Eek!

Long time, no post (again).

I am home today due to the cold temperatures. School was supposed to resume yesterday after 2 weeks of Christmas break, but the governor closed all schools in the entire state for fear of kids getting frostbite while trying to get to school. Boo to the cold, yay for extra days with the babe (who is currently napping in her CRIB! 2 weeks of nap training are [slowly] paying off!).

Life's been full with school, the holidays, The Bee's atrocious work schedule, and almost 2 months of continuous illness for the babe. We were so lucky for the first 10 months of her life...a few little sniffles and some diaper rash was about it. Now we've experienced a horrible bout of the stomach flu (3 full days of vomiting. You know you love a child when they can throw up peaches into your bra and you keep your cool to bathe them while only being able to change your clothes and wipe off with a clean towel until your husband gets home to give you a chance to shower), a seizure scare that led to an EEG (which, PRAISE GOD! revealed no seizure activity or abnormal brain activity), a horrible cold that only allowed the babe to sleep propped up with pillows or sitting up in our arms (3 cheers for co-sleeping,,,not sure how we would have gotten any sleep otherwise), and an ear infection that brought us to the ER from 11pm-3am.last Friday night/Saturday morning.

Our girl will be one on Monday. I cannot believe how fast the last year has gone! We are finding more joy in her every single day and still can't believe how amazingly blessed and lucky we are to be her parents. She is so close to walking, which is exciting and terrifying!

In other news: The Bee is fed up with his long commute to work. I am fed up with his long hours. We are both feeling the drag of the crazy running around we do Monday-Friday with drop-off, pick-up, working and normal life tasks. Seriously...cooking dinner feels like a chore after I get home with the babe and The Bee isn't around until 10pm or later. I also have extreme mom guilt about how sick the babe has been, I keep asking, "Would she be sick like this if I was home with her? Should I be spending so much of my time with OTHER PEOPLE'S kids when we waited so long to have our own baby?"

Which brings me to the generous and scary proposal my husband made to me recently: I can choose to keep teaching OR stay home with the babe and (eventually) work on my own art work again. Seems so appealing, but teaching has become part of my identity and I worked darn hard to get where I am. We are still paying off my masters degree and I don't want to lose my teaching license because I am away from work for too long (I just renewed last spring so I am current until 2018). Also, my mom stayed home with me and my siblings starting when I was 7. She had (and still has) her own barber shop that she runs out of her home, but it has always been part-time. After all those years of raising us and running her own business, my dad filed for divorce and took her to the cleaners. Now she is 55 and works 3 jobs just to keep from losing her house and barber shop. I know my husband is NOT my father, but I am sort of afraid of ending up in my mom's shoes.

PLUS, I know how isolating it can be to stay home full-time. AND, I know I'd need to get my act together if I actually want to have time to get back to my own art making (which I miss like crazy as I haven't had much time for it since I started teaching 6 years ago. I would love to be in shows again, but feel rusty and have no current work!).

One of my requirements if I am to stay home is that we need a house first. I refuse to stay home full-time in a 2 bedroom apartment! In a state where it is so, so cold, this size of space leads to serious cabin fever. Why don't you go out and about? you wonder...Because less than 5 minutes of skin exposure outside right now leads to frostbite. Not worth the risk with a little one. So, right now the plan (if you can call it a "plan") is for me to hopefully work part-time next school year, we'll start the process of buying a house while we both have income and then I will be home with the babe starting during the 2015-2016 school year. In a perfect world, we would have baby #2 on the way near the end of next school year, but we know that trying to plan babies is nonsense. (That is another fear of mine, staying home, losing my license and having to deal with secondary infertility and then trying to find work after the babe is preschool/school age. However, if it is in God's plan for us to expand our family, my income is too small at my current school to make it worth working with 2 kids in daycare. Arg. So much uncertainty).

Anyways, if you have stuck with me through my blogger absence and this scattered post, thank you. And sorry for any typos...this is being written in a bit of a rush. I will be attempting to catch up with all of you! Hoping 2014 is good to all of you!