August 10, 2012

Hope this.


(Well, Mediocrates, I hope I get this out in time.......)

Step 1: Write a blog post about hope & publish it on your blog.
Step 2: Invite one (or more!) bloggers to do the same. 
Step 3: Link to the person who recruited you (me, in this case) at the top of the post, and the people you're recruiting at the bottom of the post. 

Melanie Crutchfield will be holding "Closing Ceremonies" around August 10 and will gather up little snippets from people that wrote about hope, so make sure you link back to her as the originator of the relay.

Hope.

When I think about hope I inevitably think about desperation. Desperate people hope, and not always in the most dire of situations.  I could be desperate for a drink and hope that my kids didn't drink all the lemonade.  Pedestrian, I know, but true none the less.  We hope and hope and hope day in and day out about the big stuff and the small.  Right now I hope I will finish this in time to be a part of this blog relay about Hope.  

I could go on for days about the things I hope for daily.  It is a never-ending and ever-changing and all-encompassing (big and small) list of things.  The small stuff comes and goes (like lemonade) but the big things seem to hang on, of course.  No one hopes for a cure for their disease and then doesn't think about it again the next day, or hour or minute.  That kind of hope lives in you and consumes you and you become it.  

Some of the big things for me right now?  
  • I hope my husband gets a certain job he's been after. He has a decent one now, but this one's better and he deserves it.  We struggle and I juggle two part time jobs and the full time mother-of-three gig.  It's doing, but the other job would make a world of difference for us. 
  • I hope that our freakin' house sells so we can get a (slightly) larger one with enough room for all of  us.  
  • I hope we can get Moo's diabetes under control soon.  She's okay, but we could be doing better with it.  It's a disease with no cure, so it's all "one day at a time" and shit, but it just sucks sometimes that we never get a day off.  Chronic.  Hate it.
  • And of course there's always the big:  I hope the good, fun, educational stuff I sometimes do with my kids, outweighs the crappy, losing-my-shit, bad mommy episodes that I should be ashamed to admit to but know we all have.  That's there a lot--or maybe it just seems like a lot lately because it's summer.  
Anyway, hope.  It's always there.  Sometimes it's a disease, sometimes it's lemonade.  Sometimes it's a blog.  Hope you liked it. 

I fear it may by too late for me to invite anyone but I will add a link or two to some of my favorite blogs.


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August 5, 2012

The Thrill Is Gone--Part Four of The Crib Chronicles

(If you're new here you might want to catch Parts One, Two and Three first.)

This post is way overdue.  My bruised pride has prevented me from writing it thus far.


The Geel is back in the bed.  The crib is gone and when I think that, somehow B.B. King's The Thrill is Gone pops into my head, and it is.  It was a beautiful time we had but it's over.  I can't exactly pinpoint where it went wrong (I blame the crappy babysitter--that's a whole other post-to-come) or perhaps the night I tried to run out and catch a movie with some girlfriends (curse you, Magic Mike).  I'm not sure even Channing Tatum's gyrating groin was worth the agony of defeat.

How it ended was that a couple weeks ago I put her in her crib for the night and she screamed.  Now she had cried before but always a sort of tired whiny cry, and never for longer than 15 minutes at most.  Usually if she cried it was five minutes or thereabouts and she would whimper and go to sleep.  This particular time she started crying hard and screaming.  I sort of knew it was over.  I stood by the door with my back to her and tried to see if I could wait her out.  Wasn't happening.  The screaming was getting worse, and I have to hand it to The Sarge, because his tolerance for that kinda stuff is ZERO, but he just let me do it my way.  He had witnessed the magic and he had been sleeping back in the bed and I suspect he really wanted it to work despite his asinine paranoia about the crib.

So eventually I just picked her up and brought her to my room and nursed her to sleep.  The good news is that she since being back she hasn't been scrambling over the edge and repelling down the side nor has she been attached to the teetas all night using them as a pacifier (the two main reasons I was hellbent on getting her in the crib: safety and lack of sleep.)  

Truth is I don't mind her being in the bed.  Moo and Slim both co-slept until they were roughly 2-years-old so The Geel was actually on the young side around here for moving on to independent sleeping.  But I have to admit I'm a little disappointed.  I feel kinda like EPIC FAIL here and I did enjoy having the bed to myself even if I like the snuggly stuff and waking up next to that cute little face (when she's not roaring, moaning, and groaning--this kid is NOT a morning person).  There was a little thrill of success going on.

So I'm not thrilled to have her back but it's ok.  I think she's a little happier overall and I feel good about that.

The thrill is gone
It's gone away for good
Oh, the thrill is gone baby
Baby its gone away for good

Someday I know I'll be over it all baby  

The thrill is indeed gone, but I'm already getting over it.
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