No! I don't want anymore kids.

I'm not saying it's forever.
I just don't want another one.
I don't think I ever will, but you never say never.

Autumn is cute. She's beautiful, actually. She's a big ball of freakin' sunshine... to everyone else. She's always happy (unless she's mad) and she's very quirky. I'll be honest, my kid is magnetic. People love to be around her. They spend some time with her and then they ask "Are you having anymore?"

I laugh. The biggest, sarcastic, mean laugh that I can muster, and respond "Are you kidding me? Never. Nope. Heeellllll no."

I always get the "look" (you know that "you make adorable babies please make more" look) and they proceed to tell me WHY I need another kid:

1. "But she's sooooo cute" (...and evil)
2. "She needs a sibling, she'll get lonely." (...or get less attention)
3.  "You're going to miss her being a baby." (...really? I was dying for the day she could walk while holding my hand so I wouldn't have to carry her while I did everything)
4. "You need a boy!" (psssh. Like I have the money for genetic modification to make this happen.)
... and the oddest one I've heard:
5. "But I had a dream you had 4 kids!" (because I should just hop on board to make your premonition come true, right?)

Although all of these are very good reasons (sarcasm)  to have another child, here are my serious (kinda) reasons as to why I don't want to and probably won't do it again:

1. Pregnancy sucks. It sucks ass. Some women are super cute, bubbly, and glowing.... not me. I hated everything about it. I didn't look pregnant til, like, 3 days before my due date. So I just looked like a really whiney fat person the whole time. Also, the pain from the first trimester was God awful. I would complain to the doctor and he would tell me it's my uterus growing. Well, your uterus growing is like cramps on 'roids and it sucks. Also, I carried so low the whole time that by 6 months, even though I didn't look pregnant, I felt very pregnant and very heavy. This caused tremendous cramps, which the doctor told me was just my ligaments stretching. All of this body stretching and growing sucks. Not fun. Also the ultrasounds... yeah those suck too. You know why? Because you're bladder is full with a million ounces of water and you have to hold it while waiting for the xray tech to be ready, and of course, the little baby in your uterus is jumping on it the whole time. Then, the doctor pushes and shoves on your bladder region. I peed a little one time. It was equal amounts of embarassing and gross.

2. My labor still traumatizes me and my birth still causes pain. I went into labor on the 27th of July. I started feeling the pain on the night of the 26th, but I was ready to go to the hospital on the 27th. I got to the hospital and my water broke. They put me in a room and convinced me to get an epidural. I swear to you, every intention I had was a natural birth with NO epidural. However, they told me I'd be too tired to push since I was up all night in pain. So, exhausted I got the epdirual early in the day. The epidural stopped my contractions. The doctor didn't want to induce them because "there were too many women in labor and no on-call delivery doctors." The epdirual freaked me out and I had them turn it off. I didn't like the feeling of not feeling. So basically, I got the epidural, it stopped my labor, and I hated the way it felt so I turned it off and went back to feeling pain. For nothing. Then, I fell asleep in between contractions. The next morning, the doctor says "ok! we have more staff!" and gives me petocin to start my contractions again. I start contracting. I start pushing. I push for almost 8 hours on and off. NO baby. While she was sitting in a dry womb that, at one point, was pushing her out, and then, wasn't pushing her out. This caused her to turn "sunny side up." Apparently, babies only come out face down, which was news to me. I kept trying to push and her heart rate dropped so they had to whisk me off to emergency c-section. Horrifying. I couldn't hold her. I couldn't be with her. I had to just lie there, while hearing the doctor tell me he "couldn't stop the bleeding." Dead. I'm pretty sure at some point I left my body.

3. I can't handle more than one Autumn. Or one angel child plus Autumn. I actually can't even deal with Autumn, some days. There are moms out there who are able to spread themselves equally to each child, whereas I can't even spread my love to anyone besides her. Two days after she was born I just looked at her dad and told him that I really didn't think I had enough love in me to love anyone else besides her, including him. Also, I don't have the patience for anything besides her. I mean I barely have the patience for her... so.... yeah. No more kids, please. I would probably have a complete melt down. I have pretty bad anxiety and I sometimes feel myself seperating from sanity as it is. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be nice to bring another kid into this. She's hyper and loud, and makes me batty. I think if my next child was a saint, they'd be ignored while I tended to Autumn's antics or if they were just as "eccentric" as Autumn, I'd die.

4. It's not financially responsible. I can make it on my own but I have a 2002 car and I'm living in a *decent* part of town in a ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT. By *decent* I mean I don't technically live in the hood, I like to consider it "historical" however, my mom saw my apartment and said "Brittany! If I would've seen this before you moved I would have told you not to move." Also, she will text me when she hears "booms" from my Grandma's house who lives a few blocks away. But really, it's not that bad. We have really nice neighbors who keep an eye on our place and I haven't seen any real crime besides bums loitering by the no loitering sign. Right now, Autumn does have everything she could ever want and more. Plus, I'm able to pay my bills without things getting shut off and such. However, not having to pay for baby food, possibly formula, diapers, and wipes is such a relief. I can't imagine doing it all over again. 

6. I really am not a huge fan of kids. I love my kid, because, you know, she's cool. However, she's very different from other kids. What if I have another kid and they're a boring or annoying kid?! I mean, I wouldn't be mean, and I would still love them, but my kid is really awesome! She does funny stuff and has such a crazy personality. Other kids are just... kids. Some may be cute, and some may be funny, but Autumn is a nutcase, and I love her that way. The more kids I have means more friends for them when they get older... more school functions.... more birtday parties... NO! No more kids. I seriously was an outcast for so much of my elementary years because I just really didn't get along with kids. 



Lately, Autumn has been requesting a new baby sister of me, and  I just can't.
Although when she started asking two weeks ago, I thought it was cute... at first.
Then I saw her put her baby doll in a plastic bag and shove it in a drawer, telling it to "stop crying" and my mind returned to "Hell no."

Hello, Tantrum Three's.

When Autumn started walking I exclaimed loudly that my life just got a million times harder. I was told it was just the beginning. 
When Autumn first yelled "No!" at something I had asked her to do, or rather, not do, I shook my head and laughed.
When Autumn started to refuse to do anything but the opposite that we asked of her, I was introduced to the terrible two's. 

Just last week, a month before her third birthday, I become fully aware of TANTRUM THREE'S.

Holy Hell.

I remember when I was pregnant and I would see kids crying in the shopping cart, chair, floor, wherever, and thinking "I'll never let my kid cry like that. I'll just hold her and she'll stop." 

Yeah. Right.

The first time she threw a tantrum went like this:

Autumn open's the hallway closet and see's her collectible retro toys. 
*pointing to the top shelf*
Autumn: "Daddy daddy daddy daddy gimme my toys!"
Daddy: "Ok Autumn, give me a second, my hands are full."
Autumn: *throws self on floor* *starts kicking floor* *screaming*
Daddy: *looks at me*
Me: *looks at him*
Me: "Autumn, get up, come here, he didn't even say no! Come here, come play with your toys."
Autumn: *kicking* *screaming*
Me: "Aw, come here Autumn." *giggle* "Let me hold you. Calm down, it's ok!"

That's when I learned my lesson. 

I reached down to pick her up and she bit my arm, spit on me, and then continued to scream.

A few explicitives later, I sat down on the couch, open pinterest, and ignored her. 

Ten minutes later, she crawled on the couch, cuddled under my arm while holding her toys like a baby, and that was that.

Now, this phase should be fun. It'll test every last nerve that I have. I know I can ignore it, but I can't ignore it in public. Which happened the night before 4th of July. Except this time it was at a water park, after dark, and in the restroom. The waterpark announced the fireworks, and of course, we have to go to the bathroom. So Autumn and I head over there and as we walk in the bathroom the fireworks start to go off. Autumn gets so scared that she begins to army crawl under the stalls on the nasty wet bathroom floor and then locks herself in the stall. This continues for quite some time until, like the great parent I am, I scared her by telling her a monster was in the toilet. Once she got out she was so dirty that I stuck her whole body in the sink and used hand soap to clean her off. By the time I was done, everyone was leaving the park and the fireworks were over.

Needless to say, I was over her at that point. 

There's about half a dozen other crazy moments she's had in the past week, but I'm exhausted from being up all night, because obviously her new sleeping schedule has her awake all night, so I won't go into it. 

We're having a rough patch, apparently. 
I just want sleep.
and more sleep.

Momma to Momma Advice: Picking Daycare

Since Terrance has been job hunting, he's received offers for employment during the day when I am at work. Our initial hopes were that he could find an employer that he could work evenings and weekends. We haven't been so lucky. So now, we are looking into daycare so that next time he is offered a position with overlapping hours as mine, we are ready to enroll Autumn.

I have a lot of fears in doing this. I am hoping that it's only a few hours that overlap, maybe a few days a week. I think it would be good for her since she is such a little social flower and loves to play. However, there are so many things that could happen to your child when they are not under parental watch.

Despite our fears, we are looking. So I reached out to my readers, friends, and family members to gather advice for choosing a daycare. Please comment, tweet, e-mail, facebook message, or text me your advice! I'm going to be compiling all that advice here to share with other mommas!

Hopefully this will help me feel a little less scared shitless. Haha!
~Brittany

Concerned Parent.

Yesterday evening when I was parking I saw that Terrance was outside with Autumn and the neighbor kids whom are brother and sister. They are 4 years old and 6 years old, and always playing out side on their own. As I was walking up I asked Autumn if she wanted to go inside and make a cake. The 6 year old girl exclaimed "I want to help, too!" and so did her little brother. I told them they could help so long as they asked their momma.

They ran inside, their mother had said yes and I verified this by making sure she saw them come in and by waving at her from the back door. We made the cake (well, I did, they were distracted by Autumn's mountains of toys) and while we waited for it to bake we did some crafts. I took some construction paper to make "books" and had the kids decorate their own books with markers, ribbon, other paper, crayons, and lots of tape. When the cake was done and cooled, I frosted it and cut them each a slice.

After we cut the cake and ate, I told the kids we had to leave to run an errand so I packaged up some cake in a throw away plastic container and sent them through the back door and watched them walk onto their steps. That's when the 4 year old stuck his head back outside and said "My mom and dad are not here."

I was baffled. The parents had left their two young children at my house without telling me? Why would they do that? I've only lived by them for two months, and rarely have spoken to the parents besides a quick "Hello" in passing. I almost didn't believe the 4 year old so I walked up to their door and yelled a little "yoo-hoo" to see if anyone was inside. Then, as I'm starting to tell the kids to head back to my place while we wait for their parents they pull up behind me and park.

They were in my house for at least an hour and a half. They are 4 and 6. They do not know me well. They never told me they were leaving. I don't care how long they were gone for, it's rude to leave your kids at some one's house and not tell them you're leaving. Especially at 8pm at night when it's usually time to get things ready for bed. However, them being rude is not my concern. They literally left two young children at a strangers house for an extended period of time and LEFT their house in their CAR. WHAT?!

Even if they "trusted" me, as a stranger, what if I had let them run home without checking and something happened to them there?

She's 6. and He's 4. We don't live in a really great neighborhood. We live close to downtown, which is both beautiful and scary. It's historical yet warn, and it's definitely got a very wide range of individuals who live in the area. It's scary, I would never want to leave my children alone. Especially because of the parking situation, it's easy to tell when your car is missing.

Now I'm concerned about letting them come inside to play with Autumn again. How would I even confront them on this matter? I did state to her "Oh wow, I didn't even know you left, I was too worried to leave them here alone so I was going to bring them back to my house until you got back." to which she replied "Oh they would've been fine. She knows how to lock the door."

Any advice?