Organizing, organizing, organizing...

Seems that that is all I do these days but it's a necessary evil. Our apartment is such that we don't have a lot of extra storage space. We have a storage unit in the basement but it's prone to flooding (all it takes is a good rainstorm and the drains getting backed up and we have water in the streets, over the sidewalk, and down into the basement) which is not good if you want to store things like winter clothes. We have a closet in the living room that's very small. We have kitchen cabinet space but no pantry (and therefore, no place to store things like broom/vacuum cleaner/etc). There's no linen closet (or if there was, the room has been taken up by the water heater). Bathroom storage is minimum, only a small cabinet under the sink. The three bedrooms each have a closet but the closets are all different sizes. One room has a large closet and the other two rooms have smaller closets (including the largest bedroom, ask me how that makes ANY sense at all!). They do all at least have a shelf. It's just an awkwardly put together apartment where the space is not set up in the best way.

To add to that, I have two kids which means toys and clothes galore. I have totes of clothes that Natalie grew out of and Isabelle still needs to grow into. My younger sister is also using some of the clothes for her youngest daughter who will be 3 next week. Since it took so long for Isabelle to grow, I have clothes from 0-3 months all the way to size 8 girls. That's a lot of clothes! And that doesn't include the fact that I have about three totes in size 24 months and 2T alone that I ended up getting shortly after Isabelle was born. I look forward to her reaching that size because I'll have plenty of clothes for her to wear!

Then we have the toys. We have a lots of toys for various ages and neither girl is good at putting away toys. Along with the toys, we have stuffed animals. And getting rid of excess toys has not been easy whatsoever. Heaven help me if I end up pregnant with another child, I may go mad!

I am not the most organized person in the world. I try to be but a lot of things end up in boxes and forgotten about for years and years. It's part of that pack rat trait I picked up from my dad. He was notorious at having stuff in boxes and moving it all with him from place to place to place and filling up and entire garage, extra room, storage unit, you name it. I'm trying not to do that. Going to Korea, we got rid of a LOT of stuff. However, it's amazing how easy it is to end up with a lot of stuff again, especially when you have a friend who is moving and needs to get rid of a bunch of HER stuff! lol Of course, winning a lot of Carebears on eBay probably didn't help matters either... My husband is even worse with the organizing than I am. He doesn't organize or if he does, it's in the most illogical way. He also doesn't remember where he puts stuff which means that if he put something away, I may never see it again. Sometimes this has meant tearing the house apart until what I'm looking for. Not the most logical course of action but he truly does not get that he needs to REMEMBER where he put something!

So, I have a room that I use for an office. It's also where a lot of stuff ends up, sort of the sorting/processing area of the apartment. This way, it's in "holding" and it's SAFE from my husband putting it away. Unfortunately, it means that it may end up being in holding for sometime as getting to it and organizing it is rather time consuming (especially when I have two hurricanes to pick up after--three if you count my husband!).

The key, I realize, is minimizing what is accessible to the girls. The less they have access to, the easier it is to keep up with the daily messes. It's not easy though because they both have gotten into the extra totes and have dragged toys out, sometimes emptying entire totes at once. Argh!

So I'm slowly working on my office and trying to get it organized and have things in it that are functional. I realize that the girls having bookshelves is just pointless. The books never end up in there so one went into my office and the other into our bedroom. Books we don't want Isabelle to get into (because they're paper books and can be torn) will be in our room and board books will have a home in either the living room or bedroom/playroom. I would like to get one of those bookshelves for them that leaves the books facing out but they're not cheap and the cheap ones, I guess, are too prone to ripping. Maybe were baskets and command hooks? Might be something to look into at some point.

In the meantime, I'm just plugging away, trying to get things organized and put away. It's a huge task because I'm the one doing pretty much all of the work (definitely can't rely on my husband to be much help) and it's a lot of stuff to organize but my plan is to find a place for everything. And hopefully, by the time we move out of this apartment, I will have done that. It's just going to take time.

That was scary!

When parenting, one has to learn to expect the unexpected because you never know when a seemingly innocent event can create major problems. My husband John and my older daughter Natalie attended a winter social through their church yesterday. I didn't go because I don't follow the belief system of my husband's church and it was going to be one of those deals where I was going to be in a situation where I would have felt very uncomfortable and very self-conscious for hours and so I just decided to stay home with our younger daughter. Not to mention, they were getting a ride there from someone else in the church. They left a little after 1 in the afternoon and would be back late that night.

I get a call a little bit before 9PM. They had been out on a wagon wide and for some reason the ride included a couple of furry guests in the form of giant rabbits (and I guess these were GIANT rabbits, likely Flemish Giants). Natalie had a great time holding the rabbit on her lap and petting it. When they got back, a talent show started up and not too long after that, Natalie rubbed her eyes causing an instant and severe allergic reaction. Her eyes swelled up, her face broke out in hives. Fortunately someone there had Benedryl and gave her that and got her cleaned up and into other clothes (she had second set with her for services). Still, pretty scary and my husband was fairly freaked out. She was still puffy eyed when she got home and her eyes are still a little swollen today. Never thought a rabbit would cause that much of an allergic reaction! Guess it's time to make a call to the ped to see about getting her in for allergy testing. Just ironic though because I've owned at least two rabbits growing up and never had any issues.

Being sick really bites.

Been fighting, for the last week now, both a cold and a stomach bug. Got the cold first on Valentine's Day. The next day, got hit with a very violent 24 hour stomach flu bug. Very violent, could not get out of bed without throwing up stomach flu bug. I had to have my husband stay home from work because I could not take care of the kids. Stomach bug went away leaving the cold behind. Then yesterday, the stomach bug tried to make a come back. Was able to at least take care of the kids so that John could work. The cold is finally going away, at least enough that I might not have to go through 3 rolls of toilet paper in a weekend and I can actually sit with my mouth closed and still be able to breathe.

In the meantime, the apartment is TRASHED. Laundry hasn't been done in weeks, dishes are piling up, toys are EVERYWHERE! It's a nightmare and not being at 100%, cleaning has not been getting done (because, seriously, cleaning is hard enough with two kids even when I'm at 100%). I'm hoping that I remain healthy enough to do some catching up on Saturday while John and Natalie are away at church. We'll see. I may also try and bribe my little sister into letting me use her washer and dryer. I'm willing to pay her $1.50/load...okay maybe $1/load. That's fair. :D Okay, maybe not. I need to get SOME laundry washed though as the laundry monster is slowly slinking down my hallway. I mean really, it's getting brutal. The toys are taking on a life of their own too so that needs to be dealt with as well. I had John stop at Target to pick up some shoe box totes (as well as a couple of larger ones) and it's tackle, tackle, tackle. Just going to keep putting stuff in them until they're filled up, I guess. Even better, they have colored lids. The sale only included teal and olive green lids but better than white. The larger ones will hopefully help with some of the excess toys. For now, it might be back to throwing everything in the big totes and SLOWLY moving things to the smaller ones and organizing. The girls managed to get in and empty out almost ALL of the totes. Gah! Not like they had enough toys already running around!

In the meantime, the girls as usual provide their own source of entertainment. Isabelle is finally saying "Mama". It only took her about 19 months. It's cute though. She goes "MMMMmama". Just precious. And it's sad because I can't even remember when Natalie said Mama. I'm pretty sure it was one of her first words, one of her babble words. Isabelle's babble word was "dada". Just took her forever to get that M sound down. She does other cute things too like giving hugs and kisses and kissing her hand. She also pesters her big sister which is funny in and of itself. Natalie at least takes it in stride, she just loves having a little sister. I think it helps that her dad still gives her a ton of attention. I wasn't quite so lucky at her age.

So that's what's going on right now. Would include pictures but I don't think I've taken any lately and I haven't been letting Natalie take off with the camera as much (probably because she tends to hog the memory with videos of herself spinning around). One of these days I'll get on it though.

We're all doing the best we can with what we've got.

That was the idea for a group that formed last June on a parenting forum many moms frequented. It was a great concept. There were a number of moms who had grown tired and frustrated at the belittling that was being done on the forum. Topics would come up that inevitably led to hurt feelings especially in moms who were really struggling, especially financially. Many of these moms were doing the best they could do with what they had and it didn't always reach the expectations of other moms. I myself had had times I just could not stand to go to this forum because of some of the topics. When this off shoot group formed, I felt I had finally met some moms like me and it was great...at first. Unfortunately, because of the name of the group, some members took it as a means to go off on their own and instead of being part of a support group, decided to cause trouble on threads that in the past used to cause hurt feelings. The moderators, trying to keep peace within the forum, gave warnings but finally had to step in and take action. Members were banned, the daily thread the group used locked up. I did do a little bit of talking to one of the mods and was able to get a daily thread opened up again but many moms had fled by then not feeling comfortable, knowing that these threads were being watched closely.

So a group formed online outside of this forum. At first it started on Facebook, then there was a forum opened up on another website and for awhile, the owner of that forum was setting it up to compete directly against the original forum. It didn't work. Many of the members were moms who had originally banded together for support. Many of the members were also moms who had been causing trouble in the forum. It didn't end when the new group was formed either. There would be posts about a thread in the forum and everyone would rush over to see the drama and maybe even add oil to the fire. What was worse was that it went a step farther and members of the forum would be talked about with no way for that person to even defend herself because she wasn't in the group. It was a mean girl (or rather mom) group and it didn't take long before members started to turn on other members. I ended up deleted from the group. I blame myself for that. I knew deep down that this was not a group I should be in. Talking and gossiping was not something I did and quite often, I disagreed with what the other moms would say about something or someone. It was easy though to be caught up in a group like that, easy to stay because of the friendships...so long as they didn't turn on you but eventually, they do and it got ugly but fortunately, once I made some mass deletions on Facebook, it ended. I was simply ignored.

Still, seeing this and having gone through similar experiences before led me to look up (of all things) mean moms, mean girls becoming mean moms, etc. That's how I found The Mom Pledge. Reading it, I totally agreed with the concept and vowed too that anything I was doing that was not in keeping with this (like getting too involved in an argument that I'm not going to win) I would work on. I didn't join right away though. I wanted to take some time to get my blog up and running more but hearing that this group has gone after other members within and rather viciously too renewed my need to join. So here I am.

Moms need support. Being a mom is a hard job and a job that's not really valued in our society. It's important that we moms stick together and SUPPORT each other. We need to build each other up, not tear each other down. No, we won't always agree but we can disagree respectfully and not attack each other. We're all in this together and we're all doing the best we can with what we've got.

"Mama!"

Finally heard the one word I've been waiting to hear since Isabelle started talking. I've been worried that she hadn't said it yet. I don't remember Natalie waiting so long to say it but for some reason, she's really struggled with that M sound. I even talked to the pediatrician last week at her 18 month appointment because I was getting concerned that she hadn't said it yet. I mean, isn't that most babies' first word? Just about every talking doll you get says it. But she's always said "Dada", not "Mama". She might say it if she was distressed or angry but other than that, not once. I was getting pretty bummed about it too! But finally, while I was changing her diaper last night, she said it. She pronounces the M first but says "Mama". It's amazing how waiting so long for her to say it made it seem like a much bigger deal for her to say that word. I couldn't tell you when Natalie first said "Mama"; I'm pretty sure it was one of her first words and said it within all of her babbling but Isabelle just seemed to have more trouble with that sound for reason. She has said it several times now though she does have to kind of be coached to say, she's not yet saying it on her own. I'm sure she will soon and then she won't stop. Kind of how it goes.

Which reminds me, the girls both saw the doctor last week. Well, to be honest, most of the appointment was with a resident and while I don't have any issues with residents, the fact is is that I chose their doctor for a reason and I would rather see HIM for the girls' check-up than a resident. I have a relationship with HIM, not with someone else, especially for my older daughter who only sees a doctor now once a year for check-ups. And to be honest, I think I may even switch her to a new doctor, a female doctor since she is getting old enough now to start feeling more of a sense of privacy. I have always liked the doctor we've been seeing, first met him before Natalie was even born and I especially liked how he wasn't overly pushy about vaccinations compared to other doctors there but I don't know. It's getting to where it's a lot of work just to get to their appointment because he only works at the one clinic and the bus route for that area is not the greatest. It's something to think about before next year. For sure, I will not schedule check-ups for both of them at the same time. It's just too much of a hassle and too much chaos. I know John wants to be able to go with for the appointments but it really is just too much to have both of them there especially when one or the other is not getting attention from the doctor. This juggling two kids thing is a lot harder than I thought it would be, even with the girls being almost 5 years apart.

But anyway, Isabelle managed to increase her weight quite a bit in the last three months. She's now up to 22 lbs and 6 oz and is at the 19th percentile (quite a jump from her low of .9th percentile!!!). She's growing rather well too, up to 31 inches (actually taller than Natalie was at this age). Natalie is currently 52 lbs and 45 inches tall so growing pretty well and probably due for another growth spurt anytime now (she usually has one or two good ones a year). So they're both doing well and Isabelle is picking up on all kinds of things these days too including talking, singing, stacking blocks, walking backwards, dancing, giving kisses and hugs, and more. Natalie is reading and writing and doing her math and picking up all kinds of things on her own too. So they both at least seem healthy and right on track for their age which is good considering everything we've had to deal with this last year. *sigh*

I want to quit this SAHM gig.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of feeling like I can't get anywhere. I'm tired of the lack of appreciation, the lack of listening, the lack of help. It's a thankless job that never pays. I talk to people who have gone back to school and I miss it. I wish I could go back but stupid student loans being in default prevent that right now. I know that many feel it is important for the mom to stay at home with her young children because children need that influence. Well, if I hate being at home so much that I'm miserable and snapping and yelling at my kids, are they REALLY benefiting from my staying at home? Are they REALLY benefiting if I'm so resentful that I start to HATE my children and resent their very existence because it keeps me from personal growth that I NEED? Was this not what women in the 60's fighting against, this idea that women HAD to stay home? I'm not good at it. No matter what I do, the house looks trashed 24 hours a day. No matter what I do, I can't keep up with the laundry. And we're always broke. And I just can't do this anymore. I can't keep doing something I really do not enjoy doing. I oftentimes feel that I do this ONLY because of the pressure that's out there by other moms, by my own HUSBAND. Yeah, we agreed at one time that I would stay at home with the kids. We had agreed that that was best. But it's not just that anymore. It's that I stay home and do almost everything. I stay home with the kids; I homeschool even though I truly do not know what the hell I'm doing; I do the laundry; I do the shopping; I do the cleaning and most of the cooking and I just cannot do it anymore. It would be one thing if I got something for it but I don't even get any appreciation. I get a lot of crap and I'm fed up and tired of it. I'm so tired of it at times that I don't even want to be here anymore. I'm so tired of it I actually want to runaway sometimes and be on my own. YES, there are days I would rather live by myself than have a family because I am putting SO much work into it and getting NOTHING back. And I just can't do it anymore. I need to find a job and I need to not be here all the time anymore because I just can't do it anymore.

Today's my mom's birthday.

She just turned 66. She was 57 when she was first incarcerated for my BIL's murder. I haven't seen her since she was here for my dad's trial in August of 2004. With her and my dad's birthdays, I wonder how long they'll live. So far, no one on either side of the family has lived past 70. Granted, back when my grandparents died, that was a fairly average life span. And they lived to that having died from major diseases so I do wonder. I don't think my parents have the opportunity to have the greatest health possible. Their situation makes it so that they have to spend most of the day sedentary. But they do have health care which makes them luckier than many people in the US including my brother. It always crosses my mind though around this time, wondering how much time they have left. There is no chance of parole so that will never be an issue. Nursing homes, things like that will never be something us kids will have to deal with. We dealt with all of their things almost 9 years ago so that's not an issue anymore either. All that's left is to figure out what to do when they do die, if anything.

Is it really that much better?

Is it really that much better for me to stay at home when we're making so little money we need help from the government and even that's not enough? Is it really that much better when we live in an apartment that is getting bugs and the landlord is nothing but a slumlord and we can't move because we can't get enough money together for the first and last month rent? Is it really that much better for me to stay home when we can't afford a car and we have to take the bus everywhere and during the warmer months, my husband doesn't even do that because it's an extra $35 a month? Is it really that much better for me to stay home when I'm so angry and depressed and near suicidal because we're almost always broke and we can't get anyone to help and insane with jealousy towards those who seem to have their lives together because they can at least get their tax return and their students loans and we can't even get that and I'm angry because they're posting on Facebook about how they're getting all of this stuff with their money and they can't even pay me back the $300 they owe me from the time I bailed THEM out when THEY didn't have money and needed help?

I'm so tired. I'm so tired of making decisions that aren't the right ones. I'm tired of helping people who then put me into a situation I can't get out of. I never wanted to live in this apartment. I hated it the moment I saw it but I got it because this person needed my help, she was getting kicked out and she and her kids needed a place to live but when my husband came home a month later, she didn't want to be here anymore and moved right back to the place she got kicked out of, never even paying all of the rent she was supposed to. We're paying almost half what my husband makes a month on this place and it's a dump. And I'm just so tired of feeling like the biggest loser in the world. I'm so tired of not being able to provide for my children. I'm so tired of making enough to just make ends meet and no more. I haven't worked in almost seven years. I haven't been to school in that long. I feel useless and worse, sometimes I feel stupid. I feel completely and totally inept as a mother and a housewife. And days like today sometimes makes me wish I had died on that day in June of 2003. Days like today makes me wish I had not lived to experience all of the pain I experience. I have no village. I have no means of support outside the tiny little family I have and I hate it. I honestly feel that if I died, no one would even care. No one would even miss me. I just feel so lost and so helpless and hopeless. Being a parent is supposed to be the best thing. Being married is supposed to be so wonderful. I keep thinking sometimes that I wish I had done neither. At least alone I would have more options. At least alone I wouldn't feel so damn helpless.

I don't always feel this way. For some reason, today I feel like this. Today I feel such a sense of despair and hopelessness and loneliness I wish I could just die and get it over with because it hurts so much. I know there are people out there who would say I should appreciate what I have, appreciate my family, blah blah blah. Hell, my husband tells me this. Please, don't. If you haven't been there, you don't know what it's like. If you haven't been there, you haven't experienced the honest to goodness physical pain this brings, the chest crushing pain that is so bad, you can't even breathe. If you haven't felt this, please please please do not tell me I need to be more positive and appreciate what I have. It won't help. It will just make me feel more lost and alone.