Blogging is Good for the Soul

I need to get back into blogging. Not only are there many memories I want to document and share, but I think it would also be good to just get my thoughts and feelings out. I spend countless times a week thinking about good blog topics, or things I would say when I blog, yet it still goes unwritten. In fact, I have pictures from September that still need to be uploaded and shared. I don't share my blog on my facebook or many places where I know it will be found and analyzed by my family. I would rather this be a "safe" place for me to vent without worrying about hurting someones feelings or being told that this isn't something I should share on the internet. This is my little place and I really need to start using it more.

The truth is I have been struggling. I am not sure if PPD has smacked me hard in the face again, or if it's a depression episode, but I don't like it. I don't like it at all! I spend most my day trying not to cry. No real reason, but I am just sad feeling. I decided that Zoloft wasn't working well for me so I asked to change over to the old anxiety/depression medicine that I used to be on before having Emily. Well that was a nightmare! I stuck with it for a month hoping things would change, but they didn't and Kenny told me I needed help. It was uncontrollable outbursts of tears. I was exhausted and it was hard to get out of bed. I was short tempered and although I love my girls more than anything, I was ready to leave and never look back. I kept telling myself that it was just the month of March and things would be better soon, but inside I felt even worse.

I made an appointment and asked to change my medication to something I have tried in the past. It's one I researched and has the least effect on weight and other side effects. It's a twice a day medicine and I haven't been on it for a week yet, but I hope it helps.

With cymbalta, I lost all motivation to do anything. I was doing so good with T25 and I was so proud of myself. With the meds my hunger was out of control and all I thought about was food. I quickly packed on the weight I lost, that paired with kicking my exercise program really did me in. I have felt horrible about myself and my clothes are back to being tight. I have nothing summer to wear for work or at home for that matter and every time I look at clothes online in my sizes I end up crying and closing the page. I seriously am so depressed about the way I look and feel.

My best friend told me that one day I would regret not being in more pictures when we go and do things with the kids and I have taken that in consideration and have been trying to get more pictures of me with the girls. Well let's just say that may be one reason why I don't want to upload pictures. Nothing worse when you think you look nice or even a tiny bit confident and see a picture of yourself that you hate. I honestly haven't ever felt this bad about myself then how I've felt in the last month. I feel like I have been avoiding more social things because of it. Like I cringe when there is a camera at a birthday party. It's bad enough people have to see me, but then to worry that there may be a picture of me in the background! Ahhhhhh! And I truly know that everyone had insecurities, but I honestly have some really beautiful friends. They are fashionable, they are pretty, they have nice bodies, have nice hair, and they have confidence that I lack. It def makes me even sadder when it comes to myself. I know beauty is more than what is on the outside, I truly do, but I see and feel a difference when I am with friends.

And my poor girls, I truly do love them and they are the bright side of my day, but boy do I really need a break at times. Emily is such a sweet baby, but she is fussy and very hard to please sometimes. And Hailey, she is such a good girl, but boy does that sassiness really get to me. I feel like my nerves are shot and my patience is very little these days. I get very overwhelmed easily. And I find that Kenny and I are having a lot of heated arguments because of it. I feel I don't have the support and the help I need from him when it comes to the girls and to doing things around the house. I feel like I am always on the back burner when it comes to the things he does and his friends. And I am also sure that my mood instability is making it much worse in my mind because this isn't anything new, but recently it has gotten so much harder to handle.

There will always be sun after the rain eventually and I know that things will begin to look up soon. I just need to hold my head up and keep on swimming. I really hope to find that balance. I NEED to feel normal again. I want to look at things on the bright side again instead of wandering around Target trying to hold back tears. I need some sun in my life and a weekend of a good night sleep, unbroken or being waken up! (Sounds to me like I just described a vacation! Ha!) I really hope things look up soon and that I start feeling better soon. I am ready to be me again and I am ready to start enjoying the things I once have. I am ready to get back into working out and feeling better about myself!

10 Things on Tuesday!

1. So I never uploaded those pictures, so I don't have any updates to post! Darnit Nicole! Get with the program, but on the bright side my camera bag has been found and I now found my cord to upload pictures! I am going to write this down in my planner and make it a priority!

2. I have a job interview tomorrow for a temporary position in my office. It also may have a temporary promotion with it too, if I qualify for that grade level of course. Weather I get the promotion or not, I still would love the job and a change in job tasks. It may be a great way to open skills so that I can venture out and eventually move up one of these days!

3. Because of the interview I had to move Emily's adjustment appointment to Friday. The bad thing about this is that the only day they are local to me is on Wednesdays, which means Friday they are in Annandale and I now have to drive 2 hours north. I also had to take an early appointment so I will be dealing with rush hour like I do every day! Not fun, not fun at all!

4. The weather is warming up and I am excited! I have taken advantage of walking a couple times in the past couple weeks during my lunch break!

5. My fitbit is making me sad! The darn thing is having so many issues with it staying charged. I guess I will just have to make a point to charge it daily now. I hate that I get all these extra steps, but have no numbers to prove I am doing it. I am a visual person so if there is no actual numbers (fitbit or polar fitness watch) then it didn't happen in my mind! Kind of like the "no pictures means it didn't happen" theory!

6. Sometimes I feel like such a shitty Mom. I can't offer much to my kids in the means of sports and having opportunities. Hailey asked me if we could go to the book fair after school today and of course they will be closed by the time I get home. I can't ever make any of the after school events. I can't volunteer in her class. I want to offer her to cheer come the fall, but I can't promise I can get her to the practices or games on time. More times then not, she is late to gymnastics by 5 minutes. She never gets in bed on time. We don't eat dinner until late. I get home at 6 and just don't have enough time in a day to get everything done. When I finally got around to looking at her homework last night she had done it wrong and was already in bed. I just put it back in her folder. No point in upsetting her first thing in the morning. Hailey was talking about girl scouts, and of course when I looked into it our local group meets at 6pm at her school, which there is no way I can get her back in time. It just makes me so sad.

7. I have been slacking on my water intake this week, but I am happy to report that I made it through week 1 of beta! Holly smokes it's a lot more exhausting then the alpha. I remember when I started that I felt like I was going to die. Now I look back and think how much easier it seemed. Maybe it's just because I am not used to it!

8. I didn't log on My Fitness Pal on Sunday and lost my awesome streak! Wahhhhh! I was so disappointed when I noticed it had reset this morning!

9. I need to get my taxes completed this week. I got a message saying turbo tax was increasing their price on March 19th, so I need to get it done by then. I am almost done, just need to add two more pieces into it.

10. Thank god we don't owe taxes this year. I told Kenny that with the little bit we are getting back, I want to get a new front door, you know one with a screen that we can open and let some air in. Ha! Everyone else gets to plan trips and do awesome thing with their lump sum, and we have enough to pay towards some medical bills and afford a couple hundred on a door. It's just the way it always works out though, but I am truly thankful we don't owe!

10 Things on Tuesday!

Look at me! I am writing a blog post! It's been some time, but I so badly want to get back into making this a regular thing! I have so much to share and no clue how it's already the middle of March!

1. I really keep thinking that tomorrow will be Thursday. That's kind of disappointing in a way! Well only because I want the work week to be over with so it can be Friday again!

2. Friday was girls night and we saw the movie the Duff. It was super cute and although it broke my heart at times and I cried like 5 times, it had a nice ending. I also felt so much better when I realized the hot guy in it was allowed to be hot because he was 26! Sheesh I would have felt bad if he was really like only 17 or 18, oh the joys of getting older!

3. I applied for a temporary 90 day job with a raise in my office. I am pretty nervous about it. I have really good chances and I feel I am deserving of this position since I have done most of these duties from time to time providing backup, but I am just not sure if I will get it.

4. I went to the doctor and had my medicines switched up. It's def been a hard adjustment and I feel she gave me the wrong dose. My anxiety has been off the hook and I feel like I can burst into tears. I am hoping this will all go away as I become used to them again. It's the same thing I was on before I was pregnant.

5. I have not been getting enough sleep the past couple days. I truly don't know where time goes! It's like once I get the girls in bed it's midnight and I am rushing to get myself in bed and back up at 4:30am. I get a lot of comments about how much I sleep on days off or weekends, but with a baby who wakes up at 7am on my days off and 4 hours of sleep each night during the week, I need those naps during the weekend when I can get them! I need sleeppppppppp! Like right now!

6. I started T25 Beta week 1 AGAIN this week! This is going on my 3rd week of week 1 because I have missed days the past 2 weeks. I am hoping to make this the forreal deal and get the entire week in so I continue on like I want to! It def is a step up and is much harder!

7. I watched the Best of Me this past weekend! I have heard nothing but amazing reviews about it. I had read the book so I was excited! I liked the movie overall, but I was not in love at all. It was way different then the book and that made me sad. Why did they change so much?! It was like a completely different story!

8. One movie I watched that I didn't read the book was Gone Girl! Wow! Crazyyyyyyy movie!

9. I hope I have energy when I get home to do something around the house, and get my workout done of course! I was pretty productive this past Sunday and it is kind of starting to come together, but so much more needs to be done! There is hope that I will one day have a clean house in my near future!

10. I have tickets for Hailey and I to go Cinderella with some friends this Sunday! I am super excited and she knows I have a surprise for her and keeps asking me about it! I hope she will be excited! I know I am!

Quick Update on Life!

It's been a while.....a long while since I blogged last! I feel like I have been going going going since December! Christmas was complete bust for us. We ALL had the flu that week. There was 5 vistis to patient first that week and a mad hunt for tamaflu for the kids. Christmas Eve was spent with a sick baby at the doctors and trying to get medicines straight with the pharmacy. I didn't even get home with dinner until 11:30pm. I didn't get to read Twas the Night Before Christmas, or have our anniversary champagne (Christmas Eve was 7 years married!). Cookies were thrown together while I was gone. We didn't really celebrate Christmas Day like I had wanted to, especially for the baby's first Christmas. We missed my family's Christmas and stayed in PJs pretty much the whole time. New Years I ended up with a sinus infection and two days later I am at the peditiricans with Emily for pink eye! Then last week I was home all week with Hailey and the stomach flu! We have had a rotten time this year! I feel like all the sickness has hit our house and we haven't gotten a break. Luckily no one else got the stomach bug! I am thankful for that!

And poor Emily has had one hell of a time with this band. She began it on January 23rd and has only worn it for the 23 hours one time. She wore it a weekend then was off for over a week. Put it back on last week and ended up having it off for another 5 days. This is day 2 back in it and we are still working up to a full day. She has been getting friction burns on her face really bad. They hurt me to look at them! Once that happens the band is off until it heals. Her doctors have been amazing and have been seeing her and calling to check on her, but again this has caused me to miss a lot of work with running her back and forth. The doctors office is an hour and a half up north! I will have to share more with that when I get my thoughts all straight!

I said good bye to my Jeep and traded it in for a used GMC Acadia Denali. I am loving it, but it was a hard change to make! I def can get used to all the options it has and space for the girls! Plus it's been nice not having to climb up into the Jeep or lift the girls into it. But I still miss my Jeep!

My house is a complete disaster. I have not been able to get a handle on it yet! I seriously need to buckle down because this is not okay and it drives me nuts! Yesterday's goal was to clean, but I spent most of the day getting my coupons organized and looking for stuff that I had misplaced. One of these being my target red card! GASP! Luckily I did find it, but rumaging did not help my mess at all. I am going to try to get some stuff done this week in the evenings! It's just so hard to find the time and not easy with a baby who doesn't like to be put down.

So this has pretty much been where I have been. I feel so disorganized! I have a new calander with nothing written down in it, yet so much I need to write down and do. My anxiety has been off the wall lately and I think it's been because we have been so disorganized and crazy. I think I really need a vacation some where! Like somewhere warm! With a fruity frozen drink! Yeah, I will have to keep dreaming about that!

Happy Monday and I hope you will be hearing from me much more soon!

Emily's Consultation

I can't remember if I blogged about this in one of my 10 on Tuesdays, but we referred to a specialist on the shape of Emily's head. We have noticed more and more that she has more of a bulge on the one side of her head and a flat spot on the back right side. It's the way she lays so we even tried switching her bed around and she is still laying to that one side. I figured babies get flat spots and there was nothing to worry about. I also knew that girl friend has a big head so that's probably why it looked weird to me. It wasn't until the doctor pointed out that it may be throwing the symmetry to her face off and making one ear lower, that I realized that this may be a problem. I followed their recommendations and made an appointment for Cranial Technologies for that following Friday.

Let's start off with the fact that the place was an hour and twenty minutes away. Me being me, we left right on time, which traveling on I-95 is not a good idea. We ended up being 20 minutes late! Huge fail! I was so nervous by the time I got there that I probably was a disorganized mess. Luckily they were amazing and took her right back. They started with imaging of her head. It was this huge circle we went and sat in and they put a little stocking over her head and snapped the picture and we were done. That quick snap had a full 360 of her head! I thought that was pretty neat. Even neater was I was emailed all the images and even had one that I can spin around and look at! Technology amazes me sometimes!

Next we went into the room and waited for the doctor to come in. She was super nice and seemed very knowledgeable. She examined Emily's head and also the way she moved. This is where we hit our first bump in the road. I never noticed, but Emily barely turns her head to the left. To the right she turns and looks all over, but not to the left. They said it appears she has stiffness in her neck and it is most likely due to her muscles being tight.  So now they have recommended to her pediatrician that she goes for a physical therapy evaluation. She tends to tilt her head to one side which is also a result of these stiffened neck muscles. She has always screamed at tummy time and where other kids are starting to crawl, she lifts her head and screams. She only rolls to one side and she never rolls back. These are all developmental delays due to her neck. She waves, sits, and does everything like a normal baby so I figured these were just little things she just didn't want to do, but they said she has to work so much harder then the rest of the babies and it is uncomfortable putting strain on something that is already sore and tight. They also said that it can delay her ability to follow and track objects since she can't follow the items past her comfort spot that she perceives it as just disappearing to that one side. But the good news is that this is fixable and will involve some stretches and exercises to get her working those muscles.

She was rated with severe plagiocephaly (medical term for misshapen head). We went over the scans and could really see it there. And though it doesn't look bad in person it is off in the way her skull is forming. As far as the muscles and that bump on her head, these were formed probably before birth while she was laying and developing. She said there is nothing we have done or we can do to change this. She said we are probably noticing it more because of her growth spurts. So along side with the physical therapy we are being recommended for a Doc band treatment. This will be a band that will go on Emily's head to help reform her head. At this age children's heads are pretty moldable. This will help her head reform as she is growing. She will have to wear it 23 hours a day and for 2.5-3.5 months. She will need to go for adjustments and check her growth every other week. It's going to be a long process and a lot of strict guidelines, but they said that this should help her out tremendously, especially with the physical therapy.

 

To be honest I have been pretty depressed about the whole thing and have only told Kenny and my mom about how her appointment went just because I haven't felt like talking about it. I know these are all minor things, but I am sad at the thought of her having to have a helmet and wonder if she is going to hate wearing it. She is a beautiful and sweet baby and she is healthy, which is what I know is the most important thing, but I don't want people looking at her or staring at her or asking questions. Hailey has had a tough time understanding that Sissy needs to wear a band and I worry about her getting upset about it or if she will be embarrassed of her little sister during the time she needs it. I know these all sound crazy, but based off of the support groups and pages I have found, these are all valid thoughts when it comes to your own kid having these issues. Hailey and I have looked at a lot of pictures of children with these bands (they gave us a calender full of DocBand babies!) and ways they decorate them. I also showed Hailey bows that I found on etsy that can attach and swap out with Velcro made specifically with crainal bands in mind. She's coming up with ideas and wants to be a part of decorating it for Emily to make it look special for her. She even looked at little gem stones at the craft store. There are a ton of ideas online and that is something that the doctors encourage to help make it more personal for the children and other children in the household.

Another thing bringing me down about it is the cost. We are in network with this place which is good. The cost is $3800 so by being in network we get it adjusted to $2500. The insurance "fully covers it", but "only pays $700 out lifetime on it". So we will be left with $1800 due at the time of the next fitting. I am still working to pay off the air conditioner and was really hoping to get myself back on my feet, but not with this added expense. I do have a Care Credit card that will give me one year with no interest, but it's still going to be hard to make this work and if we miss the one year deadline then we get all the deferred interest charged to the account. Then also adding on the deductibles for insurance and the cost of physical therapy is stressing me. Kenny and I both agreed that this is what is right for Emily so we will move forward with it. Time is also not on your side with this. The longer it takes the longer the treatment will be needed because their brains and skulls are changing daily. Of course I most likely will be the one paying it so I have been really stressed about it. I just wanted to get myself back to a good place and clearly that won't be happening anytime soon. Medical bills really suck!

So there you have it! That's how little Missy's appointment went. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, I was hoping to have a "oh it will just fix on it's own as she grows", but it did bring some light to how to fix the situations. We are now waiting for the pediatrician to write out the prescription and the insurance has requested a letter saying that it is medically necessary. Once those are gotten then we will be scheduled to come back in and do more 3d imaging to make a mold for her head and then a band will be created for her. After that we will be scheduled for a fitting and that's when our journey will begin.

WW: Santa Picture

Can you believe there is 8 days until Christmas?!?

We did our usual tradition this year, and of course started a new tradition for Miss Emily! We went with my cousin and her little girl to the same Santa that Hailey has seen every year since she was an infant! I say this every year, but I truly love this Santa! The way he looks and the way he acts! Though I will admit, Santa seemed a little grumpy this past weekend. And he also told Hailey he would bring her some craft stuff. Thanks buddy, now I have to get something crafty! All and all, I was super happy with our visit and our picture!

Now if we can just get Christmas to pump it's breaks a little because it is coming WAY to fast!

10 Things on Tuesday

1. I'm having a real hard time being a working mom today. I'm just super sad today and hate knowing my baby is with someone else.

2. I made a rule not to check the scale daily, but if course I've been checking daily recently. I was down yesterday but now I'm back up today even after a very good food day.

3. I need to work out but seriously don't have the energy today.

4. I was home sick yesterday and it was so nice even though my stomach was sick!

5. I am almost done with Hailey for Christmas except for her zoomer zuppie she wants. Of course that's the main thing she wants but it's sold out everywhere at the 29.99 price. I'm not going to stress, I've done this the last couple years and by Christmas time they are everywhere.

6. It took sheer willpower to eat my lunch today and not get Chinese. I wanted it so bad and this place a couple blocks from work makes it so good and cheap!

7. Only Kenny can make a Facebook page for his garage and within an hour have 139 followers and 3 people who have checked in there.

8. I have to do a 10 day heart monitor and they are using a different company. Bad news is the little blackberry monitor died on me around 1pm. So that will be at least 6 hours not recording. Plus my little sticky circles are sticky enough to burn my skin but not to stay on.

9. Christmas cards will be here today! I can't wait to see them!

10. I need to decide, do I go out in the rain and get what I need or do I wait until tomorrow?  Hmmmmm. I know I'll regret not going but I just don't feel like it with the rain.  Decisions decisions!