5 Tips for Moving with a Family

Oh, moving… how we hate you. Getting moved into a new house can be a wonderful thing, but the process of moving sucks so badly. Especially when you have a two-year-old in the house. So here is this mommy‘s viewpoint on how to get moved successfully.

1. Don’t count on the man to do anything – My friend Abby clued me in to this. How true it is. We’ve been known we were definitely moving for several weeks now, and so far I have been the only one (with my mom’s help) to pack up anything. My boyfriend keeps saying he’s going to do it on one of his days off. At this point, the only thing he’s going to have left   to do is  pack up his own stuff, because we have almost everything else taken care of. I want to tell him to get off his ass and do something know he’ll do his part eventually.

2. Send the 2-year-old away. If you can’t send her away, have someone come stay with you (Thanks mom!) who can play ‘corral the baby’. – Trying to clean with a 2-year-old around is an exercise in futility. Trying to pack  with a 2-year-old around is a pain in the ass struggle, to say the least.

3. Be ready to feel like you haven’t accomplished anything for the first 3 days. – You clean, you sort, you box… you see very little visible evidence that you’ve accomplished anything. You get discouraged, you bitch, you smoke, you have a beer. Then, one day, out of the blue, as you are doing another box, you look around and realize “Wow, I got work done for once!”

4. Beg for boxes at least a month in advance. – If you don’t stockpile boxes well ahead of time, you’re going to end up paying out the butt just to buy some new ones so that you can just get the packing done already. I made this mistake. Luckily my friend Abby had several boxes from where she just moved. Thank God!

5. If the baby has to stay, remember the baby can do work too! – Yes, I made my 2-year-old help us pack. She put away 90 percent of the canned goods from the kitchen. Stacking? Putting things in a box? What 2-year-old doesn’t love these activities? So, I channeled her energies in a useful way! She also loves to ‘sort’ clothes, so she helped me gather clothes up to wash and put clothes in boxes. Washing down toys was a long overdue task in our household. A bucket of water, a pile of toys that needed rinsed off – and a lot of towels to sop up the mess. L swished them in the water, I wiped and dried. L put them in a packing box.  She got to play in the water, play with her toys, and put things in a box. What wasn’t to love about that job?

And I know I only said 5…but I forgot about this one.

6. Be prepared to spend money on eating out, because after being so busy, cooking is the last thing on your mind.

The Weird Things My Child Does

L is 2. This is a fantastic, frustrating age. L does so many weird things that just make me scratch my head and wonder what in the world is going on in there.

Here are a list of a few of them.

1. L pinches her nipples. While she’s pinching her nipples, she grins. When I tell her not to do it, that grin transforms into full out mischievousness. She keeps doing it.

#ISeeStripper

2. L announces she farted. Every time. I can understand telling me she pooped or peed, but farted? “Mommy…” “What, baby?” “I fah-ted…’gin.”

#Whatyoudonttalkabout

3. L is scared of like…everything. Except, see, she’s sporadically scared of things. So I never know when Elmo is going to have her entranced and giggling, or crawling up me in hysterics.

#Butjustyesterdayyou

I love my child. Heathen that she is.

...and she always announces that she's running, too. "I wunning, mommy. I wunning!"

The Middle of L’s Journey (SFW)

Shortly after Lily was taken off the ventilator, they started trying to bottle feed her. The first time, she ate 5 mLs. Soon she’d moved up to 15 mLs (half an ounce). However, she seemed stuck there. Now, when she was in the regular cardiac unit (C5), we concentrated primarily on feeding her.

L snuggling with the stuffed toy some friends of mine sent her.

It soon became apparent that her feeding issues was not something going to be easily fixed. Around August 11th, they came to me and said it was either an extended (months) hospital stay, or we could put a Gtube in (Tube through her belly) and send her home. Obviously, I opted for the Gtube.

August 14th, Lily was released from the hospital.

They had told me when Lily was placed on the ventilator that there was a chance she would not be too fond of eating afterwards. Negative associations or something like that. However, soon a pattern developed. Lily would eat like she was starving up to about an ounce to two ounces… then she would just stop. Abruptly. You couldn’t coax her to eat anymore. She was receiving most of her nutrition via an NG tube (feeding tube up the nose.)

Lily with her G Tube. At home.

And that was Lily’s journey through open-heart. I thought things would get better after this. Boy, was I wrong.

Who am I?

I have a beautiful toddler. L is the light of my life (and the bane of my existence at times – as all toddlers are). She has a terminal illness called Pulmonary Hypertension. Unless a cure is discovered, it will eventually kill her. Lovely to think about, right? L has been sick since the day she was born…and we are just now hitting a point where she has more good days than bad days. So, its time for me to start letting me express myself and be not only a mommy.

I also like to educate myself and others, so I will be doing posts on lesser-known and outright rare diseases.

I am 29 years old. I”ve got a couple years of college under my belt. I work in the non-profit sector.

I am….opinionated, blunt, quirky, kinky, and will post about the most random things in a single post because that’s how my mind works. I actually think I have adult  ADD. Several others think so too, haha. I’ve also been diagnosed as having Unspecified Bipolar. Go figure. No, I’m not any medications. I wish I was, but with no health insurance… kinda screwed. Thank God L qualifies for it.

I am in the process of moving. I have a cat named Posey who is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever came across. It drives me nuts. My friends on facebook are accustomed to seeing me rant about getting ready to Posey-Punt. For the record, I have never actually punted the cat. I just threaten to. Haha.

I have been with my current boyfriend for a couple of years. I never saw myself settling down with him. I still don’t know if this whole thing is going to work. However, we are giving it our best shot.

Okay, that’s enough of an introduction!

PS: The next 2 posts will be about the journey from my daughter’s birth until she came home from the hospital after surgery. I won’t do a lot of posting about her, but I like to get that information out of the way so that people have some knowledge of my background.