My New Endeavour

So, I've been toying with this idea for several days now...

I was at a meeting with some other moms and offered to do the shopping for the group since Charlie and I go out every day for a while. I have to Get Out Of The House on a regular basis and Charlie tends to get bored if we're home all day and a bored Charlie isn't a pleasant Charlie. Several of the moms suggested that I start a shopping business and I think I might do just that. I was thinking $10 for once a week grocery shopping ($15 for delivery- mostly because of gas prices) and $5 for each other store- $6 for WalM@rt since it's such a pain. I thought I would limit it to no more than 4 families. I figure I can probably shop for 2 at a time so, if I had 4, that's 2 trips to the grocery not counting our family needs and I don't know if I really want to go much more often than that. It seems like it's a good way to get paid for something I already do. I'm a little worried that as soon as I start Charlie will suddenly HATE all shopping excursions but I thought I could probably go in the evening if it comes to it. My husband can watch Charlie then and I could probably finish the groceries in an hour or so per 2 families which puts me at $15-$20 an hour which isn't too bad for 2 evenings a week. I'm also a little worried about morning sickness rearing it's head but I plan on telling people that we are TTC so I might need a brief hiatus and, really, this time I can hardly manage it the way I did before- laying on the couch sipping gingerale and bargaining with God anyway so I might as well feel like a productive member of society.

So, Moms, what do you think? Too pricey? Too out there?

Another BFN...

So, this may not be my month. Happily, I now have ovulation test strips so we can have a more informed go next month.

Walking!

So, I wasn't sure if he would actually pull off walking by one but we had a few wobbly steps tonight. Hooray!

Johnson's Take Me Away...

As I sit listening to Charlie cry (sleeping hasn't been going well the last couple of days and yes I have checked on him numerous times- every time I go in, he's rubbing his face against the mattress and yawning so he's clearly still tired he is apparently mostly pissed that sleep can only take place while NOT also playing) this coupon looks particularly attractive. Johnson's will "melt away your stress" for cheap after you fill out their survey. Get your $4 off coupon here.

BFN

The one nice thing about testing at 4:30 am (I really had to go!) is that you aren't nearly as distraught over a negative since all you really want is to go back to bed. Re-test on Friday.

Chick-fil-a

A free sandwich and a coke are here.

So cute!

The cutest baby duck story ever!

Suspense...

I'm sorry to keep everyone in suspense. I must say that I have no more insight than you do. So far, all tests have come back negative although I took yesterday and today off. I am hoping that not having the gumption to pee into a cup at 6 am is a Sign but I haven't seen it listed as an early sign of pregnancy yet. I do plan to test again tomorrow though as that is the actual 1st day I am supposed to test on.

In other news, Charlie has decided that he doesn't want to sit still long enough for use to spoon feed him but we also haven't been able to find any finger foods he will reliably eat other than cereal. I am waiting for the scurvy to set in...

Two Week Wait

So, we are now in the two week wait. I suck at the two week wait. I enter into it willingly and the first day or so is fine but then things go downhill. I get irritable and cranky and impatient and clingy. I want to know RIGHT NOW! I am one of the sort who really is either totally zen or totally not. Charlie came by his lack of emotional middle ground honestly. I actually think that I might test starting on Saturday which is rather on the ridiculously early side but, eh... I stocked up on dollar store tests and if it means I can make it through the day without biting someone's head off, I think it's worth $1 or maybe $2. Maybe Charlie and I should make a pilgrimage to the dollar store today, I suspect 5 pregnancy tests won't quite be adequate....

Anyway, as I explained to my husband, Saturday (maybe Friday), isn't actually that silly since it's really the 10dpo (days past ovulation) wait. (Thank you peeonastick.com- a slightly alarming site but a very welcome source of reading during the cursed wait) I discovered that neither temping nor paying attention to bodily fluids is terribly effective for me. Apparently, no one told Charlie that I need an uninterrupted 3 hours of sleep and a consistent waking time. Happily enough, in this circumstance, I have always had a bit of trouble with mittleschmerz and it is way worse since I had a baby. So, let's turn lemons into lemonade! After all, who doesn't want to jump one's husband's bones when having a headache and cramps! Unfortunately, it's a bit of an inexact sort of science and I either ovulated on the 15th, making Friday a fine time for testing (did you really think I would manage to hold out until Saturday), or the 19th making even Saturday well beyond the bounds of credulity. Unfortunately, I have almost no idea of what a typical 2WW would be like for me. I was on the pill for ages and then got pregnant quickly last time and haven't had very many cycles at all since I had Charlie so, unlike the other women on the message boards I frequent, I can't say that I don't usually go to bed at 8:30, wake up starving, and have cramps. I might have that happen every month- who knows!

Of course, I stumbled upon this post at thingamababy which talks about the conception kit. Please don't pay $300 for that. Get some non-latex condoms and instead cups at the drug store and have at it for more like $15.

Of course, when I'm feeling particularly wild and crazy, I watch the new clear blue ad which must be the most amusing pregnancy test ad ever. It's light years beyond that one where the lady is jogging and keeps going "am I pregnant." Going off of the basis of many women's experiences in early pregnancy, I have to to say that if you're even entertaining the notion of jogging, you are totally not pregnant. So for your viewing pleasure...

Fun

Nested has a fun gadget for those of us who like the whole spell baby's name as a nursery decoration but want to go at it slightly differently.

Teething again

Charlie currently has 8 teeth. There are 10 to go. At 2 weeks to 2 months of teething time per tooth my life will be hellish for a while, won't it? Not that the next while will be a cakewalk for Charlie either...

A Wizard Rock Moment

No one can say my tastes aren't diverse...

This song is by a fictional rock bad headed up by Draco Malfoy and is aimed at Harry Potter. If you don't like the books, you should really just skip over this post.

Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

The first song that I am currently gushing over...

Job Satisfaction

So, this has been a bit of a rough patch for me in mommy-hood. Charlie is starting to sleep enough (2 nights over the last 10, he's actually slept through the night!) that I am becoming cognizant of something beyond how I will manage to make it through the day. We're to a point where Charlie requires enough attention that doing anything else is less than successful but is self-sufficient enough that you get rather bored. He's adorable and charming and a delight but is lacking in conversational skills. He isn't old enough for crafts or games. Even play dates are still a bit out on the horizon. The park (when it hasn't been sweltering) is still a bit above his skill level although he does like to crawl in a nice patch of grass.

I decided that I would probably do better if I had a bit of a routine. Unfortunately, we live in a less than bustling area and the options are somewhat limited. Our rough schedule is rather heavy on Target and the grocery store and I had to really rack my brain to come up with 5 viable options that will occupy at least 2 hours. I watched with great envy, this NY City mom who takes walks with her kids where they can see all sorts of things and there is always another store to visit or another activity to do. She talked about how much she loved being a SAHM and I cried. I want to be her. I want to be fulfilled and stimulated and in love with my job of raising my children. But, at the moment, I'm not.

I suspect part of it is the stage we're in. I am hesitant to make strong moves towards going back to work as I think that things will change rather rapidly over the next 2 years. At the same time, I think Charlie is a child who would love group care. He thrives in the church nursery and other group settings. He is thrilled to watch and interact with other children. Finding quality, part-time care is always a struggle though and finding it when you are already feeling ambivalent about your decision is even harder. Coming up with a job I would enjoy is equally challenging. I think I would most like to find a very part-time office job. When I have subbed, I have always enjoyed helping out in the office. One summer I had an internship that had a rather large secretarial component and I really liked it. I love having tasks that you can actually complete; lists of things that you can check off. I like people and helping point them to where they need to go. I can schedule with the best of them and multi-task with a vengeance. At the same time, those sorts of jobs are scare here. And, I'm uncomfortable starting one when I don't know how the next pregnancy will go nor do I expect that I will want to continue after the next baby. I'm also a bit of a crafter and have a Stampin' Up demonstratorship but to grow it much more will take a considerable amount of effort and time that I don't presently have. This is also a rather economically depressed area and people tend to not be "spenders."

I learned about a mother's day out program a few days ago and plan to look into that. It sounds like it might be just right for Charlie. It's reasonably priced and would let him play with other children and is 5 days a week but you can enroll them for shorter periods. It's only during the school year though and they don't accept children until they are 15 months old. It is a shining light though. It would be so nice to have a morning or 2 a week that I could devote to doing something I find satisfying- something I can point to and say "I did that." If only I knew what the "that" should be...

Cooking!

So, in preparation of us trying to have a second child I have been stocking my freezer. Since I had morning sickness for a coon's age last time and was felled by extreme fatigue (probably why getting 2/3rds of your caloric intake from gingerale isn't actually recommended) I thought that I would try to be prepared this time. Of course, this will likely result in one of 3 things. A- the power will go out for several days B- it will take us months and months to conceive the baby (I'm toying with "thing 2" or "who" as in "Horton Hears A...") rendering all cooking moot although likely eaten in a 1 day depression spurred binge or C- I will be completely puke free this time around but will get to experience all of the other pregnancy ailments I got to side-step last time- most notably varicose veins and stretch marks In support of "c" occurring is also that I have taste tested a variety of locally available ginger candies and teas to pick the ones most likely to be helpful at settling my stomach and am contemplating laying in a back stock to have on hand. Of course, then fate will do a double fake-out and I will not only have morning sickness for the next 12 months (why not throw in a couple of pre and post-conception months as well) AND get varicose veins.

Anyway... We now have 12 packets of frozen tillapia ready to go both with asparagus and with mixed veggies (I used this recipe as a jumping off point and then added frozen cubes of white wine and pre-chopped and frozen veggies from the market), 4 chicken curry casseroles (need a no-fail, yank out of the freezer for company meal or to take to the people who just had a baby? BEST CASSEROLE EVEH! I always have several on hand. It's an all-day project with the veggie roasting and everything so you might as well make a bunch at a time anyway...), chicken soup , potato soup, and beef stew, as well as turkey kielbasa sausage and frozen pre-chopped packs of bell peppers and onions (available in your freezer section because short cuts are ok sometimes) ready to add to the skillet with some potatoes for a 10 minute meal. I love this meal but have yet to figure out how to freeze it since potato doesn't freeze well. It's super yummy though. And, this was a summer favorite- coconut milk, shrimp and a little spice- yummy! But, it really requires a solid 45 minutes or so to cook and that just doesn't happen all that often anymore- sigh... I would also like to get some chicken packets ready to go similar to the fish packets but I need to wait for chicken to go on "buy one get one" sale again. Reynold's Wrap has a bunch of packet recipes that they don't list as specifically freezable but I fooled around with some a couple of weeks ago and they are definitely adaptable.

Trying to Conceive

We've decided to switch from not preventing pregnancy to trying to conceive this month. My husband has repeatedly stated that he doesn't get the difference but he's fine with whatever I want to call it as long as it involves nookie. It's come down to the fact that my relationship with my hormones is best described as "adversarial." Over the last few months I have felt like myself about 25% of the time. The rest of the time I have PMS, the P itself, a nice reaction to all that progesterone my body would like to keep on hand "just in case," or am recovering from all this hormonal excitement. I don't remember it being all that bad before and I suspect that nursing hasn't helped matters. It seems that the level of nursing Charlie would like to do puts me right on the edge between suppression of cycles and full-on fertility and any little change (like nursing an extra time a night while my husband is away) throws the whole thing into a tizzy. In addition, around when I ovulate, my supply dips so there are extra night feedings which confuses things more and then we get an incident like this month when I think I ovulated (and dipped) twice to make for 2 weeks of a special kind of miserable. Of course, all this night waking makes temping completely pointless so this is just an educated guess about the ovulating based on limited secondary fertility signs. I drew the line at checking my cervix... At any rate, it left me feeling that if I was going to be this miserable, I might as well be miserable with a purpose and go ahead and really make an effort at getting pregnant.

And, since it's really getting to the point that if things don't stabilize I will wean due to sheer misery, we've started night weaning. Charlie usually nurses at least once during the night still and sometimes more frequently. According to my research, night nursing effects fertility more than day nursing and so, I assume, cutting it out will help stabilize my hormones. Also, a good portion of the time he doesn't actually eat all that much and they only time we have a hope of doing night weaning is this month- the first time in ages my husband is slated to be home for several weeks in a row. Last night was our 1st go and went rather unexpectedly. The DH and I were prepared for much crying and tantruming and misery. The deal was that Charlie wouldn't be seeing mommy at all until time for the morning nursing which we decided could happen anytime after 5am (envisioning hourly wakings with wailing). Sometime between 1:30 and 3ish, the window Charlie usually wakes up in for his 1st night feeding, my husband would go in with a snack and hold Charlie in the rocker while he ate. We expected this to go over like a lead balloon and so we picked one of his favorite snacks. 2:30 rolled around and in my DH went... The snack was greeted with crows of delight, happy babbling and eating ensued. There was no crying at all. Over the next few nights we will fade the snack and then fade the rocking and, in happy land, Charlie will magically begin sleeping through the night within the next 2 weeks. Now we just need to tell Charlie the plan...