I cannot even bring myself to look back to the date on my last posting, but I know it has been entirely too long. As usual, I often think of things about which to blog, but have obviously not gotten around to it. Who would have thought that full-time work and three little ones, three and under, would make me an absolutely exhausted and very busy person? No, really. I honestly didn't see that coming. Clueless, this one.
Where do I start? First, life is great. I can't complain at all. Little Hatch, our tiny and sweet baby, is exactly that. He's a little angel. He's so loving and smiley and makes all of us, even crazy Leo, so happy when he is in the room. A few weeks ago, as I was pretending to still be asleep, I heard Patrick sneak into our room and lean over Hatch. In a whisper, he said, "You are perfect, William. You are exactly the baby I wanted." Which, truthfully, is exactly how I feel, too. The boys are adjusting nicely. I don't feel like we live in chaos, but I still wonder if maybe it's because chaos is what I am used to. Usually, things are pretty calm around here. Naps are great. As I type this, all three boys are sleeping (the smallest is on my lap) and I hear nothing but the hum of the washing machine...and The Real Housewives of Atlanta in the background (old habits die hard.)
I admit that I should not have gone back to work when I did. I made a mistake. While I'm into the swing of it now, the first few weeks were pretty hard on me. I shed a lot of tears. Usually on the way home, in would set the horrible feelings of guilt. I hate leaving the kids. I realize that it's probably healthy, but I honestly should have waited. I don't want to feel like a bum mother, or a bad one, or an indaquate one, but I did. I'm starting to build the "new" mom, though...the one who gets out, buys new clothes for herself, has friends, an actual haircut, and a life outside these boys (although, to be honest, I'd be as happy as a pig in mud if I could go back to hanging out in my jammies every day with my favorite little people.) I'll be happy when I can be the new mom half of the time and the old mom the other half, which is like finding my Holy Grail.
Along those lines, I did end up bumping my FTE to a 0.8, meaning that I will work 32 hours per week, or two 12-hour shifts and one 8-hour shift a week. Three days, but I can manage that. I really went back and forth with the full-time dilemma, but Adam and I decided that this would be good for us. Working nights, that means we'll still need a little help with the kids from time to time, but it also means that I'll get to be home with them more often than I am not. And that makes me happy.
As we get into the Christmas season, it is so nice to have a paycheck again. Although we are so far from being of the wealthy kind, it's just nice to Christmas shop and not have a small internal panic attack about how we're actually going to stretch what we need to stretch to get by. It's nice to have a cushion. It's nice to relax a little. I needed to relax a little.
Thanksgiving brought us many, many things for which to be thankful. One: our kids. Two: our marriage. In whole: our life. Our anniversary is always within days of Thanksgiving, which means we can always be reminded of how blessed we are come that time of year. Only this year was different. Thanksgiving was the day before our fifth anniversary, and we were fighting...hard. In fact, perhaps it was one of the worst fights in the last five years. It started out as nothing. I didn't know that anything was wrong. We were both a little stressed, but that was about it. Wednesday night, I had to run to the store for an hour. Adam called to drop a major bomb on me (Seriously. Called me. On the phone. And dropped a bomb.) I laughed it off, but came home to Adam in a funk. As it carried over into the next day, I was immediately upset, too. In between Thanksgiving dinners, our coinciding attitudes erupted into an all-out fifteen-minute battle. I was furious. Adam was, too, but he's the shut-down type and wouldn't show a thing. We ended up at my parents', where we successfully separated; me with the girls and little kids, Adam with the boys and older kids. We cooled down a little, enough that we were especially chilly to each other.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving dinner. We each had to take turns saying what we were thankful for before eating. I was staring at the ground when it was Adam's turn, annoyed with him already. Then it came, in front of my entire family: "This year, I am most thankful for my marriage. Even though I've been a complete jerk today, I love you, Catie, and I'm sorry." Damn him for being so sweet. And for being so humble in front of my family. Immediately, someone hit the reset button for us. We needed that fight. We needed to get things out, and as soon as it was all out on the table and one of us was big enough to apologize (not me), we were good again. Our anniversary dinner was lovely. Our day together was lovely. Our verbal exchanges were lovely. We were overly affectional and life was good again. This year, I was most thankful for our really bad days that result in really good things.
So, as we move into the holidays, the tree is up, Otto (our elf) is out and watching, we have presents under the tree and Amazon perpetually pulled up on the computer. Last year at this time, we focused on how different things would be this year. And little did we know what that meant. Even though I have probably said every week for the past year, "Starting next week, I won't be so busy," I'm still waiting for that time to come. I do promise to try to keep up with this blog. Though there is so much that I have forgotten, at least this post is a start. Happy Seasons to all of you! May this holiday bring lots of warmth, love, and family for every one of us. And I mean that.
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