My lil' man turns TWO!

*sniff* Where has the time gone? Oh, wait. I know. It was spent the last two years pumping, logging, training, diaper changing... the list goes on.

But... today - yes! Today! My lil' man turns TWO! And I can't help but feel a huge sigh of relief. Like I have reached the light at the end of a looooong infant-stage tunnel. It feels spectacular. *pats self on back* At 2 years old, my son is already potty trained and stringing some pretty impressive sentences together. Yeeehawww. Since this is my last "baby".... I'm ready to conquer the next chapter of parenthood and no looking back this time!

I couldn't help but wonder why I was in such a rush and felt such a huge relief to get to this milestone? Perhaps its because I went through it with my daughter first... so having to do a complete repeat again wasn't the most appealing thing in the world. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy any of it! I'm just saying that I knew it was something I had to go through again, and in all honesty, I probably tried to get through it as quickly as possible. If you are not the first time mom, then you can probably relate to some of these feelings. I wonder how much these feelings range depending on the age gap between kids? Nonetheless, the feelings are valid and most likely normal for any mom of 2+ kids.

At every age of the child, there are certainly challenges for the parent. But I gotta say, the first year is the hardest. Followed by the second year.

I'm very much looking forward now to this next year with my lil' man. My daughter will be in preschool in the mornings all week, so I'll have tons of one-on-one time with him. Now that he is talking and asking so many questions about things (and we got the potty training down), its going to be fun taking him out more to hang out and run errands or do whatever. I have the opportunity to work more, but decided to keep the hours low so that I have this full year of extra time with him before he starts a little bit of preschool himself next year. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders as we reached this milestone, so time is going to start to fly by a little bit faster now.

Spontaneity gives me anxiety.

So we've already established that I'm a neurotic "planner". I function on schedules and predictability. Well. that all changed this past weekend.

I've been working my butt off, and after a long 10 hour shift... I came home and had the craziest idea to go to Vegas for ONE DAY and catch one of my all-time favorite music festivals. Ohhhh you can imagine the thoughts that ran through my head in contemplating on this gesture. I had no place to stay, no tickets to the event, NO childcare lined up yet... what was I thinking?

Guess things were meant to be, because in the blink of an eye, the stars were aligning tickets, my cousin's hotel room to crash in, and three last-minute babysitters willing to help out. It was crazy. I pulled the trigger and agreed to go through with it. EEEEEEEK. Let me tell you though... seriously like 20 mins later - I was like "What am I doing? Is it too late to back out?" It was seriously giving me anxiety just thinking about what I had just agreed to proceed with and then furthermore... now I have to carry out.

Fortunately, due to the neurotic nature of my parenting skills, its not hard to watch my kids (even for a last-minute baby sitter that has never watched them for a full 24 hours by themself before - gulp!). But I had faith that the kids would be fine.... How could anyone mess up on watching my kids when there a clearly color-coded daily schedule right up on the fridge? Its a no fail gig!

Ok, so all the pieces have been laid out and away I went. In a span of less than 48 hours... I managed to drive myself to Vegas, dance until the sun came up, then get back home and into mommy-mode. whew. Took me probably another two days after that to fully recover....

Was it worth it? I'd say so. Would I do it again? Well... maybe I wouldn't wait until the day before to decide on things.... but I guess I can't always plan evvvvvverrrything. All I know is that this past weekend is still sort of a blur. I really pushed through a lot of the anxiety that was creeping in the back of my head during that time.. and I survived. Perhaps neuroticism can have an off button?