June Favorites

I love reading people's favorite lists on their blogs so I decide maybe I'd start doing this on a monthly basis!  If you have a favorites list or something you want to share, comment below!

1.  Pinterest.com

It's addictive!!  I love the Food and Drink, Kids, and Home and Furniture sections the best!

2.  J.R. Watkins All Purpose Lemon Spray

I bought Method brand all purpose spray and it was Lemon Verbena, OMG, the stuff smelled like Oregano.  It made me nauseous so I tossed it out and was at Target and picked this up for $3.99.

 3. Essie nail polish

I will blame Katie at Cleared For Takeoff for this new little obsession.  I thought Essie was some cheap knockoff nail polish but I decided to give it a try and I LOVE the colors and how smooth they go on!  I already own 3 but I don't get manicures so I'm willing to spend $8 on a bottle.  I bought mine at Walgreens and Target.

4.  Target Plastic Salad Set

Now that it's summer, I like to be able to take a salad (fruit, green, pasta, etc.) to picnics, potlucks, my parents house, even camping (that's when I first used it this weekend) and this only set me back $4.99 at Target!  I always used to lug one of my serving spoons and hope it made it back with the bowl, but this is super handy because they snap right on to the lid!

5. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC

Have you been watching too??  I was the kid that almost always ate hot lunch.  My mom did not make me breakfast (most mornings I ate 1/2 of a Costco Chocolate Chocolate Chip muffing, OMG!) and did not pack my lunch, and I still love her, but I hope to pack my kids lunch when they go to school.  But this show is really eye opening into what is in a lot of school lunches.  There needs to be a big change to what is served to our kids at school.

6. Seventh House On The Left

I love Ashley Brown's blog about transforming her Virginia ranch home little by little into her own space.  I copied her guest bedroom linens in my guest bedroom (just need to but a couple more pillows) because I'm not creative, I just like to copy other people's style honestly:)  Our living room is set up very similar to this and I just love her taste!  I found her through Pinterest.com.  Check her out at http://7thhouseontheleft.com/tour/.

7.  iTot Cards Iphone App

My kids are both nuts for this app!  It's just flash cards broken into categories like food, animals, shapes, letters, numbers and so on and it speaks the word and for animals it also makes the sound of the animal.  It's great when we are at a restaurant but they say, "Apple!  Apple!" all the time meaning they want to look at the flashcards.  Dylan has a huge vocabulary and I think this has been a big part of it:)

We finally talked...

My Grandpa and his girlfriend left on Wednesday so when my husband got home Wednesday after his night class, I finally just told him we needed to talk.  He told me I'd already made up my mind so what was there to talk about it.  I told him whether we were staying together or getting a divorce we still had to talk about what was going to happen.

He admitted he'd never been so mad ever (I really hope he didn't mean ever, I can name several incidents in his life that were a million times worse than this before I ever came along, but in the moment, he was extremely mad).  I told him I'd never been so hurt either. 

We agreed that if either one of us felt like that would ever happen again in front of the kids, we needed to get a divorce because it absolutely cannot happen to them again.  For me the worst part while it was happening was that I begged him to stop and not do it in front of my kids and he wouldn't, it carried on for over 10 minutes.  He's taken a child psychology course and I know he knows how that affects kids. 

We did talk about divorce and he assumed that everything according to our state is split 50/50 including custody and bills/money.  I told him as young as our kids are and with his unpredictable schedule (sometimes working nights) and going to school 2-3 nights a week, it wouldn't even be feasible for him to have the kids during the week.  But I told him that just because logistically and financially taking care of two kids would be very hard, it wasn't enough of a reason to stay. 

I do still hold things against him that make it very hard to be happy in the moment.  I can't say it enough how hard PPD was on me.  I told him that when I finally admitted I had it, he threw it back in my face and kept saying I needed to call the doctor (which I did) but it was like it gave him permission to blame everything on my PPD.  I told him what I really needed was for him to say, "You just concentrate on the baby, I'll take care of the cleaning and cooking so you don't have to take time to do that, and you just relax.   I'll give him bottles so you can sleep more."  It was completely overwhelming to juggle everything on no sleep with a colicky baby and me with low supply issues.  My husband can let the house become a total mess and would still lay on the catch and nap.  I know everyone says just enjoy the baby and don't be so uptight about cleaning because you won't ever get that time back with your baby.  For me, to be relaxed and happy in my home, it has to be to tidy.  I can't look at piles of dishes, dirty counters, piles of laundry, dirty floors.  That ups my anxiety a million times.  So I'd do laundry all night long while my baby was up from 7pm-2am, I'd eat standing up and as fast as I could and never once did he say let me do this for you.  He even said that he was tired too because he worked and went to school 3 nights a week and then had to study at night.  WRONG.  He took that semester off.  I couldn't believe that for over a year, he was remembering the situation as that!! Blows my mind!!  That was the longest 4 1/2 months of my life.  And I still haven't forgave him.

So yes, I do need counseling.  You know there are times when I hold a grudge against my best friends for crap they did or said to me in junior high and highschool?  Yep, sometimes I think, 'Why am I even still friends with you?  You treated me like crap this time or that time.'  I mean seriously, it's been 10 or 15 years, get over it right?

My husband also thought he was helping me out by taking the kids to the park so I could have some me time.  I told him me time shouldn't be me doing laundry, going grocery shopping, preparing dinner, cleaning the house.  I told him he actually takes time away when he isn't helping me out (like yesterday when I cleaned the kitchen and living room spotless, within an hour I find 3 scrunched up paper towels-on the couch, by the kitchen sink, on the bookshelf, WTH??).  Or when I come home after he's been off work all day and it's 4:45 and he hasn't figured out dinner, that's stressful after I've been working all day.  I don't give a crap if he takes the kids for a walk a few hours later, you already stressed me out and while you are walking, I'm probably cleaning the kitchen.

But I have to say that when we went camping from Friday-Sunday, it was probably one of the best family trips we've had.  No fighting and bickering, a lot of laughs, and I was able to really enjoy my kids and my husband.  I think we need to go back to the chore chart, scheduled me time, and dates though but individually we really have to work on ourselves.  I appreciate all the input, even suggestions of books to read (I'm planning on buying the 5 Love Languages today) from everyone!

Weekly Weight Watchers Weigh In: Skipped It

No weigh in this week, instead my family left early Friday to go camping for the weekend and it's just been one heck of a week that waking up and being to the meeting before 7am to get weighed just wasn't on my radar. 

I ate like crap this weekend camping.  I mean awful awful awful.  You should have seen my groceries on the conveyor belt, it looked like a junk food hall of fame line up.  It was almost to the point of embarrassing.  Yes there was a bag of green grapes, some strawberries and a bag of oranges all of which went in the cooler and were never touched in 3 days!! 

I know to truly change the weigh I look at food and to really lose this weight I have to come to terms with the fact that when there are holidays, super bowl parties, camping, hosting a dinner party or Sunday dinners, I use it as a free ticket to eat all the junk I want and I really need to focus on healthy foods with  maybe a small splurge.  Because if I count up all the holidays, birthdays, trips out of town, get togethers, that allows me to eat really bad about 25% of the time!

Last night I thought it out and promised myself to get back on track today.

I turn 30 in October so my goal is 30 lbs lost from now until then.  It's a lofty goal, about 2 pounds per week but if I went to the gym 4-5 times a week it will be doable.  My life has got to change and I need to have more positive things happening so I need to take the bull by the horns and just DO IT NOW!

Breathing

I can finally breathe.  Nothing is "fixed yet" but the migraines have finally passed and I can breathe and make it through the day without crying.  My Grandpa just left and won't be back until Tuesday so hopefully my husband gets back from class at a decent hour and we can talk.  In my heart, I know I will stay now.  I can't promise it's forever and that awful therapist told me last summer you are either in or you are out of the marriage but that I couldn't expect it to work if I had one foot out the door headed to divorce.  At the time I agreed.  But I think I put myself in a tough place the minute I said I was in, all in, that allowed my husband and I to treat each other badly because I had already voiced that I would not leave.  This time has to be different.  I cannot let the fear of being without a partner or building a life as a single mom cloud my judgement of what my kids deserve which is to not be exposed to that shit storm that happened last week.  And what I deserve.  So I'm in, but it's conditional.

I was thinking this week about our friends and coworkers and it's amazing just how many people are divorced.  I can't even watch a movie anymore where the main characters aren't cheating or divorced.  It's like it's every where and it's very hard finding good marriage role models.  Maybe that's a small part of what I need.  To be around people that have healthy marriages.  There's a lot of stuff I need to do:)

Not Sure What To Do

Let me start by saying that having my Grandpa and his girlfriend fly in for a 2 week visit the day after I told my husband it was over was probably our saving grace.  Because I don't air my dirty laundry to my Grandpa and I definitely didn't want him to know my husband I were having problems so we played nice, kept the peace and were forced to be around each other A LOT.  But the bad part is my Grandpa is still here and we aren't able to get away and talk so we have still not talked about it but he is probably flying out to a cabin on Wednesday for a few days so that'll be our first chance at talking.

I'm really struggling with all of this right now.  I keep asking myself if I can get pass this, could we ever get back to being really in love and showing each other respect AND affection.  The affection part is really bothersome to me at this point because I feel like I'd just replay this whole event in my head and wouldn't even be able to lay next to him let alone having any intimacy.  I openly admit that when we started having to have timed sex because of infertility and timing of clomid, our sex life suffered immensely and I'm not sure if it would ever be the same once we got to that point.  I know some couples really enjoyed the baby dancing but it became a chore followed with disappointment 2 weeks later when I wasn't pregnant month after month.  And we definitely haven't recovered from it.  I thought maybe a few months after we had Dylan we would, but I was just not that new mom begging the doctor to give them a go ahead to have sex 6 weeks post partum. 

Marriage counseling last summer was awful and now it's getting thrown back in my face as I'm the one that got us kicked out and it is true that the counselor was talking to me when she stopped the session.  So I'm really not interested in doing couples counseling at this point.  It's a very vulnerable spot to put yourself in when you spill your guts and tell this one person more about yourself and your marriage than any other person in the world and when they don't get you on a path to a better marriage, it feels like betrayal of some sorts.

I would do individual counseling but no amount of counseling is going to teach me that the hurtful things my husband said or him throwing my salad spinner all the way across the kitchen (I know, sounds so stupid but I've just never seen him act that way.  Whatever made him think it was okay to grab it out of my hands and throw it against a wall while lettuce and the parts to it exploded everywhere, I'll never know.) was okay to do.  But I think I've been through a lot especially over the past few years and I'd rather work on myself at this point.  I'm still hurt by our marriage counselor last summer telling me that if I got a divorce, that I wouldn't find something better.  It didn't come with a big explanation and I thought she was going to add that I needed to work on myself first, but nope.  I mean I'm definitely not thinking of a divorce because I think I can just go find a better man but to have someone that knew me for all of 3 or 4 hours of counseling to make that judgement really hurt.  I really hope if I ever did get a divorce, that I could work towards a better life, I definitely deserve a better life and to be treated better.

It was traumatic for me to watch him pick up Dylan after I kept repeating for him to please stop, just stop, not in front of the kids and try to get him to stop yelling.  I said, "Dylan is scared.  Put him down and just stop, you can't do this in front of them."  You know what it's like having your husband yell at you in front of your kids and tell  you you are a bad mom over and over.  He did not physically hurt Dylan if you are wondering, he was holding him very gently, but emotionally, who knows what damage he did.  I can't even remember where AJ was, that's awful but, he must have been somewhere but he didn't make a sound.  I'm bawling even writing this. 

I always told  myself that if my husband cheated or hit me, I'd leave (and I'm not judging those that  have been in that situation and decided to stay still) so after all this happened I was completely confused.  I'd never thought about what I'd do if my husband did this.  It wasn't cheating, it wasn't physical abuse, but it was horrible so then what am I supposed to do?  It is difficult to have kids and decide whether to stay or not  because I certainly cannot have them witness that again so I guess the big question is if I really believe that will not happen again or if we are better parents on our own.  I definitely haven't made up my mind if I'll say the words I want a divorce or not.  In the past I've said things like, "Either we start couples therapy or I'm done."   I don't have to have a perfect marriage, but I sure as heck would like a good one!!  

I definitely don't want to bother you all with my mess of a life, it's just good for me at times to write it out versus having these thoughts play over and over in my mind.

Weekly Weight Watchers Weigh In: Gained, errrr!

I gained a 1 lb.  It's terrible.  I've had company at my house since last Wednesday and I find it incredibly difficult to stay on plan.  There has been lots of eating out, lots of worrying about what to feed them, and little sleep and add in the most stressful week of my life, I guess it could be worse than just that 1 lb.  I really need to get to the gym even with company here but I'm a people pleaser and it feels rude to me (I know, that's ridiculous, but it's hard to change my thinking!).

Anyone have a favorite healthy family meal they make?  I love to cook, i'm willing to try out some new things!

So confused

I wasn't going to write this post until some final decisions have been made but it hurts to keep it inside.  I might be getting a divorce.  I'm trying to be calm about it.  I'm trying to look at it as I'll be okay.  My husband is mad as hell and blames me and instead of sitting there blaming him for all his faults I just told him that that was fine that he felt that way and it doesn't matter if I agree or not, it's still over.  Plus, if I'm really all those things he says I am and I'm that awful, why would he want to stay.  And that all I ask is that we go about it as calmly as possible so that we don't hurt the kids or confuse them more than necessary.  I keep trying to say that I'll just make it work but he's so mad at me and spiteful that I know it's the end.  I was just thinking this weekend, what makes some couples able to work out their problems and stay married and why do others decide to end it?  I definitely don't want my kids to be from a broken home.  But it's a broken home if everything carries on this way.  The thought of not seeing my kids every single day scares the heck out of me, it truly is the only scary part that I feel right now.  And we are in the middle of an adoption.  I won't do anything with courts until that's final because I think after 2 years of being a mother to my oldest son, it's not okay for the courts to decide anything drastic because he may end up with divorced adopted parents.  I wouldn't risk his adoption for anything.  Yes I feel awful that if we get divorced that he is getting short changed by not having us both their full time but he will still have a great life I promise.

I'm sure most of you can't relate because most of my followers are married. couples dealing with infertility and trying to build their families, not tear it apart.  I keep trying to run through every possible scenario on how to fix our marriage.  But just like our marriage counseling, those ideas are short lived and barely help but certainly don't get us back on track.  I feel awkward even writing this.  I surely didn't set out to blog such a depressing blog when I decided to do this instead of videos.  I'd love to show you all the arts and crafts I do with my kids, the delicious recipes I make, how I decorate my home but the truth is my life is a whirlwind of events.  Nothing came easy to me- pregnancy, weight loss, being a foster mom, dealing with a newborn that had colic and my PPD, finances and my husbands layoffs.  It's not picture perfect, but who's life is?  I just wonder if everyone else has it this tough?