Girls night = cha-ching.

A little while ago - out of my desire to do something out of the ordinary, something that didn't include staring at each other, watching hours of mindless television or watching the grass grow - I decided to have a little "girls night" with Brielle and Claire. I talked that night up SO much, we were going to get treats, have pedicures, watch a movie...you know, girl stuff. Because boys hate treats and movies, right?

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So, we ventured off to the store to gear up for our evening of fun...as I mentioned, we were wanting something out of the ordinary. They would have never expected in a million years to do something fun! But those little happy faces as I let them choose a treat was all the thanks I needed. I just about bagged the rest of the evening as to not over load them with happiness in one night. You know, save a little happy ammo for another night.

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But apparently little 4 year old people have good memories and so I wasn't getting out of the rest of the plans we had. (By the way, I'm not mean, just funny...try to remember that as you read on).

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At the store Brielle decided she REALLY wanted these Fruit Stickerz (I've been calling them stackers all this time...I feel so foolish). Basically they're little pieces of a fruit roll up in little shapes that you peel from a piece of wax paper. Sticky, processed, sugar filled and NASTY...I don't hold back anything when it comes to making my kids happy.

I completely ignored the "Win CASH" thing at the top because really, am I going to win anything? I don't think an answer to that question really is necessary, however just in case, the answer is a big fat no. Who has ever won anything from a packaged item they bought at the store? You never hear people who made their fortune off their Snickers bar on those "Where are they now, jackpot winners" shows. They're always drunk people who stumbled in to a gas station and bought some lottery ticket and then blow all their money on buying circus monkeys and pretzel bites.

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I have been burned one too many times before thinking maybe there was a way that THIS would be the time I was going to be the 1 in 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 to win something amazing and I wasn't sure I wanted the heartbreak of that loss again.

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So imagine my surprise as Brielle was getting her last Stickerz out - a few days later, because what kind of mother would I be if I had let her eat ALL of them in one night? - and said, "Look, mommy, a card for my wallet!"

(I know it's hard to believe by the extremely high quality, but this is an ACTUAL picture of the card on my lap...it's not one I found on google or anything!)

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Holy moly, I was SO excited that after my 25 years of never, ever, ever - no matter how bad I wanted it; and believe me I've wanted it - ever, never, ever winning anything...I won!

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I couldn't believe it, I was FLOORED to think I was going to have won this great jackpot or something! I couldn't believe there was actually a card inside the box! I read the rules on the side of the box again thinking that maybe there were cards in ALL the boxes and only a few said "winner". But nope...there in the rules it says that if there's a card you're a winner, if you're not a winner, well then obviously you're a loser. There's no gray area here.
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I tore that card out, ready to figure out how I was to redeem my prize. I could imagine it now, living in Hawaii in a luxury beach front house with a full service staff waiting on my every need.
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Then I looked more closely at the card. Do you know how much I won?! $5. That is not a typo, nope...apparently the odds of winning THIS particular prize is 1 in 56. I guess I should still feel lucky that I won anything at all, because I could have gotten one of those other 55 boxes and lost. But what am I going to get with a $5 pre-paid Discover card? A couple packs of gum? A new toothbrush? A picture of Hawaii...unframed of course, it is just $5.
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Oh well, Brielle and Claire are SO excited about it! They probably are still dreaming of Hawaii as well. I guess my little (large) happy dance screaming "I won, I won, I won! I'm rich!!!" might have gotten their hopes up.

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Poor little dears are going to be very disappointed when all they get out of this great win is the opportunity to sit in the shopping cart while I decide what on earth I'm going to get for $5. Lucky girls!

I just can't break it to them yet though.

Missing Daddy

I keep finding myself at a complete loss as to how to console my children and comfort them when all they want is their daddy.


For the past two nights one, if not both, of the girls have cried for their daddy, rather it was after bath time, during night time routine or even in the middle of the night. Claire had a good solid week of crying for Marty just after he left but has since settled down a little bit.



However, now Brielle - who had been going along all hunky dory, because she's my go with the flow girl - is starting to say a lot more about missing him.



After giving them a bath the other day, I had them in their towels and Brielle started crying for daddy, wanting to know why daddy isn't here to dry her and get her in her pajamas before bed. She just wants daddy to be there to rock her to sleep and sing her a song. It tears my heart out knowing that even though I'm here for them, there is no way I can give them what Marty does.



Claire has now started telling me that everything around her is "my daddy's". From the cars we pass on the road, to the clothes we see at the store. Somehow she thinks of daddy in everything around her. Not that I don't do the same.



Today was the kicker though. After a fun afternoon out playing with our cousins we were on our way home. We drove past a bowling alley and Brielle asked if we could go bowling. I told her not that day. She asked why we went with daddy a while ago and I just casually answered that it was because bowling with daddy is fun. She started crying and said she wanted to go bowling with daddy again. I told her that when we see him, we can most definitely go bowling. She then, with tears in her eyes, said "but we're never going to see daddy again!" I assured her we would but no matter what my answer and explanation was, it was too many days, too long and she wanted him now.



Then at dinner tonight, Brielle was eating quietly and looked at me and said, "I'm ready for daddy to come home now, I want to be a family again." All I could say was, "I know, Brielle, me too."



I don't know what to do for her. I feel terrible that normally I can give her what she needs but in this case, the one thing she wants I cannot provide. The best I can do is play video's of Marty, read her the letters he's written and assure her that he loves her and we will see him soon.



I'm doing my best to keep busy for them and myself, but some days I don't want to do anything. I have a very hard time finding the motivation to just maintain the normal day to day things like dishes, laundry and straightening up because I am emotionally and physically exhausted. I feel like in a way I am failing my children because I really want to keep things moving like they were before Marty left, but that just seems impossible for me at times.



I'm not an independent person, I never have been, I never will be. I have always heavily relied on Marty, not to take care of our house, but I have relied on him emotionally and physically to keep me going. I don't know where to get that push, that energy and motivation from like he always did for me.



For now I'm going to just start working on NOT talking about Marty like he's dead. I keep saying things like, "That WAS Marty's favorite" or "Marty USED to love that". He's not gone forever, this is temporary. He will be the same person when we are back together and we will move on with our lives and look back at all of this as a very minor bump in our road of life.



All in all, I'm actually doing fine - hard to believe after this post. Most days are pretty good but the last couple have been very hard for some reason. I'm not sure if it's because we just got back from a trip and I was overwhelmed with the responsibilities ahead of me as I walked in the door. I'm not sure if it's because my girls seem to be having a harder time the last few days with missing him. I'm not sure if it's just pregnancy hormones. Whatever it is, the last couple days have basically sucked (sorry mom, that's the best word I have to describe it).



So tomorrow I have to just start moving ahead, find the motivation from somewhere inside and just get moving!



In case you were wondering, writing is my way to express my feelings at a certain moment. Please do not mistake my getting my feelings out through writing as a cry for help :)

Coolio

Do you know what word I said today?

Coolio.

No, I don't think it's cool that you want to know what word I said.

The word I said IS coolio.

I didn't even know I knew that word!

But there I was standing in the bathroom about to try out some new makeup I bought. I opened up the brush to do this powder stuff (I'm so makeup mental) and the brush looked so awesome.

So there in my bathroom, all alone, I held up that brush and I said - out loud - Oh, coolio!

It caught me very off guard that the word had come from my mouth. I turned for a second to see if someone else was there and they had somehow done a ventriloquist type thing and it only APPEARED to have come from my mouth.

But no, I was alone, it was my very own brain retrieving that word from who knows where and throwing it out, all willy nilly like it would be a good idea.

Then I was worried about the new makeup I had purchased. Had it suddenly thrown me back in to the 80's...the 80's that I was much too young during to remember anything about?

Is that word from the 80's?

Has the word ever been uttered by another human being in this decade?

I can't explain how it even happened but for a moment after the damage was done my mouth felt a little strange. Almost as if I had just described something great by saying "sick" because I get that just about as much as I get the word "coolio".

I will give the makeup another chance tomorrow but if words like "rad" and "fluorescent" start spewing out...I may have to reconsider the purchase.

Would you like more bread with that bun?

I thought and stewed over this "detail's" post wondering how to go about it without being too blah-zay (sound it out...it's the only way I could think of to spell that)

So I thought I would be terribly rude and try to make it seem as though you'd all been fooled by me once again and that I really was just mentioning my love of baking.

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But then I remembered that family members read my blog and they would be like, "You? Bake? Right, nice try."

Then I remembered that little story about a boy and something about a wolf...you know, don't count your chickens before they hatch? Oh wait...I think I'm getting them confused. Is it fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on someone else? AH...I give up.

Finding out I was pregnant was a hard pill to swallow at first...much like those terrible prenatal vitamins, those are just cruel and unusual punishment to women in the fragile condition of pregnancy. I should really be a "free the women from the terrible pills, make them chewable or in liquid form" activist. I'll start working on that some other time.

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Anyways, I am starting to feel excited about it...which honestly just happened a couple days ago. I do realize that it sounds horrible that I'm just barely feeling excited about it. Even to ME I sound horrible, which is really saying a lot because I usually think I'm pretty much awesome.

But nope, this time around I gave myself a pretty heavy lecture about how some people would give anything to have a baby and that YOU (meaning me, since I was talking to myself) have been wanting another baby since Claire was just a few months old. So you got what you've been wanting so badly...maybe you should just learn to be happy and not be so selfish about the timing and stuff.

I can be pretty hard on myself.

But then I apologized and we made up and I took myself out for a blizzard.

So back to details. When I was two weeks late I finally caved and bought TWO Dollar Tree pregnancy tests...yes, you read that right, I went and spent a whole $2 to find out if I was pregnant. Spare no cost to find out my future, that's what I always say.

After seeing the first positive result I didn't believe it. Mostly because have you seen the Dollar Tree pregnancy tests? They're like a home science experiment. You have to pee in a cup and the test has a little dropper that you fill up with pee and drip in to a certain spot on the test and then wait. How could I REALLY be sure I had conducted that highly technical experiment correctly?

So I waited until the next morning to take the second one. It was - shocker - positive again.

Luckily a few days before Marty left we were able to have our first ultrasound done when we were supposedly 9 weeks along. THANKFULLY there is just one "bun" in there...not that Marty wouldn't have been thrilled with a multiple birth situation...unless of course it was girls, or puppies.

He was hoping to even out the playing field at our house. I think his being gone at boot camp and living with like 500 boys will have him coming home singing the praises of this girly household though.

It is not that I'm not excited about a baby, it's just the timing. Not only is Marty gone but the baby is due in early December...which is when we'll be in Texas...which means I most likely won't be able to come home for Christmas because I will have just had a c-section and I will have a brand new baby. These things are making it a little harder as well.

Plus...did you know that once you have a third baby you have a "REAL family"? Or so people are telling me. Here I thought for all these years that I was a real family...but I guess I've been wrong! Now I'm nervous about what a real family is!

Whenever I've discussed going from two children to three I've just referred to it as going from man-to-man coverage to zone defense. I will let Marty handle the zone...since he's more in to the sports than I am...and I'll handle the man - or woman, whatever may be the case when we find out the gender.

So I THINK that I am about 10 1/2 or 11 weeks. You see...I know that I would be 11 1/2 weeks but at the ultrasound the baby measured about a week smaller. I'm not sure which date they'll go with because they told me that the ultrasound at this point can still be up to five days off. So I figure I'll just aim for somewhere in between and see what happens at the BIG ultrasound.

I was somewhat sick for a couple of weeks right around when Marty left and then up until a few days ago. But I am NOT complaining, because I haven't thrown up and I know people have it a lot worse than me. I'm just making light conversation...you know, like "how's the weather" type stuff.

I stopped taking a certain vitamin a few days ago though and suddenly it was like magic...I feel just fine! Well, for the most part. I still have to have little things to eat throughout the day but I can't eat too much at once. I also can't have a lot of sweet or spicy things...you know, anything with flavor...unless I want to pay the price with nausea for a while.

Which really, that blizzard I had the other day was TOTALLY worth the night of laying on the couch wondering if I was going to be re-visiting that blizzard before the night was over.

Luckily I held it together though.

So there's the details as of now. Aren't you glad you read that entire thing?! I wouldn't want you to be able to get the details in a mere paragraph or something. No, I like to drag it out and waste half of you day.

YOU'RE WELCOME!