life

“When Did We All Grow Up?”

/ Katie / Leave a comment

My husband turns twenty-five today. He’s a quarter of a century old, and I’m not far behind.

And yes, I said “husband.” On September 27, we finally tied the knot in a small, perfect ceremony back in my hometown. It’s a word that I’m still not used to, and the thought of being someone’s wife just feels strange to me. I’ll be twenty-five in June, I have a daughter who will be two in January, and I’m a married woman. When I think back to just five or ten years ago, I would have never imagined that I would end up here. I didn’t think I would be married yet, and I certainly didn’t think I would have a child at this point in my life. Everything I thought I wanted back then is nothing like how my life has turned out – which is okay, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I love my family, I love my life.

Yet, sometimes it doesn’t feel “real” to me. It’s still hard for me to imagine being a mom, and I’ve been “mom” for nearly two years now. It seems like everyone around me is having a baby, getting married, or both, and it’s sort of made me realize just how far we have come from being the carefree teenagers we once were. My former classmates are constantly posting new announcements on social media and it makes my head spin.

I had a short conversation with a friend yesterday about all of these announcements and how everything is suddenly changing and she asked me, “When did we all grow up?” I’m wondering the same thing myself. It feels like just yesterday, I was sixteen years old and starting my first job. Time felt so slow back then, and I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and go out on my own and be reckless and make mistakes. I assumed I would make the most of my late teens and early twenties: constantly making new friends, going to parties, hanging out at the bar until closing time, doing what I wanted, etc. I’d graduate college, get an awesome full-time job, and maybe by my mid-twenties, I’d find someone who was worth settling down with, and maybe by the time I was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I’d be having my first child. Things happened sooner than that for me, and I can’t help but feel like the last six years since I graduated high school have gone by so quickly.

So, when did we all grow up? Was it when we all left high school and pursued other things? Was it when we all started moving out of our parents’ houses, getting places of our own, and paying our own bills? Was it when we all started getting full-time jobs, having babies, getting married – all of the above? Is there even an answer to that question?

Baby’s First Trip to the ER

/ Katie / Leave a comment

I’ve always been a pretty clumsy person. I’ve run into, tripped over, and fallen on more things than I can count in my twenty-four years. In fact, my earliest memory is of the time that I broke my left foot. I was about two years old and I was pretending that I was in the Olympics. I stood on top of a box and jumped, intending to land on one foot, but I did not come out the victor; I hit the floor with one foot just fine, except for the fact that I broke it and had to be rushed to the hospital that night.

trip to ER 01

I wore that cast proudly.

As a mom, I have always thought it would be really cool if my daughter took after me in some way, but this was not exactly what I meant.

Yesterday, we got home around 9pm from running an errand and Boo wanted to climb up the stairs on the outside of our apartment building and back down the single set of stairs inside that leads to the ground floor, where our apartment is located. She has done this a million times before. I stood off to the side, watching her slowly make her way down the steps backwards, as she usually does, and when she got to the last step, she stood and turned. When she did, her foot caught on something (I presume her other foot) and she fell forward, crashing down onto the ground.

I panicked.

My poor baby was hysterical. I picked her up and held her for a minute, but that didn’t seem to do any good. I walked down the hall to our apartment, sat down on the living room floor with her, and attempted to calm her down, to no avail. She hadn’t calmed down a bit and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I began touching her foot gently, moving it around a bit, and she screamed at me. She broke her foot. I knew it, I just knew it.

I quickly stood up and packed us both back into the car and headed to the nearest emergency room. They took X-rays and I tried to keep her calm, which worked until she tried to stand on her foot again and realized how badly it hurt, then fell right back down. It was also way past her bedtime and being exhausted didn’t help matters whatsoever.

On the bright side, the X-ray showed no signs of any fractures, so they concluded that she severely sprained her ankle – a week and a half before our vacation, no less! That seems to be our luck. I’m glad she’s okay, though. That is not an experience I would like to relive anytime soon… or ever.

Mechanics are the Reason I Have Trust Issues

/ Katie / Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure that wine was first created because there was a mom who, at some point, turned to her partner and said, “Honey, I need a drink, and this crap you’ve got right now just isn’t cutting it.” I am that mom today. I need a glass of wine or two. Or six. (I’ll just have to settle for hard cider, since that’s all we’ve got at the moment.)

I am less than a month from my wedding and today was supposed to be the day I went shopping for a wedding dress. Then we had severe weather that took out our power for a while. When it finally did come back, so many things weren’t working right: the central air, the box fan, the ceiling fan, the stove, the toaster, the washer and dryer, the lights in the kitchen. Possibly other things, I don’t know. I found out today that the water heater also isn’t working right, which means no showers for us for the time being.

As if that wasn’t enough of an annoyance, my car is also out of commission. I was on the way home from the store last night with Boo and on the way back, my brakes decided to stop working. To make a long story short, my fiance left last night to park my car where we planned to get it fixed and walked home. This morning, we all got up too late and then rushed over there so that Boo and I could wait for two hours to be told, “We can’t start the car.”

At this point, I was sitting in the Applebee’s across the street with my toddler, who insisted on standing on top of the table to play with the light fixture above us because toddlers have zero self-awareness and even though I am dying of embarrassment because my child will not listen and is now standing on top of the table, I can’t get her down because she has a complete meltdown and then gets back up on the table again anyway. Such as the life of a mom.

But this isn’t about that. Let me back up a little and tell you a little bit more about my other baby: my car.

I drive a 2000 Chevy Cavalier. The poor thing has had it kind of rough, but I do my best to keep her running and in good condition. The past few months, my starter has been a little bit fussy; sometimes it will take longer than normal for it to turn over and start the car, but it does, in fact, start the car. I actually haven’t been worried at all that my starter would one day just quit working. When I took my car in to this place today, I went strictly to have my brake lines looked at and fixed. That was the only issue. And now, suddenly, it will not start, either. It seems awfully coincidental, doesn’t it?

Best case scenario, the total repair for replacing the starter and the brake lines (which are pretty much completely rusted and leaking profusely, hence the reason I had no brakes) would be almost $700. Worst case scenario, the total repair would be around $1100. That’s for the new starter plus the brake lines plus some of the other things connected to the brake lines that I actually have zero knowledge about, even though the mechanic explained everything to me in detail. Anyway, we’re looking at something within that range. Needless to say, my fiance is adamant that he would like to try to fix it himself but I am too stressed out and tired to deal with it at this point. I left my car in their parking lot, and hopefully we’ll get the thing out in the next couple of days.

After that fiasco, I waited around for a bit for a mechanic to give me a ride home, then changed my mind and ended up walking the two and a half miles (after walking about a mile earlier in the day) with R in the Ergo on my back. She slept part of the way since she missed her midday nap and was a real joy to deal with once we got home. I was sore and tired and hot and dehydrated and that walk was absolutely awful. I would not do it again unless my life depended on it, and even then, that’s a maybe.

Did I mention that we got back from vacation just two weeks ago? We spent five days on beautiful Lake Michigan and it was awesome. It was nice to get away and relax, and Boo really enjoyed it as well. She was so well-behaved, I wasn’t sure she was actually my child. My fiance and I also had our first date in almost two years that week while we were gone – as in, a date where Mommy and Daddy go by themselves and have a nice meal together without trying to keep a child from throwing forks into people’s faces or standing on top of tables. It was weird, but it was also nice to have that one-on-one time.

I wish we were still on vacation. We have one to look forward to at the end of the month, but it’s too far away. I need a break already.

I guess I’ll just have to settle for that cider instead.