Ugh

This has been the week from HELL!

First, our van broke down. It's leaking oil pretty much at the same rate as you can pour it in. Luckily, my dad was able to identify the problem, and the part is really cheap. The ability to replace it is something neither my husband nor I currently possess, however, and it will cost us several hundred dollars, which we don't have, to pay a professional to do it. My best friend's husband knows how to do it, but can't help us until NEXT weekend. So we are down to one vehicle, which is a major pain with Monster Boy having started school this week.

Monster Boy is really enjoying school, and he had a very good week there. I can't say the same thing for home. Most of the week was at least decent - we had some listening issues but nothing major unlike last week. Then came Thursday. And Thursday was a banner day in our household. I spent over two hours before school started trying to get my son to clean his room. Most of that time was spent by him throwing fits. And apparently, somewhere in one of those fits, he decided that it would be a good idea to cut his own hair. This was NOT a good idea. But, I was so flustered with dealing with his fits and all that we were running late for school and I didn't realize it until we got HOME from school. Which means that he went to school looking like he had mange. Then when we got home, it was more of the same. His room was still NOT clean and I was still fighting him on it. When Daddy Mac got home, he wasn't having it. He gave him ten minutes to get started (which Monster Boy spent the whole time throwing the mother of all fits) and then he took a trash bag in and "cleaned" his room himself. Well that spurred an entirely different fit, of course. We finally got him calmed down from that after about 20 minutes and he was VERY cooperative the rest of the night. Daddy Mac buzz cut his hair, and I cried. He had beautiful hair, and now he is basically bald. It didn't seem to upset Monster at all, which makes me worry that we have not seen the last of the haircutting. But I guess we will deal with that as it comes.

Miss Sunshine has been just crazy all week. BUT, she said "Mama" for the first time yesterday! She is very vocal and has been for months. But it's been only vowel sounds, no consonant sounds, which I know is normal with a cleft. It was still hard hearing from all my other friends with babies the same age about how they are "talking" and my daughter isn't. But she is slowly getting there. And she should be crawling ANY DAY. She is SO close, if she would just keep her head up, she'd be gone. I want her to learn how to do it, but at the same time, I want her to stay immobile :). Not much I can do about that, I suppose.

We leave for Chicago on Tuesday. I am very nervous for this all to go well. I want everything to turn out perfectly, and for her to get approved for surgery. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the fact that our appointment is in September, and September is Craniofacial Acceptance Month, is a good sign that she is going to get approved. It would certainly make things much easier for us financially, which would be a good thing right now. We are so far managing to stay ahead. I'm eager to see what Daddy Mac's first commission check is going to look like next week, so we can see if we can just roll over my 401k or if we are going to have to pull what little is in there to get things paid off so that we are not struggling for money once my severance ends. We will still be getting unemployment unless I find a job, which is not looking likely, but it's about half of what I have gotten in severance so that's definitely going to make things a bit difficult. I am trying to have faith that it is all going to work out in the end, though.

A LONG weekend.

We went out of town this weekends. It was a birthday party for a friend of mine and her daughter, and I hadn't seen this group of friends since before Miss Sunshine was born. So we loaded up the kids and drove three hours to visit. It was nice to see all my friends again. What was NOT so nice was that Miss Sunshine decided that, unlike our last out of town trip, this time she was NOT going to sleep in the Pack and Play - and kept us up until 3 am. Needless to say, I am one VERY tired Mommy today.

We are definitely noticing a difference in her hearing, though. Which is SO wonderful. And I realized that I didn't post an update about her hearing tests! She passed in BOTH ears! Yay. The ENT was a bit concerned about her right ear - he said there was a lot of inflammation behind the eardrum when he went in for the tubes, and he actually removed some tissue from that ear. He thought she might have some slight hearing loss, but if she does, it isn't enough to affect her hearing tests, so we were super happy there. He wants to see her yearly for follow up exams, and said that if we wind up doing the repair surgery here to call him for an assessment to see if the tubes need to be redone during her repair, but otherwise, unless we notice any problems, she only needs to see him once a year for followup. Yay! That was WONDERFUL news this week - I was very concerned about hearing loss and that made me feel just SO much better.

And the countdown is one. We have a very big few weeks coming up for us. Tomorrow is Monster Boy's first day of preschool and he is very excited for that. We did three year old preschool last year, which he loved. This year it will be more of a school environment but he is so ready for it to start. I can't believe he's so big already. Then Sunday is my 30th birthday! Yay, Mommy time! I'm going to go get my hair done - I'm thinking of changing up the color, just for something different. Now that I am not working, I can go back to my more "funky" haircolors (nothing off the wall - I just worked for a really conservative company previously and so some of the stuff that I would do with my hair wasn't acceptable there so I haven't done anything like that in 7 years!). And then the following Tuesday we leave for Chicago. I hope Miss Sunshine does well on the plane. I'm starting to get pretty nervous about our trip. I'm trying not to think too much about it until next week.

I'm also going to be ordering some ccakids.org bracelets for friends and family to wear in recognition of Craniofacial Acceptance Month. I am pretty excited about this.

But for now, I am going to go to bed and try to get some rest before the rat race starts again!

Not such a good week...

It was a VERY long week this week. Monster Boy decided to push every button I had and then some this week. Then Miss Sunshine decided to pitch one of her SUPER EXPENSIVE special needs feeder bottles out of her car seat while we were at the grocery store. So now I am down to 3 bottles. Lovely.

I did get formally diagnosed with post partum depression on Tuesday, and have started medication to hopefully resolve that. I can't wait for it to kick in. I'm ready to feel like myself again. These last six months have just been so extremely stressful that I can't seem to get my equilibrium back. I'm hoping the meds will be what I need to get back to that point, so that I can enjoy spending time at home with my kids. Because right now, I'm not enjoying it. And I hate that - this is all I have wanted for so long and I really want to enjoy this time because I know it is limited.

On a happier note - Miss Sunshine has learned how to sit up on her own. She has even learned how to get herself into a sitting position - albeit in a very unique way. She will be laying on her tummy and will push her legs up until she is basically in the "downward dog" yoga position. She then walks her legs forward while leaving her face on the ground, until she can't bring them any farther forward, then puts her butt on the ground and voila! She is sitting. It is so cute. I'm trying to figure out how to load the video of her doing it - because I have never seen a baby sit themselves up like this before. And she went from sitting using her hands on the floor to balance herself, to sitting without any kind of support at all in less than a day. It's amazing how quickly they learn things at this age. Up next is crawling - and I expect that to happen any day now. She's so close, if she can just keep her head up - she tends to just lay her head on the floor and then we wind up doing the sitting up trick instead of crawling :)

September is Craniofacial Acceptance Month!

Thanks to my support group in my online birth club for notifying me of some very exciting news - September is Craniofacial Acceptance Month! This seems especially fitting as Miss Sunshine has her first visit at Shriner's hospital on September 2nd. I am hoping this is a good portent as far as getting her surgery approved.

One of the members of my support group created a GREAT picture in honor of this month. I have added it to the blog on the upper right hand side. All of you mommies who have babies with any kind of craniofacial deformity, please feel free to snag it for yourselves!

Take a little time in the month of September to make some people around you aware of the difficulties children with craniofacial deformities experience in everyday life.

God Grant Me the Serenity...

I am SO glad I have a doctors appointment for myself next week. I really think I have post-partum depression. Every little thing sets me off and I can barely control my temper. I have to send Monster Boy out of the room at least three times a day because I am just so FRUSTRATED with him. Part of that is him being 4, I know. But a lot of it is me, I think.

I did this after I had him too. He was about 15 months old when it started, and it was mostly rage at his father over all the crap I was dealing with thanks to him. I honestly thought that my depression at that point was due to that. Looking back now, when I am feeling the same way and I have no REASON to this time, I think I actually had delayed onset post-partum depression. But I have an appointment next week if I can just make it that long.

I just want things to be back to normal. Part of it is that my cycle is becoming active again and I already know that I have uncontrollable PMS and that is not helping, I am sure. Hopefully we can get this under control and I can go back to being my usual cheerful self :).

Started the cloth diapering yesterday. Miss Sunshine had her first blowout today. That was quite fun. I was using the flushable inserts instead of the cloth inserts, so it wasn't as bad as it will be, I am sure. But at least it kind of prepared me for what it will take to change the poopy diapers from now on. So far I like the cloth diapers quite a bit. They fit pretty well and seem to work out good for us.

Torn

I am so torn right now. When we first found out I was getting laid off, we sat down and looked at finances and seemed like we would be good. It would be tight, but with unemployment and no daycare expense, we should be okay. Now, this was assuming that my darling husband had paid the house payment for July already. Well, he springs on me today that, OOPS, he didn't pay the house payment for July, so that's an expense we though was already taken care of that isn't. Argh. And then he asks me today if I am wanting to go back to work, because he knows a company here that might be hiring an office manager. I don't really want to go back to work. I want to take some time and be home with my kids. And I had thought that our plan was for me to stay home until after Miss Sunshine's palate repair and THEN start looking for a job. Turns out my husband has apparently started to freak out about me not working and thinks I need to find another job now. The problem is, I need a job paying a considerable amount more than what I was making to make it worth my while to go back to work with the cost of daycare. I am so torn about what the right thing to do it. I told him to get me the info on the job he was talking about - where and salary etc, and we would go from there, but I'm pretty resentful that he has put me in this position now. We have known for two months I was getting laid off - if he was so worried about it WHY didn't he say something about it before now???????? What am I supposed to do?

Home from Surgery!

Things went well - she is pretty cranky from the anesthetic (she's actually asleep right now or else I am sure I would not be updating) but other than that doing well. When the Dr. came back to talk to us, he told us he was glad we went in when we did instead of waiting, because her right ear was especially fluid filled - and the membranes behind the eardrum were inflamed. He said that if they had waited, she would have had permanent hearing loss in that ear. We won't know for sure if she has any hearing loss in that ear until we go back for a follow up hearing test in two weeks.

I have to give the computer back to my husband now so he can go to work!

Nerves

Today is Little Miss Sunshine's ear tube surgery. I KNOW this is a common, minor, outpatient procedure done every day on tons of small children. It's just not MY small child they are doing it on. I am kind of a little freaked out at this point. I am nervous about how she will do with the anesthesia... and the fact that we can't feed her until who knows when AFTER the surgery and she is used to getting a bottle when she gets up in the morning. I know she can tell something is off, because she woke up at 4 this morning, which lately is unusual for her - she typically will sleep until around 7 or so before waking. Keep us in your thoughts. I will update once we are home to let you know how she does...

Wow

Well, it's starting to sink in that I no longer have a job. Yikes!

Today, I had to let Monster Boy go visit his dad. That's an amazingly long story, and at his father's request, I do not discuss it on public sites such as this. Suffice it to say, it was not a decision I was happy to be making, but the court system has rather tied my hands on it.

I am sure by now you are noticing the Google Ads at the top of my blog page. It's an experiment on my part, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully it will be a good thing for us. NOW, if I can just get more people to READ my blog, we'd be doing much better!

Well, anyways. I decided that since A) I am not a big fan of cleaning and B) we all know that just because I am going to be AT home, doesn't necessarily mean I will have all day long to clean this house, we are spending this weekend doing major house cleaning so that I have a clean slate to start from. Today we reorganized Monster Boy's room. Got a shelving system with cloth cubes to replace the armoire that wasn't doing much more than taking up space in his room, cleaned the clothes out of his dresser that no longer fit (I have to do this when he is not here or he will refuse to let things go - he's developing some very bad pack-rat tendencies, I think), vacuumed, moved things around, in general gave it a deep clean. I cleaned the guest bathroom, which seems to constantly be dirty. Of course, the fact that it is also Monster Boy's bathroom might have something to do with that. I do not understand why 4 year old boys have such bad aim! But it's all cleaned up (for now). Toothpaste is another hazard in small children's bathrooms, and there was so much of it all over the sink you would have thought that the sink was orange instead of beige! I scraped all that off and cleaned out the sink thoroughly, and we are seriously considering ordering one of those toothpaste dispensers to see if that solves the issue. In the meantime, Monster Boy has been informed that either Mommy or Daddy has to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush for him. Now that this has been completed, I have also sat him down and given him some expectations. His bed is to be made every morning when he gets up. His room is to be cleaned - one toy at a time is allowed out, and has to be put away before another is taken out. Every night when he goes to bed that his room is cleaned properly, he will get a quarter for his piggy bank. If the room is not cleaned to the specified standards, no quarter. I have shown him how to rinse out the sink once he is done brushing his teeth as well. Hopefully this will work.

Little Miss Sunshine also got a storage shelving system for her room, although it is not in there yet. We have an extra furniture set that we intended to use once she was out of her crib, but it's very 80's. It is in great shape, it's just ugly! We are going to attempt to paint it white and replace the drawer pulls on it to see if we can make it look a little bit better, and go ahead and put it in her room now. I have a changing table and dresser which match her crib in there, but the dresser is falling apart and even with both in there, I do not have enough drawer space. The plan now is to paint the chest of drawers that belongs to the furniture set white, and move that into her room to replace both furniture items that are currently in there. The top of the dresser is large enough that I can put her changing pad on top of it to use as a changing table. We will then take the bookshelf (a cheapy one that is falling apart really) out as well, and move the storage shelf in - there is space enough on it for her books, and since she doesn't have any toys to speak of yet, the cloth cubes can hold her blankets, towels, bibs and burp rags for now.

We cleaned the kitchen and the living room up as well. Tomorrow's agenda includes cleaning our room (which is now housing said armoire for additional MUCH NEEDED clothing storage) and shampooing the carpets and mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors. If that doesn't take the whole day, we may tackle the basement as well. Since Shane is really the only one who spends considerable time down there, we typically don't really mess with it, and it stays rather neat, if not clean.

The first order of my gDiapers arrived today! I am SUPER excited. The other order along with the flushies should get here on Tuesday, and I also picked up some of the supplies I need to make my own cloth inserts as well. A member of my online birth club has the instructions for a now-sew and sewn method on her website (bordersbohobaby.blogspot.com) - along with the option to order from her as well! So I will be giving those a shot. I am very excited about doing this, and am sure hoping that they will work out well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but from what I have seen so far, it looks manageable.

Tomorrow I am going to go to the fabric store to pick up the rest of the supplies for my cloth inserts, as well as fabric to make a baby wrap. Miss Sunshine used to love the pocket sling I have, but lately she is not interested in it - she wants those little legs to be free! Since I am really enjoying baby wearing, and she is not large enough or strong enough to do some of the alternate carries in a sling yet, I am going to try out a wrap. If it goes well, I may start making them for sale. Along with some other items I have found. Little ways to bring in some income while still allowing me to be at home. We shall see - I have a feeling taking care of Monster Boy and Miss Sunshine is going to take every ounce of energy I have. Hopefully I can find some time in my day to get a quick workout in. That should definitely help with my lethargy!

And now I am going to go to bed. It is early, but it has been a long day and tomorrow is going to be longer, I am sure.