The joys of motherhood

I don't think there is anything more frustrating than when your baby is crying and you can't figure out how to fix it. Spending your time scoring the house for what he wants while he is screaming even more because your aren't holding him while looking for what he needs. Could be teething could be gas could be he wants his bear. I don't know. And the tylenol is vanished. Thats when you start getting angry, you plead with the baby try to reason with the baby but obviously that wasn't going to work. Add to that a couple nights of him waking up at odd hours of the night (which makes me suspect teething or tummy ache) so that your normally peaceful sleep time is disturbed. To the point that when you wake up in the morning you are yet again begging and pleading a 10 month old, this time to let you sleep in.

I love that little bugger but nights like this are so hard. When I have to stay up an extra 20 minutes to pump when I was ready for bed 2 hours ago. When he made me feel like a bad mommy for being to tired to sit here and hold him for a few hours. When I find myself daydreaming of nights out, and being able to just go for a drive, or just go to bed and get up when I want and on my schedule. I think this is why God makes babies so adorable. So that even at their worst you fall in love with them all over again. So that in the end it all seems worth it. I love that little man but definitely hoping he sleeps like a log tonight

April showers bring may flowers

So here I am once again all alone on a Friday night. It has been a crazy couple of weeks here at the Corl household and I am exhausted. Not only am I exhausted I look exhausted. I just looked in the mirror and I might as well have two black eyes. And yet instead of going to sleep I am trying to fold laundry and stay up until my sons clothes are ready for the dryer. I have turned into a crazy person.

A couple of weeks ago we got to rush into the hospital for George's shunt revision. I knew it would be our next hospital visit and low and behold a few weeks ago George started being fussier, then he started to nap more during the day, then he started it become inconsolable, then he would cry if you moved or made a sound and than he cried unless he had Tylenol until the morning we brought him in due to the final sign his head was bulging. At first I really did think all the fuss was tummy stuff. I had been trying formula he seemed to be gassy and uncomfortable but no it was his head. He must have been in terrible pain because he felt better right after surgery than he did before surgery. The very next day he was playing and smiling which is why the ever so cute resident neurosurgeon popped in to give us our get out of jail free card.

Then of course the weekly doctor and therapy visits. No we shouldn't consult pulminology yet on wether or not George will be able to speak, Yes he can go in the pool with his MicKey button, George is where he should be cognitively so how do we keep him on track with his physical limitations.

George was finally excited about eating something. Unfortunately it was a Dorito. All this time I'm trying to change the way Jarrod and I eat to make sure he is healthy, especially since being overweight may be the difference between eating and not eating. I give him all the Gerber foods and I get faces like why the heck did you put that in my mouth. His father gives him a Dorito and its like he found his new favorite thing. Hes licking it and pretending to chew after,he was licking his fingers and his face, eating his sleeve that got covered in it. I just wish he could be so excited about like apple blueberry. So now after consulting with my therapist I'm going to be buying George chocolate cheerios and this popcorn that will melt in his mouth. O well at this point food is food.

Both gardens have been plowed and tilled. They are ready when we are. And I mowed the lawn for the first time ever and found I loved it. It was like driving a extremely loud and slow go cart. I could completely escape from the stress rollar coster that my life has become and just shut everything out. Even if afterwards my ears were ringing and my arms burned (I wore SPF 70 it did no good) I actually enjoyed it. Next week I plan to weed and get the whole yard looking cleaner.

Also we finally have a finished floor in the bathroom. My goal is to get the drywall ready for paint and hopefully the tub tiled this week. We shall see. If I had to bet it would be that I get nothing done on it this week but it's nice to dream.

From scratch

Jarrod and I have decided to change the way we eat. It is not a diet per say, in fact I could probably end up eating even more fattening things if I don't learn healthier recipes. It is more about getting back to basics, back to from scratch. I find that lately I have been making food decisions by what is easy as opposed to what is healthy. The amount of pasta I eat is atrocious and the main reason for that is that I can just throw that box in a pot of water than wallah! 15 minutes and I have a meal! (sort of). So from now on I will buy things that I can't make at home like flour, spices, fruits, veggies, meats, milk etc but no more boxed pizza, no more sliced breads, no more lipton sides. The things I am allowing myself are goldfish(because without some kind of quick snack I know I will never be able to handle this) and ice cream (but only until we get our ice cream maker from Jarrod's parents. I've already seen the benefit, when I went to the store for this weeks groceries my total was only a third of what I was spending weekly before. And i know this number will go down even more once we have our veggie garden. The main reasoning behind this is after watching tons of movies about the awful things I eat, I wanted to make a change. I wanted to stop being lazy about food. I even love to cook and now I am so lazy that I only really make something when we have guests. I'm a stay at home mom with a nurse to help watch the baby for pete's sake, I have time to make something homemade. It is helping me limit my snacking and my overeating. Because now at lunch I eat what I made. I don't go back to the freezer for another burrito or to the pantry for a box of chicken flavored noodles. Tonight I made sloppy bucks with homemade rolls. The rolls were wonderful (though not as good as Jarrod's). And the other night I made homemade dumplings (which were way better than anything I've had at Covington Chinese). So hopefully this little experiment helps me to become reconnected with my food and make stuff I really love.

I'm not trying to be elitist or obnoxious about this. I will still go out to eat from time to time, and I won't make a fuss if I go to someone else's house for food. It's really just about changing the way Jarrod and I eat before we have kids that are eating at the table with us. We are even going to finish all the boxed pasta and cans of soup because there is no reason to waste it. I just hope that this leads to eating more veggies and meat and less pasta. We shall see.