This is a good read if you are contemplating having kids in the near future:

"I just want to be able to provide for my kids."  Provide what?  Expensive name-brand clothes?  The latest, biggest toys?  Outtings every weekend?  Not exactly my definition of providing for my kids.  Don't get me wrong.  I used to work, and it was because I felt like I had to in order to pay off some bills, NOT because I wanted to.  Ask my husband.  I'd cry every morning on my way to work because sitting in front of a computer at some office working for some boss was not where I wanted to be.  I wanted to be a mother to my child.  Then I would come home after work every day, totally spazzed out because there was an overwhelming amount of housework and laundry and cooking to do, and all I wanted to do was spend a few hours with my baby until bedtime.  House cleaning and laundry went out the window, which made me even more miserable and depressed, so not only was I unhappy at work, but when I was at home, I wasn't any more happy because there just wasn't enough hours in the day to get everything done.   But despite all of that, there are mothers out there that WANT to work.  They see putting their child in a daycare beneficial for their child, and that it allows the mother to still be herself by having a career in the outside world.  I guess I just hate the whole idea of riding the fence.  Either you A) Want to be a mother and give it everything you've got OR B) Have this big career in which you focus your time and energy to.  Not both.  Both things are wonderful by themselves, but put the two together and it's like oil and water...it just doesn't mix.  Or at least not the way you may want it to.  It truly makes me sad to hear people talk about how bad they want a baby, but they plan on going back to work 6 weeks or 12 weeks later and they say "I will let my so & so take care of it, and that way if my baby is sick, I can still work."  First of all, don't you think if your baby's sick, YOU will want to be the one nurturing the baby?  And don't you think your baby will want YOU?  It's like saying you want to work full time, but you only want to parent part-time.  Let me put it into perspective for you.  This is how my daily schedule went during the work week:

6:45 a.m.:  Get out of bed and get ready for work.
7:45 a.m.:  Get son up and dressed and bag packed (He went to work with my husband every day...family-owned business)
8:00 a.m.:  Drive to work.
8:30 a.m.:  Arrive at work
4:30 p.m.   Drive home from work.
5:00 p.m.   Get home from work and start making dinner.
5:30 p.m.   Husband and baby arrive home
6:00 p.m.   Eat dinner
7:00 p.m.   Clean up kitchen
7:30 p.m.   Give baby bath
8:00 p.m.   Read to baby/Play with baby
9:00 p.m.   Put baby to bed then begin to get self ready for bed.
10:00 p.m.  Go to bed.

So I had one good hour, per day, of quality play time with my baby, and if you want to count supper time as quality time, that's another hour, and then the 15 minutes in the morning spent getting him ready.  So there, 2 hours & 15 minutes per day per work week.  That's only 10 hours and 15 minutes spent with my baby PER WEEK, and then of course there's the weekend, which most of Saturday was spent cleaning and doing laundry, and Sunday a good portion of the day is spent at church.  But I was at work sitting at a desk in front of a computer 40 hours per week.  So yes, even though I carried a lot of responsibilities as a mom, I still only felt like a part-time mom with a full-time job outside the home.  And I hated it.  And I even resented my husband for it because he didn't make enough money.  Please understand that I UNDERSTAND that some mothers HAVE TO WORK, but MOST the ones I know that work don't really have to.  Your children may have to wear hand-me-downs, you may have to clip coupons and carry the calculator into the grocery store with you so that you don't overspend, you may have to stop taking a vacation EVERY year and just go every other year, you may even have to cut cable TV, you may even have to cut out some of your hobbies, but I think all of that AND MORE is well worth it to be able to be home with the children you brought into this world.  They are only little for such a short time, so ENJOY them. 

Another thing is, take into consideration how much money you'd actually not be spending if you stay home:

1) Daycare is $600 to $800 (or more!) per month
2) Gas to and from work (especially with gas prices THESE days)
3) The extra-nice professional clothes you have to have for work
4) Eating out for lunch (Trust me, even if you think you'll be good and take your lunch, lots of times you won't, especially when your co-worker asks you out to lunch, and even if you do take your lunch, you'll end up not eating it and walking down to the nearest deli)  $7 a day at the cheaper places in town.

There are also some nifty perks if you stay home.  If your income is lowered (ours was lowered by over half), you will more than likely get a nice tax return every year. When I worked, we had to PAY $1700 in taxes.  The next year, we had much less income to claim, and we GOT BACK $2300.   You can also qualify for WIC (or whatever program your state has) to get free baby formula, cereal, juice, etc.  AND you may even qualify for free health insurance through the state for your kids.  We did. 

But it's really not about MONEY.  It's about the fact that you OWE IT TO YOUR CHILDREN to be home with them, and it is more than worth the sacrifice.

Well I thought I might get to sleep in this morning since Travis went to Mamaw's to spend the night last night, but NOT!  I dragged out of bed around 7:30 this morning to run to the bathroom, just KNOWING I was going to get to go right back to bed and sleep for another hour or so.  WRONG!  Jacob started screaming, like a "Mommy, I'm in pain" scream.  Normally the boy sleeps 'til like 10 a.m., so I had to hurry it up in the bathroom to go check and see what was wrong with him, and he was wide awake.  I picked him up and in a matter of like 30 seconds, he was fine.  So I put him in the bed with us and we talked for a few minutes...he said "Boo" and "Da-Da" over and over, while drooling all over the place.  So it was kind of sweet.  Okay, so it was really sweet.  My babies are growing up at the speed of light it seems, and every little moment like that with one or both of my boys is precious to me.  I am so very thankful that I've been able to be home with them over the last year.  There's just so many things I feel like I missed out on the first two years of Travis' life, and I'm getting to soak it all in now with Jacob.  And now I am working on breaking Jacob from his bottle.  He's only had one bottle over the last week and a half, and it's kind of bittersweet.  It's a triumphant thing to get your baby off the bottle, but it's sad too, because little by little, there goes more of his babyhood.  And the bottle is a huge part of babyhood.  Bottle feeding is kind of a sweet time to spend together.  Of course, the last month or so it was more like "GIMME MY BOTTLE" and he'd snatch it from me and hold it himself, lol, but still.  My J-bug is growing up.  :(  I guess that means I'll just have to have another one :)

Jacob finally starts his physical therapy today.  Actually he has two different people that come out.  One lady, I call her the "teacher lady", comes out to work with him on cognitive skills (whatever cognitive means) and fine motor skills.  Since the time they did his evaluation back in May, he was improved from an 8-10 month level to a 10-12 month level, and last week when the "teacher lady" came for the first time, she was extremely pleased with his improvement, and that improvement came with no therapy.  The other lady that will be coming out is the physical therapist, which will help Jacob with walking, crawling, etc.  The thing about it is, when we took Jacob to the Neurologist back in May, he wasn't even able to SIT UP on his own, and NOW, not only is he sitting up on his own, he's crawling, and also standing up.  In like 2-3 months time, he has improved that much, and before the therapy even started.  He's supposed to go BACK to the Neurologist on August 4, and the doctor was assuming he'd already have had a couple months of therapy underway by then, but he's improved so much on his own that I'm kind of hoping the Neurologist will just say that he doesn't need therapy any more.  But at the same token, if he needs to continue it, that's fine.  It's a free service, and just maybe it will help him even get AHEAD. 

The "teacher lady" comes at 12 today, and then the physical therapist at 2, and I have a bazillion things to do beforehand, so later.

It's late, and I don't even know what it was I wanted to blog about earlier.

One thing you should know about me is that I really don't get my feelings hurt that easily, at least not until the same person keeps telling me the same hurtful things over and over, and then it's no longer a joke, and I figure out the person dishing out these hurtful things just isn't kidding anymore.  As I've gotten older, I've learned to let things roll off my back, but things do eventually have a way of building up over time, and when it's the last straw, I break and I get really mad and I want to take action and do something about it. 

Anyway, the wedding we went to over the weekend was really nice.  Pretty.  Outdoors.  Tiki Torches.  Me and Michael "offended" the bride the night before when we (me, Michael, the groom, the bride, and the rest of the wedding party) went to catch a late movie.  I don't care to go into what the fuss was about, but it was really stupid, and she shouldn't have been listening in on a conversation between me and my husband.  Oh well.  Maybe the maturity level is really that much different between a 24-year-old and an 18-year-old.  Yet one more reason why 18-year-olds shouldn't get married.  My opinion.  Save the hate mail PLEASE. 

Other than that, it was good to get out of town.  I was SO GLAD to see Michael when we FINALLY got there.  I swear I never thought we'd get there.  I rode with Michael's parents, and his Dad is not the most skilled driver in America...okay, so maybe you should stay off the sidewalks.  I think we missed every turn we were supposed to make.  And it doesn't help that he's one of those drivers that likes to actually make eye contact with you while you're carrying on a conversation with him INSTEAD OF WATCHING THE ROAD.  The missed turns caused us to get to the groom's house 5 minutes...5 MINUTES after Michael and everyone else had already left for the rehearsal.  My heart SANK because I was really looking forward to seeing Michael, and now I had to wait like another TWO HOURS before I could see him.  We had NO CLUE where the rehearsal was taking place, so we went to find our motel.  We found out which highway said motel was on (Best Western).  Traffic was bumper to bumper (some big horse show was in town), and I saw a Best Western on the right, and we were driving passed it, and I said "Was that not it?" and they were like "No, that's not it" and then we kept going and going and going down this highway and finally I asked "What exactly are we looking for?"  I thought maybe we were looking for another street to turn down or something, and then they said "Best Western" and I said "So that one back there we passed awhile back really wasn't it?"  and they were like "What one?"  and I said "The one we passed way back there."  Come to find out, when I said "Was that not it?" Michael's mom was looking on the OTHER side of the road at a roach motel looking thing, and she thought I was referring to THAT and they totally missed the Best Western, so we had to make a U-turn and go all the way back to where the Best Western actually was.  When we finally met up with everyone at the rehearsal dinner back at the church, I was SO HAPPY to finally see Michael.  It's truly amazing how much one day and one night apart will do to make you suddenly all mushy for each other again :-)