Wow. 2 years y’all. 2 years ago I was sitting at my parents house, crying, with a 10 month old baby sleeping in a pack n play while Sam and I argued on the phone about his drinking. As I repeated over and over that I simply couldn’t take it anymore, something had to give.

2 years later we sit here – and how life has changed. Even in the past year.

It’s a good feeling to know we’re 2 years into a new life. A wonderful thing to know we can handle things, big things, without drinking those feelings away. Or fighting and arguing.

Life is peaceful here. Rarely is there a voice raised anymore, and when it is it’s replaced with one of us telling the other, “Let’s just stop and talk about it instead of yelling.” It didn’t use to be this way. Holy Moses, we had some knock down drag outs that make me cringe to think about now. How did we live like that for 7 1/2 years? How was that our normal?

Hindsight.

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The title is absolutely meant to be read with the Happy Birthday tune. You’re welcome for humming it the rest of the day.

I’m 29 today. sigh. Last year in my twenties. What a – what an odd feeling. Like – I feel older than that. But then I can’t believe next year I’ll be 30.

That seems – surreal. I remember thinking 30 was REALLY OLD at one time. Like, gasp, ew, 30? O_o

Now, not so much. In my decrepit, feeble mind 30 is the new 18.

Or something.

Maybe the new 25. I was pretty dumb at 18.

So much has happened this past year. Since I turned 28 I:

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The other day I was sent a picture of myself walking hand in hand with Bella. We were back east – almost a year ago. We were visiting Kim and she’d taken us to the park with her kids, and behind us snapped a photo.

And as I stared at it, I wished with all my heart I could tell the girl smiling down at her daughter just what was coming in the next 7 months to her life. How she’d go from a mom of one to three but then still just one. How her heart would be broken into a million pieces. How she’d never view life in the same casual way again.

My heart ached for her. It was strange, because rationally I knew that was me and I’m still here.

But then I’m not. (more…)

I hated that paci.

HATED IT.

Around a year old. She loved it upside down against her face.

Every night, without fail, we’d suddenly realize it was lost. Somewhere in our home, the green paci attached to a stuffed kitty (or monkey) was gone and no one knew where it was.

Asking Bella resulted in her throwing herself on the floor in despair and bawling for it. Instead of helping us look. Which was helpful.

We even had a place for it in her room but somehow it always ended up gone.

Laundry baskets, Noah’s Ark, a truck, Daddy’s boots, our bed; it was a toss up where we’d find it. I’d march around the house saying awful words about it as I pulled everything apart. (more…)

For a long time, no matter how much money Sam and I made, we struggled with our finances. Every month was simply buying things until we ran out of money.

We’ve made really terrible decisions with our money – buying cars we didn’t need, a home we couldn’t really afford, not having any kind of budget, and using the credit card as a “freebie” account. In the 9 years we’ve been together, we’ve had to face some tough wake up calls when the time came for us to pay up.

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