Letter to my never-daughter

Havent written in a while. Its because this post is whats been pinballing inside my head disallowing me from coming up with anything else. I hesitate to post this. First, because I wanted things to be funny. This isnt. Second, because of fear of judgment...Ive felt it before. Its because of fear #2 that half the post will be the following qualfiers: I love my sons. Id swallow hot coals for them, Id gladly give my last breath so they could breathe one more. I wouldnt undo any part of my family or trade any of my sons for any imagined reality. I do know some people long for A child, any child. I wont pretend to understand that heartbreak. So, please if you plan on addressing any of these issues, just dont read, because this might infuriate you...because you wont understand. I do know there are people who do, though.

Dear Never-daughter,
I never thought of myself as the type of woman whose sole purpose in life was motherhood. I went to college, got a degree, found a career, got another degree. I didn't get pregnant immediately after getting married (either time). But. I became a mother and I was immediately hooked. Being a mother is magical, turmoil, elation, clarity, purpose, every feeling magnified. From my earliest memories, it was a given that I would have a daughter. It became a part of a future plan, a life path...along with schooling, marriage, home and that whole package. But you never came. I did get 3 amazing little boys, who light up my every day and even some nights. But where are you? I have no sisters and my own mom who is my rock and my truest best friend, will not be here forever for me. It wasn't until I had my own children and truly understood mortality that the weightiness of your never-existence really hit me. Whose eyes can I look into to find ME, to understand in her DNA my woman's heart. I feel like Ive learned so much about being a girl, a woman, all for naught I guess. No one else will need that wisdom. I won't lie, Never-daughter, I will miss little dresses, ruffles, bows, princesses and pink. I will miss Prom dress shopping, wedding dress shopping...shopping! I will miss those admittedly petty things. But Never-daughter, I will miss your companionship. Because I know that as I have grown older, my mom and I have an irreplaceable, unmatched bond. I'm scared Never-daughter, I'm scared because my boys will grow up and find their one and onlys and it's her family that will get the time...because they are the Daughters. There is a rhyme... A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life. I'm scared my boys won't want to talk to mom on Saturday mornings when they're 32, there will be no brunches followed by pedicures once my boys are daddies themselves. Do you see, Never-daughter? Forgive me, but I have to make up terrible things about you so I won't go insane. I basically like to think you'd be bat-shit crazy. And well...obviously that's not a stretch....My mom (She knows just the right thing to say) told me once that I never knew what was in store for me, that a daughter might find her way to me somehow, someway. So, that's comforting too. So, Never-daughter, as I wipe the tears from my ipad to post this, although my heart hurts for your never-birth and always will, I wouldn't trade my boys to have you, but they would have been awesome big brothers.
Love, your never-mom

Baby slam book

Ive seen a lot of 80s movies. The slam book, where you make a written record of all the petty, snide reasons you hate someone so the principal has all the evidence of what a b!tch you and your friends are. So, it's been 15 months since I had a baby. After this month, it will officially be the longest I've gone without being pregnant since I started getting pregnant. Blah. My Fallopian tubes have been disabled, I willingly but regrettably agreed to this procedure to secure a third child. A little therapy could be in order. Anyways. This is my baby slam book. I need this. I need all the reasons I'm done with babies. I need not to be reminded of their cute blobbiness, of the wonderful anticipation of baby baking,or the bliss that is seeing the perfect culmination of you and your mate for the first time. Im warning you some of this might get really specific. Remember I am trying HARD to convince myself.So.

Snapping up outfits only to get to the very end and realize I'm off by one snap.
Schlepping an Infant carrier overflowing with my beefcake babes.
Bib Velcro ruining my burnout shirts in the wash.
Being held hostage by the two-nap schedule.
Im done hand washing bottles and using the little nipple brush.
Formula is expensive.
Spit up is gross.
Babies make a lot of laundry.
Five.point.harnesses.
Standing over the crib at 3:30. Are they breathing? 3:34 yes. 3:37 gotta check one more time.
Beating myself up about not being able to Breastfeed.
Im done stressing out and obsessing over their circumcisions. (Only boys, ya know).
I would certainly like to never change another diaper, or buy diapers ever.
I would like to be able to go to the movies as a family, all of us. You can't do that with a baby.
I like getting hours of uninterrupted sleep, babies mess that up sometimes.
I'm driving, I have to use the restroom, weighing the trade off between just going in my pants and hauling non walking children into a gas station bathroom, the extra weight of which may cause me to go in my pants anyway.
Hate matching up baby socks, even more than regular socks.
Cutting food into minuscule pieces.
Eating my food cold because I was spooning food into another mouth
I'd like to go on another cruise someday and be able to put my kids in the activity program on the boat, but I'd never leave a helpless, non verbal infant.
Filling in the baby book. Forgetting to fill in the baby book.
Milestone anxiety.
Potty training.
Oh, baby proofing is a pain.
Hate gaining 65 lbs to grow a 7 lb human.
Being pregnant is basically a pain, at least Charlie says it is, I can only remember sunshine and rainbows and fat.
Babies can't tell you what's wrong with them and they scream a lot.
I would like one day not to have to drive a mini van, or my vehicle to look like a herd of homeless cats live in it.
If I did have another baby we'd probably have to get, like, a real van, A-team style...without the flames.
Diaper bag shoulder.
Major abdominal surgery. ( only c-sections, ya know)
Now, in real life, I've never been afraid to let my crazy show, so why should it be different here...I wouldnt be me if I didnt say....as crazy as my kids make me, as close to teetering off the edge as I am...I still hope and pray that maybe one day another child may find its way to us....not necessarily a baby.

Crap.

Tightwad Tidepod

What is your time worth to you? My going rate has definitely been on the rise.Let me tell you I used to love to go those stores, like outlet stores, where you literally have to mount a full scale excavation to find a decent article of clothing and then hope against hope that it will be something approximating your size. I mean, it may have taken me 3.5 hours to find that damn shirt, and I'll probably only wear it once assuming I can ignore that one sleeve is a little tighter, but it only cost $3.36. Winning. I have to giggle when I say this because it really does sound so ridiculous now.....but my time used to mean NOTHING to me. I'm sure my high school Econ teacher Ms. Marietta would explain it to me by drawing me an adorable Supply/Demand curve. I often have wondered what I did with all my time before I had children. I really think I must have just sat around. I'm not saying everybody does, but I think that's what I did, I must have. I have no memory of how I spent the hours from end of work day until bedtime in my Pre-children years...or weekends. Maybe I was having gobs of fun and the hormones blocked these pleasant memories so I wouldn't resent my children. Who knows? I can tell you one thing, I was Not APPRECIATING that time. It's funny how appreciation works best retroactively. Anyway, the lack of value placed on my time was only equal to my unparalleled tightwadedness. Inner musings of a tightwad..."Those crackers taste like shiz but they are a full 87 cents less than the name brand, I'll just put mustard on them. That toilet paper is so rough my colon retreats into my chest cavity when I sit down on the toilet, but it's $5 cheaper than Charmin. I can install that flooring myself...no instructions, no big deal!" Fast forward 5 years. Tidepods. Can I ever explain how glorious the 38 seconds are Tidepods save me? I mean no twisting the cup off of the spout, no depressing the button to fill the cup, no using a piece of laundry to scrape every last bit of goopy detergent out so it doesn't leak all over the shelf!! ecstasy! Open the lid, grab a pod, drop it in. It also helps that the damn things are just fascinating to hold, so pretty and squishy. (PSA: I understand why they are VERY tempting to small children, ours are stored waaaay up high, like high enough that if they were to get up there they'd probably get hurt BEFORE they got to the pods) Even when these things first came out I thought they were ridiculous, hell I thought the price of regular tide was ridiculous. It shouldn't have surprised me that like with so many things at which i have scoffed (leggings), I would be forced to embrace them. The tightwad in me didn't die easily, and in many ways her spirit still haunts me. (Her visits are becoming much fewer and far between). But standing In Front of the washer day after day, load after load, I began to be tempted. At Walmart they are always at the very end of the aisle so you have to look at them even if you're not in the market for detergent that day. I fought off the impulse for as long as I could. Then one day...I couldn't even look at the price..I remember being afraid someone I knew would see me buying these hedonistic little capsules. But I got them home and it.was.worth.it. And Tide knows, they know that if you havent, you will come to the dark side one day. and they are willing to wait for you, to do it of your own volition. did you know every Tide coupon excludes Tidepods? Salt in the wound, Tide.The tub is nearly half empty now, and even though a little piece of me died when I purchased them, I would do it again, I will do it again. I think ill always crave a good deal, always use my cell phone 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby, always browse the clearance aisle, always hyperventilate when I go to the mall once a year, but my outlook on time vs. money has definitely flip flopped. Now I'm a time tightwad. As for what I am doing with my extra 38 seconds per load of laundry? Me time, homeslice, ALLLLLLL me.

Hop on my train of thought

I have these decorative mexican tiles placed in between the terra cotta ones of my kitchen floor. I have these awful royal blue ceramic tiles on the front facing of my beautiful staircase. I have already tried one intervention on the staircase tiles, muting their awful bathroom like shininess by spraying window frost on them. Meh. It's an improvement of sorts I guess. I started thinking the other day, based on a project I did at a Pinterest Party( that's right), the tile coaster scrapbook paper mod podge deal, that I could use scrapbook paper to mod podge over the tiles on the stairs. The dilemma though is tying one design into the existing one of the blue mexican tiles. I ruminated. Now this is my idea. Take the picture of the decorative tile, crop to dimensions of stair tiles, print mulitple copies then mod podge the pics onto the gawdy bathroom-esque tiles. Thoughts?

My first tile intervention before and after. There IS a difference, you can SEE the difference, right?

The decorative tile from the kitchen floor.

The modpodged coasters that got me thinking....

Staircase with offending tiles

Curse of the ungrateful child.

I've been saying for a little while now that you never truly know the meaning of embarrassment until you have a child. There is a little bit of a grace period for babies and toddlers as far as "misbehavior" in public places, for sure. The looks are mostly sympathetic in nature and maybe even amusement. Since Creacher 1 turned four though, I've noticed a slight shift. Suddenly I see the looks of quiet judgement and I can't really say I blame anyone because I would be judging the shiz out of my four year olds tantrums if I was viewing them from the outside. The other day at Walmart I even got a "you need a few more kids". Which actually pissed me off because they werent even being bad yet and in the town I live in 3 kids is soooo small time. I digress. So it's my "Big" family Christmas, big in quotes because it was only like 12 ish people. My cousin walks in with 3 solid wood, personalized rocking chairs for my sons that she only sees once a year unless there is a funeral. Creacher 1 immediately let's out a guttural epithet against receiving said rocking chair. I'd love to share what he actually said, but I honestly can't remember, because right at that moment I had that stomach twisting, fight or flight, crawl into a hole feeling, I think unique to motherhood. It still makes me a little nauseous thinking about it. I happen to know, because I have the catalog from which they came, they were each $70 rocking chairs. My cousin has no children of her own, so I couldn't even pull from that commiseration She handled it well, better than I might have and later my child, not surprisingly expressed interest in the rocking chair. After all,all 3 children fought daily about access to the one child sized rocker we had previous to this gift. I know controlling a four year old's emotional outbursts is akin to stopping a train with your toe, futile and in the end you get ran over anyway. But what I wouldn't give to get a redo of that moment and have him run up to her and hug her with profuse thanks. Ultimately,if I'm being honest, it's because I see his reaction as a reflection on me. So, I'm just trying to work on this whole virtue thing with him and I guess grateful is as good a place to start as any. I'd love to hear how other people fill their kids' gratefulness cup, whether they want it or not!

I don't really do resolutions.

The closest thing to a resolution I guess I'd have is to keep up with this blog. We shall see.
We bought Creacher 1 and 2 cowboy boots yesterday. So, the first thing I woke up to this morning is 4 shit-kicker-shod feet barreling down the hallway. We have a long, hardwood floor, echoing hallway. No sleeping in on this New Years Day. They did go downstairs, where the screaming/fighting, of course, quickly commensed, followed shortly by much cuter cooing from Creacher 3s room. Up and at 'em! At least there was breakfast to wake up to...more on that later.

We foolishly let Creacher 1 and 2 stay up til midnight, but due to Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's Eve airing the ball drop an hour early for central time (wtf?) we actually missed OUR own countdown because we were deliriously dancing to Brandy or Pit Bull or whoever.... and of course as every parent knows, a later bedtime never translates into later wake time. Hence, the Cranky Boots here:

I also did another over night crockpot recipe, from Pinterest. This one went over much better than the French toast one I tried for Christmas Eve morning. (It was the crockpot French Toast, turned out the consistency of bread pudding, a little bland. The men, especially the tallest one, were unimpressed)

Hashbrowns, bacon and egg casserole from www.alattewithotta.com

After reading the comments, I added 2 more eggs, a little more milk and some salsa. I also skipped the dill and just added a little seasoned salt. I'm also very proud of my resourcefulness born out of laziness, I used real bacon bits instead of like, bacon I had to cook or chop up myself.