Ugh, I totally never caught up on last week. I wanted to blog about Xander's first trip to the zoo on saturday, but now that's been two weeks ago. Eh, I'll tell you all a little about it anyway. It really wasn't much special, but I wanted to be sure we took him to do something fun and centered around him before Ethan gets here. So we took a break from working on the baby's room, and cleaning and laundry and all that jazz and we went. Xander had a blast, but the heat was horrible and storms started rolling in so we had to leave after about 2 hours and we never did manage to find the monkeys. That made me a little sad case it was one of the main reasons I took him, but he loved the lions so all in all it was a good trip! We got back to the car just in time for him to catch a good nap on the way home and the storm started seconds after we got in the car. We'll have to go back another day and find those monkeys, maybe in the fall we'll take the boys back. I can't believe Xander didn't ever get to go to the zoo until after he was a year old, it's something we had been taking about since he was just a few weeks old. Time just gets away from us sometimes. And speaking of time, there are about a dozen things I want to blog about right now, but it's dinner time so I have to run!

I'm so bad at this.

It's been forever since I bothered to post. I'm telling ya, it seemed like a great idea at the time to start a blog but this is just so hard to keep up with. What's worse is that Ethan isn't even here yet and I'm already not being able to find the time to keep up.

So anyway, last weekend (6/6) we went to go try to meet Rob Dydrek. He was signing autographs at the Lynhaven mall, and then he went to Costal Edge skate shop in VA Beach. We had some yardsales to hit before we went to meet him (I got a bassinet for $10, definately the highlight of my day, lol) and when we got to the mall we decided the line was way too long so we'd just head to the skate shope early. He wasn't set to arrive there until 3pm, we arrived in town around 12:30, and the line wasn't too bad. Unfortunately parking was impossible and by the time we spent 30 minutes looking for a spot (we ended up parked 4 blocks away) the line was much longer. Long story short, we spent 5 1/2 hours waiting in the heat, security sucked and there were alot of line jumpers, so we never made it to the front of the line to get our autographs, which was sad cause Ed was really dissapointed and I felt bad but I just couldn't take the heat, or hold my pee, anymore. He did get close enough to get a couple of pictures tho.

I'm Your Biggest Fan!

So I haven't blogged in awhile. Nobody is reading me anyway, so it really isn't a big deal, but I was really trying to make this a daily thing. Turns out maybe summer wasn't the best time to start a blog, I've just been too busy! We went home for the weekend and then things have been so crazy since we got back I've barely been near the computer at all. Today I logged in to find that the Spongebob Squarepants Ceiling Fan I bought for Xander has arrived at Wal-mart! YAY! Ed is picking it up now, along with the stuff he needs from Lowes to get working on Ethan's room. I need to order Xander's bed soon too, he's getting the Spongebob room in a box. I just realized today that I'm 32 1/2 weeks preggo, holy crap where did the time go?? I've never been more than 37 weeks, so I'm suddenly very nervous that I keep putting off all the things that MUST be done before Ethan gets here because, hey, we have a pool and it's frickin' hot out. I really need to put my foot down and insist that stuff gets done, but it's just so hard!

On another note, I just found out that pro skater Rob Dyrdek is coming to town this weekend. He'll be at the Lynhaven mall on saturday, and what kind of wife would I be if I didn't let Ed go? A smart wife, but not a very popular one I'm afraid. Ah well, maybe I can use this as motivation/bribery to get some stuff done around here this week, lol. I honestly would love to go meet the guy, but I'd also love to see my nursery finished.

Why?

So for the last few days I've been wondering why I bothered to make this blog. It's not that I don't want to do it, obviously I do or I wouldn't bother. Nobody is holding a gun to my head saying "blog or I'll shoot". It's just that over the weekend I was reading some other blogs and I realized a few things, about bogging, about myself, and about the kind of people that read blogs.

I don't read any one blog regularly. I do search through now and then and look for "mommy blogs" because that's the type of thing I'm interested in. I always find myself amazed at how eloquently most mommy bloggers are even when they are talking about something like a poopy diaper. I don't think I'm ever going to be that good with words. I'm honestly a little intimidated by the thought of trying to blog in a world already filled with so many wonderful writers.

Let's just take a second to look at me. Who am I? I'm a mommy, let's just start there, because no matter what else I am, no matter if being a mommy has anything relevant to offer my current situation, it's always there. I'm not just any mommy either. I'm a stay at home mommy. Best, or maybe worst of all, I'm one of those obnoxious mommies who has forgotten how to have an adult conversation without talking about things like spit-up, poopies, boo-boos, sleep and how much I miss it, and pacifiers. I have mostly stopped talking to people who don't have, or at least want, kids. I just embarrass myself.

Who else am I? Well, I'm a Navy wife. This means that I sometimes go weeks, even months without seeing my husband. It means that sometimes, I go weeks or months without having a real conversation with another adult. It means that I have had to give up all my family and friends being close by, move to a strange state, make new friends, figure things out and be left all alone to do it. Just when I've found myself having new friends, knowing where the right exit for my Wal-mart is, and decided that I like sleeping on the sofa or in the middle of the bed, everything changes again. My husband comes home. We get orders to move again.

Being a navy wife and a mom has faced me with even more challenges. It's one thing to deal with being a Navy wife. It's another thing to be in a town you don't know, 8 hours away from family and friends, and find yourself alone with an 8 day old baby because the boat refused you're husband's baby leave at the last minute. It's almost impossible to explain to a 4 month old who loves his daddy more than anything why daddy hasn't been seen in over 2 months. Try having your husband miss your first child's first (and as we found out later, only) birthday. If you think that's hard, try making friends. Regular moms don't understand you. People you have been friends with for years will say things like "better you than me" or "I wouldn't have married him then" when you are in your darkest hour. Single moms won't sympathize with you, "At least you have help from your husband when he's home". They don't understand that he's never home, even when he is physically there, it's all about getting ready for the next time he leaves. They don't understand that it's one thing to be single with a baby and have the support of your entire family and all your friends, and it's quite another to be alone in a town you don't know with nobody, and no support and a newborn. So you look to other navy wives and hope to make friends. This option is much like trying to sit with the cool kids in the lunch room in high school without being invited. They all know each other already, they have their cliques and they don't need you. After all this, try explaining to yourself why you encourage him to stay in, and serve his country because it's a job he actually enjoys.

So I'm a mom, I'm a navy wife. I'm a daughter, a sister, a lover, a fighter, an activist, and a pacifist. I'm a personal chef, a maid, a tailor, a driver, a peace keeper, a bouncer, a dog walker/groomer. I'm a dreamer, an artist, the craft lady, a geeky girl gamer. I'm an electrician, a plumber, a painter, an exterminator, a financial planner. I am not a mechanic, but luckily my husband is. I wear many hats, I preform many jobs. I do most of them with a smile, because no matter how hard my life can be, it's also wonderful. I love my boys more than life! I wouldn't trade my life for anything.

I guess my point is that I'm a lot of things. There's a few things I'm NOT. I'm NOT a writer. I've never so much as kept a journal before. I'm dyslexic and even tho I have a decent vocabulary I'm intimidated by writing. I'm also very scattered and unorganized (if you haven't noticed). I'm not a photographer. I wish I had a better eye for the perfect pictures. I enjoy taking pictures, but I don't even really know how to work my camera, aside from the obvious point and click.

Of all the things I am, and am not, I wonder what makes me think I should be a blogger. Who in the world would read this mess? Especially in a world with so many well written blogs out there already. So far the answer is nobody. That's ok, I didn't expect any followers on the first day. I really don't expect that I'll ever have readers. But that kind of begs the question I've been asking myself, why bother?

For now the only answer I have come up with is that maybe blogging will make me a better writer, or a better photographer. Maybe I'll never be as eloquent and inspired as some of those pro mommy bloggers I love to read, but maybe someday I'll write something worth reading.

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day Internet! No yard work for Ed today I think. Yesterday I actually got him to help me clean out the baby's room, thanks to a surprise rain shower that brought him in. He tore out the shelves that were built into the wall so he could build a closet, turns out there is a closet behind them. We're not working on the room today either tho. Just making some ribs on the grill, and maybe playing in the pool. I started Xander's sleep diary today, I'm hoping I can remember to keep it up. Well, the pool is calling me! Hope everyone has a great day!

(Ok, so the date on this post is wrong. I posted it yesterday which was in fact Memorial Day, but I wanted to add the picture today. I'm still fairly new to the whole blog world and apparently I did something wrong because my original post was deleted. Ooops. Luckily I managed to find the post in my browser history, but the only way I could figure out to fix it was to post it as a new blog and that messed up the date. )

Hush Little Baby

I'm really starting to think Xander has some kind of sleep disorder. He has never been a good sleeper. He woke up every 4 hours for the first 9 months of his life. He never regularly napped twice a day. He wouldn't nap at all by himself until right before his first birthday, until then he only napped if I held him the whole time. He still isn't sleeping through the night. I thought he was, because I was sleeping through the night and he doesn't usually cry when he wakes up. We have a video monitor on him and I don't sleep with the sound on because it keeps me awake, and I can hear him clearly through the wall so it seems pointless. I do keep the video on tho, so whenever I roll over during the night I peek at him and then go back to sleep. Usually he's sleeping when I look at the monitor, but lately I've been getting up much more frequently to use the potty during the night thanks to Ethan kicking my bladder all night. This has lead me to notice that quite frequently Xander will be sitting in the corner of his crib during the night. We co-slept for the first 5 months and I knew he was a restless sleeper. When we moved, back when he was about 8 months old we co-slept again for a short time, while we were staying with family before we got our house, and I had noticed him occasionally sitting up out of a deep sleep and talking (babbling) for a few seconds and then laying back down. I had chalked it up to him being disturbed by Ed's snoring or me moving. Now I'm starting to notice that he does it very often during the night, and frequently he isn't just sitting up for a second, but rather he seems to be in a state between being awake and asleep and he sits there like that from anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours. I've seen him go as long as 3 hours just sitting in the same spot, eyes open but not really moving. Occasionally he'll nod off and his head slumps over for a second before he jerks it back up, or he'll wiggle his toes or stretch his leg, but mostly he's very still. Most of the time he will lay back down eventually and go back to sleep. The last week that Ed was out to sea he was ending these episodes by screaming, and the only way to get him back to sleep was to go change his diaper, give him a sippy cup of milk (not in his bed, he isn't that spoiled), hug him and tuck him back in his crib. I hate doing that, I know it only encourages the behavior I'm trying to avoid, but at 5am I'm too exhausted to listen to him scream, and he's never been one to cry it out, he's very stubborn. My attempts with the CIO method were very short lived when he was a newborn because even then he could scream for over an hour without showing any signs of letting up and it broke my heart to let him go longer than that. Besides that, when he wakes up shrieking out of one of his sitting up looking awake episodes at 5am, even tho the bitch in me doesn't want to get out of bed and would love to be heartless enough to just let him cry it out, the mommy in me can't help but think that since he hasn't eaten anything or been changed in 9 hours maybe he actually needs those things. Most of the time I was finding that he had peed through his diaper a little, and changing him was necessary. I even believed that this was the cause of his waking up and went out and bought overnight diapers. They are working great, he is no longer getting up feeling wet, but he's still getting up. Now I'm also starting to notice that he is spending a very long time just sitting in his crib when we put him to bed. He has a stuffed toy lion that he sleeps with and he will quietly play with that for over an hour before actually falling asleep. His bedtime is 8pm, and when we put him down he seems tired. Why he isn't sleeping is really starting to bug me. He only takes an hour nap, sometimes an hour and a half if I'm really lucky, in the early afternoon. I've thought about cutting it out, but he had other ideas and put himself down for a nap on the living room floor when I didn't take him to his crib at nap time. I'm at my wits end. In 2 months Ethan will be here, I'm not expecting to get any sleep then, but I sure was hoping to get some before then. I feel like I'm not doing enough for Xander, but I think all I can do for now is start keeping a sleep diary for him so I can ask his pediatrician about it at his next check up. I know that kids his age frequently go through phases of not sleeping through the night. I guess it just bothers me that it seems like he's never really been a good sleeper, and I keep waiting for him to outgrow his problems. At this point I'm starting to wonder if instead of helping him by trying to wait till he out grows it, am I really hurting him by not teaching him a solution?

Cleaning Up

Ed is doing more imaginary yard work, big surprise there. I just got Xander settled down for his nap. I think I'm going to jump in the shower and then I have to get started cleaning. It's cloudy today and the pool doesn't look very inviting. As much as I really want to just sit here on the computer and relax while Xander sleeps, if I don't clean that room out it will never ever get done. Of course there's a ton of laundry with my name on it too. Time to get to work.