3rd Trimester!

I am 28 weeks pregnant today! Which means I've entered the third trimester and In 12 weeks or hopefully a couple less we'll be meeting this baby girl.

I try not to think about it.

Being married to a firefighter is just a way of life for me now. The shifts, the sudden "gotta go babe, overtime" the interesting stories, the sad stories, etc are all just a common part of our lives here in this household. It's nothing new to me and I don't really ever think much about it until something like this happens. In a department, maybe 60 miles from my house, a 37 year old father of 3 was killed trying to fight a fire. I know what my husband does for a living is dangerous. I also know that driving down the road to go to the grocery store is dangerous, but it really hits home when someone just doing his job loses his life. It makes you stop and think about how important your family really is. Please pray for the fellow firefighters, the family, and the friends of this department. They have suffered a tremendous loss and will need support and prayers to get through it.

What to do?

What do you do when someone you love and care about hurts you to your core? Do you write them out of you life forever, do you take some time to forgive them? What if this person has the potential to hurt your child too. I mean if they said what they said to you, they would probably say it to your child if provoked too.

My sister and I had a small argument that escalated this weekend. It turned ugly fast and she said something about my child that hurt me so much that I could barely breathe. I'm infuriated. I'm devastated. I'm not speaking to her because I can't control my emotions enough to do so. I don't know if I'll ever be able to. I mean, this is my child we're talking about. The one person on the earth that I care about the most. This is my sister. A person who I share all of my childhood memories with. A person who've I've gone above and beyond to help when needed and someone whom I confide in. Someone who I trusted immensely.

I'm just so hurt. So angry. So many emotions at once.

It's 3:24 AM

And do you know what I'm doing? Eating a peanut butter sandwich, drinking pink lemonade and watching reruns of Roseanne. I'm also looking at fellow mommy bloggers blogs, catching up on their old posts and being pissed off at their perfect bodies 2 years after having a baby....yeah I'm not a size 2 and never have been, but damnit right now I'm a freaking blimp! I probably shouldn't be eating the peanut butter sandwich, but I'm hungry and can't sleep....so it seems logical.

Something I never want to forget.

As parents we all have things about our children that we never want to forget. What their hugs feel like, their kisses, how small they were when they were born, the first word they say, etc. Tonight, I want to remember forever that my son really enjoys brown sugar and cinnamon pop tarts and he calls them "cop tarts" and it's the cutest thing I've ever heard.

Woe is me...

So here I am having a crappy day full of  " there's not enough money, I'm going to have to go back to work full time, but how will we afford daycare, I hate my life, blah blah blah (for the record I'm not going back to work it just feels like I should sometimes since it's my fault that there never seems to be enough money to go around since I left)" and I'm taking a bath listening to my husband and D play in the living room (loudly) and it hits me....I'm a selfish bitch. Seriously. I have a BEAUTIFU L son, a great husband, a house that we can afford and a life many people would envy.  On top of all of that my child is the picture of health and so are my husband and I...yet here I am bitching and feeling sorry for myself and I have nothing to feel sorry for myself for.

My motherhood confessions...

Let me preface this with saying I know I'm a good mom. I struggled for a year with post partum depression and with a lot of encouragement and eye opening I realized that I'm a damn good mom. I love my son more than everything on this planet combined and I'd literally give my life for him without a thought....but sometimes I'm not the best mom I know I can be. I mean we all have weaknesses and strengths. While my son is always loved and his basic needs are always met and then some, I have bad days. And here are some of my confessions from those bad days.

-Sometimes I wonder why in the world I EVER thought 2 babies would be a good idea.
-Sometimes cartoons are the only thing on the TV all day long.
-My son called our dog a dirty bastard the other day because I was watching a movie where the character said that.
-Sometimes all my son eats all day long are pancakes, cheese sticks, and fruit bites b/c I don't push hard enough for him to eat something else. He eats so little that I'm just glad he's eating.
-Sometimes I wonder how in the world I will ever love this little girl on the way as much as I love her brother.
-I look forward to nap time all day long. Not b/c I get stuff done but b/c I can take a 2 hour nap too!
-Dawson stays up way late b/c he'll sleep in if he does and I sure do enjoy that.
-I am NOT looking forward to sleepless nights again...at all.
-Sometimes my husband irritates me so badly that I wish he'd just leave and come back in about 3 days.
-I could never ever leave my son for a kid free vacation....but I totally envy my friends that do.
-My son refuses to spend the night with his grandparents now b/c he's incredibly attached to me....I wish that he would get over it and just stay one night every once in a while.
-I secretly LOVE the fact that I'm his favorite person and everyone knows it.
-I seriously miss the days when I could pee, bathe, eat, etc etc etc by myself.
-I actually enjoy new episodes of Handy Manny and Bubble Guppies...until I've watched them 20 times.
-I think it's hilarious when D tortures the dog aka loves on him
-Sometimes I want to throw away all the noisy toys and act like I have no idea what happened to them
-Sometimes I take 2 showers a day when my husband is home just so I can get 10 minutes to myself

Time flies...

Everyone says it. Everyone's heard it. But it's true. Time really does fly. I notice it in little increments and big ones. Sometimes the day is over before I even realize it's started. Dawson is over 2.5 years old and I'm 3 days shy of being 26 weeks pregnant with Allie. It just amazes me that in the blink of an eye the year can be more than half way over, I can be over half way pregnant with a baby and my first baby can be a full fledge toddler. It's no wonder that children grow up before their parents even realize it.

I had my last 4 week appointment this morning to check up on Allie. She's doing fabulously. Nothing surprising and all seems well. In 3 weeks I have my glucose test and then 2 weeks after that I have another appointment. I'm already almost at the 2 week appointment mark, which I know from experience means that I'll be giving birth in no time. Of course I only have 14 weeks left until I'm 40 weeks and I know that 14 weeks FLIES. It's kinda scary really. I still worry about D and his acceptance of his whole life changing, but mostly I'm looking forward to him having a sibling and seeing them together. I wonder if she'll look like him and if he'll be gentle with her of if I'll be constantly telling him "don't hit your sister" I'd guess it'll probably be a mixture of both. He really amazes me sometimes. I don't know what I did to deserve him, but I'm certainly glad I have him. Even when he drives me absolutely nuts...which is frequently.

The Brother/Sister Relationship

So, I'm the 2nd of 3 girls. My husband is the oldest of 2 boys. Dawson is my first, obviously a boy. And Allie is going to be our last (probably) and is a girl (or so they say.) I know nothing about a brother/sister relationship. I know all about same sex siblings, but how does the brother/sister thing work? Do they love each other the way sisters love sisters and brothers love brothers? Can they be best friends even though they are totally opposite sexes? Will her friends come over and try to date her brother and his friends try to date his sister? Will he be super over protective of her and will they be close when they're all grown up and moved away? I want Dawson to always have a sibling to share all of his memories from his childhood together and to love and trust and be close to always....I thought he'd have a brother for that. Is he going to be mad at me because she's not a brother but a sister instead?

My name is Mandie and I have a highly sensitive child.

Dawson was never a super needy baby. He was happy, laughed, cooed, and hit all of his miletsones early and well. He didn't, however, sleep well. For 2 years I had to rock him to sleep and then he still got up many times a night.
ETA: I wanted to clarify that maybe D wasn't a super easy baby. Maybe it was me. I didn't ever have him on a schedule, I just followed his cues. When he wanted to eat, he ate. It wasn't every 4 hours or anything like that. I slept when he slept even if it was in 20 min increments. I held him most of the time and I thought it was just because that's what parents do. Maybe to me he was easy but for some moms he wouldn't have been.
Now he's 2.5 and SUPER clingy. He's also VERY verbal, talks incredibly well and uses big words that sometimes shock me (yesterday we were talking and he said Actually, at 2.5 he knows the word actually and uses it correctly) When he was in daycare he ALWAYS cried when I dropped him off and he would cry off and on throughout the day. He doesn't like to be left with anyone including his Dad very often and reacts to loud noises and pain in a exuberant manner. I mean tears, fits, throwing himself on the floor, etc. After some very trying mommy moments in which I just want to yell scream and pull my hair out, I've done some research....and I'm quite certain D is a highly emotionally sensitive child which means he's probably hypersensitive to other things too. Now, I have to figure out how to properly parent this sensitive child without effing him up for life.

Can i just say that the United States judicial system is a freakin joke and that there was absolutely NO justice done for little Caylee Anthony today.

What's on my mind today?

A few things....let's start:

The Casey Anthony Trial...the defense has rested and she didn't take the stand. Of course she didn't. There is no defense for what she did to her daughter and what she's done to her family since. Especially since the trial started. You can't blame your dad for everything. Even if he did molest you, like you claim, you don't kill your child and cover it up. You just don't. Molested women have been having babies for years and most of those women don't go on to kill their children.

Nadya Suleman aka Octomom says her babies disgust her...yeah I guess they do. You didn't get a tv show and have no way of paying for help raising your 14 kids. You have babies because you want them and can care for them not for a TV show.

The couple in Idaho who bought a house built on a snake den. They stayed for 3 months....2 months and 29 days longer than I would have. I can't even imagine the horror of living in that house. Straight off a Stephen King page. You'll have to google this one because I can't bring myself to pull up the story again and look at it...it makes my skin crawl.

Dawson slept til 10 this morning. It was nice. I know these days are coming to an end...soon. I just hope and pray that Allie sleeps better than D did for the first 2 years of his life.

We took D skating last night. He LOVED it. I mean LOVED it. It took me forever to find "clickie" aka training skates like the ones I had as a child, but Fisher Price has what they call 1-2-3 grow with me skates and they work just like the ones I had and he really did well. I have a feeling this will be a weekly occurence in our house b/c his dad likes to go just as much as D does. ( I obviously didn't skate, but definitely after Allie is born. We'll probably have D's 3rd birthday party here as well.)

Dawson must be in a growth spurt because he's eating WAY more than usual. Last night in a span of 5 hours he eat a pancake, a sausage patty, a nice helping of corn, green beans, 2 little packs of fruit bites, and 5 small chicken tenders. He woke up at 10 and promptly said "I hungy, mama." He's now eating two pancakes.