i wanna wear my cleats

i miss soccer. i miss playing in the warm rain and squishing around the field in my soggy cleats. i miss the blistering feeling on my lips while playing in the dry heat. i miss the foggy humid morning practices and the muggy friday nights under the lights. i miss the smell of fresh cut grass and sweat and dirt and the taste of salt dripping down my face. i miss shin guard tan lines and training hard. i miss the sound of the ball hitting the back of the net, teammates, tackling, road trips, sun burns, and fighting hard to be the best. i miss it all.

the final stretch!

i hit my 38 week mark today, and it's really starting to hit me how our lives are going to be changing very soon! baby girl has been overflowing with love and giggles and cuddles and kisses and cuteness and playfulness for the past few days, and i have really been treasuring what little time is left with only one daughter.

last night hit me really hard with the realization that it's not just my life that will be changing, but my sweet little girl's whole world will turn upside down. she has had momma all to herself for over two years now, and a baby sister means sharing an overwhelmingly large amount of momma. as excited as i am to meet my second daughter, i'm also slightly afraid of the toll bringing home a new baby will take on her. all i can do is prepare myself for sharing my time, love, and attention with two children and their daddy...and hopefully squeeze in a little me time every now and then, too.

i am praying for the courage, strength, and energy i will need to care for a newborn and toddler through the early days, weeks, and months of sleep deprivation...especially when daddy has trips and is gone for a week or two at a time and it's all on momma! it's nice to know that we have a handful of trustworthy friends nearby that i can call if i start to lose my marbles!

ready or not...

i am ready. i am so ready to be not pregnant anymore...not so sure if i'm ready to take care of a newborn through all hours of the night and spend the whole next day chasing around a two-year-old...but definitely ready to be normal again. i mean, as normal as one can be postpartum...which really isn't that normal when you think about it. but at least i will be able to lie on my back again. at least i will be able to cuddle my husband without this huge bump in between us. at least i will be able to breathe again. of course, i'm trading all that fun stuff in for leaking milk and having a person latched onto me for at least a year and never sleeping again, but who cares about sleep and independence and dry shirts anyways? that stuff is way overrated. these early years are supposedly easier than the teenage years, too, right? the best part about all of it - pregnancy, birth, and postpartum - is that i will have two amazingly beautiful little girls to snuggle and love and watch grow into amazingly beautiful women.

daylight savings

so, yesterday baby girl decided to opt out of nap time, which i thought would aid in adjusting to daylight savings...wrong! thanks to a runny nose and over exhaustion , someone was too cranky at dinner to eat. we spooned in a few bites of applesauce and put her to bed without dinner and a bath. i'll give you one guess what happened next...

well, first of all, i had the most difficult time getting comfortable and falling asleep. i probably got up to pee about seven times, thanks to the little girl in my belly. the last time i checked the clock, i think we were nearing 3 am. normally, this wouldn't be too damaging to my morning, since baby girl typically wakes up sometime between 8 and 9. last night, however, some barky little voice called out for momma to rescue her around 4am. "hungwy." yeah, that no dinner thing came back to haunt me.

despite her requests for milk and cereal, i gave her a strawberry granola bar in OUR bed. i did not feel like dealing with that mess all over the kitchen and baby girl's pajamas as i waddled around like a zombie. of course, someone also decided they couldn't sit up on top of the covers (that i could easily shake out) and eat the granola bar. no, she had to lie down under the covers in the middle of the bed next to daddy.

when she was finished, she begged for milk and cereal anyways, despite my best efforts to dodge that bullet. i compromised with dry cereal in a bowl, but my deal was not good enough. so i picked up a screaming little girl and put her back in her bed, unplugged the loud humidifier, which probably woke her up in the first place, and went back to bed, where another grouch was waiting for me...top gun soon rolled over into a chunk of sticky granola bar that had somehow made it to his side of the bed. before i could do anything about it, he threw back the covers and grumbled, "i'm going to sleep on the couch!"

i brushed what crumbs i could out of my side and passed out. we all slept in until sometime around 11 this morning. i guess this was God's way of sending me through a newborn boot camp before we bring home another little person who is going to torture me with restless nights. stupid daylight savings.

j'aime ma vie

amid all the diaper wrestling...

the crumbs on the couch cushions...

the sock factory in the backseat of my car...

the crib circus of stuffed animals...

the blueberry stained t-shirts...

the wall murals painted in sharpie and crayon...

the missing toys i find in the most obscure top-secret hiding spots...

the constant picky-eater battle...

the runny nose and impossibly fast-growing fingernails...

the begging and whining, "i want it"...

...and "don't want it"...

the inescapable cartoons...

the play dough and fingerpaints...

reading the same books twice every night for 17 days straight...

the "big castle" and "choo choo" blocks...

the puzzle books that end up in a pile...

the no-spill sippy cups that somehow always leak...

the "rinnie pieces" and "bwownies"...

amid Kipper and Nemo...

Mickey Mouse and Curious George...

the grubby smears and fingerprints...

bike rides and playgrounds...

the mountainous piles of laundry...

...and dishes...

the time-outs and no-nos...

the holes in...well...what doesn't have them these days?

yup, amid horsie-back rides...

the pants that never stay up...

and shoes that are too small...too quickly...

i get a glimpse of the amazing, incredible little girl my baby is growing up to be.

and i find myself smiling through the tears of frustration and fatigue...

because

i would not trade one minute of my crazy, sometimes lonely and isolated, blessed life for anything.

j'aime ma vie.

cry baby

top gun and i had a little debate earlier about an experience we had as first-time parents in california. we went to disneyland for a few hours and ended the night with a dinner out at downtown disney. first of all, it was our first time out together since baby girl was born. second of all, the hostess seated us smack in the middle of the restaurant...it was like we were on display, and everyone was there for the new parents show. not long into our meal, our little girl started making a BIG noise. i tried nursing her, holding, rocking, changing...nothing was helping. daddy said we should take our food to go, but i said no. absolutely not. this was our first night out, and they shouldn't have seated us "on stage" if they have a problem with crying babies. i'm curious what you would have done??

yee-haw!

Baby Girl has started noticing that Daddy is a little different. She has been trying to catch peaks for a few weeks now, and this morning finally saw as Daddy was getting out of the shower. As Daddy was drying off, she reached up to touch and he told her, "No Baby Girl, that's Daddy's." Her reply was, "Yee-haw!" Daddy put on his boxers and she blew a kiss bye-bye to her discovery...where do kids come up with this stuff?!