Before and After

I feel like Nell Carter.

If it's not one thing it's another in this life but this year has been especially grabby with any extra money we happen to have laying around. We just asked Dup's dad for a loan to cover Davey's day care expenses for next year (very hard thing for Dup to do, thank you Dup). He graciously agreed to lend us the money and I kid you not, 24 hours later our fucking car needs a new transmission and it's going to cost about half of the money we just borrowed from him.

It hurts man. It just hurts. It just feels like this year has been crazy with the unexpected expenses. We had to pay a bunch of money for Davey's hospital bill in January, insurance only covers 10% plus we had to pay the deductible... there are other things but I just can't even list them. It's too boring.

God this post is boring. But we all deal with it. Money problems, money worries. It causes a lot of worry and most of the hard work that we do in this life is to avoid that worry.

I come from a long line of people who are horrible with money. My people are the buy on credit and worry about it later kind of people but Dup is the opposite. He comes from a long line of the cheapest people on the planet. That's another way of saying that Dup is very good with money. He plans, he makes spreadsheets, he reads self help books and money blogs and he has cleaned up my act. I'm so grateful. He helped get me out of debt. He cleaned up my credit. It's a great feeling. What is a horrible feeling is working my fucking ass off, being dead tired at the end of the day and not having any extra spending money at all to show for it.

We bought a condo this year. We knew it was going to be tight for a while, probably at least 5-6 years we would struggle to make payments and then we bought 2 cars and then we got pregnant. So what the fuck did we think was going to happen? All of these things are just money magnets. They all hold potential for sudden high cost hits to the old bank account.

We sat down about 2 weeks ago and crunched all of the numbers and it's just tight and we both have jobs. So many people are losing their jobs right now. If we lost ours we'd be totally fucked. Oh Universe. Please Universe, don't hear that and laugh. We get it Universe. You can do whatever you want. We respect that. We honor that. You are every powerful. Now please. Please. Just knock it off for a while ok? Can you just hold off until 2010 at least? Just give us a small break. We're trying to be good. We're trying to play by the rules and it just feels like slings and arrows sometimes.

Ultimately we are going to be fine. We'll figure it out. Somehow, it will work out. I'm just so tired of the subject and how it seems like all my husband and I talk about is money. What a cliche. If you look at it from another direction, we are rich beyond our wildest dreams. So I'll shut up now. I just hope that we can get a little break for a while.

Thanks.

joyful

I was inspired by Shanti Town to make a list of things that bring me joy and make me grateful to be alive.

Sitting at my desk and wishing that I could have another cup of decaf even though I know I shouldn't and then realizing that I never drank it and it's sitting right there and then drinking it and it's delicious.

My little toddler saying, "mama, dada, mama, dada, mama." because he sometimes blurs us into one entity.

Asking my little toddler for a kiss and having him pull out his binky and plant a big wet one on me. I don't care that it messes up my lipstick and I don't wipe off his slobber because I want it just to dry on my face so that I can carry little particles of him around with me all day long.

My mom sending me text photos while I'm at work of my toddler playing naked in my grammy's backyard with his cousins just like I used to.

Knowing that while I'm at work, my husband is taking care of our toddler, especially when he burns his little hand.

Sharing every silly little thing my toddler does with my husband because I know he cares about every silly little thing.

The sun shine the sun shine the sun shine. 75 degrees and sunny most of the time. why doesn't every one live here? Oh yeah earthquakes, drought, fires, traffic and housing prices. All totally worth it people!

Finally finishing painting my kitchen. Maybe some small progress is happening after all? I need to post before and after photos.

Feeling my little baby kick at me from inside my belly. I feel like a Jiffy Pop. Omg. do they still make Jiffy Pop? it's the best! I feel like a popcorn maker.

Galivanting Monkey had her baby! Fred is here. She pushed that baby out, dear god. What a champion. They don't call her the Wizard for nothing.

I'll stop there. I should do this more often. Of course, now there's something that is causing me anxiety that I need to share with you. Every one I know who is pregnant is having a boy and now I'm afraid that someone is going to name their baby boy our baby boy's name. I'm trying to talk Dup into letting me tell the pregnant people the baby's name so that it won't happen but he won't budge. The name we have picked is fairly uncommon but gaining popularity and you know, it's just the power of the collective unconscious. It's impossible to have an original thought in your brain. I'm not thinking it "WE" are thinking it. It's NUTZ. Since we've decided on the name I've heard of some people naming their babies this name and even one person who named their dog this name and now I'm completely anxiety ridden over it. I'm mostly afraid that the woman who lives in our condo complex who is 3 weeks ahead of me is going to use it, even though it's very unlikely considering her taste and ours is very different. I didn't have this anxiety with Davey's name because his name is so common but it's funny because now it's so popular to name your child something unusual that his name has become much less common. We were signing him up for his day care and the teacher asked me what his name is and I said, "David" and she said, "Oh how unusual!" I was like, "what?" She said, "no one names their child David anymore." Which I thought was so funny. She's right too. If you look at the cubbies with all of the kids names it's like, Miles, Riley, Cougar, Addison, Aidan, Aidan, Aidan. Every kid is named Aidan these days. Must be from Sex and the City. Anyway...

I would like to make a plea to the universe to remove my baby's name from the collective consciousness of just the people 1 degree away from me. Anyone else can have it, I'm not delusional. I just don't want our neighbor to have it.

I need to just make my mind blank when I'm around pregnant people but I'm like Dan Akroid in Ghost Busters when he accidentally thinks of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man.

Davey at the park

window guards

We have a set of very steep concrete stairs leading up to the landing outside of our condo. 15 steps. I've been working with Davey to practice walking up and down the steps on his own, while I hold his hand, vs. me carrying him up and down. I'm hoping that he'll be able to do it expertly but the time we have the baby and he's been making progress but on Saturday we were walking down the steps and he slipped from my hand and fell about 3 steps before falling into the side railing. I started screaming, "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD." And when he stopped falling I whisked him up and carried him down to sit on the bench at the bottom of the stairs and assess his injuries which consisted of a badly scraped knee. As soon as I realized he was ok I burst into tears. "God that really scared me." I told Dup. And I'm crying again as I type this. I'm still shaken by it.

Since Davey has been born he's been hospitalized and had a seizure, he's cracked his head open and gotten stitches, I've locked him in the car with the windows rolled up. All of these things were really scary. Something about watching him fall though, not knowing in that instant if he would stop, knowing that I couldn't get to him faster than gravity was pulling him, scared the shit out of me.

As parents we have to face the fear of the absolute worst thing that could happen, the loss of your child. It is amazing to me that there are people walking around on this earth with this having happened to them. This has actually happened to them. They are many, many people who have lived through this. Dear God I do not want to be one of them. Please God, Please. Not me.

I know that it's not good to live a life in fear and yet you can't be oblivious to the dangers, you must take precautions and be preventative and follow your gut instincts but (and I've asked this question before on this blog recently) are they insticts or is it paranoia?

I know that it's not good to live a life in fear but sometimes it's the fear of losing something that reminds us how valuable what we have actually is. I wish that weren't true. I wish we could know it without the fear.

Like anything else, it's a balancing act.

I've always liked the Jewish Holiday of Passover because it's all about knowing what you have when you have it. Appreciating your life because you know it may not always be like this. It hasn't always been this good. The Jews know a little bit about suffering I guess.

I think it's the secret to life really: knowing what you have when you have it. I saw a production of Our Town recently and I've been thinking about that play a lot lately and that's what it's saying as well. This is your life. Be awake to it while you're living it.

I love my life. My life is perfect and wonderful. I love spending time with my little baby even though I'm tired a lot. I love spending time with my husband and living in our condo and taking walks and making meals but I rarely sit and contemplate it. I'm always working toward something, cleaning or cooking or painting. When I sit it's because I'm so exhausted I can't do any more. How often am I awake? Do we need fear and terror to wake us up? I think we probably do but I wish we didn't.

I don't want to live in fear of something happening to Davey. I want to be brave for him and for myself. I want to enjoy the time I have with him because no matter how long we both live, it will end one day. It's impossible to live each day as if it were our last and I hate that saying because it's ridiculous but how do we stay awake and live without fear? It's not easy.

I keep saying that I can't wait until the kids are both a little older and it's true I look forward to them both getting to be about 4-5 because you can start to do so much more like go camping and ride bikes and not worry about them falling down the stairs or falling out a window. But it's horrible isn't it? To wish them into the future like that! It's truly horrible. I know I will look back on this time and miss it. I'll miss Davey being a crazy little toddler with red hair and 36 words who resembles and little monkey, troll, alien. He's so absolutely hilarious and cute it's unreal. I'll miss having a newborn and how extremely tiny they are and their little sleeping breath on your chest when you hold them. It will be really fun to go camping and ride bikes but I can't wish this away for us. This time is too valuable, to wonderful in and of itself.

It's all going to disappear one day. I know all too well from losing my dad in an instant and having a hole ripped in the space time continuum of our close knit family that it can happen any time. It's in the back of your mind but you can't let the fear of it grip you. It's a tricky thing.

We have large window in each room of our house, including the kid's rooms and the sills are just about 2 feet off the ground on the inside and it's about a 20 foot drop to the ground outside, which is concrete. Davey could easily climb out at this point. My cousin pointed it out to me when she was visiting yesterday and so of course, last night I had a dream that Davey fell out the window. I've been upset about it all day. They sell window guards on line which are basically just bars, you screw bars into the window sills on the inside of the windows so that they can't climb or fall out. There are 3 windows in particular that worry me but there are 5 total and it would be like $100 a window to put the guards on all of them. It's $500 plush tax and shipping that I would really really really really really rather not spend. I'd really really really really really really rather buy a new couch with that money.

What price do you put on peace of mind? Would these window guards take the fear away or would I just find something else to replace it with. Is there something else I could do to baby proof the windows? I'm not sure.

AAAAhhhhhhh. I'll keep you posted.

out of the woods

I had my 20 week anatomy scan yesterday and all went well. Tiny baby was moving all around and everything looks great. It's definitely a boy. So we can move forward with the cowboy themed nursery although Dup is now voting for surfer theme. I'll keep you posted on the final outcome of this important topic.

We were supposed to do some painting last weekend but things got pushed back due to very unfortunate circumstances. Deron's dear grandmother was killed in a car accident last week and we flew out to Michigan to attend her funeral. We're really glad we went but it was a really hard trip on all of us, Dup especially. Dup said some words at the ceremony which were apparently very wonderful and moving, I wasn't able to hear them because Davey started shouting, "Da da! Da da!" over and over again when he got up there and I had to take him out. It's a lot to ask of a toddler to sit in a car and then and airplane and then a car and then sleep in a strange place and then sit through a funeral and then get up and do it backwards the next day. So it was really hard on Davey too but he was a champ about it. I was basically cranky the entire time but supportive nonetheless and tried not to complain. Dup had to work while we were there too which meant doing telemarketing calls in the bathroom of the hotel room with the ironing board as a desk while Davey and I slept. What a trooper.

Dup was close to his Grandma. She was a very strong woman and she adored him. She was 91 years old but really healthy and of sound mind. It's a total shame she had to go the way she did. You would think that your prize for living that long would be to die in your sleep. I was really hoping we could get out to see her this coming Thanksgiving so that she could meet the new baby and see Davey. The one thing that I like to think about is that she's with the new baby now in heaven and she'll make sure that he makes his journey to earth safely before she moves on to where she's going. That's what I like to imagine.

It's been a hard couple of years for the Bos family, first losing Dup's mom and now his grandmother. I told his cousins, "we need to stop meeting at funerals."

I will post a photo of the tiny baby's profile later. He looks just like Dup. Also his feet = Dup's feet. This baby is going to be all Bos, I'm certain of it.

WTF!!!!!!!!

middleamericanhomophobicassholes!!!

I can not believe Adam didn't win.

It's such a fucking joke.

He will outsell Kris in the end though, for sure.