-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!

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.

I’m so proud of Jack. He can can sit up all his own now, but he can’t actually sit up for too long. He’s rolling, he’s trying to crawl although it frustrates him. He’d much rather attempt to walk.
I’m worried about him. We definitely need a bigger apartment so I can get him a crib. I think he’s rolled out of the bed a total of 4 or 5 times with me. My mom called me up all nervous to say he rolled out with her. I mean no one lets him do it on purpose but he’s just so busy and impossible to sleep with anymore. If he hits the wall he will turn himself around and keep rolling until he goes off the foot of the bed. Uggh .. I don’t want him to get hurt! I’m not sure what to do with no space.

Anyway child support has been moving along fantastically. I assume they’ve sent out the notices. Daddy has been sending me emails saying in one sentence he has no money to pay for CS so its not fair I filed, and in the next claiming I raped him to set him up because he doesn’t remember me or ever sleeping with me. He says he vaguely remembers falling asleep while being in my presence and that I’ll never get away with this. Mmm sure baby. Guess that’s why you were all in my face saying you missed fucking me a couple months ago, huh?

Gotta love him.

ETA: I’ve been doing a worse job at keeping up this blog than I thought! Damn damn damn. I forgot to mention before that about 3-4 weeks ago Child Support had been stalling with my case and when I would call them to get answers Customer Service would claim that the hold up was that they couldn’t find Daddy even though I gave them his exact address that he had given me and no explanation as to why that was.
I got frustrated with that after hearing it for 2 months and ontop of that they were acting like I was a pain in the ass for calling them. I decided that I would write a letter to the governor to get something done and before I sent it off I like Child Support know I was going to. That same day a man called me from the Child Support office apologizing profusely and told me that he went over my case file and the hold up was that for some bullshit nonexistent reason they wrote me down as non-cooperative and put my case on hold. Finding Daddy wasn’t an issue, they found him months before. He told me he would take off my “non-coop” title and put my case as top priority to get things moving along and he would send out the letter to Daddy to let him know he was being sued for Child Support and the steps to move forward.

Glad to see he kept good on his word. Daddy got the letter and seems to be flipping his lid. I think it’s funny he actually thought I wouldn’t do this. That he could get off scotch free and not be held accountable for anything AGAIN. Nope, baby. You’re a 27 year old (sorry excuse for a) man. Time to finally step up and be responsible for something you’ve done.

I stress it. I dread it. I get frustrated with it, but I swear all of that goes away the minute my son looks lovingly into my eyes and gives me the biggest smile ever. It all goes away when he sees me and gets so excited that he squeals, laughs, giggles and tells me all about his day in baby jibberish. God, I love him. I honestly feel like the luckiest woman in the world with the greatest son ever. I’ve never been so proud of anything in my life.
Just a little smile is all it takes for me to remember why I’m doing this, why I’m here, why everything is worth it.
I’m also overwhelmed with pride and happiness because last night, for the first time ever, my little baby slept 10 hours straight!! I’m so ecstatic. I’ve been noticing that lately his sleeping schedule has been getting a little more consistent .. during the day he seems to sleep so lightly, and I suppose that’s napping, but at nights he sleeps longer periods of time and has been pretty easy to put back to sleep when he does wake up allowing me to get a little more rest. You have no idea how ecstatic I feel right now.

Lastly, I’m seeing great improvements in his tummy time and ability to hold his head up. Yes, he’s still bobble headed but he can hold his noggin up and keep it up for long periods of time even though it bops about. I plan to work with him more on his stomach if he will allow me, so I can get him to roll easier and also I’m thinking of bringing out flash cards sometime next month. None of the “Your Baby Can Read” bs, but I think it would be beneficial to introduce numbers and letters to him.

Has anyone else started their baby off to learning when they were only a few months old? How far did you go as far as how many letters and numbers to introduce at a time and how long before you moved on to more? Did it really help your baby learn faster?

So umm .. imagine my surprise when I was woken in the middle of the night by my cell phone only first to see my son completely missing from the Lounger! “OMFG!” I thought “Jack rolled on the floor! But he didn’t make a sound .. is he OK? OMG! He can’t be!”

Except no. Before I could get up to panic I realized that I felt a warmth next to my body, a “bump” beside my gut and a tiny hand resting on my giant boobs. I looked down and …

There he was. Jack had somehow removed himself from the angled Boppy, nestled himself perfectly aligned against my body, tucked himself in and was fast asleep next to me. I shit you not.

What the f* am I gonna do with this kid? How did this happen? He’s just too much!