He's almost 5 months old!

Really, where does time go? Even though I have devoted myself to sucking up every single second of babydom, my little chunk is growing up.

Nico (as we call him, also known as Nico Chico) is a bouncing 19 pounds at almost 5 months. To say he is difficult to carry around would be a massive understatement. My wrists ache from carpal tunnel! Not kidding! He was 15.6 at our 2 month appointment, and my wonderful Dr. suggested that he was being served a bit too much 'whip cream' as opposed to milk. He does like to eat, that is for sure.

He is such a happy baby, always smiling (unless he's teething) and just being a sweetie in general. He loves his brothers and sister, and he also loves his Daddy which is new for us. Our babies always wanted mommy all the time, but Nico loves his dad. I think it's because Jason really takes care of him, plays with him, and doesn't want to miss him being a baby the way he did with the other 3.

C, N, & J are all doing well in school. I had a momentary freak out about swine flu and literally pulled them all from school for 4 days until they got the h1n1 shot. J has asthma, so I could not take any chances.

Halloween is over and we started decorating for Christmas today. I had to pull 10 big huge boxes out of the crawl space and haul them upstairs by myself. Stressful. Kind of sucks the joy of everything.

I have started another blog at http://www.shellywutke.blogspot.com, but it's for the purpose of marketing writing. I'm still freelancing on Odesk, and it's about all I can handle right now. Of course I have big dreams, but I'm learning that dreams can get put on hold, no matter how old you are. I am envious occasionally, because I see several of my kidswap friends doing so well with photography and it's so great to see moms getting out there and doing what they are best at. My time will come...or it won't. Either way I'm blessed with my family, and even when I get overwhelmed and depressed I tell myself everyday how lucky I am to have them. I really do love to write, so I will just keep writing and see what happens.

I was thinking about Kidswap the other day, because I have to keep explaining the twitter name. Still not sure what to do with it. I'm thinking that permanently closing it would be the best, or starting a blog on the main site and just letting people sell if they want to. It has long since been over there, and it's really sad. I enjoyed it. I miss my kidswap friends! Luckily I can peek in on some of them on Twitter, but not having facebook and the forum makes me miss out on others.

Covered in kids

I am now a mom to 4, and wow, this is different.  

Nicolas is such a sweet little man.  He basically eats, sleeps, and poops.  We find he poops right after we change his diaper, then he poops again. 

J has been off work since I had him, and I think he's ready to go back.  Not one for staying home with the kids, he's stressed just being around them all day.  It makes me kind of sad. 

Here's a pic or 2.

Long time, no blog

It's been a long time since I've updated.  I don't seem to have the time to get to my computer these days, and my fingers are really swollen, so it makes it uncomfortable to actually sit down and type. I miss my real hands and legs.  These just don't belong to me. 

Update: Baby

2 weeks until my due date.  Doc thought the little turkey would have arrived by now.  I'm 1cm, fully effaced, and ready to go, but no baby yet.  Just lots of contractions and most of them painful.  I can't wait to meet you baby, come on out!!

Update: Kids

Jack spent 5 hours in the ER this morning.  Turns out that a blister he had on his ankle (from his sandal strap) developed into a full blown staph infection.  It was white with purple, and when he woke up this morning and told me he had an owie on his foot, he followed that up by throwing up everywhere.  We saw what we were dealing with, threw him in the car, and went straight to the hospital.  Good thing too, because he needed IV antibiotics and IV to stop the throwing up.  Poor little man took his blood work and IV like a pro, but didn't enjoy the lancing of the blister.  It must have been horrible, he wouldn't even let me near it today.  It seems much better already though, and he's on antibiotics for 7 days now. 

It seems everyone gets to go to the hospital except me!  2 weeks ago J ended up there with chest pains and upper abdominal pains.  They didn't know what caused it, but I'm guessing anxiety.  He called me while I was at gymnastics with Jack, and he couldn't talk or breathe so I called an ambulance.  Scary stuff!  He's had a lot of stress lately.

Update: Everything else

A few days ago a guy just walked into our yard when the kids and I were back there and started grilling me about the local of my tenants.  He then ordered me to get him a piece of paper so he could leave a note, and after I refused, he stomped off and was generally very menacing.  He really freaked me out.  Turns out he is someone who thinks that one of the tenants keyed his car.  He came back and banged on the door again, but she wouldn't answer.   Then last night at 1 am, 5 guys came into our yard and threw huge rocks at the window of the suite.  I mean huge rocks.  They actually destroyed the frame of the window.  We have a contractor friend coming to look at it tomorrow and give us an assessment on the cost of repairs.  There is no way in the world I am claiming it on my home insurance.  Nope, sorry, she can pay for this herself.  

We plan on giving them notice of eviction with cause as of tomorrow.  This is ridiculous.  I do not feel safe in my yard, nor can I let the kids play back there while I cook dinner, etc. anymore.  Every time the gate crashes open or closed I jump and run.  How fair is that? I didn't do anything to anyone.  She knows how angry we are, and she's trying to be overly nice, but sorry, I can't do this anymore.  If we don't ask her to leave now, she will literally never move out and we will be saddled with this situation forever.  Hopefully once they leave, the problems stop. 

So just waiting for baby, waiting for school to end, and looking forward to a nice summer.  

So swollen

I am so swollen, I literally have a hard time using my computer.  I think I've added 5 pounds of water in the past week.  My fingers look like sausage.  My legs look unnatural.  I'm just really uncomfortable, and I'm only 32 weeks.  I've done really well up until about the past week. 

Last night I woke up to go to the bathroom, and I couldn't get my balance.  I crashed into the wall and barely made it back to bed. I thought I was just tired, but it happened every time I got out of bed.  I was really dizzy this morning too, and now I have a bad headache.  What on earth??  This is all new. 

I'm still trying to get organized for baby, but I am thinking that I won't be ready before the big arrival.  I'm usually ready before this, maybe I'm in denial! 

Sun, is that you?

I'm so blown away by the warm weather that I honestly don't care that I only have winter maternity clothes.  I think I have 3 tank tops and a pair of shorts, but whatever.  It's only 12 weeks away and I can start working on getting my body back. 

We've had more stress at home recently. Hubby is either going to get fired or quit his job this week.  Bad blowout with his boss over his extra work load and lack of pay, and although I don't think either of them handled it very well, I can't see him continue to work for this guy anymore.  It's been 9 years, and I can't say that there have been very many minutes of it that I have liked.  It's rare to say that you've been through it all because of your husband's job, but I really have.   I'm at the point where I just want it to be over, and have been at this point for years.  It's taken him a lot longer to get there, but when his boss just randomly pulled his raise with no explanation and didn't feel the need to discuss it?  It kind of went downhill from there. 

I worry about him being unemployed with 3 kids and one on the way.  I know we'll be ok for awhile, but the fear of it is keeping me up at night.  Last night I woke up at midnight with really bad heartburn, and was so panicky that I didn't get back to sleep until after 2 am.  I seem to wake up with a lurch and panic immediately.  Not good for baby, and not good for me either. 

I would look forward to him being done with this job if he had something else lined up.  It's that worry that makes me stress.   We pay out so much just for him to work though, that even if he takes a big paycut, it won't be that bad for us.  He just needs to find something. 

I am looking forward to getting rid of his 2 cell phones.  They ring in the morning, at night, and on weekends.  These people have no sense of time.  

Depression

Wow, I hate to say it, but I never thought that depression would find me during pregnancy.  I always seem to develop postpartum, but that's after baby is born.   This time I have wild mood swings and am generally very unhappy.  Of course, I feel completely horrible about that, because it's not the baby's fault this is going on.  

As I've grown larger, the old pregnancy issues have flared up.  I had hoped I would be able to exercise my way through the weight gain and swelling, but it's been another long winter of my husband's job and little free time for me.  I find that when I get free time, I don't know what to do with it anyway.   So I've gained a lot of weight and started to have a lot of swelling.  12 pounds in one month!  I missed the point where I should have taken my rings off, and my legs look like tree trunks.  

I find myself waiting to have a nap each day, because I am so unbelievably tired.   All of this napping interferes with the kids having playdates, so they make me feel guilty for that.  I try at least once a week, but I don't like to have kids over here when we don't have a playroom for them.  They just drag the toys out into the middle of the living room and then it's all left there for me to clean up. 

I just feel like it's so unfair that I have asked for changes repeatedly, and here I am, still waiting for them.  I never wanted to bring another baby into this house.   We don't have the room, plain and simple.  My mom actually suggested putting the baby in our walk in closet.  Don't do this, do that.  It's all I hear all the time.  It's easy to give advice when you live in Saskatchewan and I haven't seen her in over a year. 

Sorry, I know I'm being a bummer here, but I just have been feeling so down that I'm not sure what to do.  I want to be a good mom, I really do.  I am just having such a hard time with driving them back and forth to school, activities, playdates, trying to clean up after them, and living in the top floor of this horrible house.   Will anything ever change? 

Focusing on Writing

I have decided that I need to start to focus my thoughts and energy only on writing, because not unlike a friend of mine who discovered her talent in Photography, I have discovered a talent for writing.  Since joining Odesk I have written hundreds of articles on kids stuff, birthday parties, activities, and so much more.  I did a quick 400 word article on the developmental affects of classical music on children under 2, and was told that it was the best copy that he had ever received.  I've written press releases for a lady who was by far the pickiest person I have ever talked to, and she loved it without changes.  That was a major challenge. 

I joined Writers Market recently, and had to start a blog on there to keep up with the daily writing.  I wish there was a local group of writers I could join!  The motivation would be nice to have. 

I've copied below my first blog post on Writers Market.

"If I said that I never thought I would end up writing for a living, I'd be lying. I've wanted to write, and thought about writing, for as long as I can remember. The boxes of papers I managed to save from my decluttering mother are filled with short stories, journal entries, and poems. In 11th grade I was failing almost every single subject in high school except for English, and to soften the blow of such a horrible report card, my English teacher sent home a note with it that told my parents I had a promising literary career if they could just get me to survive high school. I even failed typing that year, so that note was a Godsend. I wish my mom wouldn't have thrown it away.

When I was in University studying for a Psychology degree, I took random creative writing courses. I lost interest quickly, because most of the people in there were only trying to get quick and easy english credit, and I recognized a lot of 'their' short stories as plagarism fairly quickly. Unfortunately the professor didn't pick up on that, so I lost respect for both the class and the person teaching it.

After I received my degree, I put my focus more on marrying my long term boyfriend than I did on writing anything. We moved to Vancouver, BC, and married a year later. Shortly after I had my first child, then my second, then surprise! My third came along in 2005. In the middle of all of that, I thought myself a web tycoon and started a popular children's web site. I've since learned that I am not interested in web sites, web design, or anything to do with programming. I found myself using the site to start an online weekly gossip column where I would dissect celebrities. I had more fun doing that than anything.

Long story short, the web site started declining when a company I hired turned out to be a bunch of scammers, and I lost interest in the site and the business in the way only someone who was truly burned can. I focused on my kids, and spent 2 years seriously depressed.

Last November, at age 37, I found out that unexpectedly I was expecting again. The pregnancy of #4 hit me right between the eyes, and has put me on a crash course of absolutely refusing to back down from what I want. If I have given my life over to my children, and I will be spending the next few years drowning in coffee, diapers, and screaming, then I will also be spending it doing exactly what I want to do with my life: writing.

I started freelancing on Odesk after asking someone on Craigslist where I could actually make money writing. They directed me to Odesk. My first job was video editing, but I soon found that the person who hired me wanted to get me to create web sites. Although I know all of the ins and outs of web sites, programming, and design, my heart starts to pound and my hands get moist when I think about working on them. You could say I have post-traumatic web stress, brought on by my 2 year legal altercation with the scam artist web design firm from downtown Vancovuer. I worked hard to get that Bachelor of Psychology, and I put it to good use by diagnosing myself.

I put the brakes on the web designing, and focused strictly on articles and web content. Press releases are also a favorite, and they come very easily. I've written ebooks, and entire web sites worth of content on kids, kids activities, and birthday party ideas. I've written book desriptions, letters of intent for graduate school, and a look at the developmental affects of classical music of children under 2. It's been fun, but I feel ready to move beyond Odesk to something else.

I'm currently 2 chapters into a novel I'm writing about a woman with post-partum psychosis. I've been writing this novel in my head for about a year now, because I can really understand how someone can tip over the edge from motherhood. "