I would like to go on the record.

(image from here)

I would like to go on the record and tell everyone… I don’t really want to have anymore kids.
I love my three kiddos more than life itself, and could not possibly imagine my life without them. With that being said, before having Zach I was on the fence of if I wanted no kids, or just one kid. 75% of the time I was leaning more towards no kids. Then after Zach I was convinced I didn’t want anymore kids, ever. After I had Ryan I was convinced two boys would be good, it’d give them each someone to play with, but I absolutely did NOT want anymore kids. Then I got pregnant again and had a miscarriage. After that I thought maybe in about 5 years I could have one more, John thought this was a good idea too. He said we could try every few years until we had a girl. I said we could try one more time, and he better hope his sperm cooperates and gives him the girl he wants then. By the time we came to this decision it was like May or June and we were in the final stages of buying a house. By August I was freaking out in our new bathroom staring at the test that said “pregnant.”
If you know anything about my pregnancy with Belly then you probably know that it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Of my three pregnancies I carried to term, hers was by far the worst. And yes, that is a pretty big part of why I say I don’t want anymore kids. But really, growing up, as a child who was 6 years older than her next sibling I had to help a lot with taking care of my two younger siblings, plus help with both sets of younger step-siblings my dad went through, and help with all the babies and kids my mom watched. I knew being a mommy wouldn’t be all fun and sweetness, so I never dreamed of one day being a mommy. I dreamed of getting out in the  world and getting away from the responsibilities and hassles of children.
Now, I’m 24 and the mom of three kids. My baby is 2 and we’re working on potty training. Yeah, she’s a fussy, bratty two year old, but she communicates semi-understandably, and is fun. (Be honest, infants are sweet and cuddly but not so much fun) Both of my boys are mostly house broken and both in school. At this stage in my life a lot of my friends I had in school are getting pregnant or have little babies. A lot of moms who say they are done start feeling weepy or wistful when faced with pregnant friends or new babies. They may still say they are done, but inside they whisper “Awww, I want.” Me, not so much. I go “Man I don’t miss being that big,” and “I so don’t miss newborn poop,” things like that.
Unfortunately, everyone seems to think it’s time for me to have another kid. My relatives now seem to think I’m old enough to have kids and be excited about being pregnant… but I don’t want to. They had three other chances to get happy and excited. Ryan desperately wants a baby brother. Belly is on a baby-obsession kick. And John gets a little wistful look when babies get mentioned. The only person on my side is Zach who has threatened to move out if I have another baby.

OK, I’m a hypocrite. Sue me.

I’ve been a member of online groups for a while, the longest being my association with the forums on Justmommies.com, where I’ve been a member since May 2007. I’m also a member of various digital scrapbooking sites as well. On these sites I’ve developed many friendships, some spanning the whole time I’ve been active on those sites.

As a stay-at-home mom, who lives in a very rural area, and is rather young (compared to the moms of the boys’ friends), I get pretty lonely. Most of my friends are either all working, have moved away, or are just starting out on the mommy-frontier. Having online friends has a been a blessing.

Now all these years John has always made fun of my “computer friends.” He doesn’t think I shouldn’t have them, and he’s not as patronizing as some husbands are about online friends. He understands that as the years since high school have passed that I lose more and more of my real life friends, and that this is a way to keep me from going bat-poop crazy. BUT this doesn’t stop him from making fun of me for getting so involved in the lives of people who I have never physically met. He really thought it was really funny as I texted one of my online friends with updates to share while I was in labor with Belly.

Since John got Black Ops for Christmas he has been enjoying the online playing of it most every week night. He used to play primarily just with my brothers, but has been slowly, but surely, expanding his friends on there. Recently he has taken to playing with the same two guys over and over, even talks to me about these two. Generally when he plays I listen to my IPod, but last night I had already turned it off and was getting ready for bed when I hear John talking to one of these guys… about me and the kids. I tapped him on the back over and over and whispered “John, John, John” until he turned his headset to mute and looked at me. I asked him if he was sure he should be telling some random-make-believe Black Ops dude about our life. This is when he gave me that annoying look “do you really want to go there?” look and then pointedly looked back and forth between me and my computer. I explain to him there’s a world of difference between my group of trustworthy online family and friends and his random make-believe Black Ops friends. At this point John said I should probably just go to bed before he decides to call and cancel our internet in the morning. I wisely shut up and went to bed.

I can you hear in my head now.

…and for the record getting on to me never does any good.

I totally never posted my Sunday Scrapbooking yesterday. I kept thinking “Dangit! I only made 2 pages, and I’m actually not crazy about either one so I’m just not wasting my time.” But, um, I made three pages last week, and I kinda really like 2 of them. lol So… I’m not sure what I was thinking yesterday. I think my brain was too eager for the start of True Blood Season 4 yesterday to make much sense of anything else. As it is now Monday, and we did discuss this some Saturday, I am too much a creature of habit to actually do my Sunday Scrapbooking on Monday. That would just be… wrong. lol But I will post small clickable versions of the layouts, so if you want to see them you can.

Next, I got some pretty awesome news this weekend, but I’m not sure if I can share it yet. It has to do with scrapbooking, and no, I still haven’t gotten accepted to any full-time teams yet. I do have a few months of guest spots coming up though. I have the rest of this month through the end of August with SuzyQ Scraps. August I’m guesting with Stolen Moments. September I’m guesting on The Lily Pad’s site team. Finally October I have a guest spot with another designer, but since she hasn’t announced who/when her guests are I don’t know if I can tell who.

The boys went back to my mom’s Friday night. While I loved having them home, and miss them terribly again, I wasn’t too sad telling them bye. lol Of course they were pretty awful while they were here. They always are when they go and spend any real time at my dad’s; it’s like we have to reprogram them. Then when we finally got them back to the way they are supposed to behave it was time for them to go.

Last piece of news, John got his septum re-pierced. He originally got that and one of his tattoos done right after he turned 18. When he got the job at the shop he’s at now he was told it was OK to have, it just had to stay flipped into his nose, since he didn’t interact with customers. Then about 3 years ago they started sending him on part runs, and picking up and dropping off cars and it had to go. He decided since he was promoted again (a few months ago) to a full-time auto-body repair technician (fancy name for the guy who gets the dents out of your cars lol – OK he does a lot more than just that but still…) and has virtually no interaction with customers that he would get it re-done. It looks so funny now because before he had it stretched, and they didn’t give him a size option on the piercing so it’s this tiny metal thing in it now. He told me I can’t take any pictures of it till it’s stretched some more.

Not a piece of news, but I did my first actual attempt at drawing in like 4 years last night. The odd sketch to plan out stuff or to help a boy with school work doesn’t count. I drew a cartoon version of my favorite picture of Ryan from Friday. Oh the glasses are because every superhero needs to protect his identity. lol

Saturday Snapshot (6/25)

Since I never got around to posting the pictures I meant to yesterday of Ryan and Belly playing outside I’ll just post them today under the snapshot… which means this should technically be “Saturday Snapshots” but I’m too much a creature of habit to rename it. lol

Even though they are home

Life is not all good, especially for the Belly.

Belly has missed the boys horribly. She hasn’t enjoyed this time of being an only child. She loves having the boys around. Ryan plays with her, and Zach pampers her… usually.

Since they’ve been home they’ve wanted nothing to do with her. Each time she tries to play with them, or hang out with them, they just tell her to leave them alone. They don’t want to play with her, they don’t want to sit and watch tv with her. They don’t let her watch her shows. To her, right now, life is pretty sucky.

I feel so bad for her since she has missed them so much, and them being home isn’t as wonderful as I guess she thought it would be. She’s spent much of the time since they got home crying or throwing fits. It breaks her little heart that they don’t want to play with or be around her.

As they are five and seven I can’t completely blame them for not wanting to play with their two years old sister who doesn’t understand the rules of their games, does more destroying than playing, and watches “baby” shows. It doesn’t mean that the way they are treating her isn’t also bugging the crap out of me, but like I said, I can understand.

Life with the boys home isn’t too great for me either. They are fighting like crazy. Constantly complaining about this, that, and everything in between. Plus, causing the Belly to be in a horrid mood. Despite all that I am glad they are here. I hope once they are done with the room cleaning they’ve been working on since yesterday their moods will improve. Hey, a mom can hope.

I had a dream…

Well, maybe more of a weird nightmare/dream. lol

I dreamed last night that we had moved into an apartment, which is weird enough since there’s no way we would ever move all 5 of us into an apartment. Belly and I were out walking around, it was fall, and we were enjoying the weather and seeing our new environment. Did I mention we had also moved up north? The northern accents that surrounded me were my hint about that. lol
We ran into a couple of other moms who had little girls around Belly’s age, and we stopped to talk to get to know our new neighbors. Being close to and making friends with my neighbors is something I’ve always wanted desperately. I grew up in neighborhoods where neighbors were always close. You hung out with them, were friends with them. And it wasn’t just the kids who were friends, the adults were too. So, this is something I’ve missed the most since we got our house. Anyway, as I was introducing Belly and myself one of the ladies was like “Oh my God, you named your daughter Isabella? Why would you give her such a shallow materialistic name?? Children’s names should have meaning, not be based off of shallow girls in silly books.” I’m standing there trying to defend my daughter’s name. Explaining over and over that she is not named after the girl from Twilight, but they just aren’t believing me, they’re standing there smirking, and saying they just don’t want their children playing with Belly. I’m getting frustrated and explaining over and over again that we didn’t get her name from there, and the more frustrated I get the more southern I sound. Then the ladies start in on that, saying how I sound like an uneducated southern hick. They’re saying how I should take my shallow-redneck self and just move back down south.
I woke up then.

Can you tell I might have a slight complex about my daughter’s name, and the idea of moving up north? lol

On a happier note, the boys came back home yesterday, and even though they’re already fighting and being fussy I am glad they’re finally home.

Sunday Scrapbooking (6/19)

First things first… Happy Father’s Day to all my readers and the men in their lives!

Next, wow… I only have two pages this week. After a few weeks of having so many I feel like a loser this week. lol Not quite sure why I only have two this week. I’m not even entirely sure I’ll have many next week; the boys will be home all week, and recovering from spending the weekend with my Father and step-mother. (It always takes a few days to get them to remember the way they are supposed to behave after going there.)

But let’s get on to why we’re here…. this week’s (cough *two* cough) pages!

made with Jazzmin Designs' Sunkissed elements and papers, Lauren Reid's 300 Days of Summer Papers and Emily Merritt's Whale of a Tale Alpha

made for the Easy-As-Pie Template Challenge #13 on the Shabby Shoppe blog
made with the Shabby Princess' Giggle Box, Goose Bumps, and Hopscotch
tag alpha - Lauren Reid's 300 Days of Summer alpha

Saturday Snapshot (6/18)

Zach’s birthday dinner surprise

We got to my mom’s house yesterday to pick up Zach to take him out for his birthday. He was pretty excited… until he got in the car and we told him the plan was to go to Starbuck’s and the bookstore. That kind of deflated his excitement some. lol He gradually began to warm up to idea, talking about what books he wanted and such. He then (very innocently) says:
”Hey Mommy, isn’t GameStop next to Starbuck’s and the bookstore? Maybe Daddy and I can go in there and look around while you look at books.”

Sneaky butthead is going to ruin our plans! lol The plan was we were taking him to GameStop. That was part one of the surprise and he basically guessed it!
We get to GameStop and we told him he could get a new game for his Gameboy (it’s a rather old one… lol one of the original Gameboy Color ones from way back in the when Pokémon was new era. Hey… it was free from my brother and works.) Zach looks skeptical at this and reminds us that new games do not work on his old Gameboy. We told him it was OK, someone told us it would work, and if not, we could always return it. He picked what we knew he would, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean. We get back to the car and John tells Zach (since he didn’t bring his Gameboy) he should just “look at the game and imagine your playing it.” When Zach says he can’t imagine playing something he hasn’t played John pulls out a case and tells him to go ahead and just put the game in there for now.

Inside the case is a new Nintendo DS Lite.
His reaction, and I quote, “NO WAY!!! Is that what I think it is?!?!”

Gosh my boy is handsome.

After that we drove into Memphis and took him to Incredible Pizza for dinner. None of us had ever been there so it was a new experience for all three of us. It was a ton of fun, especially since there weren’t a whole lot of people there since it was mid-week. We got the buffet and one one-hour unlimited game card, whole cost was only about $20. Between (mostly) John and Zach we ended up with 556 tickets. Of course they did sort of cheat. One shooting game had a glitch you could point at the floor and fire all ten shots there and it would just spew tickets at you. None of the other guns in that game did it. John and Zach took full advantage of the glitch. Here are some of my favorites from all the pictures.

He said it is officially his best birthday ever.

*sob* Happy 7th Birthday to Zach! *sob*

(you can read his birth story here)

Birthday plans for the birthday boy:
morning – VBS
afternoon – cupcakes with friends
night – birthday dinner and surprise

Be on the lookout sometime tomorrow for a follow up about his birthday surprise.

I’m missing my boy-os.

picture from here

I’m really missing my boys this morning. I mean don’t get me wrong, I always (mostly) miss them when they aren’t home with me, but it hasn’t been like melancholy, sigh-in-loneliness missing.

Unfortunately, today it is melancholy, sigh-in-loneliness missing.

I think my brain and heart are just being contrary. See, the boys won’t be coming home at all this week because they have VBS this week, and well I don’t want to get up and take them when I know my mom is going to be going anyway. (It’s odd. This is my first time in six years I haven’t worked VBS.) I had really been looking forward to seeing them both. Before we remembered VBS we had planned for Ryan to come home last night, and then Zach to come home tonight. But… nope. VBS. I bet if I knew they would be coming home this missing wouldn’t be so bad.

I miss them. I really, really miss them.

Sunday Scrapbooking (6/12)

Running a little late today so I’ll just jump right in!

made with Designs by Lili's Wish Upon a Star

there’s a ton of credits. lol Just click the image to see them.

made with Lauren Grier and Kristen Cronin-Barrow's Just Like Dad Collab

made with Amy Wolff's Calico Cottage, stitches and tickets from Sahlin Studio's A Spring Day elements, alpha from Traci Reed and Heather Roselli's My Other Loves

Saturday Snapshots

Potty Training via Facebook

Today’s potty training attempt status updates.

9:00 am:
Wish us luck, we're trying underwear this morning.

10:01 am:
Doing morning housework goes very slowly when you're stopping every 10-15 minutes to make a 2 year old spend about 5 minutes on the potty.

10:30 am:
Bella emptied one of her buckets she holds her kitchen stuff in and peed in it... while still wearing her underwear.

10:42 am:
OK obviously she didn't get it all out in the bucket. She just ran to her kitchen looked around, then started crying and yelling potty. She already had a big puddle on the floor. After that she said she wanted a diaper.

So she made it almost two hours in the undies, our goal was 2.5 – 3 hours. (or until lunch basically) She was doing pretty good, though going only just a very teeny tiny bit (if at all) each time I put her on the potty. We decided to try because lately she comes to us telling us “Tee tee, tee tee!” but she’s always wet when we get her to the bathroom. Warm diaper wet so that means she just went. Thus we decided to try underwear. She was so heartbroken when she had her accident that I let her just have a diaper again. But hey, at least we tried.

This princess…

drives her own get-away car.

Prince Charming can walk his sorry butt home.

A Murphy kind of day.

I know everyone has these day. You know the ones where absolutely all that can go wrong will go wrong. (You know Murphy’s Law) Like I said, we all have these days, but I swear no one has them worse than parents.

You know why these days are so much worse for parents? Because not only is everything going to go wrong for us, undoubtedly it’ll all go wrong for our kids too. (can we say headache?)

Let me tell you about the day I’ve had so far, and it’s not even over yet.

Woke up – Huge headache. Stupid allergy headaches always get me this time of year. Normally it’s only 30ish minutes of pain and irritability, then medicines kick in and I become semi-human again. Today… I wake up and find out I’m out of allergy medicine and headache medicine. I try to counteract it with coffee and quiet. Then Zach wakes up. Zach also has a raging allergy headache and is determined to make Belly and I suffer through it with him. You might ask, “Trish, why not just go to the store and get more medicine?” I’d have to tell you it’s because John has yet to go and get me new tags for the van. I was tempted to walk to the gas station up the street from me to get some, but alas, it was just too darn hot already.

Before Lunch – All morning up till lunch time I had to deal with Zach and Belly. Normally, it’s not too bad a combination, even with a headache. Zach with a headache hugely changed my opinion on that. Belly wanted to play with and be with her brother, her brother wanted nothing to do with her, Belly tried using brute force to get her way, Zach acted like a baby. This went on all blessed morning. I thought I’d get a reprieve. My mom was supposed to be getting Zach and taking him and Ryan to the library. She kept waiting for my sister to get up (she wanted to go also), but by the time she got up it was too hot to go in my mom’s air-conditionerless car. Thus, more fits from Zach.

Lunch – Zach did not want what we had for lunch, thus Belly didn’t want her lunch either. Lots of fits again.

Naptime – Zach spent the whole time coming in and out of the back of the house, even though he was supposed to be laying down with a movie and a cold compress on his forehead. Since he kept opening and closing the hall door Belly stayed up, which completed shot down my idea of attempting to get in a nap.

Now I have two tired and grumpy kids. John calling me from work in a bad mood. And to top it all off Belly apparently had a large poop during her naptime and attempted to clean it up herself… with all the clean shirts in her dresser. To think, I still get to do cleaning, and laundry (thanks Belly), and folding clothes. Oh yeah, and about 3 more hours with fussy kids.

Sunday Scrapbooking (6/5)

I don't really have any funny or informative story to go with my pages this week. I literally spent most of my days this week on the couch watching Netflix with an extremely clingy, fussy two year old. We went out and played some during the mornings, then watched tv most of the day (since she wouldn't nap), and then I tried to regather my sanity when John got home. Didn't really leave a whole lot of scrapping time.
Also, I'd like to take a moment to say hi to some of my new followers, and to my fellow digi scrapping followers, thank you so much for some of the sweet comments I'm getting on my pages in the galleries from y'all following the pages from here to there. Y'all are the awesomeness.

OK here are this week’s pages!!
made with Penny Springmann's Your Song font - DJB Emily F by Darcy Baldwin, quote - Dr. Seuss "Oh! The Places You'll Go"
made with Julie Bilingsley's Stars in Her Eyes

made with Julie Bilingsley's Home of the Brave

made with Karah Fredricks' Splatterific 3, Sahlin Studio's This Moment, and Jennifer Barrette's Mademoiselle Papers (lift of Keela's John's Puddle for the June Scraplift at the Lily Pad)

made with Kate Hadefield's Pirate Doodles (retired), Karah Fredericks' Finishing Touches, Faith True's Watercolor Alpha, Darcy Baldwin's Story Telling Accents, and Jenn Barrette's Journaling Bling

Saturday Snapshots (6/4)

Her car runs on bubble power… doesn’t get much greener than that. lol – Click for full size.

Interviews and Flashbacks

First off, I’d like to share and interview I did with Mr. Zach today. In case you didn’t notice by the ticker on the side, he has a birthday coming up. (on the 15th of this month – less than 2 weeks away) Last weeks Flashback Friday was on Zach’s 3rd birthday at Disney World, this week’s will be on him too. (scroll down to see it) As a matter of fact, next week’s Friday post will also be about him. lol
Now, I should offer fair warning, Zach refused to get dressed for the interview, so he’s in his boxers. Thankfully, except for the one time he raises himself he just looks like he’s shirtless.

(Oh, he came home last night and Belly went to go do sleepover at my mom’s.)
 
As the picture says this was taken in May of 2004 (I’m almost 99% positive it was taken then) and I’m about 8 months pregnant with Zach. I felt like I was huge and fat, but after 2 additional times of getting that big and pregnant I know now that I was tiny while pregnant with Zach. Anyway, in that particular picture I’m sitting in John’s old truck in the zoo parking lot. We were waiting for Momma and my siblings who we were meeting at the zoo. I had a favorite pair of maternity overalls that I wore a lot during the end of my pregnancy, but since I was so small when I got them by the time I was 8 months pregnant (tummy grew a ton in like 2 weeks) even the largest tummy setting on them felt tight when sitting, and I often took to undoing them and sitting with my tummy exposed when I wore them. John took this picture and it’s my favorite out of all pregnant pictures I have of me from any of my pregnancies.
If you want to join in the Flashback Friday head over to the blog Christopher & Tia: The Documentary of Us and join in!