Marriage

I love my husband. I truly love my husband. He is a good man, a great man, a patient man. This entry is not going to be a hate fest or a love fest. It's just going to be the facts.

Fact.
After baby EVERYTHING changes.
Everything really does change. Her body changes and the Husband learns to deal with his new responsibility as a father. I'm not insinuating that a real man takes responsibility BUT a real man will take responsibility and do so without complaining to take care of his wife and new child. The wife needs to make sure that she shows appreciation for all the work he is doing.

Fact.
I have failed at showing my appreciation. I'm not the best wife in the world and Hubby knows that. Admitting that I have failed him as a wife to him...very difficult. Hubby has made many sacrifices so that Baby Boy and I can live comfortable. I need to work part time so Hubby pushed back his schedule later so that he could be here in the morning to take care of Baby Boy until I am off of work. He knows I want to someday be a stay at home mom so he is working very hard to work towards a promotion.

I fail. I promise for Christmas Hubby will know how much I appreciate and love him.

Tomorrow's post??? Hopefully it will be about my new nephew ;)

The Zoo

Yesterday I went to the zoo. I went to the zoo with Baby Boy AND his little cousin, BY MYSELF!!! I know, I know before you start showering me with phrases of how brave and amazing I am let me tell you something. Two kids is a TON of work!!! You never have a moment to breathe or to think. I can't imagine grocery shopping. As I stand contemplating the prices of produce I would surely lose one kid.

I kind of knew this when I volunteered to take my niece to the zoo so I came prepared. I had Baby Boy in my ergo. (BTW if you don't have one of these buy one immediately!!! ERGO Carrier the Best thing EVER!!!) My little niece was strapped into the stroller...or so I thought! She was like Houdini!!! Before I had a chance to look at the flamingos she had somehow gotten out of the straps and was standing up in the stroller. She gave me a heart attack! I had visions of her going down in a pile of appendages. Meanwhile I'm stuck having to explain to her VERY pregnant mother why she would be happier with her soon to be newborn than with her rambunctious 20 month old.

All in all it was a very productive day. The kids had fun playing with each other and both of them are still alive in one piece. After we got home from the Zoo they were both passed out for about 30 minutes in the car while I got some quiet time to myself.

Great fun, although I don't think I will be doing that again anytime soon!

The Garage Door

Day 1-Thursday afternoon our garage door stopped working. I was so bummed. I hate having to walk outside to get my car. I know, I know, I'm a spoiled suburban housewife.

Day 2-Friday evening my brother comes over to see if maybe he can fix the garage door. He finds the problem of but is unable to fix it. After a phone call with my husband, in which we discuss how little money we have, he thinks it's time to call the home warranty people and report our problem. For those of you who own a home and don't have a home warranty I recommend that you look into it and get one. NOW!

Day 3- Saturday- I complain to my husband that I have to walk through the front door, OUTSIDE and all the way out to my car that is getting abused by the elements. Hubby rolls his eyes.

Day 4- Sunday- Hubby complains about how much work it is to carry Baby Boy out to the car when we don't have the use of our garage. I roll my eyes at him and think, "now do you get why I have been bitching about this stupid garage door!!" We then journey with my brother and his family to purchase our Christmas tree. After we get back home my brother decides to take one last look at the garage door. In doing so he wrecks the door EVEN MORE!!! Now the garage door is OPEN and he can't get it DOWN!!! After over an hour of fighting with the door, help from Hubby and the neighbor they finally get the door down. After my brother leaves my husband confides in me that if the garage door isn't under warranty we can't afford to get it fixed and will have to park outside for the interim.

Day 5- Monday- Hubby gets a call from the door people. They plan to come out Tuesday (today) and won't know if it's covered by the warranty until they look at the door.

Day 6- TODAY!!! GARAGE DOOR DAY!!! The man comes out to look at the door. After one excruciatingly long minute of examining the problem the garage door man (A.K.A my savior) turns to me and says...."I can have this fixed in a jiffy. It's covered by the warranty, just give me a minute to fill out the paper work and call this in." Just like that our garage door saga ended. The door is functioning and working. Life can now go on!!!!

Tomorrow I will post about our outing to the zoo. I will have my 1 and a half year old niece with me so I'm hoping to have some good stories.

in-laws

Today's visit from the in-law was very tame. My father-in-law drove up for a quick daytime visit and while he was here I was at work. Not that I don't like my in-laws they just haven't morphed into feeling like a part of my family yet. I know that he really just drove up to see Baby Boy so I didn't really make a huge effort to see him.

My in-law was able to get some awesome pictures and a video to take back to show his wife. My father-in-law was also able to send me a picture of Hubby, Baby Boy, and I. It is such a cute picture that I am hoping to add it at the end of this blog if I can figure that out. I added it to our Christmas card. It looks so freaking cute!!! It took a few hours to pick just the right one but I figured it out. I can't wait to get the cards in the mail and send them out to people. Gotta love the snail mail!

As I write this blog I am also watching TV. Is it so wrong that as a grown woman I want a xbox kinect??? That is really what I want for Christmas but I feel embarrassed to ask for it. I think the kinect would be so fun to play with friends ect. I want one...

Below the cute pic going on our Christmas Card. So cute right!!!??

"Mom, Dad, I can't breathe!!"

In tomorrows post I will fill everyone in on the saga of the broken garage door. :(

Sunday, Fun Day

Today was some what successful. Not as successful as I would have liked it to be but I think we did pretty well.

Went to church-check
cleaned house-check
get Christmas Tree-check
clean house some more????

So my house isn't as clean as I would like it to be. My in-laws are coming tomorrow and I still have so much to do!!! Our bedroom is a MESS and I haven't gotten to the guest bathroom yet. On top of all this I have to work tomorrow so most of the last second cleaning is going to fall on Hubby's shoulders. I hope he is up to the task.

The one good thing that came out of today is that we were able to get a tree today. We actually got to go to a tree farm and cut one down. It was really fun and I'm so excited to start some new Christmas traditions in our family. I didn't grow up cutting down a tree for Christmas and neither did Hubby but we both decided that it would be cool to do this for Christmas.

Thats all I have to say about today. I still have a TON of cleaning to do still before tomorrow morning. I should have an interesting post for you all tomorrow about my in-laws.

Weekends

I have a love hate relationship with weekends. On Friday night my idea of what the weekend will be like is very ambitious. By the time Sunday night rolls around I feel like a complete failure. Now that I find myself in the middle of a weekend I am going to share with you what I hope my Sunday will look like.

Tomorrow the Winrow family will be going to Church. After which I plan to clean my house. (Something I am doing constantly since my in-laws are spending Christmas with us this year, more on that in another post.) Later in the afternoon the Winrow family will be meeting up with the Ruiz family as we journey to a Christmas tree farm to cut down our first Christmas tree as a family. We will then return home and prepare the house for the Christmas season. After the house is decorated I will once again run around the house and clean it. Somewhere in between all of this I plan to do laundry for Baby Boy.

These are my plans for tomorrow. We shall see how much of these plans get done. I will update you all with my progress. I hope that we will be quite successful but I'm just being positive. If nothing else I hope to have Christmas-tree-cuting pictures to share with you all.

Wish me luck!

Friends, How many of us have them???

I was supposed to post about watching my cousin's kids today but last minute changes happened and it just ended up being me and Baby Boy today. We had a pretty relaxing day. I was able to clean my house. Like actually clean it. I cleaned the floors, got rid of clutter that had collected on the kitchen table, and dusted in the family room!!! My house feels so good right now. To top it all off my friend called me this evening. We had a really good chat. I miss her :(

It's not that having a baby changed our relationship but life has changed it. We used to live blocks away from each other now she lives in San Jose and I live in Roseville. She used to be single, I used to be dating. I got engaged then married. She found a nice guy and a serious relationship. She's still teaching while I quit teaching and work for the family who gives me the hours I need for the money I want. The important things are still there though. We can talk on the phone and laugh and have a great conversation just like old times. The only thing that is missing is her face and a bottle of wine :)

Friends after baby take on a different shape and body than before baby. Before baby you can actually get out of the house to hang out with them. After baby you are lucky if you can get time for a 20 minute conversation. Taking a weekend trip to San Jose with baby in tow?? YA RIGHT!!!!!! Making plans for a Rockin' New Years Eve party??? Don't invite us we go to bed by 8 p.m. and need to be up by 2 a.m. to feed the baby.

Having a baby certainly changes things. Some for the better, other changes just suck. Regardless I love having as good of friends as I do. I truly am blessed. I look forward to the next phone conversation and time with friends no matter how short.

Addictions

Hi, my name is Jamille and I have an addiction to daily deal sites. I think I have spent $100's of dollars since Caleb has been born on daily deal sites. I just can't resist a good deal!!!! That coupled with the fact that there are so many cool things out there for babies.

Not to toot my own horn but I have all kinds of super cool things because of those daily deal sites. I check these sites religiously and go to sleep at night with the excitement of finding out what tomorrows deal is going to be! I have several alarms set on my phone to remind me to stop what I am doing and check my websites.

Yes, yes I know I have a problem. I have made a promise to myself though to not make another purchase from a daily deal site until after Christmas. I want to have a little money to spend this Holiday! We shall see how I keep my promise.

Tomorrow's post will be about my day tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be watching my niece and nephew for my relatives while they move into their new house. I will have a 3 year old, a 1 year old and a 7 month old tomorrow. I should have plenty of good stories AND a few good pictures too!

NAPTIME!!!!

Ever since Baby Boy joined us in May we haven't had a regular nap time. I have long since given up trying to establish one and just take the early bedtime as my consolation.

Other moms have told me that the nap time routine just magically creates itself when the baby is older. Low and behold the last two days he has taken an hour long nap!! I feel so rested today and I was able to pick up my house a little bit!

I really hope that this routine sticks but because I posted about it here for all the world to see that means that it won't and come tomorrow he will be up all day yet again :/

I am glad that we have a nighttime routine though. It has really made a difference. The nighttime routine actually helps to relax me and get me ready for bed! By the time Baby Boy is asleep in his crib I am ready for my glass of wine and snuggling in bed with a good book.

That's enough rambling for one post. Tomorrow I shall post about my addiction...daily deal sites...

Working Mom, Poor Mom

I always hoped I would be a stay at home mom. I now found myself in the position of having to work. Although not having to work full time, I am having to work part time.  Hubby works more than full time in that he is a supervisor and thus works long hours. This leaves me to do much of the child rearing in the home.

I really don't want to come across as sounding whiny but wanting to set up the situation so that you can fully understand what my thought is. Having to balance both motherhood and work is hard. At the end of the day it leaves me so exhausted I seriously think about the importance to showering.

What conclusion have I come to. I don't want to HAVE to work. I want to WANT to work. I want to try the stay at home mom thing and if it totally sucks I can go back to work. I have a sneaking suspicion that being at home all day taking care of Baby Boy won't suck though. I mean think about it. Never having to work?? Clocking in every day doing things that don't really matter to you but being forced to do them just for the money?? No thank you! I gotta raise my kid anyway why complicate things by adding a job into the mix?

That is all for now. Tomorrow I will post about.....Well I guess you will have to check me out tomorrow to see what I post about :)

Sippy Cups

At Thanksgiving Baby Boy drank from his cousin's sippy cup. After crying inside that my baby boy is growing up I came to terms with the fact that it is now time to buy a sippy cup for my little dude. Yesterday I journeyed to Le Target to buy him a sippy cup. Let me just say that the aisle with the sippy cups was overwhelming.

REALLY!!!?? You need there to be 100 different kinds of sippy cups!!!!?? I had no idea what kind of sippy cup to buy. I ended up buying one expensive kind and one cheap kind. 

Sometimes I think the baby aisle at Le Target is built just for those first time parents who are suckers. They give us way too many choices and hide the one sippy cup that the kids are actually going to like in the kitchen utensils section. 

Hopefully baby boy likes the sippy cup I bought for him. 

Short post today. Tomorrow I will blog about being a working mom.

Growing Boy

It seems like just yesterday that I was bringing my baby boy home. I was tired and overwhelmed. I could only nurse in one position and my back ached. I had no daily plans and the days seemed endless as they slid on into the other. I constantly wondered when I would become a nursing Jedi. When my baby would sleep through the night and let me rest. When my baby would be fun to take out on day trips and errands.

Now that this day is finally here I find myself longing for the simple days of a newborn. The time when he was so tiny I was afraid I might hurt him. He slept for 20 hours out of the day and I should have taken advantage of that. I should have cherished every moment. drunk in his smallness and helplessness.

Now he can take care of himself, to an extent, he sees something he wants he goes after it. He wants that toy in his mouth he makes it happen. He wants to be by daddy he moves his little butt over there.

I now realize that time really does move quickly. Now that he has entered my life time seems to be like those commercials on DVR. I know that they are there because I fast forward them but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what they were advertising.

My baby boy is growing up and there isn't a thing I can do about it. All Hubby and I can do as parents is try our best, hope and pray that we did a good job. I am trying to keep up with baby boy but he just grows way too fast for me to keep up.

Adios dear readers. Tomorrow I will write about sippy cups.

Thanksgiving

This is my first post at this blog. I think I am going to enjoy blogspot. It's linked to my google account so it makes for easy posting. Let me just say that I LOVE google. How did we ever survive without google?

Now on to more important things. I know why all of you are here reading this blog. It's to find out about baby boy and what went on this Thanksgiving. There really isn't much that went on but I will do my best to fill you in.

We went to my aunts house to celebrate turkey day this year. I believe at last count there were 67 people at her house. There was so much food and great conversation. I got so see some of my far away cousins and visit with some old friends. Hubby got to watch football games and cheer with the guys. Best of all Baby Boy was passed around to everyone and I got to take a rest from holding him! I love holding my baby but he is getting so big now that it's really tiring! He got passed from one set of arms to the other and he didn't cry once. He's such a good boy.

I was also able to get a picture of all the great-grandkids with my grandparents. I can't wait to print them out and put them in Baby Boy's baby book. It really is special that he gets to have great-grandparents around. I never did. Hubby has great-grandparents that he NEVER sees!!! That is so wild to me. My family is so tight knit that it's hard for me to understand that.

Today Hubby worked outside on the back yard almost all day. My dad came over with his chain saw and ladder and helped him to cut back the tree from the neighbors yard that is taking over our yard. It was a big project but they got it done. It's amazing how that one little thing improved the look of our yard already. We have both made a promise to each other that every Sunday it's not raining we will work in the backyard at least 3 hours. This way we figure by spring our backyard will be ready for new plants and look fantastic!

That's pretty much been our life as of late. Tomorrow we head to my parent's house for second thanksgiving. I am really excited for this! It's the day that my immediate family gets together to really enjoy each other and this way my mom gets some left overs :) It's also the day that we pick secret santa's. I am really excited about that. Yay for Christmas shopping!! I love buying presents!!! Can't wait to start decorating my house and showing Baby Boy just how fun Christmas is.

Adios dear readers. Tomorrow I update about Baby Boy getting bigger :)