The Times I Was So Over 2015

Not every moment of the year can be totally amazing, unfortunately. 

There are plenty of moments that are hard, challenging or just plain suck. Our society is geared, however, to capture and share nothing but the good moments, the ones that will look pretty in a picture and make us smile when we look back at them. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.. but when that is all that you present to people, or all that you see of someone else's life, it's easy to get jaded. That's not all life is about. 

Part of why I wanted to start blogging again was to be brutally honest about life as a working Mom, as a wife, as a woman in this world. 

This week I'm looking back at my 2015... and that includes the times that were hard and I was just OVER the whole thing.

Post-Baby Body

I only gained the 30lbs you are "supposed" to gain when you are pregnant.. so imagine my surprise when I looked like this the whole year after having Owen. My belly button herniated while I was pregnant, so not only are my abs horribly separated (it's called diastasis recti), but there is a hole ripped in them and my insides are pushing through, making my belly button stick out. Surgery will have to happen to get that fixed. The whole year was very hard on my self-esteem and accepting my body like this. My hernia made it painful to do core/ab workouts and the weight was SO FREAKING SLOW to come off (why is it so hard the second time around???) that 2015 was the year I just felt gross and unhappy in my body.

The Attack of the Viruses

I got the flu not once, not twice, but THREE times in 2015. I did more than my fair share of praying to the Porcelain God... let me tell you. Laying in bed, chugging Pedialyte and crawling to the bathroom is not exactly fun at any time, let alone when you have small kids, responsibilities at work and nothing good to watch on TV. 

Enter the Threenager

Austin turned 3 in January of 2015... it was like a light switch... BOOM. He suddenly turned into a threenager. The whining. The arguing over EVERYTHING (if we handed him his toothbrush, he would want to use Daddy's toothbrush and hell hath no fury like a 3 year old who wants to get his way)... he was exhausting. Time outs, tantrums... his room being destroyed because he was angry with us about something. He reverted back to having sleep issues and was up several times at night, he wouldn't listen, wouldn't compromise... that "developing independence" crap SUCKED.

Pack and Move... Then Pack and Move....

On a whim we decided to sell our townhouse and find our forever home this summer.... "wouldn't that be fun???" we said... "let's do it!!!" we said... "we can handle this with full time jobs and a threenager and an infant!" we said.... 

We are hilarious. 

I spent ALL SUMMER packing, going through crap and cupboards and closets, trying to reduce our belongings to just what we really wanted and needed. I don't even want to think about the fun we missed out on while we were packing and packing and packing.

After we sold our townhouse, we had almost a month before we got the keys to our new house... so we shacked up with Neal's parents, and shoved all our earthly possessions in their garage. Ever want to see a Mom freak out?? Move her entire house, shove it in a garage so she knows where nothing is, then make it bedtime for her baby who NEEDS a sound machine and a pacifier to sleep. I pretty much ran through my in-laws house SHRIEKING at Neal to help me find the sound machine! Find the pacifier!!! OH DEAR JESUS WHERE IS THE SOUND MACHINE??????? 

Then three short weeks later.. we moved again! Huzzah.
Shove the crap into our new house... Neal had to go back to work for the new school year and we tried to have "normal" life with two small kids amongst the rubble. I do not want to move again...like EVER. Oh and did I mention one of my flu attacks happened the day we moved into our house?? That was super fun.

Owen Needs to Be In a Bubble

This little one... OY. He had quite the year of not being healthy. He caught one of the flus that swept through our house... even though that resulted in an afternoon on the couch cuddling with me, which didn't suck at all. Especially since The Top 100 Songs from the 90's was on VH1... #90'sMusic4Ever

We went to the doctor's office over and over and over and OVER with him... once I even forgot to take off the daycare booties after I picked him up at school and wore them all the way to the pediatrician's. He was just congested ALL THE TIME. Coughing like an old man... it sounded like he was choking on mucus. He couldn't sleep, couldn't take a bottle well, cried and fussed and coughed and coughed. It was so frustrating trying to find a solution. 

In June his congestion got so bad it sent us to Urgent Care because he was struggling to breathe. We now own a nebulizer like we used above on him, and it helps open his airways. Anytime that kid gets the slightest cold... he's back to coughing and wheezing and congested and not sleeping well.

Poor kid just needs to be a little bubble. 

Then we were "blessed" to contract Hand Foot Mouth TWICE. If you don't know what HFM is, it's a virus that causes blisters in the mouth, face, throat, hands and feet and babies are MISERABLE because they can't eat and sleep. It has to just run it's course so you have to just wait it out.. and eat popsicles to help with the pain. Or in Owen's case, eat the popsicle stick.

Where the F*** Is the Sandman???

This is me in April. I'm in the back of my car. And I look dazed because I just woke up from a 20 minute nap during my lunch break. That nap bumped my cumulative sleep for the day to 1 hour and 20 minutes.
There is this nasty thing called Post-Partum Anxiety... and it doesn't get as much attention as it's more popular sister Post-Partum Depression, but it's just as big of a bitch. And I suffered, and still do suffer from it.
Owen was such a terrible sleeper his first 6 months of life, and then had such issues with congestion and coughing for the next 6 months of his life that I was an anxious nightmare. I was so hyped up and worried he'd wake up, that I couldn't sleep. As soon as I got in bed, my heart would start to pound, I'd start sweating, songs would run through my head at a crazy fast pace... and before I knew it, it was 3am and I had to be awake in 2 hours. Sleeping pills, Z-Quil.. nothing helped.
Insomnia is no joke. It rots your brain, it inhibits your daily functions.. and when it goes on for weeks and months on end.. it makes you into a person you don't know and don't want to be.
I still battle insomnia and feeling anxious at night, and I hope it gets better in the coming year.