Okay, JP just started crawling this week and already he wants to stand up on his on. He’s so impatient with himself. He just gets mad and throws a tantrum….which is new also. He’s never been one to cry and now he will cry if you sit him down and go to walk away. He’ll throw himself backwards and cry as well. I know it’s normal behavior and he’s just testing his boundaries but man! Little bugger. Just want to pinch his little head off sometimes.

For the record, butternut squash was not a hit. Peaches, however, were and so now we’ve got to hit the organic store for peaches and pears! LOL.

On the home front, things are a disaster. I just cannot make myself clean our nasty house. I have absolutely no motivation, even though he’s about to start getting into everything. I need to sweep and mop and dust something fierce. I can’t honestly remember the last time the back of the house was mopped…..could it have been before we moved in? I don’t know. It’s all a blur at this point. I just know that I have got to get things done. All I want to do is play with JP and hang out. Work sucks. I’m ready to SAH or at least WAH but we have got to find a house first. That’s not going so well right now either. We just can’t find ANYTHING. I swear house hunting stinks!!! I hate it. We either need some land or a house and soon or we’ll both go nuts. We feel like God is pointing us in the right direction and it’s all just around the corner but it’s so frustrating to be patient. Wonder where JP gets his temper from don’tcha?

We filed an appeal on the audit so we’ll be going to Tax Court at some point. We were audited for 2003. It’s awful. We were only married for TWO months anyway and what it boils down to is that they are considering rent/utility/grocery payments from our roomies as income which is ridiculous…and the fourwheeler as well. Right now, we owe $4K. Like we have that kind of money laying around….

He finally did it! JP crawled today! It’s been a busy four days for the Little Man. First, on Saturday he sat up for the first time! Both of us were in the room and neither one of us show it. We were discussing (minor arguing) about some random thing and then I looked over and said, “Did you put him like that?” “Like what?” “Sitting up.” “No. Didn’t you.” “No, he was laying down.” OMG! He sat up! We flew off the couch and loved on him big time. And now it’s like he’s mastered it once and sits up all the time. I guess he just had to figure it out.

JP turned 7 months old yesterday! <<<>>> My baby is 7 months old! How on earth does time go by this fast? I cannot believe how fast he’s growin’.

And then today, he crawled. I went to pick him up at the Amanda’s and she was in the floor with him. He was laying really close to the entertainment center so I didn’t see him at first. She just smiled and then I crouched down and said, “Hey, come see me!” And he got up on his hands and knees and crawled to me! I let out a whoop, started crying and scooped him up! She said he had just done it so I hadn’t missed it. When he came to me, it was his best one! We got him to do it a couple more times and then he started rolling like, “Okay, I’m tired here.” But, Hunter got to see it at the house. We’re so proud of him!

OMG, let the babyproofing begin!

The title says it all. I am the WORST mother in the entire world. I have cried and continued to kick myself in the butt for this.

We were at Walmart today. Everything was going great and JP was a gem. When we finally got out of that awful place it was really hot. So I put JP in his seat and turned the air conditioning on. Then I loaded the groceries, left the cart by the spot (I wasn’t leaving him there alone) and drove the four miles to our house. I knew he fell asleep on the way home because he got quiet.

When I got home, I opened the back door and realized that I never buckled JP in. HE RODE THE ENTIRE WAY HOME UNBUCKLED. HOW COULD I HAVE DONE SOMETHING SO INCREDIBLY STUPID WITH THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN MY LIFE??? What if something had happened? What if we’d been in a wreck? What was I thinking? How could I have been so negleient? I just yanked the poor sleeping baby up and took him in the house crying once I got over the shock. I just sat and held him until he woke up an hour later no worse for the wear. I am the worst parent alive…and I was making fun of Britney Spears. What kind of mother forgets to strap her child in? I even spent the freaking $200 on a Britax carseat because I thought it was the safest for my son.

Hunter just looked at me when I confessed it to him in disbelief. I’m not telling anyone else. All I can do is cry. I just prayed and prayed and thanked God for getting us home safe. What else can I do? You can bet your sweet tush I will check it three times now before I ever crank a car. Hunter was distant at first (like I needed beating up anymore) but then he hugged me and said just to thank the good Lord that we’re okay and that nothing happened to us.

Well, JP is loosing his patience but I needed to confess. There aren’t words to describe how low I feel….

JP is almost there. He’s about to crawl. He can officially pull himself up on his hands and knees. It’s all so instinctive. At three months, he laid on his belly and screamed his head off. Then he learned to roll over so you couldn’t keep him on his belly. And I thought, he’ll never crawl like this! Now, he’s scooting around on his belly and he can go in reverse, just not forward. And he’s not crawling. He’s scooting.

The past two days have been different though. He’s trying to get up on those knees and I think he’s finally figured it out. His knees are actually rough from the work he’s putting into it. Now I see him working to “lift” his belly. It’s like reverse crunches for babies or those cat poses in yoga/pilates. Today, when I finally got home from a wedding shower, I put some toys just out of his reach and he almost lifted his arm and moved forward. Then he got unsure and flopped on his belly so he could scoot over there. SO CLOSE! He’s gonna get it soon and we’re in trouble. Dear God. With the cats and the dirt and the dust, he’ll be filthy. I have GOT to start cleaning better. But I’m so freaking tired when I get home, I just can’t make myself do it! I’ve said it before though, to watch how instinctive his learning is is amazing. He just knows he’s supposed to do this or do that. He’s lifting the sippy cup on his own. He can roll to sleep on his belly at night (which terrifies me) and he’s eating so well!

Changing topics, we bought a camcorder last night. It ended up being a Sony Handycam DC36. I’m pretty happy with it. At first I wanted a DVD camcorder but then I found out I would have to spend like $900 to get one that would let me do editting on a computer! And the miniDV will record a better picture—-something about the lines per inch of color and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I feel like we purchased smart though. Since the air conditioning guy broke my digital camera, we’re going to have to buy another one of those as well. I figure, a couple of weeks and I’ll spend about $200 on a reasonably good digital camera. Once we buy the computer, we’ll be set for a while. I’m just glad we got the camcorder BEFORE JP starts crawling. I wanted to be able to capture that and I wanted one before we go to the beach in August. I wanted another digital camera but was planning to wait until December but now I’ll have to buy one.

Overall, a happy weekend. It just stunk that I had to work all five days this week. UGGGHHHH!

Thank goodness for the holiday on Monday (Memorial Day). Friday was my day off from work so I only had a three day work week. And a busy one it was. The more we talk about me staying home in the near future, the more impatient I am with work. The current plan has several “layers” to it.

First, we are waiting until Hunter’s business is more stable. We’re kicking butt right now. We’ve got a great cushion in the business account. We could let me quit now and be alright we think. But this August will mark just 1 year in businesss (this time around—when we closed down to move two years ago, we’d been in business for 2 years then and had just hit a slow spot). We never expected to do this well moving up here last summer. We thought it’d be slow and we’d be tight financially. Well, we took off like a rocket and have been rocking and rolling ever since. Hunter is exhausted from the work and I can rarely help him b/c I’m with the JP. We’re being cautious however. Slow times are bound to come ’round soon and we know it. We had to buy the truck and the skid steer and then there’s the business insurance as well. DH’s part-time gig with a nursery (which supplies us with tons of jobs and side income) is a nice supplement and he could always go full-time should we need to. We’re SO busy, which is suprising with it being summer in GA. So, we’re thinking that we’d like to get through the second year at least.

Our second reason for me continuing to work is that I provide our insurance. I bring home a fair amount of money but it ain’t great. I work mostly for benefits. Retirement sucks and I’m about to open us a Roth IRA as well so we can get used to that as a payment. We’d also like to have my insurance through the second pregnancy. It does pay fairly well….not great, but fairly well compared to individual insurance. We’re thinking when JP hits about a year, we’ll start talking about it

Third, we want a house. We live in a family home right now. It’s rent free. And no, we’re not making a house payment to ourselves right now. We’ve been paying off credit cards instead. We have two left, thank you very much. Two big ones but still, we’ve made a consirable improvement. We’re thinking I need to keep my job until we buy or build a house. That will make us look a whole lot more stable to a bank. Sometimes we talk about buying a poultry farm but then we’re like, “nahhh, we don’t want to tie up all that money.” So, we’ve looked at houses and now we’re considering buying about 10 acres and building a reasonable house (1800sqft or less). That way, we can move to the county we want, build a house we like, and we have the option of less the house+10 or splitting the 10 into 2 5-acre tracts, one with the house and one just land. We think we could make some money that way…..we think.

We’re also working on side income plans for me (or sole income when I quit my regular job). We’ve been trying to and doing a poor job of growing plants. That’s my ticket to being home—a side income. I could keep a baby(which is little pay) or work for my family as well. I think the family thing could work because they obviously need the help but then again, it may not. So, we need ourselves to be stable. I want to be able to take JP with me. I could also find part-time work at my current employer I think. No benefits but it’d be income. Maybe. I don’t know.

Who’d have ever thought that I would want to SAH in the first place? I always wanted to work and have a career. But now, I feel like I can have a business of my own and be happy not working for someone else. I miss working with DH and I know we could really build something. BUT, it’s hard when you’re both exhausted at the end of the day to want to water plants, type proposals and go do the purchasing during your lunch. I already visit the bank at least 2-3 times a week during lunch. We’re both tired but we’ve got to figure out a way to split things up better. I keep telling him we NEED laptop. Our computer is 8 years old. We don’t have internet. We’re always argueing about me coming down here. That could be eliminated with dsl at home. We’re planning a big credit card payment this week and then maybe after another job or two we can buy one.

I think the key is to be SMART with our purchasing. Dont’ spend so much or so flamboyantly if you know what I mean. I’m trying to save, save, save because I know we’re going to need it. I don’t want my kids to not have the things they need or want (not that I will give them everything, but you know what I mean). I also want to be satisfied with my life. Don’t we all though. The key is to find a way to get there. I’ll close with a paraphrased quote that I read a few weeks ago….

We can either make ourselves happy or miserable. It takes the same amount of effort to be either.