The Transition to Two and the Dreaded Return to Work.

Lets make it one post cause that's what's on my mind today.

When talking about adding to your family, everyone always says that the adjustment from one kid to two kids is the hardest and after that it's not as bad.  I'm not sure who made up that silly line and I'm fairly certain that the biggest adjustment in life is going from no kids to having a kid.  Total game changer. I don't care who you are, three/four/five kids still has to be a heck of an adjustment. Yes older kids can help out but some people have three kids by the time their oldest is 3.5, and I just added one.  Sure 3.5 year old's can help some, and I take full advantage of what she will help with.  But Addison isn't changing diapers, cooking meals, running to the grocery store, or baby sitting and she still doesn't even wipe her own ass (well she does but she needs a second wiper still).  Pretty sure I'd be losing my ever-loving mind if I had three right now.  That being said, adding a number two really hasn't been that awful of an adjustment.  Granted I'm still not back to work and I'm going to have an anxiety attack any day about that change on the very, very near horizon.

Addison wakes up YELLING every morning for me to come upstairs and get her, (She is gated in her room as she's upstairs and we aren't plus the open staircase/old farm house banister, just isn't safe for a careless kiddo like her.) This is OF COURSE the same time that Alex is eating every morning.  I'm laying in bed to feed him I'm not getting up till he's done, so I get to listen to her scream and yell for 20 minutes.  Almost eight weeks into it and TODAY she finally woke up and just started playing with the blocks in her room.  Bravo, right before our routine changes.  That seems to happen a lot, Addison NEEDS ME RIGHT NOW at the exact moment that I sit down to feed him, no matter the time, no matter if I just waited on her hand and foot to make sure she couldn't possibly need anything.

The most stressful change for me and the hardest is the double kid break down.  Okay, okay, Alex is a newborn, he can't technically have a breakdown. But Addison, Oh Addison can have a breakdown.  And when you are solo on a two kid melt down when one is too young to get that he has to hang on a second and the other is too deep in her meltdown to be talked down...THAT'S when mommy needs a drink.  That's the one and only time when I think one kid really was enough stress in my life.  But then I calm down and Addison tells me that "She's weally sorry for throwin' a fit" and Alex smiles with his chubby little cheeks and I'm right back to being the happiest mom in town.

Getting out of the house is more of a challenge, not for the newborn but for the 3.5 year old who's middle name should have been Stally Stallerton....OMG this kid.  I haven't yet *knock on wood* had any moments alone in public with the two of them that make me NEVER want to leave the house again so there's that at least.  The hardest part in public is convincing Addison that she WILL ride in the cart without a fight.  Usually I have to live through a small melt down if I don't give her the "in this store you will ride in a cart" pep talk in the car ahead of time.  Let the girl walk and you will want to gouge your eyes out in frustration.  She can't walk a straight line and not get distracted by something every 10 feet.  I repeat myself A LOT in the store.

Mostly I feel like "I GOT THIS".  98% of the time.   Then maternity leave comes to an end and I have to go back to 10 hour work days.  I work Saturday then back to my normal Monday- Thursdays.  Which mean about 13 hours between when I leave the house and when I get home at night.  Which means two kids a full time job and running my own photography business.  To say I'm stressed the frick out about it would be the understatement of the year.  I've pretty much avoided talking about the topic as much as possible all through my maternity leave.  Mostly because it makes, not normally emotional me, want to cry.  Even just typing about it now make me tear up.  Plain and simple, I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK.  I don't want to leave my kids.  I don't want to send them to another persons house all day.  I don't want to not be able to send my kid to pre-school because my work schedule doesn't allow me the time to take her there and pick her up.  I don't want to miss out on all the "first" of my "last".  I want to enjoy every last second of my last baby.  I don't want to only see my kids for two-three hours max a day for four days a week.  I don't want to spend my day pumping at work and trying to find someone to cover for me so that I can go pump.  I want to be able to enjoy breastfeeding by not having to pump making it a chore, also why am I washing bottles/pump parts all the time...breastfeeding perks I do no get to take advantage of.  I don't want hour long commutes to work.  I don't want to sit around waiting for people I carpool with to get out of work wasting my time.  I'm over it.   Maybe it's different this time because I'm leaving two kids.  Maybe it's because I work longer hours.  Maybe it's because I'm leaving my little newborn with someone who isn't my dad who watched Addison when she was a newborn and I went back to work

I can try and feed myself the same lines about how it shows my kids that I provide for the family too, like I did when I went back with Addison.  That my benefits are worth it, that I get great insurance..blah..blah..blah.  I know that I can do it.  I just don't want to.  When do I get to sleep?  When do I get to enjoy my children?  Cause lets face it moms/dads, how much can you accomplish with two kids in 2-3 hours when there are dinners to be made/eaten, baths to give, clothes/lunches to pack, bottles to make for the next day.  I am absolutely dreading this.  I'll be the grouchy, bitchy, bitter mom pretending like I have my shit together.  I haven't even gone back but my eye twitching started up again on Monday...Stress.

Toddler Talk

I keep meaning to document these toddler (I guess she's technically a preschool aged child now) ramblings because misused words and mispronounced words are one of my very favorite things about growing up.  Not only that, but, my husband hates to hear mispronounced things that he's quick to coach her through them a few hundred times until she can say it correctly and then the word as she said it is no longer.  Words like Tarm (Farm) Papple (apple) Grandpa Lariat (Grandpa Larry) and Gramma Ham (Grandma Pam) are already long gone from her vocabulary.  So before I forget her current/most recently corrected slip-ups I thought I'd dedicate a quick post to some Addisims.

One day she asked me about her pig "Puffet" and I had to make her go get it for me because I didn't know what she was talking about.  She came back with a puppet

"Hooper Slide" - Tube Slide :) "I wanna go down the hooper slide 5 times!"

At Christmas time she talked about "Candy Can's" and she knows that the letter J is shaped like a "candy can".

"Notbake" - "hey mom can I have one of those cookies you made, one of those notbakes?"  That would be Nobakes, because I told  her they were called that because they are not baked.

It's not- What did you say?, its "What did you said?" 100 times a day.

She has a doll who will hold a pacifier in its mouth and she knows that this works because there is a "magmet" in there!

She knows the difference between a guitar and a "vikolin".

At the grocery store the other day she asked me in the produce section to buy some "pinecone", not the cut up kind the ones with the green stuff on top of them.  Pineapple.

She enjoys a "yogret" in the morning for breakfast.

We eat in a "Diving Room".

She knows how to draw a "hawrt" to write I love you.

She loves to steal Poppa Larry's "Vinoculars" to look outside.

She says that "adacado" are one of her favorite foods.

She loves to play under the covers or in the dark with a "flashin' light" it's one of her favorite toys.

She's discovered the fun of "Talkie Phones" and wants to use them every time we go to Grandma's house.

And the girl will never walk past a bowl of "Wawwermelon" without eating half of it!

 

My Latest Project...

About a year and a half ago after I finished my table makeover I started looking for a buffet/sideboard (whatever you'd like to call it) to redo.  I found this gem on Craigslist for $75 and fell in love.  I love the legs/floral details of a French Provincial!

Pardon the fact that I never got a before shot other than the craigslist picture...Also I posted that photo a year and a half ago all gung-ho to get this project started.  I managed to sand the finish off the top of it before putting it into our garage where it sat until the floors were redone in the dining room this past fall.  Then we pulled it into the house and it sat untouched again.  See having a child, a full time job and a photography business plus being pregnant for 9 months of that time = Amber accomplishing NOTHING.  I was having a hard time deciding what color to paint it also, I didn't know if I wanted it to match the antique white of my chairs or the turquoise of my table with a wood top.  It took me a while to decide and commit to which way I was going to go with the color. Anyway while I sat here on medical leave before Alex was born I got sick of looking at a half finished project one day and decided to bust out the paint brushes and get my butt in gear.  As much in gear as an overdue pregnant lady can get. 

I did a quick wipe down of all the surfaces that I was going to paint with the liquid deglosser before adding a coat of primer (I used Zinsser Bulls eye 1-2-3)  After primer I went for my trusty quart of Cozumel (turquoise) which is getting pretty low these days after a table, dresser, large photo frame, large mirror and now buffet.  I applied two coats and then went back and did a third touch up coat where needed.  I'm not sure why I bothered seeing how I planned to distress this piece anyhow but the OCD in me just couldn't handle not making it perfect.

Then because I was ginormously pregnant (see OVERDUE and miserable)  I put the drawers back like this so that it could have days to dry and I decided that sanding/staning/poly should probably wait until after I had the baby.  For some reason it just sounded like a bad idea to do those thing pregnant.  So it sat like this for a few weeks:

 After Alex was born, and about 4 weeks old I again got sick of spending my day in a house with an unfinished project and I decided to get it done.  Of course this is Michigan and it's like perpetual winter...I usually use my palm sander to do my distressing on projects but since I seemed to have left it out in the shed and couldn't find it quickly enough to not be freezing or ran off by he squirrels who have taken over my shed this winter..grr.  I gave up and went to town with some sanding blocks and sand paper....

After I was happy with the distressing, I got out my can of Minwax Walnut (I use walnut on EVERYTHING mostly because I like dark wood stain, and I wanted this to closely match my table that I had previously done in walnut.)  Everything got coated with stain and allowed to sit on the painted surfaces for about 10 minutes...a little longer on the drawers (and it was not easy to wipe back off) because an Alex baby needed fed.

After the 10 minutes I used some old rags to wipe off the excess stain that hadn't soaked into the wood/painted areas.  I thought I would need to do more than one coat of stain on the top but it soaked it up so well the first time that I didn't need more.

I allowed the stain to dry for 24 hours and the next day I applied Polyurethane to the entire buffett.  This time I used Minwax Polycrylic, which is not what I had used in the past which was Minwax Oil-modified Polyurethane.  I applied two coats without sanding between to the painted surfaces and to the stained top I did 4 coats sanding with 220 grit in between coats.  I allowed 3 days for the poly to dry before I placed anything on the top of the buffet and before I closed the drawers fully or put the doors back on the cabinet ends.   I didn't want anything sticking because it didn't have adequate time to dry!

While I waited for it to cure I grabbed all the hardware and gave it a good bath in some dawn to remove any grease.  After they had some time out in the sun to dry thoroughly I sprayed them all with Rust-Oleum Oil Rubbed Bronze paint.  I love the way they turned out. 

 And now housing some of my Pyrex collection..

I notice that this color is incredibly hard to capture in a photo I think the second to last photo, the pulled back shot is the closest to true color along with the close up of the drawer pull.