Good Thing I Took Management In College

I have often (jokingly) asked Jason "where would you be without me?!"  Although, I already know his answer... the same place he was before I came along.  Doing his own laundry, paying the bills, making his own meals, cleaning up after himself (?)...

But now...  I am the manager of this house.  That's not to say that I am the "boss."  I am a manager.  I manage the bills, the inflow and outflow of Jason's income (he makes the money, I spend it), plan the weekly menu, write the weekly grocery lists, do the grocery shopping (Jason usually joins me and pushes Elise in the cart), wash the laundry, make sure the sheets are clean, make sure we have toilet paper, toothpaste, shampoo, etc.  I clip coupons, make decisions about the interior design of our home,I know when anyone in this family eats, sleeps, or poops, I keep up with everyone's appointments... you get the point.

But, I also manage Elise.  Diaper changes, nap time, bath time, play time, doctor appointments, feedings, preparing her food in mass quantities, keeping an inventory of her necessities.

Most days, I feel pretty awesome about the fact that I manage to keep track of all these things and not have my head spinning around like a scene from The Exorcist.  But, then the other small percentage of the time I feel like I can't make one more decision.  If we go out to eat, Jason refuses to decide where to go and my decision making has reached it's brink.  We will proceed to go back and forth because I physically cannot pick for him what he wants to eat.... I already do that when I sit down to make the weekly menu with little or no help from him.  If I say "I don't care" it's because I don't.  I've spent all day caring about everything else on God's green earth that picking a restaurant is at the bottom of my to-care-about list.  Then comes the complaining... "I never make any decisions around this house."

I would love for Jason to decide what we are going to eat for dinner every night, decide what Elise is going to eat for all of her meals, decide what she should wear everyday, decide which bills need to be paid today or can wait until the next pay check, decide on activities for Elise and us, and so on.

I stay home with Elise everyday.  We rarely "go" anywhere.  In all the hours of the day, the busiest part is between 5-9pm.  Jason comes home from work between 5 and 6pm, I start cooking dinner, we both try to eat while watching Elise (who is into everything), then I have to make Elise something to eat, feed her, get the kitchen cleaned up (luckily I get help from Jason when he's home), I give her a bath, get her ready for bed, nurse her, and put her down.  I'm not really sure why all that has to be crammed into 4 hours when the rest of our day is a much more relaxed pace.

Now let me explain how things go when Jason isn't home, like last night for instance...

I am cutting up raw chicken to cook dinner, Elise is having a fit because she doesn't want to swing, I can't immediately pick her up because I'm up to my wrists in salmonella.  I finally am able to set her on the floor while I continue to cook.  She's opening my cabinets, pulling all my trash bags out and onto the floor, playing in the dogs water bowl, managed to get her hands on a disgusting fly swatter, hid my cell phone from me, called someone from the house phone, and left her paci right in my path between the sink and the stove so it would ram up the bottom of my foot.  All while I continue to cook dinner and pray the house doesn't burn down.

I sat down to eat and put Elise in her walker so she could scream until I was done eating.  Then it was time for her to eat.  I just left the kitchen a mess so that Jason could help himself when he got home and I could get Elise fed.  Most nights that he doesn't come home, I don't bother to cook and sometimes I don't bother to eat.  If I do, it's at 10pm after Elise has gone to bed and I can eat a bowl of cereal.

I wonder if the entire house would fall to the ground if I quit micromanaging everything?  If I quit caring about the laundry or our dinner menu would we starve and be forced to wear our clothes over and over again?  If I just blew off picking up the toys everyday would anyone notice?  Would I be more inclined to make those less important decisions about going out to eat or what to do on a Saturday night?  Would Jason start making decisions or managing aspects of our home life besides the yard?  No one will probably ever know because I'm too much of a control freak to let everything roll with the punches in fear of the world coming to an end because we're out of toilet paper and milk.

10 Month Photos

The 10 month photos I took didn't really turn out either.  She was NOT into a photo shoot today, but I gave it a whirl.

She wasn't crawling around everywhere and getting into everything, but she wasn't smiling or looking at the camera either.... oh well.  Some days chickens, some days feathers.  Maybe I'll try again before she turns 11 months old!

9 Month Photos

Elise's 9 month at home photo shoot did not turn out very well.  She was crawling all over the place and playing with her toys.  I thought I would try again later, but later came and went and she turned 10 months old.

Waking Up to A Nudist

Dear Elise,

I very much appreciate the amazing sleep you let us both have this morning.  Sleeping until 11am is something I haven't done since I was in college after a night of binge drinking.  I forgot how much I loved it!  It surely isn't right that I can go to bed at 10:30pm and sleep until 11am... of course that's not straight sleeping, I was up with you for about an hour or so this morning at 7am.

When I picked you up out of your crib at 7am your arm was through the neck hole of your pj's.  I assume they are getting too small for your long frame.  I put your arm back in, you ate, snuggled with me, and snoozed off and on until Daddy left to go to work.  Then back in your crib you went.  I didn't hear a peep out of you until a few minutes before 11am.  I heard you begin to stir, so I slowly drug myself out of bed while staring at the clock in disbelief.  I abruptly snapped out of my groggy state when I walked into your room to find this.

Those would be the jammies you slept in last night.  Next to the jammies....

And I must point out how happy and proud you were....

Dear Lord, please do not let this be foreshadowing that I am going to raise a nudist!

Patty Cake

You may want to turn your volume down before you watch this video... my voice will make your skin crawl!

Juice-a-holics Annonymous

Hello, my name is Elise and I'm a juice-a-holic.

I must have my prune juice as soon as I wake up and drink it all day long. 

Update On Returning To Work

I previously posted about possibly returning to work part-time.  I was able to get in touch with a lady that would be able to keep Elise, so Jason and I set up a time to go to her house to visit with her.  The last time Jason and I went to meet a potential baby sitter I had an emotional break down in her drive way after we were done visiting with her.  I'm sure it was in part, due to the crazy postpartum hormones, but the other part was anxiety over leaving my brand new baby.  So, this time I knew would be different.  It was only part-time and she was older.

We went and met Darcie.  She has a 4 year old and an almost 3 year old.  She doesn't keep many other kids, just a couple a few days a week.  She has a large, clean home and informed me she's a big fan of Lysol... music to my ears since I'm borderline OCD with germs.  Everything was going great, I wasn't having an overflow of emotions until.....................................

Jason told her and her friend (who happened to stop by the same time we did) that I had never left Elise anywhere and that she has been by my side for the past 10 months.  Then the tears start flowing...  They both said it was ok because they could relate and understood how hard it would be to leave her for the first time. 

We left her house with the plan of me bringing Elise over today for me to start back to work.  We were driving down the road, and I didn't break down and start bawling and pleading with Jason to not make me leave her.  Everything seemed on the up and up.  I was comfortable with leaving her with Darcie, Elise would get some interaction with other kids, and I'd be making a little extra money. 

I went by the doctor's office to talk to her about what I had found out.  She had wanted to know what I came up with about 5 days prior to, so I was in kind of a time crunch.  I did my best to find a sitter asap so that I could help them out by coming back to work.  She told me she would have to call me.  So I waited 2 days before I heard anything from her.  When she finally did call, she informed me that the girl who had taken my place had some issues going on.  I guess they were planning on letting her go and bringing me on to share the job with the other part-time girl.  Then she said they were going to give her another chance and wouldn't be needing me after all.  Then she went on to say she didn't know how long that would last and she might be getting in touch with me again soon.  Needless to say, I wasn't very happy after I had gone through all the trouble to do them a favor. 

So, I won't be going back to work.... at least not there anyway.