Relax – its only parenting

*this is a bit of a long post.. So long, in fact, I had to trim it into two and this one is still long.. warning you now..

I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Cammy. Jerry and I wern’t trying for a baby, but we wern’t disapointed when we found out she was coming. We knew that statistically given our track record a baby was gonna happen sooner or later and while later would have given us more time to play, sooner has its perks too. 

I was genuinely happy about my pregnancy. I read every parenting book I could get my hands on, I TIVO’d every baby show, including and not limited to ‘A Baby Story’ and ‘Bringing Home Baby’. Any show showing complications during pregnancy I had to watch, I even got sucked in by those Duggars. I’m tellin you, I was obsessed.

And then she came.  Seven pounds ten ounces of sheer unknown terrain. Remember thinking, as someone told me I would, These people are crazy if they are gonna let me leave the hospital with this baby! I can barely take care of my self let alone Jerry, let alone a whole ‘nuther human being. Another person I can’t tell ‘Do not to leave those shoes in the middle of the floor please!’

And I know as scared and nervous as I was, Jerry had to be ten times worse. At least I had the “luxury” of getting to carry the baby for 40 weeks, which you know, helps make it really real, that a person is coming, right after she finishes wedging her feet in my rib cage.

And I loved her – instantly from the begining, and I was protective. I was mama bear ready from jumpstreet. There were hand foam sanitizers everywhere and I don’t think I wanted to let Jerry change a single diaper in those first few days. I over parented and probably drove my mom and grandmother crazy trying to build on what they did with rasing me. And I know if they heard, “What I read…” one more time they might have lost it.

But the thing I learned first is, Cam, all the people around her, and I are all after the same thing. Making sure she lives the best life she can. And we all love her – that makes the rest easy.  

fast forward to 2008, and we got two kids and we are hip deep in this parenting thing. Who would have thunk it, seriously.And  this weekend has been a full on assault on parenting. Cammy has demanded it and Bri doesn’t look like she’s gonna be any easier in the long haul.

Cammy is an active child who must be moving at all times. She is a thinker and a doer, only she does them at the same time.
She is her fathers child.
If you have heard his parents stories about Jerry as a child you would understand why this thought alone can cause a migraine.
So we did something this weekend we probably should have done YEARS ago. We used the Y membership we’ve been paying for, for at least three years, for the first time in at least two and a half. Jerry uses it sporadically for working out, but apparently it just never occurred to us to take the girls with us.

Who knew kids are portable!

SO we are really, really gonna use it now. I know we said that before, but I am so sin-serious this time. How can I be so sure this time? Cammy, it seems, demands the physical activity that the Y offers. And sice we are paying for it we might as well give the kid what she needs.
So We went to the Y, and the girls and I played in the pool for a few hours while daddy worked out. Cammy came home and was so much better behaved, we decided that this would be a thing we would use much, much more often, and keep us from throttling our toddler.
So we are looking at Soccer, gymnastics and swimming for her this spring. Her Gigi wants her to do dance – so we’ll let her choose from the four, however I think the dual Gymnastics/swimming class is a definite go.
She has been having a more difficult time with this whole baby thing than she’s let on, I think. Well, I know, since her teacher reported that she offered to give them the baby – to keep, forever – we’re pretty clear that there is an issue. I believe its not so much the existence of the baby so much as the shift of attention. That is my fault, you can shoot that blame right over here. This week it has been revealed to me how much like my husband my child really, really is. I’ve mentioned that already haven’t I.
Let me elaborate.
Jerry is very active. He must be doing something, from the moment he opens his eyes ‘til he passes out from exhaustion. Whether it be reading, writing, working out, playing, gaming, cooking, cleaning, something. He is not the kind of person who sits still. Ever. So it goes with out saying that the fact that we can’t get Cammy to sit anywhere for longer than two minutes with out the assistance of a TV shouldn’t be a surprise to us. She needs all manner of mental stimulation. She burned through two puzzles this weekend like I had her wood peg puzzles, and not 30 piece puzzles, so we are gonna up the ante to 48 piece puzzles and see how that goes.
This is the number one reason why I decided to decline the bakery. I’ve got too much invested in my girls to give them less than 150%, and starting a major business like the bakery would have required more than I was willing to take away from them. Especially Cammy right now. She needs me to get it together and figure out the best way to keep her world spinning on axis. And I think that the whole more active daily life will help with that. She needs me. Its as simple as that.
So this week I plan on grabbing a schedule from the Y (every time I think Y I think the song nad can see the dance in my head) and seeing if I can get schedule hammered out that will work with me taking a class this summer as well.
On a up note she has become very, very fond of our big dog Anubis.
He doesn’t get much blog time cause he’s so big and slobbery – we’ve been waiting on Cammy to get comfortable with him. We had some size issues early on.
He hip checked her into a wall, and she was naturally a bit wary of his size from then on, but they’ve gotten to spend some time together in the recent weeks, and she is glad to have her slobbery dog with her. So we’ll see how this all works out. We’re planning on getting a new training collar for him this weekend, and we are hoping we make great strides with that as soon as possible.

Bri, my special little ball of chubby cute, is still speaking angel although small pieces of words are slipping through like she is trying to form them but thinks the better of it, she says ‘DA-DA’ all the time, although never to Jerry. She’s very into toys now, so all the toys I said I didn’t need to buy, I clearly do and am going to get to that this weekend.
A friend has offered to let us come get a train table, which Cammy has been saying she wanted for a while so I hope we can get to that too. As well as some stuff for Bri.

And hte whole weekned I just kept thinking to my self..

Relax its only parenting…

Things are going well. How bout for you internets?