Mustache Bash!

Today I was looking over some past posts and realized that I never blogged about Jacob's first birthday. GASP! Haha. Very belated but I am gonna blog about it anyways!

Jacob's party was planned for 2 days after his real birthday (May 18th) on Steve's birthday (May 20th). I really wanted to have his party at a park but seeing as it was May and we were not guaranteed nice weather, we decided to plan on having it at my parent's house (even though Steve assured me that it had "never" rained on his birthday before and therefore it would not rain this year). They have a large yard so if the weather was nice the kids could have their squirt guns and bubbles party favours at the beginning of the party and play outside, and if the weather sucked we would stay inside. Our house is way too small to accommodate all the parents and kids who we invited.

It POURED on the day of the party (ahem STEVE...jk)! I had put together some mustache decor for our little man's special day. He wore a tie onesie but wouldn't keep his mustache on...surprise surprise. We had mustaches for everyone who wanted to wear one, mustache cups, I made a banner and some signs with mustache stamps. I had a lot of fun planning and making stuff! That was probably more fun for me than the actual party. I am very comfortable hosting and I get stressed and hot and overwhelmed so the actual party was a little much for me but I LOVED planning it all!

Jacob seemed to enjoy being the center of attention (like he always does). We didn't get around to opening all the gifts because Jacob wasn't overly interested. But boy oh boy did the kid get a big loot of gifts!

Very special day for our very special little man, Jacob! (ok...maybe the party was more for us than for him since he had no idea what was going on. ;) haha)

Fibromyalgia

A lot of people don't know that I have fibromyalgia. Maybe you have heard about it on a commercial for some drug. Maybe you know someone who has it. Maybe this is the first time you have heard the word. Even though I was diagnosed years ago I still feel like I have a lot to learn about it. It is classified as "long-term, body-wide pain". Here is a little bit of my story with fibro.

After high school I started to have a lot of body ache. There would be times when the pain in my legs was so bad that I couldn't walk or the pain in my arms would be so bad that I was unable to carry anything or move my arms much. I always referred to this pain as "growing pains" because my parents had called it that when I was a kid and it is a similar but more intense version of that childhood pain. I basically wrote the pain off as being normal for a long time. One day (years later) Steve said to me "how can you still be having growing pains when you are in your 20s?" I don't know how I had never thought of that! Steve witnessed many evenings of me lying on the couch or in bed in tears because the pain was too much for me to handle. He convinced me that it was time to see a doctor.

My doctor talked to me extensively and ran a lot of tests. After a few appointments he told me that I have FM (fibromyalgia). He gave me a huge book to read and sent me on my way. I am not good with medical jargon so I only read sections of the book that I was really interested in, such as sleep. I have been a bad sleeper for as long as I can remember and this book basically linked my sleep issues with fibro. My anxiety and (sometimes) depression was also linked to fibro. And of course my pain. Since being diagnosed my pain levels have fluctuated a lot. There are seasons in my life where my pain is minimal. I can go for 2 weeks with very little pain. Other times I am in pain all day every day.

Usually the pain I experience starts in my knees or elbows and then spreads up and down my leg or arm. Most of the time I only have pain in one leg or one arm at a time. The pain is a deep aching pain that can start out dull and and gets more intense over time. Once it gets to be really bad (like barely-able-to-breathe-through-the-pain kind of bad) it goes away quickly. The bad pain normally lasts no more than an hour or so. The build up to that bad pain can be 20 mins or 6 hours...I never know what to expect. It feels like the muscle/s are being squeezed as hard as they can be. As if I am having a major muscle cramp. Moving makes the pain worse.

I am lucky that usually this pain only comes on in the evenings or in the night. I almost never have this pain in the morning. I have general back, neck and hip pain but that is just "normal" to me.

I talked with my doctor about lots of pain management options. I tried a few of them too. Nothing was effective enough that didn't give me unpleasant side affects for me to continue on the drug. I can take Tylenol or Advil every time I have pain but I would be taking it way too often and eventually it would lose its effectiveness as well. I choose to take meds when I have pain during the day and need to be able to function better than I am in that moment. It never takes the pain away but sometimes it dulls the pain enough for me to get by. My doctor also recommended that I work only part time so that my body can rest more. I worked 4 days a week from then on until having Jacob.

I have been having more pain lately than I usually do. The worst part about that is that my energy levels are WAY down! Today has been particularly bad. I did a TON of stuff this morning and I clearly overdid it because I paid for it majorly this afternoon. By around 11:30 I was feeling my right leg start to ache. I went to a friends at 3pm and by then it was slowly getting worse. I felt very low on energy. By 5pm I was lying on the floor in my kitchen listening to the timer go off on my oven and didn't know how I was going to get up and turn it off and take my food out. I knew I had to feed Jacob and I knew that continuing to lie there was not an option. The pain was almost at its worst and I knew that it wouldn't be long before I would really be unable to deal with Jacob. I did my best to feed him while sitting in a chair. My neighbour knocked on my door and I made the poor decision of getting up, going down my stairs, out to my garage and getting him the zap strap he was needing. By the time I was walking up the stairs I couldn't hide my limp and I was crying. I came inside and crumbled on my couch bawling my eyes out waiting for the climax of pain to be over. I managed to get up, get J out of his high chair and lie back down but I made it so much worse! This is when having a kid and having fibro don't mix. By 6:30 I was feeling a lot of relief. Now it is 7:30 and although I still have pain and don't want to walk I am ok. By 8:30/9 I will probably be feeling fine.

There is a little bit more of a glimpse into my life and a little bit of knowledge for you as to what fibromyalgia is and how it can affect people.

Am I failing?

Last night a friend sent me a link to a blog post. It is titled "Dear sweet mom who feels like she is failing". Sigh. Immediately upon reading the title I was in tears. I do feel like I am failing on a daily basis. I know my kid is healthy, clean (well as clean as you can expect a 15 month old boy to be who plays outside everyday), fed, changed and relatively happy...but regardless I feel like I have failed him. You see I have a bad attitude. I have SUCH a hard time enjoying playing with him, going places with him and just doing the day to day mundane things. My bad attitude all stems from fear. Fear of a meltdown. Fear of drawing attention to myself and him in a negative way. I don't want others to think that I am failing. I don't want to be judged by them. I will instantly assume that I am being judged if Jacob is fussy, crying or tantrumming in public. I also fear that people will judge me for what he wears, how much he talks, how i do or don't punish or what I do or don't feed him. I stress about what he eats A LOT! In fact I probably think about his food more than I think about anything else all day. Between his 3 meals and 3 snacks everyday it feels like a full time job.

I also feel like I am failing to keep my house clean. It's clean...but not white glove clean. Please don't look at my blinds or I may die of absolute embarrassment. Sure I could clean them, but I don't want to. I don't feel like I have the energy to.

I also feel like I am failing at feeding Steve and me. Because I put so much thought into Jacob's food I often forget to plan meals for Steve and I. We don't eat as a family during the week because Steve isn't home early enough from work for that to happen. He usually gets home just before Jacob goes to bed or after he is in bed. Therefore Jacob doesn't eat the same dinner as us. Steve and I have dinner together once Jacob is in bed. I am SO bad at planning ahead for meals...and thawing meat is pretty important if you want dinner (at least it is for Steve since he is a HUGE carnivore). (Also I feel the constant need to defend myself and the choices that I make...like I feel the need to tell you that I know Jacob should eat with us as a family since it creates a better relationship with food and a better understanding of meals BUT I also need time with Steve and dinner is the only way that happens consistently.)

...anyway...after reading the blog post I felt a little less alone and I feel like I need to give myself a little more slack. Going back to work will be a bit of an escape from sitting in my house and seeing all the things that I am "failing" at.

You should take a gander...it's a good one.
Read blog post here

the dreaded car

jacob has hated the car since his first car ride. no joke. we never considered taking him for car rides as a baby to put him to sleep. we loathed taking him in the car because he would cry and scream and be miserable. i find it close to impossible to block out the crying when driving. not only does it get under my skin but it creates a lot of anxiety for me. he will now cry until he vomits which is absolutely awful for someone who has a phobia of barf. i basically stopped taking long car rides without having another person in the car who can distract jacob....yeah...it was getting ridiculous. about a month ago i had planned to go down to Seattle to visit my grandma and knew that i needed something to distract jacob or my mom and i would be pulling our hair out. i borrowed a friend's portable DVD player and some sesame street DVDs. WOW!! jacob barely made a peep. it was a very peaceful drive.
so now i want a DVD player for the car but we can't afford one. thankfully i have a husband who knew how important it was for me to be able to go places with J and have him be calm. he decided to try and get some cartoons on our tablet. steve spent HOURS on it. he had a few friends (who are very educated on computer stuff) help him and finally he was able to get some sesame street episodes on our tablet. yesterday i drove to abbotsford and back and jacob watched sesame street the whole time. so peaceful! i know a lot of people don't agree with tv in the car but i don't care at this point. the stress of driving with J was too much that i was avoiding all drives that were longer than 10 mins. now i can visit family and friends without having to pull over a million times, without having to clean up barf and without having to feel anxious the whole drive. it's worth it to me.

gluten free...

as of wednesday i have been on a gluten free diet. why? i don't think anyone wants to really know the details but basically i have had an unpredictable/sensitive digestive system for as long as i can remember and as of about a month ago it has gotten extremely worse! i went to my doctor on tuesday and after chatting with him about all of my "issues" he told me that it is likely that i have celiac disease and would need to be on a gluten free diet for life. eeekkkkk!!!! i was told to get a blood test done and that he would call me with the results. i decided to have pizza for dinner that night and see how my body reacted. HOLY MOLY, BAD IDEA!!!! i was up ALL night from 10:30pm-6:30am sick! it was AWFUL! the next morning i got my blood test and decided i was starting the gluten free diet right then and there. man this diet is brutal! i had no idea that gluten is in basically everything....like literally EVERYTHING! i would never have guessed that french fries and potato chips would be a no-no. it's a big learning curve but i know i can't continue on feeling the way i have been feeling. so hopefully the switch over will be worth it.

since i cut out gluten 4 days ago i have had ZERO symptoms! i have felt relatively normal...until today that is. today i was hit again! i was so confused because i know i didn't eat anything with gluten. i did some more reading. turns out that it takes 6-8 weeks for all of the gluten to get out of your tissue and make you relatively symptom free and another 6-8 weeks for the intestine to heal. i could be looking at almost 2 more months of feeling nasty. shoot.

of course there is still the possibility that i don't have celiac disease. i don't want to have it, but i want to be better. if the test comes back negative then i guess i can add gluten back in and see what happens. if it is positive i have learned that a biopsy of the intestine is still needed to confirm. booo! not sure i want to do that.

one awesome thing that i learned yesterday is the Boston Pizza has gluten free pizza! so amazing! if i do end up gluten free for life at least i can eat there! :)

Feeding tactics

jacob has decided that he hates eating. he screams and cries whenever food comes his way. he will be starving but when he is in the highchair he reaches for everything in sight and won't eat. we tried powering through the crying but he either gets so upset that he barfs or he just won't stop crying. shoveling the food in his mouth while he cries also leads to barfing. we decided to try more solids (even though previously he always gagged and barfed on any food that wasn't puréed. we figured that if he is barfing during most meals from crying we might has well try the solids cause it all equals barf). there was lots of gagging at first but slowly he was able to handle some solid food without up-chucking. oh progress!! :)

he will eat solids without crying because he really enjoys feeding himself the only problem is that he has such a short attention span for food. he will literally eat about 10 small bites of food and then starts crying again and whining and reaching for anything he can see. we are so sick of meals being like this that we have caved and now try and get him watching tv while we feed him or read him stories while he eats (which is his favourite thing ever!). we are at a complete loss as to how to get past this. it's not that he isn't hungry. he is hungry! he is sometimes absolutely starving. in fact if he is interested in a show or a book he will eat loads of food. i don't get him and this whole eating thing. we have even started to have to feed him in the night lately because he can't make it to his morning bottle or breakfast. He is up so much in the night crying and if we feed him a bottle he will actually sleep until 6:15ish (which for him is sleeping in).

here are some pics of him eating while watching tv or being read to.

the question everyone is asking me

jacob turned one on may 18th. it's still hard to believe that he is already one and yet i also find it hard to believe that he has only been a part of our lives for one year. funny how that works. ;) i feel like as soon as i returned to work and J had his birthday i have been getting asked almost daily when we will have a second baby. this is a tough question for me. i am never sure how to answer it. don't get me wrong, i don't mind being asked i just don't know how to respond when i myself don't know the answer.

this year with jacob has been insanely rewarding and yet extremely hard on me. i have learned a lot about myself and honestly i have really let myself down this year. i had HIGH expectations for myself as a mom. i have worked with babies, kids and teens for YEARS and felt like i was as ready as i could possibly be for being a mom. WRONG! nothing can really prepare you for this switch. i have learned that i am a very selfish person. i like time to myself, time with friends and time with steve. i have felt like i no longer have much of any of that....or at least not to the extent that i want/feel i need. i have worked hard to change this about myself but it hasn't come easily. there really is not enough time in the day. currently work is my time for me and my time to be with friends. time with steve? that doesn't happen very much. even for our 5 year anniversary (FIVE YEARS PEOPLE.....seems like a big anniversary to me) all we had time for was dinner (and it sucked). i really enjoy time away from the house with just steve and i and that barely ever happens.

i thought i would love sitting on the floor with my little guy and playing with him all day long. again i am disappointed with myself because after i have built towers for him to knock over a million times and had the same "my baby elephant" book passed to me 20 times to be read i am finished playing and want to do something else. i feel crummy for being bored. i feel frustrated when he stands next to me grabbing my leg whining because i put the book out of reach.i feel down right angry at myself for not sucking it up and getting myself back on the floor with my kid and reading the book again until HE decides that it is enough. why can't i just enjoy all of this more? why can't i really take in these moments with him and just be happy to be reading to him while he still wants me to?

i can't stop looking around my house and seeing the MILLION things that need to be done. the dishes, cleaning bottles, dusting, mopping the floors, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, cleaning windows, laundry....it never ends and i feel like i can never be ahead of the game.

i feel like i am constantly second guessing whether or not i am feeding him a balanced diet, feeding him enough, is he getting enough sleep, should i let him cry, should i scoop him up as soon as he cries, do i play with him enough, do i carry him enough, do i show him enough affection, am i teaching him anything, am i expecting too much or too little from him, does he spend enough time outside, does he even like me....i could go on forever. seriously. i never feel at peace. peace is what i crave.

back to the reason i started this post...do i feel like i am ready for another kid....NOT AT ALL. i know it wouldn't be fair to jacob right now. he doesn't have my full attention and he is the only kid i have. how can i divide the attention he does get with another child when i already feel guilty about not spending enough quality time with him. i feel too tense, too stressed, too anxious to have jacob AND a baby. i remember how consuming jacob was as a newborn. how much he cried. how much his health issues scared me and stressed me out. i know i don't have it in me to do that again and take care of jacob the way i want to at the same time

i have a big fear. what if i never feel ready for another? i don't want jacob to be an only child. but if i won't ever feel ready then i will just have to force myself to do it so that he won't be an only child. and if i am going to have to force myself at some point then maybe i should just do it soon so that he will be close in age to his brother or sister....ok....that statement scares me a lot! i know i can't handle being pregnant again "soon". is this normal? do other first time moms feel this way? does there really actually come a time when i will feel "ready"? why does it seem like other moms around me can have a second baby soon after their first and not seem to be scared and stressed? eeeekkkkk!!!! this whole having babies thing is a pretty big deal.