Another Day

Sometimes I wonder how full-time, have no help at all, stay at home moms do this job at all. Here I am, with 15 hours a week worth of help, weekly date night, and a part-time job in my chosen field that gets me out of the house another 15 hours a week and I am still struggling to deal effectively with 1 small 11 month old boy. Not to mention that I have an extremely supportive husband who is only right down the road and who will come home to help out whenever asked (usually). I honestly think that I might run away if I had to stay with Collin all day every day! I know I've said this before and I think it freaks The Hens out when I mention it, but I don't think I'm cut out for motherhood about half of the time. The other half of the time life is great, but the boy can really be a tough cookie at times. He's been a bit on the aggressive side lately too. I mean, if you could even say an 11 month old could be aggressive. I'm not sure about that, but Collin has been pinching, scratching, gouging, hair pulling, and biting us QUITE A BIT lately. We've been trying to be consistent about our response to him when he does this stuff, but frankly he seems to be getting a real kick out of it. I mentioned to CJ the other day that I feel a general sense of defeatism about myself lately. I can't get on a real routine with Collin, I can't stay on top of household duties, the thought of the holidays overwhelms me, my files at work have been untouched for weeks, I can't stay on a healthy eating plan for more than 2 weeks at a time, yada, yada, yada.

OK...so that's my whine for the day. It's off my chest and on to other things now.

Vaccinations: These went off without a hitch. Collin was pretty pissed, but he seemed over it after 5 minutes. We'll see how round 2 goes in a month

The Quest for the perfect Santa shot: We've seen 4 Santas so far and Collin has been holding his own. After his melt down on our first attempt, he seems pretty cool with the chubby man in the red suit. However, he has not really, truly cracked a smile EVEN ONCE. I also took him to Picture People last week and again, we got some awesome shots, but there was not a toothy grin to be found anywhere. We will continue to visit Santa as the opportunities arise.

The Quest for Mary Poppins: I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I think we've found her! She starts "training" with Amanda on the 11th. I never should have wasted our money on the agency...I found her on my own.

Convincing Amanda she doesn't need to return to college and that Collin will forget her after 1 week: This one is going nowhere.