Growing Babies

     OK so maybe this morning I feel the slight urge to get into the Christmas spirit!  I mean it is just a little after 6 am and I'm up blogging with the christmas tree lit and my warm mug of coffee!  My new favorite thing is this peppermint mocha coffee creamer someone at work introduced me to.  I couldn't wait to get up this morning and brew some coffee!  Decaf that is, since I'm still nursing little M.  Great news in the milestone department, she is now saying momma.  Thanks Uncle Ramey for her speech lessons.  It is the sweetest thing ever!  I absolutely adore that little girl.  We also went this past week for her 9 month well visit and she wasn't so well apparently.  She had a snotty nose so they wouldn't give her the flu vaccination.  I was kind of upset, I  mean she is teething, it is winter and don't most children her age keep at snotty nose this time of year.  Oh yeah, she has 2 teeth now and she is chomping away at some cookies like she has a mouth full of teeth!  She is also trying very hard to crawl, she is gonna be gone any second now, she is crawling backwards and scooting.  Back to the snotty nose, the nurse practitioner suggested I start giving her Benadryl twice a day.......I was all, really, dude is that legal?, I mean you know that means she is gonna sleep like a baby at least twice a day.  I mean I have been dying to get this kid to take a longer nap without her lying on me or me lying down with her!  See, she takes these catnaps and it is so not cute!  When I get old and she has to take care of me I'm gonna make her clean my false teeth and when she refuses I'm gonna remind her how she use to catnap and I could never get a thing done around the house!  Anyhow, Benadryl does not make her the least bit drowsy and I really don't see it helping her snotty nose so we are choosing to do the old saline and suction every chance we get!

     My big M is growing up so fast.  I mean this kid is loving video games and this year he made a Christmas list that covered the front and back of a sheet of paper.  J took him to rent a game for the PS2 last night and he came back with something for 10+ years and I heard them arguing when I was in the bed last night over how J told him this game was gonna be too hard.  This Christmas is going to be a big one for him!  He is loving every minute of this season!

     As for me, I weighed in at weight watchers this week and I had lost 2.6 ponds for a total of 5 pounds in 2 weeks.  I am so very proud of myself!!  One day I just know I'll be posting before and after pictures to my blog.

Praying for Marlene!

Marlene is my friend from work who has breast cancer.  She is the one in the burgundy outfit.  She is having a bilateral mastectomy this morning!  I love you Marlene!

Merry Christmas or Bah Humbug???

I'm not sure of my mood this year.  The picture above of M represents my mood perfectly, I'm just not sure what to think of Santa this year.

I am trying to get into the Christmas spirit but everyday is the holidays are hard for me.  My heart aches for both mine and my husband's mother.  My heart aches for my children to have grandmothers.  I want out of this house.  I do not want to live in a home with only one bathroom anymore.  I need storage space.  I want to live in a home where I can do projects because I know I will be living there for a while.  I want to live closer to my job.  I am tired of driving one hour one way to work.  I do not like that my husband and my children spent Thanksgiving here alone while I worked this year and 2 years ago.  I hate living far away from family.  I want to be out of debt.

Some of these problems I can solve and some I have no control over.  I realize that I should be grateful that I have a home, a job, a loving husband and healthy children.  I am just weary and I am praying that God will give me strength to push forward putting one foot in front of the other.

I just long for the day when we can have some consistency to our lives.  I want more than anything to move into a home that we can be comfortable in, where the drive won't be so far, the kids will be in a school district where I want them and I will be able to get home to them quicker.

Today I was able to convince my sweet and loving M to donate some of his toys to children who are less fortunate which helped de-clutter the den a little.  He was very generous.  I was so scared he would have a problem letting go and he surprised me.  J loaded the car with several bags of toys that he had outgrown  or didn't play with anymore.   I am so thankful that God has given me this sweet, generous child as my son.



  

Note to Self

If you see me around town and I'm not dressed to the T and sporting the latest cute haircut....know that I am currently reading Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover.  This book is inspiring me to become debt free.  I, Joy Henslee, 100%, with all my being want nothing more than for my family to be debt free!  I'm not talking about keeping the school loans and the house payment debt free, I'm talking about I don't get bills in my mailbox except my current utilities debt free.  The hard part about our new debt free plan is that I am having to work extra shifts just to keep us from using the credit cards and every time I get close to saving up our $1000 emergency fund, BOOM there's an emergency.  Like the septic lines had to be completely replaced last week...$1400.

I think I have found the root of my problem just from watching Dr. Phil.  I love to eat and I love to shop.  Nothing makes me feel better than a new outfit or shoes.  The problem is, that satisfying feeling doesn't last very long.  Then comes the bill from the department store or the credit card bill and next thing you know I have ran the bill up to $500 and I'm still not happy.Then an emergency happens and I can't pay off the credit card like I had planned when I used it.  I am doing better though.  I am trying to be very frugal here lately.  I'm not buying every little outfit that I see for myself or for M & M.

I can just see myself sitting in a Dr. Phil show where my marriage has gone bad because of our finances. I really don't want that.

Dear Joy,   

I know that you are dying to buy a new pair of jeans but you have 20 pairs in your closet.  You may need to lose a couple of pounds to get in them.  Let that be your motivation.  When you become debt free and you can pay cash for them, you will feel much better about your decision.  Better yet, if you lose a couple of pounds and get into the ones in your closet, you will feel fantastic!

Love,

Dave Ramsey and Dr. Phil 

P.S.  People could care less what you wear or what your hair looks like!  Now FOCUS! 

 

    

Breastfeeding, I am so over it!

Well not really!  My nursing relationship with my daughter is so sweet!  Yeah whatever, not only am I about over it, I think she is too.  (please don't judge unless you are an animal who lives in a barn and you also work a full time job).  She has so much more to do these days like unlatch herself and look around the room for her big brother.  If she could talk I imagine she would be all,

"Seriously lady, I got better things to do than to lay here under that big ole boob of yours all day!  This working so hard for my milk is overrated.  Hey mom, I got a better idea, why don't you just get that little black bag of yours and hook them babies up and let that machine do the work for me so I don't have to use my jaw muscles so much!"

On a more serious note, I chose to breastfeed both of my children out of pure love for all things natural and for their health.  I remember supplementing big M at avery early age because we had so much going on around here with my mom being on hospice.  I also look back and feel like I really had no clue what I was doing.  If I remember correctly big M did get sick with upper respiratory stuff a good bit.  He never had an ear infection though and I'm pretty sure he has a high IQ ;0).   Little M has not had an antibiotic yet (knock on wood).  The only medicine I have ever had to give her was Tylenol once for a low grade temperature after shots.

In 2 days little M and I will have made it for 8 months as a nursing duo.  She hasn't had 1 oz. of formula and for that I am very proud.  Even when she was hospitalized 2 months ago for a head injury (that's another post), I pumped and the nurses stored it for me and we fed it to her when she could eat and we made it through without a drop in my milk supply.  Yay!

Being a mom at work pumping is a true labor of love.  This has been my biggest hurdle, making sure I pump enough when I'm working.  Thankfully, I have some very supportive and understanding co-workers.  I have only had 1 person make a negative comment to me and it was a guy and it was just about how long it took me.  Oh what I wanted to say to him!  I won't even go there!  I have had a couple of scares when she has gone through growth spurts but thankfully I had stocked the freezer when she was younger and didn't drink so much.

I was very surprised to read an article here recently about a woman in Ohio who lost a case that went to the supreme court against her employer which was Tote/Isotoner.  She was fired from her job for taking unauthorized  breaks to pump.  I read the article over and over thinking this is insane.  How could this be?  My eyes did not deceive me, it's a true story.  You can read about it here at salon.com.

Anyways, I just thought you might want to know that on Sunday me and little M will celebrate her 8 month boobday birthday!  Hip Hip Hooray!  And yes, good Lord willing and the milk don't dry up little M and I will continue on this journey for at least 4 more months!

It's not goodbye, It's see you later!

Today I went to my Uncle Ed's funeral and while between my husband and my aunt amongst many other sobbing family members and a screaming preacher, all I could think about was growing up in the country. When my Mom and Dad separated as they did so many times Ed always welcomed my mom and her children into his home.  The memories that were made at these times are priceless to me.  The memories are enriched by a family that my Uncle and his wife Melissa had created.  My cousins, their daughters, taught me how to cross-stitch, knit, sew, dress up like a clown, lay in the sun by the barn using Crisco as sun oil (ewww), sleep in a camper beside the house, deliver newspapers in the middle of the night, use the outhouse, paint with watercolors, raise animals, bake, make funnel cake, brew tea, walk country dirt roads and most importantly they taught me sisterly love.  You see, I would have never known that kind of love.  I would have never known how to do any one of those things without them.  I am my mother's only daughter.
These memories can't be anywhere near as many memories as Ed's children have of him and for that I am grateful and I know they are.  I am praying that God will be with them as they travel through the rest of their lives here on Earth without my Uncle Ed.  I am so grateful for Ed, Melissa and their family, grateful that I shared a life with them as one of their own!   Without them I may not know what family really is!

NOT ME MONDAY

Just yesterday I did not tell my husband that we had friends coming over just to get him to clean the house even though I knew they probably weren't. Nope not me. I would never do that on my wedding anniversary. This week I did not take little M to a Doctor's appointment with me and breast feed her and change her diaper in the lobby just to see the reaction on people's faces, nope not me. I would most certainly not try to entertain a waiting room full of grumpy patients just cause I knew I could.



I also most certainly did not clean off my buffet and sit little M on it in front of a mirror to get her picture.  Nope not me, I would never sit her on something high off the ground and stand back with my camera praying that she didn't jump off just to get these most lovely pictures of her.

Dear Jamey,

6 years ago today, we started our lives together. It has been beautiful, blissful, amazing, fast, bittersweet, strange, hard at times and unimaginable. For better or for worse, you have frequently reminded me.  Through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Oh dear, how could we have known what the weeks following that ever so amazing day would bring?  We I want to remember that day as oh so special and we I do but we I also remember that day as one of the last that we I might have ever seen my mom so happy.  She was so proud of you and I us!  Those dreadful 11 months (bad and ugly), you stood by me every single step of the way.  You are my rock.

Just 2 months later we would learn that I was we were pregnant with our first child (the good).  How that happened we will never know, I mean we hardly slept in the same bed house together.  I remember calling you from the breakroom at work,  I could almost hear your smile over the phone.  I think both of us thought it would never happen.  M was a true heaven sent.  He was our rock.  We pushed forward for him.  He needed us and God knew we needed him.

5 years later we welcomed our sweet baby girl into the world.  MEH, she is her brother's pride and joy.     Now our family is complete!  Just to think all this is the product of our love for one another!  I love you so much!  I hope we are blessed with many more years together!

Seriously, You're sleeping and I'm starting a blog!

So previously I had a post here that just talked about why I wanted to start a blog and I had to go and try to make my blog all cutesy and I accidentally erased the whole post.  Jamey was sleeping on the couch and both kids were asleep in their beds.  I  was all excited this being my first blog post and all! I guess enough already about all that.  I am totally excited about starting this blog so that we may look back at these days and remember how they were and to document this most precious journey of life we are own!

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