The end.

Not even a little biased when I say LOOK AT HIM! He is freaking adorable! Holy crap I made a cute boy.

*This is not to say I am now dishonest.  I just mean I wasn’t afraid to voice my opinion while now I avoid conflict because I’m always too worried about offending someone.  Pathetic.

So I decided to go back to the way it was.  Turn this into a journal for my kids and for myself.  Let’s be honest, it’s not like I’m doing anything else with it.  I’m excited about this.  And I know most people will think it’s stupid.  But this is for me.

I like three.

One year ago on July 14th I saw this

and knew my life was about the change all over again.

Today is my best friend’s due date. Her daughter will be 4 months younger than Doodle. Smushy is 3 weeks younger than her son.

July 14th is a good day.

Let’s see, where to start?

We’re doing ok.  Better than I expected, really.  Smushy loves school.  She doesn’t cry when I drop her off.  She naps (sometimes).  She eats lunch (Ok, once.)  She asks to go to school on non-school days.  She’s excited when I pick her up and tells me about her day.  I am thrilled.  I enrolled Doodle for drop-in care and he goes for a few hours once a week.  It’s my only break, so I treasure it.  I like having the time to get shopping done or clean the house or watch a movie without kids.  It’s nice.  I don’t know that he’ll keep going once Mr. Silly gets home, but for now it’s good.

Mr Silly is busy.  Working a lot and not much free time.  He’s called a few times.  To be honest, we’re both pretty distant right now.  I update about the kids and send the occasional picture.  He talks about work as much as he’s able to say.  But for the most part, we’ve been disconnected.  I think it’s normal.  We’re both busy and aren’t able to share the day to day.  I miss him like crazy, of course.  It will be better once he’s home.

Smushy’s 3rd birthday is right around the corner.  My family is driving up to celebrate, so I’ve been trying to clean the house.  Technically, I’m still working on unpacking the upstairs.  The problem is that I’m only up there to sleep.  Out of sight, out of mind and all that.  Unfortunately, everyone is staying with us, so I absolutely have to have everything done.  Su-uck.  Slow and steady.

Doodle is amazing.  He is the happiest baby.  So smiley and giggly and I totally dig him.  He is so sweet and fun.  I had a really hard time in the beginning.  I never really went into it on here, but it was Bad.  Very bad.  I’m too ashamed to go into it now.  But now?  Things are so good.  I’m more patient.  I’m calmer.  He’s easier in general.  I think he was sensitive to something in my breastmilk and showed that sensitivity by freaking the hell out constantly.  So I stopped.  Months ago, in fact.  I still don’t know how I feel about it.  On one hand, it so isn’t how I wanted it to be.  I wanted to do it for as long as possible.  On the other hand, as soon as I stopped, we were so much happier.  All of us.  The difference was amazing.  And with Mr. Silly leaving and the PPD, I just know it was the right decision for us.  But I’m sad.  And I feel guilty sometimes.  But it’s ok.  We’re ok.

Pictures!

Look at that little grin

My girl. Cost of one ponytail? One bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Mr. Silly deployed.

Well of course there is so much more to it than that.  Traveling with a newborn and a toddler is pretty much what you’d expect, but we survived.  Found a place to live and unpacked as much as we could before Mr. Silly had to leave.  Today is Day 4 of missing him.  Just me and the kids for the next 6 months.  The first day was really hard.  It always is for me, even without two little ones to look after.  It’s been better since then though.

I feel like I have a lot to say, but it’s like trying to clean a messy house.  I don’t know where to start and I feel like I’m never going to catch up.  So I guess we’ll just go from here.

Tomorrow I try to find Smushy a school.  If I can get a few hours to myself a few days a week, I think I might actually be able to accomplish something around here.  I’ve also started working on getting us some sort of schedule and structure to our day.  So far so good.

I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be doing while Mr. Silly is away.  I tend to withdraw when I’m sad and I’m always sad when he’s gone.  Maybe once I get caught up around here (whenever that is) and have things going on, I’ll blog more.

And for an extra entry, a quick peek into my diaper bag:

Extra clothes for the kids, crayons, trash, gripe water, wallet, sunglasses, pens, keys, ikea map thingy, camera, etc, etc. All very messy because we’re traveling and boring because it is.

Bunny central over here.