Feeling Trapped

I can't think of many feelings I dislike more than the feeling of being trapped. It's kind of like claustrophobia, but instead of small spaces, it's limitations on life. There are several decisions I have made that have gotten me to this point.

Decision 1: not to re-apply to dental school after getting wait-listed the first round.
Decision 2: thinking dental therapy was going to be a comparable career path.
Decision 3: deciding to leave my baby and return to finish my dental therapy program, in the hopes I could have a great career helping people.

Well, turns out the job market for liscensed dental therapists isn't what we thought it would be. Out of the 6 available dental therapy graduates (the rest of my class), ONE was hired. It's been 4.5 months. So here I am, 7 years of post highschool education, up to my ears in student loan debt and no job prospects. Which has lead me to the feeling of being trapped. DH makes the money in the family, which in turn, leaves me having to report every purchase I make - Ask permissions for anything other than gas or groceries I want to buy.

I guess I just needed to vent a little. I'm going to sleep on it and hope I feel better in the morning. Good night.

Trip to the Park!

Something happened yesterday that hasn't happened in a long time... It was beautiful outside AND it was my Spring Break!!! I was a very lucky girl yesterday! It was a pretty busy day, but I enjoyed every moment of it :)

Lydia and I slept in until 10:30, then I dropped her off at daycare (I had a meeting at a dental office later in the afternoon). I met a great friend at Starbucks (my fave!) for coffee. We had some wonderful mama time, which in my opinion, can be grossly underrated! After coffee, I scoped out a prospective pediatric dental office to work at, then headed to my meeting at a dental office near my house. All this was done with sunglasses on and sunroof open. Fabulous.

Then it was time to truly enjoy the beautiful day! I picked up Lydia from daycare and we went for a long walk to the park. She wasn't completely sure about all the safety of the play set... We headed to the swings first. We started out in the bucket swing while she got used to the idea of playing at the park. Then we graduated to the baby swing that she could sit in by herself! She laughed and laughed! Then she got scared. Haha

She really wasn't sure about the slide. I think part of it was the two older kids that kept following us around and playing where we were. Do all kids do that? Personally I thought they were pretty rude. They kept running into Lydia when she was sitting on top of the slide (It was a double slide, so they were going down the other side). Then they decided they were going to occupy both sides of the slide. I just calmly told the little boy (8 years old?) that we were still using the slide and asked him to please move :) It was weird. Maybe I just don't understand children?

After all the playing (and fending off random children) we decided to relax and explore in the grass for a little while before we headed home.

It was such a beautiful day with my little Love Bug!

Sleep Training at 13 months???

For the past week-ish, Lydia has decided she does not want to go to sleep in her crib. We have always snuggled with her at night until she fell asleep (around 8:00) and then gently set her in her crib to continue in her restful slumber. Well, the new trend is we cuddle her until she falls asleep around 8:00pm then head up to her room to put her to bed....just like before. But now, as soon as we open her door she starts squirming and crying. We have been trying to figure out if something is wrong with her. Does she not feel well? Is she teething? As far as we can tell, she just doesn't want to go to bed in her crib. Great. Now what? Two nights ago, DH tried to cuddle her all night. Picker her up and cuddling was the only thing that got her to stop crying. So she went to bed with us. That did NOT work. She tossed and turned and squirmed and whined all night. I don't know that any of us really got any sleep. This led to crabby Thursday for a very sleep-deprived mamma.

I was curious to find out how her day at daycare was yesterday. They said she did just great! Took 2 good naps and was her happy self all day. Hmmmmm.... I think that confirms our hypothesis that she feels fine. We were hoping her sleep issues were just going to be a phase, so we were hopeful that we could go back to our normal bedtime routine. No such luck. Last night was much of the same as the night before. We needed a game plan. We decided that it might be time to do some sleep training. Ugh! So she fell asleep with me last night around 8:00, I went to put her down, she threw a tantrum, I comforted her for a little while then left the room to let her cry. We let her go for about 15 minutes at a time and then we would go in and reassure her. This went on from 8:45-10:30. Then I decided I had to go to bed. So I'm not sure how long after that it lasted. But I do know that DH and I were in our bed this morning and Bean was sleeping in hers. This might mean that I'm on baby duty tonight :-\ I'm really hoping this works....and quickly!!!

In other life news... I passed my dental boards!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippppppeeeeee! Now I have a bunch of competencies to complete at school before I graduate in MAY! Now it's time to hit the job hunt hard!

Spring break starts for me at 4:00pm today! I decided it was a good day for a half day. I slept in until almost 9:00. It felt soooo good. I have a patient this afternoon, so I couldn't take the whole day off ;)

For a little comedy - Lydia hitting the bottle: