Stewing

I tend to stew about things that upset me for quite a while, unless I can get them resolved, but this issue is probably not “resolvable”, hence me still stewing about it over a week later.

Sometimes I think my mom and I are from different planets.  There are a few things we just don’t see eye to eye on at all, as in we’re not even looking in the same direction let alone seeing different angles of one thing.  Last year before I miscarried J’s twin, I was freaking out a bit about the logistics of having twins and having 4 kids and wondering how I was going to feed them or sleep for the first few months of their lives.  I asked my mom if she would come out for 4-6 weeks to help me get on my feet after they were born and her exact words were “I don’t want to put my life on hold for that long.”  …..Okay.  Well then.  What do you even say to that?  To say it pissed me off and hurt my feelings a LOT is a vast understatement. 

My parents are talking about coming to visit this summer.  Mark is going to be gone for 3 weeks at the end of the summer and I said it would be great if you’d come out then so I’d have help with the kids and dogs.  She basically told me they didn’t want to come out when Mark isn’t there because they want to see him too.  I try to put myself in her shoes and think what I would do if Abbie was ever in my position and asked me to come out to help her with my grandkids and I cannot imagine me ever saying “Yeah… No… I don’t want to come see you unless your husband is there.”  Period. Dot.  I would never, ever say that to her.  I told my mom later that that really bothered me and she said well Mark’s our son too now and we love him and we want to see him too.  Yes, great, glad you like him so much, but still?  You don’t see ANYTHING wrong with you not wanting to come out unless Mark is here?  I told her that Mark would feel better if they came out when he was gone too since he’d know I’d have help and not be juggling everything by myself for almost a month and then it turned in to “Well fine.  If he doesn’t want to see us then we’ll just come whenever.”  Really?  That’s what you just got from that?  It has nothing to do with Mark not wanting to see you.  It’s about his priorities being in the right place.  He’d feel better knowing I had help versus him getting to see my parents, but my mom just doesn’t see it like that at all, which is so incredibly frustrating to me.


And then it turned in to “Well I’ll just come out by myself to help you with the kids and your dad will stay home.”  Why?  Because he only wants to see Mark too?  She said well what’s he going to do if he comes out and Mark’s not there?  Oh… I don’t know…  Maybe see his DAUGHTER and his GRANDKIDS?????  Hello?  And then she said well he doesn’t want to just come out and work the whole time.  I said that’s fine.  He doesn’t have to work on the house or anything at all!  I don’t care if he doesn’t.  And she said well what’s he going to do then?  You know he likes to have lists of things to do.  He wants to come out and help Mark with things around the house.  ….  So… he wants to come out to work, but only if Mark is around to work with?

I don’t know what frustrates me more, the fact that she says these things, or the fact that she sees absolutely nothing wrong with what she’s saying.  MARK’S mom has volunteered to come out before when Mark wasn’t around to help me with the kids but my own mom acts like I’m putting her out suggesting they visit when Mark is TDY.  I hope to God I never make Abbie or any of my kids feel like I’m inconveniencing them if they ask for help, and I certainly hope I never make them feel like their spouse is more important to me than they are.  I’m glad my parents like Mark so much, obviously, but I just don’t get their rational sometimes.  When I first told her about this TDY he has to go on she said “Oh good.  Well we’ll go visit Mark while he’s down there then.”  Perfect.  You go visit Mark while he’s on a tdy and I’ll be here by myself with everyone else.  Have fun with that.

My parents are great and they help us so much with everything – the kids, the house, advice, etc.  When they are here, my mom is a HUGE help with the kids and cooking and housework and my dad helps a ton with the house and the cars and the yard and the dog and everything else.  We love it when they visit and I wish almost every day that they lived a hell of a lot closer than they do.  But then these types of things get said and it makes me mad and it hurts my feelings and it makes me feel like we don’t even speak the same language.  It’s really frustrating and I wish I could just let it go, but I have issues with that.  I can handle the kids and everything by myself while Mark’s gone.  That’s fine.  I just wish they didn’t make it seem like seeing him is more important than helping/seeing me.

Expecting #4

Last week – Tuesday to be exact – I decided to take a pregnancy test.  For the past few weeks I’ve been going through the whole game – am I actually feeling these pregnancy symptoms or not?  The mind can play some crazy tricks on you and so I didn’t know if I was feeling pregnant because I kind of wanted to be, or if I actual was.  Part, or a lot, of me thought that there was no way on earth that I actually could be pregnant.  This was our “practice month” and we literally tried once.  One time.  With Abbie, it took 8 months.  With Jamison, it took a full year and progesterone and Clomid.  The whole plan was to try to get pregnant over the summer so we can have #4 by Dec 2017, when Mark will probably get out of the military (and we lose military insurance).

Around 10am, I decided to take one of the tests I’d just picked up at the Dollar Store.  I looked at it for a few seconds and saw the control line show up, so I set it down and figured I wasn’t pregnant or it was too early to test.  For whatever reason, I decided to go check it “just in case” a few minutes later and I about passed out when I saw a faint line in the test line.  It’s that feeling of excitement and shock and “holy shit” that hits you all at once.  I thought maybe it was wrong because it was a dollar store test, so a few hours later I took another one and that was a very faint positive too.  Two days later I took another one and it was a tiny bit darker than the first and on Saturday I took another one and it was a little bit more dark.  So my HCG’s are going up, which is good.

I had a pretty bad headache and asked Mark to come home a few hours early from work, partly because of my headache and partly because I couldn’t wait to tell him, but of course he didn’t/couldn’t.  But when he did get home I think he was just as shocked as I was about the whole thing, and excited too.

Of course we’re excited about this, but if this baby sticks, I’ll be due mid-December.  Ben’s birthday is Dec 8th, so we’ll have 2 birthdays pretty darn close together.  I guess we were hoping to have another baby some time next summer, but it’ll also be nice to have him/her in December and then be able to do more camping next summer.  We are supposed to go camping in Monterey the week of Thanksgiving this year, but I’ll probably cancel that trip once I get into the second trimester, or move it to spring break or something.  I still have to go do the whole pee test on base to get the referral to an off base OB and since I have Jamison’s 1 year appointment on the 29th, I’m planning on just doing it then.  I guess OB’s around here don’t usually see you until 11-12 weeks and I’m only 5 weeks right now, so we still have a ways to go.


So far I’m feeling pretty good.  A little more tired than usual, sometimes a little crampy and my boobs feel weird sometimes, but nothing unbearable.  Mostly I’m just hoping this baby sticks.  It’s bitter sweet though.  This will be my last pregnancy (unless we have a pretty big “oops”) so I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible and not spend the whole time worrying about things out of my control.  We probably won’t tell the kids for a while yet, and we’re not making it public knowledge until much later as well.  I’ve told my parents and a handful of close friends, and one of my cousins and I might tell my 101 year old grandma soon, but other than that, we’re going to wait a bit to tell everyone else.  I want it to be our secret for a while and I want to make sure this baby sticks before we broadcast it to everyone.  Although with this being #4, I’ll probably start to show pretty soon.  Not to mention Jamison isn’t even a year old yet…  He’ll be a year next week but part of me feels like I’m robbing him of his “babyhood” a little bit.  If everything goes well with this pregnancy, he and the new baby will be about 19.5 months apart.  Abbie and Ben are 31 months apart (2.5years), Ben and Jamison are 40 months apart (3.5 years) and Jamison and baby #4 will be less than 20 months apart.  I guess we’re getting to see a few different year gaps which is fun, and it’s also good because I’ll be 36 when I deliver this baby.  I wouldn’t want to be much older.

 

So fingers crossed that this baby sticks!!  (And toes crossed that it’s a girl!!!  Although I’ll be thankful for any healthy baby.)

Hawaii, day 5

It’s now 6/16/17 and I still haven’t gotten around to writing about our Hawaii trip all the way.  But this day we drove to the west side of the island and the north side to see the waterfalls.  It was beautiful and more of what you envision Hawaii to be.  And the Banyan trees were AMAZING!  We loved them!   I would love to go back to Hawaii some day!  Most of these pictures are from Hilo and the Waipi’o Valley and the drive from Kona to Hilo.