Some days. Are just – well. Memorable. Here’s mine so far:

Wake up to Bella sobbing. Ask her to take Charlie out. She loves doing that. She can’t get his cage open. She’s done it a billion times. Sobs. I get up. Dog out. Make breakfast. Dog pukes twice on the rug. I clean it while gagging. I shower, she falls in the tub next to it while I’m repeatedly telling her to get down. Hurts her hand. Charlie starts barking his head off outside. Clothes need washed. I have no underwear. 1 hour till we leave for her therapy. Cat litter changed. Another meltdown. Cat gets outside. He turns up 20 minutes later madder than heck. I give him his medicine and he foams it back up in anger. We leave. Bella drinks a half gallon of water from her sippy and screams when I take it away telling her we’re not stopping to pee. In a moment of genius I buy her a chocolate milk. 15 minutes later we’re stuck in miles of traffic due to a massive car accident. She has to pee. I can’t exit. I tell therapist we’ll be late. Bella’s bawling she has to pee so bad. We finally pull off and there are no gas stations. Anywhere. We pull into a parking lot and she pees by the side of the car while bawling about the pee going under the car. Back in. Chocolate milk explodes all over her. More sobs. I hand her a wipe but it does nothing. Traffic lessens. We get to therapy 15 minutes late after a solid hour in the car. She has to pee. Again. We go. Therapist comes out and Bella announces to the entire room she’s peed her pants (it’s chocolate milk) and bawls when I tell her she didn’t. Everyone stares at me. She heads back. I collapse in chair. I write this while waiting for her because it’s just too much real life to pass up.

Mornin’ y’all. Here’s to a barf/sob/pee free afternoon.

5 days into Sam being gone, exactly 6 weeks to go. While the first few days were, shall we say, rough? We are steadily finding a bit of a rhythm around here.

While I miss him so much, there are parts of solo parenting for a while that I do like and have missed since his 4 months away in Georgia 2 years ago. (Can you believe it’s already been 2 years??)

One thing I’ve wanted to do is wake up early to write and have my devotional time with SheReadsTruth. But with Sam getting up at 5am and it being hard to get back to sleep, it was tough to pull myself out of bed before Bella woke up. Going to bed a little earlier means I’m up by 6:30 and spend that time quietly with a hot cup of tea at my desk. Like right this moment.

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The sitter we interviewed this week wanted a lot more hours than we really needed someone here for. We really liked her, but I just don’t need 20 hours a week. I don’t know what on earth I’d do with that much time.

So after agreeing that it just wouldn’t work, we’re back to the beginning. Sam leaves in a little over a week for 6 weeks. Our current sitter’s last day is Monday.

I’m not going to lie. I will do the ugly cry when she goes.

Not that I won’t miss Sam tremendously, but you all know. He works a lot, he’s coming home in March, I’m used to really doing most of it on my own. But our sitter has filled in those gaps for me to go to therapy, to the doctor, she’s always willing to take Bella for an evening so Sam and I can have a date night, and to have a morning where I can take off and write. She’s been so dependable and wonderful – blerg.

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Being pregnant with a 3 year old is totally, completely different than with a 2 year old. When I was newly pregnant and dying from the inside out sick with the twins, having Bella around was rough. She was still so dependent on me for entertainment, interaction. We’d been here in El Paso a little over 6 months and I knew just a few people that were also busy with their little ones, and Sam worked the longest hours. Like – 16 hours a day.

At that time, I was still very much anti TV anything, so the fact that nearly every day she watched a movie so I could sleep or try not to barf on the floor completely stressed me out. And I was so tired that when she didn’t take a nap (or a long enough nap) I’d literally start to cry when she woke up. All I wanted to do was sleep.

She still wanted to be carried and I still wanted to carry her. She wasn’t a ton verbal and got easily frustrated with things that didn’t work.

This time around is so.much.easier.

Hands down.

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A while back, I read something that changed my perspective as a parent. I don’t remember what book or article, but it was talking on raising your children. The author wrote that she made an effort to be excited to be with her kids when they asked her to play – to make her face reflect back to them that she wanted to be with them.

This hit me really hard. My face is usually the first one Bella sees after she wakes in the morning or from a nap. It’s also the one she sees all day long. There are times I am in the middle of something or just really want a few minutes in the morning for devotions, but Bella seems to have a radar for this kind of thing. “Time alone with God? Meh. Time alone with ME. And my train.”

After reading that passage, I started to wonder how it would feel to be with someone constantly who seemed annoyed or irritated you were around. And although I adore being at home, did I show that to her? Did I let her know that I loved it, that she was the little girl I had fun with? My buddy?

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