Mother Hoodwink

Movin' Out

Things are happening so fast. I can't believe that Monday the movers are coming. Monday they're going to pack up everything and Tuesday they're going to actually move it out. The Navy has got its act together where movers are concerned. They hire movers who have the best ratings. Before they contracted the cheapest movers they could find. Trust me, Navy families paid for it.

Our very first move, when we moved from Virginia to New Orleans, our movers sucked with a capital SUCK. We were very naive about the whole thing. We figured they would wrap up any thing breakable and mark the box fragile. Uh, not what happened. It was only when we arrived in New Orleans and were unloading our things when we found out that breakables were simply wrapped in a piece of packing paper. They didn't even tape the paper shut. Thankfully, my grandmother's antique jewelry box and a vase my sister made me were just fine. A lot of other things were broken. Almost all of our furniture that had legs, had them broken off.

We tried to get the moving company/Navy to pay for the items but there was a lot of red tape and most of the things broken were handmade goods so therefore had no real value. A year later when Hurricane Katrina happened we got paid a lot of nontaxable money. Between FEMA and the per diem that the Navy was giving us because we were displaced for a few months, we were more than paid for anything we lost in our move. Plus we got to leave the hell hole that is New Orleans since I was pregnant and considered high risk. We figured it all worked out in the end.

Since moving to Tennessee we have had three base houses. The first one was so old that while I stepped out for ten minutes to go pick up Josh at work, the living room ceiling fell due to water damage. As in when you looked up, you could see the roof of the attic. The move went ok, but I think that's because they were just moving us across the street so it all happened in one day. Plus we fed our moving crew in the attempts of making them like us so they would take care of our stuff. Our second house had a leaky ceiling so it made us very nervous and we had Josh's command demand to the housing office to give us one of the newer base houses. We were given Chief's housing. That's three ranks higher than Josh's rank. The next move went good as well. I'm guessing because it was also done in one day and we had the same crew from before which we fed again.

My brother-in-law's friend used to be a mover and he would frequently move Navy families. He was known for stealing their things. A dryer here or a box of valuables there. He validated his theft with the explanation that, "The Navy pays for anything that's lost so I might as well take it and they'll get another one." What he didn't realize is that most of the time, the actual Navy member whose stuff was stolen, rarely gets their item back. If they do get compensated, it's hardly ever the entire price of their item. So I can't wait to meet my brother-in-law's friend when we move back home. I'm going to make sure I place my hands on his shoulders, look him in the eyes and knee him as hard as I can in the groin.

This is so asinine.

The other day while looking at a friend's family blog, I read a post where she was talking about how tired she was because her husband was out to sea with the Navy. She's in a foreign country and doesn't know too many people so she's was understandably drowning in housework and raising small children. Her mother-in-law left her a comment to try to comfort her. She said, "This is why some mothers choose to work outside the home. They just can't handle the day to day needs of children so they take the easy way out."

First of all, What the Fuck, bitch?! I'm a stay at home mom and yes, it can be challenging at times. Mothers who work outside the home, can say the very same thing. Both have their pros and cons but one is not easier or better than the other. I was raised by a working mother and I saw how hard my mom worked at her job and when she came home, there was no real relaxation for her. There was always crap to do around the house and of course she had to make time for me and my siblings. We didn't just sit in the same room watching TV and call it quality time. We actually did stuff together. We went on bike rides, went to the beach, museums, discussed things, craft projects, etc.

As a stay at home mom, I couldn't imagine having the energy to work a full day of work only to come home and clean the house and take care of kids. I would reach the end of my rope fairly quickly. There are working moms who would argue the opposite and say that they need that time where they are on their own; to remind themselves they are more than just a mother. I sometimes have a hard time reminding myself about that.

One is not more admirable than the other. I think motherhood by itself is admirable. Different things work for different people. That's ok. I've known great mothers who worked and bad ones. I've known horrible stay at home moms and wonderful ones.

Second of all, I'm pretty sure most mothers work because they NEED to. Whatever gratification they get by working is just an added bonus.There are a lot of working moms who would love nothing more than to be with their kids all day but they have responsibilities and have to work. It's expensive to raise a family. Maybe my friend's mother-in-law is living under a rock and has no idea about the state of our economy and how hard it is to get bills paid these days.

When will these bullshit Mommy Wars end?

Christmas 2008

We had a delightful Christmas at our house this year.

A couple days ago we decorated cookies.

Then we went and visited Santa. Gavin's only concern was his free candy cane. He saw Santa three times this year at different events and each time he received a candy cane. He only knows Santa as the Keeper of the Canes. So he's always excited to see him. Maggie of course did major shit flipping because *gasp* her parents weren't the ones who were holding her.

 

Christmas Eve we let the kids open one present each. Which were actually two but I wrapped them as one. (We love the That's not my... books.) We then read them The Christmas Story about that Jesus guy and of course, The Night Before Christmas.

The next morning we found that the cookies we left out,

seemed to be enjoyed by Santa.

He left Gavin and Maggie quite the haul this year.

I have to admit that most of the stuff the kids got was given to them by overzealous grandparents.

Gavin's favorite gift this year was his pretend kitchen that my mom got the kids. Back when she visited last September, she had me help her look for a play kitchen. She wanted my approval on size and such since Josh and I were the ones who would have to deal with it. It has been sitting in a huge box in Maggie's room for three months waiting to fulfill its duties of housing plastic food. It took two hours to open presents because Gavin had a dire need to pretend to eat said plastic food. "I just have to cook!" he would tell us when we asked him to open more presents. Here he is pretending to get a drink of water.

Other than Maggie popping her first tooth on Christmas day, my favorite gift was a new lens that Josh got me for my DSLR. Here are some of my favorite pictures from Christmas morning.

When I told Josh what it was that I wanted in a lens, I used very professional photography lingo and said that I wanted it "blurry behind the subject." I put one on my Amazon wishlist that I thought would do that but my ADD makes it hard for me to focus on reading about stuff that I have almost no knowledge of. Josh researched everything and turns out I did pick a good lens.

How was your Christmas/Whatever?

So, I've been busy...

I think my New Year's resolution will be to write here more often. If I checked in here as often as I do Facebook, there would never be any old posts on the homepage.

We've been very busy getting the house together for our move in two and a half weeks. We're taking a lot with us in a U-Haul trailer so there has been a lot of list making and such. We won't have most of our stuff until we move into a permanent residence and that could take up to six months. Determined not to move all the crap we don't want, we've been giving away and throwing out a ridiculous amount of stuff. I finally got rid of my jeans from middle school. I think it's safe to say that my post-pregnancy body will never fit into those again.

I used to be a complete pack rat. Like almost a hoarder except less messy and less willing to hold on to stupid things like old bank statements. Gavin came along and started to take up space with all of his accessories. I quickly learned what I needed and didn't need. Then Maggie was born and took over the last room of the house where we put stuff we didn't know what to do with. Now if I don't see myself using something within a year, I toss it. I wonder how many kids I would have to have before I turn into a minimalist.

A little update on the kids:

Gavin is amazing us every day with his speech. His newest thing is to randomly tell us, "I'm being such a good boy!" Which only seems to raise our suspicions that he's trying to hide something. Although sometimes he has a hard time pronouncing words. Last week I gave him his lunch and he scrunched up his face and said, "What a bunch of ball sacks." I was slightly offended and then wondered where he even learned that. I quickly realized that he couldn't possibly be saying that. I asked him to repeat himself many times and I still heard, "What a bunch of ball sacks." Finally on what had to be the tenth time he repeated it, he pointed to the peaches on his plate and said very slowly, "What vegetable is that?" Ahh, my two year old wasn't insulting my cooking after all.

Maggie has recently learned to stand and she's cruising everywhere. She just turned ten months old and the girl still has no teeth. I'm starting to wonder if she was even born with any. She's still very skiddish with new people. We went to Josh's work holiday party and everyone that tried to hold her got rewarded with the saddest pouty face ever followed by a deafening howl. We never see her cry like that. She's all giggles and smiles at home. I think we need to get her out more.

I hope everyone has a marvelous holiday!

 

Odds and Ends

• Hope your Thanksgiving was nice. Mine was. Quiet dinner with just the four of us.

• You have probabaly noticed that I'm changing the design of my site a lot. Between work, school and all the other stuff Josh does, I don't have the heart to ask him to design another header for me because I'm sick of the last one he made me. I don't want to pay for one since I've decided that I want to change it every month/season. I want a photograph I've taken with my site's name on it. (Similar to the stock one that I have up now.) I guess I should learn how to use that fancy Photoshop program that is taking up so much room on my computer.

• I have recently been on a search to find matching Christmas pajamas that aren't way overpriced for the kids. I found ones that I likes at Children's Place and ordered them. They came in today and they are the softest pajamas ever and they were cheap! I got them on sale this past weekend. The prices are now raised but now that I know how nice their fleece jammies are, I would gladly pay the price. I couldn't wait to see them in their Christmas jammies so they wore them to bed last night.

• Our Christmas tree is up and we already have presents under it. I'm the type of person that starts Christmas shopping in the summer. I had a couple things and within the last two months I've kind of gone overboard. I bought a ton of clothes for the kids. I rarely pay full price for kid's clothes. No matter what I'm at the store for, I will cruise by the discounted kid's clothing section and almost always walk away with something. I bought about $100 worth of kid's clothes that were on sale at the end of the summer on Old Navy's website. If I had paid full price for everything, I would have paid close to $400. About two months ago I fell in love with this purple hoodie that had a cute little bird on it. (I'm obsessed with purple and cute birdies. I don't know why.) It was 12 bucks and I couldn't bring myself to spend that on a piece of clothing that she probably wouldn't even get that much use out of. I went to Target this past weekend and found it on clearance for 74 cents! Woot! Anyway, my point is, there are already a shitload of gifts under the tree. I still haven't wrapped their toys (most of which I also got on sale) so add those and the gifts from the grandparents and our tree is going to be kind of overstuffed. I'm glad the kids are young enough that they don't realize that clothes are not a good gift because it's going to be the bulk of their loot this year.

• Maggie will be ten months old this month and the girl still has no teeth. We just started giving her lunch and she is nursing less and less. Our nursing sessions rarely last more than five minutes. Except for her morning one since she's starving first thing in the morning. She's crawling all over the place. Her independence is making me want another baby. Must resist the urge to procreate. We want more kids, I just want to wait a couple years so my body can have a break.

• In about a month we'll have movers packing up our house. I am nowhere near ready for a move. I'm not sure how I can organize for our move when we're pulling Christmas stuff out. At first we thought we would buy a house when we got to Virginia, but the more we think about it, the worse the idea gets. Since it's our hometown that Josh will be stationed to, we know the area really well so the only places that are affordable and we want to live at, are way too far from Josh's base. So we've decided to live in the new base housing that is close to the area my family lives. Not really close to the base where Josh will be working, but Josh says that being close to family makes up for the longer drive to work. While we wait for a base house to open up for us, we'll be staying with my mom. Not going to lie, kind of scared of this. I love my mom dearly but we're both honest people who like to speak our minds. Oh and we both MUST have the last word. Especially when arguing with each other. I'm not as bad about it anymore since I've realized that if I just say "You're right, mom." and not say anything else, the argument will end. I've learned this from my oldest sister. My other sister has yet to learn this vital lesson. My brother is the golden child and my mom never argues with him. It's cool. Us girls don't mind. Our brother is pretty awesome. None of us ever argue with him.

• At first I hated Facebook and liked MySpace way better. Ever since they re-designed it, I'm sort of addicted. Ironically, I joined all the groups that were against the new design. So if you're on Facebook, hit me up. I'm a friend whore.