Two months today

Dear Kaylee,

Today you are officially two months old. You are so big! In these two months you have put several pounds on. You have grown more than is fair. I told you to stay little sweet girl. I am sure this isn't the only thing you will defy me on.
You have developed quite the personality. There are times when you are vocalizing, and I swear you have turned yourself inside out attempting to talk to us. You pull the cutest faces and you have absolutely no problem letting us know when you are displeased with something we have done. I watch you watching me talk and I can literally see the wheels in your head turning. You can see that my mouth moves and you mimic me trying to make the same sounds come out. It is all very exciting to you.

As amazing as it is to watch you, it is more amazing to watch your Daddy with you. This is a man who regularly rants about how people irritate him. He can be very dark and broody when he feels like it. When he is with you, it is like a light ignites in him. He giggles and goos. You can reduce this imposing man to a baby talking fool! He would stand on his head if it would get you to smile! Your baby squeals and jabbers make him laugh from his soul...and that sound is magical! It is healing and wonderful. I love to hear him laugh. I love to hear you laugh with him.
We went to have family pictures taken today. I had pictures taken of you when you were 2 weeks old. You really didn't like having those done, but I thought that it might have been that you were so young. Well...after today I think it is just that you hate to have your picture taken. You were happy before the pictures and happy after the pictures, but cried in almost all of them. So later in life, when you look at these pictures and in every one you are pulling a funny face, just know that we tried. You are such a beautiful little girl. You are going to have to get over this, because we are going to take LOTS of pictures.
Well baby girl, it is time to go. You are hungry and we are tired. You still haven't figured out how to sleep through the night. We would be eternally grateful if you would please get this figured out soon. Mom and Dad are too old to be this sleep deprived.
I love you with all my heart sweet bug!
Love, Mommy

My last day

Today is the last day of my maternity leave. I go back to work on Monday. It is so hard to face that reality. I don't want to go back. I have always worked. With my other children I worked because I had no choice. If Brent had to work, so did I...period. We were trying to buy a house and frankly I made more money than him. Now with John, although we have a house and all, I still have to work because one income doesn't cover the bills. I hate feminism.

I know that women fought hard for equality and for the right to vote...and I am grateful for their efforts. But seriously, what was so bad about staying home and being a good wife, homemaker, and mother. I guess I am just old fashioned, and seriously, I would have to have something else to do besides cleaning the house. Otherwise, I would get very depressed. But, I don't want to be a bread winner. I don't want to have someone else see my babies first. I missed everyone of my kids firsts. You know, like the first time they sat up, the first time they walked, the first time they spoke. Hell, I didn't even potty train my kids. My babysitter did. She got to see all of those things, not me. She was great and pretended that they hadn't happened, but I always knew when she had seen something before I did. I hate that I missed that and I really don't want to miss it again.

On top of that I hate that I have to miss things my older children do. I don't get to go on field trips and help in their classrooms. I have enjoyed the last seven weeks just being a mom. I haven't had to choose between my children and my job and it has been awesome. I don't want it to end.

Ideally I would love to work from home. There is just nothing that I can do from here that would give me as much money as I am making now. Being successful in my job has become a very double edged sword. I should have stuck to working at fast food restaurants and the candy store. Those places don't pay very well. It would have been much easier to quit these kinds of jobs to stay home. I had to be ambitious and go get a real job, with real benefits and a real retirement. What was I thinking??? And you know what, I love my job. I like the people I work with and the company I work for. It makes it a little easier to go back. But I look around my house and at my kids and wish it were different. I envy my sisters who don't have to work. I know that in some ways they wish they could work and look forward to the time when they can again. It is so funny...we always wish for the other don't we?

I will take a deep breath and head back to work. I know my sister will pretend for me and not tell me all the things she sees my baby do before I do. She will be the one to see my kids when they get home from school and hear all the exciting things they did that day. She will, in many ways, be their mom as she always has been.

Today she is 9.

Today my little girl turns 9. I cannot believe it has been 9 years since she entered my life. I always rolled my eyes when parents would tell me how fast I was growing. To me, I was growing very slowly and I couldn't wait to be big. I watch my kids grow now and I want to make time stop. I blink and another year goes by.

I am going to start something new. Since I was not with it enough when my older four were babies to journal, I am going to start now. My kids always ask me to tell them about when they were babies and what they were like when they were little. They have asked more often since Kaylee was born, so I am going to start writing to them. Today is Dana's birthday so I will start with her.

Dear Dana,

You are nine years old today!!! That is 108 months old! I remember the day that you were born. Mercifully you chose to come two weeks early! You were already a very cooperative child and I thank you. You were a surprise to us. I hadn't planned on having another child until Breena was 3 or so. She was 15 months old when you were born. You were so pretty. I remember thinking that when they placed you in my arms the first time. You had this tiny little nose and very petite features. It was obvious that you were a little girl. No one mistook you for a boy. You were so sweet and good natured. You even slept through the night the first night you were home with me!
We had two names picked out for you. Dana Whitney and Gillian Lhotze. Your Dad had a thing for wanting to name each of you after mountains. When I held you, you were so little, the name Gillian was just way too big for you. Dana fit better. Uncle Jared had climbed Mt Whitney with Brent just a few months before you were born. He left for Nicaragua on a mission just 5 days before you came. It was fitting that you be named after that mountain.
You were always so smiley! I loved to snuggle with you and listen to you tell me "stories". You would coo and gurgle and giggle. You learned to walk when you were about 10 months old. Which was very helpful because by that time I was pregnant with your little brother Drake. You all were in such a hurry to get here!
You were and are so different from Breena. When she wanted to climb and be overly active, you preferred to be calm and quiet. I could sit you down with a Oriental trading company magazine and you would look through it for hours. It was sometime easy to over look you because you were so calm and undemanding. I hope you never felt unimportant. You are and always have been so important to me. I worry sometimes that you get lost in the shuffle.
You are me in so many ways. I see a lot of my characteristics in you. We tease you sometimes about your sense of humor, or lack there of. I know what it is like to always look at things from a literal perspective and miss the joke entirely. You are so much like me. You think on a deep level and you are able to apply actual life experiences. You learn from life around you and you worry about people. I hope you never loose that ability. It is so important and you have learned it at such a young age.
I know that the divorce hurt you and I know that you still don't entirely understand why it happened. I hope someday you will be able to understand, but I think you will need to live a little longer before you can really understand why Brent and I couldn't stay together. You were always in tune to what was happening in our home. You asked me several times, months before we split, if we were going to get divorced. I wish I could go back and prepare you a little better for what was to come, but I didn't even know at that time where things were headed.
You are a joy to me Dana! You are one of the best things to have ever happened to me. Thank you for letting me be your Mother. I am sorry that I fall short sometimes, but I try so hard to be the kind of Mother you need. You make me a better person.




I love you my sweet Dewey!
Happy Birthday!

Love, Mom

He wins!

I am going to write today a blog that has been a long time coming. This is likely going to make you, my genteel reader, a little sick with the sappiness of it; and John, my husband and the focus of the blog, a little red behind the ears...he is so cute when he does that. I am sorry John, but this must be written. So here is your warning...

IF YOU ARE EASILY MADE SICK BY UNRESTRAINED SAPPINESS, YOU WILL WANT TO SKIP THIS POST!!!


There...you have been warned.

John and I have been married now for a little over 19 months. When I first started dating him, I really liked him, but I was just barely divorced and I worried that he might be just a rebound guy. I SO did not want him to be a rebound guy. But he was a single unburdened guy and I was a very recently divorced single mother of four. What could he possibly want with that messy situation? Luckily for me he was...

1 serious about dating me
2 very aware of the crap that goes through a persons head after a divorce
3 extremely patient
4 unwaveringly brave

I have spent a lot of time over the last year and a half or so comparing my life now to what it was before. I have come to learn that this is something that happens whether you want it to or not. John and I talk about everything and for a while, in the beginning, we even sort of made the comparison a game. We would start talking about various aspects of personalities, habits, emotions, etc. and decided who won in the various categories, the hat or John.

While I am not going to go into any serious details, I can honestly say that John wins. In every category. No matter how you break it down, no matter what angle you look at it, he wins. For me, he is perfect.

But you see it goes so much deeper than just simply "he is better than the last one". John is my perfect match. How's that for a rebound relationship huh! He is my heart and soul. Strange, how that happened, I never believed in that kind of sentiment before. I wanted to. I tried to pretend that Brent was everything I ever needed or wanted. It wasn't until I found John that I learned what that all was. In fact, I didn't even completely understand how screwed up my first marriage was until I was married to John. Don't get me wrong, I knew it was screwed up and that I was really unhappy. I wouldn't have divorced him if I wasn't feeling those things. But...it wasn't until I lived in this relationship that I have come to understand exactly how bad it was. I am still discovering things that were missing or completely wrong now, a year and a half later. And it makes me angry. I didn't hate him when I asked for the divorce. I was sad and overwhelmed by guilt, but I didn't hate him. I have come to hate him a lot over the last 19 months.

I said earlier that John was brave. Oh, this is not an overstatement. This amazing man took on a broken woman. I was seriously broken when we started dating and even the first several months of our marriage were an emotional roller coaster for him. I think in some ways I am still a little broken. I am trying to mend those parts of me, but it will take time and patients. Thankfully he has that as well. In addition to dealing with broken me, he took on 4 kids. My kids are great. But they are difficult for him in many ways. He didn't have kids before, though you could never tell. He is such a natural parent. He is a better parent than I am by a long shot. I am too bendable. I have terrible follow through and I forget that a parents job is to teach not just love. I loved my kids, but I taught them very little. They lacked some very fundamental skills that they would need later in life. He also understands that sometimes to teach, you have to let the hard lesson be learned. I have never been good at that. All my kids had to do was cry a little or look upset and I would back completely off a punishment. Like I said...I lack follow through. He isn't mean, though sometimes the kids think so. He is consistent. He tries so hard to make them understand that doing the right things the right way gets you nothing but good, and doing the wrong things is really really un-fun. He is brave, because he takes this on. He faces them unwaveringly. He listens to them rave about how great their Dad is, all the while it is John who helps them brush their teeth. It is John who gets up at the crack of dawn to get them to school. It is John who pays for dental work when Brent wouldn't. It is John who gets up with them in the middle of the night when they are sick or scared. It is John who will sit for hours and plays games with them. It is John who takes time off work to go to an important event at school. It is John who goes to every single parent teacher conference. It is John who loves them like a father should. I only hope that one day they will see and understand the difference between the man that they call Dad, and the one who really is a Dad to them. John is the bravest man I know.

I spent a great deal of my former life trying to find ways to be away from Brent. I went out with friends, to church functions, I worked late, I hung out at my parents or my sisters house. I found any excuse possible to not go home to him. Now all I want to do is be home. I have the best time with John. It doesn't matter what we do or where we go. As long as I am with him I am good. He is my best friend and really the only person I want to hang with.

I am so lucky! It is hard to accept sometimes that my life is this good. I get a little neurotic about it some days, like I am going to wake up and it will all have been in my head and I am back in my old life. Not that everything is perfect, we have our problems like everyone else. But I think it is as close to perfect as we can get. I adore this man. I adore everything about him. I love him exactly as he is and I hope to heaven that he never changes.