Sometimes I Feel Guilty

I just found this post from March of last year sitting in my drafts, unpublished.  I'm not sure why I didn't publish it at the time, although I would imagine that it's because I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer.  But I kind of like "crappy guilt days," or "random sad days" or "things aren't falling into place days."  They seem to balance the days where I'm soaring high and everything is perfect, and make the run of the mill normal days feel  beautiful.  

 

March 2, 2012

Sometimes I feel guilty

 

When I'm putting away laundry and I realize that there are more clean pjs than clean outfits.  Which means that week, more days than not, we didn't get dressed into "real" clothes.

But that's okay, because on those days we must have really needed to stay in pjs.  

 

When I'm putting away Jayce's clothes and I notice that he has a lot more clothes than Hannah does.

But that's okay, because almost 4 year olds put a lot of wear on their clothes.  This is not favoritism, it's practicality.

 

Then I put away Hannah's clothes and notice that she has lots more mom-made items than Jayce does.

But it's okay, because for a while he had a whole wardrobe of tie t-shirts.  And right now I'm just in a onesie re-do mode.

 

When I fix Jayce a hot dog for lunch, and I remember that he has had a hot dog for lunch every day that week.

But it's okay, because he eats the hot dog.  And the carrots, and the yogurt, and whatever else I give him.  He's going through a phase where he does eat, as opposed to the phases where he is never hungry, and if he wants a hot dog, that is fine with me.

 

When Chris comes home and the house is completely wrecked.  Usually around 4:30 I scope out the damage and tidy the worst of it, but some days I don't.

But it's okay, because when I sigh "I'm sorry the house is such a wreck..." he says, "that's alright honey, we'll get it later."  And he means it.  And later, we do.  Or we don't, and that's okay too.

 

That Hannah isn't eating "right."  Baby food, formula, bottle, nursing, table food, milk.  Your child's eating/not eating seems so personal and when it is insinuated (or verbalized) that we're doing it wrong, it makes me feel like such a failure.

But it's okay, because every child is different (blah blah) and we are figuring out what works for us and our baby.  And we have a healthy happy little girl.

 

Today is one of those "wrestling with guilt" days, that starting creeping in when I was putting away laundry (can you tell) and stuck around longer than I'd have liked it to.  But I guess that is okay too.

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Mama Said There'd Be Photo Shoots Like This...

I just cannot seem to get a picture of my 2 kids together.  I don't know what it is.  

Actually, I do.  Jayce is always over it, Hannah just wants to run away, and Chris can't/won't suppress how annoyed he is enough to make it work.  After this round of bombs, they were all in trouble with me.  Actually, not Hannah.  The baby was the one who sat still and smiled at me.  That a girl!Actually, now that I look at these in a series, I kind of like them.  This is just my family at the "no normal photos together" stage.  

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Photo An Hour

7:00. Snuggle.8:00.  She thinks that if she shows me, we can pretend she's allowed to play with this.

9:00.  A friend stops by with some "get well soon" goodies for me and the kids, including wine and chocolate.

10:00.  Jayce steps away from the tv and I show him his surprise.

Sometimes he shares, sometimes he doesn't.

11:00.  Stickers and activity books.

12:00. Living room chaos.

1:00. Hot lunch.

2:00.  Chapstick attacks: Hannah-2, Chapstick-0.

3:00. Scissors and watching.

4:00. Hats!

5:00.  Running.  Rolling her arms like in "Pat A Cake" while she runs.6:00. Dinner.  Genuinely excited about the salad.

7:00. Hanna finds my hat and the mirror.8:00. I suddenly feel terrible, skip the kids'  baths, let Jayce lay on the couch with me and play Angry Birds, and eventually I put him to bed and fall asleep alongside him for the night.

Chris went home on Thursday to attend the funeral of his sweet sweet Grandma Louise.  The kids were sick and I was super sick, so we had to send him alone.

These photos are from Saturday, home all day, bored but busy, playing, snuggling, resting, and eager for daddy to return. 

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Hannah Soundbite: Making Tea

Hannah is my little tea-making assistant each day.  She rides on my hip while I fix myself a drink, pointing out the essentials with enthusiasm.  

Tea!  Kettle!  Milk!  Sugar! 

I hold out the canister, she grabs a tea bag, and drops it into the empty mug for me.  She then declares, Hot!, when I add the steaming water.

But yesterday after I added my milk and sugar, she softly said, 

Bye bye milk.  Bye bye sugar.

And gosh was it sweet.  It was so sweet.

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Groupie

If Jayce is the family rock star, Hannah is certainly his biggest groupie.And really, where is the best place to practice rocking out other than in front of the mirror?Again, no real story here.  Just photos of my Jayce and his (eventually) sleepy little groupie.

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Non-Camera Randomness

I still do not have my new camera. So I have been camera-less for days now. Actually, enough days that I can count it by weeks, but I won't.

Jayce's face below sums up how I feel completely. But I can't write a blog without pictures included, so these are from a few weeks ago.

When I first realized that I would be without a camera for several days and was freaking out about it, Chris informed me, in a very informative husbandly way, "Erin, it's not that big of a deal."

I quickly informed him, "Actually, it is a big deal, Chris. This weekend is the fall festival at church, next week is Jayce's first day of school, and the Balloon festival is that weekend and I'll have no pictures of that. Plus Hannah will be 3 months old in a few weeks and I have been taking monthly pictures of her. And I need to take pictures of my projects to stay ahead on Lemon Tree..."

These were the "events" that immediately came to mind of the next few weeks. But I was most sad about the "non-events."

Non-events like this weekend last year, when I had taken photos at the church's fall festival. It ensured that I had my camera on me when we got home, Chris started watering the lawn, and we ended up in the middle of a very ornery, laughable water war. This would have just been a little game that we played one afternoon and then forgot about, but I took a load of fun pictures in those 15 minutes, and I love to look through them and read that blog post now. It's a fun summer memory.

Along the lines of non-events, our air conditioning went out a few days after I sent my camera away, and despite what we were initially told, it has still not been repaired.

For Chris and I, this is not that big of a deal. Yeah, it's hot, but we're adults and we can deal with it. I didn't have a/c at home when I was growing up. We didn't have it in my grade school or my high school, and I didn't have it in the dorms in college. This was particularly rough when I was sunburned after soccer conditioning and practice, but I obviously survived just fine. But it's a little bit of a different story with kids.

Jayce cannot nap when he's so hot and uncomfortable. Hannah, on the other hand, cannot stay awake in this heat. It has led to some interesting moments.

Like the other day, when Jayce fought off his nap all afternoon. I put on a movie to keep him in the room while I sat down to feed Hannah. I glanced over at him after a few minutes and realized that he had fallen asleep on the couch, something that has never happened before. I don't get to watch Jayce sleep like I do with Hannah and it was so sweet. His arms were stretched up over his sweaty head, his ankles were crossed, and I kept sneaking over to wipe the tiny beads of sweat off of his nose. I was dying for my camera.

Little Hannah has been sleeping in her diaper alone and I could stare at her for hours. I can't stop smiling at her chubby little belly, her legs folded into that frog leg position, and her arms extended over her head. I rarely get to take in all of her sweet little rolls and it is absolutely a treasure.

I randomly came across a blog yesterday where a lady was talking about how she carries her camera with her all of the time, and often gets harassed by her friends and family about it. She said, "That’s the thing about pictures – they capture what is and let us see later how beautiful something was (that we might have missed) while we were living it." I couldn't agree more.

But I would argue that just being aware of picturesque (or blog-worthy) moments allows us to appreciate their beauty while they are happening. For now, I'll take this.

But I'm still more-than ready to get my new camera. :)

Also, you might remember me saying that I would be catching up on writing posts with the photos that I already have. It's true, I did this today! :)

Furthermore, I discovered a few blog posts that I wrote a few months ago but never posted because they were either almost finished, or I was waiting to download pictures from my camera to go with them and I forgot about them. So I think next week I'll post my "delayed reaction" posts. You'll know them when you see them.

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On Nurseries, Naps and Non-Cameras

There are many things happening around here lately, each of them could have their own post, but I doubt that will happen. Oh, to have the time to write about everything that I think is funny, terrible, beautiful or random. Someday, perhaps.

1.) I made this plaque for Hannah's nursery and put the tutorial on Lemon Tree today. I just love it!

I sang this song to my sweet little bump throughout my pregnancy and still do so when I'm rocking her. It is exactly how we feel about her addition to our family and our lives, so I was so pleased to get it into her nursery.

I came up with the idea while I was on bed rest and it was killing me to not be able to execute it. I kept trying to justify how I could do it but still be "resting," (maybe if Chris stains the wood, and then brings me the paint, and then I can do it at the kitchen table with my feet up...), but in the end I just waited until after Hannah was born. I love the colors too. The sunny yellow is the same shade I used for the damask on her walls.

2.) Speaking of the nursery, it is FINALLY finished! Chelsea came to town last weekend to visit and was a perfect sounding board for helping me figure out where to put everything. Now it is perfect!! I'll post pictures soon, I just need to go through and edit them all. I'll be posting the nursery reveal on Lemon Tree next Monday so I'll definitely have them by then. I promise there will be entirely too many pictures. :)

3.) Jayce has not been taking his naps. It is unfortunate timing, because some of those days I REALLY need for him to sleep.

I have tried the "resting" thing, and I don't think it's working. Once I have spent over an hour answering calls from his room and telling him to go lay down in his bed, I realize that defeat is on the horizon. At this point I regroup, and tell Jayce that if he's not going to sleep than he needs to rest quietly in his room. At first he was only allowed to read in his bed, but then he would take a few toys into bed, and they would end up zooming around the room, and now he just pretty much pulls out every toy for an hour or so and plays with it. He also continually comes to the door to tell me what he's playing with or ask if he can come downstairs yet.

Just when I feel like I am about to reach a breaking point, Jayce comes to the door to inform me that he has built me a castle. Then he'll run down, grab me by the hand, drag me along saying, "Come Mom. Come come come, I made you a present." Last week when he showed me my castle, he said, "Mom, you take a picture of your castle?" and then stood by it for a photo op. That's my boy. :)

Seriously though, how do I get him to stay in there and read? Or just stay in there at all?

4.) Friday was the end of a cumulatively exhausting week for all of us. I only got about 5 1/2 hours of interrupted sleep for 4 nights in a row, and was starting to feel physically sick from it, kind of like you feel when you have jet lag. Chris taught a week-long intensive class, so he was exhausted by Friday as well. Our air conditioning stopped working mid-day on Friday and is still not fixed. We all had a long night that night because poor Jayce couldn't get himself comfortable enough to get settled down and fall asleep, and we both were upstairs with him at different points in the night.

Saturday morning Chris took Jayce with him to help the students move into the dorms, so that I could have a chance to catch up on some rest. When they got home this happened. I think Chris intended to only stay by Jayce for a few minutes until Jayce fell asleep, but they both slept like this for over 2 hours. I snuck in to take a picture with Chris' phone and it didn't phase them a bit.

5.) I am currently camera-less.

I bought a new camera and sold my old camera. I made the buyer wait until my new camera arrived before I would sell my old one because I didn't want to have a period of camera-less-ness. But after playing with my new (used) camera for a few days, I noticed that the sensor was dirty in major way. The above picture is of a white wall, and all of the crap is on the lens, which means that it would show up in all of my pictures. Uuuuuggggggggrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! (If you feel like that is the noise that would come from a combination of Ugh and Grr, than you would be right. And you can imagine me saying it, with my fists balled up, through clenched teeth, as I yell to Chris, "There is crap all over this lens!!!!" ) I called the company, sent back my camera and have a replacement on the way. But I will be without a camera for about 2+ weeks.

It's probably crazy, but this makes me sad, and I feel slightly crippled without it. I use my camera at least 6 days a week, so having nothing to take pictures with, not even a camera phone, is a strange thing. But I should look on the bright side. Maybe I'll catch up on my editing and actually blog about all of the things that I already have pictures of!! No, I doubt it. But I'll try. :)

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