A long time coming...

Ok, here I go again!
I have "meant" to come on here and update so many times since the end of January, but something has always gotten in the way.

The day after my last post I wanted to come on and talk about how much difference a day makes... I was feeling so much more positive and hopeful... but then I ran out of time in the day and the next time I had time, things had changed once again. The truth is that every day is a new day around here. We are in a constant state of flux because of the impending birth of our newest little family member. I can't pretend that my hormonal imbalances have nothing to do with this flux... because they do. They are not the only factor, but they certainly contribute. I CAN say that as of late (and I'm talking the last week or more now) things have been MUCH calmer around here. We (the hubby and I) have been doing our very best to stop making assumptions about how/what the other is thinking/feeling, and actually stopping and (gasp!!) checking in with each other. It sounds so simple, but communication is our most difficult hurdle. We are both making a concerted effort on a daily basis to check in with each other, and it seems to be helping a lot. It is funny how easily we fall into these patterns of living when more often than not they don't work for us... but they are familiar... so we have been trying to change those patterns and some really beautiful moments have come out of it. I think that as long as we are committed to checking in with each other we will get better and better at it.... and in my most optimistic moments, I can envision it not taking quite as much effort and positive communication becoming our "standard". I look forward to that day, but until then I will keep plugging away, because for now that is the best I can do.

I will be in my 34th week of pregnancy tomorrow. WOW!! It is amazing how fast this time has gone! The baby seems to be doing well. I am certainly getting BIGGER. I missed my last midwife appointment because of the weather, but this little one is so very strong now, that I know that the baby is growing and thriving. I have been feeling pretty well physically throughout this pregnancy. After the morning sickness wore off I had some emotional/worry issues with the placental attachment and everything, but as far as how I personally have felt... it's been pretty nice! My last pregnancy, I was so large and uncomfortable for over half of it, that having a "normal" size baby has felt easy in comparison! : ) While I was pregnant with Roscoe I was measuring 4-6 weeks bigger than I was, from 24 weeks on, so that by now I was measuring over 40 weeks! This time around I have been right on target and let me tell you... I have been grateful for it! I look forward to seeing the midwife next week to check in with everything and see where we stand now... but as far as I can tell things are going great!

The hubby and I have gotten through most of our baby to do list now. I have washed, folded, and organized all the clothes, and put them in the dresser. They are ready and waiting to be worn by our newest little one. We bought a new crib... the old one had me worried about safety, so it had to go... a rambunctious toddler (the second one to use it) had gotten into a bad habit of opening the drop side the wrong way and it was pretty wobbly. I had visions of badness, so we got a new one. We don't know if this will be a boy or a girl, and the portable crib with all the features that we liked (and the right price) is so NOT gender neutral.... but I convinced my husband that a boy can happily sleep amongst flowers too.... so here's hoping that he still believes that even if our baby ends up with penis! The truth is that we both think it is probably a girl, but I am almost always wrong (the last one was the only I've had right... not great odds in my favor!), but I honestly don't care if a boy child of mine sleeps in a brown and pink crib. It does add a little more intrigue to the gender outcome now though! : ) We also got a few other things we needed, like a new boppy(the one I used for the last two has become pretty important to Roscoe, he still sleeps with it as his pillow, so we needed a new one.) They are stupid expensive new, the old one we found used, BUT since we hadn't been able to find a used one this time, I splurged and got a new one with a super soft removable sleeve that can be easily washed... it is so soft and comfy. I LOVE IT!! (it's the little things, right?) We also got the baby's going home outfit. We don't buy new baby clothes, they are just too expensive, for what they end up being... receptacles for poop and puke... in fact most of the things we have from the previous two babies were used from the get go... but we have always bought that first one new outfit to come home in... and then I keep it in a box, because I am a sentimental dork. This one is super cute, matches the hat my sister knit for the baby, and involves an adorable monkey butt... enough said right?! : )

Yet another thing we've had going on here is the CRAZY weather!! We have had an INCREDIBLE amount of snow here this month. I think that at last count we had over 70 inches this month. The usual snowfall for February is in the mid 30's. We had a record breaking snowstorm that left behind 22 inches of snow in a 12 hour period. The city was SHUT DOWN for days. The kids and I have been pretty housebound for over two weeks now... and we are all getting just a little twitchy because of it! I don't know how people who live where it does this every winter make it through.... but I imagine that there, the kids don't have 8 snow days in two weeks... or that the streets remain impassable for days (or even weeks, the smaller street across the way has STILL not seen a plow yet!) because they are used to it and prepared for it. People around here have been calling it snowpocalypse... because seriously it has made things around here pretty darn difficult!

All in all I am feeling good right now... I could use a little sunlight and WAY LESS SNOW!!! But on a day to day we are doing pretty well around here! I hope that all my bloggy buddies are doing well with the winter weather, I know that a lot of places have been getting hit hard!

Today I am thankful that things have begun to settle down a little and feel less chaotic.
I am grateful that, although I am not enjoying the copious amounts of snow, we never lost power like a lot of people in our area.
I am grateful to have my hubby around to do things like shovel our sidewalk and spend over FIVE hours digging out our cars(not to mention the daily maintenance since)... if it had been left to me I may have been stuck until Spring!! : )

My birthday and a sneak peek into the crazy

Well, I'd like to tell you all that I had an amazing birthday!

Hooray!

Ever since the very worst birthday ever (well- of my own, I might have recently been dethroned by a blogger friend, Tatts, who sadly wins the title now, that lucky girl!) the hubby actually makes great effort to try and give me a special day. Someday, I'll tell you my bad birthday story, but it's too depressing right now, so maybe next year!

This year my happy, happy involved sleeping in (or at least getting to go back to bed after I had to get up to pee in the early morning, this baby's getting heavy on the old bladder!), eating a leisurely breakfast that I got to make for myself (which is actually a very nice thing because there were no kiddos trying to eat it all or hanging on my legs, because Daddy had already fed them) then I got to walk on my treadmill for a mile and then take a relaxing bath, while the smell of my birthday cake wafted upstairs to the bathroom(and I didn't have to make it!!).

As far as I can tell that morning was just about perfect. The day continued fairly lazily at home, just kind of relaxing. Then I got a nice dinner, made by the man, this year it was Chicken Marsala with Baked Potatoes and Broccoli, followed by cake, ice cream AND a few gifts! Doesn't get much better than that!! None of them big or expensive, but they were all thoughtful, like a set of good measuring cups for baking(which I have been wanting for years), a lemon zester(so I don't have to use the big cheese grater anymore) and a Dymo labeler (which gave me a fun (for me) day project of relabeling all my whole grain jars one day... peeling off the old masking tape ones and having a unified system is something that most people wouldn't care about probably... but my crazy OCD brain was doing back flips of joy over it... really!!). It felt nice that the Mister had gone out of his way to get me a few things that would make me happy... and proved that even though it doesn't seem like it, a lot of the time... he really is listening when I am babbling on about my day. It felt really good to see how well he knows me, because lately it seems like our connection has had some serious glitches in it.

We got the kids to bed at a reasonable time and stayed up to clink wine glasses of Squirt at the stroke of midnight and welcomed in the New Year with some lovely birthday/new years loving which, as pregnant as I am, is not the norm for us right now, that's for sure!

So, I'd say it was a good memory for us... one to hold on to when things are not as calm and peaceful.... like practically every other day since then!!
BLAH!

I am really struggling right now to find my happy place. In my life, I have had some pretty serious struggles, with what I call my darkness. My darkness is full of ugliness and pain, loneliness and abuse of different levels throughout different parts of my past. It is my constant companion. It is not always on the forefront of my mind. Throughout the years I have even managed to forget about it on a conscious level at times, but it has ways of reminding me that it is there. It pops it's ugly head up every once in awhile, just so that I don't forget about its presence. It effects my daily behavior in ways that I don't always recognize and which often aren't on a super healthy level.

I have had A LOT of therapy in my life. I have read A LOT of books about any number of psychological issues, self help books, self esteem building, and so forth. My darkness is WELL COVERED TERRITORY!! But no amount of counseling or self help or even self awareness really stops the darkness. I'm not sure how much of the darkness I am ready to bring to light here on my blog right now, but at the moment it has gotten a pretty good hold on me. I am seeing a therapist every week. And it is helping.... sort of. I go in and I talk about my darkness and I cry. I talk about things going on in my life right now and things that happened a long time ago. I talk about how the things from long ago still effect me and my choices now and I talk about how to make better choices. I talk about what things are and are not in my control. I talk about my fears and pain and worries. I talk about feeling alone and misunderstood and frustrated. I talk about my kids, my husband, and myself.
I talk and talk and talk.
I get tired of talking sometimes.

I talk to my husband... not about my darkness much actually.... although he knows most of the basic facts, I haven't really shared deeply with him about any particular situation or the feelings they bring up or how some of them can haunt me. The truth is that I would love to talk with him about these things, but the man gets overwhelmed when I want to talk about what is happening with us at any given moment and he isn't capable of hearing me... so I don't bother. As it is I talk to him too much.... at least that it how it seems to me, most of the time.

My husband is kind of the quiet brooding type. I used to think that it was intriguing and mysterious... now I find it extremely frustrating. He has such a difficult time connecting to his own emotions and his own darkness, that he couldn't possibly relay it to me. This bothers me to no end. I get tired of trying to figure out what is in his head. I used to joke with him that I wished he had a button on his forehead that I could push to get at the information floating around in there.... now I wonder if there is any at all. I'm not saying that he is dumb.... just that we don't have the same way of thinking about things. I don't think that he has the constant flow of thoughts that I do.

I think A LOT!
I think way too much... about way too many things... generally all at the same time. I am thinking about many different things at any given moment... not just about my darkness past and present but also including all the things that I am trying to keep straight in respect to my daily duties as a Mama.
like...
What's for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack.... ?
when did the kids eat last?
do they really need another snack?
when did Sophia pee last?
has Roscoe sat on the potty recently?
when was his last poop?
are the dishes done?
what's for dinner?
is it defrosting, or should I be prepping something?
are we learning enough today?
what is that awful smell?
who's crying?
why are they crying.... ?
add into that the constant stream of 4 year old conversation... because well the poor thing is my offspring so she literally doesn't stop talking from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed....
add to that the constant stream of two year old conversation because he also is my offspring and chats merrily away from sunup to sundown as well... but of course with him I don't understand about half of what he says and have to stop everything for a minute... oh about every 5 minutes or so and look at him while he speaks because I have this fantasy that it somehow helps me understand what the heck he's talking about... honestly sometimes I just have to say uh-huh, because I still don't get it.
All of that is probably from about five minutes in my head.

Is it any wonder I am exhausted?

Then add to that the fact that I have constant inner dialogue about what is going on with me and the baby... who is at the stage where she is really pretty interactive now. She moves all the time and is responsive to my touch and voice now. She loves orange juice, clementines, and grapefruit. She obviously gets quite a sugar rush from the citrus because she rocks out in there after I eat them! She is starting to play the poke the belly game, where she kicks and I rub and then I push (gently of course) or rub and she kicks me where she felt the pressure. She gets really active when I get angry(which I must admit is WAY to often lately). I'm not sure if it my adrenaline or the raised voice that make her move.

I am officially in my third trimester now. I think that this is my favorite time, because although I am starting to lose the glorious second trimester energy level, I get much more interaction with my little one now, which is awesome!

I feel completely unprepared right now to have another baby. I am starting to feel a little panicked about how little we have actually done. We had the holidays for most of my second trimester and now that they are over, I keep thinking about how soon we will be welcoming another whole little person into our lives. We have most of what we will need because we have had two babies in the last 4 years... so most of what we need is in the attic... but it is not organized or washed or anything yet. I think it is officially time to get it all together. The problem with that right now is that I need my husband's help to get to all the stuff because it's buried under a bunch of other crap up there. He just doesn't feel the same urgency that I do about it... which stinks. I try to explain to him that a lot of this is my crazy hormones and it would just be easier to give me one good afternoon of moving stuff around and getting it to where I could do it myself.... but he has yet to see the light.

Man, sometimes I wish he could be the one having the baby. I wish he could feel all the crazy ups and downs and sense of immediacy that is pretty much out of his own control. Just for a week... or maybe even a month... and then I think he'd be a little more compassionate... or at the very least just help me do what I feel like I need to do so that I would get off his back about it. The thing is, if I go up there and start moving all that stuff around on my own I would most likely hurt myself and he would get terribly upset that I was so impatient and irresponsible... but I don't think he understands how hard it is to wait right now. I am not the best example of patience right now.

Wow! This post let's you all into the crazy that is my brain right now. I bounced all over the place with this one. I am feeling rather scattered right now in general, so I guess that makes sense.
Even reading through this post makes me feel like ... geez Ruth take a breath and relax!
I'm not crazy every second of every day... but probably more days than I'd like to be right now! I am actually enjoying my pregnancy much more now than I was earlier on when I was feeling sick and more worried. Now that I have reached a good point of viability I feel relieved. And although I don't feel ready to give birth tomorrow.... I probably won't. I still have a good amount of time until this little one will be ready to join us here, but knowing that if something unexpected did occur, the baby would have a good shot at making it helps. Plus, I no longer have a blood clot or any active internal bleeding and knowing that gives me much more peace of mind! I will have another sonogram in about three weeks to check back in with our little one and I am feeling pretty good about what we will see. The strength and length of this new little person are demonstrated to me on a daily basis now... so even if it's not a 10 pounder... I think we've got a good strong healthy one in here!
I hope that you all are having a wonderful new year so far!

Today am grateful that I have set up a support system for myself for after the baby is born... just in case I need a little extra help.
I am thankful that even when I struggle with my own dark thoughts, I am still able to smile and laugh everyday with my kids.
I am thankful that I get to sleep in again tomorrow because I have stayed up way too late writing this post tonight!! : )

My First(and third) Tattoo

A bloggy friend of mine over at Tattoos and Teething Rings just recently had a post about tattoos... imagine that with the name of her blog right? : )... and seeing that I have been wanting to post some of mine and their stories, AND seeing that I am planning on getting one as soon as I can stand to sit the way I would need to, to get it... and I guess after my body has healed from its most recent trauma... not to mention I have been cloistered to protect an unfortunate tweak in the belly the other night.... well, I guess now is as good a time as any, to tell the story.

I got my first tattoo was when I was just a kid really, 16. I think that we were supposed to be in school... but we were hanging out at a friends trailer.(Have I mentioned that I was pretty naughty? I hope my daughter doesn't try even half the crap, I managed to pull off.) This friend happened to be a boy who had just made himself a tattoo gun. It was like a jail gun, I would guess. It was made with the plastic outside of a Bic pen, a guitar string, and a motor that was attached with electrical tape. Just thinking about that day makes me smile. Those were the days(sort of)... no responsibilities to speak of, convinced of my own greatness or at least the ability to see through all the bullshit that everyone else filled their lives with... and shunning most of it, dramatically, but of course. At the time, I thought I knew EVERYTHING. Now, of course, I can easily see how I knew nothing at all... and I can't believe my mom was able to deal with my cynical, smart ass self.... although, I guess the truth is, she didn't deal with me well at all... but maybe now I can see why it is that she didn't.

It's not that I didn't know anything... actually most of the things I thought back then, I still have as some sort of base of my beliefs today.... it's just the arrogance of the age. I see it now in my own daughter... and sometimes catch myself smiling in spite of myself, when I am supposed to be reacting... quite shocked, or dismayed...or angry.... but really what I'm thinking is how much she sounds like me at that age and hoping that she makes it through this period with a little less drama than I did. She is my daughter, so it doesn't bode well for her. Although having someone around to openly mock your self important indignation might make all the difference... I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. ; )

But I digress. Back to the tat.
Pat(the young man with the gun) had been using himself as a drawing board and was itching to get to some fresh meat. Most of the people that I hung out with were guys. Less drama (ha ha, not really just different kinds) and I think that most of them had gotten at least a small one already.... soooo

Pat: Hey Ruth, want to get a tattoo?
Me: sure
Pat - BIG SMILE(so cute...honestly still probably one of the coolest guys I know!): really?!?
Me: ok
Pat: well what do you want?
Me: I don't know... how about a lizard... here on my chest. I wore a lot of v neck t-shirts... it seemed logical.... and easy. That was the extent of my thought processing at the time.

Forgive the quality of the following picture this was from pre-digital days... remember this days?

...no 300 shots til you got it right.. just one and you hoped for the best, back then! : )

I lived to regret that tat for years. It was just so choppy(not his fault,he actually went over it a few times trying to make it look a little better, just the equipment, ya know?) and it wasn't in a great place for my body... just where it had been convenient to pull down my shirt a little and not get nakey in front of all the guys. Well, not regret... I guess... I didn't spend all my time fretting over it... honestly, I didn't think about it too much at all, but I didn't show it off either. I was not really confident in my own skin, so I didn't show much of it... and most people didn't see it often, including myself.
Fast Forward about 5 years. During that time I have graduated from high school, moved out on my own, gone to/graduated from beauty school, had a complete nervous breakdown, run away, come back pregnant, and settled down into the life of a young single working mom.

After Emily was born and my savings were gone(about 3 months) I got a job at a daycare. It was a YMCA in downtown. It just so happened that this daycare employed several people from my previous life. I didn't know it when I started there... but once I was there, I was re-introduced to my old lifestyle (strong local music scene) and a number of old acquaintances, who became great friends. I slowly got in contact with folks that hadn't been intimately involved in my freak out... and so weren't angry with me... just curious what had happened. Through all of this, I ended up reconnecting with my old friend, Pat. Only now Pat was working at a real shop, with good equipment... and long story short (sort of right?)... he offered to fix my tattoo for free. Which was amazing because he later told me that if he had been charging it would have been about $300, which at that time (heck still now, but much more so then) was an incredible amount of money!

What I ended up with was the most beautiful tattoo that I could imagine. This shot shows how happy I was at the end... not only because it was pretty, but because I was glad it was done... it took over three hours and I was ready for it to be finished by that time! : ) He redefined the old lizard, and added on another bigger and nicer one... added color to the old one and a lot of distracting and pretty lines, curves, and bubbles. I let him have complete artistic license and he did an amazing job! Pat still tattoos for a living and now owns his own shop, Burly Fish Tattoo, and from what I gather is doing VERY well. He has gone all over Europe through tattoo conventions and has great adventures doing the thing that he loves. How cool is that right? I haven't actually seen Pat since we both attended a mutual friend's wedding in Vegas back in 2001/2?(I can't believe I don't remember! Bad Mama... it's the children... they have filled my brain with so many other important things...like when they last pooped and whether the texture was right... eek!) But I am sure that if were to run into each other it would be a very pleasant reunion. : )

So, that is the story of my first and third tattoo. Kind of fun remembering the details. When you have tattoos you end up not thinking about them that much... because you see them every day. They just end up fading into the background. Well, at least for me anyway.
Hope you enjoyed that little jaunt down my memory lane. I will do another post on the others soon... or hopefully before the post about the newest edition! : )

Today I am grateful that I have met so many fascinating and talented people on this journey of mine.

I am thankful that my ink still looks good after all these years. I still get compliments on that piece! THANKS, Pat!! : )