Christina, Author at A Mommy Story

Jun 8, 2007

Where Does My Time Go?

June 8, 2007 By Christina

Where my time went prior to Mira:

5-7 hours – sleep
2-3 hours – blogging (often combined with watching TV, below)
8 hours – working, or if not working, entertaining Cordy and running errands
1 hour – cleaning or paying bills
1/2 hour – shower, personal care
2 hours – driving
4 hours – watching TV (only 2 of those watching TV that isn’t for Cordy)
1 hour – eating

Where my time goes now:

4-5 hours – sleep (on a good day)
1-2 hours – blogging (on a good day)
1 hour – eating (on a good day)
1/2 hour – shower, personal care (shower every other day)
1-2 hours – playing with Cordy or just giving her attention
1-2 hours – watching TV (blogging or nursing during this time, too)
1-2 hours – doing the “stop fussing, baby” dance around the house while holding Mira
8 hours or more – chained to my chair breastfeeding (not counting the hours she feeds overnight while in bed with us)

You’ll notice very little time in there for things like, oh, housecleaning or bill paying. We’re doing the minimum needed to get by at this point.

It’s amazing how much time goes into a newborn. I used to think I was a busy person before we had Mira. Now I think I had the leisurely life and didn’t realize how easy it was. With one child, the parents are a true tag team: one can be on duty while the other is doing something else. Need a break? Tag the other parent into the ring.

Now we’re in a full two on two battle. The kids don’t take turns with their needs, meaning they often each need something at the same time. Each parent is generally keeping an eye on one child. If I shower, I take Cordy up to our bedroom with us, so she can play there while I shower, keeping the shower curtain open halfway to watch her.

Next week I’ll start learning how to deal with both at the same time on my own, when Aaron goes back to work part time. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a way to manage other than sitting in my chair nursing Mira and throwing Fruity Cheerios on the floor to appease Cordy while she watches Noggin.

This post is part of the Light Iris and Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast. If you’d like to join in, simply write a post on the topic, “Where does my time go?” before midnight tonight, and e-mail Parent Bloggers to let them know. One blogger will be chosen at random to win a full 2-day conference pass to BlogHer ’07!

Filed Under: being a mom

Jun 8, 2007

Keep Your Marriage Healthy

June 8, 2007 By Christina

While we’ve had our bumps along the way, I’d generally say that my marriage is in pretty good shape. Before we were married, an issue forced us into counseling, but through that we learned how to communicate with each other and actually address our issues before they blew up into big problems. Even now, Aaron and I often recommend counseling to friends who confide relationship problems to us. We sincerely believe it can help if both partners are committed to improving their relationship.

But what if you don’t have time to go see a counselor, or what if you’d simply like to do a little preventative maintenance on your relationship? A counselor isn’t always the most practical solution. Which is why eHarmony (yes, the singles site) has created the eHarmony Marriage site.

Click here to read the review…

Filed Under: reviews

Jun 7, 2007

And So It Begins…

June 7, 2007 By Christina

(Mira is crying)

Cordy: Mister Mommy? (Where does she get “mister” from?)

Me: Yes, Cordy?

Cordy: The baby is hungry.

Me: You think she’s hungry? Should we feed her?

Cordy: Nooooo.

Filed Under: sisterhood

Jun 6, 2007

I Miss The School Pizzas

June 6, 2007 By Christina

I had mentioned my not-so-nutritious high school lunches in a meme a few weeks ago: Snickers bar and fries. It’s true, it was my primary lunch in high school. Truthfully, I learned how to work the system with school lunches from an early age.

In elementary school, we didn’t have variety when it came to lunch. You had one meal, no a la carte options, and the only choice you had was white or chocolate milk. And half the time the chocolate milk was gone before you got to the cashier. As a picky eater, I generally scoffed at most of the food I was given. Vegetables? Never. Fruit? Only if it was the mixed fruit swimming in syrup. No soupy noodles, no meatloaf, and chicken patty sandwiches only if I could drown it in ketchup. If my mom knew how much money was wasted on food I didn’t eat, she’d probably make me start paying it back with interest.

The only days I was guaranteed to eat were the days when french fries or pizza (or both) were served. Oh, how I loved those little institutional rectangular pizzas! The little chunks of highly processed pepperoni, the greasy cheese that came off in one piece…even the slightly cardboard crust was heaven to me. No other food, at home or anywhere else, could compare to the school pizza.

In middle school, those pizzas were still on the menu, but now we had an a la carte line, and desserts! Fries were always on the a la carte line, so I’d always have a serving of fried spuds, but I’d save extra lunch money for pizza days, when I could get not one, but TWO pizzas! Each lunch was always finished with an ice cream sandwich, also.

I wonder if they still serve those little rectangle pizzas in school? I remember going to college and being slightly disappointed that the dining halls didn’t have these little greasy treasures. Do they sell these pizzas to the public?

Looking back over my school lunches, I know I made a lot of bad choices. Nutrition wasn’t exactly a concern for me – it had to taste good. And while the school did their job of providing balanced meals, they couldn’t make me eat the parts that were healthier than others. Of course, the addition of the a la carte line in middle and high school, plus the further addition of a soda machine and student-run snack store filled with candy bars and chips in high school didn’t exactly further the cause of healthy eating.

I know I won’t be able to make my daughters eat healthy in school, however I hope I can encourage them to do better than I did. My eating habits led to worse eating habits which led to weight gain and poor self-esteem. And I hope the schools will continue to look for new ways to encourage healthy eating as well, such as removing the soda and snack machines or forbidding their use during lunch.

But you can bet I’ll still encourage them to try the pizza.

This post is part of the Blog Blast hosted by Parent Bloggers Network. Check out School Menu and its parental counterpart Family Everyday, two sites that work together with School Food Services Directors to provide and promote healthy eating and physical fitness for kids and their parents.

Filed Under: memories

Jun 2, 2007

More Thoughts On The Past Week

June 2, 2007 By Christina

I have no idea what day it is right now. I think someone told me it’s now June. Wow, that came faster than I thought.

We’re still in survival mode here, trying to get used to life with two children. Yesterday, Aaron took Cordy out for a few hours, leaving me only Mira to care for. I ate lunch, decluttered the living room a little bit, and fed Mira. As I sat there nursing her, I laughed to myself, thinking: I used to think this was hard? Taking care of one is a breeze!

Cordy is handling the new addition with the grace we expected – which is none at all. She’s doing her best to ignore the baby, and acting out in new and exciting ways, mostly directing her anger towards Aaron and I. She’s hitting, she’s screaming, she’s doing things she already knows aren’t allowed, and she’s physically hurting herself. Today, during a time out, she repeatedly bashed her head on a wall until she slightly bloodied her nose. Fun times, people. It makes my heart ache to see her hurting so much.

So far the post-partum hormone dump is only affecting me minimally, but I’m still waiting for the fallout. I had one sobbing fit on Monday night in the hospital, when Cordy came to visit for the first time. Aaron brought her in and said, “Look, there’s mommy!” She walked right up to me, looked at me, and then replied, “That’s not mommy!” Ouch. She eventually warmed up to me, but then when it was time for her to leave, I had to endure seeing her realize that I wasn’t coming with her, and see all hell break loose. Strapped in her stroller, with large tears streaming down her face, she cried out “No! Mommy! Mommy!” and tried to reach for me as Aaron took her out of the room. I could hear her screams all the way until they reached the elevators.

Physically, I’m still down and out. It isn’t as bad as a c-section recovery, but I wasn’t quite prepared for this. My nether-regions are unrecognizable, with the swelling, the stitches from the giant tear, and the hemorrhoids. Pooping is an ordeal that requires mental preparation. And I’ve already warned Aaron that sex is unlikely for a long, long time. Are there any good remedies for healing my girl parts? While I love the Dermoplast numbing spray the hospital gave me, it only masks the pain, and the Tucks pads aren’t that helpful. Things will go back to normal down there, right?

Mira is so far very different from Cordy. From the beginning, Cordy seemed to be angry at the world for being pulled out of her warm home in my uterus. She wanted nothing to do with nursing, and spent a lot of time crying. Mira took to breastfeeding like a pro from the very beginning, and so far (knock on wood, or well, wood laminate for me) she’s generally not too fussy. We had some issues the first two nights at home, when she would only sleep up against me in bed, but last night she slept in a sleep positioner and managed a 4 hour stretch. She also went out with us for the first time today, and slept for most of the trip. I keep hoping that she will be different from Cordy entirely, and we might just skip that whole colic phase.

Having Aaron home for two weeks full time, and then four weeks part time makes me want to send flowers to the State of Ohio as thanks for their parental leave policy. With Cordy, Aaron only had a couple of days off, but now he’s here for two full weeks to help make that adjustment. I honestly don’t know how I would manage without him right now.

So, we’re doing our best to find normal in our lives again. At the moment everything feels so overwhelming, but I know that eventually we’ll fall into a routine and I won’t feel so out of control. Until then, I have to struggle to find ways to make room for two needy little girls on my lap.