When it rains, it pours

I swear, this time of year is always frustrating in terms of financial things that come up. You know the drill, I'm sure. Annual car insurance due. Need new tires. Both cars need their "big" regular maintenance. Christmas shopping. New home needs. All in one or two months. Stressful and frustrating.

And--on top of it all--Bentley has a little tumor of some sort (been there awhile; thankfully doesn't seem to be growing) on his shoulder and his ear hematoma is back. He gets blood-filled ear flaps from excessive shaking of his head. In the past, they've gone away naturally, but the one he's got now is kind of bad and worse than he's ever had. And...I'm sort of over it. WHY does this happen every year with excessive expenses? Sigh...

For now, I'll be praying (really hard) that his ear issue resolves itself ASAP. The tumor removal estimate was $1000 so we obviously opted to not do that right now. I'm sure the ear surgery would be just as much so I'd love to avoid that at all costs. 

When it rains, it pours.

Seems Fitting Right Now

Adam and Eve had many advantages,

but the principal one was that they escaped teething.

- Mark Twain

Little man is grumpy. Like really grumpy. Those pesky teeth are at it again. Thankfully, one of the molars came in on Friday, so we're 25% through the misery. He was happy on Saturday, but then turned crabby Sunday. He was fine at daycare yesterday (in fact, they said he had a fabulous first day!), but then fussy again today. Seems to be an every other day thing. He doesn't seem to be interested in eating, and if he is going to, you better believe that strong-willed boy intends to feed himself or I can just forget about it.

Praying that this next phase of teeth hurries in. For now, I will recite this piece of advice my friend gave me: "The days may be long, but the years are short."

And then I'll recite the serenity prayer.

Mommy Help Needed.

Remember how I said in Carter's 11 month post yesterday that he was almost sleeping consistently through the night? Well, I'm apparently being punished for my words, because lately, Carter has had some really, really bad nights. We're out of options. Allowing him cry results in hours of crying. Going in to comfort him at intervals (a la the Ferber method) extends the periods of hysteria since he'll stop when we're in there saying we love him and rubbing his back, but then go back to the mass hysteria when we leave. No ear infection. No fever. Clear diaper. Full bottle before bed.

I have no idea what is going on and I'm about to lose it. How in the world is my offspring unable to sleep? It's like a cruel joke.

Help. At this point, I will take ANY SINGLE IDEA you have about baby sleep habits during the night. At almost 1-year-old, this must stop. Nothing is quite worse than going to bed every night not knowing what in the world to expect (considering that randomly, he'll often sleep through the night one night and the next be freaking out all night). 

Life + raising baby + husband + full-time job + no sleep = losing my marbles.

Thoughts on what could be going on? Separation anxiety? More teeth? Something bigger/worse?

Ok go.

How You Know it has Been a Long Week.

Today when I got home from work, I was watching TV and kept hearing a chirping sound. It was just a single chirp and did it every 2-3 minutes. I just ignored it because I knew it was the smoke detector. I figured Seth could get them down when he got home and we could replace the batteries.

But while I was making dessert for tonight when our guests come, the chirping drove me insane. I washed my hands, climbed up and got the one in the hallway, and took out the batteries. We just put the other one up last night, so I knew those batteries couldn't be dead yet. But as I went back to stirring, it chirped again. UGH. Great, they sold it to us with dead batteries.

So I climb up and get that one down too, and removed it's batteries. Finally some peace!

Chirp.

WHAT?!?!? We don't have any more smoke detectors!

As I stand there figuring out what it could possibly be, my purse chirped. Yeah...the chirping sound was my work pager going off. For three hours.

Good thing it wasn't an emergency. And good thing I now have two unassembled smoke detectors to put back together.