My Christmas wish list

Patty did a thingy about what she actually wanted for Christmas and what she didn't want. That got me thinking. This year, with a new baby, and winter being slow money is kind of tight. It seems to me, it would be so much more beneficial to get stuff we could really actually use no matter how boring they are, then to get a bunch of stuff we will just put in a box or cup board some where. So here you go, the things Rob and I actually want vs. the things we really don't want to get again.

NEEDS

• A gift card to Sephora. Rob and I are running low on our Philosophy face wash and that shit is expensive. I am also all out of my amazing Philosophy shampoo and conditioner, which means I resorted to buying something less expensive from the store. It is drying out my hair and burning my eyes but spending nearly $50.00 on shampoo is something I just can't bring myself to do right now.
• A Barnes & Noble Gift card. I just want to read a good book but spending $20.00 plus on a book right now is just not something I'm excited about.
• Snowboarding passes or gift cards for Rob- The years before I would buy him passes, they cost an arm and a leg and a little toe. We discovered the passes were a bad idea because not all his friends got the same ones and in addition to paying a shit ton of money for his pass I would then have to pay a shit ton of money for a one day ticket at where ever his friends were going. Last year I decided to just ask for passes and gift cards to his favorite ski resorts. The awesome part about the gift cards is he was also able to use them to buy snacks and drinks while he was up there.
• Carls Junior and Del Taco gift cards. My husband is fricking addicted to this burrito at Carls Junior. However, since they raised the price he doesn't like buying them as often as he wants because he prefers to save his money for stuff like KFC and Michuacan (dirty little taco place he is hooked on). Then at Del Taco he loves these fish tacos but he says they cost more then just Taco Bell so he won't buy them there.

Thats it. That is all the stuff we want. I suppose I could throw in a Starbucks card for either of us, but since I'm dieting Starbucks will be so rare for me that I can afford it the once every week or every two weeks I go there. Also, yes Rob has his own money. I started a little checking account attached to our joint account and I put money in there weekly for him. He has a debit card and is free to buy all the JUNK FOOD he wants out of his account. That is seriously almost all he uses it for. JUNK FOOD. But it is a lot easier then me constantly nagging him about just how much Carls Junior, KFC and Taco Bell can one man eat! He loves it and I love it more because I don't have to see just how much money is wasted on Junk food. Keeps us both happy. Plus at Christmas I put money in his account for him to buy my presents so I don't see them in our account when I do the bank rec every day! (yes I reconcile my checking account every day shut up).

WANTS
These are different from needs. These are things that would be cool to get but I would rather get stuff on the need list then the want list.

• Anything for my kitchen. Especially a new cutting bored. Mine is done, it smells and there for has been banished from my kitchen till I get a new big one. I'm halfway there with a gift card from my mom who knows the way to my heart is through Williams Sonoma, my heart skips a beat typing that word.
• Car washes for Rob. He likes to wash his car like EVERY DAMN DAY. That boy drives me nuts.
• Car doohickeys for Robs tahoe. See Rob likes to soup up his car. Me I HATE IT! Cars are meant to be stock. Don't touch my car. I don't want to add anything or mess with anything or fix it or paint it or make it fancy. I like to roll stock. The ONLY thing I will be doing to my new car is having the windows tinted so Rob will quit bitching when he drives it and to keep the sun out of the boys eyes. Rob and I are so very very different this way. I would rather have a stock car and he would rather have no stock parts left on his car.
• New dishes. I am ready to finally own some dishes that actually cost money, not Martha Stewart dishes from K-Mart. I think I will save those for my next house though, since we all know that good dishes can cost a shit ton of money and this time I want, all the plate sizes, bowls, cups, mugs, and serving dishes. Yes that is right, I finally feel grown up enough to want some serving dishes that match my dishes. This also means I can garage sale all my mishmash of shit that is currently cluttering my cabinets.
• Gift cards to the trendy clothing shops and shoe shops for Rob. IE Abercrombie, Buckle, American Eagle, and uhh that other store next door to American Eagle. The boy needs some nice jeans, some nice pants, a dress jacket and some real shoes!
  

Thats about it in the want category. These are all things that I think I will wait to acquire until I get my new house. The other stuff Rob wants, well he always wants that stuff so I get it for him little by little throughout the year!

DON'T WANTS

• Candles. no no no. The only candles I like are Salt City. And I don't know anyone who is crazy enough like me to spend that kind of money on good candles. So since people never buy salt city, with the exception of Katie, because well Katie totally gets it about the Salt City, I just would rather not get the yicky kinds. When I do get yicky kinds I just take em to work and give them away!
• Gift cards to go to dinner. Rob and I won't be going out to eat anytime soon with a new baby and me dieting. I'm a pain in the ass when I diet.
• Clothes. Some people insist on buying me clothes or jammies. Only problem is they like to buy them in a small or medium which right now my body finds offensive.

The best of Shannon cheats part one

Cody!

First of all let me just tell you two things. One, your only going to get a short version of the stories because I don't have the patience to type out long drawn out stories. Second, you will not get the best of all the stories, because seriously my mom reads this now and I do have a little pride left!

Back to Cody.

I met Cody at the gym. He had a rock hard body and was insanely good looking. He was a vegetarian and into some kind of Zen type stuff. Cody was awesome. Problem was, he was just to nice for me. We dated on and off for a few years and then my Junior year in high school we decided to give dating a real try. Anyway I got kind of bored with it right around the time he made a new friend Brett. One night Cody and I were hanging out with his friends KC and Brett. We all decided to go to the hot tub. However it was winter so I was dressed in jeans and cute boots and stuff. So I decided I was only going to roll up my jeans and put my legs in to avoid freezing my ass off. Anyway I pulled off my boots and revealed my rainbow stripe toe socks. Brett was amazed. He had never seen anything so silly or ridiculous in his life but at the same time he found it insanely cute. He was obsessed for the rest of the night with my stupid socks.

After that we went in to Bretts room and we were all hanging out. Codi and KC were chilling on the floor by Brett's bed and I was chilling on the bed with Brett. We were all talking and laughing and then suddenly I realized it was Brett and I talking and laughing and Codi and KC were clearly pissed. Cody told me he was going to go down town ( I was supposed to go with him) and KC was gonna go too. I looked at Brett, looked at them and said, Nah I'm gonna go ahead and stay here.

Long story short I spent the night making out with Brett and in the morning Cody called me wondering if we were still together and actually trusting I did nothing wrong. I explained to him that we were different, something about a deck of cards and not being the same suit (I may have smoked a little weed before our talk) and I totally broke his heart.

Brett and I continued hooking up and then the fun wore off. He was a Canadian hockey player bad boy, but eventually all the hockey talk go to me. Anyway I bumped into Cody again later on and can you believe he was stupid enough to date me again? Wanna guess how that ended.

You know what is funny. Writing this whole post I honestly can't remember if his name was spelled Cody or Codi. I also can't remember his last name. How sad. He was in my life on and off for about 4 years. However I can remember every thing about Brett, the guy I messed with for about 2 months total.

So on a scale of 1-10 how bad is it that I totally sent my boyfriend away so I could stay at his friends house and make out with his friend?

Coming soon

The best of: Shannon cheating on her high school boyfriends.

Yeah I've got some shenanigans that will really make you all laugh, or shake your head at me!

Remember last week when I broke the number one parenting rule

I did that stupid thing. I talked about my kid sleeping. I was all oh look at me, my new baby sleeps in four hour stretches IN HIS CRIB and it's so great and wonderful woohoo look at me.

Uh huh. No less then 8 hours later did my new baby decide he HATES his crib, that he will only sleep on me and no amount of rocking, feeding or coaxing is going to get that child in his crib. He will sleep in his bassinet, umm but only during daylight hours, which is so not doing anything for me getting sleep during the dark time. Soooo I've resorted to co sleeping until I can figure his ass out. It's not that bad right, I mean Brandon only slept with me for 15 months right. ONLY 15 MONTHS, I am sure I can handle that again right? RIGHT?

Right?

Stupid dumb ass me, breaking the number one parenting rule:

#1 PARENTING RULE FOR DUMMIES

DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR CHILD'S GOOD SLEEPING HABITS EVER, OR THE WILL DECEASE IMMEDIATELY!

No entirely ready to discuss this

First of all, let me start off by placing a reminder on here. The only rule I've ever had about this blog, is that if you are one of the real life people in my life, you are free to comment on the blog but in person the blog is off limits. The reason for this, is sometimes people feel entitled to try and fix what I talk about on here, when really in general I just needed to talk about it and move on from it. So, since there are some new readers who know me personally I need to make sure you understand this ONE RULE! Please please, unless I engage you about a topic I've written please do not try and talk to me about what I write on here when it is clearly something personal. With that said, I'll finally talk about whats been on my mind lately.

My son and I don't get along. This has been going on for a while. Since before I had Codi. For some reason Brandon just doesn't want to get along with me. At night when he is tired he is fine. Then he misses me. But during the day he just doesn't get along with me. He basically spends the entire day not listening and trying to see how far he can push me. I'll tell him no and he'll do it anyway. I'm not mean, I say, "Brandon please don't do that." He just does it anyway. So I'll say, "Brandon, your going to go in time out," and he will shout at me Shhh or Be Quiet, or NO or you tine out. It's hard because he only does this with me. Then if he continues doing it, I will go toward him to put him in time out and he will just destroy everything in his path. For instance if he is throwing Cheetos or something and I say no, he will keep doing it. Then I move towards him to put him in time out and he will look at me, throw the entire bag of Cheetos and step on them. So he goes in time out. Then he goes nuts. He starts thrashing around, hitting his time out (a pack n play), kicking it, trying to jump out and yelling at me. I'll tell him to please not yell the baby is sleeping and his response is NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! with caps and exclamation points and in a whole other font really. It's at that moment where I feel like I'm failing. He doesn't do this with anyone else. And I know certain people in my life would argue that it is because I'm not parenting him right, I won't spank him, or I'm to lenient with punishments or I don't want to put him in the corner because it is against my beliefs to embarrass my child that way. And while it is true I could be more of a hard ass, that just isn't the kind of parent I want to be. I don't want my kids to be afraid of me. I don't want them to ever be afraid to tell me they have done something, or are going to do something, or made a big life decision. I want them to feel like I'm always a safe haven, which I guess is why I'm so passive towards punishments.

I think another big part of the problem is it seems everyone wants to parent my kids different then me. People have it in their head that if they are watching my kids they are in charge of how they are parented. I don't agree with this. I feel like if I have set rules in place they should be honored everywhere. I think with all the different parenting styles it's hard for him to know whose rules he should follow.

However aside from the fact that Brandon will listen to everyone around him but me there is another thing weighing on my mind. I kind of feel like he likes my parents more then me right now. He calls their house home, calls me from there to tell me he doesn't want to come back and has more fun there then he has had with me in a long time. I realize a lot of that is my fault, being on bed rest really set me back, and then the remainder of the pregnancy made it really hard to do fun stuff like ride my bike to the park and play with him. I went to the park a few times but climbing up and down and lifting him and sliding actually took quite a lot out of me. Now I'm trying to heal from the C-section and that is 6 more weeks I'm not really supposed to do much with him. Yesterday he went to see my parents. He said he was going home, meaning he was going to their house. I said no Brandon this is your home and he said NO I go home. I bawled when he left. Then I told my mom I was ready for him to come home and she told me he cried when he put his shoes on so they were going to keep him longer. I bawled more. You can't imagine how hard it is knowing your son would rather be somewhere other then with you. I love letting him stay the night there because I know he has a lot of fun and they take him to the park and let him run crazy with the dogs and drink all the chocolate milk he wants, but at the same time it is getting harder and harder for me to let him go there, knowing he is going to be disappointed when he has to come home.

The saddest part of all is Brandon never misbehaves with Rob. He just sits there quietly playing and is this amazingly good boy. Then if I so much as walk in the room he goes ape shit. Literally starts jumping, and bouncing and throwing things, and shouting and it is as though I bring out the evil in my child.

It's like that old song, I know she still loves me but I don't think she likes me anymore, who sang that? Ginger would know. Anyway, I know my son loves me, because when he is gone from me for a while like when I was in the hospital he asks for mommy, but to be honest I just don't think he likes me anymore.

If I was Swistle this is one of those posts I would delete after a day because I'm so embarrassed to feel this way or feel like I'm failing at parenting the way I want. I thought about it all and I realized maybe he was just reacting to m the way I react to him. So I tried to stop yelling, and just talk to him in a calming voice, I tried just reasoning with him and making everything I said to him full of love, hoping he would react in the same manner. I never got to see how he reacted because no one else followed suit and everyone else went right on yelling, or time outing, or making threats, or just generally laughing at my way of parenting. This gave him the idea it was still okay to react poorly to me. I think the reason I get the majority of his bad behavior is that grandma & grandpa are to fun to be mean to, and daddy was the one taking care of him while I was on bed rest, and I am the odd man out in his life so I get the shit end of his stick. I feel like bed rest screwed a lot up. Brandon spent every day with my parents at work, so they were the ones parenting him all day. They set his schedule, they set his punishments, they did everything and I sat at home as an afterthought doing nothing. Then at night it was all about Rob. Rob set his schedule, he fed him, got him ready for bed, bathed him, and he was the one who went to him when he cried at night. Again I was the afterthought. Now, at night when Brandon wakes up, he screams for daddy. If I go in he screams harder, gets out of bed and goes running through the house screaming NO I NEED DADDY I NEED DADDY.

All of this is just breaking my heart and now I have a second child and I suddenly realize that at some point I'm not going to be his everything either. I guess I always knew there would come a time when my son wouldn't like his mom as much anymore, but I was more prepared for that to be around three or four. But not today. I can only hope that he and I can find some balance, some sort of happy medium, some way for us to get along and for him to go back to thinking I hung the moon and listening to me. I remember the good ole days when he only listened to me. Now I'm the only one he won't listen to.

I just know this needs to be fixed soon before I lose it. Today he was in time out and he was being such a shit, he was hitting and kicking and rocking his pack and play into the couch trying to wake up Codi. Then he reached for a plant and I went over there to tell him no and he grabbed the plant and just ripped. I'm lucky I was close enough because that mess would have sent me into tears. I was so upset I grabbed him by the arms and shouted at him NO. He started crying. Not because I hurt him but because I think I scared him. I put him back, walked away and just sat there crying because I had just frightened my son. The one thing I never wanted to do I did. I know he's already forgotten about it, but I never will. I just want to go back to the times when I hung his moon! There are still those moments where he hugs me and tells me he's so happy. Or where he does cry for me, or hug me and not want to leave. But then there are those times like right now, where my son is sitting here crying that he wants grandma, and he wants to go home. My heart is just breaking.

I think this might be a contender for my worlds longest post, but whatever I needed to get it off my chest. I'm so frustrated right now. This was all so much easier to handle before I had baby blues.

All my boys

THIS IS WHAT KEEPS ME GOING EVERY DAY, THESE BOYS

My sweet Brandon

I just hope he knows how much I love him!

Angry face

This is how a baby looks when he just took a big poop and wants his diaper changed!

Yeah not so much with the video

So I had the stupid video all the way uploaded to my computer. It was doing something called letterboxing which is the final stages of uploading. I asked my husband to plug in my computer so it wouldn't die while doing the letterboxing thing. He did that. However he didn't see Brandon over there playing and looking at himself in the web cam, which means he also didn't see Brandon close the computer.

Sigh!

So I come back out of the room and my computer is off. This means all the video that I had just uploaded went into the trash.

Double Sigh!

Now I was sitting there pulling all the video out of the trash and trying to sort the new footage of Brandon and the new footage of Codi. I got all of the footage of Brandon and I went to create a new movie for Codi's stuff. They said I didn't have enough room to save it because I have something like 20 other movies. So I emptied the trash and walked over to my nifty back up thing my mom got me recently. I plugged it in and turned a little and CRASH! Yeah it ate shit. Now I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it work again, so I just walked away from it for a while and I'm hoping it will just heal itself in a few hours.

Sigh sigh sigh!

I come back to the computer and create a new movie again and go to pull the footage of Codi out of the trash. Yes, the fucking trash I just emptied. That is when I realized I would now have to rewind all my footage, plug my camera back in and start from the beginning with the uploading.

And that folks, is why you don't see a video here, because I don't have enough damn patience to do that shit right now.

So, we will start again later tonight!

coming soon

working on a video trying not to blow up my computer!