But to satisfy my husband and to make things fair since I did just post a picture of Jake in the last entry, here’s a recent shot of Brian, my gigantic youngest. He’s still off the charts at 13 months. Quite shocking for the boy who was once a 12lb 8.5oz newborn. Cute isn’t he?

Ironically, I love peanut butter, but didn’t eat that much during either pregnancy. Good for me. Good for my babies. Maybe I’m a good mommy after all. *wink*

For all those trying to figure out what is okay during pregnancy, you can cross the wonderful fats and protein of nuts off the list.

Nuts.

At the moment, I’m what I’d like to call “fat,” which is a shorter way of saying “I have thirty pounds of baby fat still to lose following my 12lb 8.5oz* child born a year ago.”

At least according to friends who also have a life, it’s normal to take years before all the weight comes off. I also have skinny friends, but they just lucked into the weight loss - plus they are better at eating small portions. But I think that’s because they are smaller people - they have smaller stomachs, too.

*(I find stating his weight makes people forget that I’m overweight - it’s proportional)

But now that Brian is about a year old and Jake is three (although not potty trained thanks to six months of moving hell), it might be time to tackle this fat once and for all - or at least get started on the three year process.

My Plan?

The skinny person diet.

I don’t have time for counting anything and have no desire to leave my kids to go to meetings. Can’t go in the evenings anyway - I’m working.

So I shall simply pretend I’m skinny and eat like the skinny people do. And I don’t mean the people like my husband (who isn’t skinny, just slender) who have mega-fast metabolisms. I mean the skinny people who DO have the time to count things. I figure if I watch them and eat the way they do, I’ll be benefiting from their hard work.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

You may have noticed I also have time for a renewed interest in my blog. Here’s to my future non-fat self and my renewed blogging!

If the fliers on my car back in college are to be believed, sperm donation can earn you a few hundred bucks if you are degreed, attractive, tall, etc. The more desirable you are, the more you can earn from your donation. Of course if you’re short, dumb and ugly you can only make $50 or so, but that’s still quite a bit for something most boys do daily anyway.

Girls, though, can net thousands for egg donation. Of course, boys can donate sperm every day if you wanted to, and the same isn’t true for being an egg donor, but apparently you can make $6000 by donating eggs to a family looking for help with a baby. Not bad for a month’s work. (more…)

Others can’t say the same.

So far, I’ve had two friends get divorced. One was only about 34 and on his second divorce. (His wife was cheating on him big time – I would have left her, too.) The other friend was the kind of divorce that really stings. She got married to a guy she loved. She was perfectly happy until one day he told her that he’d realized he didn’t really love her and wasn’t really very interested in staying married to her. Ouch.

Fortunately she’s since remarried a guy who DOES really love her and she’s expecting her first child. All this and she’s only 27.

I’m not going to say that divorce is wrong, but I do think it’s considered a bit too lightly by many parties. After all, everyone is doing it – it must be okay, right?

That being said, I’ll admit freely I’ve considered it on rare occasions. Usually those occasions are when my adorable husband makes sweeping generalizations such as, “Why can’t you just keep the house cleaner? Women throughout time have managed to raise kids and clean at the same time – why can’t you?”

*teeth gnashing and stony silence*
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But here’s the problem with being a work at home mom:

• I wake up with the boys around 7am. I actively parent (and I mean actively) all day long.
• The boys have overlapping naps for maybe thirty minutes - just enough time to respond to a few emails.
• Both boys are asleep in bed by 8pm, and I sit down to work…until 11pm or midnight.

Sounds great right? Being home with the boys all day is great. Being a freelance writer who can work literally anywhere, anytime is great, too. But trying to do everything all at once is really challenging.

Because I work at night after the boys are in bed, there are a few things that simply don’t get done around here. During the day a toddler and infant and working nights prevents me from taking care of:

• laundry
• picking up the toys
• baking
• uploading pictures
• watching television
• painting my toenails
• putting away clothes
• cleaning up the kitchen
• returning phone calls
• updating baby books
• reading books for fun
• etc…

Since I must work frantically all evening, all “normal” evening activities must be done while my boys are awake. So that means I’m trying to do two or more things at once any given day, and my house is constantly filthy and cluttered.

And, of course, I’m not spending as much dedicated time with them as I’d like, which was my whole reason to quit teaching for a year to work at home. So is it worth it? At this exact moment, I’m not exactly sure…

To rest is to take a moment any where, any way you can to not actively parent, work, or otherwise engage in the 752 tasks that call for your attention at any given moment. Rest can be hard to come by, especially for working mothers, so it must often be carefully sought out and taken advantage of when found.

See also: break, temporary insanity, sleep, almost asleep, REM sleep, stopping at a red light, waiting at the doctor’s office

The average one-year-old baby boy is 29 inches tall and 23 pounds. My 4-month-old baby boy is 29 inches long and 21 pounds. If I had time or energy to think about betting, I’d bet that he’ll top 30 pounds by his first birthday and be, oh - I don’t know - 33 inches long. That would be the size of a hefty 2-year-old. That’s my boy!

My friend Shanna went back to work after three years at home. She’s never worked more than a few hours a week since having her oldest who happens to be Jake’s age. Now she is working full-time as a high school librarian. She is suffering from Working Mommy Guilt in a big way. She got a membership to the Y with childcare. She was going every day for months. She went back to work and hasn’t been since – she just can’t stand the thought of leaving her girls in the childcare for one more hour. I don’t blame her.

I don’t go to church because I don’t like the idea of childcare for one hour to attend a church service by myself. (Mike won’t go.) I’d rather spend that hour with my boys. This feeling was even more powerful when I was working full-time.
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2.Your toddler has a dirty diaper. You interrupt his play to clean it up. You bundle the diaper, kiss the toddler and head off in search of a plastic bag for proper disposal. On the way back from the garage you see your toddler contentedly playing again – with a bare bottom. It seems you completely forgot to put a new diaper on.

Yes, both of these happened to me today. And yes, I’m exhausted.

On that note, I’m going to bed for another six or (hopefully) seven hours of much interrupted sleep.

Night! *yawn*