Lately

Today Vanessa is 6 weeks old and Natalie is 7 years and 8 months old exactly! I am certain my father in law will be by later to drop off a card and donuts for Natalie, Vanessa might have to wait awhile before she gets special treats. ;)

Sleep is still not good. Honestly I don't really care about that though. As I lied awake at 4 in the morning today after feeding the baby, her a bit restless and uncomfortable in her sleep, I thought how lucky am I that this is my biggest problem? Waking up to take care of this beautiful child who belongs to me is amazing. So what if she wakes up more often than most babies or has tummy troubles that make her fuss? It's such a small thing compared to the problems a lot of people have.

Her eating is still all over the place at times. We've increased nightly feedings to 4 ozs. She doesn't always finish them and during the day she will eat, fuss, eat, sleep, wake up after 15 minutes, fuss, eat, so not much consistency when it come to feeding. She does drool and chew on her hands a lot- Matt calls it her handburgers when she does. If she weren't a month old I would say it's teething. I also remember Natalie drooling and chewing a lot long before she ever got teeth too, so I think it's just something babies do.

Natalie is doing well. She is such a funny and smart kid. She genuinely makes me laugh and impresses me with her vocabulary. She uses words like subtle and eager and I think it is so cute. The other day she told me she liked my sunglasses and tried them on. I said, "You look good in those," and she said, "Aw, thanks. So do you...even though I don't know what you look like in them," so I tried them on and she goes, "You look good in them! Even better than I look in them...even though I don't know what I look like in them," and it cracked me up because she was intentionally being playful and silly. She has been enjoying going to camp pretty much every day. Granted, we only send her for 3 hours a day or so but she has fun and looks forward to it which is such a relief. My concern is once school starts she is going to hate doing that and have a lot of anxiety about it.

Speaking of anxiety, I talked to a doctor about mine and was prescribed something for it. I just took my first does today. I have so many hesitations about going on meds. I am afraid of the potential side effects and that it will physically make me feel bad. Then I am scared of the emotional side effects possible and that it will mentally make me feel more depressed/anxious or worst of all make me feel suicidal or something crazy. I know that is rare but still. Then I debate if I really am all that anxious/sad. I don't have the classic checklist of symptoms for depression like loss of interest in activities, poor appetite, fatigue, feeling hopeless and such and I certainly don't feel depressed but on occasion I just break down and sob out of nowhere. I know I am anxious for sure but sometimes I think it's fine and that I am handling it fine but then I think, why would I want to keep feeling like this if I don't have to?

I think going back to work is a good thing for me mentally too, at least it seemed to be this weekend. My first day back was Friday. Everyone welcomed me back and it felt good to have different responsibilities for the day. Of course Saturday morning things at work had to get a bit off track and I came in to computer issues first thing. Everything I do is on the computer and it was malfunctioning so making work a bit difficult but it was early enough it didn't fuck things up too much. I swear that salon is cursed though because we have the worst of luck with everything. Every week or so there is a new issue popping up. A few weeks ago when my sister was working lightening struck right outside the shop and completely fried our computers and wifi modem. There are so many things like that that consonantly happen and it makes our job 100 times more challenging. Plus my boss really isn't helpful and leaves us to figure out how to solve the problem while we're trying to deal with the problem and explain the mess to customers. Sounds like I really am happy to be back to work, huh?

Life has been good. We've had lots of visitors including my friend who lives in N.C. One of Matt's friends even stopped by to meet Vanessa, which was sweet to me because he's this big, burly dude. We've been spending a lot of time with Matt's parents too. They are always so kind and helpful and we're so lucky to have them.