Happy Birthday Isabella!

This funny, smart, beautiful, amazing little girl is officially a toddler!  This first year was filled with so many wonderful firsts.  It has been such a blessing to watch our baby grow into her own.  She is soooo active and sooo loving (we have to limit her to one hug for her buddy A who is not quite so touchy feely!).  She has little to no fear and is fiercely independent.  We are so blessed to be her parents and are excited to see what the next year brings.

We celebrated her birthday with a small party at home with family and friends.  We have her a smash cupcake which she tried but seemed to be able to take it or leave it (pretty impressive for the offspring of two reforming sugar addicts!).  She loves her Glow worm, doll baby, doctor kit, and books.  The party had a touch of an Alice in Wonderland theme (side effect of hitting the wall was I got the invitations sent out in time but the party wasn't planned until the day before!) and so we borrowed a croquet set.  J.T's 92 year old stepgrandmother whipped everyone and came out the victor.  I can only pray to have half of that woman's energy at that age.

Isabella will help keep me young I'm sure.  Looking forward to our second year together!

Hitting the Wall

"What do you do?"  People ask from time to time.  Well that is a bit of a loaded question these days.  I usually respond with some variation of a stay at home mom who watches kids in my home OR full time student.  It feels like too long of a response to include it all in one answer for some reason.  But in actuality my full response would be something like:

"I am the primary caregiver to an extremely active almost toddler.  In addition to this crazy girl I also watch a 10 month old who is going through a spell of separation anxiety and since he thinks he has two moms he clings to my leg hardcore.  There is also a near two year old who has decided to enter the "terrible twos" early who on the regular full on tantrums if the other kids even look at her and has decided hitting is tots cool if she's mad.  Finally there is a preschooler who comes from time to time who's tag lines are 'I'm bored' and 'Will you play with me?' (he's so sweet I hate telling him no!).

I also told my husband that if I stayed at home with our daughter I would take on all household chores and responsibilities (since I clearly thought I would have oodles of time-smh!).

On top of all of this I decided to fast track my way through a doctoral program taking four classes a semester this year which includes writing the first half of my dissertation and taking my comprehensive exams (three 15 pages composed over the course of a single week).  All of this while monitoring three tiny people who are like moths to a flame to the computer or seem to need my attention every few minutes if I use my standing desk."

On paper this plan seemed like a great idea.  Stay home with my daughter, make a little extra money by providing her with some playmates, maximize the tuition payment by taking as many courses as I could at a time.  In reality turns out it was not my brightest idea and maybe one of my worst:(.

From 5am (or sometimes before) until 9/9:30 at night I am going full throttle.  I refuse to stay up any later because the only thing sustaining this pace is a decent night's sleep (along with prayer and wine of course).  However, after a couple of months of this I. have. hit. the. wall.

There are 7 weeks left in the semester.  My parents were already planning to come down for a week around Isabella's birthday and I've asked them to come down for one more week at some point before the end of the semester.  I truly do not know if I'm going to make it...

11 Months

"I do like these hair bows mama.  It just might be in a different way than you do!"

This baby has such sensitive skin.  Her own drool can irritate it sometimes when she naps:(.

This is 11 months.  

Hard to believe in one month this baby girl will be ONE!

10 Months

 This is 10 months.

 Hugging Aiden--"I love my doggy!"

"There has to be way for me to climb over this.  Hmm let me see..."

Field Trip

We did it!  We took our first field trip with both babies:).  We just went up to the local library, but both Isabella and A laughed and smiled like we went to Disney.   While I have often gotten looks and been asked when I take all of the kids on walks if they are related this is the first time I have been asked if Isabella and A are twins.  Now A is big for his age so size wise that's a legit question; however, A is black so?!?!

We celebrated our adventure with a trip through the Chick-Fil-A drive through which was more of a celebration for me, but whatevs:).

One Small Step...

for Isabella, one giant leap toward becoming a big kid!  I knew it was coming, but it kind of came out of nowhere.  I had all three kids and was sitting with one of them near Isabella who was playing at the activity table.  All of the sudden she just let go of the activity table and took two tiny steps in my direction before plopping down on her butt. 

THIS is why I have made the choices I have made.  THIS is why I go without new clothes.  THIS is why we will live in this house with the tiny upstairs for the foreseeable future.  THIS is why I am ok budgeting like a miser.  THIS is why I am ok with working well past the age of 65 because my retirement savings is pitiful and won't get any better in the near future. 

THIS is likely one of the many reasons God's plan laid out the way it did, so that THIS could be an option. 

I am so blessed to be in a position that THIS could be an option for me. 

I would not trade THIS for anything.

Attitude Adjustment

I'd like to tell you it's the toddler I watch that needs the attitude adjustment, but sadly that's not the case.  The one in need of the attitude adjustment is me.

This morning I was cranky and honestly I couldn't tell you why.  In fact I didn't realize just how cranky I was until lunchtime. 

Lunchtime is the one time of the day I let the dogs roam free in the house during child care days because all of the kids are in high chairs.  The dogs want to be where we are so they are of course in the dining room.  This used to work well for the most part.  There was the time I realized the toddler's high chair was too close to the couch because our older dog realized if she sat on the back of the couch she had a better angle at potentially sharing the toddler's lunch, but once I made that minor adjustment we were good to go.   The other two kids were just eating purres so the dogs had no interest, so the dogs would hang out nearby but there was really no interaction.  However, now all three kids are eating varying degrees of finger foods so the potential puppy smorgasbord has tripled and at least ONE of the kids wants to help these puppies out any way she can.

Isabella LOVES hand delivering bits of her food to the dogs.  At first she would laugh hysterically which immediately gave her away if I was distracted with another kiddo, but now she just grins so it's sometimes harder to catch.  The other two kids are less direct and morsels of food only fall from their tray by accident.  However, monitoring Isabella has become like a full time job at lunch.  When I keep the dogs in the kitchen (which is their homebase) they can see us at the table and whine and cry pitifully which is sooo annoying.

 For some reason at lunch today this exchange became too much and I came pretty dang close to yelling (it was directed at the dogs and not the kids if that helps at all).  I took a deep breath and we got through the rest of the meal, but I couldn't shake the dark cloud over my mood. 

Then suddenly phrase popped into my head:

I immediately opened the gratitude journal app on my phone.  I downloaded it a couple of years ago and used it daily for about 6 months then when we started into the summer of IVF I got out of the habit.  I started again on January 1, but hadn't opened it for the day yet.  Honestly it was kind of like magic.  I jotted down a couple of positives about the day and immediately felt better.  

Isn't it amazing that such a little thing that is so easy to do makes such a big impact?  Isn't it equally amazing how quickly we forget?