Birthday Snapshots.

Rosie's birthday celebration...

Quick snapshot on the way there.

My BIL, FIL, and Rosie.

Tyler and I put Blue's Clues paw prints on all of her presents then hid them all over the playground. She ran around and found them Easter egg hunt style while singing the Blue's Clues song and screaming, "OH! A clue, a clue!" every time she would find a present with a huge paw print on it.

She opened them on the playground as soon as she found them.

Rosie and my little sister.

We asked everyone to donate money towards Rosie's wooden swing set. We ended up with enough money to pay for it, but everyone also got her presents. Rosie didn't want to open them! She opened all the ones Tyler and I got her over on the playground, and she had no intrest in opening the rest. Everyone was insisting that she open this present and that present. It was... :-/

She got some coloring things from my sister and also from my Tyler's brother, a toddler swing for her swing set from my parents, some clothes from my in-laws, and some bubbles, and also a really neat gardening set with a toddler gardening book from Tyler's Aunt and Uncle. His grandparents got her something too, but I can't remember what. Thankfully, no one got her any plastic toys! That is practically a miracle. The only plastic she received was part of the gardening set, but it's not quite the same as cheap battery operated things that pile up in the playroom.

That's my MIL on the left.

They were practicing blowing out the candles. Tyler always uses the dish soap to blow bubbles for Rosie in the kitchen, and he uses his hand like he's doing in the picture. She pretends to do it too.

This was when everyone was singing happy birthday to Rosie. She burst into tears after I snapped the picture. We had cheesecake for her birthday cake because that's what she requested. She has been talking about "Rose own happy day cheesecake" for nearly two weeks now.

Someone gave her a card that sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Rosie loves that song. She confused everyone by singing the British Incey Winsy Spider Went Up the Garden Wall version. Thanks YouTube...

My MIL was doing the motions while Rosie danced with the singing card.

(MIL is having a hysterectomy on Tuesday, by the way.)

Then we went home, because it was hot and sticky outside. We spent forever building huge towers with the wooden blocks! I have been dying to open them ever since we bought them.

I still can't believe my baby is two! That's so old...

Happy Birthday.

In an hour and a half we are having Rosie's birthday party. We just invited family to it, nothing big. We're going to a local historic house that has a huge play ground and a nice picnic area so that Rosie can play on the swings and slide.

I can't believe she's already two. It seems like such a short time ago that she was in here squirming around...

*sigh*

Oh, oh.

Which is harder?

Leaving your husband and setting out with your child to start fresh on your own, or forgiving him for betraying your trust, lying to you, breaking your marriage vows, and smashing your heart into a million tiny pieces?

Because he made one huge, glaring, life-altering mistake does that automatically render every loving moment you shared during the past seven years invalid? Does that mean that your wedding vows were merely lies when you said them, when he said them to you?

Is a women who leaves her husband for his indiscretions strong and brave? Or is she weak and running away from the pain?

What if she stays? Does that make her weak, for letting him get away with it? Or does that make her brave and strong, because she wants to fight for what was rightfully hers for so long, before something or someone led it astray?

Where do you look to find the answers to questions like these? Are there answers somewhere?

Maybe the answers are somewhere amidst the pain. They have to be searched for, then carefully and painfully extracted, as if you're removing clear shards of shattered glass lodged deep into the flesh of a tender foot.

But it hurts. It hurts a lot worse than broken glass in your foot. It hurts like nothing has ever hurt before, splitting pain like no human body should have the capacity to withstand.

How can something invisible hurt so much?

Something has gone wrong. Very, very wrong. Somewhere, somehow, everything has fallen apart.

Along with the pain there's anger. The want, no the need, to make someone else feel the pain you are feeling inside, for him to know exactly how badly it hurts.

What should you do with these feelings? There is no outlet strong enough for emotions of this magnitude.

They are too explosive to bury, you can't force them down.

Who do you turn to, when your best friend, your only friend, is the person who is causing you so much pain?

There is no one, but yourself. No one knows what it's like except you, because you are the one it happened to. You are the only one who knows every detail, every emotion, every desire.

You are alone, standing alone with no one but yourself for comfort.

It has to be this way. Though it is not easy. It's far from easy.

If you aren't alone, you won't ever be able to find your own truth. No one else can give that truth to you because they aren't you.

What if you just know. You know what the right answer is.

The only confusion is the feeling of peace. Why would their be peace when everything is so broken, angry, painful?

This doesn't make sense.

Then again, nothing makes sense anymore, does it?

Huh?

Today...

I found out that my husband cheated on me with some girl from his work.

Totally unexpected. If you know him, you know he's not the cheating type.

But. Another girl. My husband.

Why? Why did this have to happen to me? I'm not the type of person that posts long sob stories on the internet about their twisted, dramatic life. I promise. I don't like twisted and dramatic events. I go far out of my way to avoid them, but now they've come to me uninvited.

I'll spare you the long fucked up story behind this, but just know that the girl took pills and tried to kill herself when Tyler told her he couldn't continue the relationship, and she is now in the hospital.

Forgive me when I say, I wish the bitch had the decency to at least do the job properly and die.

She knew he was married. She has met Rosie. He won't tell me which girl she is.

He says she pursued him, offered him lots of sexual favors. She's the one he's been texting non-stop, even while laying in bed with me and lying, telling me it was his brother.

He says he ended it and he's sorry.

I left.

What if...what if sorry isn't enough? What if it's too late for sorry?

How does "sorry" make everything ok, after he lied to my face about where he was going? After he neglected to tell me, when I asked, "how was your day?" that he'd just finished kissing some other girl in her car then come home to me?

Sorry? That's it?

How can the course of my life change, just like that?

What's going on? Where am I supposed to go from here?

Rosie Things.

This morning Rosie got out my maternity pictures from when I was pregnant with her. I had a few laid out to frame and put on the wall in the hall. She is very interested in babies and pregnancy, so she loved looking at them. We put them back on the sewing table when she was done, and I went to do something else. A few minutes later, I turned around and she had out her favorite bright pink marker. She was decorating the pictures.

I was really upset with her. She knew that they were special pictures, we'd just finished talking about it. I told her how sad it made me that she'd ruined those pictures, and then I went and laid on the bed with my face down.

Rosie felt so horrible. She burst into tears and kept sobbing. She tried to kiss me but it really didn't cheer me up very much. She kept saying, "Oh no Mama. Mama sad? No sad," and then patting me. She would ask, "Rose best friend?" because she heard that on a TV show one day and ever since we talk about being best friends. She was concerned I wasn't her best friend anymore.

After that incident was over, Rosie kept asking all day, "Mama happy? Please happy, Mama, please." She also kept saying two other phrases but I couldn't figure out what they meant. She was so worried that I was still sad! She's so sensitive!

She took a nap today, so that means she was up late. She's at an awkward stage where she either doesn't nap and is super grumpy all afternoon and evening, or she naps and stays up until 11:30 or later. No matter what time she goes to bed, she's still up between 7:30 and 8:30 the next morning! It's a little frustrating, but I think once she finds a good sleep and awake pattern she'll stick with it. Hopefully she gets into the groove one day soon.

To wear her out a little, Rosie and I went on a walk tonight at dusk with Abby. Abby is doing much better walking on a leash, finally. Rosie would instruct us, "Run Mama! Run Abby! Corey run too!" (She's still pretending her name is Corey for some reason...) Rosie's version of running is so hilarious. She makes fists and waves her arms around and her little feet move so fast! Once we were all sort of running she would tell me, "Ok Mama, sing Blue's Clues!" So we had to run all over the neighborhood with me singing about us looking for Blue's Clues. Thankfully it was 9:45 at night and most people were inside...every time I stopped singing she would say, "Mama! SING please."

I love how grown up Rosie is lately. It's bittersweet because she's not a baby any longer, but it's also a lot of fun. She is capable of understanding emotions and having little conversations. We play pretend together and I love to see the silly, creative things she comes up with. We play the piano together too. Rosie plays all the notes in a row, or all the black keys, or copies short rhythms. She's always singing different songs. And she's obsessed with books of all kinds. She even likes to read my books and point out the letters. She only knows the letters Y, I, O, and A but there are lots of those letters on each page. Seeing her learn is amazing. I can't wait to give her the blocks I got her for her birthday because she's learning to build, stack, and line up objects right now.

There are so many little things about her at this age that I never want to forget. Words can't capture it all. I love her so much, all of her cute phrases and games, her never ending energy, and even her tantrums and her spirit. At night when she's sound asleep I whisper sweet things in her ears. I think she hears me through her sleep, reassuring her that she is safe and loved.

Saturday Rosie turns 2!

Update or whatever.

For those of you following this...my meager 27 subscribers over there and other lurkers (who are you all?!?) I'll give you a small inconclusive update.

Took a test this morning, and it was...mysterious. This is a picture, taken after 10 minutes.


See what I mean by mysterious? Such faint lines...

This afternoon Rosie and I went to the Dollar Tree to get some tests. I took one when I got home and it was totally negative.

So...

*shrug*

I'm now on day 35 of this cycle. The only pregnancy symptom I have is very, very wet CM. That was the first symptom I had with Rosie too. But, I'm not having any other symptoms that I had by this point with Rosie, like sore breasts.

I hate not knowing what's going on in there! I'm leaning towards this just being a strange cycle and my body is playing tricks on me.

I'll take another test tomorrow morning.

If I'm not pregnant, I want to hurry up and have my period. Tyler promises that we can TTC in a couple of months, once we build our savings back up. (We depleted it while we were waiting for him to graduate this spring.) I'm so excited!

By the way, I changed the colors and header for my blog, if you didn't notice. Can you see everything alright on your monitor? It looks spiffy on my 24 inch flat screen!

Page 123, starting with sentence #6.

I was tagged by Annie.

The instructions:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

"Because he is allowed his own evaluations, such power of decision gives a corresponding power to act, and he responds to the instant unfolding of the moment as it is. The child, roughing in a world of knowledge, wanders without rhyme or reason, and he plays. He has no goals other than the moment, and no other time exists."

Not to take this entirely out of context, the rest goes on to say...

"To the child, the time is always now, the place is always here, the center is always "me." For this is the way a world knowledge is structured.

At the same time, the parents institute an underlying strata of order. They give him four walls of "thou shalt nots" that are reasonable, unvarying, and consistent. These boundaries mostly concern personal relations. He knows exactly where he stands in relation to his parents, what they allow, what they do not allow. He is not faced with ambiguity or indecision.

No reasons are used with the prereasoning child in the expectation that he will grasp adult logic. Reasons can fill their conversations with him, but not their communications or directives. If correctives are needed, they are concrete. The parent picks the child up firmly and removes him from the bounds of transgression. They let him know without apology that boundaries are to be observed. The single word "no" suffices if the parent is absolutely consistent in his own mind, free of ambiguity about his actions, confident, decisive, and expecting full compliance.

Firm boundaries give strength to the bond and clarity to those areas open for exploration. The child clearly registers the parents' power of decision and their confidence in their decision. He feels bonded to strength. He accepts their boundaries and restrictions without frustration or hesitancy because he is geared to take cues from them, and their decisions are in keeping with his intent."

This is from the book Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce.

I've been attempting to read through this book forever, since Christmas actually. I pick it up and read a little then I get lost in my own thoughts about what I am reading. I'll admit it's also very hard to concentrate by the end of the day once I finally get a chance to read. This book isn't exactly easy reading. It's very interesting though, and insightful. I like books that are pure food for thought like this one is.

I don't really have anyone who I want to tag, but if you haven't done this yet you should do it! I am interested to see what books everyone has been reading lately.

7/14/2008

I only slept for three hours last night. I had this strange, strange dream that I was walking home alone along path through a neighborhood and then some woods. It was really steep, like the mountains in Pikeville. At one point I was passing through a shadowy area in a neighborhood, no one was outside, but it wasn't exactly night time either. I got scared, and it was like I knew what was coming. A gray scraggly wolf shot out of the trees at the side of a house and tried to attack me. I was so scared it was going to hurt my baby. It wanted to get the baby out and eat it, just like we eat eggs from chickens. (This was totally rational in my dream.) The wolf knocked me down, but I managed to kick it in the face and roll down the mountainside. I got up again at the bottom of that section of hill and kept walking. When I entered a new part of the path, all trees and no houses, another wolf came running out of the trees. This time it stopped and we made eye contact. He had yellow eyes and he just stared at me for the longest time. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Then, he attacked. He got my lower right leg and shook it like a drum stick. This wolf didn't want my baby, he wanted me. No matter how hard I kicked, he hung on. Finally something happened and he ran off. I drug myself the rest of the way home, which happened to be my parent's house. When my parent's got home from church they didn't believe that a wolf had really tried to eat my leg. I showed them the teeth marks and cried because it hurt, and they said to stop crying wolf, then they laughed at their joke. Later my sister realized that I was really hurt because I couldn't walk, and for some reason I was sleeping under ground in a cell...then I woke up and felt so sick at my stomach.

I've been feeling so sick all morning. UGH. But, I sometimes feel this sick right before I bleed too, so who knows. I will say that my cervix is so high right now that I almost couldn't reach it...

Want to know the best part? I feel way too sick to get Rosie and I dressed and then drive to the store to buy pregnancy tests. I'll just...wait. To bleed. Or not.

Either way, my hormones are going totally wacko. Not fun. If I am pregnant, I think I would only be something like 4 weeks and 4 days...that's too early to feel so crappy.

---

Managed to go to the store. Test was negative...I had a feeling it would be for some reason. I got a 3 pack of tests, so I'll take one in the morning with concentrated pee. Really though, I just want to hurry up and bleed!!!! I'm hoping maybe next month we can try to make a baby on purpose...have to see how Tyler feels about that. We talked about it briefly last night in passing and he said it would be exciting to actually *try* to get pregnant but he also said that I'm crazy for wanting another baby...but he also said he was excited about me being pregnant right now. So. I don't want to do anything unless he's 100% on board...I've got my fingers crossed that he is!

I'll pee on more sticks soon.

Dear Aunt Flow,

WHERE ARE YOU?

Today is day 32 of my cycle. I have been consistantly bleeding starting on day 26, 27, or 28 at the latest for months now.

I was definitely ovulating on day 13 of this cycle, and it just so happened we had sex that day and messed up a tiny bit with pulling out.

I had strange cramps and spotting on days 19 and 21 of this cycle, I thought I was going to have my period early. Since then I've had nothing except a strange "full" feeling in my very lower abdomen and I've been having pee issues.

Because I can't help myself, I took two tests already and they were both negative. I took one on day 29 and one on day 30, but I took them in the middle of the day after I had been drinking lots of water, so...

I thought for sure I would have my period after I took those tests, because it always happens like that.

My cervix is high, soft, and closed up tight. Last night it was actually tucked inward towards my back so that I could barely even find the opening! I've never felt it like that before that I can remember. I'm having really wet and clear CM too.

I don't have any other pregnancy or PMS symptoms really. *shrug*

I'm confused.

Tomorrow I'll go buy two more tests, and I'll take one tomorrow and save one for first thing Tuesday morning.

If I am pregnant, Tyler and I will both be excited. I asked him how he felt about it and he said, "I hope it's a boy" and walked off smiling.

I'm a little nervous because I don't want to go through the morning sickness thing again, but other than that...pure excitement!

I asked Rosie what she thought about it, and she sure did have a lot to say. She knows way more than I ever realized. She's been watching too much TV with me I guess. I always watch House of Babies while I nurse her to sleep at nap time. Rosie says she wants a "sistah" and that it can have "leff dide milt" which means she want a sister and it can have milk from the left breast. The right side is "Rose own." I so have to make a video tomorrow of her explaining how a baby comes out and everything. I swear I didn't teach her any of it, she just started explaining this to me...It's so cute. Now she won't quit talking about the baby in my belly, even though I tried to tell her there isn't one in there right now (that I know of.) She's so incredibly excited!

By the way, totally off topic...but just to wrap it all up, we bought her this swing set last night. I found it at a Walmart in the ghetto. When I called to ask if they had it in stock, they answered the phone in Spanish, asked me what department I needed to speak with in Spanish, and then I swear the person in lawn and garden called me nigga.

Yeah.

But anyway, they had the swing set I wanted! It cost $422 with tax, and I pray to the powers that be we get enough money to pay it off for Rosie's birthday. *sigh*

Anyway, that's that. I have to go snuggle and nurse Rosie to sleep.