Everything since August 6th...

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

School started. Was good. Took a 6th period. Am going crazy.

Took up running, sorta (been 5 times). Can run 1.25 miles and have now run more in the last 3 weeks than I ever did in high school PE.

Kids love school, especially Penelope. She has 16 boys and 3 girls in her class. Makes me thankful that I teach high school.

Griffin goes on his first field trip in a few weeks. I get to go (hooray for fortuitous scheduling and random Mondays off!).

Penelope went to my 1.5 hour yoga class with me and did everything except for Triangle pose. Everyone loved her and she's been invited back for other classes. She adores this. She is also surprisingly inflexible, I blame Bryan.

Griffin is now 90% night time potty trained. Huzzah!

I got a full back tattoo (well, the outline is done). It is made of awesome and I will post many pics as color is added.

I'm co-advising the Mock Trail team this year. It's fantastic, but also means Tuesdays I'm on campus from 7am until 7pm. No joke. See note re: "crazy" above.

We've been to a wedding and a birthday party with an Elvis impersonator (those things did not happen in the same weekend).

Bryan's job is going well, he loves it.

His hockey team plays tomorrow for the championship.

I turned 32 and didn't freak out (actually, it was fun. And so far 32 is infinitely better than 22 & 12 combined. Although at 2 I was in New York, so we'll see if 32 makes it to the top of my "years ending in a 2").

And now, goodnight. It is time to sleep. So I will sleep with my pet Zeep. Today was good, today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. Everyday from here to there, funny things are everywhere.

(P.S. if you don't get my two allusions, then I'm not sure we can be friends anymore).

At a Fork

Not a literal fork, mind you. But in a lot of ways we (as a family) are at a big turning point. Some of it hinges around job stuff, some of it hinges around milestones, and all of it is happening both too quickly and too slowly.

The kids are first.

With Griffin day potty trained and 70% night trained, we're completely done with diapers and pull ups. It's all undies all the time. This makes our changing table pretty useless; right now it's housing a rather large pile of stuff I should deal with but don't want to.

Our baby isn't a baby. He's not even a toddler. He's a pre-schooler. He's writing his name, speaking in large and complex sentences, and becoming increasingly independent. This is a huge transition that really snuck up on me. I feel like one minute I had a baby and now I have two kids.

Griffin wearing my wedding ring. It fits his finger. I must have skeletal fingers...

Griffin is even spending less and less time in our bed. Which is mostly good because he's enormous and is a bed hog.

At his last pediatrician appointment he was 3 feet 5.25 inches. All his 3T stuff is pitifully short and his 4T pants are starting to look more like highwaters every day. I'm going to have to start buying him 5T clothes. He just turned 3.

Sissy isn't any better. Child is outgrowing her 6s and we'll have to buy 7s for the fall. SEVENS. She's FOUR.

Does she look 4 to you???

This week she started acting camp after her 3rd dance recital (good gracious, really - 3?!). And she has a performance on Friday. After this camp, she can start participating in some of the children's theater's normal productions. Based on how much she loves camp thusfar, that's going to be a reality for us. Soon I'll have to schlep her to regular rehearsals in addition to ballet and possibly basketball (she asked to join a basketball team, I think she's got another year before she's eligible).

Besties.

If all goes as planned she'll start Transitional Kinder in the fall. She's getting taller by the second (and has regular growing pains, usually it's "mama, my leg bones hurt") and isn't gaining much weight - so she's pretty gangly.  I had to take in her recital costume because it was way too wide and I have a feeling my sewing machine is going to get lots of use as she gets older.

I am glad she's busy - making friends, having fun, exploring... I wish there were as many opportunities for the Bubs, but 3 is a hard age for extra curriculars. This summer I'll try and sign them up for swim lessons, but he won't get to do too much until soccer starts up.

I love this picture. They're sharing wearing Bryan's backpack. They really do share everything.

My babies becoming kids makes my ovaries ache. And while I really, really, really want to try for #3 ASAP (as in yesterday), we're really not in a place to make that happen. Another baby would also mean another 4+ years of childcare (we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now) in addition to all the other challenges that come with newborns and babies.

There are also a lot of really wonderful things that come with babies. Both Penelope and Griffin have asked for more siblings and babies are loves - I miss the loves. We just have to decide if all the benefits of expanding our family outwiegh the challenges and then: when could we reasonably add to the family without sacrificing more than we can afford?

Thank goodness for reliable birth control (thanks Planned Parenthood!!!!!)

There's a lot I want to do with my career. I'm taking some of the steps toward that now. Having another baby wouldn't prevent those career moves, but they would significantly delay them. I'm young, so I have time to become Empress of the World. But I still haven't decided if my career timeline or my family planning timeline triumphs.

There is always adoption - and we haven't ruled that out. If that's the route we decide to go, then we'll have to wait a few more years. We need a slightly larger place and it would be nice to have the big kids in school full time before we add a toddler into our lives (because if we adopt we'd like to adopt a toddler or a pre-schooler).

So there are options. And there's time. But if you know me or if you've been reading my blog regularly then you know that I'm not the "wait and see" type. I have to be for this, but it is sometimes frustrating to not know what I want and then not know the best way to get there.

The other fork in our road is job related, but not mine. Nothing is set in stone so I don't want to jinx anything (yes Neil deGrasse Tyson, I know I know), but Bryan does have some possible opportunities on the horizon that are both exciting (because yea change!) and scary (because boo change!). They are 90% exciting. The 10% scary has more to do with not knowing exactly how things are going to pan out rather than scary about the specific change.

I COULD be more vague, but I'll spare you.

Suffice it to say, this will be an eventful summer.

Speaking of which, I have 80% of tomorrow's summer lesson plan completed. Time to finish the rest.

I really should be doing homework

Today was spent sewing diapers - and Sarah and I made a lot of progress. Although we still have a lot more to do. It's a little overwhelming, but we'll get there. Once we're done we'll probably do something silly like decide to make a bunch more to sell :)

I received some rather annoying news today regarding my wrongful termination claim, but since it was based on blatant lies I'm not going to stress myself out. Whatever happens, happens. I have facts & truth on my side so regardless of the final outcome I can sleep knowing that I did everything I could to stand up for myself.

I really should be finishing this paper... it's due Sunday. I only have a few more paragraphs to write, but I'm finding it hard to motivate myself. If I finish it then I'm done with homework until next week - which would be nice. It would free up tomorrow for focusing on nothing but sewing and it would mean that Sunday the three of us could have a family day without me worrying about writing. So I guess there is plenty of motivation for me to finish...

Should really get to that paper.

Like now.

Really should.

Today, January 6th

So today was productive - for the most part. It started off with a trip to the mall (see previous picture blog post) and ended with a very rare dinner out in which Penelope boycotted everything but broccoli and milk.

I started a new class this week - it's a Health Education class and while there's going to be a lot of work involved, none of it seems particularly difficult (at least so far). I'm going to try and get a little ahead on the assignments so that I'm not scrambling the last week to get everything done. We'll see how that goes.

I was able to get some homework done today, in addition to applying for 4 different teaching/tutoring/mentoring jobs, meeting with my attorney (I can say "my" attorney now that we signed an agreement), reading Marvin K Mooney Will You Please Go Now 14 dozen times, and cleaning the kitchen (ok, so I just did dishes and washed bottles - the kitchen could still use a real cleaning, but I'm counting it). There were a few more things on the To-Do list, but they'll just have to wait. I'm tired.

Yesterday was busy as well and I started having some contractions while we were out and about (had some today too). Nothing painful, regular, or particularly worrisome - but it does mean that I need to take it easy. I forget that I'm 26 weeks pregnant sometimes and do things that I probably shouldn't. The added stress of being unemployed and the accompanying financial woes doesn't help and is probably a significant factor... although it's not abnormal to have these kind of Braxton Hicks contractions at this point in the pregnancy. I didn't get them with Penelope until I was much farther along, but second babies tend to speed things up (from what I've been told) so I'm not worried.

And just for fun, here's what Penelope ate today:
8 strawberries
almost 1/4 cup oatmeal
3/4 banana
1/2 string cheese
4 flax crackers
4 apple wagon wheels (they're a Gerber toddler snack)
nearly a cup of macaroni
a bite of avocado
1/4 head of broccoli
1 bite of grilled cheese
12 oz of milk
at least 14 oz of water
and a dozen or so sweet potato Puffs (another Gerber toddler snack)

I won't recount what I had :)

Tomorrow is homework, homework, and more homework while my Dad babysits. Friday is Art Beast. Hope everyone has a wonderful end of the week!

Look what I can do!

Yesterday Penelope learned "Brown Bear" - she can pick him out of the last page on her Brown Bear, Brown Bear book. We're going to start working on the other animals :) She can also pick out Max in the all the pages of Where the Wild Things Are, and will say "ooh, ooh, ahh" if you ask her what a monkey says.

She can point out Mommy's nose and mouth, and her own nose, mouth, and ears. Eyes are trickier and we're working on those as well. Half the time she'll show you her fingers if you ask, but not consistently...

Walking is progressing along nicely, she walks more often than she crawls and doesn't need to be carried as often. It's been nice, but also comes with its own set of challenges. The other day at Starbucks she kept running towards the door and needed to be corralled back to where we were sitting. I would call her name and she'd turn around, grin, and shake her head "no" and then turn back to the door and take off. Cute, and exhausting. It'll only get worse as she gets better at walking, I think we may end up with a runner :)

This morning we were looking at all of the Christmas/Holiday picture cards we received and she picked out the one of Orson, Kim, & Matt. I asked her "where's Orson?" and she leaned over and kissed his picture! :) So cute! It won't be so cute when she's 13 years old, but it is at 13 months.

Tonight she goes over to my parents for the night so Bryan and I can go out and celebrate our anniversary (a day late). Thanks to my parents & Santa we have a gift card to a wonderful restaurant and a gift card for movie tickets so we can afford to enjoy ourselves. Hooray!

Oh, my interview on Thursday seemed to go well... I should know in a week or so. Hopefully I'll have a few more interview and/or be able to find some substitute teaching work. I need to look into a few Charter Schools and Private Schools to see if they're hiring teachers since with my BA I can teach at nearly any non-public school. It would be wonderful to get a teaching job, although that will mean day care for Penelope. I think she'd do just fine, but I would miss our weekly mommy & baby activities.

And let me just say that my favorite Clone is Rex. He's just awesome. (We're watching Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon this morning).

Bryan's Song...

Isn't that a movie?

Anyway, one of Bryan's favorite 80s songs is "Warrior" by Scandal. It's on right now and every time I hear it I can see him playing it on Guitar Hero (I think it's on the 80s version?). It makes me smile :)

Tonight at midnight we'll celebrate our 2 year anniversary! We may actually stay up until midnight tonight, we're going over to my parents tonight for cards and games so we'll see how long we both last. Penelope did not have a great night last night so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay awake.

Bryan just told me the Mariners play the Giants at AT&T park on April 4th... I say we should go :) I'll be as big as a house and less than 2 weeks from my due date.

Oh, so we have molar #4 - Penny has 12 teeth! It's just started to poke through, but I'm sure that's why last night was so very horrible. Between "&" kicking me from the inside and Pen kicking me on the outside I got very little sleep. Plus some idiot decided to call me twice from a private number in the middle of the night. I always freak out when my phone rings late at night, it's never good news. But apparently it was just some idiot with a wrong number (I didn't actually get to the phone in time, but he left a message for a Suzie).

Oh, and I have an interview today. It's for a part-time job and wouldn't make up my salary from my last job, but it's a job. They don't know I'm pregnant yet, I didn't think it was appropriate to mention that in my cover letter. Should be interesting.

So far that's the only interview I've been able to schedule since I got laid off. I've applied for more than a dozen jobs, but the market it pretty competitive. I have some more avenues that I need to check out, so hopefully something will happen soon.

Ok, in happier news, I'm 25 weeks pregnant today! I was a little surprised when I saw that on the calendar, for some reason I thought I was closer to 30 weeks. Wishful thinking :) According to the e-mail I got from babycenter, the baby is approx 13 inches long and weighs a little over 1.5 lbs. "&" has been moving around a lot lately, especially when Penelope crawls all over me - it seems he/she doesn't appreciate being squooshed by his/her older sister. Something poor "&" will have to get used to, older siblings are supposed to squoosh their younger siblings :)

I've been really bad about taking belly pictures lately... I'll try to get one taken today.

Ok, time to do some chores and then get ready for my interview. Hope everyone has a safe, fun, and happy New Years Eve and a wonderful New Year!!

Chatty Cathy

Penny has a baby friend named Maddox whose almost a month older than she is, and boy can he talk! After seeing him on Wednesday for Mom's Group, Pen decided that it would be super neat to imitate Maddox. So she's been talking up a storm lately! "Whadawhatcha badabada blah blah blah" All. Day. Long.

This is, of course, when she's not fussing. I'm hoping that whatever it is that's bothering her will be done with soon - teething, a cold, desire to drive us crazy... whatever it is I hope it's over soon. She's been sleeping with us for the past two nights and I'm tired of being kicked in the ribs or head butted from 1am until morning. The restless sleeping can't be good for her either, so I'm really hoping she has a good night tonight.

We cleaned out her toy box today as well and packed up a good number of toys that she's either outgrown or that I can no longer stand. Her activity table was one of them - she doesn't really play with it anymore and it was starting to get on my nerves.

**45 minutes after she went down, she woke up... went back down in her own crib so lets hope it was a fluke.

Anyway, we'll break the toys out again once New Baby is old enough for them and by that time I will hopefully have forgotten all of the songs the darn activity table plays. Toys that stayed out were all her musical instruments (like the xylophone and drum), the balls, a few stuffed animals, her stacking cups and blocks, and a bunch of books. Her favorite thing to do now is read, so we didn't really need all the other toys - they'd just lie there on the carpet collecting dog hair (ew!).

I do have some new video, but haven't gotten a chance to upload and edit yet - I don't know when I'll get around to it since there are so many things I need to do this weekend and next week.

I'll touch briefly on my employment issues, but I don't want to dwell on them too much. I'm still trying to stay positive about the situation and I don't want to turn this blog into my own pity-party - it is, after all, primarily a blog about the babies since I haven't done much in the way of a traditional baby book. But I will keep everyone updated on the job situation so we can all celebrate when I'm gainfully employed again :)

I filed for unemployment, toggled with my resume, and applied for about half a dozen jobs (mostly administration since teaching jobs are impossible without my credential). I'll hopefully know in the next few weeks if I've qualified for an emergency teaching credential, which would allow me to take substitute teaching jobs. Those are super hard to come by with all the teacher layoffs, but it won't hurt to at least try. I've also printed out the paperwork for Medical, Healthy Families, and WIC. I doubt we qualify for Medical, but we should qualify for Healthy Families and WIC which would mean Penelope and I would have health insurance - hooray! Bryan may have to wait until I find a new job until we can afford to get him health insurance, so hopefully he stays healthy until then!

Luckily we don't need any formula or diapers (hooray for cloth!). We do use disposables when we travel, but a package of those lasts us awhile and we can't really afford to travel now anyway :)

So while things aren't great, I'm still super stressed, and the next few months will be very difficult, I'm trying to stay optimistic about the whole situation. We've canceled some non-necessities (poor Bryan has given up his iPhone) and we're going to making more cuts next week. It's a good thing we like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

Can't sleep

I didn't sleep well last night. And I'm up early - Penelope and Bryan are still sleeping, which is good since Penny didn't sleep well last night either. She's been tossing and turning, waking herself up, and fussing in the middle of the night. Tylenol doesn't seem to help (assuming it's teething)... she is a little congested, but not horribly so - maybe it's that? Other than the congestion she doesn't seem sick, and even if she is sick we've seen worse. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse because I don't think I can handle anything else. Unemployed, pregnant, AND a sick toddler? That a recipe for a very, very, stressed out mommy.

I think the reason I'm having problems sleeping is due to money worries. I didn't get any sort of severance or notice so we're more that a little screwed. Hopefully unemployment kicks in in time for us to pay our bills, but that won't pay me my full salary so we'll still have a gap (and that is, of course, assuming that I get unemployment benefits). So the next few weeks will be a balancing act.

This weekend I'm going to look into getting Penelope on SCHIP or some other government sponsored healthcare program. Hopefully Bryan and I will qualify as well so we stay covered since we can't afford to make our next month's insurance premiums. Luckily Pen was able to see her Pediatrician for her 1 year appointment before I lost my job so that's good.

I should probably go in an get this sinus infection taken care of while we still have coverage...

So much to think about, so much to do!

There's a lot more I need to get out, but baby's awake and it's time to start the day...