Family Ties & Growing Pains

WOW! Where to start...how about at the beginning of this whole ordeal.

Long story short, my brother and his wife went to an out of state wedding (her brother's) for 4 days, leaving their 2 kids behind. Unfortunately, my parents couldn't watch them for the first 2 days and since my other brother has 3 kids of his own, I'm sure they didn't want to burden them with watching their kids. So naturally, they turn to the aunt who doesn't have a child (well, it's in my womb) and who can just go ahead and take one of her PTO days to watch a 3 & 1 yr old.

Of course I said yes to watching the kids and their dog, because he's my brother and that's what families do-however, previous to this, and very tragically my sister in-law had a major injury that put her out of commission for about 10 weeks. The kids were shipped around to different houses and their schedule was thrown off, etc. I get that, kids need a schedule-they don't always adjust well to change, yada, yada. However, the financial standings of my brother and his wife are on him and I'm sorry if their kids are the ones who suffer the consequences.

Another long story short-they moved from a large house to a condo (still a very nice size, a lot larger than mine) and they don't always have money to do things, but guess what-it was your choice to not have your wife work. I don't want to work either-I don't want to have this baby and then a short 8 weeks later, leave it to go back to work, but guess what? YOU HAVE TO! It's called REALITY! Anyway, I digress...

My 3 yr old niece was basically out of control-she wasn't feeling too well (I cleaned up more poop and throw-up in 3 days, than in my entire life!), but her temper tantrums were simply out of control. On top of that-she would make a mess and when I asked her to clean it up, she would yell No.
Hmmm....ok, then you are going in timeout. NO! Hmmm....a defiant toddler, strange-not really, but one who appears to have less than desirable discipline. Usually when the word timeout is spoken, the kid will back off-knowing how not fun timeout can be...yeah, apparently she doesn't. My other nieces and nephews do and another point, when a 5 yr old doesn't want to play with said 3 yr old because "she cries too much and doesn't know how to share" then something needs to be said.

That's exactly what I did-I sent my brother an email, letting him know that his daughter was a little less than demonic and being 4 months pregnant with my first, probably wasn't an ideal situation for me, considering I am exhausted and dealing with an unruly toddler (that isn't mine) does not make for a good weekend. However, his rebuttal of me constantly judging him and my other brother about their choices, but the fact that I'm having a baby out of wedlock is ok, was bringing up things that didn't even apply.

First, my opinions only come from stories, comments or opinions I hear from them- I could care less what goes on between their marriages and their families-as long as they're happy, it's none of my business. However, when I have to co-sign on your car lease because you don't have any credit, than it does become my place to say something-especially since my credit is on the line and I want to buy a house for my growing family. Now, as far as my having a baby out of wedlock with my fiance whom I haven't known for too long, sure, this isn't an ideal timeline, but guess what? I'm happy and that's all that should matter. Plus, the family loves him, the kids love him and he loves them back. I'm not stupid-I know who I get involved with, plus my brother and him have a total bromance going on, so what is there to complain about?

Not to mention that I have been there for both of my brothers and their families constantly over the last 5 years. Whenever they need their kids watched or pet sitting or need to use my garage to store their stuff in, I've been there-but the moment I have a horrible weekend, because your kid doesn't know discipline, all of the sudden it's, let's point the fingers at each other game.

Fine. Enough said-good luck finding last minute babysitters for your kids and pets and oh, get your crap out of my garage! It's been there for almost a year!

Happy Blogging.

Bills, Bills, Boys

As I'm getting ready to make room for the baby-it forced me to clean out boxes and boxes of years of stuff I never knew I had.

However, the one thing that I did know I had were bills, more specifically-cell phone bills. Let me ask you this: Why is it that cell phone bills layout EVERY detail-who you called, who called you, how long, etc. As I was skimming through I noticed numbers had started to trail off...not having them in my phone currently, it made me think-HOLY COW! This is my dating timeline!

Area codes ranging from 760 to 858 to 619, numbers that followed that IMMEDIATELY brought up memories of lost and well forgotten men of my past. First the numbers were quite frequent, then moving in to, every 2 hours or so, which lasted anywhere from a few days to a few months and then BOOM! No more number. Isn't that how it usually goes though? No more of the number popping back up trying to get back together-when you date in your 20's, that's just it-you date. Good dates, turn into relationships and some relationships work and others don't. But hardly, do you play the back and forth game and if you do-take it from me who did that for 9 years, it's not going to last.

So back to the bills-the bills can tell more about your life, then any other piece of mail-they tell when you have money, when you don't. When you own something, or owe something :) Life can be determined on bills and I though having over 10 diaries (yes, I found them all) was going to tell the story of my life. Maybe instead of leaving my journals (diaries, depending on how old you were when you wrote in them), I'll just leave my kids a scrapbook of bills!

Maybe by the time my kids are old, bills will be obsolete! Ahhh...here's to dreaming.

Happy Blogging!