about an hour I noticed that his little hands were starting to get pretty red from being put in puddles so I pulled the plug and brought him back inside.  The meltdowns started right back up again.  I made him some dinner, he threw it on the floor.  I was near tears at this point because I was so exhausted and I just needed to NOT hear his crying for a little bit.  Eddie wasn’t much help for a good chunk of the day because he was a machine getting boxes packed and moved into the garage, but when he saw me near my breaking point he scooped Hunter up and hauled his little sobbing body upstairs to his room where they closed the door and played and gave me a much needed break.  I sat on the couch for 20 minutes and got myself together, looked at Instagram on my phone for a bit and mentally prepared for everything that still needed to be done that evening.  When it came close to bath time I got myself up, feeling much better, and handled the rest of the evening with the little monster.  I had spent a good chunk of the day irritable with Eddie, for no particular reason, but after he recognized that I needed the break and the fact that I didn’t have to ask, I was able to brush aside all the “I want to strangle my husband” feelings and instead appreciate him…for a little bit at least.

I don’t know if the little monster wasn’t feeling well or what yesterday, but he definitely tested every level of patience I have. It was a tough day.  I struggled.  I am lucky that these kinds of days are only few and far between and that we have a very happy little boy usually, but when we do have those days I definitely feel for parents who have challenging babies and toddlers.  But yesterday was a definite great example of natural birth control.  I couldn’t help but think of how difficult it would be if I had that  kind of day with a young toddler and also dealing with a small baby too.  Hats off to you moms of babies and toddlers.  I don’t know how you do it!

We did have some fun on Saturday though. We took Hunter to Whistler where he got to play in the snow for the first time ever!  He wasn’t so sure what to think of it at first but after some coaxing and help from his Dad, he happily set off to walk awkwardly everywhere in his new snowsuit!

I have no idea why wordpress has turned all of my pictures around.  I’m computer challenged and can’t figure out how to adjust it back to the right way.

Little monster being “helpful” while I try to pack up a bunch of his closet into boxes.  He found the legos that we had hidden because he’s still too young for them.

You Can’t Pick Them…What A Shame

I truly wish you could choose your inlaws. You get to choose who you want to marry, why can’t you choose the family you’re marrying into?  Seriously!

When I first met Eddie and we started to talk about our families, he always said he isn’t super close with his parents as they are very different from him and he feels like they don’t approve of a lot of the ways he chooses to live life. I didn’t fully grasp his words until the first time I met them.  It was only a quick half hour meet and greet at their house, but I sat there quietly on the couch and listened to his Mom judging the sh** out of women and men who had chosen to do the early start for the marathon that had taken place that morning in their town.  “What is the point of doing the race if you can’t do it in the allocated amount of time and instead are out on the course for 6 hours because you aren’t capable of finishing under the 5 hour cut off time.” Is what she said.  I sat there stunned that she, a woman with her own battle to lose some weight and recover from a bad knee, couldn’t see why people would do whatever they could in order to conquer something challenging in their lives.  Something they never thought they would be able to do before.  Just because a woman is 250 pounds and doing the race, it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t already lost a ton of weight and this race was the goal she kept in mind during her entire weight loss.  But his mom sat there and judged these people.  This was my first warning sign.  It wasn’t long before they started judging their own son right to his face.  “Edward’s resume is stacked with lies just to get the job he isn’t even qualified for.  He’ll never get it.”  3 years since that comment and he has done absolutely everything they doubted him on…and then some.  “Edward you’re getting fat.  Maybe you should focus more on losing weight than your career.”  There are just so many things they have judged him on which only has driven him further and further away from them.  But he still makes the effort to keep them involved in his life.  He tries hard, but when he decides to stop for a bit to see if they will make contact with him and share the effort of the communication, he will receive a passive aggressive text from his dad saying “mother wonders why she never hears from you anymore.”  Well how about “mother” picks up her damn phone and calls or texts him for once??

This weekend took the cake though. Every year our entire extended family goes to a new city and takes part in a running race there.  Every year we invite his parents to join us at the big family dinner the evening after the race.  Every year I question whether they truly want to be there or if they are coming out of obligation because we invited them.  They come and sit there and don’t make any effort with my family, despite everyone being super friendly to them.  My Dad makes effort to talk to them and they blow him off.  I don’t know why.  I will never understand.  During dinner this time, after we were all done eating, his dad leans over to Eddie and says “Edward, you need to cut back on the amount of carbs you eat.  It’s not good for you.”  All because Eddie and I shared a spinach dip with bread for the dipping as an appetizer.  A rare carb indulgence for us.  Eddie just recently lost 30 pounds in 2.5 months all because he cut down carbs and started portion controlling and working out with a trainer.  Apparently those 30 pounds were not enough for his father and instead of praising him on it he felt the need to belittle it and attack him for one meal.  ONE MEAL!!!  It blew my mind when I heard that he said this to him.  Every time Eddie sees them it’s an opportunity for them to attack his weight or appearance somehow.  Eddie has a younger brother who they can’t say enough good things about.  Meanwhile this brother is a lifer in university.  He’s gone back to live with them in their hoarding style house.  He never bathes.  He doesn’t make any effort with Eddie, despite Eddie’s attempts with him.  He has no job.  He has major mental illness that he doesn’t get help for.  He has no drive or passion for anything.  But he is their pride and joy.  Eddie is almost like the son they never wanted but are stuck with.  The only positive to come from this is that it has reinforced Eddie’s drive in life to never be like them.  To work hard at his career, despite them disagreeing with it.  To be the parent that they never were to him.  But the craziest part about it all is that he wants to make a lot of money and his intention with some of that money is to buy his parents a home and assist them in opening up a small cafe (his mom loves baking) if they are interested in it.  I don’t know if this is to give his parents a big F you by proving that he has amounted to be something they said he wouldn’t or what.  But whenever he says what he wants to do I just quietly support it even though I don’t understand it.

I wasn’t going to get started on it, but it feels good to be writing about this and letting it all out so I will say this too. I have no idea what they think the role of being a grandparent is.  They have been around Hunter four times since he was born.  Four times in 14 months.  I get that they live in a different city and visits aren’t aplenty, but there is technology out there to make it so that he sees their faces more often.  He facetimes my mom just about every second day.  He just watches her as she makes faces at him or sings songs to him.  He can’t talk to her.  But weeks can go by before he sees her in real life and there is never any hesitation from him to be with her because he knows her still from those phone conversations.  But this weekend Eddie’s parents commented about how Hunter doesn’t really know them because he isn’t around them that often.  Ok…fair enough comment to make….so why not work on that while he’s in their town?  It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me on how you make a relationship work.  We went for coffee with them on the Saturday.  Hunter crawled around the quiet cafe and played with toys on the floor.  His dad stayed sitting at the table talking about pretentious things and his mom spent most of her time talking to the woman who owns the cafe.  All the while Hunter is hanging out behind her.  All it would have taken was one of them playing with his truck with him for 5 minutes to instill the memory in his brain and create that connection.  Neither of them asked to hold him.  Neither of them asked if they could feed him his snack.  Nothing.  It was like he was barely there.  On Sunday at the dinner they made the comment again about how he doesn’t really know them.  Once dinner was over Hunter was walking (with help) everywhere in a quiet corner of the restaurant with my sister.  They were playing and climbing on things and having a great time.  My mom eventually took over with hanging out and walking Hunter around.  Eddie’s parents?  They ate their dinner, said their a-hole comments to Eddie, didn’t make any effort with anyone else, and then they left.  They left without saying goodbye to me.  They left without even trying to hang out with Hunter.  This is after I asked his dad if he wanted to hold him, he begrudgingly said ok to it, and then Hunter started crying the moment he was in his arms.  Hunter loves people and will get held by almost everyone.  Clearly he was not a fan of the person he doesn’t even know is his grandfather.  But why the heck did they not get off of their asses and spend time with him?  Did they just sit there and judge/be envious of his relationship with his Aunt and his other grandparent and not realize that those relationships were formed by effort?  Or do they think that they only happened just because they happen to live closer to him?  Blows my mind.  We went to briefly see them before we headed back home and Hunter was sort of ok with his grandma holding him, but the moment his grandpa went to hold him he started crying and reaching back for his daddy.  Meanwhile Eddie’s douchebag brother made comments about Hunter being apprehensive about them all.  Well no shit Sherlock!  Wouldn’t you be apprehensive too if someone you don’t know was in your face?  And then they make comments about how, next year when we come for the run, they can watch Hunter while we race.  Uhm….no?  Not until you can show that you’re making more of an effort to know him.  And not until I know that you can take care of him and follow the rules I give you.  Not march to the beat of your own drum.

Don’t even get me started on his dad referring to last Christmas as being a “huge disaster”. This was the Christmas where we invited them to join our family tradition with my side of the family.  Where we bought them nice gifts.  We cooked them a nice breakfast and an even more amazing, huge turkey dinner.  What did they do?  Snuck out of my parent’s apartment right after dinner was over.  Didn’t thank my dad for hosting them.  Barely said goodbye to my mom.  We are racking our brains to figure out why the heck they think it was a huge disaster.  What did we miss from the amazing day that they saw?  I swear the day is going to come where his parents are going to say something that annoys or offends me and my response will be to gather up my son and walk out the door.  I don’t have to put up with shit like that.  Calling an event put on by my family a “huge disaster” when it wasn’t?  Not showing any fucking (sorry for the language.  I’m pissed about this) appreciation for the fact that we allowed them to join in our celebration?  I hold the power to leave and show you that shit like that won’t be tolerated.

Two people have never gotten on my nerves or made me as angry as my husband’s parents. But I have no choice but to tolerate them as long as he does.

Men….sheesh

Sometimes I’m absolutely convinced that all my husband hears is muffled noise when I speak.  Either that or he doesn’t even hear me speak!  I will often say something to him and then sit and wait for a response and it never comes.  I usually have to follow it up with a “Hello?” to get his attention.  He could be watching tv, looking at his phone, staring off into space.  It doesn’t matter.  He just clearly does.not.hear.  I have asked him quite a few times if he even registers that I’m speaking to him when it’s just the two of us in the room and he hears my voice.  He now says “I thought you were talking to the dog!”  Yes…because I have full on conversations with the dog on a daily basis.  Riiiiiight.  It’s such a man thing to do.  When he speaks to me, I hear it and I respond to it.  It’s as simple as that.  Every now and then if he’s hollering my name from a different room I will pretend I don’t hear him so it forces him to come to me instead of yelling across the house.  But that’s all strategy…not because I don’t hear him.  But seriously, how do men so easily block out their significant others??

With all the insanity of renovations going on in our townhouse right now, once the baby is in bed we are just go-go-go-go with getting as much done in the evening as possible.  The last four nights I haven’t gone to bed until 11:30 and then am up again for the day at 5:30.  It sucks, but it is what it is.  With all the craziness going on, my reoccurring back issue has started to flare up again and I feel I’m just a few days away from having a major back spasm.  I’m doing all the precautionary things with it like rolling on a baseball to loosen it up, rubbing anti-inflammatory on the spot, sleeping with a pillow between my knees, etc.  So I’m doing a good job preventing it from coming.  But it doesn’t mean that I’m not in pain while I’m doing all the evening work that needs to be done.  Multiple times last night I cried out in pain as my back seized up here and there.  A few of the times it was when Eddie was in the same room as me.  Typically, when someone cries out in pain, a normal person would say “are you ok?”  Eddie….he just kept doing what he was doing and it didn’t even register with him that I had made a sound.  I asked him if he ever hears me when I make in pain noises, like the other day when I slammed my finger in a drawer and was in the kitchen yelling “F***. F***. SH**.  SH**” and he didn’t even react despite being about 10 metres away.  His answer?  A straight up “Nope!”  What the heck dude???  What if I accidentally had stabbed myself and was lying on the ground bleeding out and dying??  Would he hear it then??  Seriously!!  I think he has a “block the wife out unless I want to hear her” filter in his brain.  Last night I had to give him a mini lecture on how when he sees that I’m in pain, the right thing to do is offer to help.  Ask if I need anything.  Like I would do.  He goes “I don’t really think like that.  Not in the way you do at least.”  I reminded him that it should be a regular human reaction.  See someone hurt.  Offer help.  It’s truly that simple.  He is an a-hole when it comes to his job, because he has to be, but not usually in most areas of regular life.  So he really should be able to figure out common kindness!  So when he asked me what I want him to say, I gave him a few options for learning purposes.  He then repeated them all and then asked “is there anything I can do to help?”  I bitterly said “NO!! I don’t need your help.” simply because I was annoyed I had to tell him he needed to offer help and that it didn’t just come naturally.  I’m so stubborn!  Why should I have to tell him these things?  I thought it’s just something that we all come by honestly and don’t want to see a loved one stressed or hurt.  But clearly I’m over estimating the male race.  Time to lower my expectations?