I am so Lucky
I was really getting behind in my work and the boys weren’t napping very well so I finally caved and hired a nanny. All I can say is HALLELUJAH! I am a fool for not doing it sooner. I didn’t want to because we really don’t have the money and because I work from home to be with my kids, but man, the help is fab.u.lous!
T is a mom of 4, step-mom of 2, a Certified Nursing Assistant and former daycare provider. Perfect, right? And the boys LOVE her. She is coming 15 hours a week and this week I found myself so much happier because I had time to do the things that needed to be done. We will probably take Calista out of school for the summer and have her stay with T and the boys — since I’m paying T to be here anyhow, might as well put the money we spend on daycare to her, instead of paying twice.
I don’t know if it has to do with T or what, but the boys have also started sleeping at night! Yes! Ace has woken up just ONE time a night for the past 3 or 4 nights, and Nate is down to 2. They had been waking anywhere from 2 to 4 times each per night prior to this week. Sweet relief!
I ended up hiring T after I sent a desperate message to my HOA BOD (that’s homeowners association board of directors) saying I might have to resign if I couldn’t get my crap together and get a nanny. T happens to be the BOD Secretary and lives just one street away from me… she asked what I was looking for as she thought she might “know someone” and after I gave her the details, she offered to help me out. We gave it a try and she’s great!
As for the boys, they are 7 months old and so much fun! Nate is so giggly it’s hilarious — and he’s a flirt to boot! He just loves people and attention. He’s sitting up on his own pretty well and rolls around to get where he wants to be. He’s also a bouncy boy and loves to jump any time his feet touch a firm surface. Ace just wants to be m-o-b-i-l-e and he is getting better at it! He’s been “crawling” on his back for a while, and now he does it on his tummy, but he goes backwards. He is so determined to crawl that I’m willing to bet he’s crawling forward in some fashion by the end of the month, the little bugger. He’s also discovered his feet and likes to grab them, and he figured out how to blow raspberries — just as I gave him a mouthful of squash. Yummy.
I asked Skip today if he ever just thinks to himself, “TWO babies!” and he said yes, he had just been thinking about that recently. I think about it most nights, when I check on them after they’ve gone to sleep. As I fix their covers and make sure they are comfortable, I look back and forth between the two and just can’t believe I have two babies! I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to be so fortunate as to have a wonderful husband who is a great dad, a smart, active little girl and not one but two sweet baby boys. Two babies. I think about how I feared we’d never have another baby and then I see those two and it’s just an incredible feeling. They make me so happy I just can’t describe it. It’s hard to imagine a time without them, but it’s also hard to forget what we went through to have them.
I am just so lucky. That’s all there is to it. :)
I’m also kind, apparently, as my friend Kathy at Three of a Kind, Working on a Full House has bestowed upon me the Kind Blogger Award. If you haven’t read Kathy’s blog or know her story, let’s just say that she has been through hell and through it all has been full of nothing but love and grace. Kathy and I met online back in early 2003, when we were both pregnant with our first children — me with Calista and she with Sean. We’ve posted together on and off for years on different message boards.
Kathy and her husband, Bob, starting trying for their second around the same time we did. They succeeded twice, only to lose both babies early on. Then they moved on to IVF and then FET, and finally got pregnant with their daughter. Sadly, Molly Marie had a congenital heart defect and had to be delivered early. She lived for a little less than 15 minutes before she went on to heaven.
Kathy has shared her experiences through her blog — the joy, the fear, the frustration and the heartache. She has shared the most beautiful pictures of Molly’s birthday as well as stories of her birth, her passing, her service and how Molly has taught her so much in so little time.
Kathy is an amazing woman. My heart breaks for her and her family to have suffered such a devastating loss. No one should ever have to outlive their child. It’s so unfair.
My point is/was, somehow, in her time of grief, Kathy finds it within herself to think of and reach out to others, and so she gave me the Kind Blogger Award. And now it’s my job to pass it on.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, as I don’t read a lot of blogs, but I finally decided who I wanted to give it to, even though she doesn’t know me. Her name is Angie and she, like Kathy, recently lost a daughter. Her blog is called Bring the Rain and she is such an incredible writer that you find yourself reading page after page, taking it all in.
The most interesting thing is that I am hardly religious — I generally refer to myself as Agnostic — and I usually steer away from those who write/talk about God a lot. Angie, however, brings God into her writing as she does her life. She finds Him in everything around her and her writing is so beautiful, her emotions are so raw, and her faith is so strong that no matter your religious views, you just can’t turn away from her words. She is incredible, as is her — and her daughter Audrey’s — story.
With that said, I bestow upon Angie the Kind Blogger Award and I hope that she will pass it on to another deserving blogger. Thank you, Angie, for sharing your life with those of us who read Bring the Rain.
I am so lucky… and I wish that instead of bestowing little graphics as awards I could pass on some of my good fortune to others who are so deserving. To anyone out there who is suffering from infertility, pregnancy/child loss, or any other situation that causes you pain, I am thinking of you and hope that some how, some way, I can pass a little hope, love and luck your way.
