Oh, hi there. There is so much to write about and so little time. I hate being busy! I need to get things off of my chest and feel like I have very little avenue to do so. LeSigh I know. Anyhoo, here are at least a few of the things that are on my mind:

Can you even believe it is Easter already? I have not one thing for my baskets. Nor do I have any sort of plan to color eggs and do Easter stuff. Why?
I have been working Saturdays, and all day during the week facilitating training classes and all kinds of crap. It is fine and I don’t mind, but I am tired. Really tired. And my voice is tired from all of the talking.
On top of it, the baby has a double ear infection and has been one big ball of miserable. Until yesterday, she had not slept a full night for 4 nights in a row. Couple that all with my busy work schedule and boy have I not been happy. At all.
I happen to send all of my work emails in Comic Sans, so STFU, Tess.
We went to the water park and had an amazing time. Especially the baby who jumped in a jolly jumper in the baby pool for hours on end.

She also turned 8 months old, my funny little ham. (also note the clearance bedding Hub got her last year. I love love love it.)

Happy Easter to you all!!

We are back from 2 days at the water park. Great fun! I can't
believe how great all 3 children behaved. Now, Hannah is scooting
backwards on the floor while I take a rest. Happy Weekend!

Hub’s not working much. And on the money side, it sucks—a lot. But in the sense of housework, and dinner, and shopping and other miscellany—it’s great. As we speak, he is at Chez Target, picking up Goodnights for Bud and a new bathing suit for Lucy to take on our trip this weekend. Am I concerned about what the bathing suit will look like? Yes. Will it be better than going out on my lunch break, losing my (already pretty crappy) parking spot and walking 2 miles in the bitter cold? Hell yes.

And when I get home tonight, he’ll have got the kids from school, and dinner will be started, if not already ready. If there was any laundry, it will be folded and ready for me to put away. Dishes will be done. It’s grand.

Having him home during the week makes me feel less guilty about not getting things done over the weekend too. Which isn’t to say that I’m taking advantage of him and being lazy, but I am enjoying more time with the kids without worrying that if I don’t clean, we’ll have a total shit storm on our hands.

We have had 2 really nice weekends in a row. Last Sunday, we took a family trip to Target, had lunch there, and went on a long walk on the trails at our favorite park. It was muddy, and the creek had washed away a large portion of the trail we were on. Bud may have come home sans pants and none of us had shoes. We had a really good time though; especially the baby who I’m sure felt like she was chasing the big kids down the paths as she rode in her buggy.

This past Saturday, Hub’s mom came over for dinner, and we cooked on the grill for the first time this year—even though it was colder than it has been recently. Hub and Bud got a lot of work done outside, including pulling out our ugly ugly bushes and framing in our walkway so it can be cemented. After dinner we started watching home movies which, aside from a minor breakdown on Lucy’s part—because, where was she?????, was a really good time. I forgot how little the kids were. And I mean, God, they are still so little, but it seems so long ago. Bud on Christmas morning at age 2 saying “Mommy, open! Mommy open!” Lucy and blankie when she was 16-months old. Even Christmas of 2007, before I grew her bangs out, Lucy seemed so small. And Hub and I were so young……these are the days of our lives, or something, I suppose.

Anyway, we were up until close to 1am watching them and when I tried to put Liv down, she outright refused. She slept in her swing 4 nights last week because she was so congested, and now, seems to think that she is never sleeping in there again. Um…oh hell no. We finally got her to sleep after 2am sometime and Hub stayed in the living room with her because I had not slept in bed all week. Last night, more of the same, though earlier. Finally, I put her down on her belly, and she stayed down until about 12:30. At least it’s something, right?

The girl is stubborn in every aspect of her life. She wants to stand. Not sit, not lie on the floor (because when she tries to crawl, she just goes backwards), stand. And she stiffens herself and throws herself backwards until she gets her way. She hit her head twice yesterday pulling this crap. My back is sore from holding her little hands while she stood, practically the entire time we were at my uncle’s yesterday.

She’s something else for sure. And someday she’ll be another one of our babies long ago, making eyes at the video camera.

If I were to have written anything over the past week or so, it would have read something to the effect of ‘sick, sick, sick, everyone is sick, nobody is sleeping, we are all sick, I have an effing headache again, sick.’

Oh, and ‘sick’.

I’m not getting a lot of sleep and I have been in a mood. The baby in her stuffy sickness is trying my patience. We have spent the last 2 nights in the swing and on the couch, (I’ll let you decide who slept where) and because I haven’t got decent sleep, I am still feeling the effects of a migraine that started Sunday night. Plus I have my period. And I feel like my tampon is in crooked right now. (TMI? I DON’T CARE!)

Yes, I’m a peach. So lets do some comparison photos, yes? Haven’t done that in a while! Here are all 3 kids, at around 7 months of age. Isn’t it funny how much the same, but also how completely different they all look?

Liv:

Lucy:

Bud

I had a really good weekend. Hub let me sleep in on Saturday—though the baby who loves to scream at the top of her lungs while she plays had different ideas–and I woke up to donuts and coffee around 9am. The coffee was wonderful and I told Hub that he should make it every day if it would turn out that good. I found out later that he purchased the already made coffee from Tim Horton’s while he was out, and just emptied the cups in to our carafe to keep it warm. It was delicious though. We were around and doing work before 11; cleaning out the basement to make room for what is in the attic, so we can tear the attic apart to turn it in to bedrooms.

Anyway, I was in my glory because I just moved around clothes, and sorted them by size in to bins, and got out what I have for the summer since it will be warmer VERY SOON! While I don’t have much for the bigger kids, I have more than enough for the baby. I think she could go the entire summer without wearing the same thing twice. Someone went a little bit crazy in the baby clothes department when her 1st baby girl was born. I’m just sayin’. Anyway, the summer clothes are on deck, and I have 0-3 and 3-6 clothes packed up and a box started to throw the 6-9’s in as she is outgrowing them. Which is happening fast, sad to say. In fact, now that I think about it, all of Lucy’s old clothes are 9-12 and 12-months because she was a teeny tiny peanut. Liv—not so much. Oh well, I suppose we’ll just have to see. It’s a crapload of clothes.

Yesterday, we started hauling stuff down from the attic. We have more movie posters and standees from our years of working at Blockbuster than you could ever imagine. I mean, seriously, well over 200 posters. We used them as wallpaper in our very 1st apartment. Good times. So anyway, we went through a lot of those, and I worked some more in the basement, and I’m sure there was some child-rearing mixed in as well.

I think though, that the highlight of my weekend was an old friend finding me on Facebook. You may have heard me talk about my friend M here before, she who has been my BFF since we were 11. Well before it was Saly and M, it was Saly, M and C. And sadly C moved away when we were Freshmen in high school. This was the time when there was no such thing as the internet (GASP!) (I mean, there was an internet, but nobody had it) and it was hard to keep long distance friends. Anyway, hard as we tried, we just lost touch. Imagine my surprise when she friended me though. It really made my weekend.

And today, I am at work, which I am not really feeling, but at least I can hold on to my 2 days of vacation scheduled for the end of the month. Whatever it takes to get me through, right??

I leave you with Liv’s 1st pancake—about 3 weeks ago:

I think the thyroid is kind of amazing, in that it is basically responsible for everything that occurs in your body—you know, directly, indirectly, whatevs. What sucks though is that mine does not work properly—and when things are off, things get pretty screwed up for me.

I remember vividly, the beginning of my quest. The year 1999, I started feeling weird. Gained like, 60lbs in a very short time frame. I felt crappy, tired and like I was constantly losing my mind. I saw my primary doctor all the time who chalked the way I was feeling to changes in my eating habits, since I had moved out of my parents home, working 3 jobs and going to school, and general stress. For 2 years I saw him probably on a monthly basis. For 2 years, I had no answers.

I was uneducated, you know. And young. I believed my doctor. Finally, after months of feeling a weird sort of pressure in my neck, and having been told I had ear infections, swollen glands, sinus issues and so on, my doctor agreed to test my thyroid. He did it begrudgingly, as if to shut me up, and ordered a gamut of blood work along with an ultrasound of my neck.

I waited for a week before I finally got a call from some tech at the doctor’s office who simply said “You have a goiter. We can see you in about 6 weeks if you want to talk further about it.”

A goiter sounds mortifying, doesn’t it? I remember learning in elementary science about them; how they were common somewhere due to lack of iodine. The photos of women with bulbous necks. I was terrified, to say the least.

Finally, I did some research. Relied on a friend’s mom in the medical field to find a good endocrinologist, and there began a journey of testing different levels of Synthroid and monthly blood work.

This was 2002. I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder, Hashimoto’s Disease. I lost about 45lbs very quickly. I was managing this condition and I felt good.

I had heard of risks to pregnancy with this condition, and thankfully, never experienced any of them. I had heard that TSH levels can spike after delivery, but for the most part, mine remained constant. Then again, with both Bud and Lucy I had an amazing endocrinologist who monitored my levels monthly, and increased my dose every couple of months to keep me level and then gradually decreased it after birth. Sadly, this endocrinologist moved and the one I have now, is usually too busy to even listen to me. My dose wasn’t changed at all during my pregnancy, and though my blood work continued to show my TSH levels at an even 4, I was starting to feel weird.

You know, with all the stress of a new baby, and going back to work, and managing childcare, I hadn’t really paid attention to the last time I had blood work done. I haven’t really paid any attention to myself since Liv was born. I’ve noticed some weight gain, and mood swings, and being a little bit scatterbrained, but chalked it up to all of the above. A few weeks ago I noticed that I was losing a lot of hair. Hub has had to ask me several times to do things that normally would be non-issues. He has even asked me about checking my levels, because he knows the signs. I have been borderline out of control; feeling hazy and exhausted most of the time.

I finally had my blood drawn on Tuesday, and the results were in yesterday. My TSH levels were up to 14. I guess the high range of normal is 5, but they should really be between 0 and 3? I don’t really know. But I guess it’s no wonder I have been feeling wonky. They increased my dose a bit, and we’ll see what we see, I suppose. It takes about 3 weeks to make any sort of difference, but I’m hoping to be back on the right path to feeling normal and well. To losing some of this baby weight.

I still need to find a new endocrinologist, but that will have to wait for another day.

Oh how neglectful I have been of my poor blog! It’s not for lack of having things to write about either, I’ve just been ridiculously busy with this work transition and then when I get home, I have no desire to go down to the cold cold basement……so, I’ve been reading, always reading, and sending a few tweets by phone, but other than that, I guess I’ve been pretty much MIA.

So yeah, work is in-freaking-sane, but I can’t really discuss any of that, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I’m ok though, we’re ok. But crap! It’s a lot.

Somehow, Liv turned 7-months-old on Sunday. I am not entirely sure where the time goes. I feel like we are trapped in a vortex or something. I mean, 7 months. Closer to being a year old than she is to her actual birth. Closer to becoming, well, not a baby. We moved her in to her crib (and out of our bedroom) last week, and while it’s the sort of thing you think would get easier with the third child, it was harder than I thought it would be to not sleep on her bedroom floor. I like being able to hear her breathe. I like reaching over and placing my hand on her belly, feeling it rise and fall. I’m getting used to checking her when I make my usual rounds of the big kids. But still…it’s hard.

And speaking of getting older, we picked up Bud’s kindergarten registration crap yesterday; oodles of paperwork and documentation (and maybe fingerprints and drops of blood……) and it kind of hit me……I am going to have a school-aged child. In September, my baby will be riding the bus, and spending every day from 9:30-3:30 at school. He felt like such a big kid, going in to the school with Hub to pick everything up. He’s excited about kindergarten. I am not so much.

Thankfully, Lucy is still pretty much Lucy. No major milestones, no changes. She’s 3 ½ and I struggle to remember that sometimes; Hub and I both do—holding her to the same standards we do Bud. But she’s still just little (and also hell on wheels). We were surprised at her parent/teacher conference last week to hear just how well behaved and controlled she is at school; how smart she is. This is not the case at home. And she will refuse to recite letters or try and draw them. (she will however sing the national anthem on cue, which is adorable) But at school, she is good. She is where she should be. Before we know it though, we’ll put her on the bus too and only have Liv’s babyhood (or lack thereof) to cling to.

I told Hub the other day that the realistic part of me; the huge brunt of my being, is totally OK with being done having kids. I am done with the rigmarole of all of it—feedings, changings, the countless sleepless nights—seriously, so over that. The sentimental part though……that part of me just can not wrap her head around never snuffling her own baby’s neck again, never feeling the weight of her sleeping newborn on her chest again. Never feeling a baby kicking her in the ribs. Hub smiled and patted my shoulder and said, “Well, we can hold out hope for an accident……”.

Indeed.

I just can’t believe how fast the time goes. If anyone has any tricks to get it to stop, please, let me know.

• Ok, well, first of all, don’t screw up the crust like I did. The recipe calls for 2 cups of “sandwich cookie crumbs” 1/4 cup of crushed peanuts and 2 TBS of butter. I used about 2.5 cups of chocolate graham cracker crumbs and ½ stick of melted butter and the crust was still ridiculously dry and crumbly. Fool around with it until you get it to the right consistency. You’re smart people. (I did not add the peanuts to the crust, nor did I garnish with peanuts, because that is not my thing.)
• When it says chill for 4-6 hours, they mean it. We ate some of this after dinner on Sunday after it had chilled for maybe, 3 hours. We were both kind of like, “meh…it’s ok”. But on Monday, after it had been in the fridge all night, it was good.
• Don’t send a huge slab of it over to your BIL’s house so that it is out of your sight. You will regret it and contemplate driving over and stealing it from his fridge.
• Buy some extra heavy cream. You can use it in your coffee later. Yum.

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2 cups sandwich cookie crumbs
2 TBS melted butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup crushed peanuts, divided
2 cups heavy cream, divided
2 cups peanut butter
2 8oz bricks cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
2 TBS Vanilla Extract
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

Crust:
1. Mix cookie crumbs, butter, sugar and ¼ cup of peanuts and press in to 10-inch spring form pan. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes and let cool.

Filling
1. Whip 1 3/4 cups heavy cream in chilled bowl until thick and set aside
2. Mix peanut butter and cream cheese until well blended. Add vanilla extract and powdered sugar in batches.
3. Fold cream in to peanut butter mixture until well blended
4. spoon and spread in to crust and chill 2-3 hours

Topping
1. Bring remaining ¼ cup heavy cream and ¼ cup sugar to a simmer. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips until melted and well blended.
2. spoon over top of dessert and garnish with remaining peanuts
3. chill for at least 4 hours.

I’m tired today. The kind of tired where you feel like your feet are stuck in mucky mud all day and you just can’t get moving. It’s the unmistakable tired of “I’m getting sick”, which makes sense because all 3 kids have some hacking nonsense going on. The joy……

Our weekend was eventful in a non-eventful kind of way. Hub switched the bedrooms around and we bought Lucy a new bed, so that Liv can (finally) move in to the crib. It’s a Tinkerbell bed complete with canopy, and it is so purple and delicious, that I could just die. I always wanted a bed with a canopy when I was a little girl, so somehow, she is fulfilling my childhood dreams.

And speaking of utterly delicious, I made a peanut butter mousse pie on Sunday that save for my crappy crappy crust, was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. OMFG. Hub printed it out from one of those screens at the grocery store and brought it home, so proud of his discovery. He even bought the spring form pan it required. We didn’t let it chill long enough on Sunday, but yesterday, after a full day of fridge time—it was divine. I’m really regretting sending a huge slab of it off to MIL’s house.

I was off yesterday, so Hub and I celebrated Valentines Day with lunch and a movie and then Starbucks while the kids went to school. We picked them all up and went to Tae Kwon Do together for the first time since I went back to work. It was a really nice day.

I’m leaving work soon, and Hub and I will pass each other briefly before he goes off to work. The big kids have been horrible at bedtime recently when Hub isn’t home. They’re just not interested in listening to me, or staying in bed. Then the second that I even start to get upset, they start crying that they miss daddy. Which escalates in to hysterical sobs. Yesterday, Lucy went so far as to say “When will we be a family again, Mama??” through her hysteria. I had to stifle laughter at first, and probed her as to why she thought we weren’t a family. Because I hollered at her, and don’t love her, and Daddy isn’t home. SO apparently, I have to give them free reign at bedtime, otherwise, I do not love them. We are making a chart tonight to track good bedtimes. I think I could deal with Bud, but Lucy is just so extreme……

In other news, the baby is saying “Eddie”. At first, I thought it was a fluke. But she sees him and clear as day says “Ed-Dee”. My mother didn’t believe me either, and today Liv saw Bud’s picture on my mom’s shelf. Clear as day—“Ed-Dee”.

Smart girl. She also claps. She is available for parties.