thank you, mom and dad

i've been seeing a therapist to help me work through some of my "stuff". and though i try to hide it from you, i'm sure you are aware that i've got a lot of stuff. i feel like some of my sadness (she is working with me on calling it sadness instead of anger) revolving around losing your brother overflows into every area of my life. sometimes i am meaner to your dad than he deserves. and sometimes i lose patience with you more quickly than you deserve. sometimes i'm just too angry sad to really just enjoy life. and to enjoy you. the therapist has helped me to see why i do a lot of what i do, and to see that i really am stuck in my grief over the loss of your brother. so many good things have come out of losing him, and i try to always remember that, but i think i try so hard to make it positive that i have yet to deal with just being sad.

don't get me wrong. i was really sad for a really long time. and a lot of times i am still really sad. just in the course of a day, i can out of nowhere get really sad. and angry.

and that's just not fair to you.
or to your dad.
or to me.

believe me, i know that we have a lot to be thankful for. to be happy about. just the fact that we have you is a miracle to celebrate every second of every day. we have a cute little house and two cars that we can depend on. you have a lot of fun toys to play with and there is always food in the fridge. we are all healthy (unless you count my head). we have loving family members who adore you and shower you with love every day of your life. your uncle and cousins live just down the street and you get to see them and play with them whenever you want. your grandparents live close by and you see them all the time, too. (except for nana, but you still know she loves you all the time and i think that you think you see her more often than you do, which is good.)

i am so grateful to be able to be home with you every day. i was able to leave my full time job and to take on another career that allows me the flexibility to make some money while doing something i am passionate about, without having to be away from you all the time.

that being said, we are not rolling in income.

your dad is a teacher. he is a really great teacher. and he is lucky to have a good job in a nice district that pays well. he has great benefits. i am making some money, but that's really just enough to cover what gaps there are between the current income and output.

we were smart in our choice of a home. we knew that i would want to stay home when we had kids, so we bought a home that cost less than we could afford at the time. we are lucky to have very few college loans to repay. actually, i have none because grandmom and grandpop were able to pay for me to go to college (as long as i lived at home and stayed in state!). but even with all of those lucky and planned choices, we still struggle a bit with money. i don't mean that we can't pay our bills, but i do mean that we sacrifice a lot so that i can stay home with you. we don't go out to eat as often as we would like. daddy and i don't buy new clothes for ourselves. we do make sure that you get to experience a lot of fun things, but really, every penny is accounted for.

i'm really not trying to do a poor me post here. really. i know that i have way more than many people do. and i am grateful for every lucky thing i have received and for every penny that we have been able to earn. i wouldn't trade my decision to leave my teaching career for anything.

but here's the deal.

i think that it's starting to get to me. and i have so little sanity to work with sometimes that every little bit helps.

it's hard for me to be on such a tight budget. i'm not used to it. i was a teacher married to a teacher. and together we had very few bills to worry about. we had enough money that we lived without a budget, we spent what we wanted to spend within reason, and all of our bills were paid. and we still had some leftover. but now, every penny is allocated for bills and the extra goes to the really exciting stuff like groceries and gas and other essentials. there is really very little, if any, left for anything fun. i am so conscious of wanting to save money that being unable to do so makes me feel sick. and it makes me fear spending a penny on anything silly.

so the outcome here is that we don't really spend any money on anything fun for us. i mean for me and for daddy.

nothing.

so my therapist suggested that we take a family vacation. i shuddered at the thought of spending money on something so frivolous. even though travel is another one of my true passions. so i thought maybe we will go to cape may for a weekend. or go camping. or drive up to boston or something like that.

but really deep down i wanted to take you to disneyworld.

so when i mentioned to grandmom and grandpop that the therapist suggested a vacation and that i really wished that we could take you to disney, they said that i should look into how much it would cost.

so i did.

and when i did and told her, she said, "merry christmas". she said that i should tell your uncle, too and that they were sending us all to disney world.

holy bleep! can you believe it? can you believe how lucky we are? and i can't believe how much just this week of having something to look forward to has changed my mood. i forgot how fun it is to look forward to a vacation.

i'm not saying that life is all about the big stuff. it's not. and i know that going to cape may for a weekend would have been a blast. and i know that i can't take my worries and troubles away with a trip to disneyworld.

but i just wanted to say thank you to grandmom and grandpop. it means so much that now matter how much we sometimes fight or how much i might piss them off from time to time (to time to time), that they are always there for us. and they always want to make us happy.

they've always been that way. they've done so much for uncle and for me and i am pretty sure they have no idea that we appreciate it all.

so i hope that grandmom reads this and just gets a little feeling that everything that they do for us, not just the money stuff, but everything, has been noticed and appreciated. and that none of it has been taken for granted. and i hope that they know that someday, when we can afford to do these things for you and for your kids, we will. and i hope that they know that everything they do for us and have ever done for us, they do for you, too.

i think that sometimes because i am such a different parent than they were to me and to uncle, that they think i don't appreciate everything they've done and the people that they were and are. i think that they don't see that i am really not as different from them as they might think.

they loved me and uncle with all of their hearts and they did the best that they could at every second with the knowlegde and the power that they had.

and isn't that exactly what your dad and i do for you?

and i promise you that i will keep working with my therapist in order to get a hold of my feelings. so that i can learn to be more patient and to be less angry. i don't want you to grow up with an explosive mommy. i want you to see love and happiness and laughter all around you, so that you can grow up to be full of love and light.