Park Photo Dump

Warm enough for the park today and we're both worn out!

(Manual mode shooting today - hooray! No post-processing at all though. If I waited for that, these photos would never go up, so here's what I took.)

She still loves the swings. She wants to go on the big kid ones but falls off pretty much immediately.

Wheee! 

She's perturbed by her ponytail touching the top of the tube.

Over it. What a big kid!

"Okay Mom, stop taking photos and come help me get out of this thing."

Escaping the playground.

"See ya."

"And what's around this bend?"

Very upset, despondent even, that we couldn't get closer to the fountain.

My "big kid" still crawls up stairs. Thank goodness for remnants of babyhood.

And then she runs off and reminds me how big she is again.

Taking a break to tell me, "FA FA FA FA FA!"

Are we racing, JJ? The toddler vs the preggo? They're lining up to watch that.

I have no idea what's going on here.

And.... we're done.

Zoo Weather

Stay At Home Mom Linkup

I'm not usually big on this type of thing, but another one of my favorite blogs is prompting this post.

What Being A SAHM Means To Me (sounds like "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation")

Objectively: 

R and I both come from families with a SAHM, so that was the model we both grew up with. When we envisioned having children, I think we both subconsciously modeled our future family after our families of origin. And, while there were parts of my job I enjoyed, it was not a good fit for me, at the time, so it was not a huge sacrifice for me to quit the workforce for awhile. Me staying at home was sort of our default, and there was no compelling reason to do otherwise when I got pregnant.

And now that I'm at home with Julia, I truly believe she benefits from having a parent as her primary caregiver during these first few years of her life. I see how different she is with Robert - differences which have become more subtle as she's gotten older, but I see them nonetheless, and it makes me realize how secure she is when she's with me. I'm happy I can provide her with a "go-to" person, and as exhausting as it can be to be that person all the time, I can actually feel her relax when she's with me. Being a rather anxious person myself, I think that's important for her well-being. Plus, I'm busting my butt to give her the best growing-up environment possible: no tv, lots of books, puzzles, one-on-one playtime, fresh air, outings, and exploration.

I obviously can't compare her experience to the daycare one, and I'm not trying to here. I'm just saying that I'm confident I'm doing a good job of helping her grow mentally and emotionally, which is our family's priority right now. With #2 on the way on the heels of #1, it becomes an even more efficient decision - I'm raising all the children in our family the way we would like them to be raised.

I don't intend to stay home perpetually. At some point the girls' needs will change and I hope and plan to be able to meet them as they grow while starting up my own life again.

Not So Objectively:

While I didn't love my actual job, I derived a lot of my identity and personal sense of worth from the intellectual environment I was in every day. I was doing big, fancy-pants lawyer work at a big, fancy-pants firm, and I gotta say, it's been humbling to say the least to trade that in for diapers and spit-up and sitting around in a circle with other toddlers singing patty-cake. I'm sure this reflects my own feelings more than that of those around me, but I feel like being a SAHM is like wearing a sign that says, "I'm Stupid." I find myself saying, "I stay at home with Julia now but I used to be a lawyer," as if to toss in a quick "I'm smarter than I look, I swear." By my own personal standards, I've gone from being a productive member of society - something which was always strangely important to me - to being an underpaid babysitter.

Because, even as frequently as I wish I could just drop Julia off at daycare and go to work where I can use the bathroom by myself, I know that the job I'm doing now is easier than the job I was doing before. In a different way, of course. Now I'm on duty 24/7, and giving up not only my privacy, identity, personal growth, intellectual growth, and ego, but literally giving up my body for these children. And that's exhausting in it's own way. But, I also get to go shopping, go to the park, go to the zoo, read on the floor, and fill up our days with other things that would have sounded delightful to an overworked, over-berated young attorney.

And it's hard for me not to believe, in my heart of hearts, that I took the easy way out. And I'm afraid everyone I meet knows this.

(Edited to clarify:) What I'm saying is, my life is really nice right now. Compared to being a lawyer, it's validating, satisfying, and relatively low-stress. Which, makes me, the overachiever best-under-pressure never-good-enough type person I've always been, feel like I should be doing more. I've always felt that, if I'm not almost drowning, I'm not doing enough. And this SAHM thing, I'm actually keeping afloat for the most part. (Hah - we'll see how I feel once Baby #2 gets here!) So I'm not saying that SAHMs take the easy way out, or that they have it easier than those who work, because I really believe there's absolutely no point to having that debate; it's like trying to compare grief - you just can't do it.

What I am saying is that this is a pretty good gig, and I judge myself and wonder whether I should be doing more. I.e., working. Despite the fact that I believe it's best for the kiddos if I stay home, I constantly wonder if I shouldn't be "doing it all" instead.

Conclusion:

I don't have much of one - like all of life, staying home is messy and my feelings about it are ever-evolving. It's been about a year and a half since I quit the workforce, and I've gradually come to peace with my our decision, mostly because I've adjusted my perspective and gotten a bit more mature about things.

The grass is always greener, and I know there are so many working moms out there who would kill to be in my position but can't. And I know in the long run, I'll never regret taking a few years off to stay at home with my children. It's cliche, but true - I can always go back to work but I can never get back these early years.

And it's my life, and my family's life, and what anyone else thinks of it really doesn't matter one flipping bit. We're happy. Julia's happy, despite my misgivings I'm way happier than I was when I was working, and I'm pretty sure R is happier too (or at least so he tells me). Like I said earlier, we're doing what we think is best for our family and best in line with our family's priorities. If that means I have to be insecure sometimes and take the hit to my ego, so be it.

Cause this little family? Kind of worth it. :)

Not the most amazing photo of us all, but we're all there!

Thursday photos

Not feeling the blogging thing lately, but I did take a few pics of Julia so I'm putting those up for family.

(Shot almost 200 photos in full-on manual mode today, and these are the only ones that are decent. I hear you get worse before you get better, so I'm hoping that holds true for me, because I'm definitely getting worse. It's tough when your subject is moving a mile a minute, but I guess that's just making me get shutter speed down pat.)

Okay so it's a terrible photo but her expression just cracks me up. This is after she tried to eat Play-Doh for the seventeenth time.

Filling up at the Magic House.

Who goes down slides all by herself now?

Mom I got this. I know how playgrounds work.

And just watching the big kids...

Only Monday?

I wouldn't say it doesn't feel like a Friday, but I'd swear it feels like a Thursday. At the very least, a Wednesday. But the calendar tells me it's only Monday, and Blogger tells me it's been many moons since I was last around here. I've got a quiet night so it's about high time I caught up.

The kitchen is coming along. At this point, we're just waiting for the countertops to be fabricated and installed - all the tear-out is done and the lighting is finished. I hear through the grapevine that the countertops will be in on Thursday, but last week it was supposed to be tomorrow, so I'm not hanging all my hopes on that. While I still don't have a working kitchen, at least I no longer have workmen in my house until Countertop Day.

~~~~~

Julia is evening out a little bit. Her sleeping has gotten a bit better and the "tantrums" are calming down.

I have to put "tantrums" in quotes because they're truly just about 30 seconds of screaming and crying - not bad by toddler tantrum standards. I'm responding by getting physically accessible to her (getting down on her level, holding her, etc.), using very very short sentences to empathize with her ("Play with stove! I know! Fun stove buttons!"), then waiting for her to calm down a little and redirecting with an explanation as appropriate ("No stove. Stove hot - ow! Look! Phone buttons!"). It's roughly based on the Happiest Toddler On The Block book, and thus far it seems to be working alright. I like that I take the time to empathize and be emotionally available for her without compromising my position or authority. Do I have any idea if this is more effective than any other approach? Nope. Do I have the patience to do this every time she doesn't get her way? Absolutely not. My other tactic is to ignore her, which I do when I feel like screaming right back at her. But I'm trying. I'm also getting better at seeing a conflict before it happens and heading it off.

She's also been doing some adorable things lately:

• When she sees that I'm making her a bottle, she'll run to her room and lay down on her floor where we usually feed and change her. From a child who used to hate laying down, this is hilarious.
• She'll pick up her play phone and make this big fake laugh into it. "HAH HAH HAH!" Is that what I sound like? Yikes.
• When my phone rings, she always goes, "Dada!" because R is my most frequent caller and his picture pops up when he calls. 
• When we go somewhere in the car, I give her a book and she sits in her carseat and reads her book to me. I can often tell what she's looking at based on the sounds she makes, but it's looking back and seeing her reading quietly on her own that really warms my heart.
• Still very little in the way of actual talking, but she makes signs for food, water, basement, butterfly, gorilla, frog, help, please, airplane, cat, and cold. She knows a few more when I make them and she's understanding more each day, but between the signs she knows, and pointing and shaking her head "no," she can communicate pretty well.
• She still loves Scrappy. LOVES Scrappy. Loves to pat her, scratch her, hug her, kiss her, and bring her toys to play with. (Scrappy is a dear, patient dog who doesn't get enough credit in our house.)

Guess who was here first and who decided to join?

~~~~
Being pregnant sucks right now. I'm pretty pissed off about it. I'm happy about New Baby but the thought of being pregnant for ANOTHER FOURTEEN FIFTEEN WEEKS makes me cry inside. Nothing's physically wrong, and I remain grateful for that, but mentally this one has been tougher on me than Julia's, for a variety of mundane reasons.

And those are my major updates. More details, probably on all of those subjects, later this week.

Baby Bump #2

I was about to write out an actual post but the baby monitor just started making noise... So much for nap time today!

But I do have a photo for ya'll - proof that I'm actually pregnant. I wasn't planning on doing this but then I realized I have ZERO bump photos this time around, and that's just not fair to #2. So, here we are:

Yes, I'm alive

This isn't a "catching up" post, just a "yes, I'm still alive" post.

We decided to go full-steam ahead with the kitchen remodel so I've been immersed in that. One of the reasons we chose to do it now is because the contractors are slow, which means they've been able to move very quickly on this job. Great, of course, but it means my days have been a whirlwind of tile, light fixtures, countertops, and other major, permanent house decorating decisions that I feel very ill-equipped to make. But I'm plowing through (golf claps) and hopefully things calm down in a few days.

On the Julia front, briefly: she's learned "no" and started throwing mini-tantrums when she doesn't get her way. And she's stopped sleeping through the night, so she's exhausting me.

Today, we were playing in the family room. She was throwing a fit because she didn't fit inside a little toy car the size of her foot, when a workman walked through the room on his way out the front door. She immediately stopped crying, gave him a big grin, and blew him kisses as he left. That pretty much epitomizes life around here lately.

But, Robert and I have started taking night shifts again, and sleeping in the guest room on our nights "off." Last night was a pretty good night for her, and I'm off tonight, so two decent nights' sleep in a row ought to do me some good. I'll be back to blogging on a somewhat regular basis (hopefully with some kitchen update pics!) in a few days. Maybe a week.