Just Life

THE PICS BELOW ARE OF MY KIDS THE DAY THEY WERE BORN...Gavin, Owen then Annalise.




I've been dealing with some postpartum depression issues lately and haven't felt much like updating, but I'm feeling a bit better today so here it is.

My back is dead. Killed it. I've had back problems for years but they've just gotten worse recently. I have been the to doctor a couple times and now I'm going to physical therapy. They have dertermined I have a few problems: I have some pelvic issues because of my pregnancy, I have a lower lumbar "something" that will never heal but they can teach me how to deal with it, and to make matters worse I do not have the abdominal support for my back that is necessary because of the 2 c-sections I've had...they cut into your abdominals and it just kills them. So hopefully I'll be better with the physical therapy.

My grandma is recovering from her mastectomy quite well. For some reason in Idaho they don't do reconstructive surgery at the same time, but hopefully she'll get the reconstruction in 6 months or so.

I got a new computer!! A MacBook!! LOVE IT!!! It's been a while since I've used a Mac, and the'y completely changed the OS since then, but I'm falling into it quickly. LOVE IT!!!

Alright, my kids are great. Gavin is getting so great with letters and numbers and I'm anxiously awaiting the parent/teacher confrences in November. I want to hear how he's doing...listening, learning, playing, etc. Owen is just talking up a storm now, though I forget that just because I can understand him, doesnt mean everyone else can. :) And Annalise had her belated 2 month appointment last week. She weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces and was almost 24 inches long. She's getting so big, I can't believe she's almost 12 weeks old.

So there you go. I'm going to go mess around with the programs on my new computer and attempt to make something AWESOME. :) Take care everyone!!


STACEY'S BIRTHDAY COUNTDOWN: 24 DAYS!!! That's right folks...it's on Thanksgiving this year!! And my 7th anniversary is the next day, and my husband will be working both. :)

5 Of My "Weird Things"

Here they are, some I've mentioned before...

1. I have a hair pulling thing...it's actually an impulse control disorder called trichotillomania

2. I have a numbers thing. I can just remember numbers and birthdays, my Dad has a numbers thing too.

3. I have a fear of opening doors the wrong way. LOL. Crazy isn't it? Something must have happened when I was a kid, because I don't like opening a door or the first time because I'm afraid of pulling when I'm supposed to push or vice versa.

4. My friends actually make fun of me for this one but I'm full of odd facts and useless information: Every human body consists of 10 quadrillion cells, but about 100 quadrillion bacterial cells! Ooh. Cool eh??

5. I type 75 wpm. I guess that's not weird, but I'm having problems thinking of my weird things tonight for some reason. I know there are lots more, but I'll just have to add them when I remember them.



There you go. Sorry it took so long. :)

Your turn Kat and April!!

Haven't Forgotten

THE PICTURES BELOW ARE OF ALL MY KIDS AT 9 WEEKS OLD!! First Gavin, then Owen, then Annalise. :)

I just haven't had time to update for a while, so I'm sitting on the edge of the couch bouncing Annalise on my knee while I type one handed...so far she's content and I've not made many mistakes.
Quick Updates:

I'm getting over a bad stomach "thing" so hopefully I'll have more productive days ahead.

Johnny has his four day weekend and I'm enjoying it

Gavin stayed home from school on Thursday because he was throwing up, but he's better and we still managed to turn in the Otis Spunkmeier Cookie Dough Fundraiser stuff (Thanks Dad!!) so I'm anxiously awaiting the second week of November!

Owen's crib broke so he got his first Big Boy bed!! Last night was his first night in it and he fell asleep on the floor. :) Little sweetie.

Annalise started smiling more often and especially at my Dad, she thinks he's a riot. :)

That's really all. Boring, I know...but it's an update!! Thinking of you all.

Gavin and Dasia

How cute are they?? This was taken at the pumpkin patch last week...LOVE IT!! And I'll always remember my little slip-up: When I opened my car door at the preschool my camera fell onto the concrete and I said, "SHIT!" not even a second later every little voice in the car (with the exception of my 7 week old) said, "shit," "shit," "shit," shit."

One mistake. Luckily there hasn't been an utterance from the little ones since, and I'm keeping my mouth shut too! :)

Motherhood

We keep deluding ourselves that happiness is just around the corner, but always in the future. “If I could just get out of school”, “if I could only find a better job”, which becomes, “If I could just find someone to love”, and so on, potentially for the rest of our lives. How many of us said, “If only I could have children, then I’d be happy”? We soon found that children brought us great joy but also countless hurdles and frustrations. With happiness always round the next corner, we could come to the end of our lives to find that we never allowed ourselves to be happy in the present moment and that we therefore wasted countless opportunities to experience joy.

We ceaselessly categorize our experiences into “good” or “bad”. Then we try to arrange our lives so that we can avoid the “bad: and attract the “good”. Despite these efforts we live in failure: Life presents “ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows”. We must meet pain as well as pleasure, so we can’t afford to hook our happiness to external circumstances.

In our clearer moments we may glimpse what’s going on—this endless pursuit of transitory happiness seems futile but what can we do? Rather than acknowledge the inner deprivation we try harder in the outer world because we obviously need more of what is can offer. We might convince ourselves we need a world trip, new things, or an exciting new career change. And we’re back in the cycle of demanding from the outside world.

Happiness, or the lack of it, can be an issue that mothers feel desperate to resolve. This is especially the case on the arrival of a second child. A parenting magazine reported the results of a study which found: “…a woman’s life satisfaction falls to its all-time low the year after the birth of her second child. Another sturdy found that many second-time mothers had stress levels high enough to warrant medical treatment.”

Mothers spend so much time attending to the “have-tos: of life: housework, errands, paper work, phone calls, taxiing, appointments, birthdays. We need to give all our family members quality time and maintain contact with a string of relatives. Our brains are shuffling so many details that they feel close to exploding.

With family responsibilities we are far less free to seek our own happiness. We have less time for our careers, hobbies and friends and we may discover that a ‘family holiday” is a contradiction in terms. At times any hope of happiness for a mother is quashed by a baby’s bellowing, a toddler’s tantrum, a sons sleep problems, a daughters anti-social behavior or workplace inflexibility. There’s no end to the hoops our children and others can put us through. At times happiness is the most distant of our dreams and we humbly confine our wishes to “a little peace and quiet”.

Certainly a mother has new sources of happiness from the world outside her: watching her children grow into little characters, laughing at their capers, perhaps a new circle of friends. Still she may find herself in the cycle of postponing happiness, wishing, “If I could just have them all at school”, “If we could just get through this stage”, “If they’d just move out!”

We sometimes catch more experienced mothers musing: “They grow up so quickly, don’t they?” Some of us don’t believe them but still, this period of our lives will pass and that makes it precious. In postponing our happiness until the children are older, we lose sight of the importance of this stage of our lives. When we’re older, perhaps as we leaf through a scrapbook brimming with images from their childhood, we might regret that we didn’t allow ourselves to enjoy our small children as much as we could have. The studies keep finding that the first few years of life are the most important to a child’s psychological and intellectual development—another reminder of the preciousness of our moments with our young children…

Love you gals...

enough said.