T + J

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Dear 31...

Dear Readers,

Tonight I stumbled upon my old blog entries from when I was in my young 20s and thought "dang I was a good and hilarious blog writer." So I decided I should probably bring that back for all the world to enjoy. I've dabbled in writing about finance, and I've kind of kept a journal here and there, but I think what the world needs is consistent and hilarious blog updates about my life in this format... so here we go!

Dear 31,

I've only been 31 for two days, and so far no complaints. I mean we had a fun day celebrating filled with free food and lots of birthday wishes from all my favorite people. We had a birthday week at work since I have a coworker whose birthdays are on the 11th and 13th. Nothing like three leo's birthdays in a row to drive everyone else crazy!

Dear Catherine Manor (my name for my house),

I keep waiting for you to clean yourself, and you keep disappointing me. I think the biggest disappointment though is when I do clean you, and somehow not even three hours later it's a bigger mess than it was before. How does that even happen? I mean it's 2022 now, shouldn't we have the Smart House we watched on Disney Channel years ago that just cleans the messes up before the parents get home. As a parent I would really appreciate that. There are too many tiny toys, pieces of clothing, and paper airplanes randomly placed throughout my house, and if you could just take care of that... I would appreciate it!

Dear Best Friends,

It's been a solid 7 years since the five of us have been together. I remember that there were two babies at our last get together, and when we see each other this week, we will be moms of 14 kids in total. That's pretty insane if you ask me. I seriously can't wait to see all of you and to eat Cheesecake Factory and to just hear how everyone's life has been!

Dear Weekends,

Why has it been such a love/hate relationship with you lately? Like I love that I don't have to wake up at 5:15 and get off to work first thing, but I also hate how I can't think of enough entertainment for my two kids for two days in a row. Somehow the kids feel it is my duty to literally be entertaining them all day long. I keep reminding the 5 year old that he is actually capable of going into his room with his sister and just playing together, and yet he doesn't think that's true. I think the exact quote today was "you haven't done anything with me all day..." (I mean besides reading to him, playing make believe, a tickling game, and watching church videos together).

Dear Blank Wall in my Bedroom,

How big of a TV should we put on you? The husband doesn't think we need one, and honestly I don't know how much we'd watch in our room, but I like to watch a show while I fold the laundry and that's usually done on my bed with the show being on my phone, so the thought of a nice big TV in my room does have a nice little ring to it... but just how big of a TV should we get?

Dear High School Playlist,

When I made you I was feeling very nostalgic, and now I'm feeling like music just hasn't been as good since the year '09. I've been loving listening to all my old favorites, Kelly Clarkson, old Jonas Brothers songs, with some All American Rejects and The Fray. But I think my favorite is when Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard comes on, like how come I stopped listening to you for so long? I think the rest of my life will be spent listening to this playlist, its just sooooo good!

Dear Threenager of mine,

Please tell me your whole life right now is a phase. I'm mentally exhausted after every encounter with you, and I love you so much, my little heart can't even take how extremely cute you are with your perfect curly blonde hair, but man oh man is your little rebellious attitude kicking my can. Why do you have to do everything opposite of what I ask. Why do you run into the room to hit me, your brother, or your dad, and then run out. Why don't time outs work for you anymore? Why are you laughing when we are trying to discipline. Why!!! #notbitter

Dear Kindergartener,

Please stop growing up so fast. You are getting so smart and so big so fast and I need you to cut it out. I signed up to have a baby... I was not planning on this baby growing up so fast and making me a school aged mom in what feels like a blink of an eye. Can you slow down time... PLEASE! I'm not ready for you to grow up.

Dear Where the Crawdad Sings,

I can't stop thinking of you. The way the story was told was just beautiful. I loved Tate, like so so much. I kept saying to my friend "oh we love Tate don't we." And yes... we really really do! I was actually still playing the movie out in my head two days later trying to think of all the details I missed and how everything fit together, and man have I just loved it. I will always recommend you to all my friends because of how much I enjoyed watching it all play out. Man that was a good one!
(My husband also wants me to mention Top Gun, because that was also so good, but I guess I feel like at this point everyone knows that was so good and the internet doesn't need my little opinion on it as well)

To be continued....

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Stay at Home Mommy

Being a stay at home mom is so much more fun than I thought it was going to be. I was so afraid I would be bored and not know what to do all day, but I actually have been keeping myself busy. Between Netflix, books, chores, errands, feeding the baby, and just playing him, my day fills up very fast! The two of us have the best time ever. His first month just flew by. I was so lucky to have my mom stay as long as she did. She took such good care of me. I had another surgery when Ezra was three weeks old. I had a parathyroidectomy. I didn't see my baby boy for 26 hours. It was so hard to be away from him but I knew he was in good hands with both of his grandmas taking turns watching him. When grandma left, things became real. Just me and the baby, all day everyday! But we have really just come to love spending time together! I am terribly sad that in 6 weeks I have to go back to work and leave Ezra with someone else. But thats life I guess….

Billy Rueben

Okay, its actually spelled Bilirubin, but up until now I had never heard of it, so how was I supposed to know how it was spelled. We checked out of the hospital on Friday and they asked us to bring Ezra to the lab to get some blood work done that Saturday. Later that Saturday we got a call saying that his bilirubin levels were too high, and that he was going to need light therapy. These levels showed that he was jaundice, and he was going to have to stay on the lights and eat a lot to bring the levels down.

The hospital took care of everything, they called the home health people, and they delivered the little light bed and lamp to our house that afternoon. Ezra needed to be undressed to be on the lights, so for that first week of his life he didn't wear any of the cute clothes we had for him. But he has a cute little naked body so I didn't mind too much. He really liked the light bed, he would sleep well on it and was really happy to just lay there.

This lasted for about a week. We took him in every day to get his blood work done. They had to poke his heel and get blood that way. He was so chill he hardly flinched when they took the blood. But as the week went on he started to notice more and more, which was a sign that he was getting better. Before we knew it his levels were great and we didn't need the lights anymore.

Hospital Stay

Since I had a c-section, I got a longer recovery in the hospital than I expected to have. And to be honest, I kind of loved it. Yes by the end I was ready to go home and sleep in my own bed… but I really enjoyed my hospital stay. I had my baby right there next to me, and I had food being brought up to me all the time. I seriously ate so much of their macaroni and cheese!

Each of Joseph's siblings came to visit, and it was fun to see them all meet their newest nephew. My mom came up that last day and helped me check out and then stayed with us after for a few weeks.

We had a couple of scares that first few days. He stopped breathing a couple times and was rushed off once because of it. We had a nurse tell us he wasn't eating and losing a lot of weight when he wasn't. And he had a really hard time eating from me so we were struggling with that for a long time.

Here are some pictures of him that first few days.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Ezra Joseph Van Zant

So there's this boy... and I have fallen in love with him!

On October 11th, Joseph and I went to my 8:30am OBGYN check up. It should have been a normal visit like the week before, but I was feeling very off that morning. And the night before I had a hard night, so when the midwife told me she wanted me to go to Labor and Delivery, I wasn't too surprised.

Joseph and I checked into the hospital around 9am. I texted my boss saying that I might be late/not coming in that day. At the time I didn't feel like I was going to have a baby that day, so I thought we would just have some blood work done and head home later. But apparently the doctor had other plans. He wanted me to stay there for 6 hours, getting my blood pressure checked every 15 minutes. If my blood pressure continued to stay high, they informed me that my baby would be coming that day. However, my baby had this funny habit of making lots of flips and turns inside if me, and this day he had flipped the wrong way and was breached. Knowing that we might have to deliver the baby with him being breached was a little nerve racking. The doctor suggested a c-section and honestly I felt good about it.

By the time 6 hours had come and gone, it was obvious that we would become parents. Around 3:00 the doctor was telling Joseph and I about our options. We asked when the c-section would happen and the doctor said immediately. We moved to another room where I signed consent forms and was prepped for surgery.

As I laid on the operating table, I just watched my husband. He was watching the whole surgery, and I was watching him. What felt like a minute after we started I heard the best noise of my life, my son's voice. He didn't bawl like I thought my newborn would, but he made some noise. Just like that Joseph left my side to go be with him. Then Joseph came and laid him next to me.

Words cannot describe the feelings I had in this moment. It was love at first sight. Welcome to the world my little Ezra.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

True Charity

So uh... its been a while since I blogged. But Joseph did something so incredibly sweet to me the other day I just feel the need to scream it to the world!

So to catch up on our life.... We are expecting a baby! I've had a hard pregnancy though... At the beginning of my pregnancy I was sick... like sick sick sick. And we had just started a budget, but I was too sick to go to the ATM to pull out money for our cash budget. I was too sick to pack a lunch. I was too sick to care about anything... So I just survived... day after day after day. But sadly our savings account did not. At the end of the month when the credit card was due, I would pull money from savings to make it happen (which I knew I shouldn't have, but did anyway). Joseph would remind me all the time we needed to budget and be good and I just couldn't because... well I felt like I couldn't do anything....

A few weeks ago we went on vacation to Lake Tahoe, and we had a vacation savings account, but on the drive home after spending all our money on vacation.... we knew we needed to start being better with our money, like right away. So we got back and with the little cash we had after our vacation we put together a cash budget, and have been living off of a cash budget for two weeks now.

Tuesday night my friends wanted to go to dinner with me, and of course I wanted to go with them. The place we went had burgers and shakes, and I spent $11 on dinner. But the dinner made me really sick, that night I was so sick and the next morning I was throwing it all up... So the next morning when he asked me how I was I told him I was more sad than anything. I have $20 a week to eat food on, and that is sadly really hard for me. I spend way too much money eating out, and I'm trying so hard to stick to that budget. So when he asked me why I was sad, I told him its because I spent $11 on food that I didn't really love and ended up throwing up.

The next thing he did was the sweetest. We originally decided we would spend $30 on eating out, 15 each. But he told me it was a lot easier for him to not eat out, so we split it 20/10. And when I told him how sad I was about spending $11 on one meal, he gave me $5.00. Now I know that it doesn't seem like a lot, but he gave up half of his spending money so that I could avoid a day of packing a lunch and buy food one day.

Joseph has done his very best being there for me. I have been a miserable pregnant wife who doesn't help out with much and complains/cries most of the time. But he has just been amazing. Marriage is the best, we help each other out, and sometimes one helps the other out more. Joseph is the best and he has just been so amazing to me. I am feel more and more grateful each day I am with him.

Also its Thursday night and I haven't and don't plan on spending his $5.00. I need to prove to myself that I don't need more than $20 a week for food. And then maybe on Saturday him and I can go get ice cream with the $5.00!!! Oh the exciting dates we go on these days! :)