I realize that I have been a bit negative in my posts lately. Though I won't take all the blame (!!), I just wanted you to know that there is positive in my life. There are good feelings and some goodness that I can't take full credit for, either. Nonetheless, he is here, and quite loveable and adorable and sweet. I do still have a lot for which to be thankful. Even in the midst of it all, we do have him.

If you have a Snapfish account, you can click on his picture to see the slideshow of pics we took within a few minutes of his actual six week "since I was born" day -- or something like that...

:D

Last week was one of the weeks off we have to take in the summer. It was supposed to be a "vacation" week.

I had grandson 5 days and 4 nights. Just took him back last night. I'm exhausted today. I had insomnia a few of those nights, with Friday night being the worst. I didn't sleep a wink all night. It wasn't all because of grandson, though. On Friday night, he slept 6 straight hours, up for about 5 minutes, then back to sleep for 2 more hours. I just had insomnia or too much going on in my head or something. I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep at all. Didn't sleep at all during the day Saturday, either. I became what some refer to as "too tired too sleep." My muscles ache and I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. (I'm getting too old for this... ;D)

So I'm back at work now more exhausted than I left the Friday before.

Don't get me wrong, I love having grandson at my house!! That part was great! He's a little angel baby!

Son said she was in the process of a "manic episode", so I did what I could to keep the worry and drama down. She is strange. (And I also think there's a part of her that's a hypochondriac.) She took a class for weeks on lamaze, labor and delivery, and babycare afterwards. The only notes she took were for "postpartum depression." Sure enough, within a week or two, she was on antidepressants. The only thing is, she is bipolar. I told son that wouldn't work for her -- that she needed to get back on bipolar meds. She didn't. She just took the antidepressants. And now she's having trouble with the mania part of bipolarism. I told son yesterday she needed to get to the doctor ASAP!! She's supposed to start back work today and she had school today (which I'm sure she skipped). I don't have a clue just what she IS doing today. I just told son to not leave her alone with the baby. Watch her. Make sure she is good with him, or that she leaves him alone if she can't be. I told him to tell her that when she's beginning to feel 'strange' or having symptoms, she needs to leave the house. Her mother has an apartment in the same complex, just two buildings down. She needs to go there. And I hope she has at least enough sense to do that.

Other than that, I had about 2 days off, and on those days I tried to catch up on sleep or just rest. So suffice it to say I got nearly nothing done last week!! My laundry is piling up, and luckily, hubby made 2 pots of stew (one of my favorites he makes) so we had that wonderful stuff for leftovers. I didn't cook much last week! ;)

I haven't been this tired in some time. But other than checking on him this week, I don't think I'll have any overnight visits until the weekend. I'll try to rest.

Hope all of you have a great week!!

No real changes on the homefront. We have to tolerate her schedules. ...and that doesn't always mean that it's for a good reason. It's just so she can feel powerful. I seriously dislike feeling as though I'm at someone else's mercy in such a way, but I do it for the baby.

She is in school 4 days a week now. She's supposed to start back to work on Monday. She goes to school at 4 a.m. (to catch a bus for a 3 hour ride to the school), and doesn't even get home from school until 6 p.m., and she's supposed to be at work at 3 p.m. weekdays. I don't know how they are going to do that. Son says she's going to try working from home. I don't see that working out at all. Hubby thinks she's trying to be a full-time student. That would leave neither of them working. How do you pay bills? How do you pay for baby things? I'm really worried.

I seriously, seriously hope I'm wrong, but I actually got the feeling the other day that they almost feel like, "okay, this was cool, now you can take him." ..as if they are tired of him already. I don't know. I may be totally off base, but for a split second, I felt that. Don't get me wrong, son is absolutely wonderful with him, but he seems to need constant "breaks." He seems to need time away more often than is normal. (The first time I handed over my son for someone else to watch, he was 4 months old, and it was to my mother. We were home for Christmas.) Parenting is a 'forever' job, though. We don't take breaks from worrying and caring and hoping and praying. I'm perfect proof of that, even though my son is nearly 23 and has his own son now.

I can't be totally negative.

I took Evan Jimmy (she calls him Evan, we call him Jimmy. They were going to call him Jimmy or Jaimie, but she decided she didn't want him to be named after ANYONE in our family :( .) in for more pics on Monday. I can't believe how much he has grown!!! He's getting so big! ;D I think he's about 8 pounds now! This weekend, he'll be 6 weeks old. Wow...

He's definitely the light of his grandparent's eyes!! We are head over heels for this little one.
If you couldn't tell...



He's such a little loverboy. He loves to cuddle! Even when we keep him and try to get him to sleep in his travel bassinet, he does not like it. He wants to sleep next to someone in some way. He's precious...

:D

Hey. Don't want to make everybody depressed that comes here. Things are going okay with son and d-i-l. I'm not happy (nor are they) with the relationship they have, but I'm not going to stress about it. She's beginning to play "mind games." We all see it, but aren't paying attention to it. We just do a lot of what she asks so that we can keep grandson in our lives. It's nothing really bad. At this point, it's just about the hours that we can see him. The latest example is that she chose to "tell us" exactly when we had to bring grandson back to her after we'd kept him for the night. Not a biggie. The fact was that when we brought him back, she wasn't there. She said she had to have him back at this particular time so that she could see him before she went to school on Monday. (...college.) So we brought him home and she wasn't there. Son called her and she was out at a movie. Umm... We had to have him back at a specific time for her -- and she purposely chose to be elsewhere for 3 more hours. Hmmm...

OK. She does this frequently.

You know, I said I wasn't going to dwell. The main thing is that we have that angel with us. I had him last night, and I'm going back to get him in the morning (after she goes to school), and will have him all night again!

We've told son that our house is open to him and the baby. Anytime. No matter what.

He's thinking seriously about it.

And while we aren't dwelling, let me please show you a couple of pics of the precious little angel!

;)





He's smiling!!





We call this "kissy face."



Now he sleeps....

As you may be able to tell, after work, he takes up a great portion of my life. He is precious. I love him more than words can say.

If you couldn't tell....

:D

P.S. He is, as of yesterday, 5 weeks old.

There's been many times in my life where I've disliked my eyes. I've always liked the color, but the shape was so different than anyone else I'd known. ...definitely not like anyone else in my family. At one point in time, I even considered plastic surgery to remove the overlid "puffiness" with which I was born.

My lips are the very typical "cupid's bow" lips. I never really had an opinion of them. I could take them or leave them (though hubby says they are 'perfect'). :P

Being adopted, I've never really been around anyone who looked like me. Even son looks very, very much like his dad.

Now I have a grandson. Now that I see my eyes reflecting back at me in him, I love my eyes. When I see the perfect 'cupid's bow' in his lip, I am utterly amazed.

I've never, ever seen myself as any sort of beauty. I was raised in a house with three beautiful girls. I was the 'unattractive' one. But I was the brain, so that's what I accepted. And now that I partially 'see' myself in someone else, and I see how wonderfully beautiful he is, I know that I must be an attractive person, too.

Who knew that accepting oneself and seeing the physical beauty in oneself was so easy...?

I know it's been awhile since I posted. A lot seems to be going on here. ...things I don't wish to discuss in this forum. You could just say there's "trouble in paradise" with the kids. Not much to do about it but be there as much as we are needed, I suppose.

On a brighter note, we had a wonderful July 4th! A good friend of ours had a cookout/picnic and we all went -- hubby, me, son, d-i-l, and grandson. It was nice just to be out and having fun, talking with others and being social. I hadn't realized it had been that long since we'd been around others just to have a bit of fun and relaxation!

Here are the guys just "hanging out."



Friend's youngest son holding the baby.







Playing in the pool! These guys are playing "chicken" I think.
They are definitely having fun, though!!



Getting ready to go home... It was a fun-filled day!

Here are a couple of pics I took of the baby on July 4th. Some are at the picnic, others are at my house. We took him home with us that night.

Also, at the bottom is a video I took a few days before that. He's not doing much, but babies 2 1/2 weeks old don't usually do very much!! ;)

He's such a precious little bug...