Brock and I had a date night last night.

We got a sitter so we could be BABY FREE and tried to go to a movie, only there was absolutely nothing that either of us wanted to see.  So instead, we went over to hang out with our friends, Chris and KJ.  We were there for 3 whole hours, and it really felt like 20 minutes.  We had SO much fun!

What do two tired, overworked parents want to do when they get a date night?  Why, play video games of course.

Brock started out the night by trying out a God of War rip-off where you play as one of the four horsemen, and you have to kill demons and angels alike.  It looked pretty cool, albeit a little silly.  Then KJ got irritated because we were all watching instead of playing.  So we put on Mario for the Wii!

That game is designed to make people hate each other, I swear!  My throat was sore by the end of the night from yelling at everyone.  I couldn’t believe how fast the time went, or how relaxing it was to let loose and not worry about waking up the baby.  We played Halli Galli, which is a counting fruit card game.  Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid, but it was actually really fun.  We were yelling, and laughing and slapping – it was crazy.  We got to see KJ’s ninja hands and how lightening fast she was, winning two times in a row.

We were sad when it was time to go.  Date nights come so few and far between, and it felt like we had just walked out the door.  I texted our sweet and wonderful nanny to see if the baby was sleeping.  She said that he was ALMOST out, and would probably be asleep by the time we got home.  We came in very quietly, and I texted her again to see if she wanted me to come relieve her in the bedroom.  After she responded ‘Yes,’ I went in and was greeted with a happily  chattering, wide-awake little boy.  April said that he was nearly sound asleep, and when she tried to move him, he woke up and started talking.  Typical Ronan behavior.  Sleep is for the weak.

About half an hour later, I finally got Ronan back down.  Brock and I had planned on a little grown up time in the bedroom, if you know what I mean.  We were in the guest bedroom, kissing and being all romantical and sweet.  I was laying on the bed watching as Brock lit candles and set them on the ledge above the bed.  I don’t remember what we were talking about but I was focused on how Brock was holding the large glass jar candle upside down and putting the lighter all the way up inside of it to light, when one of the candles fell off the ledge and landed on the top of my head.

Wow.

I clutched the top of my head, moaning “OW OW OW ow ow ow ow ow ow!” until my ow’s turned into sobs, and I couldn’t stop crying.  Brock felt horrible, and held me while I cried telling me, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”  He ran downstairs and got me some ice and Tylenol.  It took me about that long to calm myself down and get my crying under control.  I did that silly thing where I pulled my hands really slowly away from my head to make sure there was no bleeding.  (There was no bleeding.)  Brock kept telling me he was sorry, and I laughed and said that it was okay, it was an accident!  He told me I wasn’t allowed to smile and be happy, because I was the one that got hurt.

So, instead of sweet-happy-love-time, we sat on the couch together and watched House while I iced my noggin.  The lump on my head grew in the shape of a C right behind my hairline, and stuck out of my head by a fingersbreadth.  Probably not the most romantic night we’ve ever had, but at least it was memorable!

I came home from work and found this one on my camera.  I’ll bet you that this makes your day.  So far, it’s made mine twice already.  LOVE!

Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone.

This is one holiday that I have no particular like nor dislike for.  I don’t look forward to it… I usually forget about it until the week before.  I don’t really WANT or EXPECT anything for Valentine’s day, and am always lovingly surprised when my husband does something wonderful.

This year, he wrote a letter.  Yes, ladies and gents, he HAND WROTE a love letter.  He left it sitting by the front door, and I read it as soon as I walked in from work.  I had a hard time getting to the bottom of the page because I had started crying.  Yup, he wrote a whole page about how much he loves me.

Isn’t it funny, though?  Just two weeks ago, it was all we could do not to yell at each other every day.  We didn’t even want to spend time together if given the choice, because we just kept ending up at odds.

People always say relationships change.  I read once that passion is like the tide… it ebbs and flows.  The older I get, and the more we go through difficult times together, the more I realize that those things are really true.  Yes, there are days when we can’t stand the sight of each other.  Yes, there are times when we don’t really seem to want the same things.  And yes, there are really moments when the relationship seems in vain and we can’t figure out what we’re doing.

But.

But there are times when things are so wonderful, when all we want is to be together, and the kisses are amazing, and the sex is unbelievable… times when we talk, and cuddle, and never get enough.  Those times make everything else so worth it.  They make the rest of the days worth putting up with.  We find ourselves going out of our way to make the other person happy.  Everything just fits.

I love my husband so much today.  I love him every day, but today I know that our love can last forever, even though a week ago I questioned it.  And days like today will help remind me that even though sometimes things are bad, we will always be okay.

I wonder how long I can stare at a blank entry page and have no idea what to write about.

For quite a while, evidently.

I do and I don’t want to write about stuff like this.  On one hand, this is my blog and I feel like it should be fine for me to address any issue that I want to.  On the other hand, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about the crap that I vent about – it’s pretty typical to write about things when they’re bad, and forget to mention the really good stuff.

Brock and I have been in a terribly bad rut lately.  I know that it happens, it’s happened before.  We get into this place where we cant really stand each other.  We have no patience, we don’t want to spend time together, and all we do is fight.  I freaking hate it.  I feel like I can do nothing right.  Every day, he’s pointing out something to me that I’m not doing well enough, or that is pissing him off.  My reaction is to strike back, tell him what HE’S been doing that is pissing ME off.  Then we’re just mad at each other for the rest of the day.

Add to that the fact that Brock has been sleeping in the guest room, and we sort of feel more like roommates that are sick of each other than a married couple.

Speaking of the guest room.  Brock was relegated there when I became tired of him getting pissed off at night when Ronan would wake up and cry… and it would wake him up.  It’s hard enough to handle the baby and get things taken care of without trying to ignore the pissed off sighs and frustrated pillow adjustments from the other side of the bed.  So I told him he could start sleeping in the guest room, and get as much sleep as he needs.  Since we’ve begun this arrangement, do you know how many times he’s offered to take baby duty and let me get a good sleep?  Two.  There have been two nights in the last eleven months that I have been given a night off.

And now that I’m working myself up to it, do you want to know what REALLY gets my goat? (Because I wasn’t upset enough yet…)

Brock got a new PC for Christmas.  You’ve heard about this one before.  And he’s been gaming more and more lately.  To the point that I’ve really started to get irritated.  He’s on the computer more than he’s not.  I don’t know how to freaking deal with it.  I go to bed when I get sleepy, around 10 or 11 at night, and Brock will get on his computer.  He’ll play until 2 or 3 in the morning… and then complain all the next day about how tired he is.

HOW TIRED YOU ARE?  ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Wow, I’m so angry about this right now I’m having trouble thinking straight.  He tells me that sleep isn’t as important to him as relaxing.  He says he doesn’t understand why it upsets me so much.  He seems completely unable to comprehend what I’m going through, and how he makes it worse.

I want him to see what it’s like to go this long with no sleep.  I want him to feel the utter exhaustion and defeat you feel when you NEVER get any rest.  I want to sleep every night for a week while he’s up with the kid every hour or so, and then tell him to his face that ‘I’m so tired.’  I want to watch with NO sympathy as he struggles to make it through the day, and can’t find the energy to get things done.  I want to complain that he doesn’t pick up enough, that our house is a mess, that he needs to do the dishes more often, and make more home made meals so we’re not eating out so much.

Because I’m supposed to do all of that.  And work.  And raise a happy, healthy, well-balanced child.  Without sleeping.

Sometimes I feel like, if I’m doing it all myself anyways, why don’t I just do it myself?  Something’s gotta give.

It just has to.

Brock and Ronan fell on the stairs yesterday.

It was a traumatic situation for both of them, I think.  Brock tripped over the cat, and tried to regain his balance, smashed his knee through the dry-wall, and still ended up unable to catch himself.  He fell onto Ronan’s head.  Ronan screamed like the world had ended, and Brock worried that he had severely hurt his son.  I knew they were both probably fine, and Ronan stopped crying in under 3 minutes.  He nursed, and then happily started jabbering, playing and laughing.

When I left for work, I told the nanny to call me if he started throwing up or if she couldn’t wake him up from a nap.  I never heard from her, so everything was okay.

I don’t feel guilty that I didn’t rush him to the E.R.  It would have been a wasted trip.

However, last night, one of our physicians, a co-worker and I were talking about the phenomenon of dropping babies.  We agreed, unanimously, that it is a good thing if mothers drop the baby first.  In my own situation, Ronan fell off of my lap when he was less than 2 months old.  He was sitting up with his legs hanging off of the right side of my legs, and I was steadying him with both hands.  I let go of him with my right hand, and reached across to grab something on my left, and he overbalanced forward.  He fell on the floor, screamed, and was just fine.  I felt like WORST mother in the world.  But when Brock told me he had let Ronan accidentally fall off of the bed, I couldn’t really be that mad at him – I had already dropped the baby.  What could I say that wouldn’t be hypocritical?

I told my co-workers that it was a good thing that I had dropped Ronan first, because if he had done it… I probably wouldn’t have let him stay home alone with the baby any more.

My ultrasound cohort quickly agreed.  She had fallen while walking up the stairs with her 7 or 8 month old infant, much like Brock did, and her baby girl suffered a big dent in her skull.  They spent HOURS in the hospital, multiple tests, and I’m sure what was a horrible, harrowing experience.  But, like she said, if it had been her husband who had fallen and allowed the very same thing to happen, she probably wouldn’t have been able to forgive him.

And then the radiologist told us that when we finally have our second children, we wont even bat an eye when something like that happens.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

So, I’m upset and I was going to sit and write an email.   Then I realized that I hadn’t posted a blog in several days, which is unacceptable, so I decided to write a blog instead.

Why am I upset?

I have spent the last two and a half years of my life as the happy female half of a wonderful couple.  My husband is a ‘gamer’ in that he loves video games, and spends as much time playing as he can get away with.  However, he’s always been reasonable about his playing time, and has never really left me feeling like I wasn’t getting to spend enough time with him.  Until recently.  I have discovered that the only reason I wasn’t a gamer-widow more often was because my husband didn’t have a computer that allowed him to play as frequently or for as long as he wanted.

Then he got a new PC for Christmas.

I now remember why I always swore to myself that I would never get involved with a man that played video games again.

What really breaks my heart is that I had such a great Christmas, and want to post about our holiday, our gifts, and all the wonderful pictures that I took… but all I can think about is how much it sucks that my husband wants to sit upstairs on his computer and play.   Better yet, instead of wanting to come downstairs for a while, he wants to baby-proof the UPSTAIRS, and have Ronan and I go up there with him.   Because sitting next to him while he’s completely absorbed in a game is JUST as good as spending quality time with him anywhere else in the house.

Hold on, I forgot to hold up my “sarcasm” sign.

This morning, when I got up with Ronan, the boy whom had just spent the most HORRIBLE nights sleep in bed with me, Brock asked me if I wanted him to get up instead so they could let me sleep.   Only I figured out this trick… the one where he says he’s going to get up, but instead lets Ronan stay up and play in bed with us until I get mad and tell them to leave.  After that, he brings Ronan back into the room any time he’s fussy or tired, so I don’t get any real sleep.   Today, I said no instead, and told Brock to sleep in so I could have a good nap in the afternoon before my midnight shift.

Ronan and I got up at 7:00.  Brock got up at 9.  I was watching my Christmas present, P.S. I love you, when he got out of bed.  I knew he had no interest in watching it with me for the third time, so he went upstairs to his computer.   I put Ronan down for a nap at 10.  My movie ended at 10:30.  Ronan woke up at 12:00 (blessed 2 hour naps!), and Brock was still up on his computer.   At 1:00, I had decided that it was time for me to have a nap, and asked if Brock was planning on coming down “any time today?”   He finished his game, told his buddies that he had to go, and then came downstairs.   I said that I wanted to sleep for a few hours, and went to the guest room so baby naps wouldn’t wake me.  I woke up at 4:30, and got in the shower for work.

The whole point of that WHOLE paragraph?   Brock and I spent exactly ZERO time together today.   It has just begun, and it’s already starting to REALLY get to me.

What’s even more, this is our evening text conversation:

7:17pm – Me – I love you.

8:15pm – Me – Where are you?

8:16pm – Brock – I love you. Ronan is being mad.

8:16pm – Me – Oh no Did you give him oatmeal?

11:23pm – Me – Are you playing on your computer?

12:01am – Brock – Kinda. Been in and out of the bed room a lot.

12:01am – Me – Baby troubles?

12:28am – Me – Are you gone to bed?

12:36am – Me – I wish you would answer me. I worry when you don’t. I love you and I hope you aren’t having a bad night.

1:12am – Me – I guess I’m just gonna assume you gont tired and fell asleep. I’ll see you in the morning.

3:07am – Brock – Going to bed now. Love you.

Ok, seriously?  I know games are mad fun and shit, but it doesn’t take THAT LONG to answer a text.  This is an inside joke, and you will not get it, but ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS A LITTLE CONSIDERATION.

I know it’s new, and the shiny fun-ness of it will probably wear off.  I’m just hoping the fun-ness goes away before all of my patience does.

Brock and I set about cleaning our upstairs and guest room this weekend for our incoming guests.  (Read: MOM AND DAD!!!)

It’s almost amusing how differently we choose to clean.  Typically, I want to clean as quickly and efficiently as possible; if it looks clean when I’m finished, I’ve done a good job.  Brock, however, has to clean ‘the right way’.  He wants to remove everything from the room, dust every piece of furniture, organize everything, and then finally return things to their places.

Yeah, he’s probably right.  It’s the “right” way to clean.

But it sucks.

We need to clean our guest room, which is a disaster.  Instead of cleaning that room, however, Brock decided we had to clean the loft.  That included getting EVERYTHING out of the loft, re-arranging the layout, and then organizing the storage closet.  He pulled everything out, organized everything into piles, and left them.  Now that that is all done, the entire upstairs is a bloody mess.  NEITHER room is clean.  BUT, it’s getting done ‘the right way’.  It will just take three days instead of three hours.

No point in fighting over it, I guess.  As long as it ends up clean.

Funny how different we are.  The worst part is that I don’t ever feel like I can really help, because I don’t do it as well as he does.  So I just run interference with the baby.

I think I’m the best wife ever.

Not really, but I love to make my husband happy, and I want him to get things that he wants.

We live like we’re broke 99% of the time.   We don’t eat out, we don’t go and buy whatever we want, and we don’t have super nice things.  We’re the only couple of all of the people that we know that don’t have an awesome home-theater system, haven’t just bought a new house or made any other big purchases of that sort.   But we’re happy with what we have, and we’re also the only couple that has gotten married and had a baby all within the same year.

We live like we’re broke, and it has allowed us to survive while paying off our debts.  It has also allowed us to save up a cute little nest egg.  This Christmas, I told my husband to get a new PC (the one he needs for when Starcraft 2 comes out.)  He’s been shopping for parts for MONTHS now, and quite frankly – I’m tired of it.   I want him to just get it over with and purchase the damn thing so I don’t have to keep hearing about this cooling system, and that motherboard.  Which video card?  I don’t care!  JUST BUY IT.

In return, I’ve sort of had my hopes set on a pretty little digital camera.   I’ve been thinking that if Brock gets his PC, perhaps I could get a new camera and indulge in my favorite pastime a little more seriously.  Bouncing back and forth between a new entry level Canon Eos T1i… or a Canon 5D - used. I couldn’t really decide.   I would end up spending about the same amount, but there is a vast difference in the camera quality.   Do I really want to go used over new?

Now, it DOESN’T MATTER.   Because I’m the BEST WIFE EVER.  And we found a great deal on TV’s.  So, I let Brock order a new 46 inch Samsung LED TV.   AND get his new PC.

Wow, are we just being frivolous or what?

We have been dealing with so much debt over the last few years.  It always seems like things have been hitting us harder and harder.   First the wedding, then honeymoon, then baby-stuff, then medical bills.  Now that we finally have it all paid off, it feels really good to spend some of our hard earned money on US.

And hey, it’s not like I’m not going to enjoy the new TV as well.  New camera will just have to wait a while.  And I’m okay with that.

Let’s get right into it – no pulling punches.

My husband plays videogames.  I’m not surprised, nor was I unaware of this fact when I fell in love with him.  Much of the groundwork of our relationship was laid when we played World of Warcraft together as friends.  And I will give him so very much credit; since we have been together, he has dialed back his gaming time to a fantastic degree.  He still likes to play when I’m sleeping, or when I’m gone at work, but when I’m home and we’re together… we are together.  There has never really been a time in the last three and a half years that I wished he would just put down his stupid game and come spend time with me.

Enter: baby.

Ronan has added a whole new function to the equation.  We’ve all heard stories about those parents that stuff their kids in a closet in order to play games in peace, or that have neglected to feed their children for weeks while participating in a raid.  There is no fear of that here, in this household.  There is no competition between Ronan and a videogame.

There is, however, some troubling overlap.  And this is where Brock and I don’t see eye to eye.

I may be a little strong-willed in my beliefs.  There are certain things I hold to be true above all else, and I insist on making it so.  I don’t subscribe to the school of thought on allowing my child to cry it out.  I did not feed my son solid foods before his sixth month.  I will nurse until he is one year old.  And… I don’t think children should see violence, even before they are old enough to recognize it for what it is.  I don’t know why I feel this way, I don’t even know if it’s a relevant fear.  I have these images in my mind of children learning through what they see… isn’t that the point of educational television?  If he can learn to count to ten in Spanish from Dora the Explorer, couldn’t he possibly learn that a sharp object can be used to stab someone and make them bleed?  What do we have to gain from allowing him to learn that?

So, I instituted a rule.  No violent videogames or TV shows to be played/watched/seen when Ronan is within viewing distance.  I didn’t really think that it was a bad rule, and Brock didn’t really object.  We’ve turned off movies that were too graphic and waited to watch them when Ronan was in bed.  We’ve covered his eyes if there was a part of an episode that we thought was inappropriate.  We’ve been sticking to it, and that made me happy.

Enter: Assassin’s Creed 2.

Brock had the luxury of playing the first installment of this console game while I was still pregnant, and there were no ‘rules’.   Assassin’s Creed is a unique game in that there is a large amount of content that is decidedly non-violent.  Much of the time in-game is spent exploring, spying, hunting treasure, and pushing the storyline forward.  There are, however, large portions of the game that involve killing people; come on, now… it’s called ASSASSIN’S Creed.

Our typical scenario occurs when Brock is running around in-game, minding his own business and doing one of the many fight-free objectives.  Ronan plays nearby on the floor, having little to no interest in the colors and shapes on the television screen.  Suddenly, a fight breaks out in-game, and Brock is intently doing battle.  There are swords and fists flying, blood is splattering, and people are yelling out in agony.  Ronan immediately becomes VERY interested, and can’t peel his eyes from the screen.  I look over, notice what is going on, and bring it to Brock’s attention that he’s allowing Ronan to watch digital people be killed.

This same scenario occurs several times over the course of an evening.  I start to get frustrated, because I don’t think Brock takes it seriously, nor is he paying enough attention to his surroundings to notice what he is subjecting his child to.  Brock gets upset because he thinks it’s my responsibility to “distract” Ronan whenever he gets into a fighting situation that I don’t want Ronan to see.  He told me that he doesn’t think it’s such a big deal for Ronan to watch what’s going on, and if I’m the one that’s worried about it, I should be the one dealing with it.  I feel that if he’s not attentive enough to be sure he’s not killing people while Ronan is watching, he shouldn’t be playing while Ronan is awake.

Enter:  The fight.

Brock and I had our first knock-down, drag-out over this one.  I don’t really know which of us is right or wrong.  I don’t know how to reconcile the difference in opinion.  I just know that I don’t want my kid knifing some other kid in the park, standing over him, and saying, “I live by the creed.”