The End of 2008

First of all a belated Merry Christmas to all.

This year is almost over and I don't think I have ever been so grateful. Scott and I are doing quite a bit better but we still have work to do. Ethan is still up in Washington and from the sounds of it, staying. He is doing amazingly well. A down side is that he has gained over 20 lbs from the looks of the pictures I have seen. Emma flew up to Washington to spend the Christmas Holiday with her dad and stepmom and has texted me a few pictures. Emma has been miserable up there. She starts texting me at 7am and doesn't stop until almost midnight. I don't think they interact with her very much unless it is to try to talk her into moving up there with them permanently. Why would she want to do that when they won't spend much time with her. She's been up there since the 17th and she flies home on New Year's Eve. Very excited for her to come home. This was my first Christmas without Ethan and Emma and it was a little rough. I stayed busy enough to not think about it much but I still miss them.

Ronnie is doing so well here. He is a Sophomore with A's and B's in his honors classes, was on his way up to Varsity Wrestling until the muscles in his arm were torn. He is disappointed but dealing with it. Because of the torn muscles, wrestling is done for this year and Tennis is out as well. He said "it's all good, I still have the ladies". WOW, we have a steady string of girls coming through the house and have since school started. The friends he has made are great kids. I thought at first I would hate having a teenage boy here but I love it. Out of all the parents, Scott and I are the cool parents. They all spend the night here a few times a month and we have junk food and soda on hand at all times, live just 4 blocks from the mall, let them play video games as long as they stay quiet once Midnight rolls around, and insist on playing video games with them once in a while. The fact that I cook and bake for them plays a roll in the cool part for some reason. A couple have said their moms don't cook, they live on microwave foods. We manage to stay in touch with what they watch, listen to, like, and play and still manage to stay cool in their eyes.

Then there is Harley. He will be 5 in a month and half. He is sick right now and I've just spent 3 hours sitting in the rocking chair snuggling with him. I discovered his biggest disappointment for Christmas was no baby brother. He has asked for a baby brother all day now and can't grasp the concept the mommy and daddy can't have any more babies. We are both "fixed" so it would take an act of god and lots of money for us to have a baby. Some of the things that come from him are so fricking funny. He told me we need another Puggy to give Vegas a friend. We have been looking for another Pug and are trying to find a Pug Rescue close to us. So far no luck but we aren't giving up. It took us 8 months to find Vegas. Harley misses Ethan and can hardly wait for Emma to come home and wants a baby brother and another Pug. I asked him this morning what if mommy did have another baby and it was a girl. He said, nope won't happen, God knows he wants a boy so it would be a boy. He has a Mohawk right now and loves girls and spinach and is totally and absolutely fearless. Scares the crap out of me at least 10 times a day. He is the leader at preschool more than the others because that is the only way to keep him occupied. He is so far ahead of the others right now, I am afraid he is going to be bored in kindergarten. Guess I will deal with that when we get there. He is spelling out everything and reading and counts to 100 in English and can count to 10 in Spanish. It is so odd for me to have two boys, one Autistic, struggling to learn and the other, gifted, struggling to behave in preschool because he is so far ahead of the others. When the teachers started talking to me about him I thought they were full of it. The farther along preschool goes the more I'm realizing they weren't just yanking my chain.

Emma is 11 going on 18. The whole make up, clothes, shoes, friends thing that has sprung up since she started middle school is killing me. She kept a couple friends moving from elementary school up to middle school but the poor girl is like here momma and has boobs, which for some reason has attracted girls in the 8th grade to hang out with her. She is also a little taller than most of the kids in her classes. I wasn't allowed to wear make up until high school. I was going to do the same thing with Emma but she her new friends started putting it on her no matter what I said or did and the bunch of them ended up with Pink Eye. So I gave in and bought Emma her own makeup. The hair has changed quite a bit too. Her golden locks have been replaced with red hair on the lower half of her head and dark brown on the upper half. Her timidness is pretty much gone and her grades are up. So, the hair and makeup can stay as long as the grades are good. Truthfully I think having her older stepbrother living here, in almost all honors classes pushes Emma to work that much harder. Fine by me!

I am still at the same job, and still loving the job itself. Scott might be applying for a different job, better pay and benefits. Hoping he does for many reasons. Dig ourselves out of this mountain of debt we have, visit Disneyland a few dozen more times while we are still young, and who knows what else, oh yes, save for retirement!

As for my issue at work that has resolved itself. We are friends and that is it, ok co-workers and that is it. We talk about work and say Hi and Bye. It has taken a while to get there but we are. It was rough and there were lots of tears shed on both sides. I don't know what his home life is like anymore and he doesn't know about mine and it is better this way.

Scott and I talk ALOT more. Like we used to. We are spending alot of Us time again. Like we used to. All the things we did when our marriage was wonderful we are bringing back. I am alot calmer and the panic attacks I've been having throughout this year are gone. I haven't had one in almost 3 months now. Granted I should have seen my doctor about some of the issues I was having but I didn't and Scott worked through them with me. He calls it my MidWife crisis. You know, instead of my MidLife crisis. I really don't know what it was but we finally clicked again and life is almost back to normal since.

I told Scott if I ever go through something like that again please take me out to the back 40 somewhere and just shoot me, put me down so we don't ever go through this again.

Ok, I lied I know what clicked. Scott had a heart attack the first of October. That slapped the biggest piece of reality into me. He is doing good now, his heart tests came back showing no clogged arteries, but both upper chambers of his heart are enlarged. We keep an eye on him, get him to exercise more, and keep up with the diet he is on with some minor changes. He is a diabetic and his diet right now is pretty good.

And right now it is 12:20 am and I am exhausted so I'm going to bed. I will try to keep up better with this since I have absolutely sucked at this since my MidWife crisis started.

Only 3 more days til my baby girl comes home!