2012 In Review

What better time to look back over the past year than New Year’s Eve?

Tim and I rang in 2012 by getting bundled up (after he woke me up 10 minutes before midnight) and we ran down to the end of the neighborhood and watched fireworks from Seattle and Bellevue.

Between January and May there were snow storms, power outages, we found out the sex of our baby and learned I had placenta previa, I had a few baby showers, some fun celebrations we participated in, we transitioned Kaydriana to her big girl room and bed, had a lot of colds, ate a lot of chocolate, and focused on the upcoming birth of our son. Also, after a few years of seasonal jobs, Tim was hired on as a permanent employee for the Washington State Department of Transportation.

May 24^th, we welcome our precious Lake. His arrival was unexpected, scary, and amazing. One of the best days of my life was waking up, finally home from the hospital, and laying in bed with my son, daughter, and husband eating breakfast from Dennys.

Summer of 2012 will always be known as the BEST SUMMER EVER! In June my sister and her family came to Seattle for a temporary gig, which has now resulted in a permanent arrangement. Unlike my maternity leave with Kaydriana, I was out and about on a daily basis. I chose to keep Kaydriana home with us to save on daycare costs. She loved playing with her cousin and I enjoyed my time bonding with my sister and having her assistance with the kids. We did fun summer things like going to parks, playing in water (the Seattle Center fountain, lakes, splash parks, etc.) and did touristy things.

As the summer winded down and my return to work was approaching, Tim and I took two mini trips to the ocean with the kids. Seaside, OR and Ocean Shores will always hold special memories for our family. One thing Tim and I have never shied away from was getting out and having adventures with our kid(s).

My return to work in October has made me realize how much of a change I want in my life. Although I felt this way a bit with Kaydriana, it wasn’t until having 2 children that I realized how much more time I want to spend being a mommy. Spending all the time I did with them during my maternity leave made me feel fulfilled. Leaving them to go to work everyday makes me feel like there is a void; my passion is my children, not being a big wig at work.

The holidays were a blur, but thankfully they were captured on camera. And as the last weeks of 2012 came upon us, our whole family has experienced illnesses. Three weeks ago it was the stomach flu and currently the kids and I have nasty colds. Poor Lakey got the worst of it and was put on an inhaler, steroids for his lungs, and both kids are on amoxicillin for their double ear infections.

So, due to our sickies, we’ll be bringing in the New Year at home, with just us. I plan on going to bed, having Tim wake me up 10 minutes before midnight and we’ll run over to the edge of the neighborhood to watch the fire works. This time, with a glass of wine J

My hopes for 2013 are that we remain healthy, we get to sell our house and move closer to family and friends and that I get to step down and work part time. I also hope 2013 is the return to sleep year. All of 2012 I have not slept. I want to have energy again! I want to return to the gym. My vow to myself is that when Lake starts sleeping through the night, I will go to the gym at least one day a week before work!

We have one trip planned in March where we plan on visiting Tim’s parents in AZ, attend Mariners Spring Training, and take the kids to Disneyland. I asked for a week off in June in hopes we’ll somehow get to spend our 5 year wedding anniversary in Maui, but that’s probably unrealistic, but a girl can dream!

Many blessings to you and Happy New Year!! 

Our 1st Christmas as a Family of Four

After getting home from Christmas Eve dinner at my Grandma’s, Tim insisted on taking us through Candy Cane Lane in Seattle. We fed Kaydriana candy to keep her awake, but 40+ minutes into our crawl, we decided to abandon that idea.

We got home a bit later than I would have liked since we still had stockings to do and to set out cookies for Santa. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as getting the kids out of the car and into bed. Kaydriana had this nasty chesty cough and when I got her out of the truck and woke her up, she started choking/coughing. So I did what my mom used to do and brought her into the bathroom with me and turned on the hot water. She kept crying, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to”. She thought I was going to give her a bath. Poor thing!

After we get her to bed and Lake to bed, Tim and I did the last minute Santa things and got into bed ourselves.

Both kids ended up waking up in the middle of the night, but I was able to get them both settled down quickly. At about 6 AM, both Tim and I woke up… no kid alarms. We laid in bed thinking we should go back to sleep… but we just waited until one of the kids woke up. First was Lake. I brought him into bed and fed him and then we waited for Kaydriana. When we got tired of waiting, we decided to go downstairs and wake her up. I video taped her, hoping to capture her excitement, but you could tell she just wasn’t herself. It took her a while to get downstairs as she was pretty groggy. She was happy to open gifts and has become very proficient in it! Lakey didn’t know what to do. He enjoyed the wrapping paper and kept trying to get over to his sister’s gifts.

Lakes favorite gifts were his giggle pet thing and his loud, sing song, bright thing daddy got him. Kaydriana’s favorites were Lake’s loud, sing song, bright thing and her camera. She was taking pictures of everything! She even copied me when I set the timer on my camera to take a family picture. So we had to pretend she was taking a family picture with her camera J

We then spent the rest of the day at Tim’s parent’s house. Lake was not his usual self either. Typically, he is very content and can play and entertain himself. He needed to be held and played with and had the hardest time going down for a nap. It certainly was not a relaxing day.

I guess I expected this magical day with a lot of joy and merriment. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a bad day by any means and I loved that between Christmas Eve and Christmas day we had a lot of family time. But, I went to bed feeling like something was missing. I guess my expectations were too high?

The only other idea I had was that to me, Christmas is more than just a day. It’s a season.

And being over worked and under slept (that’s an acceptable term, right? :) ) I just couldn’t get into the spirit of the season. My goal for next year is to not be in the same department/position I am in now. I want the time and the energy to enjoy the holidays. I deserve that and so does my family.

Tim sent me this very sweet email last night while he was at work:

I want to say how great it was to be as a family with our 2 kids and you on Christmas it feels good to be with our family in the morning, the wife I love and the kids, we may not think the same way but my love will never fail. Love you more today then I have ever. Your husband for life, love you

So I guess I’ll end my blog entry with this: I know I have much to feel blessed about. We’re healthy (present colds excluded), we’ve got jobs, a roof over our head, food in the fridge and lots of family and friends. God is good.

12/28 Update- I wrote my entry yesterday (the 27^th), but wasn’t able to post it until today. During my one on one with my GM, she said she will be putting in a request for me to have time off leading up to Christmas. She said I deserve to enjoy the holidays while I have a young family. Then, my director came up and my GM mentioned it to her and she said it sounded like a reasonable request. Ummm… THANK YOU GOD!! :)

Getting So Big!

In the past two weeks, some major growing up has been happening in our household! Two weeks ago, Kaydriana went potty in her potty chair. The next weekend, she went poo in her potty chair! We don’t do too much, “training” during the week since our weekdays are chaotic and daycare is aiding in those efforts. But come the weekend, she is in her big girl panties!

Lake has been getting up on all fours and rocks back and forth. Usually he only accomplishes launching himself forward on his face or pushing himself backwards.

He has also been sitting by himself. On Tuesday, Tim texted me to say that Lake had been sitting up for 15 minutes! He’s now practicing moving from a sitting position back to his tummy, but mostly he falls on his face. He started to army crawl last weekend.

It appears that Lake has developed eczema. It looked pretty inflamed and dry. I’ve been putting anti-itch cream and lotion on his arm and there is a little patch on his face.

So between his teething and I’m assuming, itching, he’s been a bit difficult in the middle of the night the past week or so. He finally did better last night. He woke up a few times, but only twice did I go in to check on him and he went back to sleep. The other time he cried for a few moments and then fell back asleep.

This Sunday, Kaydriana will have her first “performance”. She is singing, “Joy to the World”, and “Away in the Manger” with her other little toddler buddies with the church nursery. We’ve been practicing a lot. I can’t wait to see if she will sing loud, (like we’ve practiced) if she’ll just stand there like a deer in headlights, or if she’ll cry and run off stage. Either way, she should look stinkin’ cute!!

I’m still working 11-12 hour days. Our sales and orders were up 156% compared to last year and we had no way of knowing that was going to happen. We hired 80 seasonal employees and we should have hired closer to 140! Our phone on hold goal is 1 minute, and we were experiencing over an hour long hold times. So while I understand that the management staff needs to work 60 hour weeks, it’s almost killing me.

I know that I don’t deserve any special treatment, but I am the only person in management (including supervisors) who has a little baby and a toddler, and to add to my sob story, a husband that works nights! So my 60 hours is probably a bit tougher than everyone else’s 60 hours. Yup, I’m pretty much, “whoa is me.” At least I own it ;)

But, there are a few things that I’m trying to remind myself: this is just going to last a few more weeks, (even though my holiday season is already ruined)  I have a LOT to be grateful for, and that my joy will be full as I live in His presence. The theme for these past two holiday seasons has been JOY so I was delighted to run into this verse last night:

"You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand" (Psalm 16:11).

So while I have emotional break downs about twice a week where I’m overwhelmed with life (work, household stuff, lack of sleep and time, my relationships), the fog usually lifts and I can refocus and survive another day, another week, another month, in our current situation. 

A year ago…

I originally created this blog to share my experiences with pregnancy, trying to get pregnant, talking about my kids, etc. Since I don’t foresee another child in our near future, I see my blog evolving a bit to reflect a more broad insight into my life. So, I hope you don’t mind that I’ll be sharing more than just my kids, and complaining about work ;)

I purposefully didn’t share on here much about what was happening to my family this time last year as my dad’s final days approached. It was a year ago yesterday that we got the call from hospice that my dad’s health had changed and that if we wanted to be with him to come now. I knew when I visited him the month before, that it was going to be our last time seeing each other here on this earth. However, my step mother, Rene was there and my sister, who had just landed home in Southern California, promptly got in her car and sped (got a speeding ticket!) to be by our dad’s side.

I’ve always been the kind of person who puts meaning in a lot things, and one of those things is time passing. Like, I feel it’s significant that a year ago today, my dad was still alive. This Saturday, the 8^th will be one year since his passing. We’ve gone through the “firsts” without him. The first birthday that I don’t hear, “Happy Birthday Sweetheart” or read on the check he always sent that says that in the notes section. And there was the first Easter and Thanksgiving where I usually talk to dad on my way to Tim’s family’s house.

I’m so glad that I’ve kept voice mails from my dad so I can hear his voice. When somebody is smoking a stinky cigar, I immediately think of him. I know there will be the opportunity that some guy will be wearing the cologne that my dad used to wear and I will be grateful and sad.

We buried my dad on my 31^st birthday. It was an interesting day full of emotion. Growing up, my mom did an awesome job of making our birthdays special. We didn’t have to do chores that day, we woke up to a present on the end of the bed, and just the whole day was amazing. We grew up pretty poor, but my mom always made us feel special. Some say it might be immature that I want to feel like I am special on my birthday, but that’s just the way it is. I’ve done the same thing for my daughter’s first 2 birthdays and I’ll do it for both of the kids’ birthdays for as long as I’m alive (or they’ll let me).

Going back to my dad’s funeral, I wanted to feel special, but at the same time I didn’t. I just wanted to focus on my dad and forget about my 31^st birthday. My family did do dinner and cake for me and my step sister got us party hats. I loved that they cared enough to do that for me.

So… this year, my 32^nd birthday we are wine tasting on the 8^th. I’m glad that my sister will be here. It will be a celebration for another year, but we both will be thinking of my dad. And then on my actual birthday, 12/12/12, I’m going to be getting my brows done, lunching with my cousin and sister, and then getting a massage. Afterwards, Tim took the night off so that we can take the kids to see the lights at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens.

I know that I will never forget the day my dad died or the special day we buried his ashes in his beautiful garden, but life does go on and I’m happy to be celebrating my upcoming birthday with some of my favorite people.