I just don't get it...

I can't for the life of me figure people out. I just don't understand how you can be friends with a person for over 20 years and then just throw the friendship in the toilet for no other reason than you don't agree with some of his opinions. Without so much as a conversation to say "hey, it really bothers me when you..." before you decide to just chuck it. No "I think we should just go our separate ways because this friendship hasn't been working for me for awhile" or anything. Friends who were each other's best man at their weddings. Friends who had kids two weeks apart. Friends who have been more like brothers since they were in kindergarten.

I guess as a person who is loyal almost to a fault and who values her friendships as precious commodities, I do not understand how a person can do this. I have problems letting go of people in my life even when it would be much better for me to do just that. It just makes me sad. In a way I wish things could go back to the way they used to be, but another part of me realizes that that probably will never happen because things have changed. People have changed. I don't think there's any going back now. I guess I'm just in a mourning period for a friendship that is now dead. And it wasn't even my friendship (except through marriage). Hopefully soon I can move on and feel that our life together is more cleansed of drama and irritation than lacking something. I really don't know why I seem to be taking this harder than my husband, but I just feel betrayed and disappointed. People suck. If you can't count on your best friend of 20+ years to stick by you, who can you count on? :-(

Expanding the family?

Well, we finally got health insurance! Yay! We've been waiting for months to be able to get insurance so we can work on having another (final) baby. The only problem is that now that I can actually go ahead and get pregnant, I'm finding myself scared to death. I really want my daughter to have a sibling and I want to have them pretty close in age. I just can't help thinking about how much harder my life is likely going to become. I think about the nap situation a lot. My daughter used to nap on top of me for the first 6 months of her life and I was strapped to the couch for two hours or more a day while she did this. There is no way that is going to happen with a second child as I will have to be running around after the first. Also, my daughter is down to one nap now and the new baby will be napping a lot and then will go to two naps so how do I ever leave the house? How do I coordinate naptimes between the two of them? I don't know how I will be able to function without my two hour break in the middle of the day.

Leaving the house is another pain in the butt prospect. Trying to lug the baby around while chasing after the toddler does not sound like fun to me. Throw in there a purse and diaper bag and it sounds like pure hell. My daughter has been sleeping through the night for months and months now and I don't know how I will go with the lack of sleep again. It was ok before because when my daughter kept me up at night, she would sleep most of the day and I could nap with her. I won't be able to do that this time around because I have to take care of my older child. I don't function too well on very little sleep and I feel that I am nowhere near the best mother I can be when I have not slept well. I also worry about the fact that we only have two bedrooms so the kids will have to share a room. I remember the first week that we had the baby sleeping in her room she cried and cried and I don't want to have her waking up all the time when the new baby is crying. It is just such a logistical nightmare!

I feel like I have finally regained some semblance of my own life and it will be kind of hard to give that up. I'm also selfishly afraid what a second pregnancy will do to my body. It was very kind to me the first time around, but I'm not so sure about a second time.

All in all, now is the best time to do it since I still have a couple more years in school (which is online) so I can stay home with the baby before I have to worry about getting a job. I also know that even though it will probably be very difficult for the first 6 months or maybe a little longer, it will ultimately be wonderful and it will add such happiness to our family and give my daughter a playmate and friend.

I have always taken the easier path in my life and I know that the easier path in this case would be to stick with just one child and pour all my love and attention onto her and just enjoy the blessing that I have now. Having a second child will be more chaotic, stressful and tiring, but it will be worth the extra work. Nothing in life worth having ever comes easy and I think that applies to this situation as well. I'm just going to have to take up drinking coffee or something! I hope that if it ever comes to be that both the kids are sleeping at the same time, I can magically learn to fall asleep very quickly and get a little refreshed.

Even as I write this I don't know why because worrying about all this stuff is not going to make me not have another child and it is not going to do any good because I can't really figure out any of the particulars until after I have the baby and see how he or she deals with sleeping and all that other stuff. I guess I'll just take a deep breath, stop worrying, and start trying! Wish me luck! :-)

New Possibilities

After more than a month of dealing with the school that I was going to re-attend and not getting anywhere, I decided to stay at the school I am currently attending. Yes, I already paid a $100 deposit to be readmitted but they were driving me nuts telling me I needed all these forms and to talk to all these different people to get my transfer credits applied correctly. Last night I decided to look at my file to see if they ever changed anything on my degree because they said that once the readmission process went through my report might change. Well, it turns out that they did finally change it without all the crap that they said they needed from me. So now, after I changed my mind about going there, they have everything all updated showing I just need ten more classes to graduate and that would only be like 6 or 7 classes between the fall and spring because three of them could be done during the summer and one or two might even be able to be done online.

However, I refuse to change my mind again and go back there. All the classes will probably be full by now anyway because they made me wait so long for them to get their act together. I also determined that I really didn't want to have to go to school during cold and flu season and have my daughter in daycare probably getting sick left and right. I would have to be taking days off from school to take care of her and then I would get behind. It is so much less stressful and more comfortable for me to stay where I am. I am just annoyed because once they fixed the information it made the decision a little less clear than it had been. I still think career wise though, I am making the right decision continuing with early childhood education instead of French. What am I going to do with a French degree anyway?

It is finally working out for us that we will be able to qualify for and afford state insurance so sooner rather than later we can have another baby. I really wanted to do it before I finished school so that I could just get a job and not have to worry about going on maternity leave shortly after. I also wanted to do it before I am 30 which is quickly approaching. I want to keep my kids kind of close in age so they can be playmates and share a room without too much hassle. Also, I want to do it before I am completely used to having a more independent kid and I have to go back to babyland. Also I am only planning on having one more so once the new kid is older I can get rid of all the baby crap that is taking up room in the house.

I am very excited. I am thinking that I will start trying in June or July so I won't be having a baby in the middle of winter. I can just imagine trying to get out of the house to the hospital when there is a snowstorm or ice or something. That'll be fun trying to skate my pregnant self to the car! Even though my husband and I change our minds about everything all the time, I am hoping that these few decisions I've made recently will work out for the best and we can expand our family soon!

A Whole New Dilemma...

Why do I keep torturing myself with the whole college thing? I was so excited to just finish my bachelor's degree and be done with it. I've been in school for 23 years straight now. I'm tired. I'm done. Or am I? Yesterday I just had the thought that since grad school is pretty much like a brand new slate, if I was to go, I would like to go to be a nutritionist. I am really interested in keeping my family and myself healthy and I could definitely see myself really enjoying classes that relate to nutrition as well as a profession in that field.

The problems are these: I have no background in science because I have always been on a language track in both high school and college so there are a bunch of science pre-requisites that I would need in order to even start one of these programs. Some schools will let you in without these classes having already been taken and you just take them there before you start the actual program, but some schools won't even let you in without that background.

I have no background in the sciences because I am awful at science! It is not my strong suit at all. I know that being a nutritionist will have a lot to do with biology and anatomy and biochemistry but my thought is that if I really want to do this as a career then I can and will get through the courses and do my best to completely understand the material. My husband has absolute faith that I can handle these classes, but I am not so sure.

The closest school that offers this program is 45 minutes away from me in a city that I prefer not to drive alone in. It is also about 37k a year and I already have thousands upon thousands of dollars of student loan debt. So, if I go through with this program, my whole paycheck once I am done with it will probably be going towards my loans for a very long time.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I want to have another baby. I already have to put that off longer than I would like because I'm finishing my bachelor's this year. I would only have 6 months after graduation of deferment on my loans so I would have to get a job in order to help pay those off, so I wouldn't be able to stay home with my daughter. If I went to grad school right away, my loans would remain in deferment, but I would still not be able to have another baby for another 2-3 years. So it would be 3-4 more years before I could have another baby and my daughter is already 18 months old. I want them to be pretty close in age. I also want the next baby to have the same advantages as my first as far as being breast fed for a year, being able to stay home with him or her and give her as much love and attention as I did with my first. I don't want to create a life long resentment of both me and my older child because the younger one had to go to daycare and I was never around.

Ah, what to do, what to do? It seems like planning when to have a second child is harder than planning the first. Even though she is the joy of my life and the best child I could ask for, I don't want her to be an only child. She needs someone to play with, to commiserate with, to laugh with, keep secrets with and to love. She is so loving and she would make such a great big sister. Plus, I loved being pregnant so much the first time and having a baby to cuddle, I really want to do it just once more before I'm done.

I wish everything in my life wasn't always so up in the air. I guess it's kind of exciting because I never know where I'll end up, but it is also very frustrating because it's very hard to make a life and a home when I don't know where I'll be living or doing in the next few years. UGH. Someone help!

School...ARRRGH!

I am getting more and more stressed about school all the time. Every day it seems there is another thing that I have to do to satisfy them. All I want to do is register for my freaking classes and finish my degree within a year. It shouldn't be that difficult. But no, they want a financial aid verification worksheet, they want an "off campus study approval" form, they want to try to tell me that half the general education classes that I took won't count for squat. They want me to wait almost a month after regular registration to be able to register my classes which will probably mean that there won't be any seats left for me. It's really annoying!

I should only have to take like 8 more classes to get my degree but I don't know with the way it's going. I would also love to know if my daughter is going to be accepted into the campus daycare sometime before the day before classes start so I can figure out an alternative situation if need be. Why do colleges have to have their heads so far up their asses? It takes so much leg work and busy work in my opinion to ever get to the education part of college. And when you're like me and you end up switching colleges all the time it's like a constant state of annoyance.

I cannot wait until this is over with and I have my degree. I don't think I will ever have the urge to go back again. It would be nice to be able to get a master's degree but I don't think it's happening. It has taken me ten years past high school and I still have a year left to go for a bachelor's degree. I don't think I can take any more schooling once I am done. I just can't wait to get all this wrapped up in a neat little bow, schedule my classes, finish my classes and graduate already. I've come this far for a bachelor's degree, I don't want to leave it unfinished with so few classes left to take. I am just really hoping they don't screw me over with the general education crap. Trust me, in ten years I have taken enough general education classes! Just let me graduate already! Ahhh, it feels much better to get that out.

There's nothing better...

I can't think of anything better in life than watching your kids being silly and laughing hysterically with them. There is no sweeter sound than baby laughter. There is nothing my eyes would rather see than my little girl playing and laughing. I can't tell you the joy and satisfaction I get from soaking in her innocence and unbridled enthusiasm for everything in life. She is such a dream come true. Every day I marvel at how smart she is becoming and the new things she can accomplish on her own.

I can't imagine my life without her. A world without children would be a miserable place. They remind us to take time out and enjoy life. They are a clean slate and we write on them every day. It is so important to make sure we write the right things. Nothing on this earth brings me more joy than children, especially my own! :-) It is just too bad that childhood is so fleeting; especially nowadays when we seem to be ripping our children's innocence from them at younger and younger ages.

Every night I am so happy at having spent another day with my baby girl but I'm also sad that another day of her childhood is gone. Ah well, such is life I suppose. Bittersweet. I just hope that all you parents out there remember to take the time to truly enjoy your children and make the most of their childhoods. Don't focus on stupid little things that annoy you or test your patience. One day you will be longing for this time again. So, kiss your kids and let them bring joy into your hearts.

Bad Drivers!

My town has the worst drivers imaginable! Actually, our pedestrians are pretty stupid too. Last week I was behind a truck and the light turned red so we're all stopped. All of a sudden, this truck decides he wants to back up. I had no idea why he was backing up or where he wanted me to go because there was another car right behind me. He starts gesturing in his side view mirror getting all huffy with me and then decides he's going to back up anyway so that he can parallel park in the space next to me. Who does that?? You can just be at a light a decide "Oh, there's a spot, I'll just park there when I'm in the middle of traffic." He almost backed into me. I had my daughter in the car and I almost got out and beat this guy senseless. What a moron!

Then today I was driving out of a parking lot after driving down the lane of the lot and stopping at the end and signaling to turn into the driving lane which leads out of the parking lot. This jackass comes flying through the lot (through all the parking spaces, not the driving lane) and almost t-bones me. I saw him look at me but he just kept right on going. I had to honk at him too. My daughter was again in the car with me. After I got out of that lot and up the road a little ways, some moron turned left in front of a car that had the green light to go straight and some pedestrians almost walked right in front of another car. Some people should just stick to the bus! By the way people, when the little orange hand is up at you, don't just cross the street anyway. There is a reason it is telling you to wait. It absolutely drives me insane when people cross the street when I am in the turning lane and have a green arrow but I can't turn because I have to wait for them to get across the street. Then I end up waiting through five more minutes of lights.

There, I just had to get that out. That is my rant for the day! Sorry if I offended any bad drivers or pedestrians out there. Oh, who am I kidding. No I'm not. You guys suck!