He is currently in daycare which has been freeing up a little bit of time for me to work and this month it has paid off. I’ve done really well and am trying to get back on my feet. I had been planning to move into a nice, larger apartment in a different complex once my lease was up in August, but yesterday the apartment manager called me and told me the city is expanding the freeway next to my apartment and that they are tearing out our parking lot and would be working directly infront of my place. So to compensate for this she offered me a larger, newly renovated apartment for the same rate I’m paying on my studio and also free moving and moving equipment that she would arrange for me. I just have to be out of the studio by Monday and I have to sign a year long lease on the new place. I was looking forward to moving away from here, but I honestly think that’s an offer I can’t pass up. It’s an upgrade and very little financial responsibility on me to get the move off. So I save moving costs and about $200 a month on rent that I was planning on paying. This complex is not my fave because some neighbors are annoying and some units are infested with roaches .. but I can’t really complain. I just hope I have decent neighbors and little or no pests.

When I got there I helped set up his locker and let him roam around a little bit. It kinda made me wanna cry just watching him explore new surroundings with big eyes, awe, and being a little bit shy around the older babies. It was the cutest thing ever. DAMMIT! I’m upset that I forgot to charge my digicam and couldn’t take pics of the occasion.

Anyway, his report is that everyone loved him and found him to be so sweet and cute, but they said he cried a bit and refused to eat. DOH! I completely forgot that when in new surroundings Jack doesn’t eat. He might blend in and be sociable, but on the inside he’s too overwhelmed by what’s going on to eat or nap. Crap! My poor baby went nearly a whole 8 hours with little food.
Also I noticed that they asked for permission to feed him cereal, fruits/veggies and for me to make up his bottles. On his chart I see they tried feeding him nude cereal, nude veggies and most likely cold bottles. My son won’t eat this. He needs bottles to be room temperature or at least with most of the cold knocked off. Also he will only eat solids if they’re mixed together. I’ll have to bring this up tomorrow and see if they’re willing to go the extra steps for him. It’s also not a big deal for me to bring food premixed together, I just assumed they would.

Overall things went well. I got much needed grocery shopping done and I finally got time to sit down and work in peace. Tomorrow I need to get laundry done and clean up a little, and after that I should be able to devote most of the time to work. I do want to create a little schedule that allows me to get a work out in before I go pick him up. Maybe next week I will start doing this.

-I decorated the bed with friendly colors and sheets similar to the ones I sometimes use.

-I purchased him a mattress similar to mine

-I put some toys in there he can play with to show how fun the bed can be

-I place the bed where he can see me in my bed

It’s still hard to get him to sleep in there a full night. Once he wakes up and realizes where he is he starts screaming bloody murder and won’t rest until he’s in the bed with me. And he’s a horrible sleeper. I have to wake up multiples times just to make sure he’s not about to crawl off the bed or behind it. I’m dead tired.

Argh. I need a vacation!

Saturday I randomly came down what I believe to be the flu and I feel so horrible. 104 fever, chills, cough/chest congestion, stuffy nose, super sore throat, body aches. It was so hard to get through and take care of my child. I would die if I passed this along to him. I had to actually call my mom and let her come over and care for he and I. That was not something I wanted to do, but I had to put the well-being of my child before my feelings against her. Eh. we’ll see how things go this time around.

It was also a nightmare trying to chase after my baby, him fully taking advantage of me being slow and my inability to speak by getting into any and every thing he could. It tired me out, made me feel faint and worse of all made me lose my temper.

How do other single parents handle being sick AND taking care of the children?

So for my search ..

Day Care#1 was a sty. It was disgusting. I mean toys (the toys it did have like 3 little pieces and 6 children had to share them), the equipment was from the 1980s and the place reaked of mildew. Eww no thanks.

Day Care#2 Seemed really nice at first until the teacher who was telling me about their policy repeatedly interrupted to yell at one little baby boy to “LAY DOWN! NOW!”. Definite NO!

Day Care#3 Wasn’t really bad per say. I just didn’t get a comfortable feeling about it.

Day Care#4 is the one I believed to be the one. The Director seemed genuinely nice and patient, as did the teachers. The babies seemed to love them and it was a clean environment that everyone seemed to be having fun in. Plus it wasn’t too big, so my son would be able to get attention and I felt like overall it was a place he could have fun in while mommy is away. I just didn’t get any bad feelings there at all. Hope I’m right.

I honestly can’t wait for him to start. There’s so much that needs to be done around here that I simply have no time or energy to do. I’m just a bit disappointed that their opening isn’t until the beginning of March, but since I felt so confident wit them I figured it would be worth the wait and put down a deposit.

Ontop of all else my mom and I had a fight (like always lately) and I decided to cut her out of our lives until she gets her attitude adjusted.
I’ve been putting up with her bullshit since I had the baby. She treats me like I’m so stupid and such a burden to her when I rarely ever ask her for anything. Sunday morning I woke up in terrible pain which I thought I would have to go back to the hospital for so I called her and asked her to come watch my son and drop me off there. She came over bitching saying I’m ruining her life by calling her just because I’m in pain and since he’s my son I need to deal with him whether I’m in pain or not. On top of that she told me she wouldn’t take my to the hospital but she called 911 and told the EMSA to come get me even though I told her NOT to since I don’t need another $1400 medical bill.

I told her I wouldn’t treat her this way if she needed me and to think about how she would feel if I did treat her this way. She didn’t listen to one word I was saying and told me to shut up because she’s sick of me. That’s when I kicked her ass out and told her I don’t wanna see her and she’s not allowed to see my baby again. He doesn’t need to be around that type of toxic shit or witness anyone treat his mother like that infront of him time and time again. I guess obviously she didn’t take me seriously because she called me about 50 times yesterday, then she drove my aunt over and asked her to ask me if she could come up. I pretty much laughed at her and gave a big fat NO! If anything she needs time to think about how shes acting and how she can change. IF she doesn’t feel the need to change then we really don’t need her negativity.

……….

Anyway, so that’s the deal with my mom. Since she nor any of my family can watch my son reliably for me while I work I decided to enroll him in day care. This is so fricken hard! First of all it’s hard to find one I feel comfortable with. One where the workers seem nice andthe environment seems fun, safe and sanitary.
Second of all it’s hard to think about leaving him with strangers for a few hours a day. He’s been by my side since he was born so he has an attachment to me. I wonder which of us it’s going to be harder for. I’m sure he will be able to adapt faster. I did 2 tours today, got one more in a couple of hours and another on Thursday then I will make my decision which will hopefully be the right one.

I know in the end it will be good for me and him. I will be able to make a living for us, get a break/much needed rest and run errands. He will be able to gain a bit of independence and make new friends/be around people his age. Those are all good things right?
….

I’m trying to think if anything new is going on with Jack.

- Eating solids 3x a day now. Thinking about introducing him to finger foods like cooked apples or something because he wants to feed himself.

- He understands no and is starting to learn what is OK and what is wrong. He knows he’s wrong to go into the bathroom or kitchen without mommy. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to sneak in anyway.

- He has his big boy bed. Initially it was hard to transition him over from cosleeping, but he spends long hours in the bed now.

- He has a love of being naked. I had to buy him overalls because he loves to take off his pants and diaper when I’m not looking. Just like his dad LOL.

That’s about all I can think of for now.

Jack is pretty much doing everything now except walking independently and it’s blowing my mind. It’s like one day he could hardly crawl all that well and that next he was crawling, climbing, standing and taking steps when holding on to surfaces. I think it was because of the exersaucer and jumperoo he received as early Christmas presents. They really seemed to up his confidence in standing/walking and built up strength in his legs. According to his doctor he’s very advanced for his age because he’s doing things typically a 9 month old would be doing. I’m so very proud, but it has it’s drawbacks as well. For one I hate that he’s impossible to change and bathe because he wants to move around so much which really frustrates me lately. Especially since more and more often he’s been getting up the back poops .. every parents nightmare.

For two, I get no sleep because I have to wake up about 50 times a night to check on him since he’s crawled off the bed more times than I’d like to count while we sleep. I’m giving up cosleeping now and purchased him a crib.

I was going to participate in Ms. Single Mama’s “New Year, New Leaf Challenge”. I wrote up a few things I want to change this upcoming year, but I never got the time to finish writing it all out so it’s sitting as a draft that I will probably post eventually even though I’m now too late to officially enter. Working more diligently is one of the things I want to do this year. I had to face it: I’m in debt. Ever since I had my boy I don’t really work much and everything I bought for him had to be charged. My credit cards have reached a balance of $3k in total. Which isn’t horrible compared to most people but that’s more than I want to owe anyone. I’ve cut them up and vow to live off cold cash or debit now.
To keep up with this vow, I had to empty out my savings account over the weekend to buy my son a bed. barricading no longer works because he can climb over anything. So now we have no savings it’s completely do or die in order to survive.

I hope by the summer to have the debt paid off and hopefully a little savings built back up.

….

So I got noticed over the weekend that we finally have court with Daddy later this month. I don’t know how to feel about that. Part of me is happy to be moving forward in this child support case, the other part of me is nervous as hell to see him. It’s been over a year now and with all I’ve learned about him the past month. But I honestly don’t know how this would work out being that he’s in jail right now. He probably won’t even be there.

…..

One other thing I want to change is my cooking habits .. typically I don’t cook and I’m embarrassed to admit I still haven’t lost the baby weight. I bought a bunch of groceries and I’m going to cook them up and learn new recipes on the way. I’m putting myself on a low carb-ish diet because of how sedentary I am and I bought myself a Wii for Christmas that I will only buy interactive games for. I’m loving DDR!

Ok this is a start to my updates. I gotta run now to get things done while little man is sleeping.

By Sunday night I was hospitalized and it turned out I my appendix was about to explode, plus I had an ovarian cyst so I had to get those bad boys removed. All my life I dreaded surgery but I guess with modern technology it’s not that bad. I have two unnoticeable stomach incisions and one c-section incision. I’ve been healing without pain meds. I was released Christmas Eve and spent time over my moms with my son. Christmas was just us 3 being snowed in her cozy apartment. I have to say that she drove me absolutely batshit insane after living with her a month and my son was picking up too many bad habits such staying up until midnight, wanting to be held at all times, throwing a fit when he doesn’t get his way .. all of which my mom catered to. No ma’am Miss Pam! so I pleaded to come home and here we are.

It’s so nice be home again, just the two of us. It’s still a little difficult to take care of him and he’s such a big crier and whiner now, but hopefully we can both be back to normal within a week or so.

Thanksgiving was really nice .. I was so happy to be spending it with my son for the first time ever .. but all the same these holidays are kinda rough. Everyone loves the new baby you know so they fuss over him and pass him around a lot. There are so many faces he isn’t used to and so many loud voices that he was so overwhelmed. Odd thing is when he’s around people he doesn’t know he doesn’t cry. When he has had enough of a particular situation he kinda gets this worried look on his face and he might groan a little, yet he’s too concerned with what’s going on that he won’t eat or sleep either. I took him home that night, just us two, and he really let me have it. All of that pent up frustration .. I never heard him cry so hard!

One more to go! I think we will be having a big Christmas dinner as well.
Speaking of I don’t know what to get for my son .. I mean Christmas came pretty early this ear because last month I bought him a Baby Einstein tunnel, this past week I bought him $200 worth of winter clothes and toys. Plus he doesn’t even know the difference.

He can crawl now, he’s sitting up independently, he can roll, switch directions and push up on his toes when he’s on his hands and knees. He’s mostly obsessed with trying to stand, walk and jump .. so I really wanna get him a Jumperoo but I have a cross fear of him not wanting to play with it .. and also my aunts or cousins buying him one. A couple of them have said they want to get him one or a walker (which btw I don’t want and keep trying to drop hints not to get we have carpet!) .. so either way if I get one now I fear I will waste money.

Oh yeah .. a random thought .. one thing thats currently REALLY bugging me when I let him stay with other people is how cute everyone thinks it is that my son is entranced with television so they will sit right there close infront of it with him for as long as possible and just let him stare. At first I didn’t mind if it was occasional and only for a minute or two but now it’s starting to chap my ass because I feel it’s the making of a bad habit. I don’t watch TV myself and I don’t wanna raise my son to watch tv either. I mean there are so many other better things to do than just sit there for hours .. so this is another habit I’m going to have to get my relatives to break.

The same applies to me. Lately I feel bored and like I need to be intellectually stimulated somehow because I don’t feel I’ve been learning much of anything. I think in Jan I will go back to school if I can.

Anyway, this entry is all over the place and pretty random but I just wanted to catch up. I’m going back to bed now.

I will go on and assume nothing horrible happened to him while at my aunts, but I will also assume my uncle did fuck with him in some way or another since he said he did. Even if it was just tickling him or making noises to wake him up that’s not acceptable. He’s just a baby who needs his rest. So he will no longer go over there unsupervised.

Some of you may wonder why I let him go over there when I said I was unsure of if I trusted them .. the thing is, as a mom, I don’t really trust anyone with my son but myself because I know no one loves him the way I do. While he’s away I wonder what all could possibly happen accidental or not that I have no control over since I’m not there. There are also many cases where you may think you know and trust someone, but then they do horrible things to people for some reason or another that you never thought they would be capable of doing. No one knows another person 100% probably for the simple fact that none of us read minds to know what all goes on through a person’s head.

Sometimes it’s hard to decipher where I’m being paranoid or where I’m feeling valid motherly instincts. In this particular instance these were not just strangers I dropped him off at. They are people I’ve known all of my life, and while my aunt did weird things to me as a child she never full on abused me sexually or otherwise. My uncle was always uninvolved so at the time I felt he would be OK in their care. He very well could still possibly be. This all could be a misunderstanding and I may be overreacting, but because I AM a good parent and I DO care about my son I have made the decision not to put him in that situation again.