Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am so very thankful for the following:

1. My wonderful, amazing husband. You are still #1 on this list because without you, the rest of this wouldn't be as important.

2. My beautiful, perfect son. I'm so happy that you are home with us.

3. Our family

4. Chasen and Liz (Why can't we do Thanksgiving with friends again? Oh, that's right..........)

5. Having all of our needs and many of our wants met

6. Our church family and other friends

7. The ability to laugh even when things are hard as well as the ability to have fun even in the simple things.

8. The health of myself and my family

9. The many opportunities that make life interesting.

10. The ability to eat these pies later!





11. Witnessing Gabe's first snow fall yesterday.

Time to go flip the bird (in the brine, I mean)

Hooray for Thanksgiving Day

I'm going to be hosting Thanksgiving here on Thursday for my parents. It will be the third time I've cooked and I love doing it. By far its my favorite holiday. We pretty much stick to tradition around here menu-wise.

Turkey (the Alton Brown brining method)
Mushroom stuffing (grandma's recipe)
Candied Yams (of course...this is the best part if you ask me. From scratch with marshmallows)
Baked Beans (this is a staple for every holiday meal for some reason)
Sweet and Sour Green Beans (this is my flair dish)
Rolls
Salad
Apple & Pumpkin Pies (from scratch)

My mom is cooking the beans, rolls, and bringing the salad. I'm doing the rest.

I can't wait to watch Detroit's Thanksgiving Day parade with Gabe (not that he will care). My brother and I used to watch it when we were little, sharing my dad's recliner and a blanket while my parents slept in. I watch it every year. One year, when I was about 10 we went down to Detroit and watched it live. It was really cold and I was wearing a powder blue one piece snow suit. The first year I was married, and Ben was still working nights, I repeatedly went into the bedroom to wake him up so he would watch it with me. He mostly just moaned and rolled back over. I was persistent though, "Ben, come quick, Carmen Harlan is singing 'Who Let the Dogs Out' and its terrible. You have to see this!". Unfortunately, I wasn't very convincing.

So today I have a bazillion things to do including but not limited to cleaning house, finishing the laundry, quick thawing my turkey, preparing the brine, marinating the green beans, and baking the pies. Unfortunately, there is always swearing involved when I make homemade pie crusts. I SUCK at crusts. I can NEVER get them rolled out properly without some sort of fiasco of epic proportions. Its unreal. Ben won't even come into the kitchen when I'm making crusts. So why don't I just use a premade crust, you ask? Because I have a personal vendetta against pie crusts, that is why! I will beat the crusts some day.....some day. I will not be defeated, I will prevail. Did I ever mention, I hate to fail? I would also like to mention the wonderful sainthoodness of my hot husband. Yesterday, he cleaned the entire kitchen (including scrubbing the sinks) so that I could have a nice fresh start prior to my kitchen destruction 2005. I think I'll keep him.

This will be my favorite Thanksgiving ever. I finally have my son with me.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Confessions

In an effort to not talk about the on going situation that is plaguing my life. I bring you a few dark confessions:

1. I wish we could celebrate Thanksgiving just the three of us.

2. There are days that I don't want to be mom.

3. I'm secretly jealous of parents with babies that crawl, even though I say it doesn't bother me that Gabe doesn't want to crawl.

4. Somedays at 6:30AM when I hear the boy on the monitor, the thought of getting up, making a bottle, and changing Gabe's diaper is overwhelming.

5. I wish Ben was more comfortable leaving the baby with a sitter so that we could go on a date (how is that for backwards). We haven't gone out alone once in the 4 months that Gabe has been home.

6. I'm still mad that the size of my family is going to be decided by money. I really wanted to have 3 kids, but will be lucky to have 2.

7. I don't want to deal with the on going situation anymore and just wish that we could pack up our house and disappear so that no one could find us.

8. I could really use some alone time, but I always feel guilty because usually taking alone time means that I'm not spending time with my husband who deserves it.

9. I feel like I'm a boring person to be around.

10. Gabe is in a phase where he leaves him mouth open with his tongue hanging out. This phase is driving me crazy and I keep poking it back in with my finger. Seriously, I'm a horrible mother.

11. I wish I could lose 10 pounds.

10 Months Old

Can you believe the boy turned 10 months old yesterday? I swear he was just 6 months old and arriving home. He's almost 1....holy crap.

Gabe had his 9/10 month check up yesterday (no shots thankfully). He is still in the 10-25% bracket for height, weight, and head circumference but the doctor said he's growing at a normal pace. He's just not going to be a big boy....but I already knew that. The doctor said he looks healthy with just some excema. He wasn't concerned at all about him not crawling and simply said as long as he's learning new things we shouldn't worry.

He certainly is learning new things. He now stands next to tables/chairs/his exersaucer. Unfortunately, he doesn't always bend at the waist when he falls. This is kind of a pain because he always wants to stand so you always have to be next to him paying close attention. He doesn't yet cruise around the furniture but he will. He also walks while holding on to your fingers. Its pretty funny because he lifts his left leg really high when he steps, but then steps normally with his right leg. My thought is he's not going to crawl, but will just walk instead. However, I'm not really sure how he's going to stand up since he can't pull himself up (since he doesn't crawl or lean on his knees). The moral of this story is, he just has to do everything his own way....the hard way.

Sorry to be MIA

I know I haven't posted much lately. I've been dealing with some on going family stuff that I can't post about here. I looked into password protecting the blog so that I could write about it, but Blogger doesn't offer that as a feature. I promise to be back in a few days when I can devote some mental energy to something other than the on going situation.

Finally!

After a year, I finally finished the top panel of my quilt. I'm making it for Gabe's big boy bed. It certainly isn't perfect. The diamond border strips were killing me, I could NOT get them to line up but I refused to rip them out another time. Otherwise, I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out. I don't know if you can tell or not but the shades of blue go from darker to lighter as you go up the quilt to simulate twilight. I'm not very good at arranging fabric to capture that (since I am NOT artistic AT ALL). I'm going to quilt it by hand in different sized swirls in hopes of making it look like wind blowing through the stars. We will see if I can actually accomplish that. Hopefully, I will complete it by the time he's ready to move into a real bed.

Full View




Here's a close up view of some of the fabrics....oh and OCD cat as well. I always have help when I'm working on quilts (can you see the paws in the picture above?)

When Your Past Locates Your Present and Gives You a Ring

Yick!

Yesterday, I was playing with Gabe trying to coax him into crawling (to absolutely no avail) when the phone rings. "It must be daddy" I say to Gabe in that high pitch baby voice that annoys me greatly (I need to stop that, really).

Nope, it wasn't daddy that's for sure.

Caller: Hi Kim, its "ex boyfriend" (that would be number 2 from this post

Me: How did you get this number?

That's just weird. I haven't talked to this guy since I lived with my parents. He's married and has two kids. Why does he feel the need to track me down and give me a ring? Apparently, he was "closing some windows on the past". Uh, didn't that happen when I was 17? Evidently, he must still think of me fondly. I find this somewhat amusing considering I don't have a single good memory of him, not a one.

I hope he doesn't know about this blog. That would be creepy.

Depressed

First off, my wonderful BFF Liz (that would be Liz, the creator of my new do) started a blog. So if you have time, stop by and say hi.

Now on to the less happy stuff.

Well, we've run out of sacrifices to be made here at the Boy Makes Three household. I really thought we could maybe pull this one out of our butt, but it isn't going to happen. Today Ben found out he can no longer work overtime (without the big shot's permission) so essentially he's taking a pay cut. Now our already strained finances are surely blown and I have to get a job. You know what folks, that SUCKS! The whole five years we went through IF and then the adoption, I looked forward to staying home. We worked hard to try to make that happen. We failed. I hate failing, HATE IT!

We don't want to put Gabe in day care because quite honestly, neither of us think he will do well with that. I don't think that day care is bad, so this is not in any way a judgment. Hell, I'm a child of day care and I turned out fine, despite some really crappy sitters. So basically, that leaves me working nights and weekends and Ben and I no longer seeing each other. You know what, we've done that before and it sucked ass.

I just want to cry. I won't though, I will deal with it the same way I dealt with all the other garbage that has happened in my life. I'll get up every morning, put one foot in front of the other, and do what I have to do. What other choice do I have?

Like I said, we ran out of sacrifices. We don't shop for clothes etc, we buy groceries off brand and on sale. We don't take vacations, don't spend money going out, we don't even rent movies. We own one crappy Escort that is paid off (and falling apart) and our Escape we bought on A-plan when I was working for Ford. We can't sell it because the proceeds wouldn't pay off the loan. We would only save $200 a month by selling our house and renting a one bedroom apartment. Our only luxuries are cable and internet which isn't going to get us there either.

I'm sure many are thinking, "So what, I had to go back to work. Quit your whining!" If you are thinking that, please don't voice that in my comments. I don't have a problem with working. This was a goal I was striving towards and sacrificing for and it isn't going to happen. I'm allowed to be disappointed. It feels like another of life's dreams being ripped out from under me. I'm allowed to be upset about that.

I am upset about that.