Liebster (completed/part 2)

Ok, i have a few minutes to actually devote my attention to this so here goes. First i'll answer the questions asked of me - im trying to figure out which ones to answer, since i was asked 2 sets, i might just pick my favorites and mix them up. here goes...

1. (from Meela) Favorite Christmas tradition?

My personal favorite Christmas tradition in my family is when my dad breaks out his guitar and we all begrudgingly take a slip of paper out of a gift bag in order to figure out who gets what part in the 12 days of Christmas. It's always a semi-tone deaf rendition, but it's always hysterical and i treasure Christmases when my Uncle Joe (who is in his upper 80s, the one who got married when i was about 8 weeks in) is able to make the drive from PA, so that he can sing the part of 5 golden rings. No one does it quite like him.

2. (from Meela) Worst gift you've ever been given?

has to be this weird item that we couldn't identify that was given to us as a wedding present, from someone who i knew practically my entire life, and is coincidentally no longer a friend lol. it seemed like it might be a ceramic vase of some sort, but it had holes throughout, and a top. it was similar to this, but had a top, and was wayyyyy uglier. one night we got drunk (because all we did the summer after we got married was party, it was a glorious time) and smashed it in the walkway on the side of our house. we cleaned it up the next day.


3. (from Mamma V.) Something you cant live without.

My insulin. literally. on a less serious note, chocolate.

4. (from Mamma V.) If given the ability to change one thing in this world what would you choose?

Honestly, probably money, or the concept of it. It is way too important in this world and too many of us struggle to earn so little of it and the people who have it don't give a shit about the people who dont. I think it makes the world uglier than it needs to be. this is a vague answer but money bothers me, and not just bc i dont have a ton of it, just because of what it does to people and their minds.

5. (from Meela) Something I'm proud of.

I'm really proud of my accomplishments. I've always been a planner and i am pretty passionate about the things i want to accomplish in my life. I knew i wanted to go to college, become a lifeguard, have a family, become a social worker, be a good mom, become a bio-mom, etc. So far i've been able to accomplish most of the things on that list and I'm proud of that. I'm glad that my words have weight when i talk about my plans for my life, and significant others in my life have mentioned that they see the follow through once i set my mind to something. So ultimately i guess i'm proud of myself. that sounds pretty snobby, but i am. i know that i worked hard for all of those things.

6. (from Meela) Worst habit.

um, refusing to do kegals. sneezing continues to be a challenge for my undergarments. lovedove laughs at me when i admit to her when my sneezes get the best of me, and keeps telling me to just start doing them, but im such a slacker. ugh, i know im going to continue to pay for that, whatever.

7. (from Mamma V.) Any regrets in life?

i thought about this for a bit, and i like to think that i dont have many, if any, but i will admit that i made some poor-ish choices in my friendships and young/short-lived dating life. i know that i have wasted too much of my time and effort in the past, allowing my heart to hurt longer than it needed to when i have lost friends. i have tried in the past to hold on to friendships for far too long and i hope that i've learned from that part of my life and its over. also, i hurt lovedove quite a bit unnecessarily early on, but i was sowing some very minor wild oats. not that it excuses anything, but they were very minor oats and it was only for a very limited time.

8. (from Mamma V.) Best trait/worst trait.

I'm generous.

I'm a scatterbrain (as you know from my posts)/severe procrastinator/struggle with sequence of events (my kindergarten teacher wrote it on my first report card).

9. (from Meela) A food i dont like.

This is a real challenge because there aren't many. Fennel.

10. (from Mamma V.) 3 people i'd love to have dinner with, living or dead.

amy winehouse, to thank her for her music.
president obama, to thank him for his respect.
my grandma, because i'd love to see her one more time.

11. (from Meela) Favorite jelly bean.

Margarita Jel.ly Bel.ly.


done! and the nominees are....................(i know some of you have already been nominated, please just take the compliment and dont feel like you need to answer more questions if you're not in the mood to)

1. Little One Still to Come - Meela feels like a friend I've known for a long time from her posts. Her family lives in Australia and already consists of 2 mommies, 2 daughters, and a few fur babies. They're trying to add one more to the mix!
2. Mamma V. - An Italian mom on her way to becoming a bio mom, with a toddler almost the same age as Sofia.
3. Crazy Lesbian Mom - I've been reading this blog since I started "stalking" bloggers and now we're pretty much side by side in our pregnancies. She's wonderful and honest and uncensored (as all of my nominees are) about her ttc process and life in general.
4. Our Road to Motherhood - Another lesbian couple with fur baby children, on their ttc journey.
5. Breathe, Dragon! - Ruby and Rose chronicle their attempts for baby number 2 after being successful in their quest for their first.
6. Two Girls' Path to Parenthood - Married California ladies who are already moms to their almost 3 year old, let us follow them through their path to baby #2.
7. Delightful Insanity - very busy lady Amanda tells us all about her pet parenting and her ttc hopes.
8. Love Shack Baby - Philly couple working their way through life and heading towards parenthood with honest emotion and fur babies of course!
9. The Hetero-Lesbian Translation Guide to Pregnancy - One Hopefully Preggo Lesbo writes about being a married lady in New Hampshire and the frustrations of ttc.
10. Opening the Door - Another blog i have been following forever. They recently welcomed their first baby girl and all are doing great!
11. The Cornfed Feminist - An Iowa native who traveled a long road to pregnancy, chronicled her pregnancy in hilarious detail, and just entered the world of motherhood. Huge congrats!

Phew. Now I have a date with Sofia in the (soon to be) girls' room to play Play-Doh.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

L is for...

learning and Liebster! clearly Sofia and i have been reading her alphabet books often. first I'd like to thank Meela and Mamma V. for nominating me for the Liebster, im totally honored, especially since this blog is pretty much never grammatically correct. that how Lazy (another L word haha) i am. woo hoo i feel like an accomplished blogger! i'm excited to pass on the honors, but i'll get to that in a little bit. this post has the potential to be very, very Long. i'm not sure why that is, i guess i just have a Lot on my mind. ok, i'll end the L stuff.

um where to start.. how about daylight savings time, that just started. there is no way to explain this phenomenon to a toddler. i mean, there might be, but we didn't even try. needless to say we were up way early with Sofia yesterday and i'm kind of afraid of how long it will take her to get on the new clock schedule.

speaking of Sofia, a few updates. she's really begun to be a bit terrible, as the 2 year old territory suggests. she is all about pushing boundaries and testing limits lately, which is exhausting. i will continue to work on picking my battles with her, but its not that fun. especially when she is throwing a tantrum with a mouth full of chewed up whea.t thi.ns and i tell her to swallow so that she doesn't choke, and she spits it on the floor. clearly she earned a time out there, it was gross and i was semi furious. also, the potty. as i suspected, the potty perfection we were experiencing was too good to be true long lasting. she has really been struggling, and by struggling i mean asserting control over her body (as she is still allowed to do under the current administration - whoops i hardly ever talk politics here) and refusing to go when we ask her to. this has led to several "accidents" aka on-purposes, usually just urine, but once in a while she gets extra spiteful and shits herself. LOL. thanks little love, those moments are truly stinky disgusting joyful. we've also gone back to having a hard time staying dry during nap time and overnight. she had been able to be successful a few times, but i think the novelty of all of that wore off once the candy/rewards stopped rolling in after the inital successes. i'm not really worried about any of this, she's only 26 months old, and usually she's pretty good during the day. lovedove is a little more frustrated which i understand because she was doing so well, so we know that she could do really well if she was willing, key word, to.

(i'm going to do the other half of the liebster stuff in an additional post, my brain is too full this week to actually answer questions and get my ish together enough to nominate others. i want to give that stuff my full attention, and my attention span is just not there right now.. here's why)

so sofia got croupe this week. started monday with a slight cough when she was laying down for naptime, and by 3:30am tuesday morning she was up and completely miserable. she did sleep for a little bit until like 5, but then she was up for the day. i on the other hand could not go back to sleep. this was our tuesday. took sofia to the doctor at 11. dropped her off at Gma's house at 12. took lovedove to the dr at 1245. picked up sofia and went home around 3:30. went to argue with the receptionist at the vet over the price we paid for disa's monthly shot (it was 3x the amount we paid for the same exact medication the first 2 months, this issue is still not resolved), went to cvs to find out that sofia's prescriptions were not sent in correctly. went home to eat something, went to work, then went to cvs and waited for an hour and a half for her prescription. all after being up since 3.30 in the morning. i was sooo over tired. oh and i forgot to mention that monday after work i went to wait on a gas line. yup gas line, google the gas situation in ny if you're not familiar with the post hurricane chaos. it was a successful trip, only waited 90 minutes and was able to fill up my tank which was a win-win situation for me.

sofia has been on antibiotics for an "ear infection" that we dont think she has. she's excellent at letting us know when something hurts her, and she hasn't said a word about her ear but we're giving her the meds anyway. she's been on steroids for a few days to treat the croupe and they make her totally insane/disobedient/more irrational than usual. we've been cutting down the dose and tonight is the last time we're giving it to her. she's not having difficulty breathing and we really dont feel that she needs it. plus the rx he wrote has a $200 copayment, which is clearly ridiculous and we didnt fill that rx. he had given us a sample bottle, and when thats gone, we're done with that. her pediatrician seems kind of heavy handed with the meds, hence why we only take her to the doctor if she needs to go. my mother (gma) on the other hand, thinks that we should take her to the doctor every time she has a minor fever or a cold. gma also believes that not wearing socks when its cold outside will make you get sick, so clearly i take medical advice from her with a grain of salt.

yesterday i had my second non stress test. i love the tests, i am not so in love with finding care for sofia constantly. and its only going to get worse until baby gets here. once i hit the 32 week mark (end of this month) i'm going to be going for non stress tests twice a week. i totally hate needing that much childcare for her, but there is no way she would agree to sit nicely for an hour plus while i have a nst and sono, twice a week. whatever, people know i need help at this point, hopefully they all just step up when i reach out for help. (so much more i could say here but im trying to end this post so that i can gather my thoughts for the next ones)

on another difficult note, i didnt wind up going to work weds and thurs this week, and i saw only a few clients on monday and tuesday. the weather was atrocious on weds and only one was coming in, and on thurs only one was coming in. not even worth the gas in what they would pay me. my paycheck is going to suck again. im glad we saved some money when my checks were larger bc anything i am making is being completely eaten up by bills. its dumb to be stressed about money, when people just miles from us lost everything they had in the storm, but everything is relative i guess.

anyway, im going to end this. if sofia naps today i will post again with all the things i promised in this post.

things are getting crazy and hectic now, ill be 30 weeks on sunday. f-ing nuts.