JUST A GIRL.

A. 34. CLE.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I’m back, cause there’s really no where else to throw these thoughts & I don’t have time to sit to write on paper.

-my oldest started kindergarten, which is thrilling. Life is ironing itself out a bit, finally.

-on a walk tonight, kindergartener made a huge deal about how they were scared about bears in the back yard (“are there 1000 bears?!”)

-turns out, kindergartener saw a video at school about bears & thought they exist in our backyard. No, kid. We’ve lived 35+ years & never seen one in our suburban lives.

-this video must have been some current events news compilation that are watched in schools because the next thing kid asked was “I’m also scared of ground strikes, will they happen here?” I didn’t even know what they were referring to. “Like when the whole ground blows up like boom! All of it!” It took me by such surprise when I realized what he was referring to that I stopped in my tracks, astounded.

My kid clearly must have been discussing a video they saw of some stock war explosion that was part of the news video about (I’m guessing) ground strikes somewhere overseas recently. I purposely try to avoid hearing about war news so I have no real idea.

I told kindergartener, that doesn’t happen here. How long does it take daddy’s plane to get to California for work? Now triple that, & that’s where Bluey lives in Australia, & Australia’s on the complete opposite side of the world from us. That’s how big the world is, & how far away things are. And that happens far away.

But I felt like I was fucking lying, because I can’t guarantee that it will never happen here. I can’t guarantee safety. Just like how their school scrambled to take down the school mass times off their website because a week before school started, kids died a few states away doing the same thing these kids will do. It scared the fuck out of me.

I keep showing up for the bus every afternoon, & it feels like magic how my kid steps off it every day. I always feel a small sense of relief that they are safely back to me. Is this how it feels all the time for everyone, or does it get easier? I’m loving that my kid is growing independent in many ways, but the smallest part of me always is afraid.

My kid also will remember the smallest thing to be anxious about. Like on the night before their 5th birthday, they said, “what if I don’t remember all the fun things that happened when I was four?!” Genuinely upset that they will lose their memory of the previous age. So this was most likely something very small in a video about bears & current events that my kid latched onto cause they found it shocking.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Has anyone tried Bluesky?

I didn’t sign up for Threads since there was no way to permanently delete your account, but the only thing I’m seeing with Bluesky is that all posts are public. Anything else know much about it?

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I made one. Come find me @ dinohearts. Gonna be for crafting & stuff probably.

🦖❤️

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

There’s a sinkhole downtown that requires a major intersection closure on the route to Browns stadium from the freeway for emergency repairs, & of course there’s people out there who think that the city did it on purpose.(….?!)

Like no, you dumb motherfuckers, not everything is a goddamn conspiracy because you’re big mad about the Browns getting a new stadium in Brook Park. As someone who is extremely familiar w where the new stadium is planning to go, I’m here for it. I’ll actually go to games if it’s that close with a dome.

But not everything is a fucking conspiracy just because it doesn’t align with your worldview! Goddamn.

The real answer does require science, tho, which is made of factual information about ground and soil & a bit of fuck about timing (which… ever watched engineering disaster shows? Everything’s a bit dodgy w failure timing, cause again, the science doesn’t math & there’s a FAILURE).

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Has anyone tried Bluesky?

I didn’t sign up for Threads since there was no way to permanently delete your account, but the only thing I’m seeing with Bluesky is that all posts are public. Anything else know much about it?

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I felt bad about missing the deadline to sign up for fall soccer this year, but the kid is 4 so I thought it’s fine, we will just miss out.

Every Saturday so far that we would have had a few hours of game time, we are instead enjoying family time at home, making our own schedule, and we didn’t originally plan for it to be that way. It’s been so nice.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

We had at least two tornadoes in the area yesterday. One near the lake & one that started in my hometown & went all the way to the east side. All ef-1s. Probably at least one more tornado somewhere too. The long tornado started a few blocks north of my in laws, passed a few blocks south of my dads, and ended a few blocks south of my brothers, all in different cities. What the fuck.

All the tornado alarms went off on my phone at the same time, & my husband texted at the same second. He NEVER gives a fuck about the weather so it was serious. I threw shoes on, had the 4 yr old carry his shoes, snatched up the baby & diaper bag, & was down below the basement stairs in about a minute. Below the stairs is plywood-ed off w a door and shelves w just enough room to stand between the shelves and plywood wall, but honestly if it had all hit the fan we had no real protection. I was standing in the plywood doorway holding the baby & couldn’t even technically close us in all the way. I played Bluey songs on my phone & sang to drown out the rain and wind for the kids, & it was the most actual danger I’ve ever felt with a tornado warning. We stayed put for over 40 mins even tho the preschooler was getting antsy. I felt so vulnerable, home alone w these kids. It was terrifying & I had to pretend it was okay. We came up from the basement & I played the rest of the video game we had been playing, just on autopilot to distract my kid, being super fake cheerful & hoping he didn’t notice.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Taught my four-year-old how to use a book’s index today.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I’m starting to slowly get my shit back together now that I’m out of the newborn phase. My kid finally found a bottle that is the okayest, thank god. We are starting to jump hurdles in potty training w the oldest. I’m thinking of saying fuck it and trying for a children’s librarian position to try something new & it would unfuck my fall schedule massively. Right now I’m looking at the pre-k schedule and my schedule and going holy fuck I don’t know how this will work.

A little boy was murdered on the other side of town, randomly, while grocery shopping w his mom and it is fucking with me so bad. He was a few months younger than my son, & the go fund me description reads identical to my son.

Loves dinosaurs, the color green, loves school, rambunctious, obsessed w his newborn sister.

No one seems safe anywhere. I make game plans for quick exits, look over my shoulder, simplify my processes, always back into parking spots. It’s all useless. Some crazy fuck can decimate a family forever just because. The news mentioned that the mom, who was also attacked, will recover “physically”, which is a very deliberate choice of words. Cause how the fuck are you ever okay again? Toddlers pack a lot of love and life into their short years so far. They are intense and they matter and they leave a mark, however small, on those they meet.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I’m at a weird spot when it comes to my job. I lowered hours when I had my kid this year & then for some reason my husband has been having to do an out-of-state work trip for days at a time EVERY month postpartum so far. When he’s gone on these trips it’s honestly just survival mode for me. Work makes it harder, especially since baby won’t take a bottle well. (My dad let her go 8 HOURS once without forcing a bottle or calling me about it and then I fed her boob in an Olive Garden & she started puking so much I thought we were gonna have to walk her over to the ER across the street. We had to all take our stuff to go.)

So the baby eating enough on my long days at work has been a huge struggle. Add in a work trip fresh off of the Olive Garden shitshow, & my oldest’s bday & Mother’s Day right before, & THEN add in the illness that started at the end of my oldest’s bday (the day before Mother’s Day).

Yep. Ended his birthday with us feeling bad for him, Mother’s Day plans canceled, last full week of school called off, I get the illness 2 days later like I always do, right when my husband leaves for the work trip. While I’m alone w the kids. All three of us are sick. I think it was the most miserable I have felt (emotionally) as a parent, & I was a 1st time parent during the lockdown.

To add to it, work hasn’t been easy. Changes are trying to happen internally which will fuck me over so bad. I’m also out of sick time, so getting sick this week was awesome. I called out as little as possible because like usual I’m always with subs when I’m sick for some reason, which makes it way harder to last-minute-call-off. I think I only took 8 hours off out of my 28. Called the late afternoon before my full day, asking for the afternoon off almost 24 hours in advance, and heard, “you know we’re going to be scrambling”.

All that and I STILL showed up Friday for the morning & went home early so they wouldn’t get fucked over by me calling off last-minute. I just am really starting to think about things after a week like this one.

I know this week was probably the bottom. I hope. By July this kid will be able to supplement purées so 8 hours of caregivers trying to bottle feed unsuccessfully is temporary. I’m already mostly better, just a cough. Dropping more hours would do nothing but empty the weekdays and leave half my scheduled hours on weekends. Switching statuses to keep my job but not need to have posted hours every week will lose me my place in the branch that I love. I’m not sure what to do. I feel like I’m at a crossroads that I don’t need to be at. I suck at being at home all the time. I’m more patient when I get at least 4 hours a few days a week to focus on what I’m passionate about. In a few years the kids will be in school all day and this shit will get a lot easier logistically.

But right now, it’s a shitshow. I have a friend who we check in with each other every so often, & I swear all they hear from me is that shits exhausting. It is. But there’s also small beauties that make it worth it. We are starting to find the hand hold in the newborn trenches, and are about to pull our way back up.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

We are incredibly lucky here. In just over a month, we saw a total solar eclipse & tonight, the aurora borealis (thru a phone screen, not quite with the naked eye). I experienced both in my neighborhood/backyard.

Incredible.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Chilling in my bed, playing a new game on ps4 w a sleeping baby on my lap & rain outside my open window. Throw in a nap & this would be the coziest. 💕

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

I’ve been barely staying ahead of my toddlers next mess this week. We went to baby club at the library this morning because my coworker texted me that we should come, another coworker has been begging me to bring the kids to it, & I love helping boost their stats lol.

It was chaos. There were so many kids there & it was fun but it was extreme sensory overload. By the end, my kid couldn’t regulate himself, the baby was hungry, & I had to fill out a three page form for their grant records. As I sat there filling out the form as other families packed up and left, the baby started crying & my kid just kept making one mess after another. As he proceeded to dump a full cup of water down his entire front, a mom w a baby walked past & stopped to tell me, “you’re doing a great job”.

I know she meant support & solidarity, & it was kind of her to say, & I do appreciate it. But I felt on some level that she was saying it out of pity? Even though rational brain knows that’s not the case. I was just, in the moment, so overwhelmed & embarrassed & could barely concentrate on the form I was filling out, & all I could choke out was a quick smile & “thanks” as she walked away. I felt like a total failure who couldn’t keep it together, & I think that’s why the other mom spread kindness my way. She was so kind.

I ended up being the last family there, wishing that the forms would be available online in the future. I was able to get my kid a full shirt change because he was just THAT soaked with water 🤦🏻‍♀️, & fed the baby one side as I talked with my coworkers before packing up the stroller, backpack, & canvas bag of freebies they gave me due to the grant program.

I just struggle with perfection SO MUCH, & feeling like I need to never be a mess on the outside. Days like today, I feel so vulnerable because it WAS a lot & so outwardly a struggle. But I got both kids fed, out the door, to a fun kids program, socialized with coworkers who adore my kids, & got them home & fed again. Now I’m nap trapped with the infant. I’m getting out of the house while still in the “4th trimester”. I’m still on maternity leave, & I’ve been doing everything myself for three days while my husbands out of state. I was able to keep the house up until last night, really, & a 20 minute pickup will fix most of it. I think I can give myself a mental break & some grace, but I’ve never been very good at that.

It’ll be a relief to have my husband home soon, cause next week brings Total Eclipse Day in a major totality city (seriously, I’m not even planning on leaving our neighborhood, & if I could baby wear on a bike, I wouldn’t even drive). Then the very next day, I start back to work for the first time since I went into labor in mid January. Early next week will be a lot, but I’m ready for it.

I just need to remember that I’m doing great, & other people can see that too. They can see the beauty in my imperfection & they don’t think badly of it. My village has been checking on me this week while I’ve been alone & it’s not because I can’t handle it; it’s because that’s what people do when they care about each other. I need to be kinder to myself.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Hi, I’m freaking out over the weather forecast for tomorrow because I’m super scared of tornadoes and it’s the worst forecast in a decade and OF COURSE I’m alone w a newborn & three year old while my husband is off on a fucking work trip & im still on my maternity leave for fucks sake & I just need someone to tell me I’m not alone & it’s going to be okay 😭

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

The skies have been gorgeous lately. @thejunesky

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

445-545am: wake up with baby, feed, settle, go back to sleep til my alarm at 7

615am: get blasted awake by adrenaline from the air raid sounding siren that is the amber alert on my phone

At least it was local this time, and fuck whoever decides to take kids (most of the time, statistically, the non custodial parent), but I am so pissed that I just shut off all future amber alerts on my phone, negating what the alert is for.

Maybe don’t send middle of the night alerts multiple times a month, you fucks.

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

Toddler life:

My entire house smelled like men’s cologne for over 12 hours after my kid got into it.

Better than diaper cream, I suppose. No clean up (& we were able to open the windows today 😍)

[yourdreamsarebeautiful]

The newborn haze has the days blending together so hard, I thought today was the 23rd. Fuck.

I love my kids, but I hate not working.