Noah Jay.

His six month pictures are up! http://www.purephotographyblog.com/
I love him!

Good Morning.

It's seven thirty and Ethan is sleeping in. This never happens. I don't know what to do with myself.
I am also fighting off a sinus infection. On Monday evening I was convinced I had a cavity in every one of my upper teeth. That night I flossed for the first time in months, hoping to what? reverse the cavities? close the holes up by sliding a piece of string across them? But I was so desperate, they hurt so bad.
Then my cheeks started to ache and if I bent over, head below my heart, my head felt like it might implode, and I thought, oh, sinus infection.
So then I tried to call my bestest friends at the insurance company to see what doctor I can go to and after being on the phone for fifteen minutes going from recorded menu to recorded menu so that they could "better serve" me, the real lady I finally got to told me to go to Anthem.com.
And is there anything else I can help you with?
Stupid.
Today is Friday and Fridays are good days. I go over to Deana's house before work and get to chit chat about mothering and marriage and all that fun stuff while drinking tea. Having Deana in town has been such a treat... I can't believe how fast the year is going. She is due in May with their new baby...I can't wait!
I have been thinking about summer everyday now, planning all the fun things we will do once the sun is good and hot: Aces baseball games, Sand Harbor, camping with family, camping with friends, Marine World, naps in the the sun, San Fransisco trip, Graeagle (the Mill Pond, the Millworks, walks) girls' nights, date nights which include walking in the warm nights....I cannot wait! Summer come soon!!

There's a Change A Com'in.

If I were ever to get a tattoo, and I want one really bad, I want to get something that pictures growth and change. A butterfly would be perfect, but I'd have to be super careful to not make it look like those skanky ones.
Or a flower. I have this shirt from Target that has this great print on it of this flower that could take up my entire back.
Scary, isn't it? And you know how impulsive I am.
I want something that shows growth and change because for a long time I have always thought things are what they are and the future will only get worse. Somewhere deep, deep, inside I believed I could not change, could not alter the way life goes and who I am.
But I have seen myself changing. It's grace pure and sweet, and it comes out in tender places in my relationships with my sons and my husband mostly.
Take last night for example. I got Joey all pissed off because I was criticizing his way of parenting Ethan. (This is a wonderful way, ladies, to make your husbands hate you).
He eventually said he was done talking about it and we went to bed without another word.
That's the miracle here. I didn't have to keep it going, didn't have to have some sort of resolution, and I wasn't upset at Joey.
I let him be. Sure it was hard to go to bed and not be all snuggly-cuddly, but not killer hard. Not I am a total emotional freak case hard. I knew I was loving him by letting him sleep. So it was sweet in that sense.
I love what I am learning in all the hundreds of relationship-help books I am reading. I swear the librarians must think I am a total loser. I am always a little embarrassed to pick up these books I get: How to Have a New Husband by Friday, Your Man is Wonderful, and other books for wives who have no idea how to love a man.
I think what it is is pride; picking up those books is outwardly showing I don't know how to love.
I am not perfect. And I am so prideful I care what the stinking librarians think about it.
Anyways, I am also reading Rob Bell's Sex God. The first time I tried to read this book I could not get past the weird, broken way it was written. It annoyed the crap out of me.
Then, out of boredom one day at nap time, I picked it up again and started reading somewhere in the middle. Something caught my attention so I started jumping around, reading until I was annoyed, and then going backward or forward a couple of pages and starting again. I don't know if it is important or not to read this book in sequential order but I am getting a little bit out of the pieces I am reading, especially this:
Love is giving up control (punch to the gut). It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two--love and controlling power over the other person--are mutually exclusive (so if I am loving Joey but still wanting something in return, I am trying to have controlling power over him? And then a flood of memories, of scenarios, of recognition that I don't love him for loves sake. I love him so he loves me). If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship (Shit).
This kind of love is scary as hell. It's "frightening" as another one of my favorite authors puts it. She goes on to say, "Yes I am married, but do I know how to love?"
My answer, so clear in the desperate and intuitive way I protect myself, is No.
This love means trust, and it means I could get hurt.
So this is the change I want--need--for God to do.

Mama's in Charge. Get Used to It.

After the meltdown of all meltdowns Saturday afternoon I decided to become hard core in this madness we call mothering.
The meltdown came across as even more end-of-the-world-ish because I had just come from a four hour parenting conference. As I was screaming for Ethan to get his little putootee into the house I happened to glance down at the book I had just purchased at the conference: The Well Behaved Child: Discipline that Really Works! And then the small caption: A Well-Behaved Child? Yes, it's possible!
And in my head, Alanis Moresette singing:
And isn't it ironic...a little too ironic...
Ethan spent the day with Grandma (God bless her but the kids come home ruined. Absolutely ruined) and then after no nap we went to a birthday party at Deana's for Simon and my mom.
Let's just say Andrew and Ethan can bring out the devil inside of each other.
Ethan, like I mentioned earlier, had a meltdown that was capable of starting world war three. I left right in the middle of dinner. It was that bad.
I guess in all of it I learned Ethan doesn't give a big stinky poo about what I say. In other words: HE CONTROLS ME.
Or at least he did, and to some degree still does. But the light bulb that has gone on in my head is this: This is MY life. Not Ethan's. He can have his own life when he is twenty six.
Mama's in charge now. Not little Lear Number One.
This means me being a little mean, a little hard ass. It means saying "No", "Mama's got work to do", "Because I said so", and then some more "NO's" just so he gets the point little man does not rule the roost. My life does not revolve around him. He's a part of it, and I love him crazy, but he is not me.
He's little, I am big. And let's be honest, I don't like playing trains. I'll paint a little bit, I will play a board game, I'll take you bike riding. But I am not five, I am not a boy, and I won't play make believe trains. Oh and? I don't feel guilty about it.
In other news I am having an almost-twenty-seven-year-old-life crisis. I think. Or it might just be that I regret taking my piercings out and I still would like a tattoo. And I really want to go tanning. I haven't tanned since I was like fifteen but I just really want to go.

Normalcy, please.

Oh to have a normal day around here where we are all feeling normal and nothing weird happens.
I know "not normal" is life but seriously? I don't think I have finished one full week of school since my car accident (the first one) at the end of December. That's HORRIBLE. And next week won't be any different because Ethan is scheduled to have a tube put in his ear and his adenoids- whatever the heck those are-scrapped out.
He's lost four pounds, which on his 30 pound body is A LOT of weight. He looks so thin. His head looks too big for his neck and his eyes sort of bulge out of his face like a cartoon. When I pick him up his arms and legs dangle around me and he feels lighter and easier to carry than Noah because his weight is all distributed down those long arms and legs.
Last night, to take up time, the boys and I went in and I got to go to a kickboxing class. The more I exercise, the happier I am. Yeah for endorphins.

They're Ba-ack!

I mean not completely but way better than the tweety birds they were! Thank you Jesus!

And just so this post is not just an update on my boobs:
We are all doing better today. We might just have a normal day around here, which is much needed. Joey works an 18 hour day today, followed by his usual 12 hour days throughout the weekend.
Can I just say I am a totally bada** wife for putting up with this schedule?
Yesterday I looked online to try and find a city and date that would work for me to get trained in Yogafit, but it all seems so impossible right now. Too much time and money--two things that with small children around come in short short supply.

God's Gift of Motherhood or the Cruelest Joke Ever?

So I have been sick the last couple of days, violently vomiting back up anything I attempted to get down. A side affect was that I lost some weight.
As an already struggling breastfeeding mommy, this was worrisome, as I felt my boobs shrink drastically from their airy C-cup back down to their pre-maternity, prepubescent A's.
After two days of being sick, I took my shirt off for the first time and saw what I had been feeling: my boobs--which I have been enjoying for about a year now nice and plump--teeny, tiny, like little tweety birds, the right slightly smaller, if that is possible than the it's brother, the left. I know we women usually refer to our girls, as, well, girls, but in this case mine are so definitely un-feminine. They are little boys.
Yes, I am concerned about my milk supply, but that's not what I was having nightmares about last night--the horrible dreams consisted of having boobless sex with my husband who has also shown in no uncertain terms his support for the maternity size boob (I don't blame him one bit).
It makes me want to run out of the house right this instant and fill those jugs back up. It feels like the meanest joke ever.
The first time this happened (big boobs) when I was pregnant with Ethan, it all seemed like an incredible gift.
That was until six months later when they disappeared. It's like you get them just long enough to get really comfortable and used to them, you have all new bras, your shirts fit nicely, not to mention the routines that are set in place in mommy and daddy's bedroom- and then whammo--BYE BYE!
Only that first time it was gradual. Like a week or two. So I wasn't quite as devastated. I also think this second time around we made a bigger deal out of them because we were anticipating them before I even got pregnant, and we have really made the most of them throughout the pregnancy and first six months. And then, for them to be gone in a matter of forty-eight hours...I know it sounds so indulgent and incredibly materialistic but I feel like my identity has been altered.
I stood in the shower this morning looking down through the space that used to have two pretty lumps of flesh and felt like I had gone through some sort of surgery taking them away. I mean there's small, and then there's small. I am on the second end.
On the flip side, I put on my tightest fitting clothes and they feel great, seamless. I looked in the mirror and I looked like a ballerina.
Ballerina's can be sexy, right?
When my husband came home last night I broke the news to him-"My boobs disappeared honey, they are gone." I was too embarrassed to lift up my shirt and show him so I pulled my shirt tight around what's left of them and said, "See?"
He gave some sort of little smile which I don't know what it means and didn't say anything. Now maybe I wouldn't have had nightmares about our next boobless sexcapade if he would have said something a little reassuring like, "I still love you and your teeny, tiny boobies are adorable," (next time, dear) but it probably would have only calmed my own frantic insecurity for the following five seconds, until I looked in the mirror again.
It might be that I have a serious image disorder, and hell, I am no stranger to those, or this might just be something about motherhood for us small breasted sisters (and I don't mean my sisters; they seem to have got their fair share, the littler one especially) that is seriously messed up.
I got to experience the feelings of being voluminous and sexy in a new way. And it's not like I can just do something, like eat healthy or workout, and they will come back. In fact, they more I do those two things, the smaller they stay.
And it's not all about being hot and wanted by my hubby, at least two percent of it is feeling motherly and not so stinking stickly. I want Ethan to know the difference between laying his head on daddy's chest and laying his head on mommy's chest. I do.
I want to need a bra. I want to feel like a woman, not a nine year old.
I remember talking to some christian friends about this then quite taboo in my mind topic and me saying something holy like, "The best thing would be if we could just not care, and see our scars of motherhood (saggy tummies, saggy or no boobs, road-map stretch mark thighs) as things to be proud of". Oh would someone please give me a bowl so I can barf some more. I am so much more human than that. I want my mommy boobies back as soon as possible.

Sick.

I am home sick today. Just typing might send me in to hug my new best friend, the white porcelain god. I have been throwing up non stop for over twenty four hours, and yes, it has started to come out the other end now too. (sorry, totally disgusting).
My whole house stinks, worse than I can even smell it because I am also still trying to get over this killer cold.
I know it's bad because yesterday every time Joey came into out bedroom, which I had been marinading in the bed with my throw up bowl and BO due to the sweats, he'd hold his breath. At about 4 am last night I decided I must be dying and I started getting weepy thinking about my boys and what my funeral would be like.
Now, I am pretty sure I'll come out of it, having eaten a bowl of dried Cheerios and being able to type.
Joey was a real trooper yesterday, coming home early from training, even though it made him look bad.
If you have ever had the wonderful experience of taking care of young children while you yourself are ralphing, you know that so far as experiences go, this one SUCKS. Get up to breast feed the baby-ralph. Deal with a four year old impatience and tantrums-ralph. I must say Ethan was incredibly helpful and sweet, other than his two tornado meltdowns. He even came in and took my hand on the side of the bed and prayed for me-twice. "Dear Jesus thank you for this grrreat day (!) and I hope you make Mama feel better." He's so optimistic that little fellow. I appreciated it thought, and today, with him being with Nawnie and at school, I really miss him. The house is so empty.
I have to go sleep.