Sick and sad.

Mike told me about this news story early this morning when he got home from work. He fortunately did not have to respond to it, but he said when the call came in last night, he couldnt sleep at all after that. I dont blame him. I have been thinking about that family all day. The oldest child was the one who got away and was able to call for help and get the neighbor, a nurse, to come to the house. This particular neighborhood is only a few miles from us, and I know several families who live there. It is really disturbing.

I cannot fathom how a parent could kill their child with their own bare hands.

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In other news, I am still sick with a bad cold that has turned into a hacking cough and isnt getting better. This has been going on for 5 days now. Ive been to 2 different doctors this week and theyve both told me its just a virus, there's nothing they can do for me. There's not much medication I can take while pregnant.

15 months old.

These pictures were taken at Duke Gardens a couple weeks ago. I forgot that they were on my camera!



Aliah had her 15-month-old check-up this week. She now weighs 23 pounds and is 31 inches tall. She has dropped from the 95 percentile to the 50th. But she never stops moving, and eats more than her big sister, so no worries there. ((My in-laws are always asking about "the newest thing" that the kids are doing and I have such a hard time thinking of anything "new" to tell them. So I was glad that I could call them with some kind of "news" to report. At this point it just seems like we are doing the same stuff over and over and over again every day.))

Poor girl had to get three shots too. Hannah said "It made me sad last time Aliah got shots. It hurt me when she got them, and I was so sad for her that I wanted to cry too." I knew she loved her baby sister, but wow, I didnt know she was quite that sensitive.

Hannah has REALLY opened up and come out of her shell lately. She is so much more outgoing and talkative and I am really proud of her. On the flip side, this means that she rarely STOPS talking. Sometimes I have to insist on "quiet time" just so I dont have to hear constant chatter all day long. And of course the girls feed off of each other. If one of them laughs or sings or cries, the other has to do it too, just 4 times louder. It is not always sweet. In fact, it can be annoying. Especially in the car.

Mike applied for a promotion at work this week. I have no idea when he will hear anything about it or how competitive it is. He has been pretty vague about describing it to me. We'll see what happens with that.... Tonight he and a friend drove to DC to participate in a Tax Day political protest at the Capital. Interesting. They are staying with my relatives in NW DC. Hope they have a good time.

Hannah prayed that they would have a safe trip home :) She really misses her daddy when he is away. I guess they both do: Tonight at bedtime, Aliah got dressed in her pjs and then ran into our room, yelling "Dada, Dada!", looking for him. She thought he was laying in bed, waiting to say goodnight. She didnt understand that he wasn't home.

Well, we'll see him on Friday night.

Wake-up!

I love my girls so much, and I am so thankful that I get to be a stay-at-home mom right now. But I am run-down. I give all I can to them, and don't have enough time at the end of the day to properly care for myself (let along washing things, household chores, paying bills, etc). Just feeding Aliah is a full-time job in itself! I find myself eating granola bars or chocolate milk as meals, sometimes pbj sandwiches - whatever I can grab and consume with one hand. And more often than not, remembering to take my vitamins and meds is a forgotten habit that I just can't seem to get going again.

Right now Mike is working as many overtime shifts as he can, just to ensure that we can pay all our bills and put food on the table. He is severely stressed and burned-out. He never gives himself a break.

This morning, after I had been up all night long with Hannah, who was refusing to go to sleep and insisting on interrupting my sleep-time every hour or two, Mike came home ranting about having to get a new driver's license, and how he couldn't find some important papers.... Ok yeah, the papers were important to him, but it was not necessary to wake up everyone else in the house at 8am. He acts so angry and aggressive, and I don't just mean sometimes. He doesn't have time for a hobby with his insane work schedule, so he ends up taking it out on me. It's not fair, and I'm not trying to make excuses for him... That's just what happens.

Something has got to give, but I am scared about what exactly that will be, and what it will look like.

In the meantime, we have lots of birthdays to celebrate over the next 3 weeks.
Mike is turning thirty this weekend. He is feeling really, really old.
I told him that for my birthday, I want two hours by myself. With NO interruptions. I Need Me Time. We'll see if that happens.

Good news

MIKE PASSED HIS PARAMEDIC EXAM!
Now he will be cleared to work anywhere in the United States!

Thank you to everyone who prayed for him this week.
God heard and answered our prayers.

I hate money.

I have spent an hour online this afternoon, looking for more part-time work.
Money and finances have always been a sore spot for me.
Right now, Mike and I are struggling to pay all of our bills on time. I am trying hard to continue to trust that God will provide for everything we need.... but somehow we come up short every month, and our credit card debt is creeping up instead of going down. It is getting to be really hard to keep on trusting God.
I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all that we have... I'm just concerned. There isn't anything else that we can cut out of our monthly budget, yet our expenses continue to increase.

Mike at work.

Yesterday Mike found a tiny, starving stray kitten at work, roaming around behind the ambulance base. Last night he left plenty of food and water for it, and planned to feed it again today. This morning when he arrived at work, the kitten was dead, laying as if sleeping, underneath an abandoned truck.

Shortly after Mike got to work, his supervisor publicly accused him of having an affair with a coworker!!! He called to let me know about the situation, but... it's ludicrous that the supervisor would openly accuse him of something like this without any proof. Just terrible. (Poor Mike, all he does is work, and come home to sleep. He doesn't need this extra stress and pressure!)

I don't know what is going to come of it all, but I just keep praying that Mike can keep his cool, and that his name and his reputation will remain clean.