i am too tired for this!

What am I too tired for you may ask? I will tell you, my two year old! She is winning. You would think that since she is my third child I would be an expert by now, but no I am failing miserably. So I think I figured out why two year olds are so tough to deal with, I figured this out during the hour that I spent rocking her the other night when she wouldn't go to sleep (with one arm and one leg asleep so I was multi tasking). Anyway, during the average day I, as all mothers, have quite a bit to do. My to do list looks something like this: get up, feed everyone breakfast, make lunches, get everyone dressed, beds made and to school, clean up the house, do laundry (really how can three kids produce so much dirty clothes), play with my two year old, take care of any church responsibilities, pick up the kids, start dinner, look through homework, eat dinner, do dishes, bath time, and get the kids in bed. Oh ya and this time of year get everything ready for Christmas (that at least is fun). So that is more or less my average day. This is what my two year old has to do during the day, eat, play and GET HER WAY. She has much more time during the day to devote towards getting exactly what she wants. So while I am holding her in the rocking chair thinking of all the things I have to do while ignoring my tingling arm and leg, she is sitting there focusing all her attention on not falling asleep.
I keep telling myself that when she turns three it will all go away, this is only a terrible two thing right? But she turns three next week and she hasn't gone to bed before ten this week, and that is with no naps, she has also been just a tad bit grumpy this week.
My sisters two year old is also part of this evil movement of children whose goal is to destroy their mothers. She had her daughter completely potty trained for a week and then guess what. Her daughter changed her mind. If a kid isn't going to use the toilet there isn't much you can do about it. So my heart goes out to my sister who had a crushing loss in her battle last week. But mothers everywhere lets take up the call, "we will triumph, we will not give up, they will not win, we are bigger, smarter (I think), and we have chocolate any time we want to give us strength!!!!" so any way to all you out there who have two year olds, good luck!

And you think pregnant women are illogical?!?

This afternoon my husband and I were watching the BYU vs University of Utah football game. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the BYU world this is a HUGE rivalry. Especially if you are my husband and are convinced that every Ute is a spawn of the devil, even though we are friends with many of them and even related to a few. When we lived in New York there was one couple, who were very good friends of ours, who the husband had actually played football for Utah. It was a serious moral dilemma for my husband to be friends with him. Any way we are watching the game, having a very enjoyable time, when my husband turns to me with a very serious look and says "you know if we lose this game it is because you are wearing a red shirt right now" (Utah's colors are red and white). To which I replied "well what does that say about you since you married a woman with red hair". He didn't have a response, points Karen!!! So I think my thoughts like "I can eat all the pumpkin pie I want cause pumpkin is good for me" or "I am totally justified crying during a biscuit commercial" are way more logical than that.

sleep, what a wonderful thing

Last night the most amazing thing happened... I slept all night! No crying two year olds, no bed wetting 5 year olds, and no nightmares for 8 year olds. Most importantly I didn't have to get up to pee every hour like I have had to for the last month!!! I felt soooo good this morning. Instead of dragging myself out of bed and getting, you guessed it, angry at my kids. I found that I was actually cheerful and patient (these are attributes that I have not claimed for myself in a very long time). So even though I am still feeling slightly nauseous I feel like I have the energy to deal with it today, for now anyway who knows how I will feel in about ten minutes. It just makes me reflect on how weird pregnancy is. When you look at a pregnant woman symptoms like hunger make sense, sleepiness also after all it takes food and energy to have a baby grow inside of you. But the symptoms like nausea, constant peeing (when there is nothing pushing on your bladder yet), gas, oh and I find that I have to burp all the time when I am pregnant (much to my husbands disgust and my 6 year olds amusement). These things don't make sense to me. But I guess it is the way it is and I just have to remind myself that THIS IS THE LAST TIME. So anyway I am fairly happy today, I have energy and the comfort of my fat pants, nothing can stop me now!

goodbye vanity, i will miss you, or not

Well it has come to that time of pregnancy where vanity must go or I will become thoroughly depressed. What has pushed me to this completely non-feminine concept of having absolutely no vanity you may ask? Well there are a few things. First of all my pants don't fit anymore, I am in pants limbo. To big for my old pants but not big enough for maternity pants. That means it is time to pull out my old post baby, aka fat pants. Now there are two reasons that I need to put aside all vanity to wear these pants, first is the obvious that they are fat pants. Second is the fact that they are years old and most likely out of style, but who wants to spend money on stylish fat pants, not me. I would rather just give up my vanity and be comfortable if unstylish.
My next "give up vanity incident" happened when I was only 5 weeks along! I was at church and a sort of friend of mine came up to me and asked if I was pregnant "yes" I said wondering who had told her. Then she went on this monologue about how she couldn't tell if I was pregnant or just having a bad month! Her words not mine. Then realizing she had just totally insulted me she tried to cover it up with a backhanded compliment of "well usually you are sooo skinny". I just sat there and stared at her not quite believing she had actually said all that. Really, how do you respond to that, I could be honest and say "why did you just say all that to me, are you stupid or are you just trying to push me into a deep depression?" or I could go the self depreciating route and say "you are right, that grain of rice inside of me has made me poof out like the stay puff marshmallow". You see there is nothing to say to people like this. I would really like to return to my idea of a previous post and throw a book at her, but I can't, it is important for some reason to be "polite" to people even when they are rude to us, I guess I will just have to be the "bigger" person, hahaha I crack myself up.
Anyway my latest proof that I need to give up all vanity came from my two year old. I was getting out of the shower the other day and she came up to me, pointed to my rear end, and said "that's big" feeling that I needed to clarify before I burst into tears I pointed to the offending area and said "that's big?" to which she replied "yes, that's big" then walked out of the room. Well folks kids don't lie, so goodbye vanity i think i will miss you, but maybe not. I think it will be nice to not care for a while.

My son the hearthrob

This has nothing to do with pregnancy but my sister said it was funny and that I had to put it on my blog.


The other day I went to Ty's parent teacher conference. I was waiting a little early with some of the other parents and started talking to one of the other mom's. When I told her who my son was she said oh, my daughter Pilar likes him soooo much, she says he is her boyfriend. This reminded me of a time about a month ago when Ty had told me that one of the girls asked him to be her boyfriend, which Ty assured me he said a big loud NO to. So I told the other mom about this and asked if it had been her daughter. She said that it was her daughters friend who had asked Ty to be her boyfriend and that it caused her daughter to come home crying cause she was so upset with her friend. It was so funny, so I asked Ty that night very casually if he liked Pilar. He said"sure she is my friend" I asked if he played with her, he looked at me like I was crazy and said "no, I play with Connor". So it funny to me that the desperation of girls, and total ignorance of boys start at such a young age. It reminded me of when I was in kindergarten once, I was sitting by the "cute boy" during reading time and I started poking him. When he told me to stop it I said I would only stop if he sat by me on the bus, which he did. I remember being so happy on the ride home that day!

joys and concerns

The other day my kindergartner came up to me and said "mom, my joy is that I have basketball next week and my concern is that I hit my head on the wall in the shower" "okay" I said with a very confused look on my face. My 8 year old quickly explained that in his kindergarten class the teacher asks them every day if they have any joys or concerns. So now it made a lot more sense. So the other day his joys and concerns went like this "mom, my joy is that I have basketball in three more days and my concern is that I have to wait three days for basketball". He really likes basketball. So anyway it got me to thinking that maybe I should post some of my joys (since anger was getting a little depressing) so here goes. My big joy the other day was ... you guessed it, grocery shopping. Now this also brings up some concerns, namely the whole weight gain thing. I am ten weeks along and have gained 6 pounds, not bad but not good either. When I started out I had all these optimistic thoughts like "I will eat right, I will exercise every day" you read in those pregnancy books "you should only gain two pounds in the first trimester" whatever, who are these women who are only gaining two pounds. Whenever I read that I want to throw the book out the window, or maybe at one of those skinny pregnant women. Anyway, this post is supposed to be about my joys so I apologize for getting a little to "concerny". Anyway I had all these grand plans and ideas, then I started feeling sick a couple of weeks ago and it all went out the window. So I figure if you feel like puking every day you shouldn't have to feel guilty about anything. So I enjoyed my grocery shopping. I walked into super Walmart with a gleam in my eye, the whole store before me, yummy food ready to fall into my shopping cart and I indulged myself. Now all you normal non-pregnant people out there are probably imagining all sorts of delicacies falling into my cart (or as many delicacies as can be found at such an illustrious place as super Walmart) like fillet Mignon, king crab legs, spinach salads, and ben and jerrys ice cream. However it isn't like that, I am craving much different things. These are the items I was very excited about:

pop can crescent rolls
lunchables
frozen mini quiches
canned soup
sausage for breakfast burritos
frozen chinese food
cheap sandwich bread for toasting
frozen twiced baked potatoes (these are so good especially cause they are yummy microwaved so you don't even have to wait like with a lot of frozen food)

So I put all these things in my cart and I am just wishing it was dinner every night right away so that I could eat them all. It really made me very happy, so there is my latest joy. I hope I have brought some joy into your lives and encouraged you to give into a random craving, pregnant or not.

Anger part three

Well this is the last of my three part series on anger, and frankly I am glad as angry as I am all the time I do realize it isn't a good idea to focus on and remember that anger. However, seeing as how I have all ready started this "anger series" I am committed to finishing it. So I have saved the "best for last". What may you ask would make me more angry than kids not listening or the absence of Burger King fries? The answer is easy... MEN, more specifically my husband. Now the rational side of my brain knows that he is a great guy. We will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this month and I have to say it has been a great 10 years. He is kind, helpful, a great father, fun to talk to, and he has even been known to skip a BYU football game just to go on a date with me. So like I said the rational side of my brain knows he is great. Then there is the pregnant part of my brain. I can't seem to get the rational part and the pregnant part to agree. I find myself sooooo angry with him a lot lately. Then I ask myself is this something that I should be mad about or is it crazy pregnant woman taking over. So I will give you my "angry situations" and let you be the judge.
Situation 1, the other day he had gone on a day trip to Billings, so 8 hours in the car and 4 more in meetings, now most people would hate a day like this but he loves driving by himself and eating fast food, so for him it is a great day. Meanwhile I am at home with my stinky two year old who is really quite a challenge lately, I mean it a kicking screaming non-sleeping challenge. Feeling all day sickness, cause it is not just morning sickness for me lately, I had also acquired a nasty body aching cold and I was of course super tired. So he gets home from his ideal day and the house is slightly, okay pretty messy, but I am just proud of myself for keeping the kids fed, clothed, and not strangled. So I tell him that I think I have some sort of virus cause I feel achy and awful and he says in a monotone voice "great". Then he starts walking around the house putting things away while slamming cabinet doors and such. I can tell he is upset so I carefully ask "how were your meetings" he says in the same monotone voice "fine", okay "did you have a nice drive, were the roads good?" "they were fine". By now I can't decide if I want to shoot fire out of my mouth at him or start crying. So I say very calmly, using my fine social working skills I learned in college "I feel like you are mad at me because I am sick" he replies "I am not mad at you cause you are sick" okay then "I feel like you are mad at me cause the house is messy cause I am sick" to which he replies "I am really trying here okay" which in my mind is a load of crap (excuse my crudeness) this just pushes me over the edge, but I know I shouldn't yell so I calmly reply "If this is you trying I would hate to be around you when I didn't try"then I walked out of the room and start putting the kids to bed. Woohoo, score one for the pregnant woman, I made my point without resorting to tears or giving in to the urge to throw things! Any way he was good a couple of minutes later he apologized and ordered me to be so he could finish cleaning the kitchen.
Situation 2, now this one is a double whammy cause it combines pregnancy with middle of the night tiredness. Now I have spoken of our difficult two year old in the past, well one of her stubborn things is that she doesn't like having a sleep schedule. Sometimes she even falls asleep at 4 in the afternoon, naps for 2 hours and then wants to stay up till one, if I try to wake her after 30 min she is a bear for the next hour. So it is hard to decide what to do. So anyway we had gone to bed at 10 putting her to bed at the same time. I was very tired at this point and fell asleep immediately. So at 11 Grace gets out of bed and starts crying a screaming that she wants to get up then she starts walking around turning on all the lights. I have woken up at this point and I knew Brad had also. But he just LAY THERE!!! I know he was waiting to see if I would get up! I was livid, so i said, while grinding my teeth "are you waiting for me to get up?". He got the picture real quick and said very annoyed sounding "no" and got up and took care of her. I mean really what is he thinking, that he needs sleep more than me right now. I swear sometimes I could just kill him. Then I start thinking he got me this way and then he acts like he is some pregnant wife martyr and that life is so hard for him but he can bear the pain as his lot in life. WHATEVER, stupid men. And all the little boys born out there will turn out just like them. When I went through pregnancy and delivery with my first child I remember calling my mom and telling her how much I appreciated that she had done that for me. I suggested that my husband do the same and call his mom, he looked at me like I was crazy. I realized that my son would never appreciate what I had gone through for him. So really forget them all, except when it all comes down to it and these nine months are over I think that I will probably love him again, but we will see.

Anger part two

I figure this anger thing had better be a three part series. There are too many things making me angry these days to put it all in one post. So anger number one was at my kids, all though I must say today we had a great morning and we were even ready a few minutes early, so my kids are pretty great sometimes. Anyway, anger number two is at you guessed it, franchises, namely Burger King. This specific event happened a couple weeks ago but it still makes me angry just thinking about it. Now I love Burger King french fries, they are so perfectly yummy better than any other fast food place. So I had been wanting these fries for about six weeks but had been denying myself cause I am trying not to overload on salt like I want to, and I really want to the other day I was making my husbands ham sandwich and I found myself wanting to lick my fingers just to taste the salt from the ham. I know it is not a moment I am proud of but it is true none the less. So anyway I had been denying myself the fries. It turned out that we had one of those days where we had tons of stuff scheduled in the late afternoon so it was pretty difficult to make dinner. Brad and Audrey had eye appts so I told them to just get fast food and that I would take the other kids to dinner. So finally I was going to give into temptation and get my french fries, I seriously looked forward to it ALL DAY. So I pick my other kids up from a party and head for Burger King, I passed every other food franchise on the way there and as I passed them I thought "nope, I want Burger King". So we pull up to Burger King, at which point my mouth was literally watering, and... IT WAS GONE! The building had been torn down! Apparently they are putting in a Walgreens and building a new Burger King in another part of town. I sat there in the parking lot in shock, how could this be, did the whole commercial world hate pregnant women. Now at this point you would say "why not just go to another Burger King" and for those of you who don't live in podunk little towns like me could do that, but for me to do that I would have to drive to the next town. Which I was very tempted to do except that my 5 and 2 years old were moaning about how hungry they were. So we went to McDonalds and I got their crappy substandard french fries. I bet that if I checked on the completion date of the new Burger King it would be June 8th, did I mention my due date is June 7th. Oh well, it really is for the best I guess, the title of this blog is "i will not gain 5o pounds" so I guess the no Burger King thing is a blessing in disguise.

ANGER

I find when I am pregnant I am much more emotional, big surprise there. But it isn't only crying it is everything, especially anger. I get angry very easily, kind of like the incredible hulk only not big and green, well not green anyway. So I guess I feel sorry for my family having to live with me lately, except if they wouldn't do stupid things I wouldn't get angry so really it is their fault. So here are the things that have made me angry lately. Number one, kids not listening to me. Every morning I am of course really tired but being a mom of school aged children I still must drag myself out of bed to get them ready for school. This is what has happened EVERY DAT this last week with my eight year old daughter Audrey, who I will tell you now has a long history of being very slow at doing things. When she is close to done eating her breakfast I say "okay audrey clear your dishes, brush your teeth, make your bed and get dressed" she says "okay mom" then i go to deal with my screaming two year old who seems to always be screaming lately for very rational things like someone left the room before her or tyler said good morning to her, or the earth was traveling around the sun. So anyway I deal with her for a few minutes then go back to check on Audrey's progress only to find her still sitting at the table playing with the leftover milk in her bowl. So I start to get a little bit angry "Audrey what are you doing" "oh sorry mom I forgot" at which point she gets up and clears her dishes. Meanwhile I go make my bed while my two year old screams at Audrey for walking down the stairs before her. When my bed is made I go downstairs to check on the progress, I find that Tyler, bless his heart he keeps me sane in the morning, is dressed with teeth brushed and bed made playing quietly in his room. Audrey meanwhile is sitting on her bed looking at a book, at least she has her pajamas off. "Audrey what are you doing" "Oh sorry mom I started looking at this book" at which point she wants to show and explain the book in great detail to me. "Audrey you can show me the book after school, you need to hurry or we will be late". Then I go get my two year old dressed after I let her walk up the stairs first. I come back down and hallelujah she is dressed and maybe by now her bed is made or maybe I have to remind her but we are making progress. Then she goes in to brush her teeth, now if you will remember at the beginning of this post when I gave the first direction of the morning, the same things I say every single blasted morning "brush your teeth" comes before "get dressed" somehow this is not heard correctly. It makes me wonder what they really hear when we moms talk I think they hear "Audrey you are wonderful and perfect, do whatever you want this morning" or maybe "mhhm, rrrrr, blblby, oijodfoe". She is definitely not hearing what I say, if she did I wouldn't have to scrub toothpaste off the front of her shirt every morning! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! By now we are almost late and I turn into the mean angry mom who is frantically yelling things like "get your shoes on, put on your coat, empty the rocks out of your shoes OUTSIDE, don't forget your backpack, do you think I like to yell, why do you make me yell to get anything done, don't forget your back pack, no the gloves go on first not last" etc, etc. I am not proud of myself in these moments, I am not a nice person to be around, but it gets them to school on time. I suppose I have vague memories of my mom sounding the same way before school but probably all I heard was "mhhm, rrrr, blblby, oijodfoe". Sorry mom.