All of the emotions!!!

I haven't talked much about how the transition to actually being a mom has been for me, so I thought I should do that while he's still young, while I can remember some things and before I'm a mom of a toddler, because I'm sure it will change again then. I didn't know what to expect with adding a baby to our family. I don't think you can really mentally prepare yourself for it. People tell you things, but that's completely different from experiencing it yourself.

Mason was just 3 days old here! How do you prepare yourself to be responsible for that wonderful little life? You can't, you just jump right in.

The emotions I go through are crazy. I'm definitely a much more emotional person now...like, a total mushball. At my 2 and 6 week checkups, I had to do a post-partum depression screening. Everything looked great at my first one. At my second one, I didn't score as well. I wasn't depressed, but I had room for improvement. I talked to my midwife about it (I had actually talked to Josh about it a couple nights before, so this wasn't news to him). I couldn't make sense of any of it. I didn't really know what was bothering me, so I had to dig really deep to figure some things out. That only helped so much, because it still didn't make sense to me. After weeks of thinking and praying about what in the world was going on in my mind, I think I've figured it out to an extent. I was struggling to figure out what my new role was. While I was working through that, I kind of forget about taking care of me sometimes. I guess it started around the time Josh went back to work and our new real life started. It was kind of like his parental leave was the honeymoon phase. I'm incredibly thankful that he had that leave. Having him with me so we could learn how to take care of our new baby TOGETHER was definitely a blessing! Anyway, here's my crazy thought process, that I wrote like 2 months ago...

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I love taking care of Mason, but I'm still struggling to adjust to our new normal. I'm incredibly happy, but it's still easy for me to get sad over the dumbest things. I'm not happy with the state of my house. It really bothers me that I can't figure out the right balance of caring for him and caring for the other people/things in my life, including myself. If I get "enough" cleaning done for a day, I feel guilty that Mason only did tummy time once and I didn't throw the frisbee for Bailey. For the record, I define what enough is. Josh puts 0 pressure on me to get any housework done, so all that stress I have about it, I put on myself. If I spend the amount of time that I want focusing on Mason, I feel guilty that Josh comes home to a sink full of dirty dishes and a floor covered in dog hair and I didn't get any exercise. I'm learning to be OK with the fact that I can't do it all, but it is a very long, hard lesson to learn! Now, I'm back at work, and it's even harder. Cut that time I had to divide all those things into down to almost none and imagine how crazy that makes me!

Another thing I'm having trouble adjusting to is how needy I feel sometimes. Josh literally did everything for me during those first couple of weeks. I didn't change any diapers until we transitioned to cloth, so Mason was about 4 or 5 days old. Even after that, Josh changed all of the middle of the night diapers and most of the daytime diapers. When Mason needed to eat in the middle of the night, he got up with me just to keep me company. I didn't get my own food or water...he even brought food to me in bed (I still can't believe I ate in bed). He washed all of the laundry and took out all of the trash. He didn't have to work and we had help with meals, dishes and such, so he made it his full time job to take care of me and Mason. I never had to ask for anything, it was kind of like he read my mind and did exactly what I wanted before I even got the chance to ask for it. Every woman's dream, right? It was really nice. I hate asking for help, even from people closest to me. I only want them to help if they REALLY want to and I feel like if they REALLY wanted to, they would just do it. I know that's ridiculous, but it's what keeps me from asking for help, even when I want to. Anyway, I guess I got a little spoiled by all of that. As I started to heal and become more mobile, Josh took on more responsibilities, like yard work and actually going back to work, so he couldn't spend ALL of his time and attention on us anymore.  I guess that was just a harder transition than I expected. Josh still does a great job of taking care of me. He helps me clean the house, he almost always washes the dishes, he cooks dinner some nights and lets me do whatever during that time, he starts diaper laundry while I feed Mason at night. He does all of the right things and more, but I still feel so needy and it frustrates me. A lot.

It was just the two of us for a long, long time. Then we got Bailey. She was really good practice for a baby, but it's so different at the same time. Now, we have a baby to share each other with while we're also trying to make sure our fur baby doesn't feel abandoned. I don't want to be less of a wife because I'm so busy being a mother. I think it's very important to always make our marriage a priority and sometimes, that's harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes it's hard to remember to show Josh how important he is to me when there's a baby by my side who relies on me for EVERYTHING.

On the brighter end of emotional things - You always hear people say you'll fall in love with your spouse all over again once you have a baby. I wouldn't say I doubted that, but I didn't understand it. Now, I completely understand it. It's so very true. Not only did Josh help me bring this amazing little gift into this world (and not just by getting me knocked up), he was there with me every step of the way during pregnancy and labor. All of the appointments, the bad days of pregnancy and the good, every single step of labor - he was my rock and my voice of reason when I started to doubt myself. He literally (and figuratively) held me up while I was pushing our baby boy out.  He's been by my side through all the craziness of having a baby and raising him and that has taught me to love him in a brand new way. Even after all the things he saw when I was in labor and the way my body looks now, he's still attracted to me. There's nothing sexier than the man you love caring for you and your baby that way, as weird as that may sound. I feel SO incredibly blessed to have him in my life!

And of course, I feel so much joy when I'm able to take care of my baby. I'm healthy, he's healthy. When he's upset, I can (usually) calm him down. Our breastfeeding relationship has come such a long way and I really do think that has helped me emotionally. I look at him and I see his daddy (and a little bit of me), and that makes me so happy. Together, we made this amazing little boy. Getting to watch him grow up and help him to learn everything he is learning is such a fulfilling feeling.

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I'm doing SO much better now. I'm trying to get better about taking time to myself and that really helps. Josh sends me upstairs to take a bath so I can decompress a couple times a month. I want to start doing this once a week, because it really does help, but we have limited time between when Mason goes to bed and when we go to bed. It's hard to "steal away" an hour of that time. I know how to be "selfish" when it comes to other people, but not to my boys.

Adjusting to being a mom is not easy. Being a mom is not easy. It's a hard, hard job, but it's the best job I've ever had. 

Delays Galore!

So, in my last post, I said we would be arriving in Lima late Friday night. Well, let me tell you about our delays...

Delay 1 - First, the plane was overweight. JetBlue was trying to get 6 people to fly out the following day. This would have been tempting if we didn't already have so few days in Peru...or if the same thing had been offered on the way home. We obviously decided to stay on the plane. We boarded and they were still trying to get more people to get off. Several did, but we stayed put.

Delay 2 - After a few people got off the plane, we learned that a sensor had been painted over (Dear FLL airport, how does this happen?), so we had to either get a new plane (fingers crossed) or wait indefinitely. We knew we were delayed a bit more at this point, but we didn't know if it would be 30  minutes or several hours. We were getting hungry, so we decided to go grab dinner. We had met a friend who was sitting in the row with Josh and I - and he decided to go check on our plane while we were waiting on our food. Our plane was boarding in 10 minutes. We finished our food quickly and got our beers to go. 

Delay 3 - We board. We wait. And we wait some more. We think we're about to taxi out and all the power cuts on the plane. I've been in some pretty scary turbulence, but this is the most scared I had ever been on a plane. I just kept thinking, "What if we had been in the air when that happened?!?" Apparently, the pilot signaled to someone to do something and they accidentally cut the power. OK. So it took a bit to get everything back up and running and for the plane to be checked again.

Delay 4 - We've finally made it to the runway and we're about to take off when another passenger realizes they can't find their passport. Back to the gate. The passport is found in the bathroom of the first plane. 

FINALLY we take off. We ended up getting to our room in Lima around 3:00am, so obviously, we didn't go out. We crashed. We were staying in a guest house and we had arranged a cab through them. Luckily, they kept track of our flight and they were there to pick us up 3 hours after they were supposed to. 

In the end, I'm glad we didn't fly with a sensor that wasn't functioning and that our plane didn't crash because there was too much weight or the power went out. I do wish people didn't leave their passports in an airplane bathroom and hold up a couple hundred other people while it is found, but hey, it is what it is.

In the end, JetBlue did a good job of communicating what was going on and we got a $50 travel credit each. I've had 4 hours worth of delays with AirTran with absolutely no explanation and not even an extra bag of pretzels, so I'll take it!

I can't tell you how many times we looked at each other and say, "Maybe we should have taken that deal". The next time we're in a situation where Josh and I can both get a few hundred dollars in travel credit to take a different plane, we may consider it a little more seriously!

Oh, the joys of living next to the woods...and a pond...and a ditch filled with rocks

Those things all sound so nice...and very peaceful. And trust me, they are! I love our yard. I'm now convinced it's just about the perfect size for us at this point in our lives...though if it were much bigger, we would probably get a riding lawn mower, so maybe a bigger yard wouldn't be all bad. Either way...the size is great for us. We don't regret not getting a larger yard. 

The down side to all of the things that make me love our yard is that they all make a perfect habitat for snakes. I'm terrified of snakes. Guess who found the first snake in our yard? Yep...this lucky girl.

Josh was cutting grass in the back yard the other day (long overdue) and I decided I would grab the weed eater and help out. Fun fact...I had never used a weed eater until this week. Josh used to be able to cut our grass and trim everything up in about 30 minutes, which is less time than it usually takes me to do dinner, so I never did any of that in our old house. Now, I try to pitch in and help out since there's a lot more to do. 

Anyway, I was minding my own business, planning our garden out in my head and trimming the perimeter of our fence when I noticed a tiny little snake slithering away from me. Of course, I screamed. Then I was fine. I was proud of myself actually. I didn't run away. I just let out a little scream. Then Josh came over and picked it up and played with it a little. 

I'm totally kidding...he didn't pick it up at all. He didn't even see it. This is a picture I found on the Google, y'all. But, like I said, he was a tiny little thing. I looked him up and found out he's a ringneck snake and totally harmless. We probably shouldn't mind having him in our garden. I've come to terms that we may have some things like this hanging around this time of year. I'm cool with that. Eat all the critters you want out of my yard. Just don't show any of your big, scary cousins your new hangout. 

Meet Sir Poops a LOT

This is an old story that I never posted, but our little friend came back for a visit this week, so I feel like it's still an appropriate time to share it. From about the first week we moved into our new house, I started to notice MASSIVE amounts of bird poop on the sides of both of our cars AND on the driveway. I looked around trying to figure out where all these birds were perching. Surely, it had to be 4 or 5 birds! I didn't see anywhere they could be targeting our cars from.

This picture doesn't do it justice.

Well...one day, I was about to take Bailey out for a potty break and I see this little guy. My first thought was - "Awwww, how cute!" I love Cardinals! I think they're such beautiful birds! Then it hit me and I probably said something not nearly nice as "Awwww, how cute!"

This little guy is responsible for all the poop on the cars and the driveway! How do you make a bird stop perching on your car? And why on earth does he like perching on our cars so much in the first place?!?

Josh figured that out a few days later when he was working from home on a snow day...

Yep...this little guy likes to fight himself in the mirrors. He will fly from car to car and fight all of the other male Cardinals who like to hang out on our cars. It's almost too cute to get mad at...almost. So we started tilting the mirrors in to keep him off. It works for the most part, but we don't always remember to tilt them in. 

I still don't know why he chooses our cars other all the other cars in all the other yards in the neighborhood. 

Anyway, thanks to Jen, this little guy has been named Sir Poops a LOT.

Now, to get the garage organized enough so that we can fit both cars in it. haha...

Next Week HAS to be Better!

This week has been an extremely tough week. Work has been way more stressful than usual. Luckily, this is my off Friday and I REALLY need it. I need the mental health day and I need the time to get things done.

Outside work, there were tons of those tiny little things that just went wrong. Here's my favorite of those things:

Yep, I FINALLY got around to painting the craft room/office/guest room...whatever it is today, and paint that I spilled soaked through the drop cloth without me realizing it. I found it the next day, so now I have to figure out how to get dry paint out of carpet. 

Robin Williams died...so sad.

These things would have been tolerable on their own, but the worst of my week is that I lost TWO of MY loved ones. 

 

First, I found out Tuesday morning before work that my cousin, who was like a big sister to me when I was growing up, passed away. It was not completely unexpected since we were told months ago, after her brain surgery, that she would probably never get better. That doesn't make it easy though. It's still tough to accept and very hard to believe. I still feel like it's a bad dream that I'll wake up from.I'll be going on with my daily routine and some random memory will pop in my head out of nowhere...

I'll be showering and I remember the time she took me to the pet store to pick out a fish. She picked out a beta and I picked out a tiny little black molly or some black fish. She didn't know much about betas and the people at the pet store didn't tell her our fish wouldn't make good roommates. We spent the night setting up their tank and when we woke up in the morning, my little fish was gone. She felt SO bad about it, she let me take her beta home. I can't believe I still remember that, I couldn't have been more than 5!

I'll be taking Bailey for a walk and I remember when she took me to the Backstreet Boys concert with a friend when I was in elementary school. She drove 2 crazy kids all the way to Charlotte. That takes some patience!

I'll be cooking dinner and suddenly I'll think of the day she came to see me at work to tell me she just found out her daddy had stage 4 lung cancer. I remember how I was so sad to hear that about a man who was like my grandpa growing up, but that I was heartbroken for her. How do you handle getting that news about your dad?

I'll be driving home from work and I remember the summer during college when she let me live with her...the summer after Freshman year. I had gotten a credit card and racked up more on it than I would be able to pay off before classes started back in the Fall. I got a job at Subway, right around the corner from her house. I couldn't drive my car that summer, so she let me drive hers. She didn't charge me any rent AND she helped me pay off my credit card. This was the same summer we found out about Uncle Danny. We spent many late nights talking that summer.

This is me and my "Sissy" when I was a little one. 

I'm incredibly sad, but I feel SO bad for her mom and kids.

Melisa's funeral is the day that we leave for Spain, so we won't be able to make it. I would like to be there to support my family, but things work out the way they do for a reason. This is when it really sucks to live so far away from family, but I will support them as much as I can from a distance. 

Also Tuesday morning, I found out my mom's dog had passed away. This was not expected. Yes, he was old and he had a heart condition, but he was OK. He was being lethargic the day before and my mom took him to the vet. Blood work looked OK, but he did need a blood transfusion and some fluids. We expected him to pull through. He ended up passing away that morning. 

We've had Harley since the day he was born. He was born the day before Josh and I started dating. He could be a little jerk, but he loved HIS people.

This is Josh and my little Harley monster this past Easter.

So, yes...this week sucked.
 

Catching Up...Again

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged! There's so much to catch up on. I haven't blogged for 2 reasons. 1) We've kept ourselves pretty busy lately and 2) I just haven't felt like it. I don't really feel like it at the moment to be honest, but when I think back and I can't remember what all we've done the past few weeks, it's just a reminder that life is FLYING by. I want to document it so that we have something to look back on when I think I'm bored. Haha.

I'm going to try to keep this as organized as possible...

Debt:

We were debt free for a bit (except the house and car - Our car interest rate is lower than our bank interest rate and let's be honest, the house debt will be around for quite a while). I'll explain the little bit part in a second.

We've made a couple extra house payments. It wasn't easy to re-allocate this money, but we've figured out how much more we need to pay monthly to be where we want to be with the house by the time we moved back home. I'm not sure we'll stick to it 100%, because having the money to move back home is a priority. 

House Things:
We have now been in our house for 2 full years! Where is all the time going?!?

We have our new heat pump. I was not excited about this for a while because it's costing us a big penny. On the day I stayed home to have this done, it was in the 90s though. At that time, I was probably to spend every dime we had to get one if we had to. We had a home warranty, but they would only pay for a very small portion of it. We had to decide to pay cash or finance it. The contractor offered 0% financing for 3 years. We went back and forth and eventually decided to finance it. This way we can leave our emergency fund alone and we can take the monthly payment out of our house budget. But the downside is, we have debt again. Blah.

We were pretty set on building a deck this year...then we got a couple quotes...then we realized how much we were going to be paying for our heat pump. The deck is out. We don't plan on building one at all now. At first, it was hard for me to accept, but I don't care so much anymore. The lowest quote we got was over $5K. We only plan on being here for 4, maybe 5 years. That's over $1K per year, not including the money we will spend to maintain it and furniture. When we broke it down that way, it just wasn't worth it. If we were selling the house, we would be more likely to do it since it would up the value of the home, but since we're renting, it's just another thing to maintain over the years. 

We bought the paint for the guest bathroom cabinets. Now we just need the time to put it to use. I'm excited about it, because it's potentially a color we will use to pain the kitchen cabinets.

Car Things:

I bought a Groupon a while back for window tinting. We've had some scheduling conflicts and one failed attempt at actually getting it done. Since it was their fault that we didn't get it done on our initial appointment date, they agreed to tint the 4 small windows (the Groupon only covered the big 5 windows) at no additional charge and to let us use the voucher past the expiration date. We FINALLY got our windows tinted yesterday!

Vacation:
We just returned from Mexico on Friday!!! We were there for 7 days and we had a great time! It will definitely get its own post at some point.

 This is from the front of our resort on our 5th day. Such beautiful colors in the sky!

This is a pool pic on our 6th day, the first day we got to use the pool!

Family:
Natalia celebrated her 6th birthday 2 weekends before we went to Mexico. We had a great time at her birthday party. I really can't believe she's already 6! She's such a funny little girl. :-) We discovered that Bailey loves to play with balloons at her party, and Bailey also met her first infant. She was really good with her, but she was very interested in her diaper. I can foresee some interesting diaper situations in our future. YIKES!

 Me with Daddy

 I think she's getting a little big for this.

 Holding the baby Bailey met. I forgot her name. She's so excited for her little brother to come, so she wanted to "practice".

This is Bailey playing with a balloon. She will hit it back and forth for you, like she's playing volleyball, then she pops it.

Friends:
AJ and Kristen came to visit for Memorial Day weekend. They got in late Friday night, so we just hung out by the bar when they got here. It was their first time ever seeing it. We slept in on Saturday then went to Baltimore for lunch. We went to our favorite burger place. I got my usual kangaroo burger and Josh got Camel. We split them so we could try them both. They were both very good, but the camel tastes more similar to beef. I prefer the slightly gamey flavor of the roo! We walked to the harbor and people watched for a bit, then we decided to make it back to see the State baseball game. We had a couple other friends over that night too. We didn't really plan on staying up so late, but the game just wouldn't end. After like, the 12th inning, we decided to play Cards Against Humanity and have the game on in the background. I'm glad we did this, because the game went on until 2am! I really wanted to be up for the end though. In the end, UNC beat us and we were all exhausted. I didn't take any pictures at all during this trip. It was a short visit, but we had a great time!

Anniversary:
I'm saving the best for the last...we celebrated our 3rd anniversary while we were in Mexico! We decided to visit Chichen Itza. I'll post more about this later in my vacation post, but this was an amazing day trip! We are coming to love traveling more and more, so this was a perfect way to spend our anniversary! 

The Opposite of Friday Favorites...for Last Week

So, last week, I didn't have a Friday Favorites post. Honestly, after our weekend home, last week was pretty darn crappy. Monday, I was rear ended by a tow truck on the way home. I was coming to a stop (the car in front of me was stopping), he rear ended me, and pushed me into the car in front of me. Not a great way to start the week. I was completely fine, just a bit shaken up. I had some random bruises and some muscle soreness the next day, but nothing major. Josh wanted me to go to the Dr. just to make sure everything was fine, so I did. They just said I had some tightness in my muscles, gave me a super awkward neck brace to wear and gave me some exercises to do. I'm completely fine now. 

 Tuffy made it out in one piece. I kind of wish I would have saved this so I could frame it and put it in the State Room. Unfortunately, I didn't think of it until we had already cleaned everything out of the Taurus. 

We had to drive a rental. Since we were just going to have this one for a week, we wanted something fuel efficient. We ended up with the Mazda2. I don't love the car, it's definitely not my style, but the color is absolutely hideous!!! The gas mileage was really good though. 

So, I spent most of last week dealing with insurance companies and all that fun stuff. We were 90% sure our car was totaled, so we started researching like crazy. By Friday, we still hadn't heard back from the adjustor, but we started shopping and test driving anyway. We didn't have a great experience at the first dealership. We looked at only used cars at this one, and they were near the top of our price range for a new car. We decided to test drive a manual Corolla anyway. We liked it, but we didn't love it. The salesman was very pushy and knew absolutely nothing about the car. I actually doubt he knows much about any car. He didn't know manuals came with cruise control (ummm...even I knew they did...and I don't know much about cars). Josh told him up front that this was our first test drive and we still had to hear back from the adjustor, but he just kept on and on. He finally mentioned us getting married early, so why not buy a car early. Josh said..."Yea, we dated 9 years before we got married." That finally did shut him up. Haha. 

Charleen and her boyfriend came over for a game night Friday night. Around 11:00, our power went out. There was a storm going on, but it didn't seem too bad, so I thought the power would be back on in no time.  We've never lost power in our house, so this was a first for us. Luckily, we have a ton of candles and a big flashlight. We kept playing games for a while. Josh and I went to bed around 1:00 and the power still wasn't on. We decided to sleep on the bottom floor since we didn't have A/C. I expected to have power when I woke up Saturday morning...NOPE! Apparently the storm was a lot worse than we thought. We went to test drive cars in Silver Spring (close to DC) Saturday, and it was worse there. The stoplights were out, so traffic was a mess. Gas stations were closed. Some of them had no power at all and some of them had run out of gas. Our gas light was on, and we were in the rental so we didn't know how long we could make it. There were a few gas stations open and they had ridiculously long lines. We had no choice but to wait since we didn't know how far it would be before we found another gas station open. We ended up waiting about 25-30 minutes for gas. Not fun, but it's better than pushing a car! 

We ended up not getting power until about midnight Monday. We were out of power for about 48 hours. It sucked, but there are a lot of people who STILL don't have power. It's hard to believe because it really doesn't look that bad. We had lots of branches and some small trees down, but that's about it. I know there were worse areas. Growing up in southeastern NC, we saw lots of hurricanes, and they were a lot worse than this storm. Fran was a horrible storm, and I think we were only out of power for 2 days. I know there are a lot more people up here (about 500,000 people were without power at some point due to the storm), but I still don't get it.

We passed time by car shopping, eating out and playing games. We tried to go to the movies, but they were out of power too. Luckily our downstairs area didn't get that hot. When the power came back on, our thermostat said our second floor was 87 degrees! Yikes!

Playing Monopoly in the foyer.

Changing Minds

When we first moved up here, we were planning to stay for about 2 years, then move to Florida. Josh was planning to stay with his company with hopes of transferring to Melbourne. I guess this was just supposed to be a stepping stone of sorts for us. If we had stuck to that plan, we would be planning on the move now and we would have less than 6 months left up here! At that point I think we also didn't really plan on moving back to NC. 

Last week,  Josh had a work function and he met a co-worker who is also from NC. He moved up here with intentions of moving his family back to NC, just like us. He was just starting his career up here. He's in his 40s now. He's still here. This kind of worries me...I think? I don't even know. Haha. The money is just a lot better up here. Sure, the cost of living is lower in NC. No, it won't make up for the salary difference. He said he just got comfortable with his salary up here and he just never thought he could re-adjust. He told Josh if we really do want to move back, don't up our lifestyle as we make raises, etc. Start saving for when we do move back. Of course, we haven't planned on increasing our lifestyle, we've planned to increase the amount of money we're paying on debt. Our student loans are higher than we originally thought they would be at this point. The house kind of interfered with those plans. When Josh got his raise, the only thing we really increased is our vacation budget (only by $25 a month though, and this is the beginning of our savings for a big trip before we have kids, not regular vacations), Bailey's budget (for daycare twice a month), and our gift budget by a little bit (it was REALLY tough to stick with our Christmas budget this year). All in all, that's still less than $100 a month. Everything else has gone to savings and debt, so I guess we're on the right track. We just have to be careful that we keep putting that money back in retirement and other savings once all the debt is paid off, rather than spending it on things we want. We already have a rough savings plan, including when and how much we'll save for kids, when and how much we'll put back for a down payment for our second home, etc. 

A lot of times, I think buying the house wasn't the best choice for us. We spend SO much more time on it than I thought...and more money too. It's definitely not cheaper than renting, but it's at least an investment. I think if we would have bought our house after Josh has the job he has now, we would have bought a nicer and maybe even bigger house than we did. We almost did that anyway, then we sat down and talked about it. It was hard for me, because I think I was attached to the house, but Josh reminded me that we were buying the house for an investment and it would be better if we bought one that just needed a little work that we could do ourselves. We would have had to cut what we were putting in savings or paying on debt. At that time, that thought didn't bother me. Now it bothers me a lot. I'm SO glad my husband is more practical than I am! 

I guess in a few years...more than a few years really, we'll be faced with a very difficult decision. Do we stay in MD or move back home? I think no matter what we decide, we'll have many of those "what if" moments. Right now, the decision seems so simple. We'll move back home before the kids go to school. When the time comes, I don't know if it will be that easy. But at the same time, the possibility that we'll change our minds doesn't seem that unlikely since we've already done it once. We could move to a more rural area up here (there are some really gorgeous areas) and get the same kind of home we hope to have in NC. Of course, we still won't be close to family and friends. But what if family and friends aren't around that area anymore anyway? Why did we move there then? Of course I would love my kids to be raised in the South. Josh says he doesn't notice the lack of southern hospitality until he's been to NC then back up here. I guess when I think of it I don't either. People aren't rude up here. They just don't go out of their way to speak or make nice gestures like they will in NC. 

Why do we have to change our minds so much? And why do decisions have to be so difficult?

Separation Anxiety?

Bailey has been doing well for the most part. She's doing great at day camp when we take her. She did well when we were dog sitting and she did well when a friend was sitting her for us. She's doing well on walks and she's not having accidents in the house. 

It's not all good though...I've been thinking she may have a bit of separation anxiety for a while now, but I thought I was just making excuses for her behavior. I kept pushing it out of the back of my mind and telling myself she was tearing things up because she's a puppy and she'll grow out of it, she's bored, blah blah blah. It's not just tearing stuff up though. She barks, whines, etc. a lot when we leave and she won't stay in a room alone. I used to think she just followed us everywhere because she was curious, but I think it's because she's scared to be alone. I kept making other excuses for all the behaviors that were concerning me. She didn't always have these issues. When we were in our apartment she never tore anything up and she didn't whine when we left her. She would sometimes let us be in a different room without getting upset. It didn't happen immediately when we moved in the house. I wish I could pinpoint when it started to happen, but I can't. I can figure out when she started to be destructive with things other than her toys (thanks to this blog and her weekly updates), but I can't remember if she started freaking out when we left around that same time. 

This kind of freaking out is bad. Really bad. Our carpet is brand new. I'm not ready to replace it. So...back to the crate it is for my poor baby.

Bailey had to go to the vet to get a Lyme booster last week. While we were there we talked to the vet about our concerns. Of course he can't be sure, but he agrees that it sounds like separation anxiety. We talked about what we can do to address the problem. We talked about the different steps we could take and little things to hopefully make things easier on her. We've started her on a natural supplement called Composure. We want to use this combined with some behavioral things (crating her and leaving her for short periods of time, leaving a TV or radio on for her, etc.). Of course there are medications, but we definitely don't want to go that route. If things don't improve at all, we may have to take her to see an animal behaviorist. I don't think it will get that extreme. We just have to work with her consistently so it doesn't get worse. 

I keep trying to figure out if there's something we did to provoke this. I don't know what caused it, but I do think we have been making it worse without realizing it until recently. Bailey used to be REALLY bad for sprinkling on the floor a little when we came home from work. To try to prevent this, we would just ignore her for a few minutes when we got home. Once we got her outside and she calmed down some, we would talk to her and pet her. Now that she doesn't do that anymore, we have started talking to her, hugging her and playing with her as soon as we get in. We have recognized this and we're trying to make leaving and coming home from work as insignificant as we possibly can. I know it will take some time and lots of trial and error before we start to see any major improvement. I feel so guilty leaving her now, because I know she absolutely hates it :-/

The Woes of Being a Homeowner

Being a homeowner is very different from what I expected. It's not nearly as glamorous for sure, and it's a lot of work. We're way behind where I thought we would be at this point. For that reason, sometimes I regret not buying a newer home. Sometimes I think we are going to end up spending just as much as if we had bought one of the new construction townhomes we looked at once we do everything we want to do. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems that way sometimes. I have to remind myself that we bought the house as more of an investment than anything. The amount of money we were going to spend in rent for the 5-7 years we plan on being here was absolutely ridiculous (and that's just with a small 1 bedroom apartment...anything larger would have been even more ridiculous!), and we did get a good deal. Not only that, but I was just plan sick of apartment living. It was definitely a lot less responsibility, but I love having a place to call ours! And, even if we don't actually make money on the house once we sell, we've learned a LOT! There are things I know to look for now that I would have never considered before owning a home. There are things that I have realized are or are not actually that important when it comes down to it. I know this is going to be a great experience when it's all said and done, and I definitely wouldn't want to go back to apartment living, but sometimes it's just frustrating.

There are tons of changes we want to make to our house, from simple updates or renovations to adding a deck. By this time, I thought we would have our kitchen completely renovated. We're not even close. One obvious reason is money. Every project, big or small, seems to end up costing more than we think. There are those "little" things we need to get for projects that add up really quickly. Also, I didn't think about those things we would HAVE to spend money on, like fixing a leaky window or replacing a water heater (more on that later). Of course I knew there would be repairs, I just didn't think they would come soon. The other reason is TIME. There's never enough of it. Since we're beginners at this homeowner thing and neither of us are particularly handy, our projects always take longer than we plan. For this reason, we're making some changes to the way we plan for projects. We're going to plan for the project to take twice as long as we think it will and 1.5 times as much as we think it will cost. This will account for the numerous trips to Lowe's to pick up tools we didn't think we would need. Haha.

Now, back to the water heater, the main reason for this post. It went out on us. That's bad enough. What's worse? It went out when we had 4 guests in the house! I felt SO bad. Some of them got lucky and only had to endure 1 cold shower, others (sorry Hutch!) were pretty much screwed for 4 days. Josh researched some stuff and tried a few things on the water heater. In the end, the heating coil was corroded or something and the whole thing needed to be replaced. We did a bit of research and picked out a water heater. We decided to have it installed. Josh has learned very quickly that he hates anything plumbing related. He had already been trying to repair the thing for several days. He was just burnt out. Lowe's had same day installation if you ordered before noon. That worked perfectly. Josh ordered it on Thursday. Well, same day installation was $100 extra, so we decided one more day wouldn't kill us. They only had one in stock that they could deliver soon (and it wasn't the one we picked out, but at least it was cheaper). So, we were getting our new water heater on Friday. Yay for hot water! Nope, no hot water of Friday. The lady taking the order didn't think to tell Josh that someone needed to come in to sign a contract before they would send anyone out, and she didn't update the phone number on file with the number Josh gave her (they had Josh's phone number on file...Josh lost his phone). Mid-day Friday we still hadn't heard a thing. That's when I called to figure out what was going on. This is when I found out we had to go to Lowe's first. We went in after work to sign the contract. Someone finally made it out on Monday to install the water heater. So...several hundred dollars and a week later, we could take hot showers again!

Luckily, I have an amazing husband who warmed water on the stove for me to take baths rather than cold showers, so the bathing part wasn't so bad. Washing dishes was horrible, it's so much harder to get dishes clean with cold water! For this reason, we decided to put off brewing our Christmas beer for a week :-/ Hot water is definitely one of those things we took for granted. 

Where Were You?

I don't know anyone who doesn't remember where they were on 9/11/2001. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's a day I'll never forget. I was a freshman in High School. I was walking from my first period class to my second period art class when I heard people talking about a bombing at the Pentagon. I assumed it was a small bomb that resulted in a few injuries and maybe a death or two. Sad, but I didnt' think it was a huge deal. When I got to my art class, my principal came over the intercom and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At that time, I wasn't even completely sure what the World Trade Center was. We didn't watch anything on TV in any of my classes, but I know some classes did. I heard various rumors throughout the day. I still didn't know how bad it was. I don't remember if I went to my mom's or dad's house after school, but I know we watched the news that night. I was shocked when I finally realized how bad things really were. The amount of smoke that was covering the sky, the people jumping out of the buildings, then the buildings actually collapsing. It was unreal to me. Thousands of people died that day. Thousands of moms, dads, siblings, children, spouses and friends would never be coming home again. SO many people could only sit around and wait, for what must have seemed like forever, to hope that someone they loved would be found. I can't imagine the agony they went through. Losing someone that way must be horrible, but not even knowing if they're dead or alive...if they're dead when their remains will be recovered...I just can't imagine. I never dreamed something like that would happen in the US. 

It was already a very very sad situation, but once I started to see the stories of families who lost people that day, it really just hit me. I remember seeing a story with a man who had lost his wife on 9/11. They had a 3 year old little boy and he had been asking where mommy was and when she was coming home. This poor man who lost his young wife now had to explain to his toddler that his mommy wasn't coming home. I just can't imagine how he felt. I can't imagine someone being evil enough to cause so many people to have these types of conversations with people they love. 

I had never been to New York at that time, so I never got to see it with the towers still there. I finally got to go a couple years ago, but the memorial wasn't ready at that point. I saw the memorial on TV today and I think it's beautiful. Hopefully I'll get to see it in person before too long. 

Until then, Baltimore has a small memorial that I got to half see this weekend. It was unveiled today, but we went Saturday. The marble has a timeline of the day on one side and the tarp covered thing is a piece of one of the towers. We'll go back to see it before too long. 

God Bless America!

RIP Tyke

When I was in 6th grade, my dad bought my sister and I each a Chihuahua puppy. I got a male and named him Tyke. My sister got a female and named her Cocoa. We decided they should get married. We used Barbie and baby doll accessories to dress them up and have a proper wedding ceremony. I wish we had pictures of this. They were the happiest married Chihuahua couple I've ever seen. We decided that they would have one litter of puppies before we spayed Cocoa. My mom wanted a little Tyke. The puppies were born and there was a little black Tyke. My mom named him Harley. Not long after the puppies were born, Cocoa began to act weird. Once we realized she really needed to go to the vet, it was too late. She passed away just as my mom and sister got her to the emergency clinic. This was a very sad time for us all. I felt so bad for my sister. 

Tyke was the saddest of all of us. He moped around for longer than I can remember. He was never quite the same after Cocoa died. He didn't want anything to do with the puppies...or really anyone for quite a while. We ended up keeping a puppy that was the color of Cocoa, but had long hair like Tyke. My sister named her Cheyenne.

Tyke went on to have a pretty tough life.As he got older, he got a little meaner. He never realized how small he was. He tried to fight a pit bull over a large female dog...2 times. Both times he came out with some stitches and other major injuries. He was blind as a result of the second occurrence. Since that second brawl with his big brother, Tyke was blind and Stitch had to find a new home. (Just a side note, Stitch was actually a very sweet dog, my dad still has his sister. Tyke probably attacked him on a daily basis and he would just lay and let him chew on his big lips. Finally, a female was involved and he had had enough. With his size, it didn't take much at all for him to hurt Tyke.) At this point, no one could touch Tyke except my dad. For whatever reason, he was very tolerant of my niece though. I could not even pet him without him trying to chew my fingers off, but she could. It's funny how dogs know to treat the little ones differently.

Tyke turned 12 on Valentine's Day this year. He passed July 1st. Although this is a very sad time for me, it's also a relief to some extent. I could tell that his health was declining each time I saw him. I was worried about my dad. I knew there would come a time when a decision would need to be made, and I didn't think Daddy would be able to make that decision. The last 2 times we visited my dad, I cried when we left. I couldn't tell Daddy, but I told Josh...he just looked pitiful and I hated to see him that way. I missed when he was a feisty little thing running all over the place.

I miss you Tyke Tyke.

Bunnies Bite!

I used to think bunny rabbits were some of the cutest little creatures. I never really understood why so many people hated them, even farmers. I figured there was no harm in a bunny eating a few plants, he's just hungry. Well, my opinion of them has changed quite drastically. Sure, they start out very cute...like this...

but then they decide to demolish your lettuce...like this!

My previously lush leaves of lettuce are now bunny leftovers!

Since I took this picture, he has been back and has completely eaten all of the leaves off the top half of my largest plant. He has also eaten more zucchini and some tomatoes! We're considering putting chicken wire around the raised beds, but we're trying a few other options first. I wish I could get a fox or something to keep in my back yard so the stupid bunny would stay away...or become fox lunch...either way, I don't care.

If you have looked at my 101 in 1001 post, you know I wanted to start meal planning again. Well, I've started doing that and last Wednesday we were supposed to have grilled chicken salad. Stupid rabbit ruined my menu for the week!