A Too Much Information Post.

So ever since I was a little kid I remember having a nervous stomach. It got better when I got older, at least most of the time. That was until I had kids. It seems birthing children broke something in my guts and now I have IBS. This doesn't come as a huge shock since just about everyone in my family has stomach troubles but of course this was one I was hoping would skip me.

Now why would this be a big deal? The main reason is because anytime I leave the house I worry about needing a bathroom and in turn the worrying upsets my stress induced stomach. It is a horrible cycle but I am beyond knowing how to break the cycle.

It also means I have a hard time going out and meeting friends. Sometimes even seeing my best friends makes my stomach go nuts because it is a social situation and I am very easily stressed by that. I guess you could say I am painfully shy.

I am sitting here now getting ready to meet a friend IRL for the first time. I have been talking to her for nearly 5 years and we were pregnant at the same time with our firsts and I have been dealing with a horrible stomach all morning. I have no *real* reason to be nervous. I know she is a good person, I know she has similar stomach trouble, I know she is likely the last person in the world that would ever judge me, but still, Imodium and I have been best buddies this morning.

I have been to the doctors of course but there is nothing that can really be done. I can take anti-anxiety meds but those would just make me sleepy and a sleepy mom doesn't take care of kids so well.

So until I figure out how to fix it, I stay at home an awful lot, way more than I ever want to.

Feeling like parenting failure

My son is 4. I love him dearly. Most things go fine around here but one area that I feel like I really suck at is finding him friends his age.

In our area it seems as though all 4 year olds are in preschool, which is something that we can't afford right now as we have to pay a sitter to come in 2 days a week to watch *both* the kids so I can do school work. Also things around here are *expensive*. I went looking around. There is one thats $35 a day but it is also 18 3-5 year olds in a basement with no windows...uh, no, not gonna happen. Then there is one that is 9 hours a week (3 days of 3 hours a day) for $265 a month. So those are pretty much it without trying to get into a program with the local Y which would be way less than ideal as one location has no parking so I would be trudging downtown with both kids in January. Ugh. Or the other location which is about 40 mins from my house and only runs 3 hours at a time so there wouldn't be any point in coming home with Ivy once we were done dropping off Aaron...and what on earth would I do with just Ivy in that town for 3 hours?? There is a serious lack of indoor stuff here in the winter.

I have tried meeting other parents at the park but there are problems with this. One is that Aaron doesn't hang out and PLAY with people at the park...he is busy running etc. The second problem is that I am busy running left for Ivy and right for Aaron and can't manage to try to strike up a conversation with a parent even if I managed to find the guts to *Talk* to someone I didn't know out of the blue.

We have tried local story times etc but there are either very few attendees or the ones that come all have younger kids. Same story with our local meetup.

I would try to post something on craigslist but 1. you never know who you are gonna find that way and 2. I wouldn't even know what to post it under.

I am just out of ways to figure out how to get some age appropriate friends for Aaron and it makes me sad. I grew up with few friends and still have very few friends, I can think of a whole two that I am close with and see regularly, if my son wants more than that and wants to be social, I want to help facilitate that....but I am running out of ideas!!

Sugar Countdown

I have needed to do this for awhile now. A long while. I am trying to kick the sugar. I am still eating carbs but I am trying to cut out most of the added sugars. I also can't have any "fake" or artificial sugars (stevia etc as well) because of unpleasant digestive side effects.

I am on day 3 now. I have a few problems with it though, mostly that I am not a big veggie fan. I routinely eat red peppers, sweet potato, potato, corn, and peas. I do have others on occasion but not that often. I admit it, I am flawed.

The first day I did this I hadn't planned on it so my sugar was still higher than I would have liked but I wasn't able to make it to the store etc.

I have been writing down everything I eat and the "sugar" part from the nutrition facts. I realize there are more carbs etc but I might eventually get to the point of chilling out on those but I am working slowly.

Day one (umprepared) was:

Coffee with creamer - 10 grams sugar
1 dark chocolate n oats granola bar (not a pack, just a bar) - 6 grams sugar
PB&J on Wheat - 22 grams of sugar
PB Pretzels - 2 grams sugar
Chocolate soymilk (I need soymilk for other reasons but will be switching to something unsweetened when the chocolate runs out) - 19 grams sugar
1 piece white sauce lasagna with spinach and whole wheat pasta - 3 grams sugar
1 mentos - no idea…maybe a gram??

Total added sugar intake: 63 grams

Day Two:

oatmeal 5 grams of sugar
Cashews 2 grams of sugar
Quisadilla 1 gram of sugar
granola bar 6 grams of sugar
fries 2 grams of sugar
veggie chicken nuggets 2 grams of sugar

Total added sugar intake: 18 grams

Day Three:

coffee - 6 grams of sugar
grilled cheese (on yeast free/ sugar free bread) 0 grams sugar
Potato chips - 0 grams sugar
hotdog on a roll - 5 grams sugar
corn on the cob - 0 grams sugar (I know its carbs, right now I am limiting added sugar)
1 small cookie (I made cookies because hubby was bugging me alllll day so I let myself have ONE) - 13 grams of sugar

Total added sugar intake: 24 grams

For me the biggest hurdle was the coke. I LOVE my coke in the afternoon. I have been having one everyday for at least 8 years now. It is a hard habit to break and of course I was addicted to the caffeine.

I replaced this with flavored seltzer (raspberry lime) with no sugar and no artificial sweeteners.

So far I have noticed some changes that I didn't expect. My mood seems to have stabilized a bit, which is amazing. My 4 year old is forever doing bad things, always bad things, and for a long time I would freak out and my BP would rise and I would have a horrible time keeping my calm.

I noticed even yesterday and moreso today that he is still doing all the same ridiculous things that he shouldn't do and I get annoyed...but I dont feel like strangling him because of it. You wouldn't think that sugar would cause such a difference, but it really does.

Dreams

So now that I have had some time off school and my brain is actually allowed to think about things other than assignments and papers and homework, I have had a chance to really think about what I want to do.

I have struggled really hard with what I want to "be when I grow up" and while I am sure it will always be a challenge I feel like I at least have a an idea now. I will graduate in December with a bachelors degree (finally!) and then will be left to figure out what I want to do from there.

My long term goal is midwifery. I love birth. I believe in birth. Being around new moms and new little babies is truly amazing. I had thought about possible doula work before I train for midwifery but came to the conclusion that it just won't work until my kids are a bit older. Right now if I had a client call at noon that was in labor, I would have nothing to do with my kids and I couldn't be a very effective doula with my children running about.

I still want to be around babies and new moms, and I know/knew quite a bit about breastfeeding, so I am looking into a way to possibly become a lactation consultant. In my *ideal* world I would set up an office in my home and schedule clients around *my* schedule as well. My husband is very supportive of whatever it is that I might be able to do for work that still allows me to be home for snow days, and sick days, and vacations etc so I am lucky that he is willing to see me through that stuff. First of course I need to find the right path to becoming a LC. If I do that I could even do post postpartum doula work as that usually doesn't need to be done at a specific time, you can schedule appointments for that instead.

I sit here at 25 years old and feel so excited about what the future might hold, but need to figure out how to get to the end result. I am thrilled at the idea of doing something I *love* for work rather than just working to work.

Here is to the future!

I am here!

I promise I am still around and plan on writing. It has been a crazy semester and we are finally coming down to the wire. Everything is due by May 18th at the *latest* so I will be done before then. My *goal* is to have all the work done by May 1. My "big" projects I had left for the semester as as follows (the stuff bolded is stuff I finished during break week last week):

Things I can do during vacation:
4 writings for weekly papersPOG
4 weekly questions POG
Final paper S&I
Final Exam POG
10 page paper PC
Cemetery Assignment AOD
Persuasion Essay RE (cloth diapers)
Slides for ads & radio PC

I have the ability to do the cemetery assignment and the final exam now, I just need to find the time...I also could do the 10 page paper but I gotta figure out an outline or something beacuse 10 pages is a lot of pages.

Death everywhere.

Forewarning, this is not going to be a happy post. Today I am hurting.

It of course started with my Grandfathers passing in February. That I handled okay. He was 88 years old he had a long life and the last years of his life were filled with confusion and pain for him as he suffered from Alzheimers.

I had started to get over that and I noticed on a friends page the story of Layla Grace (Don't read that page if you can't handle very sad cancer things and small children). She is a little girl in Texas that is at the end of a losing battle with cancer. She is 2 years old and has never known much other than pain and chemo and cancer. It hurts my heart on a serious level to hear about it yet I can't stop following her updates on twitter. I think it hits me especially hard because of Ivy being nearly the same age but in either case no child deserves cancer and no parent deserves to watch their child have to die such a hard death.

Then there is a friend from high school. I lost touch with him years ago as I did most people from high school when I moved up here. He too is losing his battle with cancer. His wife also just had a little boy in late February and they have a 2.5 year old little boy too. I want to visit but I wouldn't even know where to start. We hadn't been in touch for a long time but we were good friends for awhile in 7th grade and threw until I left my hometown. Of course, as a parent, it hurts me so much to think that he is sitting in the hospital missing what little of his childrens lives he will be around for.

Then, after all that, I find out the dog that we tried to own, the great dane, is at a rescue because whatever home he went to after us didn't work. I also find out that the poor thing has a fatal heart defect. So now he doesn't have a family and there is no saying when he might die, could be any time. I briefly thought about trying to take him back but I know we can't. Ivy just won't have it and I haven't got the time to continually peel Ivy off of me to do homework. She was *not* okay with him being here. At all. I loved that dog though and he is a perfect pup.

So that is my pity party for today. It is just a lot to handle all at once in addition to the 2 kids and the 5 classes (one of course, about death).

I am physically and mentally exhausted and could really use a couple weeks to sleep, but of course, I don't get to even if I want to......

Word EXPLOSION and Imagination Enters

So Ivy, all of a sudden, has gotten a whole mess of new words. Some of these words include: beef, spices, ice, peacock (?!), Barbagee (Aaron), whoa, on, and off. There are others and they just keep coming!! It was pretty funny because she didn't say a whole lot of things for awhile but clearly understood EVERYTHING being said then all of a sudden BAM! She has a bunch of words. It is so great to see her learning and being SO excited that she can really talk now.

And Aaron...oh that little boy. He has recently grown quite an imagination. He has always been creative but he has lots of imagination in there now. Today while we were playing outside he was chasing "Moon Dragons". When asked what color they were and where they were he said they were white and way up high. He was running around like CRAZY "chasing" these Moon Dragons. He does stuff like that all the time now and its so funny to see because he gets so excited.

I *love* these children. They are so fun and wonderful.