Wonderful World...

Wow... My world is kinda wonderful, and pretty sucktastic at the same time. How's about them apples?

I have several things I've always wanted, more kid-related goodness than I could have imagined, a growing friendship base, and yet my insides are...well... screaming. I find I am, therefore, screaming at my husband and older kid a bit for being a pain in my buttocks. Then, I turn and see Miss M and I just melt. I'm instantly calmed by her innocence and sweetness.

I feel like a fraud when this happens. I feel like a bad Mommy. Apparently I'm just not good at holding in my emotions when I'm being irritated repeatedly. My husband is, I think, trying to work with me. At least he's less bothersome lately. My older kid? Not so much. He's taken on waaay more of the "mommy irritation" work than his fair share lately.

Really, I need Jim to stop baiting me everytime I turn around. He argues with me about his dinner every.freakin'. night. He claims to NOT LIKE his FAVORITE foods. OMG, makes me want to screeeeeam. Sometimes, I do. Like tonight.

I made dinner, took it out of the oven, carefully cooled it for my lovely son, and all the while he was claiming that he doesn't like this food. A WONDERFUL food he's had many times before and LOVES. I knew, as soon as it started, that we'd have another night of me repeating "No, you aren't done until you have had 'n' more bites.", and the all-time classic, "How do you KNOW you don't like it, you haven't even TRIED it?!?!?".

He KNOWS this dance bugs the shit outta me. He KNOWS he's just being a pain. He KNOWS that end the end he'll just end up eating it - at least 1 bite. So why in the hell, after 6 months of this, are we still having to sort out what he will agree to eat? I just want to run screaming from the house.

The worst thing is... He's a wonderful, amazing, sweet, and loving child. He's also a pain in the butt because he's really smart and knows just what he's doing when he pushes all the buttons at once. Sometimes, he even smiles an evil smile when he knows he's got me cornered.

I don't know how I'm going to make it through this point. I told my hubby... It wouldn't be sooooo terribly bad either, except that we have at least 3 more years of this with his sister to look forward to before she's even started pulling this mess. How am I going to make it that long? How will I stay sane?

I have to admit, I think some of my angst is that I'm more mentally tired these days. I changed teams at work recently, and the learning curve is pretty steep. I'm doing to same job, essentially, but I'm having to learn slightly different policies and procedures, as they apply on the new team. It's exhausting having to track down the process for each thing I do. I really need a break.

I want to take a trip overseas. I want to go either to Rome or Ireland. I want to go in late May, but it may already be too late to make that happen. I'm not really sure my passport is current... I need to put that on my checklist.

Hubby is talking about taking me to Chicago in June to celebrate my Birthday, which is this month. He chose June because there is a huge food fest going on, and he KNOWS how I lurve me some great food. Trust me, if Seattle wasn't on that nasty fault line, and right up against that tsunami-generating ocean, I'd be there in a NY minute. No Doubt about it.

Anyway. I'm just rambling. I haven't posted in a while due to my funk and my crazy so-called life.

I am loving on my sweet baby girl. She's 5 1/2 months old now. Ya, I know, where did the time go? Does the 2nd one grow faster or something? Sheesh.

She's doign all kinds of age-appropriate stuff, grabbing toys, chewing toys, babbling, and now she turns when you call her name! YAY! I'm not sure I talked about that here, but we were kinda worried something was very wrong. She was 4 mo old before she made any attempts at all to turn to investigate the sounds around her. It didn't matter what the noise was, or the loudness of the noise - no response. So, Whew! We are so glad that turned out to be nothing, apparently. She seems to have learned her name even! YAY! Oh, and she has juuuust started rolling over. Tonight, I think she figured out she could roll to where she wants to go. Seriously. she looked at a toy of Jim's, flipped and flopped a couple of times and ALMOST got it. She's apparently directionally challenged, but I don't expect it will last long.

I'm sorry I haven't posted lately, hope any of you that are still reading will choose to forgive me. My funk and all the work craziness has kinda made me hide from the world a bit. I've been reading up on you guys though. AND I'm on Twitter - I don't follow during the day usually, but I'm on at night.

Night all.