Everyone always talks about second child syndrome; how there are no pictures of the second baby, how parents who were strict and anal about bedtimes, toys and foods basically give the second baby free reign. I was not going to be like that. I have hundreds of pictures of the Little One, she has a regular routine that we try our best to stick to, yet somethings do slip through the cracks.

My girls were both born in the spring and were about the same age when we went through our first round of daylight savings time changes. Here’s how things were handled with each girl:

Several weeks before daylight savings with the Big One I began readings my sleep books and searching the Internet for tips on how the experts say to deal with the time change and how it relates to sleep schedules. We read some advice that says follow the baby’s cues, not the numbers on the clock. Others said to keep them up as long as possible, but not force them to stay up if they are too tired. And still others recommended shifting the bedtime by 15minutes or so over a couple week period of time to slowly re-adjust the baby’s internal clock to account for the time change.

I believe with the Big One we did a combination of things. We really focused more on her cues and starting the routine when she started rubbing her eyes and getting cranky. The point is we were well versed in the experts’ opinions and were very aware of how the loss of an hour would impact her schedule.

Fast forward to this most recent time change. The last thing on my mind was how the change was going to affect the Little One’s routine. Honestly with the husband gone during the week, my main focus is on survival. We take things one hour at a time until we reach the magical time when both girls are snuggly tucked in their beds. So the time change went relatively un-noticed until about 3:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. We had changed the clocks back one hour on Saturday night. We got up and ready for church on Sunday all was good and it seemed nothing had changed. So around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Little One got really crabby. I fed her and tried to put her down for a quick nap. After all it was just past 3:30, she doesn’t go to bed until about 6 p.m. so she shouldn’t have been so tired. I left her in her crib to cry it out. After about 30 minutes, I sent Jason in to try. This was unusual for the Little One. She doesn’t like to be rocked to sleep. I feed her and then lay her down and she falls asleep on her own. After about 10 minutes of intense screaming (Little One, not the Husband) he came out of her room defeated. So I let her cry a bit longer. When she was still screaming at 4:30 I went in again and held her and rocked her until she finally tired herself out and gave up.

As we were sitting there and the room got progressively darker, it hit me. While the clock said 4:30 to the Little One’s little body it was 5:30 ….time to get in the bathtub and start her bedtime routine. I was so frustrated with her and couldn’t figure out what in the world her problem was, when really I was the one with the problem. I suffered total mommy brain, forgot about the time change and then blamed the poor kid!

UGH! Do you know how frustrating it can be to try to hold a conversation with a two-year-old? We were at the mall today looking at draperies for the house. As we were wrapping it up and heading back to the elevator, the Big One starts whining that she wants her other shoe.

I had the girls in our Graco Duo Glider stroller. For those of you not familiar with this monstrosity it’s at least 8 feet long, I swear. With the Little One in her car seat in the back part of the stroller, I cannot see the front of the stroller so most of the time I have no idea what the Big One is doing. As a result I have become pretty adept at walking and watching the ground around the stroller to check for falling objects. Somehow today I missed one… one very important object… the Big One’s right shoe.

So here is basically how the conversation went once I discovered we were missing a shoe.

ME: Where is your shoe?
Big One: Big One dropped it
ME: Where did you drop your shoe?
Big One: On the ground
ME: Where on the ground did you drop it?
Big One: Yeah.
ME: Big One where on the ground did you drop your shoe?
Big One: We shopping.
ME: Yes we are shopping, did you drop it in this store?
Big One: Yeah.
ME: Where in the store did you drop it?
Big One: On the ground
ME: Did you drop it when mommy was looking at curtains?
Big One: No
ME: Then when did you drop it?
Big One: On the ground
ME: I understand you dropped it on the ground, I am asking you when you dropped it and why you didn’t tell mommy when you dropped it.
Big One: Big One wants her Pooh bear shoe
ME: I understand you want your shoe. Mommy is trying to find it. When did you drop it?
Big One: Shopping
ME: So you dropped it in this store while we were shopping?
Big one: On the ground. Big One dropped it.

And on and on and on it went. This conversation continues as we did two laps re-tracing our steps around the entire mall (Parkway Plaza) and JC Penney (where we were looking for curtains).

Fianlly I gave up and went to Starbucks, I deserved it!

How in the world her little blue Croc (knock-off) could have disappeared in such a short amount of time is beyond me. It’s not so much that we lost the shoe that makes me mad, it’s that the damn thing had a Winnie the Pooh Jibbitz on it. The stupid Pooh bear cost me $5… yes I think that’s more than the shoes cost. So if you are at Parkway Plaza and find a blue croc wanna-be with Pooh bear in it, give me a call.

Growing up my dad could fix anything. Whenever something broke, a piece fell off something or I lost an important part to a toy, it seemed that my dad could fix it. Well apparently Big One has that same impression of me.

I hear, “Mommy… fix it,” several times a day. Now it does vary from:

“Moooooommmmmyyyy……..fixxxxxxxxxx itttttt!”

to

“MommyFixIt!”

to

“Mommy, fix it?”

The version that I hear depends on what exactly “it” is that needs fixing. When the “it” in question is simply putting the baby doll’s hat or shoes back on, it’s a general request. Unless of course Big One has been trying unsuccessfully to get the shoes or hat on for several minutes, then it’s the long drawn out whiney version.

If it’s something like putting the straw back in her cup when she is absolutely dying of thirst it’s the quick demanding no syllable break version.

When the teeny tiny screw falls out of her sunglasses, it’s the sweet inquisitive version.

The list of things that I can fix is long and can be complicated. Some of the things on the list I’ve already mentioned, some of the others include rebuilding a tower of blocks, putting the cushions back on the couch, pushing the play button to make Barney come back on after she’s pushed a series of buttons on the remote, putting the plastic egg toys back together when she’s broken them all open and scattered them across the living room, and making a sticker that she has put on and taken off 20 times sticky again.

Those are the easy fixes, some of the more complicated ones include putting a piece of chalk or a crayon back together after she’s snapped the pointy end off, putting my white gold necklace back together after she accidentally pulled on it and broke it in half, fixing the fender on my car where the morons at Carl Burger Jeep hit a pole when my car was in for service and finally putting a banana back together.

Now I admit that I may cheat here and there, yes I have taped a crayon back together. I have taped a sticker back together. Now if only I could figure out how to tape a banana back together I could remain the fix it queen of our household forever.

I’ve heard it said the life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. Well, when we found out that the Husband had been RIF’d we had to notify our tenants that we would need to be moving back into our house here in San Diego.

Our tenants have been awesome. They are Navy and have been in the house for three years. They have a teenage daughter who is in a wheelchair, as well as a one-year-old. As timing would have it, when I called to notify them that we needed to essentially kick them out, I realized that their older daughter had just gone through major surgery and was in a body cast.

I felt bad enough about having to give them notice, when I then found out that the husband was out to sea. So this poor woman is essentially a single mom, for the moment, of an active toddler and a teenager in a body cast. Here comes Mrs, Scrooge to kick them out of their house.

All I can say is that Kim is a better woman than I am. She took it all in stride and basically said the only thing that could be said, “Well that stinks.” And with that she somehow managed to find another place to live in about 4 days and will be moving out on August 19, about 21 days after we gave notice.

Just to give you an idea about how wonderful she is, she called me on Sunday to let me know that they would be out in two weeks, but wanted to make sure that I would be by the house to water all the beautiful flowers that she had planted. She’s amazing in the midst of trying to pack up, care for her daughter and waiting for her hubby to return she wanted to make sure the flowers at my house don’t die.

Most people live in a world where the wheels on the bus go round and round, but for us the wheels on our bus just came flying off at about 100 miles per hour!

What could possibly be that bad, you ask? How about finding out that you and your family are the poster children for the Air Force’s force shaping initiative? You civilians are probably wondering what in the world does that mean, but those of you who are familiar with the Air Force powers that be and their infinite wisdom know that it means come Jan 29 Jason is out of a job. Yep, the Husband was one of the people in his career field that fell victim to the RIF (reduction in force).

According to the Air Force Times there were 306 officers out of a pool of about 1200 who received the RIF notification today. Air Force Times article.

The crazy thing is we were scheduled to close escrow on our brand new beautiful house on Friday. Guess what’s no longer happening? As if it’s not bad enough that we have been homeless since March, now we have no idea where to go or what to do.

For those of you that are the praying type, please send one or two up for us that God will provide us with the clarity and peace to know where we are supposed to be and what we should be doing. We are currently weighing our options and determining if we’d be better off keeping with our plan to go up to Rosamond and hope for a contractor or GS job at Edwards for the Husband, or come back to San Diego and hope and pray that the Husband  or the FixItMommy can find a suitable job to support the San Diego lifestyle. Yes, we know how blessed we are to have the house in San Diego and coming back to it is starting to look like the best option. But in order to stay here, we will both probably have to work and put the girls in full-time daycare, which is not something that we planned on having to do. Yes, they will survive it, but the question is whether the FixItMommy will! 🙂

Who would have thought that we’d be facing starting over in our careers at this point in our lives? We are doing our best to keep our heads high and our hearts light as we do our best to determine God’s grand plan for our future. If any of you receive the magic key to decoding our future, please pass it along! We’d greatly appreciate the insight.

Wherever we go someone invariable asks me the age old question, “How are you” And my answer is always the same, “Tired.” It didn’t used to be this way. Before the Little One was born, my answers would have been, fabulous, peachy, good, or okay, all depending on my mood. But since the Little One, it’s been the same… tired. I’ve decided that the best way to demonstrate why my answer is always tired is to share a typical evening with you.

9:00 p.m. Little One is finally asleep, so we head to bed. Me in a twin bed and Little One in her swing, with the white noise machine set to “summer night.” Basically it’s white noise with a few crickets chirping. Now before Little One was born, I needed absolute silence to fall asleep. Once when we were living in Maryland, we had a cricket in our house somewhere, its incessant chirping drove me crazy. I would literally lie there for hours just wishing for its slow painful death. Now it’s just another noise in the room to contend with.

12:30 a.m. Little One gets restless and starts to fuss. It’s not a hungry fuss, so I replace the pacifier and stroke her cheek until she calms down.

12:35 a.m. See 12:30 a.m. entry

12:45 a.m. See 12:30 a.m. entry… okay so we don’t get too repetitive this continues until about 1:15 a.m.

1:45 a.m. I am awakened by a loud thud followed by a quiet whimpering. No doubt in my mind what just happened. Big One just fell out of bed and is still trying to figure out what in the heck happened to her. So I race in her room, hoping to catch her before she starts wailing like a banshee. WHEW! I made it, when I get in her room she is still layed-out on the floor, face-first trying to figure out where she is and why it hurt so much to wake up. I quickly grab her and begin to rock on the floor with her in my lap. She quietly whimpers, “mommy, wock…mommy wock.” Translation = Mommy, rock. She wants to rock in the rocking chair. So we begin to rock and she looks up at me and says, “mommy nap, mommy seeping.” Yes, I replied that mommy was in fact sleeping until something scared her and she had to come make sure Big One was okay. “You fall, you fall,” she says. “Yes, Big One fell out of bed,” I whisper. {she is a bit confused on her pronoun usage so when she says “you,” she is actually talking about herself.}

2:10 a.m. I crawl back in bed restarting the chirping cricket noise in hopes of assuring the Little One will sleep a little longer.

2:20 a.m. Get back out of bed, go outside and tell the dogs to shut the heck up or someone is going to get hurt and I don’t think it’s going to be the stupid opossum or raccoon that they are barking at.

3:00 a.m. I am wide awake, having realized that it’s been a really long time since Little One has eaten. Living by the cardinal rule of NEVER waking a sleeping baby, I take my chances that she won’t wake up for a while, and pump so that we don’t all drown in milk.

3:30 a.m. I try to get some sleep. Feeling great relief with a full bottle of milk in the refrigerator, I can comfortably lie on my tummy. Of course, now I know that since I just pumped that the Little One will be up any minute starving. So I lie there waiting…

4:00 a.m. The crying begins; wearily I get up to retrieve the aforementioned bottle of breast milk, hoping that it’s still semi-warm.  Little One takes about two ounces, so I know she wasn’t really hungry. UGH!

4:30 a.m. Sound asleep, I lie Little One back down in her swing and hope to not hear from her until at least 6 a.m.

5:30 a.m. The fussing begins; I offer the bottle once again. She takes a couple sips and is back asleep. However this sleep will not last. She is up fussing every few minutes.

5:40 a.m. See 12:30 a.m. entry…

6:30 a.m. I finally give up; sleep has eluded me once again. So I try to feed the Little One, once again. She is really not interested, so now she is chewing on her hands and I am sharing my lovely evening with you.

It is like this every night? Not this exact sequence of events, but some variation of it, yes pretty much every night since we came home from the hospital. Would I change it? Hmmmm that’s a good question. Yes, I think I would, not that I would give the Little One back, but I would definitely recommend the model that sleeps at least a few hours at night!

Naming a child is one of the most important tasks that a parent must come to terms with; after all you are, for the most part, stuck with that name for the rest of your life. It becomes your identity and part of who you are.

So for the last 35 years, I have been called “Joyce.” It’s a good name, not popular for people in my generation so I am typically the only one in a crowded room. I went through phases growing up where I wished I had a more popular name, but for the last 25 years or so I have been rally content being called Joyce. My great-aunt who I was named after was an awesome lady and I can only hope to be a cool as she was.

Now I am faced with a change in my name, I was not prepared for this one. It kind of snuck up on me over the last few weeks. I suppose I should look at my new name as an honor. I am very fortunate to be blessed with two healthy, beautiful children so the fact that my two-year old has re-named me, “Mommy-Feed-Little One” really should feel like an honor.

I am so fortunate that the Big One is an active and talking two-year-old. And that she can comprehend that yes in fact, most of the time it does seem that mommy has to feed the Little One. But c’mon how sad is it that every time she looks at me she automatically assumes that I need to feed the baby. I know the benefits of breastfeeding, but as I’ve said before, if I had any idea how difficult (and time consuming) it would be the Little One would be living off of formula. The Big One was a formula baby and (obviously) is just as smart, fun, beautiful and healthy as can be.

So why is it that I continue to breastfeed the Little One? I guess as much as I complain about it, it’s another thing where I know how fortunate that I am to be able to breastfeed her and I don’t want to throw that away. Besides, formula is crazy expensive… losing my name temporarily is a small price to pay in comparison.

Perhaps a new low is more appropriate in this situation. Any mom knows that multitasking is the only way to survive. Ask any non-multitasker (a man) and he will give you a blank stare like “huh? You want me to walk and talk at the same time?”

For any mom, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, changing a diaper and feeding the dog at the same time is pretty much a typical day. Nothing too extraordinary when you are folding the laundry, feeding the baby and getting a toddler down for a nap.

So this morning when I was breastfeeding Sarah and realized that I needed to go to the bathroom, I did what any mom would do. I sat myself down on the toilet and did my business. I am not talking about a quick pee trip here, that happens several times a day. I am talking about finally being done with the iron supplements and getting back to a “regular” schedule.

At first I am was bit horrified by the fact that I was pooping with a little baby attached to my boob, but then I figured hey you do what you gotta do when the “spirit moves” as my husband would say. Sarah is no worse for the wear and I felt much better afterwards.

I’m sure when she is 16 she’ll be thrilled that I actually wrote this experience down for all to see. Heck, I may even put it down as a “first” in her baby book!