Fail

So apparently I'm not the blogging bad ass I thought I was. I can't tell you how many times I tried to pull myself to the computer and blurt out some of the crazy shit swirling in my head. I have so many updates and want to tell you my hopes and dreams, but that nap tho...

So let's try again. I am strugglin ya'll. I am, we are in over our heads in babies and work, and yes more school. R has decided that she wants to become a physician's assistant and well, that's a hell of a lot more school. I was on board at first because we thought she was going to get in pretty quickly because well, she's indeed bad ass. However, 5 years ago, we did not take into account how skipping class to have futon sex would effect her gpa later on since she never thought she was going back. She was super supportive of me going back to get my BSN, it only seemed fair that I do the same. But now with two kiddos that require a lot more attention, it has become a thorn in my side. I'm trying not to resent her for it and want to be her cheerleader, but it is too much to handle at times. The boys are wide open and I need help often. It's hard on her too, she is working really hard to get her gpa up and so far is making all A's.  We work opposite shifts to keep babysitting costs down so we are literally two ships passing in the night. We already have a lacking love life and this is not helping. I have also picked up a second job because I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone (so dumb) and she will soon start teaching at a local college over the summer to fluff up her application. Yes I know, we have bitten off more than we can chew, and I feel like I have written that here more than a few times. I just want the world for my boys and in case you haven't noticed, the world is getting more expensive. I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end but am not quite convinced.

The boys are growing so damn fast. I work three days in a row and don't see them the whole time because they are sleeping when I get home and sleeping when I leave. When that third day comes, I feel like I have missed so much and I swear they've grown 10 feet. P has lost his sweet baby face and really looks like a big boy. It's weird. and sad. O is still so small. He's not even on the growth charts. The pediatrician swears he's fine. I don't think anything serious is wrong, it's just odd that he is so small, considering the amount he eats!

Big Boy P!

They are not speaking and we were worried about a speech delay. They say "here", "duck" and "dada" (oh the irony).  We work with them every day on talking, reading books, pointing etc. They do follow simple commands and can identify objects. But I feel like a failure because I don't think I give them as much time as they need. It's hard to divide attention between the two and one almost always seem to get more attention than the other. The pediatrician assured us this is normal but we insisted on seeing an audiologist. Well, they failed four hearing tests in two weeks! The doc said it could be a number of things including the fact that they always have ear infections and fluid all the time. So we opted for ear tubes and will go back for hearing test in two weeks. If they fail again then we move on to other things like speech therapy and possibly hearing aids, but I can tell a difference already! They are babbling a thousand times more. They call each other dada but don't call me or R momma. It's a little disheartening. I'm hoping it's coming soon. It's so hard not to compare them to each other and other babies too. Our friend has a 15 month old and he says like 15 words. It's really hard to not get jealous when we have playdates with him and he is talking.  I've been trying to teach them some sign language but that has gone over like a lead balloon so far. They will sign "all done" and "more" though so that's a start.

And in other news...I have no friends. Seriously. I used to. Then I got old, and married a woman and had kids and the group of people that we had things in common with got smaller and smaller. I do have a dear friend but we see less and less of each other.  A lot more of my old acquaintances are having babies now and I wonder if we will be brought back together because of that? You probably wouldn't think it if you met me, but I am shy. And I hate new things, oh and surprises. So basically I am grumpy cat in human form. I have joined facebook groups, twins clubs, babywearing clubs, gay parenting clubs, all in hopes of finding friends. I want to have more mom friends but I literally don't know how to make them. I feel like such a dork for even saying that! I may have 200 likes on a post and talk to 3 of those people in person. That's sad and I feel like I am failing. How can I be a good role model for my kids when I can't even make my own friends?  The few interactions I have had with other moms usually start out fine and end with them leaving quickly to "run an errand they forgot about" when the find out I have a wife. Maybe I am being paranoid. I would love more queer parent friends but there aren't that many around here. The struggle is real.  I often turn to these blogs because I feel so isolated in real life that it's nice to see families like ours really do exist. So I will continue to stalk my cyber friends here in the blogosphere until real people appear...that's not weird is it? I know everyone is different but do ya'll have trouble with this?

Staycation

Me and the wife need some time alone.  R has started school again in hopes of applying for a P.A. program next year and I got a second job. We are two ships passing in the night again and we need some "us" time. Desperately! I switched my schedule around thinking my parents would take the boys because they have offered so many times and the last time we went down, they bought their own car seats. Well, when I asked them they surprisingly had plans but offered to come watch them here for a couple of days. While I don't want to sound ungrateful, I wanted to have less people in my house, not more. So my mom came up for one day while I worked and then we changed our plans from snowboarding in the mountains to a toddler friendly trip to Atlanta. Initially I was sad and mad because I really wanted some time with  just R. But...we had the best time ever!!! We took the boys to the aquarium ( me and the wife's favorite spot) and made some awesome memories.   We had so much fun sharing this time with them. I didn't think they would appreciate the vastness of the place and the animals but they did!  I can't wait to take them back.  If you have never been-Go! GO NOW!



MAMA R



SO BIG YET STILL SO SMALL!

We also found some Walking Dead filming spots cause we're super nerds like that.

 

"THOSE WHO ARRIVE SURVIVE!"

We stayed with our close friends who went through their first IUI while we were there! (Yeah we're close like that)  So we lived vicariously through them and reminisced about our baby making experiences and that stressful TWW. We could not be more excited for them. They are doing a non medicated cycle first. I can't help but feel that we have had some influence on them in the past couple of years.   We took them to their first pride festival and equality march. They went with me to buy my wife's ring and I went with them to browse for theirs. We missed their wedding due the arrival of the boys but we see them often and it's like they never left.  They are truly good friends and will make amazing moms! Fingers crossed that they have some sticky luck and good news soon! So overall our family staycation wasn't bad after all, but I am still hoping for some alone time with my wife soon.  I am so excited for so many BFP's and am looking forward to some gender reveals soon!!!!

Bath time

Oh, please excuse the dripping noise. It's just the sound of my heart melting...

LOVE these Ikea kid towel ponchos!

Captain Bubble Beard!

Bringing Sexy Back

 On New Year's Eve, we did our usual routine and put the boys to bed. We drank beers and channel surfed until the clock struck 12. That's right folks, girls gone wild over here! You have to sign a waiver to enter this house....

As the countdown started, we both jumped up and started dancing and counting backwards with the strangers on T.V. and our bff Taylor Swift. I felt a sudden burst of energy and was excited to ring in the new year. Why you ask??? Was it the fact that we have yet another chance to do things right? Nope.  Was it the beer? Nah.  Was it because TayTay is my new girl crush??? Maybe but probably not.  It was because I was about to have sex! That's right, me and my wife did the do!  I'm gonna be brutally honest (probably embarrassingly so for my DW). Sex has fallen to the wayside off a cliff this past year. While I was pregnant, my sex drive never went into "beast mode" like most women brag about. Our sex life slowly dwindled as I got bigger and the mechanics of it all became too much. Then came the 12 week postpartum period in which I felt like a goddess with an amazing bosom and slamming waistline. No kidding, I dropped all my pregnancy weight and then some. I was skinnier than I was in high school. I felt  looked like a million bucks.  Seeing my wife in a new light as a mom made her even sexier. Unfortunately, our inflated sex kitten egos were lost on us due to serious lack of sleep. When we tried, I was super self conscious about my breasts since I was breastfeeding. I didn't want anything weird to happen and the paranoia of my post baby body took over. Then we went on our first date sans boys. We shaved our legs, we wore each other's favorite perfume, put on secret lacy things and sadly fell victim to too much wine. I had a headache (really, I swear did!) and R was drunk. The next few dates went just the same with one or both of us passed out or puking. Hey! Don't judge, it's not our fault. We really rarely go out so when we do, we party like it's 1999 and Y2K is coming.

This time we didn't make plans, we didn't wear frilly things, and it was nice. Afterwards, we joked that we used to have sex more in one day than we did all last year. Yikes. We both laughed, but we both knew it was true. We have become that couple. The couple that gives sex for birthdays and anniversaries. We talked about it and both admitted that neither one of us feels sexy even though we still find each other attractive. It's hard for us to be intimate when we don't view ourselves as desirable anymore. Both of our libidos have taken a nose dive.  We both want more intimacy in our relationship but as crazy as it sounds have not been able to find time for it.  And this is where I think we have failed. We have failed to recognize that intimacy is a vital part of our relationship too.  When we have a moment to spare, we give it to the dirty dishes, laundry, or whatever endless task there is to do instead of to each other.

We haven't fallen out of love with each other, but we may have fallen out of lust. Don't get me wrong, spooning and holding hands is awesome but we cannot survive on bread alone folks. So my new year's resolution is to carve out time for my wife and I. We have also both resolved to join the gym. (uuuuugh!)  My wife is pretty athletic and is really happy when she's working out. ( I think she looks great already!) I think that when I become more confident in my body, I can truly appreciate and accept my wife's affection. Right now I am just not comfortable in my own skin so I don't want anyone else looking at it. I knew post baby body would be an issue, but I didn't think it would last this long.  It's time to engage each other and ourselves again.  I have decided that I need to let go of some things, if the dishes go one more day, or the bathroom is a mess then so.be.it.  Our time is limited and I want to make the most best of it with my wife.  I am glad we acknowledged it and we are working on it together. 

So let's hear it: Have you or a loved one fallen victim to sexual underdrive? What did you do? Thoughts or advice on how to bring the sexy back?

 

 

Happy New Years! I hope that you spent it doing something (or someone) you love! ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 



ONE

This year has wizzed by and I find myself yet again apologizing for the lack of posts. I really thought I'd be better at this! Oh well, it seems that I am that girlfriend that leaves you high and dry when a new flame comes around and then pops back into your life when it fizzles. (or in my case just takes a really long nap). 

There are so many things I wanted to share if only I could remember. I cannot emphasize enough how vital the sticky pad has become to our survival. I went to the store no less than four times this week with the intentions of buying trash bags and guess what? We still have no trash bags. I have the attention span on a gnat. No joke.  Anyways, I guess I will hit the highlights. Our state has legalized same sex marriage! It's official, we are officially married. No more filing double taxes, we can be on each other's insurance, we can be on the birth certificates together. I will admit that while I am ecstatic, I am also annoyed that we just shelled out over five grand in legal fees to do our second parent adoption and $500 for our legal name change. I want to sue the state for that money wasted on fighting for something that should've been ours in the first place! It is what it is and I am glad that we have those protections in place, although I still don't feel entirely safe it's a start.

In the past year I have realized that my life, my house, and my body will never be the same but I can make them all look decent in about an hour. For real though, I am 30 minutes late to everything, my house is exploding at the seams with toys and laundry and I have three different sized pants because my weight has fluctuated so much. Leggings are my new best friend. I dress like I am going to the gym in hopes of one day actually getting there. I sacrifice looks for an extra few minutes of sleep and my hair is in a permabun. I wouldn't trade it for the world though.

And in other news..the boys are ONE!!! I cannot believe it! What an amazing year it has been with these two. They have just grown leaps and bounds. I really am in awe of them as people and the strides they have made. They both started walking around Thanksgiving, are babbling up a storm, blowing kisses and breaking hearts all around the world. Really, they are pretty stinking cute.  They reach up to hold our hands when they walk and it melts me every time. I am so smitten with these little men. I just watched them in disbelief as they waddled in between everyone playing and laughing. Part of me loves that I can play with them more now and really talk to them and the other part of me wants them to stop growing. I totally get why people want another kid shortly after the first turns one. Unfortunately, that may not be in the cards for us for a while. We want one more, but these boys deserve our time and I want to be able to give them 100% of it. It's really hard to do what I need to do now (see trash bag story above), let alone with a third in the mix. So for now we will remain a party of four. I'll leave you with some pics of our party. I hope everyone is doing well and I will continue to cyber stalk each and everyone of ya'll! I look forward to hearing some special delivery news from a few of you soon <3.

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Just a piece of paper

When I met R, I had never been with a woman, I was previously married, and swore I would never remarry again. When we became serious, I told her I wanted children but still didn't want to be married. After having been divorced, I felt that a marriage license wouldn't protect anything and it was "just a piece of paper." I will admit, looking back, I was still feeling burnt from my previous relationships. We did finally decide to get married and going to D.C. to get our license was one of the most exciting days of my life. That "piece of paper" meant more to me than anything- maybe because so many people told us we couldn't have it or maybe because this time I knew it was for keeps. We celebrated our anniversary this year without any fuss and we still haven't opened our love box and read our letters but I pulled out our license and looked at it for a while-and my heart smiled. It is certainly more than a piece of paper to me.
When we decided to have children, we knew we would have to take some action in order to protect our family. We didn't have a clue how much that would entail. We just happened to be at a rally and met a family lawyer that specialized in ART cases. We worked with her over the past year and finally as of August 19th we are both legally recognized as the parents of our own children. We got co-maternity agreements stating our intent to have children before we conceived.  Now, this sounds ridiculous of course but here's the thing: since we did reciprocal IVF and the state does not recognize our marriage, we were considered an egg donor and surrogate. Which technically means that if god forbid something happened to me, R might not get custody because up until the "adoption" she was not on the birth certificate, and if something were to happen to R, even though I am on the birth certificate, I am not biologically their mom so if her family wanted them, they could get custody over me. Now I know that many of you are thinking that going through all this for hypothetical situations is silly, but as a nurse and a military dependent I can tell you that parental death is very real and it doesn't make an announcement before visiting. It was important to us to be prepared. And even though our families are cool with our situation right now, death, divorce, or whatever, can change people in an instant. It can make people turn on their loved ones no matter how strong the bond was. Also, if by chance I lost my job, the boys would lose their insurance and R wouldn't be able to put them on hers. All of these possibilities left us with a sense of urgency to get our affairs in order. Along with filing for the adoption, we did living wills and health care power of attorneys for each other.
We also had to terminate our sperm donor's pseudo relationship. The case was actually us vs. John Doe because we used an anonymous donor. I'm not sure if they did this because it's protocol, or because from the outside it just looks like a couple doing a closed adoption versus two lesbians adopting their own children. We had visits with a social worker and a guardian ad litem. The visit with the social worker was short and sweet although I felt that she really could've cared less due to the fact that we actually had to pay her a lot of cash for the visit. She was eccentric and talked like Paula Dean ya'll. She walked through our house and made comments about how the boys had nicely shaped heads-and that all african american babies have nicely shaped heads so our babies must be mixed. She then proceeded to talk about her high profile custody case that had been in the national news. We were familiar with it and I was shocked she was a key player in this situation as she was just so, err, um, eccentric. She also shared that she had done IVF and was a foster parent and we had nothing to worry about. With that she flitted out of our lives never to be seen again. Her placement report was clearly from a template and she had left the previous couple's info in it because according to her we were a "lovely Caucasian couple raising their children and practicing Judaism." That couple does sound lovely, but it wasn't us, so we had to wait while our lawyer fixed all our paperwork and filed our court date. The guardian ad litem was also very nice and much more down to earth. Although she was named after a legume....Anyways the court date came and we were informed that we had to have a plan b in case the judge gave off a bad vibe. Plan b was to politely ask for a continuance and hope pray beg for a better judge. So the lawyers went in and talked to them before we came in to get a feel for her. Even through the home visits and all the paperwork and background checks I hadn't been nervous or even mad-until now. Here we were, nine months in with our sweet little boys, and after all we had been through to have them, it struck me that there may be people out there that still don't view us as a family. It also struck me that we could be denied and everything was in vain. That scared me and made me furious at the same time.  I couldn't imagine not being these little boys' mama.  It still chokes me up to think about  it.  Well those fears were quickly put to rest when they came out and said it was a go! We had to both testify about our family and how we conceived. It was indeed awkward. However, the judge was awesome and she thought our family was lovely. (We dressed them up in hopes that their cuteness would distract the judge ha!) It was bittersweet. I was happy we were finally going to be protected by this piece of paper but mad that we even needed it. We haven't gotten the new birth certificates yet but we were already warned that the R's name will be listed under "father". Our legal system has unfortunately not caught up with the times. It will be nice to have their new birth certificates with both our names even if they are just pieces of paper.