📸 Photo cred: husband
🎂 🎁 🧁 🪴 🌻
Seriously, look at these! 🤩 I repotted them and two are already sprouting new leaves 🍃. It makes me so happy 😃. I even found a collectible golden crocodile philodendron for $12.50!
I hope 38 is my year to rediscover all of the parts of myself that got lost through early motherhood. I love being a mother, and it’s a huge part of my identity, but it’s not the entirety of it. My kids are becoming more independent and rely more on their friends for entertainment than myself, so it’s becoming easier to do things for me. My friend, Alexis, who used to be my nextdoor neighbor, started a book club at the beginning of the year. I’ve always loved reading, but it became a forgotten hobby once Quinn came along. I was already getting back into at the end of last year, but the book club helps motivate me to keep going, as well as introducing me to new authors and genres. I’ve also connected with people I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s nice having a standing commitment that gives me a couple of hours away from people saying, “Hey, Mama,” every five seconds 😵💫. Getting time away is the key to me being a better mother. By the time my birthday came, I was desperate for a break. Quinn had had another full week off of school, and all he and Ash did was fuss and fight 🙄. It is exhausting mediating every little squabble all day long. I truly don’t know how single parents do it. I’m so thankful for the privilege my children have from being raised by two parents. I was raised by a single mom, and I think she did a pretty good job, but I know I wouldn’t be as good of a mother without the support I get from Philip.
I had a conversation with my friend, Mollie, last week about how I’m a different mom whenever Quinn is home. It stemmed from me telling her that Iris had gotten a different experience the day that she was here during Quinn’s off week. Mollie agreed with me that I have to be, which is true, but it made me want to explore my feelings about it a little more. Whenever I talked to Philip, he pointed out that it may not necessarily be just that Quinn is home, but rather that he and Ash together create chaos. I’d bet he’s right about that, but I rarely have Quinn without Ash, and often have them the other way around. I hate that Quinn gets Angry Mom ™️ more than I wish he did. Those two get together and Quinn forgets how to keep his hands to himself. It’s super annoying.
So yeah, I was ready for some time by myself. I am with my children 99% of the time, and I love them so much, but they exhaust me 😅. One thing that I’ve been doing for me is making sure I get some exercise most days, which is usually just going for a walk. Philip and I tried and failed to the do the 75 Hard Challenge, which stipulates doing two 45 minute workouts each day, one of which has to be outside. You also have to commit to reading ten pages of a nonfiction book, following some sort of diet plan, not using alcohol, and taking daily progress photos. I could easily commit to no alcohol, photos, and reading. I could not easily commit to the rest. It’s a mental toughness challenge, and in order to succeed, you have to care, and I just didn’t care enough. So while I failed at it, it wasn’t a complete loss because that’s what inspired me to start walking regularly again. I walk with Lori during the day most days, and I walk with Mandy in the evenings whenever she can, and I occasionally go alone. I don’t mind going alone. I usually try to increase my pace and see how quickly I can do our usual route. I feel like the combination of daily walking and taking a multivitamin has helped me to feel less tired during the day. That’s a good thing because Ash is over napping at this point. Even if he wanted to, I’d rather he not. Bedtime is so much easier when they both go to sleep around the same time, and if Ash naps, that won’t happen.
He gets plenty of rest at night though, enough to fuel his nonstop talking ALL. DAY. LONG. 🫠. You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth. He told Philip one morning last week, while he was changing his diaper, “My penis is all wound up!” 🤦🏻♀️🤣.
He cracks me up whenever he says, “You scared me outta the crack!,” his take on “You scared the crap out of me” 😂. Quinn has recently learned about “nuts,” either from tv or the bus, I’m not sure which. He started saying that if a robber breaks in (a favorite scenario of theirs to act out), he’s going to kick him in the nuts. I try to discourage it by telling him it’s just not a nice thing to say, but I haven’t deemed it a “bad word,” so it still gets thrown around. It sounds particularly vulgar whenever the just-turned-three year old says it 😭. Ash will say, “If a robber breaks in I’m gonna punch him right in the kisser,” which is funny, but, “then I’m gonna kick him in the nuts,” which is not 😑. Both boys have an inflated sense of ability 🙄.
Ash’s favorite trick is to try to trap me in the kitchen with his line of Good to Grow lids 😅. Those stupid things cost too much for the amount of juice you get, but he seriously plays with them all of the time, so guess they’re worth it.
Quinn has a heart of gratitude (usually), and he’s very appreciative whenever he gets something he wants. We went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and told the boys they could get something from a gift shop. Quinn didn’t find anything he wanted, so we told him he could pick out something he wanted and I would order it for him. He chose a new hoodie, one to match Lawson 😆, and whenever it came in the mail, he opened it up and then came straight over to me to give me a hug and say thank you 🥹. I don’t get that kind of credit with Ash, he asks me where things come from all of the time, and I’ll tell him I ordered it from Amazon or whatever, and he’ll argue, “Nuh uh, the package man bringed it!” 🙄. I sure wish that’s how it worked 😅.
The trip to the zoo happened the day after Quinn’s surgery, a plan that was contingent on how he felt. The doctor said getting adenoids out and tubes put in wouldn’t be a big deal, and that Quinn wouldn’t have any restrictions. He did have a sore throat for a few days, but he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t let him jump on the trampoline the day of his surgery, after we got home 🙄. I could only keep him down for a few days, before he started ‘forgetting’ that he wasn’t allowed to do it 🙄.
His recovery was easy, a breeze compared to the one that comes with tonsils, I’m told. I had mine out in first grade, but I don’t really remember the aftermath. He was originally scheduled to have the surgery the week before, but the morning of, a nurse called to cancel because the doctor was sick. When we got rescheduled, we were put on the same day, and almost the same time, as Alexis’ two girls, who were having their tonsils removed. They were scheduled for 6 and 6:30am, and we were 7. It was nice having Alexis go first because I knew what was going on before the hospital staff informed me. She would text me, like, “Quinn just came to the recovery room,” and the doctor hadn’t even called me yet 😆.
I’ll get to the recovery room part in a sec, but before there, we were in the prep area. The nurse kept asking Quinn questions, and he answered her, but only with the bare minimum. Thanks to Alexis, I was prepared when she asked him if he felt safe at home, and did anybody hurt him. He said he felt safe but sometimes his friends hurt him. I began to elaborate on his answer before I came to my senses and let her do her follow without my influence. She asked him how they hurt him, and he said, “Because sometimes they wrestle me” 😆. She laughed and told him she knew that could be dangerous sometimes.
I felt like a terrible mother because Quinn didn’t have a comfort object with him, so one of the nurses brought him a stuffed animal to have with him during surgery. They told me on the phone that I could bring something for him, like a stuffie, or a blanket he likes, and something to keep him entertained, like an iPad. He doesn’t have any of those things 😅. Okay, he has stuffed animals and blankets, of course, but none that have any special meaning. I figured I would just let him watch videos on my phone, and that’s what I did, but I felt bad that I didn’t even ask him if he wanted to bring something. Anyway, the nurse brought him a hedgehog, and when the anesthesiologist came in, he asked Quinn about it, like what was its name. Quinn was like 🤷🏻♀️, and the our nurse told him that it was one from the hospital. I was embarrassed and said, “Yeah, I guess we probably should have brought Spider-Man, huh,” and Quinn said, “Why?” 😂. Yep, that’s what I had thought, too. At least he wasn’t upset about it. They told him he could take the hedgehog with him to the OR, but he told me to keep it because he didn’t like it 😅. He ended up giving it to Ash whenever we got home.
Even if he had been sad, the medicine they gave him made him so loopy he couldn’t stop giggling. Every day leading up to his surgery Quinn kept saying it was going to be the worst day ever, but once he was drugged, he told me, “This is actually kinda fun” 🤣🤣. The other nurses kept walking by to laugh at him being giggly. I enjoyed that part very much.
Now, let me tell you what I didn’t enjoy. Apparently, it’s very common for kids to experience emergence delirium, or what they called Angry Child. I learned about this the moment my child started screaming like a lunatic about five minutes after he woke up in the recovery room. It was then that the medical staff informed me it’s a good idea to have a second adult to monitor the child on the ride home 😑. My second adult had stayed home with my second child so that we had one less issue to deal with. The nurse said it was alright, we could still leave. I’m not surprised she said that because I’m pretty sure she wanted us to leave as soon as possible. I was unprepared and unmedicated for the stress of that situation. By the time we reached Moundsville, he was still screaming and I just about lost my mind. I’m ashamed to say I yelled at him to stop. It didn’t help, in case you were wondering. As we approached Washington Lands, he finally said something coherent, which was, “I have to pee!” Of course there was no where to go but the side of the road, so we did what needed to be done. I swear he peed out more liquid than I ever would’ve imagined his little body could hold, and afterwards, he returned to normal. Unfortunately, he remembered that I had yelled at him and he told me he was mad at me 🫠. I apologized and felt bad about it long after he had forgotten about it.
I like to think that I would’ve handled it better if I had been prepared to handle it, ya know? He has thrown tantrums before, but never like this, and I know it wasn’t his fault this time. During the torturous 45 mins of screaming, I questioned whether he was intentionally making me miserable or not. I realize now that he wasn’t, but man, being in the thick of it really causes your brain to go haywire. That’s a pretty good analogy for motherhood in general, I think 😅.
Pittsburgh Zoo
I kinda wish we would’ve gotten another reaction like this though 😄.
We saw more big cats 🦁 🐆
Ash said his favorites were the monkeys. I thought the anteaters were interesting, and I love flamingos 🦩.
The aquarium is great, but it was so crowded 😵💫. I didn’t even get a pic of what was probably everyone’s favorite, the seals 🦭. They’re like water dogs, zooming all over the place.
On our way to the zoo, we stopped at a rest area. Quinn initially wanted to stay in the car, but after I scoped out the place, I went back out to get him so we could get snacks from the vending machines. I love vending machine 😁. I’ve never seen a vacuum powered ice cream one!
We turned our Christmas clearance gingerbread houses into a spring version. You can watch me talk about it on my YouTube channel here:
I made a bird themed 🐦 sensory bin for Ash to practice his scissor skills while feeding pipe cleaner worms to Gatorade pod babies 🙂.
And get my bird beak tweezer template here:
We built a leprechaun trap on the day before St. Patrick’s Day.
We didn’t catch one, but they did wake up to a surprise. There were gold coins buried in special leprechaun snow, which had to be cleaned using the magic potion that was hidden on Quinn’s desk. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen him find something before 😆. The leprechaun also played a trick, like the one in the book, How to Catch a Leprechaun, and took out my shoelaces. He had to do mine because they were the only shoes out that had laces 😑.
The leprechaun snow was just green conditioner mixed with baking soda, and the magic potion was vinegar. They had fun finding the coins and then watching the reaction whenever they dropped them in the vinegar.
We went downtown to hunt for shamrocks and collect gold coins. It was a week long event that was supposed to start on St. Patrick’s Day, but many of the participating businesses didn’t receive their gold coins on time. To help soften the disappointment, I took the boys to Reisbeck’s so that we could get a bag of the new chips I saw they had advertised having…
Quinn, especially, was psyched that they had Mothman chips 😅. I hoped that he would be. The mysterious spice blend was some assortment of bbq, and we really liked them!
Ashy got to go to Walmart and spend his gift card Kiki gave him for birthday.
We got to meet up with Kiki, Luka, and Lilly at the park one warm day. The stream had some interesting bubbles in it that I thought were frog eggs, but a google search told me it was algae. Boringgggg.
The warmer weather has made playing outside more fun…
Piles of it 😅.
This dog gets herself into all kinds of situations that she isn’t equipped to get herself out of 🤦🏻♀️.
She knows nothing about personal space.
Such a baby.
No, Soph, no worries, you’re not in the way while we’re doing yoga 😑
Sure, there’s enough room for both of us on this chair 🙄
She rarely sits alone, but whenever it goes this way, it’s not her who initiates it 😆. I hate when he does this before school because then I have to lint roll him on his way out the door 🤦🏻♀️.
She’s been enjoying being outside again, too.
I was working at my desk, and while I was distracted, Ash scooted those foam blocks and big stuffed sloth under it, but someone else sneaked under there, too 🙄🤦🏻♀️.
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