Hello again ladies! Welcome to the new faces - hope all our beans stay sticky
I have missed this thread so much while dealing with crummy, stressful stuff. To sum up - had a WONDERFUL extensive scan at 11 weeks, everything normal. I should have known with the pregnancy going so well (great scan, very handleable ms, fatigue fading...) that everything else would fall apart. Death in family, scary toddler injury, school conflict, landscaping debacle... Details below for those with the time and energy to read me rant and rave.
First, my aunt's health took a rapid turn for the worse, and after a 2-day bedside vigil she passed away. It was sad, of course, but also relieving - she's been almost unable to communicate for ~2 years, due to deteriorating tongue muscle control, and had also struggled to eat and refused a feeding tube. My sister, her wife, and their new baby stayed with us for the funeral, which was wonderful to see them, but added a bit of stress.
While they were here, I noticed a very nasty looking owie on my toddler's thumb - at first I thought it was pinched, like a blood blister, or a burn, but my sil pointed out it looked quite a bit like an infected spider bite. Sure enough, I then noticed the tell-tale red infection trail leading up his thumb and towards his elbow. I freaked out a bit at that point. We got him to the urgent care, and it was in fact infected (test results later showed staph), but it responded to antibiotics enough that we did not need to go to the hospital for IV treatment. So we were dealing with bandaging and trying to keep a toddler's right thumb clean and dry (he seems right-handed), while dealing with funeral arrangements and whatnot (I am from a large Catholic family, so funerals are quite the ordeal and family gathering).
Meanwhile, at work, buzz starts going around about a reorg, and some announcements were made to some teams but not others, and involve my current boss. But then they did NOT do the big announcement when they were supposed to last week, because 'someone will have their feeling's hurt and need to be talked to ahead of time', and one of the big EVPs was out the rest of the week. Still no word today, but rumor is VERY STRONG that I will be reporting to someone else, and that that person is someone that I feel completely screwed me over during my last pregnancy when my father was dying. I have VERY VERY strong negative feelings towards this person, but I generally try to ignore the personal and emotional while in the office, so it is doubtful too many people know about it.
And at home... well, I do not like change. I struggle with it. The older I get, the worse I am. Don't get me wrong - I love trying new things; it is changes in daily routine that gets to me. Well, DH decides that the girls should go to public school. Now rationally I have absolutely no problem with this. It is a sound decision - the quality is great for our local school, financially it would help us out, and the timing is good - my oldest is starting 1st grade. This would enable us to more seriously consider me transitioning to be a sahm (or as I like to think of it, a 'get the kids out of the house and doing things mom without the added complication of an external work schedule', but that acronym didn't work out). All these things are great, but I DO NOT HANDLE CHANGE WELL. When we first discussed this 2 years ago, I made sure DH knew that kindergarten is something you usually arrange in March/April for the following school year. He initially brought this up the summer before oldest started K. We were interested in a non-traditional public school in our area, that some neighbor kids go to. I warned him that schools like that probably have a long waiting list. I am very happy with our current school, so I also told him if this was something he felt strongly about, he needed to do the leg work. He didn't move very quickly, and missed all the deadlines. So we checked them out this spring for 1st grade instead and found out that the waiting list was over 60 children long. At that point, I SPECIFICALLY SAID, that if moving to public school was a priority for him, that there were other options in our area and that he could check them out. He did not. Two weeks ago he decided that the girls should go to public school, and had researched online that the same school for 1st grade offered a full day preschool. I was skeptical (how many public schools have preschool included?!), but told him to check it out. Of course the school office was closed until today (19th). I still didn't take it too seriously, and we even did school supply shopping on Saturday. This morning he stayed home from work in order to go to the school and register the girls! I was FREAKED OUT. Yes, we'd talked about it for 2 weeks, but... well, it took me THREE MONTHS to buy my first car (not 3 months of thinking, 3 months of dedicated research and almost 20 different test drives after ~6 months of thinking about it). I haven't even ever set foot inside this school! I don't know when it starts/ends for the day! I completely flipped out on him. Overreacting? Yes. Pregnant? Yes. Change adverse? Yes. Completely psycho? DOUBLE YES. Poor man didn't know what hit him. After I calmed down, I realized all I really wanted was for him to hold me and tell me it would be ok, and apologize for waiting so long. But it turned into a big emotional fight and I brought crap up that didn't need to be brought up and now his feelings are SUPER hurt and he's pissed. First he threw a little fit and stormed off saying FINE I AM DONE DO WHAT YOU WANT. Then he showed back up saying that he wouldn't let me derail something so important (fair enough). Then he called back after going to the school saying he gave up on the whole thing because it isn't preschool, its kindergarten, and since DD2 is a september baby, will miss the cutoff not only this year, but next year as well so she is TWO YEARS away from k, even though she turns 5 next year. He is thoroughly defeated and depressed and mad at me, and I'm a huge ball of emotions trying to avoid screaming one minute and bawling the next!
Did I mention in the middle that DH also completed our BIG HUGE front yard landscaping debacle, which over 2 years has cost us over $5k, and ended up not being what I really had in mind AND something that even the professionals were like, wha??? He wanted all grass in the front. We have a freaking ENORMOUS SPRUCE TREE. Grass doesn't like to grow there. Plus he is not amazing at mowing and keeping lawns nice (our back is an absolute mess and is mainly grass). But - I said, hey, its only a yard and its important to hubby so go with it. Well, they poured concrete borders that ended up too close to our front porch (we planned on expanding it to incorporate a decorative ramp to make it easier for my family to visit (had 2 in wheelchairs, one was my recently departed aunt). Even the folks who sprayed the grass hyrdoseed on the ground were like, WHY ARE WE DOING THIS UNDER A TREE?!?! IT WONT GROW! I am trying VERY VERY hard to be charitable, but I'm so freaking tired of DH ignoring me when I tell him things, like it is just my opinion when I actually DO know what I'm talking about. Blarg. But no, we have to pay people to tell him stuff I already know. And then he worries about money.
To top it off, while my ms has subsided quite a bit, I get VERY nauseous at dinner time. Or precisely when I would be cooking dinner. It stinks, and adds to the stress. Beyond that I am so blessed with this pregnancy, and my kids are incredibly supportive and amazing. Thank you ladies for letting me rant!
