Mommy guilt

Someone else is raising my child. Some people might say thats an unfair statement and working parents are still the primary caregivers in their child's life but I figured it out yesterday, excluding night time (since the munchkin is sleeping so I'm really not doing much parenting during that time), I have Z for 34 hours a week. Kirby (my dayhome provider) has him for 45 hours a week. Thats depressing. She has Z for 11 hours longer a week than I do. And a lot of my time with him is occupied with other things. A good hour every day after work is spent around dinner. Then on the weekends, he's sleeping for clost to 3 hours a day. We have church and family functions which take away a lot of our time together.
She is the one who takes him outside to the park, who works on potty training, who hears all the new words coming out of his mouth. She is the one who kisses his owies and cuts up his grapes. She gets the sleepy hugs when he wakes up and the grumpy ones when he's going to bed. I want that. I miss those things. Everyday when I go to work and I look at my desktop background of Z smiling at me, I want to cry. I was SO ready to go back to work and I loved putting on nice clothes and having adult conversation and not wiping bums and struggling to feed a fussy toddler but I'm so done with it now. I want to go back to the bum wiping and food struggles. I want to be able to stay at home with Z and make pictures with him and go for walks and all that fun stuff. I think part of it is that it's summer and there is just so much fun stuff we can do together in the summer, we are so cooped up the winter that we both go a little stir crazy that it was kinda nice that Z could go to the dayhome and have other babies to play with but in the summer, I just want to be with him. I am going on maternity leave in just 3 months, thats not that long. But it's all summer. I'll be leaving end of August which means I might have a couple weeks of nice weather with Z at home but I will be 9 months pregnant and then I'll have a newborn and it won't just be me & Z anymore. And that makes me sad. I want to be home with him right now, when I still have energy and can still go outside and play with him. But it wouldn't make any sense for me to leave my job a couple months before I qualify for a full year of maternity leave. But I want to.
Sigh.
It's been a bad week. I think coming back from vacation and having Z with me that whole time (plus the week before the dayhome was closed due to pink eye so hubby & I took turns staying home with him) was just so nice and reminded me how much fun he is right now. And how much I'm missing. I'm sick of missing these things. I'm sick of not being there. I'm sick of picking Z up, making dinner, doing bathtime and then putting him to bed and feeling like I didn't really get to see my baby all day.
I know I should be blessed that I have a great job, I have a fantastic dayhome and I live in a country that gives me a year paid to stay home on maternity leave. But to be honest, today I'm not feeling very thankful. Just sad.

Traveling with a toddler

Not as scary as I thought. Z is a well-traveled baby. In the last 6 months alone, he has traveled to California, Hawaii and back to Califonia. Considering we don't live in the US, thats pretty impressive. The kid has more stamps on his passport at 22 months than I had at age 18. But I always worry because as he gets older, he gets more active and less willing to sit in my lap. But he has always been a great little traveler. Case in point:

Here are my tips for traveling:

1. Something new, I had made an airplane tray cover which had velcro on it which was pretty much the most exciting thing ever to a toddler
2. Snacks - little fruit snacks that you can doll out on at a time are especially handy when you are taking off and they have to sit still and can't play with the seat tray
3. Books, a new one and then a couple favorites
4. Sticker books - the best kinds are the ones with reusable stickers. I bought mine at the dollar store so the stickers weren't really all the reusable but they don't really stick all that well which means you aren't scraping stickers off the seat trays - plus they stick to the windows which is always fun
5. Anything with buttons, even a calcular is exciting to a 2 year old!
6. Wipes - even if you aren't doing diapers anymore, they are so handy for so many things!
7. Ask for an extra seat, if there are any extra seats, they are usually more than willing to switch things around so the couple traveling with a baby has an extra seat - it makes life so much easier! We've only had it once in our many, many flights where we didn't get an extra seat and that was when we were flying at Christmas.
8. Ask for a seat in the back, by the bathroom. This way you won't get stuck by the refreshment cart when you really need to go (helpful for emergency diaper changes and pregnant moms!)
9. Backpack leash - this might be a little controversial but airports scare me. I'm really not one of those people that think someone is constantly trying to steal my kid but there is something about airports that freak me out, maybe it's that Z is still a lapbaby and even if he's not on our ticket, they let us take him on the plane sometimes. That always makes me feel like someone could grab him and bring him on a plane with them and who knows where they would end up. Anyways, to soothe my paranoid heart, I love our backpack leash. Z doesn't like a stroller and he loves to run and his pregnant waddling mama can't always keep up but at least with the backpack leash, he can run a certain distance away from me but he's still attached to me and can't get too far away from me.

Happy Travels!

Hands on Dads

I love the world we live in...most of the time.
I was driving to work today and I saw a dad pushing a stroller down the street. Then I got to work and there was a dad on the train dropping his kids off at the daycare on his way to work. These dads are hands on, they change diapers, they know their kids feeding schedules and they will gladly stay home and play with the kids so mom can get a break.
I think thats the way things should be. I'm blessed with a husband who LOVES to spend time with our son. He sometimes takes Z to the park after work so I can relax and get dinner started without a toddler running around. Or he gets home and starts dinner so I can just play with Z at the end of the day. If Z needs a diaper change, he probably will try to convince me to do it but he's alone or I'm tired, he will change a bum without complaint. He does bath time and stays home when Z is sick and takes Z to the daycare. He is a hands on Dad and thats the way I think it should be. My mom was telling me that my dad almost missed me being born because he didn't want to leave work too early because he wasn't going to get any time off for me being born. How crazy is that? My mom had 4 kids and they didn't live near any family but still my Dad was expected to be at work. When Z was born, hubby was beside me the entire time and he took 2 weeks off afterwards. He will actually be taking at least 3 weeks off this time since his work will top up his paternity leave so he will actually still be paid full salary while he's off. I think the idea of father's being so involved in their kids life is amazing. I think it's God's plan. It's modeling a loving father, a loving husband and a man of God in their lives. I love that it's becoming more common because I really think absent fathers contribute to the high divorce rate in families and although I know that even amazing parents can raise troubled teens, I think having a father home and available does help with those adolescent years. I love hearing about stay at home dads, my husband actually talked about doing that since at the time I made more money than he did but we decided against that but if that had been the best decision for our family, I know it would have worked well and he would have enjoyed that. And our house probably would have been cleaner! :)
I just think God has called us to be family and that involves Mom, Dad and baby! (soon to be babies!)

Celebrating Life

The last week and a half has been hard. We were really counting on hubby getting into the police and it was a huge disappointment but I'm so proud of him. Instead of just being pissed off and giving up (which is probably what I would have done) he instead contacted his case manager asking what he could do to improve, he is training more, he's going to go on a ride a long and he's working really hard to make himself into the best possible candidate. He is turning to God and just asking God to direct him in his next move. He is trying to see the reasons why instead of focusing on all the why nots. I'm just so amazed at his strength, faith and dedication to our family.
And speaking of our family, I've officially passed the half way mark! I'm feeling really good these days, I'm still tired ALL the time but beyond that, I feel great. When I am awake, I feel like I have energy. It doesn't last long but at least I can enjoy my family again.
We took Z to the space & science center in our city yesterday - so much fun! They have a little toddler area with water tables and an airplace and a giant piano! We love it there!

Also, I got to rock out my new clearance rack dress! I love me a good sale! :)
So all in all, life is good. We are taking a slightly different path than we thought we would but thats okay. God is in control. I firmly believe that and I believe that He knows why so even if we don't, I'm okay with that right now.

Not the news we wanted...

So we aren't waiting anymore. But it wasn't good news. Hubby got deferred for three years!  which seems really excessive since there wasn't really anything in particular they were saying as a reason, just a couple minor things in his past, that wasn't exactly recent anyways or even really bad. But thats life. I was really upset when we first heard but I'm okay now. Our friend was deferred and appealed it down to a year so he might look at that but even if he does have to wait the full 3 years, we are okay with that. We really do feel that God is in control and even though we don't know the reason, there is a reason that he was deferred. It's frustrated and disheartening for my man but he has really been trying to seek out God's wisdom in all this. Maybe God knew we couldn't handle life with a newborn with him in training or maybe God has something better in store for us. We don't know. But I'm trying to seek God in all this and understand why or at least understand that God knows best. I think hubby is doing a better job of this because I think he knew the process wasn't going great while I was trying to be positive and assume the best so I was a lot more surprised. But I just feel bad for him. He's had so much disappoitment job-wise, it's not fair. But I also know that he is still young and if he still wants to be a cop and if he applies again in 3 years, he will still be under 30 so he will still have lots of time to do this.
So I'm just really needing to seek God, support my man and just realize that we are so incredibly blessed.

Baby!

I can't believe how clear and perfect my ultrasound picture is. This is "Beta" (my husband is a greek nerd) at 20 weeks!