Writing

So, I'll all caught up in the Rachel Hollis last 90 days thing that all consultants of a certain MLM skincare company are crazed about (is everyone else friends with at least 20 of these consultants on FB, or is it just me?).  Anyway, we have been going through a lot of changes in our house, which I will put in another post (Scattered Excerpts, remember? No linear posting here) and I've also been trying to be more deliberate in focusing on goals overall recently because I am ONTHEBRINK of 40 and mid-life crisis, I think.  Anyway, back to writing.


I love writing.  I have loved reading and writing since I was a kid. I belonged to a writing group in high school, where we wrote fiction and met before school to critique each other's stories. I don't think I'm very good at fiction, but still love to write.  After college, I haven't written much; the entries on this blog are pretty much the extent of my writing.


So, a goal I have had is to write more.  I'd love to be published someday (but AHHH, running out of time, I'm so old!! mid-life crisis!) but that is SO FAR outside m comfort zone, so I'm exploring what a goal of writing more/trying to get published looks like, which led me to my question -


Why write? 


I think Hollis touches on this in Girl Wash Your Face - she states that she writes for her, and no one else.  But, do you really write for yourself, and no one else, if you are putting it on the internet?  Why not write in a word doc on your laptop?


My niece has a form of dyslexia, and my sister-in-law shared an article about the science of reading that I found fascinating; so much so that I followed up with listening to the radio program the article arose from, and listened to that as well - with two newly minted kindergarteners, how reading was taught wasn't something I had thought, and hearing how it can  be taught so wrong was concerning.*  One of the takeaways I got from the article was how NEW written language is - it's only be around for a short period of time, relatively speaking, compared to spoken language. It was designed as a way to communicate with others.


Which brings me back to our desire to litter the interwebs with blog posts.  Writing is not just writing in a vacuum, it is a form of communication. The innate purpose of writing is to communicate something to others.  It goes against our very purpose of developing written language to write for ourselves only.  So, like others, I will send my writings out into the internet, and continue to write for myself, but also because I need to communicate in written form.


Next time - more about goals and how I live in fear.  No really.


*After this article, I panicked that our elementary school may be ignoring phonics and phenomes and frantically reviewed the curriculum.  They aren't.  Whew.  Being a parent is hard.

Disorder

This post is a departure for posts of late.  My three littles are great.  Love them to pieces.  Sad over how fast they are growing up.  Feel like a huge failure when they beg to stay home instead of go to daycare.*




The hubs and I had our first marriage counseling session yesterday.  I am not going to go into detail about what led us to counseling, as really, that is unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  Both the hubs and I went to our session expressing that we wanted to work through things and make our marriage work.


During counseling, the counselor asked us what had led us to counseling.  The Hubs listed his concerns.  I listed off my concerns. 


Mine was a long list. 


I was relieved after the first session was over.  I realized I had been really nervous about disgorging all of the issues I saw in our relationship, primarily stemming from the Hubs' choices.  I was nervous about how the Hubs would react, but he mostly nodded in affirmation when I spoke.  Before speaking to the counselor, I had not told anyone else about the things I saw as issues.  I am a very private person, and I do not want to bad-mouth my husband to anyone, lest they unfairly judge him in my venting.  I also do not want people to know about conflict in my marriage.


After our session, my mind is muddled.  Listing everything to another person, finally, has opened my eyes a bit.  As we have started this process, I was terrified of the potential end result.  Scared to be alone, but mostly scared to have to share custody of my kids should we split up.  I love those three little beings so much and I don't want them to grow up in an unhappy home if it would come to that, but I also selfishly want to be their parent day in and day out, not part-time.


However, as I list all the things, note the ways in which the Hubs has breached my trust in the past, I can't help but think that things will never change. Is this the integral part of who he is? Although I felt initially that I was the one fighting to save our marriage and our family, my stance has now changed somewhat.  What sacrifices to my own well-being and self-worth am I willing to make for our family if the Hubs doesn't change his behavior?


I do not deny my contribution to our need for counseling, but my list of all the things has also made me feel, to some extent, that I have initially shouldered too much of the "blame" and I am trying to determine how to communicate that I am not happy with this.


Our counselor communicated during our first session that it normally takes 3-6 months for couples to find the "sweet spot" in marriage counseling, and asked us to commit to that timeframe, which we have done, but oh my, I am not a fan of the shaky footing we are on now.




*I should clarify this is by no means a reflection on our daycare - they love it there.  They are just feeling disconnected from mom and dad.  We never seem to have enough hours in the day.

2016 Goals check in

At work, we have the option of doing a mid-year checkin.  I was reading back through my posts and realized I put 2016 goals together, so I thought I'd record my progress and see if I can re-commit myself to some of these:

Personal

• Get on a regular haircut schedule again (It's been 5 months since I had a haircut, and it looks like it). - FAIL.  I had a haircut in April, but haven't had one since.  I need to call and schedule.
• Get back to being able to run 2 miles nonstop by the end of summer (this is going to be tough unless Nugget starts sleeping more, but a girl can dream). Nope. I ran/walked two and a half miles with the Hubs one night, but I'm going to aim for work out 2-3 times a week instead.
• Finish SB and BW's "baby" blankets (luckily I made them toddler/kid size from the start; I'm cheating a bit here as I just finished SB's; I have a few more hours for BW's). Still have some work to do on BW's, but I made some significant progress last weekend,  Probably have 4 hours or so to go.
• Choose and start "baby" kid blanket for Nugget. I may start looking for "high school graduation blanket" ideas

Work

• Get a promotion (I'm really nervous about this one; I don't have enough confidence in myself). No promotion, but did get a nice raise in March.  Still need to take action on this one.

Household

• Declutter and organize master closet See my last post - this is probably never going to happen.
• Redecorate SB and BW's room to a "big girl room" (I'm super excited about this one, and have even opened my Pinterest app again to explore color ideas. In progress; need to paint and rearrange some shelving. 
• Make our office an office instead of a storage room The office was mostly an office, then we decided to make it a play room so the toys stopped over-running our living room.  So, now I need to paint and get the final "office-y" stuff out of it.

Financial

• Finish paying off medical bills (still some lingering from Nugget's birth and subsequent illnesses) DONE!
• Increase 401(k) contributions 1% over yearly scheduled increase DONE!
• Commit to plan to pay off credit card debt and make substantial dent in credit card debt (this one weighs huge on my mind.  We have more than I'm comfortable with due to the Hubs' stint of unemployment in 2014; the Hubs and I are still working on how to communicate financially after five years of marriage - I think this is still one of the areas that is a work in progress for us, and may be for some time. Still needs to work.  Hubs lost his job after I made these goals and that significantly hindered my ability to make progress on this one.

So, not too much progress, but honestly, I had forgotten about these existence of these goals.  I need to print them out and hang them where they are visible and start knocking them out.

On summer...

I started to type this post long ago, but only made it as far as the title, and now it is September.  Which seems fitting, as that is how our summer went.  it was there for a moment, then it was gone. 

I feel like this summer we finally broke the surface of our drowning in littles and took some big gulps of air.  We still flounder and drop below the surface once in a while, but we're now treading water instead of drowning.  We've found a babysitter we trust as another option besides my mother who we trust to feed and put to bed all three kiddos on her own. We've gotten some (very brief!) time away.  Life is still chaotic and messy and I'm forever behind on projects (my closet will just always be a disaster, I'm afraid) but it feels more manageable.

So, I failed miserably at getting my kids signed up for any "summer activities."  Since I'm a procrastinator, literally everything was full by the time I started trying to register them.  Then I had an "aha" moment.  My kids are in a wonderful daycare center where they get to play outside all day and learn through play, and my work schedule meant any activities would be in the evenings or on weekends.  The activities I was looking at registering (swimming lessons, gymnastics, dance, sports sampler) were all indoors.  Why, for the life of me, would I put my kids indoors in the middle of our relatively short Midwest summer?  So, I viewed my procrastination failure as a blessing in disguise and instead focused on getting outdoors for walks, bike rides, and the playground.  We set up our tiny pool and took full advantage of the neighbor's quick-set pool, ran through sprinklers, drank out of the hose, and enjoyed summer.

And we blinked, and summer was over.   I sent my kids to daycare today in pants and sweatshirts.  Sure, it's getting up to 65 today, but the morning was chilly.  Which I love - I love this time of year, with crisp mornings followed by warm, sunny days.  But it means we are getting closer to the tipping point - the time when my kiddos will be closer to four than three, and closer to two than one.  How is that possible already?  SB and BW have moved to the next preschool room (already?) They just moved from the toddler room a few months ago, and Nugget moved to the toddler room.  She's still bald except for her mullet-in-training in the back, so she still looks like a baby, at least.

Breathing it in

We just recently returned from our week-long vacation, which I'll hopefully squeeze a post in about in the future.  Yesterday was the first day back at daycare for our three little girls, and it was a bit tough on all of them, after having mommy and daddy around 24/7 for 10 days.  Nugget especially had a difficult time transitioning back - after daycare pickup she just wanted to cuddle and snuggle with mama.  She went down for bedtime okay, but then woke around 11 pm and did.not. want to go back to sleep in her crib.  So I sat with her in the chair in her room, and snuggled and just breathed in her baby smell, as soon she won't be a baby anymore.  She would breathe deeply, but then here eyes would slide open, like she was checking if I was still there.  She finally gave in to sleep, but popped up the moment I laid her in her crib and cried.  Since I needed sleep, I took her into our  bed with me at this point.  She snuggled right in against my side and dozed off, although she still wasn't in a deep sleep for a while.  Was I sleeping?  No, but I savored that moment of snuggles and tried to commit the feel of it to memory.  He soft, still covered in baby peach fuzz head on my shoulder, her body curled against my side like it belonged there, her hand spread on my chest for assurance as she dozed.  She has gotten so big all of a sudden and her first birthday is only a few weeks away.  Once Nugget is ready for sleep, she doesn't want to cuddle (family trait), so once she pushed away from me and settled between the hubs and I on her stomach, I knew I could move her to her crib, but even though I'm tired this morning, I'm so glad I was able to sneak in the extra cuddles.  I am 99% sure she is my last baby (I can't say never yet), so I want to remember all these moments. 

Pools

The hubs and I decided, a bit last minute, to do an overnight hotel stay this past weekend.  The kids haven't had any pool time in a long time and we have an upcoming week-long trip coming up and I wanted to try out puddle jumpers for the girls before I take up a ridiculous amount of space in our luggage.  Lessons learned:

1). An overnight hotel stay at a hotel with a "water park" (read: small pool with one slide and a kiddie area) is pricey for a family of 6.
2) Taking a trip to a hotel without my mother is infinitely more relaxing than taking a trip with her.
3) If I have to share a bed with one of our twins, I pick BW (the hubs got SB and battled for space most of the night)
4) Nugget is not a fan of the pack and play and would prefer the nice cozy hotel bed
5) Taking toddlers to the pool is more enjoyable for everyone once they can touch the bottom, because
6) My TWO YEAR OLDS can touch the bottom and keep their heads above water in 3 feet of water.  Is that supposed to happen?

Seriously, being able to feel the bottom was a game-changer for BW.  She is normally our risk averse kid, but once she figured out she could touch she would paddle around in her puddle jumper and even ducked her head below water a few times.  We have another hotel stay planned for 2 weeks with my mom and they will get some more pool time in then -great to see them enjoying it.

So we let SB and BW stay up late and watch a movie, pumped them full of unhealthy snacks, and had a great time.  The week-long trip (with my mother, see number 2 above) will totally be smooth sailing, right?

Only two

I'm stopping by to write for a quick reprieve before jumping into work for the day.  The holiday lull has definitely ceased at work and "slammed" is how I again describe my day to the hubs when I get home from work.

The hubs and I are both very tall, so we make tall kids.  BW, in particular, is off the charts.  at 2 1/2ish, she is almost 42 inches tall and 40 lbs - about the size of the average 4-5 year old.  SB is shortly behind her at almost 40 inches tall and 33 lbs.  This brings about a host of challenges, like having people mistake BW for a 4 year old and expecting her to behave like a 4 year old, and giving us the side-eye if she throws a 2-y-o tantrum.  She's potty trained now, so at least the judgy looks about her wearing a diaper have stopped, but there are some days I want to have a t-shirt made that says, I'm 2, so people know that she is just acting her age sometimes.

However, I think the hardest thing is meeting the emotional and physical needs of a 2-y-old in a 4 year old-size body.   I can still pick both of them up and carry them if necessary, but there are times they want to be held and cuddled by their mama, or they just need a carry because their legs are tired, or because they are TWO.   BW doesn't get carried much, because (1) she's a lot to carry, (2) she isn't a good contributor to being carried - she doesn't hold on and just hangs out and makes you do all the work and (3) she doesn't seem like she needs to or should be carried because she seems older than her age.  I have to remind myself, too, that she is still only 2, and sometimes 2-year-olds needs some carries and cuddles, because.  Even if my back sometimes disagrees.