The Daily Toilings Of A Part Time Stay At Home Mom

Well we are in full pre-party cleaning mode!  I can not stop adding to the list of things that need to get done before Bell's big first birthday bash.  The thing is that I normally get crazy when I am having a lot of company and this is the first time that much of my family is going to see our new house so it is double anxiety.  I am actively scrubbing baseboards, washing doors, sucking up dust bunnies and trying to organize the kids millions of miscellaneous toys that are strewn around under couches, beds, and t.v stands.  It all seems overwhelming but I am glad to do it.  It is not often that you get to have the family together for such fun events and like I said in my previous post we are celebrating everything right!  Last night was the best with hubby home early and a little hungry hippos to top it off. I can not believe that my little baby girl is going to be one!  It makes me a little sad being that she is "our last".  I am going to m...

Here goes...birth story number one.  My son Noah was born on a Monday morning at 8:07am on August 20th 2007 at Framingham Union Hospital.  I don't have many pictures of the birthing process since I think I was sufficiently freaked out by every ones horror stories that had been drilled into my head since we announced that we were expecting.  I worked right up till the Friday before he was born at the same hospital that he was born in.  At the time I was a unit secretary at a inpatient geriatric psych ward.  On that Friday morning before he was born I had a trickle of fluid as I was getting in the shower, I didn't know if it was my water breaking or if I had peed on myself because by that time I wouldn't have put it past myself (I was huge, swollen, and my feet looked like balloons.)  I went to work and casually mentioned it to a co-worker who took it upon themselves to notify one of the nurses from my OB office in the cafeteria that day....

Breast Cancer.  Those two little ugly words have been a part of my families lives now for the past 3 years.  My son was about 3 months old when my mother called to tell me casually that the other morning she happened to feel a "pretty big lump" under her armpit.  Well the first thing you do is go completely numb and your ears start to ring, and then you start to give the "oh it is probably just a cyst" story even though deep inside you are starting to panick.  Well about three weeks later I got the call while in the middle of whole foods with my son and a carriage full of flax seed and organic food, because I knew today was the day that we were going to get our lives disassembled and rearranged even before the doctor called.  "It's cancer Michelle."  That is all I remember from that conversation.  I can't remember what I did really except that I went to the check out counter and then walked out without a single grocery and had to be chased down by...

Today is a beautiful day!  50 degrees in March I will take it!  My poor husband is sick so I will play perfect housewife and make chicken soup while he is at work.  Ordinarily I think that I hold my own when it comes to domestic duties. I always have a pretty clean house, on the surface maybe but still no one would call it dirty. The laundry is always done, even if it takes a while to make it to the drawer, and the kids are clean, well most of the time.  I guess the area that needs work is the fact that it is not a natural thing for me.  I HATE cleaning so it takes a bigger toll on me then someone that would be glad to do it.  That is why I think sometimes I am a little grumpier then I would like.  I wish I was one of the moms that could care less if the house is clean or if the kids have a bath every single night (because they don't really need one) but if anything is out of order I feel like I am failing at my job.  Since I don't work there...

Instant gratification.  This is something that has stopped me from completing almost everything that I have ever started.  I guess the best example of this is painting my son and daughters bedrooms.  I have all the best intentions when I start a project, I buy the painters tape, drop cloth, and Spackle with a grand notion of painting better then the pros.  Well as soon as I get up in that room with the can of paint all hell breaks loose and no sooner does the cap come off that I am well on my way to painting over every hole (who the hell needs Spackle anyway), dried dead bug, and bugger that the little darlings wipe on the wall.  I think this is why I have a hard time with hobbies.  Every time you tell someone that you are bored they tell you to get a hobby.  Well for someone that needs everything that I do to be done yesterday that is a real humdinger.  Unless I can make a quilt in 45 minutes (which is about my attention span) then...

Well the kids are now home from their weekend at Grammy's and we are settling back in to our routine.  They both came home with a tad to much sugar in their systems so we have a little bit of pent up energy to get out before they hit the sheets.  Big news for this week though is Bella has started to walk without the help of her little push lion!  This is great especially since we are worried about the sacral dimple and a possible tethered spinal cord.  Walking is a pretty good indicator that she is just fine and might just have a crooked little bum bum :)  Here is a video we took of her first trip across the kitchen floor!  (try to block out the obnoxious mama and dada in the background.) On another note the hubs and I have completed this years taxes phewwww.  This year between living in Virginia working in Massachusetts and then buying our first house and moving to New Hampshire our taxes were a disaster and nothing that I would have even attempted ...

This weekend is one I have been looking forward to for quite some time!  The hubs and I are kid free for a night and the following day so there is a night of taxes, romantic dinner, and uninterrupted sleep in store for us.  These little nights alone are sooo needed.  Sometimes just one night out for drinks or dinner alone with Dov is enough to reignite some passion in the relationship.  After 10 years of being together and much of that living together it can be a challenge to not look at each other as roommates sometimes, especially when you add kids to the mix.  I mean sometimes I will wait for him all day to get home just to have a adult to talk to but then disappear to my bedroom just to have a hour or two that doesn't require getting someone juice or hugging a screaming child who just slipped and fell on a toy that THEY left on the floor.  On to another thing, Noah has been out of school at least 2 days a week which leaves a HUGE amount of time to bull...

Lately I have been struggling with trying to divide my attention between my two kiddos.  Isabella is at the stage where she pretty much needs constant monitoring so that she doesn't swallow one of Noah's toys, play in the toilet, or fall down the stairs.  Noah is at a stage where he can entertain himself with trains or video games, coloring etc.  I have so much guilt that he is not getting nearly as much attention as my daughter.  The saddest thing is that it is so much easier to snap at him for any little thing while he watches his sister get away with bloody murder.  No one ever tells you that when you become a parent you will have such feelings of guilt...I mean sometimes it is overwhelming.  When I was pregnant with my second I remember thinking about how wonderful having the two would be and how Bell would be cooing on a blanket and Noah and me reading a story, well that was just plain delusional thinking.  More often then not I am screaming at No...

I guess there is no real good way to say this but I SUCK at meeting people.  I get super nervous that I will say something wrong or maybe swear to much for their liking or one of like eight thousand other faux pas.  The real trouble with this is my husband has the same problem.  I mean what two people can move away for a year and only meet one person (who by the way I thought sucked) the whole time. I could go on and blame it on the kids and being stuck in the house with them blah blah but the truth of the matter is I just hate getting to know people.  I am the type of girl that likes to cut the small talk and get down to the dirty dirty right off the bat.  I always say when Noah goes to school then I will meet someone or when the weather gets nice I can meet someone at the park but ya know what...I usually am the mom that sits farthest from the rest of the group and tries my damnedest not to make direct eye contact, probably cause my kid just whacked their kid...

Well I don't know about any of you other mamma's out there but I think I have a serious unhealthy addiction to Target.  I swear whoever designed that store must understand women very well.  First off they have it nailed in the baby department, I can get anything there necessities down to baby leg warmers.  Then we are off to the women's department where I can scavenge through the clearance items for a couple Isaac Mizrahi gems.  I find myself there whenever there is a lack of something better to do and sadly sometimes when there is.  The way I knew there was a problem was that the other night while me and hubby were out having a couple drinks at a local bar I kept staring longingly out the window across the street to the bright red lights of the Target.  It took all I had in me not to ask if we could just go walk around for a bit.  Well enough of that, I am just nervous that now they tell me that they will be stocking produce!  Uh oh,  if I c...

So here we are stuck in the house while we get pummeled with another 20 inches of snow.  I have run out of activities for the kids and so I will let Netflix take over and pray for long naps.  Here is a shot of my hubby and son during last weeks storm. Note the cast on Noah's leg...I will get to that. So the cast...my husband and son were horsing around on the bed one night while I talked with my mom on the phone.  I am unclear on the specifics but in the end I wound up in the doctors office with a very upset little boy, a grumpy daughter and a doctor that thought it was fine but sent me to get x-rays anyways.  Welp guess what, broken.  So I was not so crazy for thinking something bigger then three year old drama was going on.  Noah made out like a king for 4 weeks while daddy worked out the guilt. I was just glad kids are so resilient, after about a hour Noah walked with his cast like he was born with it!  It has since come off and thank god for...