I started this blog as a way to keep track of Molly pictures, milestones…etc. I am probably the least organized person on the planet, so blogging helped me keep my thoughts, plans, ideas and pictures all in one place, instead of floating around in my mind, randomly.

Since I am not working, I used to look at blogging like a job. I would blog everyday about something, anything that piqued my interest. The problem with that was blogging then became a job. It was something I almost forced myself to do everyday, whether I liked it or not.

Finally I just stopped. I was tired. Tired of trying to compete with other blogs like it was a popularity contest, tired of not feeling passionate about my writing. Tired of not being able to think and write down my thoughts because I wasn’t getting any sleep at night.

I thought that maybe at some point I would find the motivation to write again. Then, bad things started happening. Soul-crushingly bad things. My grandma died, I was offered a great job and then, for no reason at all, the offer was rescinded, then—the kicker in all of this—I found out that I am pregnant again. And not just, oh I am 5 weeks along, more like 16 weeks and 4 days—and I had NO CLUE. I wasn’t sick and I thought all of my other symptoms were seasonal allergies. Stupid, right? Stupid and scary.

Then, before I even had time to process the pregnancy, my dad went in for a routine stress test and ended up having emergency triple bypass surgery.  He’s okay, Thank God, but it was so scary.

THEN….we find out the baby is another girl–silver lining, right? It will save a lot of money to be able to reuse everything, which is great. But, at my doctor appointment the OB informs me that the baby’s left kidney is dialated and we need to watch it. I can’t help but think something is wrong and it is my fault because I didn’t know I was pregnant. I beat myself up constantly because I should have known—I just went through this, how could I not know? It feels like being 16 again.

With all of that—how interesting would this blog be to read? All I do is worry. I worry about money, about my dad, about this baby and how on earth is going to be possible to manage two kids under two. How do I find a job now? On top of that, how incredibly expensive would daycare be?

Oh, and I am trying to wean Molly and she refuses everything I do. Last night she wouldn’t eat her dinner (pasta with tomato sauce) and then screamed because she wanted to nurse. When I finally got her to sleep, she woke up every 2 hours and wanted to nurse, which I am not supposed to do, so I have to just try and calm her down while also trying to maintain my sanity.

It feels like I am failing. I am failing as a mother, I have already failed as a wife. I am failing as a daughter and a daughter in law. I am failing at just being myself. Do I even know who I am anymore?  It doesn’t feel like it.

With all of that said, I hope you all understand my “blogging sabbatical”. I wish I could say that I have come out of all of this a stronger, better person, but I haven’t. I am still in the muck and cannot find my way out.

Please forgive me for this awful, depressing post. It’s as real and as raw as I get, and I hope that can be appreciated for what it is—the truth.

Isn’t she funny? She kept running off of the set. By the end of the photos she was SO OVER it. They came out well I think, despite her protestations.

Preparing for a first birthday party (or planning any party) is not exactly my cup of tea. I have ordered her cake, after spending months thinking hey, I’ll make one! With my own marshmallow fondant! Because, you know, I bake all the time, only not. I had visions of this:

What I ordered will probably look like this:

(Photo courtesy of cakewrecks.com)

Well, I am sure it will look better than that. As long as it’s edible who cares right?

The biggest “wreck” so far on my part is the fact that I ordered my invitations and well,the party is on September 11th and I haven’t mailed them out yet. I also forgot to put a way to RSVP me, but I suppose most people who would be coming would tell us, right? Hey, more leftover cake for me if no-one shows.  I like frosting.

What on earth do you get a one year old that would rather play with mail envelopes than toys? I was going to get her a wagon, but my mom apparently still has the one from when I was little.  I’ve gotten her clothing, but seriously, how fun would that be to open? Not very.

With her birthday being 16 days away, and the party being 17 I am not even overly worried about it. Maybe I should be.  I guess with everything that’s been happening lately, it just hasn’t been that important. It is important, but I’d rather have living family members there to celebrate with and no party, than dead ones and a big party. If that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t.

I need more sleep. Maybe I should retitle the blog “I need more sleep. Please excuse the rambling”

After last week quite possibly being the worst week of my life, I figured I would start out this week with something a little more fluffy and interesting (well, it’s Wednesday, but hey atleast I know what day it is!)

I mentioned in earlier posts that I was going to be Cloth Diapering and had found a blog sponsor. I received Molly’s diapers from Comfy Rumps on Monday and promptly washed them. I have to say, I was a little bit surprised at having to wash them so many times to begin with. I learned that if you don’t make them absorbent, they will leak. Thankfully I didn’t learn this the hard way.

After drying the inserts in the dryer and hanging the shells in every possible place I could find to hang dry them, I began to stuff the inserts into the shells. Apparently, Molly is not a fan of this process, as she screamed and tackled me as I was trying to stuff them. She then knocked over the stack of diapers I had just created and crawled off with a couple of them.

Then, after stuffing the diapers, I changed Molly into one on her next change. Following using disposables, it is not easy to get used to the snaps! I made sure to size them when I was stuffing them so that I didn’t have a half naked child running around and peeing everywhere whilst trying to snap them to size, but there are still the top snaps to deal with. I think once I get used to them it will be much much easier.

I have cloth diapered for a day. Here are my thoughts so far:

1. I have a hard time telling when she has peed, as the fleece lining is super absorbent. This may or may not be a good thing.

2. These diapers wash up awesomely well. I had previously used a few Gro-Baby CD’s and these are so much nicer.

3. Poo is not as hard to deal with in cloth as I thought it would be.

4. Since she is walking, I think it makes it a little easier on her bum to fall down now that it’s padded with fleece.

5. My brother thinks that when she sits down, it looks like she has a cup on. This is both humorous and slightly disturbing.

I love these diapers so far. Pictures of Molly in them are forthcoming, I just have to find my camera, where-ever it may be.

The above picture is of me (6 years ago, so forgive the ridiculous tan and the teeny tiny limbs) and the most amazing woman I have ever met–my grandmother.

I wrote a post on Thursday about how she was sick and that I hoped she could make it through it. How she’s so strong and I thought she could fight what was attacking her body and mind.I didn’t post it because I got distracted and started on something else.

I wish I would have posted it, because  I was wrong. She passed away last night at 83 years young, and that news truly hit me like a ton of bricks. I kept thinking, even as they told me she wasn’t going to make it that they were WRONG. They had to be. She wasn’t here long enough in my mind.

When my brother told me, my response to him was “okay, goodnight” and then I hung up the phone. I didn’t know what else to do but cry and try to think of happy memories, instead of being sad over her loss.

My father sent me some old family pictures a few months ago, and amongst them was Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding announcement. It stated the University she went to before she was married. I never knew she went to college, and when I asked her what she went to school for she said “I went for fun, stayed until the money ran out and then came home and worked”. When I talked to her about my fears regarding childbirth, she told me I should have a C-Section with Molly because she had four and they were “just wonderful!”. That’s one thing about her–she always knew how to make me laugh, even with the truth.

I want her to know how much her life has meant to me. How wonderful it was to spend Friday nights at her house, where I could make popcorn with tons of butter and watch Friday night Nickelodeon without my brother interrupting. How much I enjoyed it when she let me pretend I was a surgeon on my Raggedy Ann dolls, cutting them apart and then sewing them back together with her sewing kit. How even though everything she cooked was burnt, it still tasted good just because she made it. One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was dress up in her fur coat and high heels, with her clip on earrings and sparkly shirts from the 40′s and strut around the house like a grown up.

We went through her old photos today, trying to find ones to use for a memory board and quite honestly it was a humorous experience. There were pictures of her making funny faces, serious pictures of her and my grandfather, with my dad ruining the picture by sneakily holding up his middle finger. My favorites were the ones where she was playing with my brother and I, or in one picture just my brother but I wanted her attention too, darnit (go figure).

The pictures made me realize what a wonderful life she lived. She was the most loving, wonderful, caring, giving, special woman I have ever met. I am proud to say that she is my grandma, and even though she’s gone, she’s alive and always will be in my heart. I think that’s what matters the most.

I am sitting here, watching Molly sleep, wondering when she got to be so big.

I remember being able to set her in the Boppy and her just watching me, like “Wow, my mom is sooo interesting”.  She would take a binky when she cried and would happy stare at a ceiling fan forever in amazement of its ceiling fan-ness.

Now it’s like her attention span is that of a goldfish. She flops from one place to another, doing different things. It’s almost like she needs separate activity stations to keep herself entertained.

I also remember when tummy time used to look like this:

And now she is crawling with some random walking in between (running, as well, can you believe it?).

I often wonder where my teeny little baby went. It almost feels like she has grown so quickly that I missed it, or something. So many things have changed about her—she has this titanic personality where she makes it known if she is displeased, whereas when she was little she was so docile. The one thing that hasn’t changed is her inability to sleep through the night.

I mentioned a while back that I was attempting sleep training via some sparse CIO among other methods, but that kind of went out the window. If I put her to bed on her own at night, she now will cry for a couple minutes and then fall asleep, but she still wakes every 3 hours wanting to nurse. Last week she had a night where she was awake every 45 minutes and I finally decided at 4:30 AM to stop nursing her and turned on Yo Gabba Gabba, which, as crazy of a show as it is, soothed her and she fell back to sleep on her own.

I am so jealous of the moms who have babies who sleep all night and have for a while. I sometimes wonder if I went back and did things differently with Molly, maybe she would have better sleep habits now.

I guess I could try new methods with the next baby…….20 years from now

First off, sorry for the randomness of the earlier post-song. It was in True Blood last night and it’s from Shrek the 3rd and I just love it.It doesn’t really have a meaning for me other than for some reason, as it was playing the end of True Blood last night it made me cry.

Anyways, Molly is 10 months old–can you believe it? I cannot. I received an email a couple weeks ago saying that she was 42 weeks old, which made me think that she would be one in 1o weeks. No no NO. She’s not allowed to be one. I remember being so excited to meet her and now I just want to turn back the clock and have her be little again.

Molly went swimming for the first time last week and she just loves it. She has always loved her baths, so I thought that she would love to swim—I thought right!

See the cup she has? She was playing with it, and then all of a sudden she filled it up with pool water and started drinking it—ew! Goofy girl. She also tried watermelon for the first time, which she LOVED.

I’ve been preparing to switch over to CDing–Comfy Rumps as one of the sponsors of my blog will be supplying us with some diapers to use. They have great prices and were recommended to me by LCW at Waking Up Williams. I cannot wait to try them out! Molly has these cloth swim diapers and they worked really well also.

Also–I apologize for the blog hiatus. When asked for blog advice, I always tell people to not write if they don’t have anything to say or if they aren’t feeling up to it, because that isn’t what people want to read. I have had plenty of things to say, but haven’t been able to express them in the best manner, so I just haven’t blogged.

I promise to never go this long again though, I’ve missed blogging! Thank you to all of you for the supportive emails and tweets. They have been wonderful!

Damien Rice – 9- Crimes

Before I babble on and on about Molly and how she’s doing, I want to thank you all for the kind words and comments. Although I feel undeserving of such a  huge response, I appreciate it so much more than you know!

Molly is “talking” more and more each day….see below. Sorry for the poor video quality. My camera has decided to make things randomly fuzzy for some reason.

Girl LOVES to sit outside. We try to get out and do things everyday just to keep her active and “social”. She started yelling “Mamamamamama” as loud as she could in the middle of the grocery store, so I ended up opening a box of biter biscuits and giving her one (I was going to buy them anyways—-BAD MOM alert!).

We’ve been trying new foods lately since the pediatrician gave the okay for soft table foods. She’s had pancakes which she ate with no hands, sticking her face on her space saver tray. She had a cheese sandwich yesterday that she smashed into unrecognizable pieces and only ate a tiny bit of it—the dog was in heaven because she got to eat the super smashed sandwich. She also tried steamed carrot sticks and canned green beans, both of which she hated. We tried a new fruit mixture puree that she hated so much that she closed her mouth and shook her head no—it was quite hilarious.

Currently she is sitting in a pile of puffs that she dumped on the floor. She has figured out that she can get the lid off of the puffs container with her two bottom teeth and makes a huge mess by dumping out the entire container.

Below are some pictures of her having fun in the sun (and fun stealing my unopened can of diet dew). Enjoy—I know y’all have missed the Molly pictures!

Sometimes it’s nice to find humor in strange places. For example, Molly loves to open and close drawers and sometimes she will attempt to do mini pull-ups whilst hanging from a drawer. Humorous, yes. Unsafe, um….yeah..

The best part about her making me laugh is that when I laugh, she laughs. She gets this HUGE toothless grin on her face and she belly laughs like my laughing at her is the funniest thing in the universe. It’s the best, happiest feeling I get lately. She also says “Mama” which I quite honestly think is her trying to say “Molly” but she cannot say “L’s” yet. She also has this roll ball with a cat on it, and it meows. When it meows, I tell her “That’s a kitty!” and she tries to say “Khhhhh” “Khhhh”. It’s like she’s hissing.

I need humor to keep me sane. I don’t talk about a lot of things that have been going on, because I like to keep the private stuff private, but I will come out and say it.

I am in the middle of a divorce.  Last week H’s lawyer sent me an email with a “Proposed request for full custody of Molly”. I almost puked. Are you fucking kidding me? I mean seriously. I cried. and cried. and cried some more.

I’d love to write what I really think….but I’ll save that for a time when it cannot be used against me. Let’s just say I am really really pissed off.

So, you can blame last weeks happenings for me being kind of off the radar. I have not felt like myself and all the Zoloft in the world cannot fix it.

If you have emailed me, I will write back soon, I promise. If you have requested to join the D-List I will get you listed asap.

Thanks as always for your love and support.

If you’ve seen this movie, explain something to me. Is he crazy or is he sane?

Here’s my theory…..

I think that he is sane and they convince him that he is insane. They know he was asking questions about their facility so they bring him there to shut him up.

The only problem I have is that there are things all along that do lead you to believe he is insane. When he sees his wife holding the whiskey bottle and she turns around, her back is burnt. When they do a front shot of her, she is bleeding from the stomach which is where he supposedly shot her when he killed her.The little girl he keeps seeing ends up supposedly being his daughter. Also….where did they get his suit with the tie his wife gave him? If he is crazy and he was sent there, presumably they would not have sent his good clothing to a mental facility.

If they are practicing mind control experiments there, like he thinks they are, it is entirely possible that he is made to think he is crazy, even though he isn’t.

What do you think?!