WHAT.A.WEEKEND (aka...The Longest Post EVER)

Where to begin…

Well first of all, I took Friday off work. To spend with Hailey. You know, because we were going to be gone all weekend and I wanted to see her before we left…GAWD was that a mistake. I don’t know if she could sense we were leaving, or she was just feeling extra cranky or what. But it was a BAD morning. She was fine the first couple hours after she woke up. I was packing, she was packing her pacifiers in my suitecase, and packing her cookies in her own overnight bag. I took her pacifiers out of my bag…is that what started it all? Did she realize she wasn’t going with me at that point?? I have no idea. But all hell started breaking loose. She clung to me like she did when she was little. I couldn’t do anything without her at my legs, pulling my pants down and yelling and screaming at me. I was at my wits end. I fed her lunch. All of a sudden she decided she did not want the rest of her peas. “NO!” I asked her at least 3 times, and each time, “NO!” So I put them on the kitchen counter. Oh God, I took away the kid's food, she was dying of hunger, I tortured her…at least that’s how she acted. She ran over to the counter, threw a huge fit, went to throw herself down on the kitchen floor and throw a fit like she does…and she threw herself into the oven, hitting the corner of the handle on the drawer with her forehead. I freaked out and ran over…big ol goose egg with a cut in the middle, right behind her hair line. I finally got her calmed down by giving her like 10 of these little organic cookies that she likes. Then I tried to rock her and read a book, thinking she was tired. Oh she let me know that was not the case. I lost it, yelled at her that I had no idea what she wanted and she needed to spend some time in her crib while mommy cooled off…and I plopped her in her crib. You’d think I was murdering her. She screamed and cried…of course D, who does hardly any of her care and none of her discipline rushes in the room(and btw was doing nothing to help me pack or get ready to go), yells at me to stop yelling at her, and goes to get her out of the crib. I went over and told him no, leave her there. We cannot let her run this household and get her way all the time. He pushed me away, NOT HARD, but since I’m a huge klutz I tripped backwards over her toys on the floor and fell backwards onto the floor. D tried to catch me but he wasn't quick enough. I felt so stupid. And damn did it hurt my head. And then I felt absolutely horrible because Hailey FLIPPED out and started screaming frantically. D picked her up out of her out of the crib and she struggled and struggled reaching for me, so he laid her on my chest. She clung to me for dear life and just cried. Then I realized…good God, she thinks he pushed me onto the floor. She thinks daddy hurt mommy. She was terrified of him after that. I felt so bad. Here I was fighting with him, well just arguing a bit, in front of Hailey, which I vowed never to do because of all the crap I had to witness from my dad(not my mom, she was wonderful) when I was a kid, but I was at my wits end…and here Hailey and I were bickering…and then this happens, and D starts acting like it’s all my fault that she’s acting terrified of him and here my head is pounding from me hitting it on the floor. Damn talk about a bad morning. D left, said he had to run some errands. He was very hurt, about the whole thing…about Hailey not wanting him, about me being so upset with the whole situation. Here we were supposed to be all lovey dovey, getting ready to go on our anniversary trip, and this happens. I tried my best to get ready, I threw some things in Hailey’s bag and left. I ran by work to use the net for my bank account, since our internet at home isn’t working...Hailey brightened up a bit. I called D and asked if he minded if I just went ahead and dropped her off at my mom’s…it wasn’t like she would have let him tell her bye anyway…he said that’s fine. Honestly by that time I was just ready to hand her over to somebody, I just needed a break. Which I feel horrible saying, because I work 40 hrs a week…I hardly ever get to see her, and I was going to be away from her all weekend, and here I was at my wits end needing a break. It was just a bad morning. She was happy to be at my mom’s. She waved bye to me, barely looking at me…watching her Curious Buddies movie. I went and got D, we got Arby’s for lunch and got on the road. We were both just kind of blah. Trying to make the best out of the rest of the day though. Which leads me to our trip…

So we get down there and the cabin is very neat. I’ll update with pictures later, can’t as my internet at home isn’t working right now. It’s in the back, with a huge deck all to ourselves. We went down to the pool. D starts griping. Doesn’t want to take off his shirt because he thinks he’s fat…he’s bored and hot…the pool is too crowded. D---- Downer. He finally went and got us some drinks from the bar. Then he bitched because he got a beer and he doesn’t like beer, but men are supposed to drink beer not those sissy girly drinks. BLAH He was being so silly! We finally got in the pool and he started having a good time…then I was starving so we had to get out, and he was bummed but ok. We went to eat. He griped that it took too long. He was just in a mood to gripe at everything I guess, which happens sometimes. I think when he’s tired or just isn’t in the right frame of mind. That night the people in the level above us, a bunch of guys(huge busybodies that would not sit down!) annoyed us walking back and forth across the floor and going in and out onto the deck about a million times. Finally I decided to just try to go to bed…D wanted to stay up and watch TV. I got up to turn on the AC and damn if I didn’t see a spider crawling ON the bed, going under it. I am TERRIFIED of spiders ok. I mean like I hyperventilate and everything if I come close to one. I kept my cool, surprisingly (was I just too tired??) and got D…he couldn’t find it to kill it. I even looked and couldn’t find it. He even said he wasn’t sleeping in that bed…so we pulled out the sleeper sofa from the love seat and slept on that. Springs poking me in all the wrong places did not give me a good night’s sleep…not to mention the guys upstairs, who didn’t stop walking around til 1:00 in the morning, woke up at 6:00 am!!! How crazy is that?!?! I woke up and told D “Screw this, I’m sleeping with the spider.” I slept in there til 9, waking up every 30 minutes or so. Talk about a sucky night’s sleep. We went to breakfast, then drove to the outlet mall near there that we went to last year on our honeymoon trip. We had so much fun last year! Well we figured we’d do that in the morning, because it was cloudy and so chilly I had to wear jeans. Not exactly waverunner weather. Well we get to the outlet and right away D starts bitching and griping. He hates shopping, and he was letting me know it. It hurt my feelings. He knew how excited I was about going to the children’s outlet stores. Last year he was great, never griped, had fun…not this year. He ended up turning the car around and saying we were going back to the hotel because we were fighting. I was just hurt, and he was being such a huge turd!! He drove all the way back to the room, and seriously I wanted to come home at that point. I was thinking “screw this, I could be with Hailey right now instead of my crappy husband”…how sad is that??? On our anniversary trip!! We fought pretty bad at that point. I even brought up the fact that we seem to have absolutely nothing in common anymore besides Hailey, and that even when it comes to her he doesn’t really have anything to do with her. I told him maybe we should think about getting a divorce. He got all ticked off and started saying really hurtful things, which made me even more upset. I finally just went outside onto the deck by myself and watched the boats go by and cried. I was so hurt that this was how our anniversary trip was turning out. I was away from Hailey, spent all this money on this vacation for us, and this is how it was turning out. Finally he apologized, said he was just tired, and that we could go…I pulled myself together, put my makeup back on and we left. And he did not have that bad of a time. I only made him go to like 3 stores, and 1 store for him. I didn’t even shop for myself. I didn’t even want to…shopping for Hailey is so much more fun. The sun came out and it got hot, so we rushed back to the resort so I could change into my bathing suit, and we rushed back to our 2:30 reservations for the waverunner. We rode that til 5, and it was a lot of fun. I was starving by the time we were done. We went back to the resort and I got ready. D was even really sweet asking them if they could make our reservations 15 minutes later to give me some extra time to get ready. We went and had an amazing dinner and a lot of fun. Afterwards we took pictures on the deck, being silly and posing etc…I don’t know what happened, but from the waverunners on was so nice…we had so much fun and it would have been so great if we’d had a couple more days there. But right as we started to have fun and enjoy each other, we had to start thinking about coming home. Saturday night we laid around on the couch watching a movie and then slept in the spider bed(he never did make another appearance). The guys weren’t as active upstairs, so we got a better night’s sleep…they still woke up at 6, which means I was up at 6, 7, 8 and finally 9. I got up and started packing while D slept in. We went to breakfast, and decided we’d just head home after going to the gift shop because we couldn’t think of anything else to do besides swim, and we didn’t want to get wet before the drive home…so we got home about 1:00 in the afternoon, and Hailey was napping at my mom’s so we went home and unpacked. I left to go get her, brought her home and D climbed into the back seat so happy to see her. He asked her “Hailey, do you love daddy?” She said “Mommy.” (He told me this later) He didn’t let it get to him. We went to his brother’s, and he carried her in and tried to play with her throughout the evening. We got home that night, and she was tired. He wanted to tell her goodnight…and she wouldn’t let him. I told him to come into the bedroom with us, be a part of the routine…she just screamed at him…he said “apparently I’m not supposed to be a part of the new bedtime routine”…and walked out. I feel so bad for him. I could tell he was crushed. I put Hailey to bed and went out to cuddle with D…he seemed ok. We ate pieces of our wedding cake top that we saved then I went to bed.

So…that was our weekend. Hailey had a great time at my mom’s house. My mom said it went so well that she’ll keep her overnight more often for us now. Which is really good, because I realized something this weekend. D and I have separate lives, which we’ve always had…but we don’t really have a life together anymore. I mean we do somewhat, but not like we should. So we’re going to have to really make it a point to spend time together from now on. Hailey is my life, she’s my everything…but I really have to start trying to give D some of my time/energy/love too. He’s always wanting to let one of our parents watch Hailey so we can go to a movie or something, and I’m always flipping out and saying how much I’d miss her and how I don’t get to see her all day at work why would I want to be away from her even more, and I tell him how could he want to do that when he never gets to see her as it is. He’s trying harder than me at “us”…I just realized that this weekend. To me it seemed like I was, because I was trying to get him to be home more and do more around the house, but then I realized he doesn’t care about all that crap, he just wants to do things with me again as his wife. If that makes any sense. I’ve kind of forgotten about being a wife, I’m all mom now…he loves Hailey, but he hasn’t forgotten that he’s a husband too. We’ve just gotta get all this worked out, and it’s going to take some work and effort. Especially now that school will be starting again in less than a month. But at least he’ll be done in less than a year now. And then we can go from there and kind of officially “start” our life as a family.

I don’t know that I’m making that much sense anymore…I’m bored as hell here at work, nothing to do right now, and I’m wishing I was at home. I’m confused as to how to handle Hailey these days, and that’s making me anxious about picking her up from the sitter’s today…I don’t know how to handle these tantrums she’s been having. My mom admitted to me today at lunch that she did have one meltdown while she was with her this weekend…she saw some sippy cups in a catalog and flipped out, stomping and screaming and crying. My mom went and got her a real one and that upset Hailey even more. Then last night at my brother in law’s house Hailey flipped out I thought because her cousin was playing with a toy she wanted to play with. But when he gave the toy to her she flipped out even more. I tried to pick her up and comfort her and she wanted back down and continued face planting onto the floor and throwing a fit. Is this the “terrible twos”??? How do I handle this sort of this? I’m so afraid of doing something wrong and screwing her up emotionally for life. At 15 months how do you teach them to handle their feelings?? Or even figure out what’s wrong when they’re babbling off long sentences of nonsense with only a few recognizable words thrown in the mix?? I’m at a loss. My mom had no advice, she was just as baffled as I was. And how do you keep your cool when this happens over and over and over again and starts driving you insane(like my Friday morning that I just had…) How do you keep from losing it and yelling back?? I need suggestions. I’m seriously thinking about going to Barnes and Noble and buying a bunch of books on dealing with a toddler’s emotions. Because they are a mystery to me. That is not something I have experience with.

On a better note…I bought the newest (and LAST, boo!) Potter book yesterday!! So freaking excited!! Feel so much better just having it in my possession. Don’t know when I’ll get to start reading it(ok I’ll probably start tonight)…but I need to get to it soon. I’m ultra-paranoid I’m going to hear something in the media about what happens before I get to read it myself!! I’m avoiding all internet media sites or anybody I think might spill the beans. How do you find time to read with a toddler w/out staying up really late???

If you made it this far in this post...you're awesome. I think this is definately the longest post I've ever written.