Unlivable to Unbelievable- Part Two

As I noted before, the bathroom renovations really did take 9 months to complete. But that wasn't the only thing that was going to take 9 months. Just three months before our wedding, the wedding that my step-mom had been losing sleep over to make beautiful, I found out I was pregnant. Well Shit! Was really the only appropriate things for me to say at that point. I already had my dress, and it had already been fitted. Just one more thing to literally add to the pile of crap that was already inside, and outside of our house. My stand is, that with all the renovations, and stress going on I simply forgot to take my birth control pill, but my husband has a different idea of how all that went. I don't recall having the "let's have a baby" conversation. Greg claims it was in the heat of the moment. C'mon, does anyone remember what they say in the middle of sex? If you do, do you expect anybody to hold you to it?
Regardless, our incredibly beautiful and emotional wedding came and went and do you think the two of us whisked away to some magical island? Hell no! We came right back home to a bathroom that still wasn't done, and ended up having to rip out the sink because if any more of it rotted away it would have just fallen apart all on it's own. Plus, Sean was starting his first day of kindergarden a few days later. With Sean at school and lot's to do we both took the week off work to try and "get ahead". We decided, with the help of Greg's dad to take apart the floor in what would later become the master suite. Halfway through we find just about every species of insect along with their eggs. Um, can anyone say Pest Control? Maybe the people that owned it before us?? This house was becoming our own personal money pit. Every time we took something apart a surprise was waiting for us. Several rooms didn't even have insulations, and tell me if it's normal to be able to see outside when your inside? And not through a window, through tiny holes and cracks in the wall. Wall paneling meant for an inside wall, not an outside one. Oh, and did I mention the single pane windows that frosted on the inside in the winter. Oh yeah and an air conditioning system that only worked for 7 hours and then froze over. Which, by the way, wasn't even plugged into the breaker. It took two years, a maintenance man, and $65 to figure that out. Aren't we a couple of geniuses?!
The time crunch was on because now we had a baby on the way and our house could probably have been deemed hazardous. Despite all this mess, we had a blast somehow working on it. We were literally building our life together. We learned a lot about each other along the way and about ourselves. I learned how to cut and measure drywall, I realized I was much stronger than I though, I had to learn how to be brave, especially after we built our front pouch and I had to carry chunks of grass and dirt filled with spiders and worms wiggling everywhere. But most importantly, Greg and I learned that no matter what shape our house was in, or how ugly our furniture was, it didn't matter. Because your life and relationships aren't based on any of that. You have to be able to strip all that away and still say I love my life, and I am happy. Can you say that? We could. We went to bed together every night and woke up in each others arms and nothing about the house or the financial stuff changed that or our love for each other. There were plenty of disagreements, and tears but we made our house into a home. There will always be a project, or something that needs to be fixed and changes are always coming. But our family is the constant and no matter where we are or what we have we know we have each other.

Yes! I have stretch marks

I have two amazing children, but let's face it, as beautiful and wonderful as pregnancy can be, there are definitely the not so beautiful parts of it. The morning sickness, the acne, the weekly weight gain, and maybe I should whisper this one.... (whispers) the stretch marks. They come in all sizes and colors from deep purples, reds, pinks, and clear. They take over our tummy,ass, hips, and boobs. But my question is, why are we all so ashamed of them? Our bodies changed to carry and care for our children. If our bodies weren't able to stretch and change the way they do who knows what the world would be like? Pregnant men running around like big balls of emotional mush? Women are made to handle the emotional and physical strain of carrying a child. I saw a commercial the other day for Coco Butter stretch mark cream, and in that commercial they said that stretch marks were ugly. So lot's of women including myself hide them.
One Piece bathing suits, long shirts, soccer mom shorts. I truly feel like we should be proud of them and show them off. Those stretch marks tell a story about each of us. Maybe they aren't from pregnancy, maybe they are from weight gain, or weight loss, or both. Whatever the reason, flaws aren't flaws, they are just simply what we are. Those imperfections give us character and make us who we are. Which is why I am posting a picture of the stretch marks I have grown to be proud of :) And you should too! Share your pictures with me, be proud :)

Unlivable to Unbelievable- Part One

My husband and I met three years ago and I was a "hot mess" if you will. I had a four year old little boy, was still living with my mother, and six thousand dollars in credit card debt. The only sweet part about any of it was Sean, my best pal in the world. I worked at a bank; 8:30 to 5:00 everyday, full time and when I could I was taking college classes at the local community college. By the time I got off work, picked up my son from daycare, yes, daycare which by the way , broke my heart into pieces every morning when I dropped Sean off for the whole day, i had just enough time to make dinner, clean up, get him bathed, and then bedtime. I was missing out on everything and we really only had the weekends to catch up on everything. My child was growing up before my eyes and I was missing it all. What choice did I have? I was a single mother, living at home, trying to pay off debt and the only thing I did own was a car I couldn't even afford.

Despite all this I managed to meet Greg. I wasn't looking for a relationship at that point in my life and I think I had even told my mom that I was done dating forever and was just going to live with her until I was forty. I know how cliche the whole "love at first sight" thing sounds. But what I felt when I first saw him was way beyond that. My heart jumped and for that few seconds my entire life flashed before my eyes and I couldn't stop looking at him. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and I was confused because although I was feeling this life altering emotion, he still hadn't looked at me other than the half second when we were introduced. To fast foreword this a little bit, we fell so deep in love with each other that within a few weeks he moved out of his dorm room on Tech campus and moved in with me....err....well, moved in with me at my mom's house, a month after that we were engaged, and a few months after that we bought our house.

Now, before you get all excited and start thinking what we are all programmed to think, it isn't like that....at all. I am not Cinderella, Greg isn't a prince, and the house we bought (thanks to help from his parents) is not a castle or anything even close to it. This house was a foreclosure that had been on the market for months and not a "hot mess" by any means. It was just a plain old dump. A foreclosure as most of you know is a house that the bank repossesses from the owners and when it's put back on the market it is SOLD AS IS. They mean that too. You buy the house, you buy all the problems that come along with it. This was probably the ugliest, dumpiest, grossest house I have ever seen in my life. The kitchen floor was completely torn apart, maybe to match the broken window and old refrigerator that didn't work. Which, by the way, we didn't find that out until later when we put frozen meat in there only to open the freezer door and see melted meat juice EVERYWHERE. The bathroom, oh the bathroom, where do I begin. Okay, close you eyes and imagine the ugliest, moldiest bathroom you can. Okay, got it? This bathroom was worse, far worse. The linoleum floor was probably five inches higher than it was supposed to be due to water damage, and the mold around the yellow bathtub and tiles was so bad you almost couldn't tell if the tub was even yellow. Between the wall paneling, the mold, the ripped floor, and the fact that I had to hang sheets in the windows for privacy, on move in day I had my first meltdown. It was all hitting me at that moment, I was going to be living in this house, a house I had to try and make into a home for my family.

Day one, immediately the bathroom demolition begins. Everything came out except the toilet, and partially rotting sink. I was forced to walk down our crooked and uneven basement stairs and use the shower in the basement for what seemed like the longest nine months of my life. Thanks to my dad and step-mom's generous house warming gift, we now had a working fridge in our kitchen. Between trying to fix things around the house, pay off my debt, and pay our mortgage, things were tight. We didn't have cable, or internet, and to save even more money, hot dogs, ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and chicken nuggets became a few of our favorite meals. This was a lifestyle I was not used to, and as awful as it might seem to some, I adapted quickly. The sacrifices were hard, but what I was gaining in return was even better. I had a place I could call my own. All the stuff inside of it, no matter how old, or worn, was ours. We were building a life, no matter how small it might seem to some, it was our life and it was beautiful.