15 truths about my parenting. She did 25, but I’m not sure I have that many.

1)I loved parenting from the opposite side of the world from my husband. It meant I didn’t have to justify any of my decisions. I missed him dearly, but I loved calling the shots (especially on the lack of shots!).

2) I’m a yeller. A lot. Around Devon, at Devon, in reaction to her. I don’t like it, but I have trouble keeping my cool.

3) I swear. A LOT. Occasionally at Devon, and then hate myself for it. It usually makes me cry.

4) We have the TV on pretty much constantly when we’re home. We’re not usually watching, but I need the noise.

5) I have tried to spank. I can’t. I have popped her diaper, but I cannot make myself hit her hard enough for it to matter. She laughs, because she thinks the noise is funny. I then get more frustrated at myself, and her. It leads to more yelling.

6) I don’t want to vaccinate. I don’t want to circumcise. I don’t want certain crap in our house. I want to let my children nurse as long as they want to.
But I don’t parent by myself, and I make concessions. I then resent my husband sometimes.

7) my husband makes it look easy. It drives me crazy.

8) I HATE being pregnant. Every part of it. I hated our birth. I love my daughter, and want as many kids as my husband and body will allow, but if I could grow them in a test tube I totally would.

9) I hated breastfeeding. I loved the snuggles, I loved having the calming effect and the quiet time, but I hated the actual process. The lack of personal space made me crazy. However, I will breastfeed every child I can for as long as I can, because it’s the best thing I can do for them.

10) I have, and would again, breastfeed a child that is not my own. I never will without a parents express knowledge, but I would wet nurse in a heartbeat.

11) I hate being a single income home, but I wouldn’t make enough to make daycare a smart choice. I would love the break.

12) I hope Devon is our only girl. I don’t think I can handle more than one.

13) I spent way too much time plugged in. Sometimes even at the dinner table.

14) I am jealous of moms I know who saw the world and did great things before having kids.

15) my daughter is amazing. I’m pretty sure this is in spite of my parenting, not because of it.

Now, before anyone goes all (if anyone even reads this anymore!! lol. Mostly because I never post.. things are just to crazy) super opinionated one way or the other, I would like to point out that this blog mistress, or should I say, Madam, as she recently married the man of her dreams, is a dear friend of mine. I know that she has not come to her decisions lightly, nor by herself, because she is an intelligent, thoughtful, and well-rounded woman of the world, and not someone who has defaulted to this lifestyle because she is lazy or “scared of what lies beyond the kitchen sink”.

That all being said, the views that we have are vastly different. I am a stay at home mom, who is in school either full-time or part-time at any given time through the year, married to an Army Officer. We have a 15 month year old toddler who is the light of my life, and I spend all day, every day, exploring the world with her. She is my favorite travel companion, my road dog in all car trips, and my tester for new cloth diapers, baby carriers, and baby yoga positions.
And I can’t wait for the day I take her to daycare and go to work.
Like KD, I joined the Marine Corps. I was 19 years old, sending my life down the hole, and I saw the sign. Mostly the sign that said “We’ll Miss You Matt!” as one of my BEST friends prepared to leave for Iraq. I was devastated that someone who meant so much to so many was going to have to go so far away. Joining the Marine Corps was twofold for me, and both for selfish reasons. One, I could put a dead stop to my trail of self-destruction, and two, once I made it through training I could keep more people like Matt at home and take their place in deployment. I went to the recruiting office to pick up stickers for Matt’s going away party, and signed a contract. I aced my asvab and the other recruiters in the office tried to convince me that being small and apparently “incredibly intelligent” meant that the Marine Corps was not the place. Also, I hated to run. However, I only wanted the best, and that was clearly the USMC, especially when they would ask why I wanted to enlist and I said “Because I want to kill people!” Really because my apartment lease was up, living with my mom was damaging our relationship, and I was out of options. I begged to leave immediately, and while that originally wasn’t the plan, a slot opened up a month after I signed my contract and I begged for it. My recruiter fudged my PT test, and I left. When I got there, I managed to pass the incoming PT test by the skin of my teeth, and made it into recruit training. It was no surprise when a week before graduation (so 12 weeks later) my body gave out on me. Literally. I fell and could not get up. I had been on “light duty” off and on since the range, but was going to make it. Or so I thought. The doctors told me otherwise, and I was dropped to FRP (medical platoon) and told to get better. I never did. I just broke more and more. Being in FRP made me want to throw up, and I did more than once. I missed my platoon, I wanted to leave Parris Island, and I had almost gotten away with my genius plan with no one being the wiser. So many of the girls in FRP were crybabies who had gotten to PI and wanted to go home, and I hated all of them for it. I was SO CLOSE. In April, actually the same week Matt returned from Iraq, they medically retired me and sent me home, under instruction to never again darken the doors of the in-processing building.
I left with more money than I had ever seen in my life in my bank account (Amazing how much money you have when you never have to spend any), and when I had almost run through that with my crazy spending spree and buying a car, my severance showed up. That was even more than before. I also ended up with 100% GI Bill coverage. I worked that summer off and on, spending the weekends driving to NYC to visit the man who would later become my husband. I didn’t work a lot, but I had the money to do what I wanted and didn’t need to work. I moved to NYC in December, had a job lined up before I got there, and worked enough to be able to afford my odds and ends and buy groceries, etc, occasionally, but that was about it. I paid for about a third of our wedding that way, and kept that job until we moved. The plan had always been that once I got my degree we would split everything based on percentage of total income.
I had started looking for a job in CO, but by the time we got there we knew I was pregnant, and I had sold my car so that we didn’t have to take two across the country. We were a one car household and I walked to school everyday my entire pregnancy. Me getting a job would have meant getting another car, so I didn’t. Then when she was born, Tim deployed. I was still in school for part of it, so I used my GI bill allowance to pay for a sitter, and he gave us money for bills and groceries. I paid for everything else- all of our travels, etc. There was no sense in me getting a job now, because we wouldn’t make any money after paying for daycare, and we’d still have to pay taxes on it.
When we found out we were coming to VA, I bought a car with my savings to have once we were back on the east coast. T helped me with the down payment a little, but by choice not by force. Honestly, it upset me. I had more than enough money to do it myself, and while he was just trying to help and be “husbandly” I felt like it demeaned what little independence I had left. I started looking for a job where I could take Devon with me, but no one wanted a nanny for only 4 months, especially that had to bring a toddler with her. I even looked into evening retail jobs, but between T’s class schedule and my own, it just wasn’t feasible. However, this semester I was only taking 9 credits instead of 12, so there was no GI Bill. T has paid for everything. He puts gas in my car so I can drive the 30-60 miles each way for a babywearing group I’m helping start, so that I can get to school, and most recently he has helped pay for a class I’m taking to get certified for babywearing because a check I’m owed hadn’t arrived in time. He will get the money for the class back, but everything else, I wouldn’t be able to afford without him. When I want new things, I sell other things, but this time I came up short. We also sold his laptop from Deployment and bought me a smaller one (among other things) with the money, but he uses it whenever he wants, and also has the desktop, so I don’t feel as guilty about that.
To circle back to the original blog, KD has made a conscious decision  to live that way, but some of us can’t. One of the women at my class this weekend went as far as to say that attachment parenting brings validation and that it fills the empty space that “some people get” when they no longer work outside the home. A few of the other women in the class heartily agreed, but I don’t get it. I want to work- I want the satisfaction that my husband and I are equals and that I have contributed something other than dinner when he gets home and childcare. He always joked that if I was ever going to be a homemaker, that house better be spotless. Let me assure you, it’s not, but some of that is beyond my control as we are in temporary housing.
I am working to have my undergrad, masters, and hopefully some day a PH.D. I originally wanted to be a sex therapist, but I vary by day as to whether I will do that or work with PTSD patients. I also want to open a natural parenting store. I like certain things and a certain lifestyle, but I don’t want to leave it up to my husband to provide everything for me. Like KD, I want to be a great wife and mom, but not at the cost of what I feel is my independence and individuality. I love my daughter, and personally I want a small army, although this is also a point of discussion in our house that T does not want more children than we can afford. The certification I am in the middle of getting will allow me to teach babywearing for Doctors offices, special needs patients, one on one consultations with couples, etc, but I don’t want that as a sole income. It is more of an interest, as babywearing has mad a huge impact in our lives and I want to share it with those who can use it as a valuable tool not only in lifestyle but to help with child bonding in cases of adoption/foster parenting.
I have no shortage of respect for women (or men!) who choose to stay at home and keep tabs on all the responsibilities therein, but I want something different for me. I know the benefits of staying home for both the household and the child/children, but this is just a stepping stone for me, not a stopping place.

~Another is the same that plagues a lot of breastfeeding moms come this point.. that dang weight chart. Devon is somewhere between the 25th and 40th percentile (I’m leaving that gap so big because we don’t have an exact scale. We do the whole ‘weigh mom.. alright weigh naked baby with mom’ thing, and it’s not an exact science) and where we live, they can be pretty anal about that kind of thing. She’s really LONG, and she still has the chunky thing going on, just not nearly to the extent that other babies do. She’s helped a lot by the “shaniqua booty” (as we call it) the cloth diaper provides her. But really, she’s long and skinny. Neither her dad nor I have any idea how that happened. My money is on my Pa, which is also where she gets her huge crystal blue eyes. I’m just worried that as time goes on, she’ll be like I was and drop down to the 3rd-5th percentile. And I was a formula kid, so figure that out. It’s pretty much that I just don’t want to hear it, but as long as she’s eating as much as she wants, as often as she wants, and we’ve started dabbling in solid food, she’s ok, right?

~The last one is one I have mixed opinions on. She strongly dislikes falling to sleep without nursing. We’ve had a few bright days of putting her in her crib after she’s dozed off while eating, and even though she’s woken up, she just talks herself back to sleep. She’ll fall asleep when mom watches her with a bottle and stay asleep, but if there’s no milk left she just likes something to slurp on, like her water cup, til she falls back to sleep. Last night for example she woke up like 3 times before we went up stairs to bed (I forgot the baby monitor, so if she falls asleep while I’m still downstairs, I let her sleep where she is until I head upstairs) and ate a little and fell back asleep. When I took her upstairs and put her in her crib, she screamed. Not the “I hurt” or “I’m hungry” or even “I’m bored” cry, but the heart wrenching “mommy don’t leave me” cry. I rocked her, I put her back in her crib and patted her back, and even just let her fuss for a few minutes. No avail. I ended up just bringing her into my bed and letting her nurse, which after about 45 minutes of going strong, I fell asleep. I keep reading that by this point they should be able to sooth themselves back to sleep, and sometimes she does, but most nights she just.. won’t.
The only other thing that helps is the carseat. Late at night if we’re driving back from somewhere, and she’s already done her bed time type feeding, she’ll fall asleep in the carseat and stay that way. Those nights I usually leave her in it, which for better or worse, works really well for us.

I’m just constantly worried I’m doing something wrong.

We’re on our last leg of the deployment, thank God. I’ve about lost it. I can’t believe she’s gotten so big and is doing so many awesome things by herself. She is now pulling herself up, crawling, and eating a handful of “big girl foods”, and apparently has a taste for organic, non microwaved food. She turned her nose up at my short cut attempt for microwave steaming. I’m proud to be raising a food snob
I’m trying classes again.. taking four this semester- two online and two at night in hopes that TJ and DC will get daddy daughter time. We still don’t know where we’re going to be living yet, but we know we’ll head to VA mid july for cary and chrissies wedding (SOO excited!!!) and then just stay on the east coast until he has to report on the 7th. We’re both pretty excited to get on with this new part of our lives, even if it means selling our first house already. We hardly even got to enjoy that milestone because it was under various bits of construction most of the time T was here! (Or is that part of true homeownership?) We were hoping to know by now where we are going after his schooling in VA, but no such luck, so I’m just taking more classes at UC. I’ll probably have to pick up a second major to meet the credit requirement for another school, but whatever. I’m looking at Comm.
DC and I went to FL for a week, including 4 days with family in FTL and 4 days exploring Miami with Kelly. She adored it, as did I.

Loving the sands of south beach!

We got to try out pools, wander the beach, go to a museum (I highly recommend the WEAM for anyone who visits SB!) Of course, I also did some shopping on the strip, and Kelly tested out the club scene. Apparently it was pretty awesome. Maybe next time It was nice to just be on vacation. We did a lot of sleeping and a lot of exploring, which was good for all of us. It got a little cold the last two days, and definitely windy, but cold on the beach still beats the pants off of cold anywhere else!
I think we’re going to stay on the east coast until the middle of the month, putting me back just in time for class and giving me some time to get the house ready for hubs to come home. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it

We have done a TON of traveling since tim left, and intend to do more around the holiday season. She is an awesome traveler, she just needs a LOT of sleep to recover afterward. Which is fine, sometimes I do too.

Recently I’ve discovered how easy it is to give something up when you know it’s hurting someone you love as much as a parent loves their child. When I was pregnant, the foods that upset Devon (affectionately referred to at the time as shemonster )upset me, therefore food was never a problem. However, now, a lot of the foods that I LOVE upset Devon. We went dairy free first, and while it made a vast improvement, my little panda still has some serious tummy issues. At first I thought it was peanut butter, but now that I’m starting to do the math, it looks like it’s gluten. Meaning that tonight an awesome friend who’s been visiting that happens to have a mom with celiacs helped me clean out my fridge, pantry, and freezer to rid myself of all the things that would make a sad panda. I was super sad, let me tell you, watching my cereal, granola, waffle fries, even possibly ketchup (research depending) bite the dust, but that face and that horribly pitiful little cry she makes when her stomach is upset tears me up inside. It’s awful knowing that something you’ve done makes someone you love SO much hurt so badly, and there is nothing they can do about it!
We’re also in the process of slowly redecorating the house to make it easier to sell. Just a few simple things, mostly curtains, slipcovers, and paint, but it’s still an adventure. She loves to go with me and explore places, so taking her into new stores and letting her feel the different textures has been an awesome experience.
Alright, its almost 11 and I have to be up in five hours to take Jessi to the airport, but that’s about whats up. Tim is doing well, bored out of his mind, and sending Devon and I flowers

She’s getting to be such a big girl though! Since we got to VA she’s been sleeping through the night, and she spent saturday night in her pack n play (not last night because she was spitting up a ton again right before bed) and is currently asleep in her own crib IN HER OWN ROOM. I keep glaring at the baby monitor, waiting for it to light up, but it hasn’t. She finally made her way comfortably into 0-3 (yes, my daughter wore newborn sizes until she was like 7 weeks old), probably helped by the “Shaniqua booty” of the cloth diapers, but also because last week at her 2 month check up she was a WHOPPING 10 lbs, 14.6 oz and 23 inches long! Grow baby grow (as Jessi says!)! She and her dad skype and she “talks” his ear off and is incredibly responsive to his facial expressions. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, and since we’re able to skype at least 5 nights a week, I’m very optimistic about her being receptive to him when he gets back. She was trying to reach for him again tonight. She was mad at me because I was trying to make her burp, and she had her arms wide open and was all but launching herself at the computer screen.

Our dog bit a kid in the face last week. The bite wasn’t bad at all, and the kid was trying to play with him again like 20 minutes later, but I am currently in the process of attempting to re-home him. If I can’t find him a rescue, I’m just going to take him to the shelter and say I found him so that they don’t kill him. I swore up and down when we got him that if he EVER hurt a child, he was going to be ousted. I’m now terrified to have him around Devon and make him go outside most of the day. I just have her on the floor or in the swing and out of arms reach so much now that it makes me nervous to have him inside and between the two of us. Hopefully he can find a home with adults or older children and will be very happy there There’s just something about the size of kids like 1-5 that scares him and he gets loud and defensive.
Alright, time to go fold the laundry that I’ve been putting off folding.. since tim left? I generally just get dressed out of the laundry basket, but I’d really like to stop living in a disaster zone, so here goes.

So.. I’m not dead. Life has just been CRAZY. So almost two weeks ago, I snuck off to VA to surprise one of my best friends at a cookout, and then spent a long weekend with my friends both of our families. I was supposed to come home monday night. I didn’t want to come home, but got packed, got to the airport with mom, and found out my ride wasn’t going to be able to get me so I was going to have to haul a second carseat all the way across the country and try to catch an airport cab at 1030 at night, but still rolled with it. Got to the counter and got a call from BMW saying our car was going to take longer than they thought so it wouldn’t be ready til thursday at the earliest. At this point I was right on the borderline of missing my flight, so I opted to miss it, and then ended up buying a new ticket because it was cheaper than messing with my old one. Stayed til wednesday afternoon, got to the airport at what I thought was 90 minutes before my flight and was super proud of myself, only to find out that it was 30 minutes before my flight, and Delta had taken the liberty of giving my seat away. Jessi was amazing and came to get us because my stepdad was already almost to hampton. Looked at tickets for thurs-sunday only to find that they were ridiculously expensive, so I got one today. Made it. Made it home, back to my dog drama (It would take me too long to type it all out, but basically our dog sitter decided that instead of taking our dog back to her apt like she had offered and thus we planned for, she left him tied up in our backyard for almost two weeks. Thank God for Matt and Ashley coming to check on him.) and my angry kitty, both of whom are inside, sleeping within ten feet of me. Learned that my daughter is a epic road dog. She flies better than most children under the age of ten and even better than some adults I know. She doesn’t mind big groups, lots of driving, or sleeping in strange places. My little girl is a champ Got all kinds of strange looks slinging her through the airports, but it was a total lifesaver.
I realized while being home how lonely I am in Colo Springs, and how overwhelmed. Discussed moving back home with Tim, and he did the number crunching and decided it wasn’t worth it and offered to help me go on more vacations home/fun trips to make up for it. I’ve also decided to drop my classes. Taking 18 upper level credits while having a newborn while having a husband deployed while living on the other side of the country from close friends and family while training for a marathon.. while theoretically doable, was quite possibly going to kill me, judging by the amount of sleeping I did the whole time I was home. I averaged 12-14 hours a day. Mind you, my friends out here are awesome, but they all have their own offspring/deployed husbands/far away from family stuff going on, and while we can all lean on each other, if we don’t each find our own brick wall, we’re all going to fall down at the same time. So since most of the rest is non-negotiable, my classes (and sadly my stipend No more shopping trips for a bit) got the boot.
ugh.. time for sleeps before I spend all of tomorrow trying to get our house/yard/dog back in order. Night yall.