Negetive Nan

Warning: It's currently 4:19 in the morning. I have been weaning Marcus for a week now. My hormones are going berserk. I am emotional and cranky, and I may or may not make sense.

Oh, where do I begin? There are so many (many!) crazy ramblings going through my mind right now. Marcus was actually mostly asleep, being rocked on my lap, but he was coughing so frequently that he wasn't able to fully go to sleep so I could put him down. I was basically writing a Complaining Post in my head, so I figured I better write it down to just get it out.

I'm sorry that the bulk of my posting for the last six or seven months have been me complaining. Life is really not that bad, and even on my worst days I know that there are so many other people who have a harder life than I do, and I really have no cause to complain. But yet I still complain, and I hate that, because I am not a negative person. I'm not, and I don't like being one. I realized a few months ago that I was spending entirely way too much time focusing on the negative, which was only making my life, and my children's lives worse. And yet, I still complain. In my defense, though, even though I have a ton of negetive blog posts lately, I'm not being negative all day long of every day. I just don't have any free time to post the good things that are happening. Seriously, there have been so many good posts that I've wanted to write that have just been swept aside, because when I finally get chance to write I've got to get everything written down and out of my brian. Like now, for instance.

So, yeah. Where do I begin? I am so tired of having Brian gone. We've gotten used to it; it's almost become routine, especially now that he's able to be home every weekend, instead of every thrid or fourth weekend. We've gotten used to it, and we've made do and done the best that we could, but I am so ready for it to be over. I'm tired of all our conversations taking place over Windows Live Messenger after the kids are in bed. I would love to just have him come home in the evenings and be able to talk over dinner or while cleaning up after dinner. I would even love to have to shout while talking, because the kids are being loud, or have a disconnected conversation, because I have to change a diaper in the middle of it. I just want him here. I'm tired of being alone, and I'm tired of doing this alone. Call me a wimp, but I could not be a military wife. I'm not that good.

Weaning Marcus has been crazy. Let me start by telling you that my other two children basically weaned themselves. On their own, they cut down their nursings to be just once before bedtime, or during the occasional "I'm sick" or "I really just got hurt" times, so nursing just kind of faded out for them, and weaning was no big deal for me or for them. (Alyssa weaned at fourteen months, and Ethan weaned at fifteen.) Weaning Marcus has been entirely different story. When I started to try getting him to sleep through the night when he was eight or nine months, I kept nursing him through the night, because Brian wasn't home, I was exhausted from being a single mother, and nursing was the fastest and easiest way to get him back to sleep. And that was okay up until he was twelve, thirteen, fourteen months old and waking up nearly every two hours to nurse. You can't tell me that that was necessary. He wasn't interested in nursing during the day, he was getting plenty of nutrition from real food. He just had this crutch to lean on that actually was keeping us both up all night long.

So I tried to shorten the time spent nursing at night. I tried cutting down the number of times he nursed at night. We made progress, but that progress was very, very slow. Fast forward to last week. Jeremy and Andrea were getting married in Seattle, and I very much wanted to go with Brian without bringing Marcus along. We spent the entire week debating whether or not to bring him, and we finally decided to just leave him at home. It turns out that we were very busy with Brian being the best man (Yes, I'll post soon about the wedding. I've been wanting to.) and it would have been really hard to be carting a baby around everywhere. My wonderful mother kept Marcus for two nights, and he was not happy about the situation. When I got back, I figured that he had already gone two days and nights without nursing, and it would be silly to put both him and my mom through that and then to just go back to nursing all night long, so we quit cold turkey.

I'm glad that we did, but it's been hard on both of us. With the other two kids I didn't have the huge and hurting chest when I stopped nursing. I don't like that part. I didn't have my hormones forming a picket line and shouting obscenities at me. I don't like that part, either. And Marcus has definitely not been happy with it. Yes, we're still making progress. He's sleeping better, but with his cold (really, I guess it is more the cold than the not nursing) it's really hard for him to get back to sleep enough to stay asleep. He's now on a schedule that he wakes up at four o'clock every morning, and instead of crying and screaming like he did at the beginning of the week, he just complains for a few minutes, fights for a few minutes, then he goes to sleep in my arms. Seriously, the whole process takes about ten minutes. Not that bad. But then he starts coughing in my arms, and he doesn't settle enough for me to lay him down, then he wakes up again, and we have to start the whole process over. Or, I lay him down, he starts coughing, and then after about five minutes he wakes up again. Really, the best way to get him and keep him asleep right now is by holding him and walking around the room, and my legs are so sore from walking so much. It feels like I've just taken up running! My thighs are actually sore! From rocking my baby to sleep!

But, really, we are making progress so I shouldn't complain. And once his cold is gone things will get a lot easier. (By the way, I rubbed creamy Vicks on his chest and throat a while back, and he's asleep now. He got tired of sitting on my lap down here, so we went upstairs and he conked right out.)

So what else is going on? I want to have another baby. Brian wants to have another baby. But I do not want to be pregnant again. Even with being on medication when I was pregnant with Marcus, I was still miserable. Yes, I was only throwing up once or twice a day. Yes, I was able to take care of the kids and reasonably take care of the house. Yes, I was able to function as a normal person, which is something I wasn't able to do while pregnant with Ethan. Yes, yes, it was okay, but I was still miserable. The throwing up once or twice a day lasted nine months. My stomach was hurting constantly. I was miserable, and I do not want to do that again. I honestly feel like being pregnant contributed to this awful state of complaining that I'm in. When you spend nine months being miserable, you kind of get used to it, and you just keep complaining even when it's over.

I know, there are ladies who would give their right leg to have the opportunity to be pregnant. I should be thankful that I can have children, and I am. I feel guilty that I'm not embracing this miracle that I have a chance to take part in. I've lost three babies during my pregnancies, so I know that feeling of emptiness. And it took a long time to get pregnant with Ethan, so I know the yearning of wanting so badly to be pregnant. I know how incredibly sad it is to be on the other side of things, yet, I still feel that being pregnant would be worse.

There are so many things that I want to do with the children I have already, and I feel like the quality of their lives would suffer from having a sick mom for nine months. I wouldn't be able to play with them, or have energy and patience to tuck them in at night. I wouldn't even be able to sit and read with them, because that would put them too close to me and reading aloud would also make the sickness worse. (It sounds pathetic, but it really does.) I'm seriously thinking of homeschooling next year (yes, I'll post about this soon, too) and I've started having a Morning School with the kids before Kindergarten each day, and I've loved that. I wouldn't be able to do that if I was pregnant. I'm terrified that we don't have a dish washer. Standing over a hot, steamy sink doing dishes is really hard for me when I'm pregnant. Heck, just rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher was hard enough last time. Brian says that he'll help, but he's not going to be around all day, and he'll be tired when he comes home, so even though it's wonderful of him to offer (and if/when I do decide to get pregnant I will take him up on that offer) it's not enough to relieve my mind.

Yes, I know I don't have to worry about this right now. While you're reading this, you're thinking, "If you're not ready to be pregnant yet, just wait. Don't worry about it right now. Marcus is still young. You have plenty of time." I've already told myself the same thing. The problem is that even thinking about it happening next year, a year from now, a couple years from now...it still feels like it's this huge thing that looming over me, waiting to just make my life miserable. And it doesn't help that I really do want more children. I especially want a sister for Alyssa. Honestly, if I was guaranteed to have a girl, I would do it one more time, and that sounds really bad, because there are so many women who would be happy with whatever they were given.

I've thought about adoption a bit. I want to think about it more. Maybe if we put the Pregnancy Decision off long enough for Brian to come home and get settled in his job and get us settled in our lives, then we'll look into it more. I know there are a lot of children out there who need loving homes. I just need to look into it enough and know that it really is the right thing for us before we think seriously about it.

And last, (Yes, I'm almost done!) I want to buy a house. Brian and I have been talking about buying a house for the last five years. We frequently plan our dream house, even though it may never happen. But it's fun to plan. In our dream house I have our ballroom, and Brian has the elevator going down to a Bat Cave that also has multiple buttons for basement levels that don't exist, just to confuse people...who happen to be in the Bat Cave Elevator....Um, but we know that those particular designs will never actually make it into our real dream house.

So we've been talking about buying a house, and we've actually talked to a few banks and lenders and such, and we could buy a house in the very near future. School is almost done, and Brian will have a steady, good job. It looks like it's very possible for us to buy a house soon, but we're running into the question of just because we can doesn't necessarily mean that we should. We've had a great time looking at houses that are entirely too expensive for us, and adding mental notes on which contractors we like the best and what their rates are for building Bat Caves. We've looked at a lot of different options, from buying to building, to waiting. I've found a lot of land that I've fallen in love with, and a builder that seems to be in our price range, and we could even start building soon so the house would be ready this summer when Brian will have a job, but we're still not sure that's the smartest thing to do right now.

I would love to be settled for a while in our own house. I can't wait for the day that we can actually say we have our own house. The lot that I love is so close to the Columbia River and the bike path. I would love to live by the river! The lot is actually not very far (at all) to where I grew up. I have so many memories of going on walks or bike rides along the river. Riding my bike to meet Jamie Thompson at an old dead tree that we named Marius (because I had a huge crush on Ryan Pitcher), and going for walks with my sister Christina and just being in awe of her very exciting (in my opinion) high school life. I would love to be able to take walks every day with the kids or with Brian or as a family. I would love for Alyssa to have a safe place to ride her bike. She's six years old, and she doesn't know how to ride a bike!

See? There's so much that I want, but I feel guilty for not being thankful for what I already have. We are so blessed to have the house we're living in now. It's not perfect, and some days here are really hard, but it's more than a lot of people have, and we really are lucky. I should be thankful.

And now you all know that I'm crazy, because Marcus has been sleeping for the last forty-five minutes, and instead of going back to bed, I've been typing away my troubles and boring you all with an incredibly long, emotional post. Now it's almost six o'clock, and I'm wondering if I should just get up for the day and take a shower while everyone is still sleeping, or if I should go back to bed, which means that I'll probably be forced to take a shower with Ethan and Marcus running around the bath tub, hogging the water. I could start another paragraph telling you about how I've tried to interest the boys in breakfast, computer, movies, games, and toys in hopes of showering by myself while they're awake and that it never works and they come find me upstairs anyway because we don't have a lock on our bathroom door, but that would just make this post longer, and that would be really pathetic.

Anyway, life is not that bad. I really am happy most of the time. I know that this won't last forever, and it's actualy almost over. I'm going to go lay down for a few minutes, then I'm going to go take a long, hot shower, all by myself.