Choices and hormones.

This has been a rough week for me. My pregnancy hormones are kicking in double time. Not to mention some tough choices and frustrations have come up to just make me go over the edge, emotion wise. I guess I should feel lucky to be able to even make some of the choices that I/we do. Especially when people around the world are trying to find food and shelter and safety. I am lucky. Very very lucky but still frustrated.

Adam and I went car shopping/test driving last weekend. And it sent me into a tail spin...I have always said I would NEVER get an SUV. Adam and I try to live eco-consciously, we car pool, ride our bikes, don't drive big cars, eat organic as much as we can, use cloth diapers, use earth friendly products, support our local economy, etc. etc. etc... but we get so frustrated when those choices become about money. We are two educated, employed (for the time being) adults with a modest (needs work) home, a garden, a great 19 month old, amazing families, a great community, and yet we still live pay check to pay check and have to decide between organic or cheaper food when it comes to our food budget. We have to look at everything we buy and say what impact does this have on our planet and can we afford it. Ugh. So like I said in the beginning, we went car shopping. Our great little Jetta is not going to work for two kids. We can't fit a rear facing car seat behind the passenger seat without having to move the seat all the way forward and have your knees up to your chest, Adam wouldn't fit. It doesn't get as good of gas mileage as we had hoped. It's just too small. So I have done all this research on cars and decided that the Toyota Hybrid Highlander (an SUV) was the car for us. It was perfect. It's bigger, it gets 30-32 MPG, there is a third row option, but new it costs from $35-45 thousand dollars! CRAZY. Even the used ones are expensive. We decided we didn't want to have a 7 year car payment for a 4 year old car. It just seemed insane. But made me oh so mad... here we are trying to make a conscious choice about our environment, not just about how much we spend on gas...and we can't even afford a 4 year old car. Ugh. So we are starting all over. In order for us to get a bigger car, we move into the SUV market. No, we are not ready for a mini-van yet (they get even worse gas mileage). They are making smaller SUV's with better MPG and more options. I am eating my words. We might get an SUV. Now there are more choices to make and none of them seem to be perfect... but we will see what we find.

Work has been tough this week too... but I think it will work it's self out. I just need to not take things so personally. I love my job but this week for the first time ever, I didn't want to go to work today for fear that I would start crying. That is how powerful my hormones are right now. It's hard for me to tease out what is really bothering me and what is just an over load of estrogen or something. So I went to work. I didn't cry. And things will get better. Education is a frustrating thing sometimes.

I am lagging behind on my Corbin updates. He is doing great. Talking up a storm. Stringing two and three letter words together. He knows his colors. He is becoming a picky eater. He has had little interest in potty training although he did sit on the toilet for 15 minutes the other day and say pee pee and poop over again without anything happening. He loves to ride his bike all over the house. When I get home these days he can actually tell me something he did that day with Melissa and Brody. He has gotten is two year molars on the bottom. When I ask him what the baby is doing inside my tummy he says "growing"!

Here are the three buddies sledding in Leavenworth a couple of weekends ago.

Dance and play

Game time

As one who will usually forgo food, drink, sleep, and probably other things in the pursuit of game, it is likely not surprising that I would encourage Corbin at the earliest possible moment to play with me. I've got some games picked out for him for the next several years already, and at Christmas we tried the first one.

Go Away Monster! is a non-competitive game (though there is a competitive option) that involves a slight degree of shape matching and recognition. The suggested age is 3 and up, so 18 months seemed like a perfectly logical time to try it. The point is to add objects to a bedroom, but if a monster comes out, to tell it to "Go away" and throw it in the monster pit. It's sort of supposed to help children deal with monster fears.

Corbin is not afraid of monsters, and I don't want to have this game make him think they are something that is necessarily scary. I think it will be OK. The first time we played he put a monster in the bedroom.

We played a couple times at the grandparents' in Bend, and he seemed to get the hang of it pretty well. Then, this morning, I told him we should play a bit before breakfast, thinking trucks, or barn, or whatever. He said, "Game! Game! Monser!"

So we played. This time he was much more into it, and really wanted to pull out a monster so he could wave his arms around yelling "Away! Way!" and then put monster in the "pid." He also tried to put the cat picture and the teddy bear in the pit.

We went to go work on breakfast, but he went back to the living room and got the game out again. So we played again. Then he played with Erin after we ate.

I am encouraged by how he plays. He's not always the most patient boy, but he seems to be very willing to wait his turn while playing the game. Maybe when he tries it with Brody and Melissa that won't be the case. But maybe it will. And maybe it will rub off in other situations. We'll see.