.... Hello?
.... .... Hello?
Greetings!!!! Signing into facebook tonight, finding a new posting from a blog belonging to a friend of mine, I thought to myself, "How long has it been since I last SIGNED IN to my own blog?" Ten more days and it would have been a full 13 months since I last wrote. Like a lot of projects that I start in life, I was all fired up at the start, liked how it was going, and then - life happens! One night when I plan to write I am too tired, so I put it off. The next few days, I am hoping to get an entry in, but there's dishes to wash, a husband's lunch to make before bed, and - oh yeah, a baby to take care of. Not complaining, just reiterating the cycle that I am sure MILLIONS of people go through when wanting to accomplish something extracurricular to life. After a while I just forgot about it, and when I did remember, I just felt the shame of defeat that yet ANOTHER one of my life's projects and fallen flat, and I recoiled from the idea of facing it. But no! Not fallen flat. Because one day, I WILL get back onto my blog site, and I WILL continue writing. Just like I WILL finish binding my school work that I have kept since the 7th grade, I WILL make those scrapbooks I've been saving (s)crap for for years, I WILL make up my daughter's Baby Book. I DID NOT expect to log on, let alone WRITE tonight, but look! Now I have. :)
So where have I been this past year? More for easing my own conscience than to share with my 1 follower (Cousin Stacey!!!!), let's recap. In June of 2013, very shortly after my lovely daughter turned 1, I had some 'suspicions', did some 'investigating', and... Surprise! I was pregnant again. I was just getting ready to go back to work, life was finally starting to fall back into a normal rhythm, and it was the very last thing on my list of things I planned for my future. At first I think I was in that state of denial where you just blindly accept what is handed to you because you've gotten so used to life taking you for a ride that you just skip the whole disbelief phase and take it as it comes, but it hasn't truly sunk in. After a few weeks, I will admit, I was a bit angry. I finally had a sense of control again, felt confident about moving forward, and then all the craziness from the passed year just promised to rise up all over again. After that phase subsided and I realized what a gift I had been given yet again, I tightened my belt (but not too tightly), took my pregnancy books from the shelf, and let it all come.
I began working again and had that moment where I had to tell my boss that I'd be taking ANOTHER maternity leave, and oddly, she laughed and said "I wondered when you'd be telling me this." (Huh????) After I got back into the routine of work, in retrospect, that seven/eight months went by FAST. I remember going through days at work thinking 'I cannot wait until this is over' and then when it was over, I was saying 'Wow, it's already over.' I spent a lot of time at home sleeping while I still could, trying to get a 1 year old into a routine (a word that exists in my vocabulary, but not in my reality) trying to keep my house clean enough to keep my husband from saying "What did you DO all day?" and doing all this while dealing with morning sickness, or as I learned thanks to Vicki Iovine is technically called 'progesterone poisoning'. So needless to say, I did not have a lot of time, energy or mentality to dedicate to blogging.
One month ago (TODAY!) my son was born. And I will declare to the whole world with modesty immodestly strewn aside that he is the absolute most perfect little baby in the whole wide world. :) I won't sit and bore you with all the big and small reasons why he is so perfect, but the thing that has blown me away is that my greatest fear, which was "HOW in the world am I going to handle a newborn baby AND my wild, rambunctious nearly two-year-old?" has not turned out to be so rendering after all! I'm not tired, I'm getting all the laundry done, and everyone is happy! I don't feel that helpless, hopeless, drowning in a whirlpool of unfinished chores and pressing needs being unmet feeling that I felt with my first baby. Maybe it's just because I was inexperienced the first time around, and going through that experience primed me for adding another one. Whatever it is, I can honestly say to myself that I feel like I can do this. I can take care of two children, keep my husband happy and my ferret's cage clean. I might even be able to do some things for myself. I am also happy to report that my reading expedition that I began when my daughter was two months old hasn't been compromised or put on pause for anything. Maybe that's a road I've been dawdling down a little too much, but that's a topic for another day. But what I AM saying tonight is that, HOPEFULLY, my writing absence has come to an end. I'm gonna find that list of topics to cover that I made those 13 months ago and see if I can do some new things with it. Something more than just Sandwiches and Baseball. :)
