An ode to 2012

Oh, 2012.  Somehow I am never really sorry to another year pass me by, no matter what happens. Part of the journey I suppose.

 

In 2012 we:

 

January  Saw my sweet Sammi girl turn ONE!

February Made Valentines for the annual swap.

 March Watched Sammi learn to walk.

 April Watched Sammi learn to walk again in a cast. (ugh.)

 May Went to Iowa.

June  I gave up my own sewing room for the first time since I started sewing so we could make room for Grant.

July Saw Chicago.

August Started second grade.

 September Welcomed Grant.

 October Turned eight.

 November Took the annual Christmas card photo with three (!) kids. (And cried a lot. Hard birth, baby blues, ugh.)

 December From my motley crew to yours -

Happy New Year!

P.S. Swap is full, expect an email Wednesday!

If this doesn't make you laugh, you might be the grinch

i can't use any capital letters because i have been trying to post this  for two hours and i am now one handed. but if i don't do it now i fear it will never happen.

 

i was trying to compose an end of the year post for tomorrow and i thought to myself, "self, what this post needs is a family photo."  my girlfriend told me she took their christmas card photo using the self timer on the camera and i thought, hey, why didn't i think of that?

 

so i set out to do it today.

 

now, i did not bother with our clothes and i don't think i have even brushed my hair today, er, this week. i did try and fix sam's hair which was covered in jelly and change her shirt (also covered in jelly).

 

that resulted in a most wicked screaming thrashing tantrum.

 

then the first round of photos were total crap because i still had the camera set for christmas tree photos.

.

so we had to do them twice.

 

here they are in all of their glory, just as we took them, in order. i haven't left out a single one of those joyous moments. lololol

 

jack was REALLY REALLY excited about doing it all over again

 

 so excited that he started to scream and cry.

 and i started to yell "get out of the pictures jackson! get out! you don't have to be in the damn family photos! but just get out now!"

 and sammi started to yell "punchy", and hit him. (bet he is sorry he taught her that now, eh?)

 since he refused to get out i told dave to just keep taking them anyway.

 man, we were having fun right about now.

 not one to be deterred, we just carried on.

 it is what it is.  right about here sammi yelled "UH OH! cheese!"which was hilarious in the moment.

 and then dave starts to yell "you are lucky you aren't me kid, my father would have made us do this for HOURS hollering the whole time about how we needed to smile and on and on".

 if we aren't the griswalds, i don't know who is.

just what the hell is jackson doing?!?! LOLOLOL

 

man we know how to have a good time over here.

 

 

Heart to Heart 2013 and 3 months old

It's that time again, time to sign up for the Heart to Heart swap. If you have already signed up via Jooners, great! If you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?

 

We have THREE spots left. If you are nervous about using Jooners just shoot me an email saying you want in.

 

Need a few details first?

 

You will make 14 valentines and send them to me. I will then redistribute the valentines and you will receive 14 different valentines in return. (Most of them are made so you can hang them on a tree, but not always). You can make anything you want as long as it isn't as big as a loaf of bread. (And they do not need to be all the same.) You will also need to contribute $5 to help cover the cost of your flat rate box back to you.  Valentines must be in my hands by Feb 1.  I will send a more detailed email to all of the participants just as soon as we have those last three spots filled. If  we don't fill them by Jan 3rd I will just close the swap and we will go with however many participants are signed up.

 

Go on now, it's always a lot of fun and I haven't missed in a year since Jack was a baby!

 

In other news, my sweet big baby boy turned three months old this week.

 At three months you are:

*sort of a frowny baby
*BUT you love to smile and laugh at us when we talk to you
*crazy intently watching the bigger kids all the time, you just light up when you see them (How different it must be to be a third child instead of a first and only child for a long time like Jack!)
*sleeping through the night always
*watching us eat food already!
*drinking milk like it is going out of style
*still sleeping in the swing, the crib is a fail every time I try it
*grabbing toys
*starting to grab my clothes and my hair
*cooing and gooing and ahhing, I swear you say HI!
*still have blue eyes with no sign yet of the dark brown your siblings have
*getting so much better at controlling your head and neck, you can sit in the bumbo now
*HUGE, I mean HUGE, your head is nearly as big as Sammi's already
*the proud owner of CHEEKS
*enjoying your play gym
*HATING tummy time
*still on Zantac
*have long skinny toes
*cuddly as can be
*called "gent" by Sam
*fussy in the evening suddenly
 and most importantly - my sweet little partner in crime!
Love you oodles littlest dude. :-)

(Photos by Daddy for a change, mommy was juggling other kids. Daddy says he can't do it like mommy, mommy says he just needs a LOT MORE PRACTICE.)

Before I say this

Before I write this post, some of you want to run away now. It's going to be intensely personal. And biological.

Go on, I will wait.

Okay then.

Sitting in the fertility clinic waiting for my gyn appointment this afternoon it was hard to care about my stupid problems amongst those women. The ones who are desperately trying to have a baby (5 years in for one them), the ones who were showing everyone the picture of their "little seahorse" after the second round of IVF, the ones just starting on this journey.

It has been one hell of a long road to my kids.

And one that is apparently not getting any shorter. Or less unexpected. Because I have to tell you that just as infertility sort of smacked me in my stupid unknowing head, this complication has done the same thing. NEVER EVEN ON MY RADAR.

I have a grade 2 rectocele and a grade 2 cystocele from Grant's birth.

You can go ahead and look it up. But I will just tell you that it basically means I have pelvic organ prolapse and things are not where they belong.

The internet tells me this doesn't really go away without surgery.

My gyn tells me welllllllll, your tolerance for it will increase and you need a lot more healing time. You have basically had one of the biggest babies you can even give birth to vaginally and you are breastfeeding.  Which was followed with "no one will want to do that surgery until you are one year post partum" so they can know what the real extent of the problem is.

The internet also tells me the surgery(ies) don't have a great success rate.

I can tell you as a human this DOES affect your quality of life. It's as if (and I will be blunt) you constantly have a tampon that is falling out.

And it leaves a lot more questions than answers. Should I stop breastfeeding and see if it improves? Or should I just keep going to six months as I planned because it's easier on Grant's belly and this needs a crap load of time anyway? Should I get another opinion? Am I totally done having kids? Is this going to get worse? Can I ever use a tampon again? (God, that one is way harder than you think it might be for someone like me who hates pads and associates pads with many miscarriages.) Can I really live with this for a year?

I don't know what to do to be perfectly honest.

I knew it was coming before I went in today. Dr Google helped me sort it out a long time ago.

But that does not make it any less emotionally devastating to be 37 years old and feel totally and utterly wrecked in such an intimate way.

So I think what I should do is just chew on it for a few days.

And tell myself many, many, many, many times over that I would not trade the kids for being "normal" again. (And I wouldn't. Honestly.)

But dear sweet baby Jesus, I think enough is enough, okay? 

Ho Ho Ho

It's always something around this house of mine. My dad hurt himself on Saturday pretty badly. And refused to go to the hospital until today. So I have been juggling trying to get him to go to the ER* with three rowdy kids. On Christmas Eve Grant was SCREAMING for hours, my dad was on the phone and Sammi was hollering her fool head off in her crib. I had to ignore her to juggle the other problems. She stopped so I forgot to go check on her. On Christmas morning we went in to get her and she was TOTALLY NAKED. And had been all night. So she had been peeing with no diaper.

 

Merry christmas to me! 4 loads of laundry and an emergency bath before we were even out of bed! LOL

 (Grant wearing our elf on the shelf's hat.)

 Sammi was most crazy about these Thomas slippers and her Thomas trains.

 And Jackson. Oy. I think the Santa thing with him might be up. He hasn't really said anything, but he has a pretty bad attitude this year. And he asked me on Saturday if I had wrapped his presents yet (and then covered and said the ones from you and dad?). Also he did not show much enthusiam about presents. I will fully admit I am ABOUT FED UP WITH IT and I wanted to give him nothing. It's an awful damn lot of work I have been doing for two months straight to get nothing but attitude.

In other news, I am taking down all the Christmas stuff today. My head is way too busy with the kids to have all this extra stuff around right now.

And that was Christmas at our house. I hope yours was merry and bright!

*My dad has finally agreed to go today, hopefully we will know what is wrong with him very soon.

I want to remind everyone you can still sign up for the heart to heart swap here. We still have 5 spots left and we are nearing the end of time to sign up.

The family jewels

Well, these are in no particular order because I tried playing with the camera settings to get better pictures. (And I think it worked, thank you internet.)

 

I didn't put nearly as many ornaments on the tree as I usually would, but whatever.

 

 The all vintage tree, except for the naked Santa, he's tradition, vintage or not.

I used tinsel garland instead of glass garland this year.

 The village is hard to photograph in the hallway.

 I still find myself oddly in love with our "family tree". The mix of old and new ornaments, the tinsel, the bubble lights.  It's not the vintage jewel, but it's sweet.

 Hey, how did that stinker get in here?!

(A non working bubble light, I need to find replacement lights.)

With camera setting changes. I really want to enter a picture in the country living pinterest Christmas tree thing,but I do not have time to be a good photographer right now.

For this one too. (Which is mostly naked on the bottom branches, kids and cats you know!)

They promised us a little snow today, but the sun is brightly shining and I was up nearly all night because of HUGE thunder. Oy.