I'm LOSING my mind

May 5 So I might be a little bit crazy. I KNOW I'm high spirited and high maintenance at times. But throughout all my life I've never felt like I was a danger to anyone around me or to myself. It is at this point in my life that I suppose a thorough inner soul searching would be appropriate.

I am living in a one bedroom house with 3 other people. I also live in Florida which means any kind of outdoor living space is not a reality, not in the summer. Michael is gone at work all day and I get to be home with my kiddos. I love having the time to be with them. It definitely makes me so much less stressed out to be home all day instead of working and being a mom. I honestly don't know how other moms do it. That being said, it's still not easy being a stay at home mom. I'm experiencing some rather awesome pregnancy symptoms as well. Nausea, like all the time, severe fatigue, headaches, light headedness (is that even a word), as well as all the emotional turmoil that crazy hormones put you through. So when my kids wake up at 6 in the morning, gross, I have a really hard time taking care of them. Not to mention the fact that I'm used to them waking up at 8 when we were in Idaho. Who knew moving into a time zone two hours ahead meant your kids would sleep 2 hours less than they used to.... And that translates out into waking up 4 hours earlier than they used to. And oh how I love my sleep. I cannot get enough of it. And pregnant me? She is even crazier about getting enough rest.

So I'm in basically another country, compared to Idaho, without any friends or any of my things and with absolutely no space to spread out. Toddlers need space to run and play and make messes. Moms need space to have peace and quiet. we have neither. And it's hot. It's so dang hot. Every single time I walk outside I feel like my face is going to melt off. I have no idea how I grew up in this heat and humidity. I mean, I played soccer in this weather, in the middle of the day! Crazy talk.

My only outlet for de-stressing is through phone contacts. And just about every person I've talked to says something like "oh it's only for a couple months" or "at least the beach is close." As nice as that might sound, I really feel like nobody is understanding how difficult this is for me. I get claustrophobic and overwhelmed and I need my own space. Thank goodness we haven't had anyone else try and fit in this house or I might lose it for reals. It is a serious problem for me to be cooped up inside all day. As much as I try to let the kids play outside, I just plain don't trust them to stay away from the road. And the road is pretty close to the house and people just fly down it. And I feel terrible. I seriously don't feel good, at all, like most every day. And somehow I manage to keep both the kids alive and mostly happy, the house clean, and dinner made. Of course if I didn't clean the house it would just make me more crazy. And if I didn't cook dinner I think I would starve. The beach would be fun if the kids actually liked the ocean. But it's really dirty. Sand is the devil. Charlotte eats shells and who knows what else and Ivan just runs and runs and I can't keep up. Really, going there by myself with the kids is just not safe. There's a swimming hole here, but it's really smelly, like sulfur smelly. So unless I'm feeling super great about shouting groceries into the garbage, then I try to steer clear of there. Plus it's a lot of work getting 3 people in swim suits and covered in sun screen and into the car and buckled and out of the car and making sure we don't drown. I'm tired just thinking about it.

May 14 I would really like to think that I'm super awesome at being a mom and I reread what I just wrote and I feel absolutely terrible. I feel like I can't do my job and wonder why I was ever allowed to take this much responsibility into my life. I wonder why Michael chose me as a wife and the mother of his children when this is how I feel about being a mom. I wonder why pregnancy is just as difficult as raising a child is and how in the world do people have so many kids? Am I doing it wrong? Am I just not cut out to do this? And when I think of the alternative that my life could be without kids... I am graduated from college and could easily be working on a masters degree to teach in the vet tech field. Or I could be working towards being a vet tech dental specialist. Or I could be working at a zoo or working anywhere and Michael and I could be debt free. Heck, Michael might even be done with school already if we didn't have so many kids to look after. But what is that really worth? I hate working anyway. Sure we might have more money, but we'd definitely find other things to spend it on. That's not the real issue here anyway. How I feel is the issue. I go on this up and down roller coaster of craziness and I hate it. Nothing makes me more sick than feeling like I don't deserve my children.

So here I am, feeling terrible about myself and letting it seep out into everything I do and onto everyone I come in contact with. My poor babies are stuck with me all day long when I can't get off the couch some days. And others I just plain can't get my emotions in check. I know two year olds will throw fits and that one year olds don't understand everything you ask them to do. But does that stop me from expecting them to be better? Nope. In fact, I think I expect more out of them since we get to do so many fun things. And still, messes are made, tears are spilt, punches thrown (not by me), and hair is pulled (not by me, unless I'm pulling out my own hair). Ivan and Charlotte are finally at the age that playing together is pretty cool... sometimes. Most of the time, Charlotte wants to be beside Ivan but not playing with him. And Ivan wants Charlotte to interact with him. Oh so many fights have been fought. And it is only the beginning. I definitely feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is, I'm losing my mind.

May 23 I feel like it's this house that is hurting me. If I can get out of this house I will be fine. If I can have my own room to sleep in, I'll be ok. If the kids could play outside without the chance of them being hit by a truck, then they would be fine. So I decided to take a trip to Tennessee. Michael's parents are going to be visiting Chris and Laura for a few days in Atlanta. So I can drive up, stop and see them and have a chance to stretch my legs, and keep driving north. Hopefully it'll be a little cooler up there, but I'm not counting on it. All I want is a yard. Ivan and Charlotte love my parents' house. They have a huge yard with chickens and dogs and rabbits. The kids love playing with all the animals. And it's seriously a long way to the end of the driveway to get to the road, which is a dead end road that no one ever drives on. So I'm really looking forward to this visit. Plus our last visit with my parents went really well and I'm actually excited to see my mom and dad again.

June 10 Oh, did I mention I've been diagnosed with antepartum depression? You've heard of post partum depression, right? It's the "baby blues" you get after having the baby. Antepartum is a form of depression experienced from the onset of pregnancy. My doctor told me it could last my entire pregnancy and end when I have the baby but most likely, with my ppd history, I will have a much more intense post partum experience as well. And who knows if that will be the end of this or not. I'm really hoping I'll get this baby out and go back to normal, but for now, I do not feel normal. I literally feel crazy. There are days I wake up crying because I don't want to get out of bed at 6:30. Some days I get so angry, so incredibly angry, for a bowl a spilled cereal. Sometimes all I have to do is look at the overflowing sink of dirty dishes and wish to myself I had a dishwasher and I get angry and sad. I'm supposed to be eating healthy, as a management technique, but then I think about how much healthy costs and the fact that we are already spending over budget on groceries and that we won't have any money to live off of when we get back to Rexburg. And it's not just me that's hurting. It's my kids and my husband. I've distanced myself in my relationships and it's made it so hard to reach out for help. I'm silently suffering when I shouldn't have to.

As much as I try to reach out and make friends here, I find that there just aren't enough people close by. I have 2 friends I can talk to, but I don't feel like I can really talk to them. And they have their own things going on. I miss my network in Rexburg. I had a few friends I could kid swap with and have some time to myself. I miss the space I had, oh how I took that for granted. I miss the fenced in yard that I could toss the kids into and work on something else that needed to be done. I miss the parks close by and the lack of blistering heat. I miss the community feeling in our little trailer park. I miss my mixer and I miss baking. I miss baking and giving away all the goodies to those I cared about. I miss the mountains and the fresh air. Did I mention a gallon of milk is $4.30? For one gallon! No wonder we're going over budget each and every month on groceries. Things literally cost 2 to 2.5 times as much here as they did in Idaho. Shoot I could shop at Albertson's for all my groceries in Rexburg and still spend less than I would at Walmart here. Then you throw in the half a tank of gas to get us to the nearest grocery store, that adds up. It's the little things that set me off. I miss Brenda. I feel like we finally were living close to each other and we had to ruin it.

All in all, I just don't feel like myself. I'm known for a sassy personality, more so when I'm stressed, but I've never felt like this before. And I honestly felt like I had achieved a calm and collected personality after years of Michael's chillness rubbing off on me. I settled into a loving role as a mother and now I'm angry mom all the time. I'm not loving who I am or how I'm acting. I'm looking for a change. Getting out of this house is going to help reset my life. Hopefully I'll get to spend a couple weeks in TN and reevaluate with the help of my parents to watch my kids a couple times. I can catch up on my sleep, my quiet time, and my alone time. I can spend some quality time planning out the rest of my summer so I can stay on top of the boredom that begets fit throwing kids. I want to make our time in Florida fun, memorable, and worthwhile. I want to say we had a good sabbatical from school and Rexburg and normal life and that we are refreshed and ready to outlast another Idaho winter. (Although right now I could really use some snow.) I want to be able to bring our last child home to a family that is unified and loving. And I want to be the mom that my kids remember. I want to be a source of comfort, love, kindness, fun, and friendliness that they can't find anywhere else. I want to be like Julie Millett. She's like my ultimate example of awesomeness. Her and Llewanne Bass, Sister Spann, Martha Flake, just to name a few.