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The New Mom Diaries

Now that it’s halfway through my baby’s 4th month alive on this planet, I think I have as coherent list of advice as anyone can who chases around an active infant. It’s always important to impart whatever wisdom you have on others, a nice way to pay it forward. Everyone is so willing to give advice, and let’s be honest, most of the time you never asked or wanted it. Sometimes you’re lucky and you think back to it and go “oh well that was great advice” in a non-sarcastic manner. I’ll be honest though, most of the time you won’t be that lucky. A lot of what I’m going to say here, I have written before. But I think that my advice was so awesome, that I should reshare it. That, and I’m way too tired/lazy to go back and see it as I’m sure you are. Or maybe you’re new here, and you’re in for a treat. A treat of some sort, anyways.

  1. A Deer in headlights looking at the parenting section. I can recall staring at the pregnancy section of Barnes & Noble, wondering which book on breast-feeding I wanted to get. Wanted? More like needed. (More on this topic later.) Books are terrible when it comes to pregnancy, breastfeeding, and child rearing. I actually think they’re scamming new parents half the time. Sure, they are great when it comes to the changes in your body or what to expect in scientific scenarios. They don’t capture the emotions or the possibility of other scenarios you’re going to need to adjust to. Any book on these topics are a fantastic starting point. I say starting point because they don’t discuss any variables, just the way things are in normal circumstances, but how many live through normal circumstances. None of my pregnancy books had the information to prepare me on an induction, but thank goodness for free information on the internet that seems it’s only there to make you more terrified about an already terrifying situation. So, books are good if you’re new to the game in general and great for tidbits of knowledge like the fetal development and such. Terrible on everything else.
  2. What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It. My first pregnancy was perfectly storybook, well in terms of its progression, not anything else about it. I gave birth right down to my exact due date. The second one? Entirely different. I gained a lot of weight, I gained it quicker, and I was nearly 2 weeks past my due date. You can compile all the knowledge you think you need, then you can compile all the information on top of that you think you also should get. I’ll give you a great word of advice: All that knowledge can only go so far, because you really can’t prepare yourself fully for any of it. It’s like a crash course, only if you fail, you take little unknowing children down with you. This is one class you really can’t afford to fail. The best thing you can do is realize that you’re not going to get what you expect to. Plans change, and we need to adjust. And in this case, always prepare yourself for the worst case scenario. It can mentally prepare you in case you’re faced with it.
  3. Great Expectations and Failures. Never ever let someone make you feel guilty because your plans failed. You want to go in for natural child-birth, and 4 hours later you beg for an epidural after all. You plan and study on how to breastfeed, but for whatever reason things didn’t fall into place for this. People will probably judge you for this, I’m not going to lie. I’ve even experienced this as a second time mom. It’s your job to readjust your plans however you think you need to and be strong enough to stand up for that. I planned to breastfeed, and my son just couldn’t do it. He even had problems latching onto the bottle. It wasn’t in the cards for me to nurse, but my husband felt very strongly about his children getting the best. He bought me the best pump he could afford to buy me, and I learned to grow accustomed to feeling like a milk cow. People said “you just didn’t try hard enough” or made me feel like they thought that because I couldn’t nurse my son, that I couldn’t bond with them. (More on this topic later.) My adjustment made me no less of a mother than a person feeding their child formula or having an epidural. Everyone is different, and children are born into all of these scenarios and come out perfectly fine. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty, life is all about changing plans and adapting to your situations.
  4. The Great Mother/Child Bond. People say that nursing and skin to skin contact is the best way to form a bond with your child that is everlasting. I think that’s a lie. You’re child will bond with you because it can sense your love and it trusts you to take care of it. Your family and friends mean well giving out this advice, but not everyone’s comfortable with the idea of putting a naked baby skin to skin with you. I wasn’t comfortable about this, and my children are doing very well. Babies know who loves them and knows who takes care of them. That’s all a baby really needs to bond with you. Every time you feed it, while you stare into each others eyes, you are bonding. Every time you smile at each other, you’re bonding.
  5. The Gut. My final piece of advice is simple: You know. As a mother, you might be completely lost your first time. People have asked me “how do you know if ___?” My answer is always the same: You know. Your instinct will be the #1 tool in your arsenal, followed only by patience and the ability to work under very stressful situations. You can sense when you’re child is in pain, you know when they’re hungry, and you’ll definitely know when they need to be changed. Babies are simple beings, but they know exactly how to tell you what they want. Likewise, you’ll get a nice gut feeling that you need to learn to follow. A mother always knows, sometimes even more than the doctors and other professionals do.

Keep all that in mind. All the books in the world won’t be able to help you, neither will all the advice. Sometimes you just have to accept that things won’t go as planned or as expected and you need to learn that it’s completely ok. All that matters is you raise your child to be a great person and an incredible addition to this world.

 

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What is “offensive”?

I wonder if I was too harsh in Friday’s post, though it’s not a statement of whether or not I should apologize for it. I shouldn’t apologize for it, nor should I have to. I stand by every bit of what I said. I worried that people would be offended when I posted it, but I did it anyways. I realized a long time ago if someone gets offended, it has more to do with their own thoughts than my own. I feel that insecurity may directly affect what someone deems “offensive”.

If someone mentioned that I have gained weight, I do get upset. It’s not because of what the person said, they were merely observing something. I get upset because I’m insecure about my weight since the baby fat is not coming off as quickly it did the first time. If someone said “your hands are short and stubby”, I nod in agreement. They are small, little chubby things that I just accept. I do bite my nails and I can’t seem to get over teenage acne. I accept certain things and notice that I easily take offense to the things I do get insecure about. I don’t think I’m special; I do think I’m not the only one.

I also believe in standing by what you say. Never say something you don’t mean, no matter what. Did I agree with what Chris Culliver from the 49’ers said? Absolutely not, I think those comments were ignorant and hateful. Should he have apologized that people took offense? Probably, but he said it and should’ve stuck by it. I wouldn’t agree with him or respect what he said, but at least I wouldn’t look at him like he needed to grow a pair. Being hateful was his business and as much as it pains me to say this, he has a right to believe what he wants. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, but it’s his right.

So what is offensive? That’s everyone’s question. What’s offensive is what someone believes is offensive, whether we agree with it or not. I can’t tell someone that my thoughts on anything isn’t offensive just because I don’t think it is. Though, I’m very certain I say offensive things all the time. I cringe every time my son says “that’s offensive”, but he has a point with the ridiculous things he says is offensive (and he says it jokingly, he isn’t actually offended). I think that we’re becoming wussier every generation. All you ever hear is “____ is offended by _____”. The Christians are offended by a mosque being built nearby, Atheists are offended by the mangers. People are offended a white male pretended he was Jamaican except for people from Jamaica. Everyone is magically all of a sudden offended by everything. There are things that are rightfully considered offensive, like children being abused in any manner and racism/sexism/anything derogative. But seriously, everyone really just needs to take a step back and chill out a little. Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff.

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An Angry Rant I Won’t Regret Until Comments Are Posted

Even then, I can’t promise a regret. I’ll start this with an acknowledgement that I am a Democrat, a reasonable one anyways. I’m not reminding you in the sense that Newsroom reminds us that Will is a Republican, though you know they only say that as a way to prevent people from thinking the show has a biased agenda. (Not that I have a problem with that, it’s a television show for entertainment that can have any agenda it wants and some that I agree with personally.) I know people need help, and they should be helped. This isn’t about that. This anger goes towards people who don’t need help but get it anyways.

I remember being ashamed to be at the WIC office every 3 months to collect funds to support my son. I felt like the waiting room having a storefront window was supposed to make you feel guilty for being there. I would look out the window, then away, afraid someone would see me there. I needed the help, working 80 hours on a minimum wage paycheck wasn’t anywhere near enough for myself and a newborn. With the state health insurance, I could hide it. Here, I sat looking at the other people in the waiting room. No fail, every time I was there so was this woman with her special needs child. I wouldn’t normally note it, except this child was always bruised up. I wondered how the office could just ignore it, that made me more ashamed of sitting there. The rude staff wasn’t much better, and the minute I could, I never returned. I vowed never ever to be in that position again. I never had problems with my health insurance either, never had to argue over bills with a stubborn person in billing who insists they were right even though you knew they were very very wrong. I never even saw a bill.

It was after that I realized that I didn’t get the best care. But I realize now that getting the best care is a lot more expensive. I looked over my hospital bill from having my baby and saw that one Ambien cost me $60. For one pill, that was the size of a Tic-Tac. I’m glad I didn’t have an epidural or C-Section, I would’ve hate to see how much that cost. I looked down and kept seeing $3 for every Advil I took, a charge for time in the Labor room, Delivery room, and Recovery room. That’s even funnier when I inform you that they were all the same room. I looked down the list and I couldn’t believe it at all. When laughing about this bill aloud, I was told “you have to pay extra to make up for the people that can’t pay at all”. I don’t know if that’s true, it may be though. No one will ever admit it though. I’m not sure who or what to blame, but it takes a lot of number crunching to afford these piling bills. And when the doctor’s office double charges for everyone and their brother, and you can’t do a thing about it, you really just get pissed.

When I found out I was pregnant, I looked to see what my options were for help. I knew that Massachusetts had supplemental insurance, and I looked into that. My husband made too much money, by $2000 a year. When ranting about it with a friend, she told me about  how she tried to get help too only her and her boyfriend made too much money. She was given $8 a month in food stamps to help her. It’s sad we live in a place where people who just don’t make enough can’t get help, but some people can get paid because they just don’t feel like working. (“Not feeling like working” and “can’t find a job” are two very different scenarios.) I won’t deny that with parts of savings and part creative budget works I wasn’t able to figure out how to pay it. But the system needs help. A lot of help. No system is going to be perfect, but something needs to change. Everyone talks about how “oh the poor people need help” or “screw the rich people”. I haven’t heard a word about the people in the lower middle class bracket. That’s the worst one. You need the help, but make just enough to not qualify for any. Those are the people we should consider when decisions are made.

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My Name is Brianne, and I’m a Judger

We all do it. We see that overweight person walking around in spandex bike shorts with a sports bra at the mall and wonder “seriously, I wouldn’t do that and I’m skinny”. Some of the more brazen folks will even utter that aloud. I am one of those people. It’s a flaw, my inability to keep my thoughts to myself. Most of the time, it ends up as amusement for the people I’m with. When it’s not, I was lucky enough to be able to duck and outrun the offended person.

As I’ve grown older, thankfully I’ve learned a bit more restraint. Not much, but a bit. I’ve learned that generally there’s a time and place for it, and I’ve also learned that biting your lip is less painful than a punch in the face. I fail to acknowledge how words really affect people, mostly because I generally don’t mean what I say as rude and not “constructive criticism”. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to let someone be ignorantly uninformed and not say… be fire from your job. I even learned that social media is not the place to air out my opinions on a person, because a lot of things just get lost in translation from text to words.

Still, I’m often put in a lot of situations where I have to recite “it’s not my place” or “leave it alone” in my head to distract my mouth from saying anything. I’m able to now look at my moral compasses to prevent anything that shouldn’t come out of my mouth. Between my husband’s look of disapproval as if he’s scolding a potty mouthed insolent child and my wish to not have my children follow in my footsteps, I learned that sometimes silence with a smile and a nod is the best thing you can do in life.

This whole post was inspired by a movie my family watched over the weekend named “Pontypool”. (Spoiler alert) The virus was spread through the English language. In that case, words do kill much like the case in a lot of bullying tragedies. Words have a habit of hurting if used improperly, and we should try to remember this when we’re put in situations. Not everyone wants your opinion, if they do they’ll ask. Luckily I’ve gotten to this point, unfortunately when asked to give an honest response I don’t know how to soften the blow and I rattle off every thought that comes into my head when asked. (Take note: Never ask me for my honest opinion unless you really really really want my honest opinion.) Baby steps?

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Breakups and You: The Survival Guide

Oh that first time we fall in love! That sweet moment of stupid irrationality and blindness. Then with the words “it’s over”, it seems like the world falls apart while you just watch it shatter. Age doesn’t make any of that easier, and each time seems to leave a little scar each time. I remember watching an interview on “19 Kids and Counting” where they said they encourage courtship because Michelle had carried with her the baggage of the previous relationships and wanted to spare their children that same pain. Sure, every breakup leaves you with some scars. You know what scars exist for? A reminder to “not do that same thing that hurt me once again”. I’ve had temporary scars from burning myself, and did you know what I learned? Don’t be stupid and keep your arms away from hot pans. That, and tomato sauce bubbles with a vengeance.

I was speaking to my son’s grandmother, and I joked with her that “it’s ok, I’m used to being the girl who mom’s hate their sons for breaking up with”. After she laughed and nodded, I told her that “it’s not their fault they can’t handle my awesomeness”. Growing up, you learn that confidence is a key to everything. Am I really that awesome? That doesn’t matter, saying I am makes me feel better about any of the bad. When you have your heart-broken, that bit of confidence can make a world of a difference. One of my philosophy teachers in college once gave a lecture saying “No one is worth crying over if they won’t cry over you”. I repeated that for several days until I really thought about it and realized how true that was. It doesn’t matter in the moment, you’ll still cry. But after, you understand it and realize it’s old news.

My other real trick is the music. I have a playlist for the breakups, though now that Adele exists my list has been altered. My playlist starts at the point of “can we just get back together now” to the result of “who were you again?”. That’s key for me, because I like that my music is taking the same journey I did. I start with “Dumb Girls” by Lucy Woodward. She wants to get back together and realizes how stupid she is for it. Then a “Please Don’t Leave Me” by Pink for the same “beggy” effect. Then the midpoint, a realization. Taking Back Sunday excels at this. For this point, I go with “You’re So Last Summer”, and then the angry point of this realization goes to “Cute Without the ‘E'”. To follow this point of anger, we hit the final stages. Pink “So What?”, that point where you’re over it and onto insults, also All-American Rejects “Gives You Hell” is great too. Then the final point, the place where you’re over it with a line like “You’re calling too late” from “The Best Deceptions” by Dashboard Confessional and “You’re just a phase I’ve gotten over anyways” from “Red Letter Day” by The Get-Up Kids. Toss in some “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele, “If I Told You This Was Killing Me, Would You Stop?” and “August in Bethany” by The Juliana Theory, and finish off with “A Sharp Hint of New Tears” by Dashboard Confessional. My two additional picks for humor/anger factor? “Good Will Hunting By Myself” and “Love Me Dead” by Ludo. Trust me, you’ll thank me for this list.

Everything is a learning process, some more painful than others. (Darn you tomato sauce!!) The point of a learning process is how well you pick yourself up after it. You can sit around feeling sorry for yourself and watching TV all day in your pajamas while wondering what you let things get to or you can pick up those little pieces of dignity on the floor and get on with it. Ok, I take the sitting around in your pajamas all day, I still do that. Everything else is true. Situations can only be as bad as you let it, that’s the truth. Things can always get better, you just have to open yourself up to that and allow it.

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A Little Rice Cereal is Better With Raspberries.

Last week I officially got the okay from the doctor to start solid foods. I didn’t tell him that we’ve already reached that hurdle, a mom always knows when even if Daddy fights it. I was ready for this moment. My freezer had banana and avocado purees waiting to be defrosted and served. I had the bowls and spoons washed, all the bibs ready to grab, and the high chair and walker ready to go for “nom time”. I wasn’t prepared for all the milestones that would hit me at once.

His feedings go better than the textbook says. He eats, but he decided that was boring. He needs to be entertained and what’s more entertaining than realizing that those raspberries he loves to blow makes all the food fly everywhere. He took his spoon, and place it in his mouth, and would blow raspberries until the spoon was empty then would cry wanting more. Since most of it was still getting in his mouth at least, I let him continue this game. The joke was on him when he blew cereal right into his eyes. While it startled him, he laughed and laughed and thought it was so great he wanted to flick cereal into my eyes. Joke was on me, that was funnier.

In making his food (not the rice cereal though I do have that ability with my Baby Bullet blender), I learned quite quickly that I save a fortune. To put this into perspective: one little jar = $1.05 for the “good brands”. For about $1.69 I spent on a sweet potato, I filled up 9 baby bullet servings of food. With the bullet servings being double the size of those little jars, I estimated I’d need about 18 jars for the same amount of food. That total equals about $18.90, versus the $1.69 for my sweet potato and it packs more vitamins, less preservatives, and from what I remember, tastes a lot better. The moral of the story? If you have the ability to make the baby food, do it. It’s cheaper if nothing else, and healthier at the risk of sounding like a hippie.

That wasn’t the only thing to happen in this week time frame.

I would say “I don’t mean to brag”, but every parent is proud of every achievement their child does whether it’s big or small. My scrawny little peanut of a baby impressed the doctor by being “developmentally advanced”, but worried him by being a skinny little guy. He’s not little though; he’s a tall bugger. He’s just his father’s son: taller and skinny with a flat skinny butt and even has the hairline my husband thinks he has. He’s hit milestones months ahead of him, and that made me happy thinking that maybe he’d wait a little and stop growing fast. Not my kid though, he’s his brother’s brother. He never slows down, and never misses a beat.

He has quickly learned that his rolling that he mastered a while ago is much more efficient than his attempts at crawling. To prove his point, he quickly rolls across the room until he reaches whatever destination he decides he want, which I quickly learned is the one that makes me run after him saying “baby come back!”. I think my chasing after him is more amusing to him than the action of rolling away from me. My oldest son was an early crawler and an early walker. The faster they learned to move meant they would always stay the closest to the action. Now it seems I blink and he’s across the room. I wasn’t ready for this, but like everything else with children, you adjust real quick.

Babies grow quickly without warning. They learn from every little movement you allow them to do. With freedom on the floor, my son learned that he could quickly move across it. Now with Boppy, he learned that sitting up and “playing catch” with a little football is more fun than anything else. You can’t blink because you might miss everything. Then before you can even believe it, they’re almost in middle school and full of independence. All you can hope is that you did everything the best you could.

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Inside the Life of Boston Fans

Prior to last night’s disaster of a game (looking at you Pats), a sportscaster said “with the Patriots first Super Bowl win with Brady started a trend of Boston teams being very successful and winning championships.” It’s true, our children are spoiled as the Boston teams we have now have an expectation to win because they have consistently won. Since then, we’ve had the pleasure to see all our sports teams succeed. Not sure about our soccer team or if they even exist, I don’t really care. Our children didn’t grow up with the sort of heartache that generations before us have.

Once in college, I had a bizarre and elderly history professor. He could’ve written much of the history companion book that came with our text book from living the history and not just studying it. He was an absurd man, but I remember a few things he distinctly said. One was a discussion of “don’t feel sorry for the slaves, they sold themselves into that mess. Feel sorry for the prejudice the Irish had to suffer in America, am I right?” ::looks at me, the only non-minority in the class:: That was awkward. But to the point, he also said at the beginning of the semester, while handing out the syllabus “Every year, I promise that if the Red Sox win the World Series, everyone will get an “A” on their final. I’m sad to say I can get away with saying this because they have never and probably will never win while I’m still alive.” The joke was on him, that was the year that the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 series in the playoffs to make it to the championship game and win the World Series for the first time since 1918.

Since that point, Boston has jumped up to be one of the most championship wins behind only New York. (If my research is accurate, I’m by no means a sports stats person.) Now when our teams have terrible seasons like last year’s baseball season with the Sox, our children are starting to truly understand what we went through as Boston fans growing up. To be so close to the Super Bowl only to fail so miserably in the conference championship or even making it to the Super Bowl and choking. They truly understand the morning after, where you want to hang your head lower or make yourself feel better by saying “well we made it further than most.” Or like me, watch Honey Boo Boo afterwards to make myself feel better because how can you not feel better by making fun of them. Well a nicer person than I probably wouldn’t, but seriously have you seen that show?

We’re spoiled sports fans in Boston with all the luck we’ve had this decade with wins across the important sports. But it’s really time for the morning after where we realize that we’re no “pink hatters” and we’ve lasted this long with our teams failing and supporting them through heartbreaking losses, why would we stop now? We don’t want to ruin the biggest thing we have going for us: us Boston fans are the most fiercely loyal fans in sports. If we can make it through Missin’ Sisson and every failed year with the Red Sox, we can survive anything.

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It’s a Random Sort of Day

Much like every other time I don’t feel like I can give enough of a rant about one topic, I decide to make a hodgepodge of rant of current events. Current events might not cover it, more of “I can’t think completely coherently for 300-500 words on one topic so I’ll just spew whatever pops into my little head”. Thankfully, these sorts of posts are hard to write a proper introduction for so I can just get right into it.

1) Gun Control, The Fiscal Cliff, The Debt Ceiling, and Te’Oing? Let’s just be honest here, the news is like the 24 hour Christmas Story marathon on TBS. You’re really just watching 24 hours of the same story, except the news cycle is apparently 2 weeks, not 24 hours. Just when you finally get tired of hearing about one topic, you really just get another thrown right in your face for a few weeks. It wouldn’t be so bad if the whole time they didn’t just basically repeat everything from the day before. Then the day before that… then the day before that… etc. Finally, the gem that is the “Te’Oing” thing happens. We get to hear about fake girlfriend conspiracies and debate about whether he knew anything and whether we feel bad for him or think it’s hilarious. (My stance? The idea of it, maybe sad. The memes? Hilarious.) But like the fiscal cliff and every other news story that we get tired of hearing, all they talk about is this one story. News stations, there’s more than one reason no one likes to watch you. Biased newscasting from all sides aside, we really can only listen to the same news story said in different words with the same exact idea so many times before we want to hit our heads against something.

2) Only You Can Prevent School Shootings. All this talk about gun control and “Obama’s stealing our right to bear arms” annoys me. School shootings are tragic and terrifying. People are like “why blame guns, why not the entertainment industry for violent games and movies. Violent games and movies do not kill people, crazy people with guns do. Gun control probably won’t save lives because guns can easily be stolen from responsible gun owners by crazy people who want to do bad things. Unfortunately, you can’t prevent everything in life and there’s really no way to stop people from getting their hands on guns and killing people. I think people on both sides of this argument are being completely irrational and ignorant and it annoys me. The best we can do is hope that we catch bad guys before they do bad things. Like the expression goes “Guns don’t kill people, husbands who come home early do.” Wait.. what?

3)  Baby Number 2. I know what you’re thinking. “Did Brianne pull a Jessica Simpson?” Excuse me for a minute while I die at the thought. Baby number 2 is referring to my second publishing that should be incoming soon after a hopefully quick editing process. I say this with a smirk, because there’s no such thing as a quick editing process. This will be a compilation of poetry, very very short stories and short stories. I’ll keep you posted, but I’m excited.

4) Practice What You Preach, Mama. This one will be short, but the subtitle says it all: Don’t tell your kids a lesson if you won’t follow through yourself. I can tell my son’s “you can be anything you want to be if you try hard enough” if I don’t try to get noticed for my writing and live my dream as a writer. You can’t tell your kid that they need to better themselves if you’re willing to settle for awful living conditions without trying to get out of it. And the most obvious lesson is, you can’t tell your kids that “sometimes in life you have to suck it up and do things you don’t want to”. Because the minute you don’t want to go someplace for family obligations and try to get out of it, those little buggers actually remember it. They say “remember when I said I don’t want to go to CCD and you said I had to because sometimes growing up means doing things you don’t want to?”. Yeah, also be careful what you teach them, it might bite you on the butt when you’re not looking.

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I Feel As Young As Ever

Yesterday was my birthday, the good ol’ 29. Not quite 30, and still another year to enjoy my 20’s. A friend on Facebook said “I hope you don’t feel almost 30, because I do”. My response: “Eff that, I feel as young as ever. Mostly because I’m too tired to feel”. He said he was going to steal it, but I just stole it first. To prove my point, when I originally read it, I thought he had said “I hope you don’t fear 30, because I do”. Which I had a response for that too: “I don’t fear 30, 30 should fear me”. It’s true, it should. I’m kinda a b-word.

I can’t complain, my 20’s were certainly a lot better than my teens, but being of legal drinking age probably helped that a lot. I don’t really feel older though. Maybe wiser, definitely more seasoned. I still feel like I’m young enough to take on the world. When I was 18, I was afraid of the big 3-0. When you’re young and stupid, you think your life ends when you’re married with kids. While your life as a person who can do whatever you want whenever you want is over, life is still full of fun and excitement. Though admittedly my idea of a thrill is the Russian Roulette I play while changing diapers. The minute I think I’m safe, I end up with a painting on my shirt washed off with urine. Luckily with age, you also gain a level of patience. And more of a sense of humor.

30 isn’t really old anymore. You’re still young enough to not have wrinkles and grey hair, but you’re too old to shop in the juniors department with any shred of respect. Now you’re the “old lady trying to look young”. In your 20’s, you easily get a pass on this. Not 30 though, now you have to figure out a whole new style of clothes. It’s also at this age that getting faceplanting drunk because it’s trashy and not cool. We’re definitely way too old for bar hopping. until 2 a.m. And this also means we’re too young to be unemployed without any attempt towards a goal, but way to young to sit around watching soap operas and eating loneliness as if we’ve given up in life.

I’m excited for what 29 will bring me. Hell, I’m even excited to see what happens at 30. I keep looking for wrinkles and passing off as someone in my early 20’s. I’m ok with it. I’m trying towards everything I want in life, and I realize that I won’t sell 100 novels in a day starting out. I’m even sure that I won’t sell 100 in 6 months starting off. (Don’t forget, the link on the side will allow you into my first long short story.) I feel accomplished though because I tried, and will keep trying towards this goal. I feel accomplished because I have 2 amazing sons that are growing up very well as smart and mostly healthy children. Not to mention, I have hands down the most amazing husband in the world. Don’t be afraid of getting older. If you embrace it, you’ll realize that every chapter of our life brings something exciting. Getting old and grey doesn’t mean you should be sad, you get to retire and enjoy your grandchildren. Life goes on, and you shouldn’t sit back and give up when you still have so much to go. Life’s too short to squander it.

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It’s Like Petfinder, But With Kids.

It was going to happen eventually, when the discussion would end up with a consideration of our future with kids. Are we done, do we want more, etc. I laugh when people ask me, “are you going to have more?” The last thing you think about when you can still close your eyes and remember and re-feel everything from the last birth, is another child. I made no secret that I wanted a girl this time around, since I already had one boy and I didn’t want to be overrun in a houseful of testosterone. No such luck, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because my baby is absolutely perfect.

I did know that a point would come when we had to have the talk. Do we try again in 2 years? 5 years? Are we done because we have 2 beautiful boys as is? We do want a girl, that much we absolutely agree on. How we get there though, that’s what we’re figuring out. What happens if we try again and we  are blessed with a 3rd little boy? We can’t afford the test tube baby for a guaranteed girl, and quite honestly I’m certain no one would be happy with us going that route. Then my husband researched adoption, and said that maybe we should just consider that. They need a home, we’d love a girl, why not?

I decided to research this myself. I’m on the fence, mostly because I like the idea of a baby with a clean slate. Adopting a baby girl is a lot more expensive and a lot longer of a wait. In researching, I discovered how sad it was. It was almost like when I look at Petfinder to look at all the puppies I’d love to adopt, only with children needing homes. It seemed so wrong to make that comparison. But I mean… how can you not? You chose from age and gender options and up comes pictures with descriptions. I’m not sure which saddens me more though: the fact that there are that many kids that need a home with a loving family or that we’ve resorted to picking them out like you pick out your future animals for their “forever home”.

It’s a lot to consider. I know that despite all my self-deprecating humor where I talk about how terrible of a mother I am, I’m actually pretty decent at it. Shocking considering I never really wanted kids, but it came pretty naturally. I’ll approach it like I do most everything in life: I’ll think about it in a mostly cold and logical manner until I just know what I’m going to do. I’ll admit it’s enticing to think about having a child without having to destroy my body further with another pregnancy for a guaranteed outcome. We’ll see, you never know where the road will take you until you follow it. Unless you have a map… which unfortunately life doesn’t come with.