Someday

I got pregnant with my oldest when I was 20. I was in my junior year of college and had to drop out, move home and get a job. Chase (the donor) didn't want anything to do with me or the pregnancy. He was willing to give me the money to get an abortion, but I opted out, so to speak. I remember him asking me if I was "trying to ruin his life?" Yup, I guess that was some deep rooted goal I was trying to reach. If you look at his profile on a particular website today he mentions that he is his own hero because he has survived life thus far and he's done it "all by himself." Wow. Too bad he's never met his own son. Sam, my oldest, knows about Chase and is okay with things as they are. I have never, ever, ever said anything negative to Sam about Chase because I don't want to plant the seeds of resentment and anger in him. I simply told Sam that Chase and I agreed that I would do the better job of raising him because I was more mature and we decided together that that was how it should be since we could not be together. I know that's kind of confusing to a kid and Sam and I have had multiple conversations about it, but he seems okay and I never shut him down about it when he wants to talk. I usually tell him, too, that Nick (my husband), chose to be Sam's father. I have told Sam that Nick did not have to be his daddy everyday, but he WANTED to and LOVED Sam so much that he decided to be his daddy and my husband. Sam seems to be very receptive to that answer.

I'm just having kind of a BLAH day. I get in these moods from time to time and I always become resentful of Chase and I get angry that he actually believes that he has sacrificed and had to give up things because I got pregnant. When Sam turned 5 I finally took Chase to court for child support. I was so determined for so long that I did not need his help and that was actually the last thing I remember screaming at Chase when I told him I was pregnant. "I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP! I'LL RAISE THIS BABY ON MY OWN!!" I was so determined to NOT ask him for money or help in any way, but it got to the point that I just had to. Not only that, but I was developing a very deep hatred for Chase (which, believe it or not,I do not wish to have) because he had gotten off "scot free." Honestly, (yes, I am this naive) I always EXPECTED that he would one day have a change of heart and WANT to see his son. Isn't that just stupid? I saw Sam everyday and I knew how much I loved him and I just couldn't imagine there not being a part of Chase that wouldn't be driven to at least meet his own child. So, anyway, while Chase is feeling sorry for himself he actually got to finish college and get his Master's degree. I, on the other hand, have yet to get my Bachelor's degree. I have gone back to school since having Sam, but I've also had two more kids. Those two, of course, have nothing to do with Chase (lol)...I blame my husband for them! I am totally joking, we're both to blame! Anyway, the point is that his life did not stop and mine took a big time "pause." Which brings me to the actual point of today's post.

When, tell me, please, does that slippery "someday" come? All of you who have kids or have adult kids, please, I need some positive feedback on things. I'm afraid that my Mom kept telling herself, "someday I'll do that, finish that, get to that," but her someday never came. Does it come? I'm sure things change. I mean, things you want to do become different with age, but do you ever get your own life back? Am I being selfish?

Christmas with the girls....et. al.

When we moved into this house I was stoked because it came with one of those fridges that has the slide out shelves. I remember telling Nick how cool that was, but after being here for 6 months I just realized that I have never once slid one of those shelves out to get something. I still move everything around to get to what I need in the back. That inevitably prompts me clean out the fridge. I ask myself now, "self, if you didn't have to move everything around to get to what you need, then would you ever clean out the fridge?" The answer is, "probably not." So I think GE needs to do everyone a favor and just do away with the sliding shelves, cause we all need cleaner fridges.

No seriously, folks. I haven't posted in awhile because the family has been here for two weeks. Yes, fourteen days of family living in my house. It wouldn't be so bad, I think, if we lived where they lived, but because we live in a different state that creates an obligation to go sight seeing. Hell, I haven't even gone sight seeing, but once they step foot here they've got their plans all laid out. Forget about schedules and routines for the kids, when they're here you gotta turn on the entertainment button in your brain and schedules go out the window. Now that they're gone I'm stuck with a 15 month old who feels that staying up til 11 pm is cool and sleeping til 9:30 is A-okay. I would love to sleep til 9:30 everyday, but since my oldest has to be on the bus at freakin' 6:30 in the morning, 9:30 is outta the question. In the meantime, I'm losing precious sleep and the patience that's required when dealing with tres ninos. I wish I had the button that makes the swirly symbol so I could put it above the second "n" in ninos, but for those that don't know, it's pronounced "neenyos." Ok, and the tres is "trace." Overall, we had a great Christmas though. The kids went temporarily insane on opening day and have since justified their constant inside playing with justifiable excuses that their toys are new and they wanna play with them bunches. Yesterday I had ten kids running amok in the house. Yes, ten. I only have three children. However, my kids apparently got some really cool toys cause every friggin' kid on our street decided it was time to visit the Hooes. Truthfully, it was kinda fun. There were actually little girls that came to play too! I have always dealt with boys. I say "dealt" on purpose cause that is what one does with boys. All this girl stuff is totally new to me, including the glass breaking soprano squeals that go along with it. The neighbor girls were here modeling in Olivia's dress-up trunk clothes, and my younger boy (with his two friends) were dressing up in his pirate gear and chasing the girls away with swords, snakes, dinosaurs and anything else that little girls apparently find terrifying. And then it was "do my hair time." Geez, what else have I forgotten from my childhood. I've lived with boys for so long that I worry I've forgotten how to be a princess. I want my girl to be a girl. I really don't want a tomboy. I want a little girl in dresses and bows, who finds great satisfaction in being able to do the splits and handsprings. My husband, on the other hand, thinks there's nothin' cuter than a little girl in hunting clothes toting a 12 gauge around. I guess we'll see how it turns out. I really can't wait to see... it's gonna be fun. Raising kids is like riding 'It's a Small World' at Disneyland, you never know what's gonna be around the next corner. Ok, so that's my update for tonight. It's 10:34 and I'm gonna try and reason my non-talking 15 month old into bed. Much love my sistas and brothas (lol that's funny) and good-night.

Grr...the holidays

Christmas, ahhh, Christmas. Being a military family our Christmas comes in phases. First there are the endless phone calls from family far and near about what to buy. What do we do? I always go to Wal-mart's online wishlist with my kids so they can shop and create a list of all the things they so desire. When I was a kid we'd get out the JCPenney catalog and just circle everything we wanted, not so anymore. Everything today is online and it's wonderful as far as I'm concerned. It saves me from having to go down the list and dividing up what each kid wants for each side of the family. So we email their lists from Wal-mart and it's all good. Then I let each side know what the other has gotten so there are no repeats. In the past we've always gone home for Christmas, but this year we moved to Texas and we told everyone WAY in advance that we would not be home for the holidays so they could plan for either shipping or traveling. Turns out that they all wanted to come to our house instead! Now, don't get me wrong, I love my family, but OH MY GOD they all are coming to our house. We have yet to find the perfect distance from our respective in-laws. When you live too close, they come all the time in short little bursts of misery. When you live too far they come for weeks at a time. We need to be in the middle somewhere so they come very little and stay very short. Close enough so that they can come and pick up the kids and take them to THEIR house if'n that be what they desire. Ok, well I gotta go cause my husband is lettin' me know that I need to go to bed cause family is arriving tomorrow for a week and there'll be no play for us for that long. What a man.

Going against the grain

My husband just got off the phone with his sister and then has the nerve to come to me to complain about her reasons for not talking to him for the last 5 years. Ugh..I don't even wanna talk about it. What is it about all this that I don't get? I can't understand people not accepting people for who they are and just leaving them alone about it. She does not want anything to do with us or Nick's mother....that is obvious to me. They always ask me what I think and I always tell them the same thing...leave her alone. That means don't mail her things, don't leave messages on her phone or email and for god's sake don't call her and start a damn fight. I accept the fact that my brother is making HUGE mistakes in his life and with his daughter. I accept the fact that he is living with a complete psychopath. Does the fact that I no longer intervene and try to talk to him about things mean that I have given up on him or does it mean that I have resigned myself to the fact that he does not want to change? Do we continue swimming against the current after the people that we love or do we accept that we cannot reach them and just watch them float away?

A purpose in this life.

I often read the blogs on this site. I have one favorite that I read everyday. I read her posts, I read the comments that her readers write and I read her responses. It's become quite a popular blog and it is, in fact, the blog that inspired me to begin my own. Now, I am not so confident that my own blog will become as popular as hers, but I began one nonetheless. She has recently within the last year began making money with her blog and has book offers and so on and her most recent post was one that grabbed me in particular. It was a response to one of the comments. She wrote that her blog has given her a sense of purpose and a source of income after being a stay-at-home mom for so long. I have struggled with that same feeling since I began to stay home with my children. I worked with my two oldest children. They are now 7 and 9 years old. When my husband enlisted and we moved to Georgia I left my job in Indiana and never got back into the workforce. It wasn't so much a decision to stay home, it was more circumstance than anything else that resulted in my staying home status. When we got to Georgia, we only had one vehicle. With my husband's schedule (up at 5 am for PT, and home around 6pm) it didn't make sense for me to try to get a job because the entire house would have to run around his schedule. Then he deployed for the first time, which freed up the vehicle, but that left the fact that one parent was completely gone and there would be no one to alternate trips to school or the doctor. Not only that, but trips to the grocery store and regular household routines would all be rushed all the time because I would have always been going. I worried that that would create more stress for the kids, more than they were already under with their father being in Iraq. Upon Nick's return from Iraq we had the extra money to get a second vehicle. It was always an assumption that I would return to work, but for those 3 years it just hadn't been feasible or seemed as though it would have been more work than what it was worth. But, nonetheless, there we were with two vehicles and the boys were both in school so it was "time" for me to go back to work. I didn't really want to at that point, but my husband really wanted me to.

This is the part that goes kinda crazy. I had planned on getting a tubal ligation before Nick got back from Iraq. I went to my doctor, which in a military facility you never really know who/what you're gonna get. I was fortunate enough to get a doctor who was a strong advocate of SEMI-PERMANENT birth control like an IUD. I didn't want an IUD because I was finished having kids. She, however, didn't speak very good English and wanted to do what she wanted to do. Instead of scheduling me for a consult for tubal ligation like she said she was doing, she scheduled me for an IUD implant. Imagine my surprise when I showed up for my appointment and a whole new doctor walks in with an IUD kit. I explained that that was NOT what I wanted, but seeing as how there was no way for me to get a tubal ligation BEFORE my husband got home I agreed to give it a try. Now, I could have just scheduled my tubal for after he got home, but I knew for sure that there was no way after being in Iraq for a year that my DH was gonna wait for the tubal. So, on we went with the IUD. Unfortunately, my cervix is stubborn and the docs could not get it in!!! LOL!! Two different doctors came in and tried...imagine my humiliation. My legs all hiked up and different docs with their respective nurses coming in and discussing my vaginal area and looking confused and bewildered at the same time. Never have I been told "I can't get it in" so I totally bragged about that to all my friends, but at the same time I was still fertile. Since the IUD was not a success I went ahead and scheduled a tubal ligation, but, again, it would have to be after my hubby's arrival home. Even after explaining to him all that I went through, do you really think he wanted to wait??? So, we tried the family planning method and I guess we could've used condoms, but I didn't have the heart to make him strap it on so we didn't. Ok, skip to the next month and it's finally time for my tubal. My doc ordered all the pre-operative tests and everything came out fine. My pregnancy test was negative and I was healthy. I had the tubal and doc said everything went off without a hitch. Two weeks went by after the procedure and I had yet to start my period. I knew that I was supposed to have started and asked my doctor if this was a side effect. He said that all my plumbing should be normal so I had to go in for an ultrasound. Sure enough, I was pregnant. WHAT!!!!!???? My doctor kinda of laughed and mentioned that the baby had a very strong heartbeat and could very well be "president" one day. I don't know if that's a requirement for president, but my doc said so. My shock was mostly because I was pregnant WHEN HE DID the tubal and he never noticed. He then looked at us and began to explain that he is a strong believer in a person's choice and would support us either way. We were confused until we realized what he was saying. Nick and I looked at each other, and even though this baby was very much unplanned/unexpected we would not allow her to be unwanted. So there was another little Hooe on the way. I went through a mild depression and I think that Nick did too. We had finally gotten to a point in our lives where we could do "stuff" again. The kids didn't throw fits when we got a sitter anymore, they could do simple things like pouring their own cereal, they could both wipe their own butts and clean themselves in the shower, they both slept without argument in their own beds and most of all they were both in school now. I had planned on getting a job and contributing to the household financially. All of that was over and so we grieved for a bit. Grieving turned into furious planning and we righted ourselves for a new baby. When we found out that she was a girl, Nick's entire outlook changed. He always wanted a girl...I never did, because I am familiar with the life of a teenage girl, but I soon became excited as well when we started shopping for clothes. It all turned out okay and so here we are today with our three babies.

Now, even though I was pregnant, Nick continued pushing me to get a job. I thought that it would not pay for me to go to work at this point. With labor and delivery looming, who would hire me? This was also the time that we learned we'd be moving. Nick got the great opportunity to switch jobs in the Army to one that would benefit us when he gets out and so he was leaving for four months for school. After school we would have to move to Texas. Having a job would only complicate things. But still, I'm bored with being home. Often, I feel useless, without purpose or direction.

My generation of women are the daughters of the feminist movement. Our mothers worked and pushed their way into the workforce and they did it! So for my generation it became an expectation that we (women) would work outside the home and still be able to be Susie Homemaker when we got off work. Not to mention that when I was growing up I was good at everything. I excelled in sports and academics and it was evident to me as I grew older that my parents expected that I would be the doctor/lawyer/politician/astronaut or anything else that requires much work and dedication. I have great respect for the women that are those things, but I don't believe that those things, despite my success in school, were in the cards for me. I am my parents' greatest disappointment. I know this. I still cannot accept that I have failed so miserably to live up to those expectations. I want very much for my children to succeed in life, but how do I do that without setting the bar so high that each of my individual children won't feel as though they've let me down? Do I lower my expectations? Do I tell them that if they get pregnant in college or (God forbid) high school that that is okay and I will love them forever no matter what? I know that my parents love me, but every time I look at them I can see them looking at me as "the child who could have....." For me, being a stay-at-home Mom is almost embarrassing. Every time I tell someone what I do for a living I always feel obligated to explain why I am doing this. How many of you know doctors who introduce themselves, "Hi, I'm John and I'm a doctor. I chose to be a doctor so I could make lots of money and help people at the same time." Well that's what I do every single time. What's worse is that when I tell people what I do they always tell me how lucky I am to be able to do that. They don't really say it in a cheerful, encouraging way. They say it in an almost bitter way. Like they resent me for doing this. Like, "Well, it must be nice, aren't you little miss lucky." I don't understand this response. It's like they assume that because I'm home with my kids that my husband must make tons of money. Can I just remind you that because my husband works for the government, his income is a public issue. He is currently an E-4 with 4 years in, look it up, you'll see how much money he makes. Also, I haven't gotten my nails done in like 10 years. I get my hair done usually twice a year, at tax time and then I usually get a gift certificate to a salon for my birthday (October). So without further explanation, I think it's clear that I'm not living the life of luxury while the rest of the women in the world are suffering. I also have very little contact with any other adults. I live at work, this is my job and I take it seriously. I do not get vacation or weekends off. I do not get promotions or a pension or a title. Well, I guess I have a title, but it's the same title as every other woman who has ever given birth.

I am not mad at the world. I am here by choice. I chose this life. I do not wish that I had taken any other course. I think that the women who fought so hard were misunderstood by most of the world. They were not fighting to get into the workplace. They were fighting for their choice to do so.