Sleepy and can't sleep!

There are times where I feel like I'm on autopilot, just trying to make it through the day because I'm so darned exhausted.
Today was one of those days.
Half an hour ago, I was barely able to sit up on the sofa with Mr K and remain awake. Now, I cannot for the life of me fall asleep. Ack!
I shall rant now.
   Before I met my Mr K, I loved all animals. We had numerous dogs when I was growing up, and I loved every one of them, from Spunky and Blackie to Lazy and Precious. We had many semiferal cats thanks to ignorance and lack of funds for a simple spay procedure on the feral girl that showed up when we moved in. Anyhow this feral cat, Pookie, was a wild Calico girl. She was an avid hunter of field mice, moles, and other small varmints. We knew this because their corpses were often gifts at our doorstep. She loved us humans that she adopted, but hid from everyone else who ever came near our house. Pookie got sick when she was about 13 years old. She had gotten hurt by something and never healed well. We had a wonderful mail carrier who offered us help by rehoming her in a rescue that could afford the veterinarian bills that were likely extensive. After the hard choice was made to rehome Pookie, we were given a few updates about her from the mail carrier. She lived another six months with a whole pack of other semiferal cats rescued in our area. She died peacefully in her sleep one night. It broke my heart that I realized we were unable to care for her properly because of lack of finances on our part, but it also mad me swear to never get another cat as long as I lived because of how much losing Pookie (first to a rehome, then when she died) hurt me.
Then I met Mr K.
He has a cat.
   I have tried to like this cat, but have failed. We have been together for over four years now. This cat went from being left alone for days on end without Mr K due to business travel, to being here with me, every single day. I mentioned we had Pookie for YEARS earlier. Pookie was an outside only cat. I grew up in the south, so she only ever came inside on the rare winter nights that it froze outside. This was a handful of nights in the thirteen years she lived with us.
   Back to Scooter. Scooter was neutered and declawed in the front because Mr K didn't know better at the time, if he had known better, the surgery would have only been a neuter, no declawing done, period as told to me by the mister himself.
   Scooter cannot be an outdoor cat because he is defenseless without those front claws. This makes for a very frustrating life. Scooter also bites because Mr K thought it was cute when he would bite as a kitten. Scooter grew, as did his teeth. You see where this is going don't you? Scooter was never trained on proper play and behaviour. He thinks biting is the only way to show affection, playfulness, and aggression. This makes me not want to interact with Scooter as I am not fond of being bitten. This keeps Scooter locked away from me and our daughter since I will not risk bites to my child. It is not fair to the cat that my two year old chases him, his only recourse is to bite as a defense. I will not let him bite her so I keep them separated.
   I cannot and will not spend my entire day following my daughter around while she tries to play with Scooter. There are things like cooking, cleaning, practicing letters and numbers, and cuddle times that need to be attended to during the day. So, Scooter has his bed, food, water, and litter all within the confines of one room. When Tyrant is awake, Scooter is put up. When she is in bed for naps or for the night, or we are gone for an appointment, he can be loose. Scooter has no manners. He still tries to jump up on the counters and dining table (EW! Cat fur and litter on his paws from burying his excrement, freaking disgusting) I do not allow pets on surfaces where food is handled. That is not okay in our home. Scooter was allowed run of the house for the two or so years he lived with Mr K in the bachelor pad, so he got set in his ways. It has taken a lot of time, energy and water squirts to get him to behave while we are home.
   Anyhow, my point after all that rambling is this: Scooter and I do not like one another. We tolerate each other. Him because he knows where his food comes from, and me because i cannot be cruel. He loves K, and K loves him. I swore to my Mr K that I would never ask him to get rid of Scooter, as I could not handle it if he asked me to get rid of any of my three dogs. He tolerates the dogs just as I tolerate the cat. I would love nothing more than to hand Scooter off to someone who adores overweight orange tabby cats with no front claws, a fondness for biting, and a deep seated love of splashing all his water out of his bowl. But I cannot. I cannot give up my three rescue dogs. My Tink, who has a Chihuahua body and a Great Dane sized ego, my Zee, who is so timid she is afraid of her own shadow but loves to hunt small game like squirrels and mice, or even my Little Foot, whom Mr K and I rescued together during a family member's divorce or else she would have been euthanized.
   I cannot give up my dogs, so I cannot ask him to give up his cat.
   I can say, however, that I would happily say no to a new cat unless it was to be an outside only, semiferal but spayed Calico that would hunt all the snakes and other nuisance critters like our cat Pookie used to do for us.
 
   I'm going to sign off now, attempt sleep yet again, and pray that the demon spawn kitty does not bat at a door, jump on a counter, or attack a sleeping human foot tonight.

Taking breaks?

Some days I feel like I need an evening break. Just a small break where I can sit and read, sip a warm drink, and relax for an hour without guilt.
Mr K is amazing. If I need time to myself, he gladly goes solo on parenting the Tyrant so I can rest, but the guilt is there. It feels like I am being selfish by being alone in our room while my sweet girl is is playing with her daddy and every few minutes saying "mommy"  amidst her toddler babble or directly calling for me in such a lonely sad voice. I don't get it, K is on the floor playing cars, dolls, or reading to her, and she still calls for me. She knows I am in the house, as she doesn't do it when I go to run errands and she doesn't do it when K is at work.

How am I supposed to relax for a little bit when I feel extreme guilt for taking time alone?

  Tonight, the tyrant decided to go to bed early. Our routine consists of brushing teeth, changing into a fresh diaper, and getting pjs on. We give kisses and hugs, place her in bed with her dog and her soothie, turn on her night light, shut off the light, close the door, and we are done.
  We usually do bedtime at nine pm. I need to sleep at some point, and my insomnia-type sleep patterns keep me awake until the early morning hours. Since my sweet girl gets good time with us in the evening, we have her bedtime at nine pm, and she usually awakens by nine am. Tonight at twenty past eight, Little Miss chose to go to bed early. She grabbed her daddy's foot, then my hand and tugged. She ran to her bathroom to wait for us to brush teeth. Her daddy and I were more than happy to oblige.
   Here it is at ten past nine, Little Miss is asleep, we are on our electronic gadgets watching dvr tv shows, and having quiet adult time. Yes!
   My pregnancy is going well. I am showing symptoms of symphysis pubis dysfunction, minor pain compared to what Doctor Google has taught me, but still some pretty intense pains at night. My next appointment is at the beginning of March. It will be a busy day with a fetal echo to check the baby's heart for any changes in the tricuspid regurgitation that was seen in the previous scan. I will also have a growth scan ultrasound. I will be making certain to ask the tech for a print of the scan to have for the baby book. That reminds me, I need to make a baby book collection!

My tablet is warning me of a low battery so I'm off for now.

Valentine's Day

Yesterday was a good, quiet day.
   I was smacked, kicked, beaned in the head, sneezed on, coughed on, screamed at, cuddled with, kissed, smiled at, and hugged, all before 5pm. I love being a mother.
After A had her busy day of terrorizing our home and myself along with the dogs and cat, she loudly squealed "DADDY!!!" as he walked in the front door. He told our sweet girl "Give this to Mommy!" I heard a rustling of a grocery sack then the slapping of feet as she ran towards out kitchen. I get to the gate to discover a bright red envelope held outstretched towards me, a big grin on my little girl's face. I told her thank you and took the card. I opened it to read a funny message form my husband and giggled. As he stepped over the gate to unload his lunchbox from the day, I gave him a warm hug and a thank you kiss. He surprised me with a large pack of Reese's Cups. My husband knows what to get me, what can I say?

   I was about the check dinner, so I playfully made the excuse of my ever expanding belly being in the way, and asked him to get the pan out the oven for me. He did then checked the chicken I was baking inside. It wasn't done yet. Drat! I put the bird in for another hour, finished up the side dish, and K surprised me again with an offer to get frozen yogurt. Awwwww. The man spent all day at work and on week nights he only wants to rest, not drive into town for anything. He prefers comfy clothes, a beer, and dinner. Dinner wasn't ready and we had been dying to try out our favorite frozen yogurt place at their new location, so off we went. It was delicious! As we were leaving, I spied warm brownies and a display of chips. We got them both and came home to the fully cooked bird. After a bit, we had dinner and some family time. We put the Tyrant to bed and watched some Friends on dvd. As soon as K began snoozing, it was bedtime.

   As soon as we were in bed, my sweet husband was asleep. I tossed and turned and gave up on sleep. My incubating fetus had decided to wake up and proceeded to do a one-person version of the summer Olympics in my uterus, thereby rendering me sleepless. It's all good, I caught up on my shows I had missed the night before. As one am arrived, I had had enough and told my baby to be I was done and going to sleep whether or not they wanted me to do so.
   It was a great day with my family, depsite the seeming abuse from my toddler and my baby to be.

It's been interesting since I was last here!

Miss A is in her room, playing quietly. Luckily it is the safest room in the house for her (meaning there is nothing my monkey girl can climb on or pull onto herself), and she enjoys destroying the order playing.
Updates:
Miss A is two years old, loves to climb, and run after the dogs and cat.
Her likes:

• any type of car or truck, be it toy or real; 
• animals, she can spend hours watching critters in the yard and playing with our furry family members; 
• eating, she likes to snack on chips and salsa, and will willingly dip anything into anything which makes for some interesting flavor combinations at mealtime; 
• Daddy, he is still her favorite person in the whole world.
• Mommy's iPad, which stays put away to prevent rough and tumble A from doing too much damage in her rigorous play
• books, while we are not given too much opportunity to read more than a page at a time before she takes the books to read by herself, we enjoy trying every day. she loves to look at the pictures and will have entire conversations in toddler babble about what is going on in each page.

News about us as a family:
    We have since moved. We bought two acres south of the town we were in, and we are in the middle of a bunch of farmland and wooded areas. We see deer regularly and I have spotted a fox, an owl, and a hawk, along with the scurry of squirrels and flocks of small birds. We love it out here. When we lost power at night once, we could see so many stars in the sky, it was absolutely mesmerizing. We went from our 1950s two bedroom starter home to a gorgeous three bed, two bath home all on one level (no more basement, wahoo!) and my kitchen is three times as large, with a separate dining room off the kitchen. We moved at the start of 2013 (that story is deserving of a whole blog post all in it's own right).

    A will be  big sister this Spring! We are expecting our second baby in May and we could not be more excited. I will reveal the sex in a later post, maybe...    ;-)

More about A. She is two years and three months old. She began walking at 14 months, she has said dada and mum for a long time, and switched to mama at some point. She has slowly added to her vocabulary but has trouble pronouncing sounds and words. I have started the process of a speech evaluation this week. Her hearing screen was normal, so we wait for the referral to reach the speech evaluation people. She has some words that are perfect and clear like "daddy" "mama" bye-bye" and "I/eye" however, most words are not completed, like book (boo), bite (bi), and many other words. When we say her ABCs, she will try but many sound the same, such as C, D, and E all sound like "dee"
I work with her daily and we do not many baby talk to her, but she is still not picking it up, so I am going with the speech eval. to see if she needs more than what I am offering currently and to see what else I can do for her.

I'm a big fan of car seat safety. I learned more and more about proper car seat use after A arrived and her daddy and I chose to rear face her in her seat past the law's minimum of 1 year and twenty pounds. She is now 28 pounds and rides rear facing in a Britax Boulevard 70. I love it because she is safer this way. Had we forward faced her at a year and twenty pound, when we totalled our van while heading on vacation during the Christmas of 2011, she could have suffered a very serious and life threatening neck injury. Thankfully, she was still in her infant carrier and riding asleep rear facing. She didn't wake up until we came to a complete stop and the road noise and movement were gone. We are lucky that no one else was involved in the wreck, just my beloved minivan Bonnie, and the deer who decided leaping at us from the median at that precise time was a good thing. I knew immediately that we had to replace A's car seat. In the event of a high speed collision (deer vs van at 55mph) all car seats MUST be replaced, no matter how well everyone weathered the wreck. Micro fractures can occur and the seat is no longer considered safe or usable. I eventually settled on the Britax and have loved it ever since. If you want more information of car seat safety, visit www.carseat.org A will remain rearfaicng to the limits of her seat.
I must go for now, A is wanting a snack, or as she says "nat"