Confessions

Last night was another good night for Ayden.  He went down around 8:00pm, I gave him his dream feed at 10:00pm, he woke up hungry around 2:45am, he woke again around 4:30am because he had spit up and was laying in it, poor little guy. He woke up hungry again around 6:00am and that's when I brought him into bed with me (David was already up for the day).  Now that he's sleeping in his own room, his first morning feeding and the couple hours of cuddling and dozing together afterward is one of my favorite parts of the morning, along with kissing and hugging my honey goodbye <3.  

<3 Our little snuggle bug, sleeping in. <3

Playtime is also getting so fun!  I used to try to time it so Little Miss and Ayden would nap at the same time so that I could nap too.  Now that I'm getting a little more sleep, I use her nap times as my one on one time with Ayden.  He's so funny because he loves to roll to his belly.  He'll get over then push up and smile but after a few minutes he starts to get frustrated and "calls" for help.  I'll flip him back to his back and he'll do it all over again.  I suppose it's all part of the process for learning to roll from stomach to back now.

I have been keeping some pretty important feelings to myself for a while now and decided to finally voice them to David today.  I don't want to watch Little Miss anymore.  I'm so torn in so many ways on this subject.  

Reasons to watch her:

1) Having the supplemental income makes us comfortable so that we can be a little more flexible with our spending/have a little wiggle room from month to month.

2) Her mom is a long time friend of mine and has always given me summer work/extra jobs whenever I've wanted them (She owns a pet store and I worked there through college).  I like helping her out and giving back to her in this way.

3) It's only 2 days a week. 

Reasons not to watch her:

1) Being a stay at home mom has always been my dream.  I want our children spaced out in age so that I can give each one the chance to be a baby and also give them all of the one-on-one attention they need to grow and develop.  I feel this will help me be present and intentional with my parenting.  I strongly feel that Little Miss takes a lot of my attention away from Ayden on the days that she is here and even decreases my overall patience at times (ie, when she is calling out for more snack while Ayden is fighting sleep and crying, etc.).  This is NOT okay with me.

2) Little Miss doesn't like to play with toys.  I can pull out an entire room of age-appropriate toys and she will still find anything and everything non-toy that she can to play with.  I understand that this is all part of being a toddler, my degree is in Early Childhood Education after all; but as I mentioned above having to monitor her so closely while she plays takes away valuable time I could be spending focusing on my own baby.

3) On the days she is here I can't (and shouldn't since my job is to engage with her) get any house work done.  My vision of myself as a stay at home mom, home maker, house wife, whatever you want to call it was that I would make time to shape and mold our children, workout regularly, keep the house CLEAN, and have dinner ready when David gets home.  That way we have the rest of the evening to relax and enjoy each other as a family.   On the days she's here the house is a wreck and I don't even think about dinner until after David is home.

4) Like I say over and over, being a stay-at-home mom has always been my dream and this is it.  Once our children are grown it will be over.  If I feel like I'm only living my dream half way right now, and there are no do-overs,  something's got to change.

You may be saying to yourself, "Geeze, it's only two days a week!" and this is true but that leaves me having to pick up the slack on the other days and I constantly feel like I'm playing catch up.  

After  finally voicing all of these concerns to David, we came up with two possible solutions.  David's was to just call it quits.  No amount of money is more important than happiness or living a dream to its full potential (isn't he so wonderful?!?) and mine was that I would cut the hours down and take Little Miss to her mom's store around 2 or 2:30.  That would give me a few hours before David gets home to get things in order.  I think I'll start with my idea and if I'm still feeling like I'm only living my dream half way then I'll just tell her mom it's not working out.  It is as simple as that.  We only live this life once and you make your own happiness.

In the meantime, my solution to getting through the day with my sanity in tact is to get out of the house after lunch.  Today, I engaged in some retail therapy at Target.

Ayden in the Moby, Little Miss in the cart :)

It was so much more pleasant being out of the house!  Among a few other things, I got Ayden some summer clothes.  He's beginning to outgrow his 0-3 month clothes and after going through the 3-6 month stuff my sisters gave me, and finding most of it to be winter clothes, I decided we'd have to get at least a few outfits for him:

Sun hat and swim shirt (no sunscreen until 6 months...)

3 piece set

HAD to get the guitar romper!

Just for fun! :)

I'm keeping the tags on for now.  I'll scope out the local consignment stores to see if I can find some super cute, super cheap stuff and if I do, I'll return the above clothes. :)

Putting him to bed tonight was a DREAM!!  We are really making some headway in the bedtime department, as long as we get the timing right.  Not a single fuss, he just laid there listening to me reading a story while David and I stood over him admiring how cute he is, got sleepy and went to sleep.  It was as easy as that.  Hopefully we're on our way to that kind of bedtime every night!

Are you living your dream?  Did you have to make any hard decisions/sacrifices to get there?

~Sarah