I had genuine happy feelings tonight.

Let's be real here. I'm a negative pessimist. Misanthropic. I keep a few close. The rest are people that exist in the ether. If we lived near each other, maybe we'd hang out. Hopefully. I'm not that great at keeping up with relationships in general. I get lazy with my friendships and then.. Well. The ones that stick, you know they count. Anyways.  The point is not about that. It's about tonight.

We took Hazel to the Edaville Railroad. It was magic. So many christmas lights. I loved it. I cried happy tears at the lights. I felt feelings that I couldn't control. It was awesome.

It's not that I don't feel things. But I'm a cold New Englander. I keep my feelings close. I keep my walls up. I'm loving in a practical way. I'll make sure you've got clean socks and a warm dinner. I'll make you a sandwich. I'm not mushy... maybe as a girl I was, but not as a lady. Not as a mother.

It catches me, though. Nostalgia is powerful. Add Christmas, and forget it. I can't control that shit. We pulled into the parking lot, and I saw all the lights, and I was done. Warm goo. Mush and heart eyes and fucking twinkly stars. All of it. We rode that slow train around in a loop and it was just magic. Hazel loved it. The whole thing. She walked around, smiled, pointed, wowweed. We took her to the gift shop and bought her some presents from Santa. We took her in the candy store and bought treats (for the car ride home, for mom & dad). We took goofy pictures.

It was all so good. So so good. I was overwhelmed by love and magic and feeling so fucking lucky that we were able to do this tonight. That we can create this cool memories for our daughter. To give her the warm feelings now that will make her nostalgic as an adult.

It's nice to feel those feelings. To feel so happy that I can't keep it at a distant from myself. I'm thankful.

Lots of cliches about time passing

I won't write them, but please know that I am feeling them.

My family is going through some big things right now that I don't feel like I can share publicly, as they are not happening directly to me, but certainly they impact my life, so hence the vagueness. If you, stranger on the internet, are reading this, please shoot good vibes through the ether or say a couple prayers for us, if that's your thing.

Currently, on this monday afternoon, I am listening to my baby cry & cough through her afternoon nap. First bad cold and this is just no fun. Ugh. It would be much easier if I didn't have this shitty mom elbow and a sore throat myself. Every time Hazel wails, Kiki howls. WHY?

I would love a night off..
but I will settle for a microwaved cup of coffee and a grocery store cookie before I go back in and rock my miserable baby back to sleep.

UPDATE: There are actually no cookies left. Trever finished them. ALL I WANTED WAS A COOKIE, MAN.

Wow.

My baby is eight month olds now. She is big. She is funny. She wears sunglasses outside. She eats cheese. So many things. It's amazing to watch her grow and change each day. Her little brain is processing so much. I wonder how she will be when she is one, two, eight, twelve, but at that same time, I wish she was still that tiny little bundle that slept on me. Being a parent is the weirdest thing I have ever done. I feel every feeling all the time. I am the same person I was but I am totally different. I am lonely often but I want to be alone alone which I never am. I want to be more than just a mom but right now all I want is to be a mom. Walking contradiction, always and forever. 

Kiki is seeming older and older each day, too. My poor kitty has tender hips. We have stairs for her to get on the couch and onto the bed. She has a food bowl in each room so she doesn't need to go far if she doesn't feel like it. Her food was discontinued (Canyon River Creek, WHY?) so we've been sampling various foods, trying to find the ones she will eat with her arthritis pills mixed in. Her meowing is out of control, she is SO LOUD. It's so frustrating sometimes, when it's 3 am, or when she manages to wake up Hazel just as she finally goes down for a nap, but I have to remind myself that my beautiful loud cat will not live forever and I need to appreciate every moment with her that I have left. She is seventeen years old now. SEVENTEEN. She has been with through every important moment of my adult life. No cats will ever mean as much to as Kiki and Roo (I miss you, every day, sweet girl), no chance. And of course, there will be other cats in my life, I am sure of that, but these girls have meant the world to me, have been my best friends and confidants, my pillows, my blankets, my babies. So I will do whatever I can to make Kiki's twilight years as comfortable as possible. Great. Now I am crying. 

The first Christmas.

Our holidays involved driving. A lot of it. And a lot of people, all up in Hazel's face, telling her how cute she is. And she is, it's true, but baby girl does NOT care for people to invade her personal space, nor does she care for cutesy loud voices, and quite frankly, older women scare her.  So with that, add in the following things:

-Barking Dogs
-No naps
-a few LOUD family members
-TEETHING (top front teeth)
-A cold (for her, for Trever, and now for me)

And you get a hectic five days of chaos and crying. That's right, FIVE days. Next year, that ain't happening, no sir, sorry family. I'm not sure how it is that we are expected to drive all over, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that we live in apartment and not a house, and the people with houses have more space? but also dogs. And it's not that I hate dogs, but I don't really like dogs, especially when they bark and jump and smell.  I don't want everyone to come over here, either. But perhaps we can combine visits a little better next year so that we aren't driving down to the south shore three days in a row.

As far as gift giving, we gave out magnets of our little goon's face. They were a hit. We didn't have much money to do things for people, and really, no one NEEDS anything. So the only actually presents that we gave were to the kids (there are two aside from Hazel) and a little photo album to Trever's grandmother. I wish people didn't give us gifts. I know that sounds ungrateful, but we just don't have the space for more knick knacks or things to hang on the wall, and also, I like to pick that stuff. It's my space, you know? I don't want my surroundings to be based on feelings of guilt over gifts. Does that make sense? I get it, it's nice to give gifts, but I feel terrible creating a donation pile right after Christmas. I would much rather people just keep their money, or give us $10 to put in the bank for Hazel, instead of buying her terrible clothes made of fabric that I don't like touching. It's not like I can tell people this, either. I can tell my mom, and I HAVE told my mom, but clearly it hasn't sunk in.

I swear, my family is TRYING to make me a hoarder, like they all basically are.  IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, PEOPLE.

Other stuff happened that was also dramatic/traumatic over the past couple weeks that I won't get into, but everything seems to be calming down a bit, for which I am thankful. We have big plans for New Years, to stay home and play Monopoly, and I couldn't be happier. I love my little family and I can't imagine ringing in the start of 2014 with anyone else.

Some Lists (I hate lists.)

Things Hazel is working on:

Sitting without toppling over
Napping on a schedule
Going to sleep without my nipple in her mouth
High Fives
Drinking from a cup
Drinking from a bottle
(Clearly she has a nipple dependency. MY nipple... which she is now biting. OW.)

Things Kiki is working:

Eating
Sleeping
Trying to get that hairball out
Getting more attention than Hazel

Things I should be working on but I'm not, really:

Organizing all the tiny clothes which are overtaking our apartment
Figuring out a "holiday" photo (why does this annoy me so much?)
Our Christmas Stockings, which I am hand-sewing because I am an asshole
Etsy Shop update
Some sort of exercise routine

Things I have managed to accomplish this week:

Ate a lot of oatmeal
Kept up on diaper laundry (but no other laundry)
Paid bills, paid overdue parking tickets (we suck)
Ordered new carseat for giant baby
Kept my baby & my old lady cat alive and mostly happy for another week
Showered three times
Bought moccasins (FOR HAZEL, NOT FOR ME.)

Super exciting, I tell you. Life is a carnival.

Last night I had a dream that I was on this big wooden raft with my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and Trever. We were in the middle of a body of water, hanging out I guess, for fun. Maybe the ocean, a choppy bay, with water that was clear on the surface for a foot until it got dark. Hazel wasn't with us, but we had the baby monitor. My mother went out on a float, and had the monitor, and dropped it in the water. I panicked at first but then I remember we have baby monitor apps on our iphones (which wouldn't have mattered in real life, since we would have had to set up one phone with her for it to work, but hey, it's a dream). Then my sister & brother-in-law decided to jump off the raft together, thus shifting the balance of the raft, so that both of their phones fell off into the water. I went to grab my phone, lost my grip, and somehow dropped it. Into the water. I scrambled to grab it but I was too slow. I watched it sink. My mom still had her flip phone. Trever still had his android. But these things were useless to me and I felt so helpless.

THIS DREAM IS SO IMPORTANT AND GROSS TO ME. Clearly it's a message about my phone and how attached I am to it.

Escapes.

One thing I like to do when I need a break is to go on craigslist and look up other places to live. Sometimes, it brings me down. Way way down. Cost of living is just so damn expensive here, and it can be incredibly frustrating to see how much more we could get for our money in a different state, or even just a different part of this state. Of course, who knows how much money we would actually have if we moved elsewhere. It's all about connections and networking and putting yourself out there when you are self-employed as Trever is, but also, carpenters can really work anywhere when you think about it. So this morning, with both babies snoozing, I went on and perused the listings in Maine. I will never leave New England, I can almost 100% guarantee that, and while I sometimes daydream about living in Vermont, I think Maine is really the place I want to be. Having spent time there every summer since I was 7, it just feels like a second home to me. We have friends in Portland. It's not completely out of our reach, to relocate there at some point. Not NOW, but maybe in a couple years, why not?

There are so many cute single family homes for rent. With porches and BACKYARDS. Some even have scenic views. If we went further up coast, we could get even more for our money. Farmhouses, or a dock. I even found an A-FRAME for rent! AN A-FRAME, people! Gahhhhh.

Don't get me wrong. I love living in Massachusetts for many, many reasons. And I think if we had a backyard, I'd probably be less inclined to want to move. I don't need to be in a house, just us. I grew up in a duplex, in a neighborhood with lots of other duplexes, and it was great. BUT we did have a backyard. It didn't have much grass, and it wasn't very big, but it was away from the street and I had a swing set and sandbox. I want these things for my little girl, and I hope it's something we can provide for her sooner than later.

Anyways. Today, instead of bringing me down, it's got me motivated to get our life on track so that in a few years, we can have the space we want/need. And until then, we will make due with our nice cozy apartment that is luckily within walking distant to a playground.

I hear a baby blabbering now, so I guess that's all I've got.