The Times, They Change




(left) The trio that is us, at New Buffalo, MI 2008. (right) Taken at the very same spot, 2012

  Everyone is lamenting on how time is quickly passing by. You see it on Facebook, emails or blogs and every day there is a new photo and a new teardrop of a mom taking her kid to kindergarten, 8th grade, etc.

I am not there yet, but my time is coming. Jack is going to preschool in about a week and a half. Seeing the photo above, we as a family have been through a lot in trying to figure out what it means to be a family. Becoming a trio was simple and we knew from the moment we brought Jack home from the hospital how good we were going to have it - because we as a couple have each other. There were many many times where I wanted to lose it and couldn't grasp on why Jack was always sick, why he would cry all the time, why he wouldn't stay in his bed at night.

Yet Brian has shown nothing but the utmost patience in a man. Really, if I married someone who was exactly like me, I think I would have been in trouble. Two stubborn quiet tempers would not have been good as a parental unit. But Brian is there to calm the quiet storm in me at times. I like to think that I do the same for him.

When Jack was a baby, I would ask Brian sometimes, what is Jack going to look like when he is 5 and going to school? Here is my answer. A bright, funny, goofy and all around sweet sweet boy who is about to charm every teacher and classmate that he will meet. I will understand if the teacher will love him to pieces. Who doesn't?

So here I am, counting down the minutes til we get to take our boy to start his education. I am not sad that he is growing up. I am excited.

The Lost Pixar Movies

It broke my heart to even write that title. : (

Jack had the best of the best Pixar movies in one case; The Incredibles, Monsters Inc, Pixar Shorts.
He was taking these movies over to my parent's house since they were going to watch the boys for the day.

Jack's window was open and his little hand was out of the window, feeling the wind blow hard against it. His little hand was also holding the Pixar movies outside the window. Brian was driving alongside a forest preserve at a steady pace. A steady pace would mean that if you were holding something in your hand, out the window, it could easily blow away.

Are you following me with this? Do you know and can guess what happened next?

The movie case blew away from Jack's hands. Onto the street, where it was probably crushed immediately by the following traffic. Brian heard an " Uh-oh" from Jack and he knew exactly what that meant. I think Jack asked to go get it back but Brian couldn't. I told Brian that it was a good thing that I wasn't there. I would have shouted " OH NO!!!!!!!!" thus making it a bigger scene than necessary.

It was movies that Jack loved watching over and over again, and yes we could always buy new ones. What breaks my heart is that Jack keeps saying over and over again, " I lost the movies. I lost it." I never thought that he would get it stuck in his head that he was responsible for this or that he would even understand such a concept. I keep reassuring him that movies are movies and we could always get a new one, but it just stuck with him that it was his hand that was holding them and it was his exact same hand that dropped them. He is not sad and he hasn't cried over them but just hearing him put some sort of guilt upon himself just kills me. He even wrote a letter to Santa already , telling him what happened and what he would like for Christmas ( the Pixar movies) . Hearing that made me weepy, and I just wanted to hold Jack and let him know what a wonderful boy he is. When I heard the Santa story, Jack was already sleeping. I am sure he wouldn't have liked it if I interrupted his sleep for a huge hug. Or maybe he would have. Who knows?

I have a $50 Best Buy gift card that I won from a work raffle recently. Guess who is taking Jack there and getting some new movies? And forget the DVD, we are upgrading ourselves to Blu-Ray. Anything for my guy.

The Nighttime Battles

The whole world sleeps, while I get up for the 3rd time in the middle of the night to nurse my son.

He doesn't even nurse, he just uses me as the pacifier. This has been going on for a month and I am now at the point where I dread the nighttime. I hate it when it comes close to 8 pm, because that is when the real battle starts. Trying to put Charlie to sleep, only to have him just get up and start talking. It is bedtime!! Now is not the time to start being adorable! It really is adorable when he just starts blabbing, and I can't help it but give him little kisses at that point. Then I have to remind myself that I actually have to put him to bed. 8pm means no kissy time, it is bedtime! Remember that tonight Andrea!!!!!!!!!

So I do, and that confuses Charlie on why he has to go to the crib. Hey, you were just wrestling with me? Now you are putting me in my crib and expect me to sleep? Well, watch this Mama....... ( insert huge loud screaming Wahhhhhhhhhhh at this point.)

 Then the midnight battles begin. Almost every hour starting at 11:30, Charlie wakes up expecting to be "nursed". Since we have that nursing while lying down position mastered, it is easy just to pick him up and lie him back down in our bed and nurse him so he sleeps again. But now that he is doing this almost every hour , it is becoming tiring. And annoying. Annoying that I am the only one that has to wake up and do this routine while everyone sleeps. I get so frustrated that this happens that I bang my leg down on the bed, just so my husband can wake up a bit so he can share my misery. He doesn't, and it just makes me more annoyed.

I know what you guys are thinking, let the baby cry it out. Except we can't , since we are not the only ones that live in the house and we have to think of the others and not waking them up. So we are stuck. Stuck in the hopes that somehow Charlie can outgrow this. Sorry, I am stuck with this hope. Everyone else is sleeping.

The Mini Date Night

For all you couples out there that get to have a date night on a Wednesday or seem to have one every other Friday...I hate you.

Wrong, I do not hate you, but I seem to think that you are extremely lucky and that if I ever saw you guys walk down the street and enter a restaurant gleefully, I might be looking at you with my eyebrows furrowed and my arms crossed.

Brian and I have never been busier. These past couple of weeks have been busy! Drive Jack to day camp, don't forget to pack Charlie's bag and milk! Pick up Jack at camp three hours later, drive somewhere so Charlie at least can get 15 minutes of a nap. Get groceries, entertain kids at the park, try to make dinner, maybe pick up Mama at the train station, finish dinner, wash dishes, try to give the kids a bath ( they resist sometimes) brush teeth, read bedtime stories, listen to the baby cry in his crib as he resists bedtime ( what is with this kid?) relax finally around 9:30 ( as I write this blog) go to bed at 11pm.

For some strange reason, the kids decided to peacefully go to sleep before 8 on Monday. It was so weird to still have the whole night to ourselves. Brian and I decided to have a mini date night so off we went to ......the ice cream parlor called Plush Horse. A pretty decent staple out here where they make their own ice cream.

It felt weird to enter the IC parlor without little ones. At one point I felt that we left them in the car as we sat together. We ordered a turtle sundae and sat side by side in what I called the Sweetheart Table. We didn't talk about world politics or anything serious and I am sure that our children wasn't the only topic of conversation for that night.
But it was nice just to sit with my husband and look at others in the parlor, and just relax at the table. With no little hands trying to grab the spoon out of my hands. Afterwards, we just went home and went to bed.

It really is the little things that matter the most. Now , if someone wants to volunteer to take care of the kids for more than 30 minutes so we can maybe have a meal to go with that sundae, that is alright with us.

The 9th Month

No, he isn't sad because he is eating Cheerios.

We started off Charlie's 9 month birthday by giving him a lecture. A real, first, hey let's talk lecture.

He's  9 months.

This month has brought quite a change in Charlie. He discovered how to crawl which is great, but now that he has discovered that he has mobility, he will not stop anywhere. He is constant, and will get really angry if someone puts him on the floor to sit down. He wants to constantly have you stand him up, hold his chubby bubby little hands, and walk him around. Crawling is for babies. Walking is for Charlie.It is quite charming when you are walking him around and all of a sudden he looks up at you with the biggest cutest smile ever. Like " Look at me Mama!! I'm doing sooooo good!!"
Back to the fits, it gets somewhat worse if it's dinner time.
He will have a fit when it is dinner and will arch his back, cry little tears of anger, and just be really upset. Charlie, I have to say that these tricks that you are trying to impose on us are not working. Perhaps if you were my first born, I would fall for it and go  " Whhhhaatt, what is the matter??" and worry about why my child is so sad.
You are my second child. We have been through these tricks before. Your brother Jack has taught us well about what to look for in terms of getting what you want. Yes you can have your dinner. No, you may not snatch your dinner from my plate by almost throwing my plate to the floor. There are rules in this house. That maybe hard to believe since Brian and I are one of the most funnest parents ever. Well, Brian is. I am more the "stop jumping on the couch!!" as soon as I come home from work parent. ( True story, I just said that to Jack yesterday).
Charlie also weaned himself from the pacifier, but now what he does is wake up at least three times a night, so I can bring him to the bed and nurse him so he can sleep. Sometimes he nurses at night, but other times he uses me as the pacifier. One night Brian and I decided to let him cry it out so he can just go back to sleep on his own without the nursing or Mama pacifier. Did that work? No. It was around 12:45 am. You wouldn't want to start that experiment either at that time of the night.
Charlie is getting a bad case of the Mamitis.So on his 9 month birthday morning, after he refused Brian three times and only wanted me to pick him up, I said
" Hey Charlie. Sometimes Mama will not always be here to pick you up. Other people can pick you up. Papa, Tia, Tio, Grandma. It can't always be Mama."
He listened intently. Looked down since he knew he was in trouble. Or he just looked down since there was a toy on the floor. Who knows.