I'm still here!

Stopping in real quick while the bacon for bfast is cooking. I'm still here. Been keeping the boys busy while they're grounded (half way done!!) and I've been using my online time a bit more effectively. I found out about this thing called ChaCha, people can txt in any questions they have and a real person txts back an answer. I"m one of those real people who answer's questions. You get paid by the answer, and it's not a lot, but I made almost $25 last week. And if I get good enough I can double my pay per question. This is all money that is going to be mine to spend however I want. Though I'm thinking if I"m making $200 a month some of it will probably go to bills, lol. If anybody wants more information, let me know! But yeah, so I've been busy doing that. Well, need to get back to bfast!

Spoke too soon

So much for Genesis being the one to give me grays (see post below). I'm surprised I didn't turn all gray this afternoon. The boys were playing outside, as usual, Austin came home, gave them hugs, came inside, we talked a bit and then a few minutes later I looked out the window and couldn't see the boys. "Hey honey, did you tell the boys they could play next door?" "No, why?" "I don't see them. I'll go out and call" A minute later "Honey!! They're NOT out there!!" So we both go into search mode. Something told me they walked down to DH's mom's house (where his sister, BIL and their 3 kids live also), so I told DH to go down there, but first he went around the block a few times, asked neighbors if they saw them, came back, walked around a bit, had me call 911 (I had already called down to MIL's but noone answered the phone), then he drove down to MIL's. They were stepping on the front porch as he pulled up (she lives maybe 1/3 of a mile down the road). So he disciplined them good, called me, I called 911 back, but right after I got off the phone the cops and fire dept showed up. I assured them we found the boys at their Grannie's house and DH was headed back home with them.

So my boys are in very big trouble. DH grounded them everything for 2 wks. No outside (obviously), no TV, no computer, and no toys. They'll probably drive me crazy, but DH wants me to work them anyways. I think we'll get some fall cleaning in the next two weeks. And of course it'll probably be next year before they're allowed outside without a grown up.

She'll give me grays for sure

I think Genesis is going to give me more gray hairs then the boys combined! For one thing, she is into everything. The boys were nothing like this. I had always heard the "I can't even take a shower b/c of my toddler" lines and I always thought they were slight exagerations. Now I know better. Literally, if I have her out of my sight for 2 minutes, she's into something. Whether it be washing her hands, getting some water out of hte sink to drink (or spill), finding the boys' scissors and glue, emptying a drawer, etc etc, she's doing somethign that is going to require cleaning up. But that's not the worst.

Here's the worst. A few weeks ago (I don't think I blogged about this, but maybe I did?) she came up to me, handed me a washcloth and said "Owie Mommy," and then held up her hand that was covered in blood!! She had cut herself on the tip of her finger, calmly got a washcloth and then let me know about it. She had dripped blood all through the house! I freaked out for about half a second, but then I saw her face mirror my horror, so I quickly regained composure and took care of her.

Then last night, DH and I were watching a movie when she comes in and says "Mommy, look" and her face is covered in blood! She had somehow gotten a bloody nose (which was still bleeding) and had smeared the blood all over her face. Talk about freaking out Mommy and Daddy! The best we can figure is that during the small tantrum she had been throwing a few minutes before she had hit her nose. She has a tendancy to roll and throw herself around during fits. It only took a few minutes to clean her up and get her nose to stop bleeding, but it still made our hearts stop when we first saw her. Though I'm glad DH got to experience the freak out with me, so he can see what I'm talking about when I say she's turning me gray!

Midwife appt

We had another midwife appt on Thurs. This is one we've been trying to get in forever, but it kept getting cancelled for one reason or another. We finally made it though! Everything looks wonderful. The MW already is putting a plan into place to make sure we get my body back up to par after the antibiotics and ready for this baby. My "homework" is to self-educate myself on that as much as possible and to find where the closest helipad is. She said she doesn't care about the closest hospital, since they're all likely to be dinky, b/c if we need to transfer to a hospital it's goign to need to be a big one. Almost anything the little hospitals can do, she can do at home. So I actually find that comforting. I know if she says "we need to get you to a hospital" then we need to go. If an ob/gyn were to say "you need to have a c/s" I probably wouldn't trust them!

Our MW has an apprentice who did all the baby checking. It was so funny though b/c she's been mainly working with larger inutero babies up to know, so she was almost giddy with how small the baby was. She kept saying "It's so cute and tiny!!" It just made my day. It's so nice to see someone else as excited about your 4th baby as you are.

Rediculous Dr's office policy

After putting it off for many reasons, I finally called to schedule my children for well-child check-ups. None of them have had any in about 18 months. Not so bad for the boys, but that's when Genesis was 6 months old, lol, so she especially is a bit overdue. Plus I need to meet with the dr anyways before the baby is born to get acquainted and ask some questions, etc. So today I called. Turns out, they won't see all 3 at the same time, or even on the same day! The lady I talked to claimed it took too much of the Dr's time for new patients to see that many. Ok, so schedule extra time for it. I asked if we could stagger the times, etc and all I could get was "no." How frustrating is that? The dr's office is not near by so it takes a good bit of time and gas to have these appts (which is part of the reason I've delayed this long) but she was not willing to work with me at all. I went ahead and scheduled Genesis an appt, since I figured she needed it most, but I have every intention of mentioning the absurdity of it to the dr when we get there. I mean seriously, what if in a few days another new patient wants to schedule an appt for that day. Are they going to say "I'm sorry, we already have one new patient scheduled for that day..." It wasn't just like there wasn't room that day for 3 new patients, she was very specific in saying htat I could not schedule all 3 children for the same day, regardless of day, it was simply too much. Whatever.

One of those days

Ever have one of those days where you just have no patience for your children? How is it that they can sense that and be at their worst when it happens?



The day actually started out really good. I felt productive, got a lot done, including laundry, etc and then by afternoon, I just had no patience. The kids only did half their chores b/c then I sent them out to play, rather than deal with them in an unkind way. I think Genesis is teething, so she was pretty cranky all day and kept screaming, which was probably part of my problem. You can only handle so much of that screech before your nerves are shot. The boys kept bothering her on purpose, making her scream more, making me more irritable. It just was not pretty. So it's now 8pm, the kids have been in bed for half an hour (an hour earlier than normal), Genesis is asleep, I'm considering duct-taping the boys to their beds with their mouths taped shut too and I've exhausted my normal internet sites that I visit. Maybe I'll go to bed early tonight...

Well, that was fun

Sunday afternoon Ike went through our area. Thankfully, it didn't storm badly, or even have any rain, but we had horribly high winds. Like gusts up to 75mph. It took down a ton of trees, including one in our back yard that just missed the house. If it had fell at a different angle, it would have taken out our bedroom, where Genesis was napping at the time!! Of course downed trees, means downed power lines. So we've been without power from about 1:30pm Sunday, until just a little bit ago, 7pm on Tues!! Of course everythign in our fridge and freezer was tossed. Today at the fire house (and maybe tomorrow) they were giving away free meals and water. Our county actually declared a state of emergancy. I've heard though that that means we'll get money to replace the food we lost. I hope so, b/c we sure can't afford to replace it all. I am disappointed though, b/c it wasn't all just food you buy from the store. I had a whole bunch of homemade chicken stock in there, pie crusts that I make in bulk, refried beans I had made, etc. I'm working on a grocery list so we can go shopping on Thur on Dh's day off. We'll also be going to see the mw that day. She was goign to come out here on Mon, b/c she was between offices, but seeing as we had no power and she had 3 downed trees at her house, we cancelled, lol. Oh, but her new office is closer, so that will save us some gas. All in all, no power wasn't that bad. If it werent' for the fridge and stove, oh, and water heater, I wouldn't have minded really at all. I was pretty bored last night though while DH was at work and the kids were in bed and it was dark outside!

Our interesting bug find

We found one of these beauties in our yard about a week and a half ago. Actually I saw it, quickly put a jar on top of it, called the kids over to look at in, then went in to find a lid for the jar. Thankfully it didn't get out, or get let out while I found a lid. It's known as a velvet ant, and they are huge btw. Our's is probably about 3/4 of an inch long. It's not really an ant, it's actually a flightless wasp. A flightless wasp with a very painful sting. Our species is actually known as a "cow killer" b/c it's sting hurts so bad, you would think it would kill a cow. Ouch!! I've had it in that jar for about a week and half now. The first week it had holes in the lid, then I switched to a hole-less lid, b/c the thing just won't die!! Usually I'm all for catch and release, but i am not letting something with that painful of a sting loose in my yard again. I'm jsut thankful noone got stung in the catching process. Did I mention that it's still alive? It still won't die. Coincidently, we saw another one at a state park yesterday. Btw, if you see one of these with wings, don't worry about it. The winged ones are the males, and htey can't sting. I think I'd kill it anyways, just to prevent procreation, lol.

Oh gross

When we moved into this house back in March (April?) there was evidence of cockroaches. The landlord claimed he bombed the house and the problem was taken care of. It was soon evident that the problem was NOT taken of. So after months of fighting the cockroaches the best we could, we finally hired an exterminator. The landlord says he won't pay for it, but I checked and he has to by law. Which is good, b/c we can't afford it anyways. Unfortunately, we only have a month to month lease, so he'll probably just give us our 30 days notice when we give him the receipt with the rest of our rent. We dont' have much choice though, they were getting BAD, and like I siad, we can't afford an exterminator out of our pockets, and shouldn't have to anyways. We're hoping he just takes the reciept and doens't do anything, but if he does, whatever. We'll find someplace else to live. This isn't exactly the nicest house anyways. And we've got lots of feelers out, lots of people around this little town know we're looking. Either way, God will take care of it, so I'm not worried.

Just having cockroaches isn't what's so gross though. The exterminator came yesterday and when we came back home, there were so many dead cockroaches all over the house. It was nasty. And the exterminator said to expect them to come out for the next 2wks or so. We spent like 2-3 hours yesterday cleaning up after the exterminator (we also had to put stuff back in cabinets, wipe counters down, etc), and of course, this morning I wake up to lots of cockroaches all over my floors again. Fun for me. I'm just thankful we don't have a crawler who puts everything in their mouth! I can trust my kids to not eat the dead cockroaches and leave them alone until I'm able to get them cleaned up. And even more fun, I get to do this every month or more! until the problem is taken care of. We're goign to spend some time goign through all our stuff and shaking the cockroaches out, live and dead so that every spray will be more effective. And hopefully this way, if we do have to move, we won't take them with us!

OH, and while I"m blogging, a quick update on my ear since I saw the ENT yesterday. Things are looking much better. My more severe symptoms (like daily headaches and stiff neck) are abaiting and my eardrum doesn't nasty. So good news. He gave me another 3wk rx for antibiotics, making a total of 5 wks, and when it's almost done I'll go back in for another check and see how things are. Hopefully at that point we can decide things are all better and discontinue the antibiotics. Oh, he also said we may at some point try again to put a tube in my ear (I'm assuming if things don't look all cleared up at my next appt), but he wouldn't do it now b/c of the horror of last time. He wants to make sure all the swelling is down first.

Update on my ear

Sorry to keep you hanging. Over hte weekend my a/c adapter to the computer went out. The a/c adapter we just bought less than 2 months ago. *sigh* Luckily it had a 90day warrenty, so they sent us a new one. I couldn't get through to tech support until yesterday and they told me it would be Thur/Fri before the adapter came, so I was happy when it came today! But on to the update.

Talked ot the ENT dr yesterday and he said I definatly have mastoiditis. The good news though is that it doesn't have any of the aggressive features, like bone density loss, abcess, brain abcess (!!), etc, so there is no need for IV antibiotics or surgery or anything. It will need long term antibiotics though, like a month or more! He said after seeing the the inside of me ear though that this was the best possible outcome we could have hoped for. I'm not looking forward to a month of antibiotics and how that's goign to effect my body chemistry, but it could definately be worse. I also feel better about having done the CT scan. I was starting to worry that I had put the baby at unnecessary risk, but I now know for sure that it was necassary. And I feel vindicated and want to give a big "haha" to the ER dr, who said there was "no way possible" it was mastoiditis. So all in all, I'm fairly pleased with the report. Sure it would be better to not have any problems at all, but all things considered, I'm pretty happy with the diagnosis.

It doesn't take long...

It doesn't take long for a house to fall apart, does it? My house was wonderfully clean on Mon. Then on Tues it was super hot and I was having a bad day with my ear problems (which prompted me to google my symptoms, which caused me to completely focus on that and my house continued to fall apart around me). Then on Wed, we spent all day at various dr offices, and by the time we got home I was so wore out, there was no way I was getting anything done. I was in bed by 7pm, no kidding. DH got left with the kids, which he didn't mind and did wonderfully! Then yesterday we had dentist appts and had to go grocery shopping, so it was later afternoon before we got home, and again, I was wiped out. I've been trying to figure out for weeks why this pg has been so much harder than the others. I figured it was probably just b/c I've been nursing and/or pg for 6.5yrs and that was finally taking its toll. Now I'm thinking it's probably b/c I've been fighting this nasty infection for several months now! That would wear any body out! Today I really need to focus on getting dishes and laundry caught back up so I can start the week out right. Oops, I didn't realize it was so late, I have to be at the WIC office in an hour!

Back from a long day at the drs.

So today started out with me feeling like I overreacted, and ended with few answers and again thinking I waited too long. We got to the ER at about 11, they got us in pretty quickly and hte ER dr declared I definitely do not have mastoiditis, but my ear drum was opaque and my Eustachian (sp?) tube was probably full, so he set me up an appt with the Ear, Nose Throat dr for early afternoon. We had lunch and headed to the ENT, they tested my hearing, checked things out and the ENT declared I have a pretty bad middle ear infection and suggested I get a tube put in since it's been this way for over 2 months. He could do it right in the office, would only take 5 minutes, a little discomfort and no harm to the baby, so we decided to do it. A few minutes into the procedure I hear "hmmm..." and then "wow, your ear is so swollen from infection you have no middle ear space. It's obliterated. No place to put the tube." At which point he left the room and called "The Ear Guru" for a consult. THey decide I need a CT scan b/c I could have something much bigger and nastier than just a middle ear infection (like mastoiditis). He then tried again to put the tube in my ear. After half an hour, I was in tears from pain and he still couldn't get the tube in, so he gave up. From there we headed to the radiology for the CT. The radiologist did not want to the CT on a pregnant woman, then he talked to the Dr and decided that it really was important enough that it was worth the risks (though, of course, it was ultimately my decision and DH and I decided to let God worry about the baby and take the Drs advice). So we should know more on Monday when the results come back from that and either way I have a follow-up on Thurs with the ENT. Oh, and I'm on oral antibiotics for at least 2wks.

Please pray with us that the baby was not harmed by the CT scan, that the results from that come back clear and that the antibiotics take care of everything.

Probably need IV antibiotics, and prayers!

A few months ago I had an ear infection that came and went for about two weeks before it "cleared up" but it left behind some lingering symptoms. They've gotten worse over the last two weeks so I finally googled them and it looks very much like I have mastoiditis, which requires IV antibiotics. We're heading the ER in a few hours. Please pray that this clears up quickly with the antibiotics and that nothing harms the baby.

Does anybody know what IV antibiotics entails? Will they have to admit me? The hospital is 30 miles away and we don't have the gas to go back and forth if I need a treatment every few hours. I'm kind of freaking out a little b/c everything I've read said it can be hard to treat and if the antibiotics don't work they do surgery to remove part of the bone behind the ear. That's scary! So prayers for peace would be nice to.

OH, there's also a very slight possibility it's meningitis instead/also, which is very scary to me. Will update when I can.

The start of potty training

Quite by accident, I've started to potty-train Genesis. Especially during morning sickness, it was not unusual for her to be running around without a diaper on, and still occasionally now when we've had a rough day, she can be seen running around the house naked. Which lead to her disliking the feel of a wet or dirty diaper. As soon as she wakes up in the morning she takes her diaper off so a dry one can be put on and the same continues throughout the day. Unfortunatly for me, she also takes poopy diapers off without my knowledge. Anyways, a few days ago she was running around naked when she started to poop. She ran to her little potty and finished up there. YAY GENESIS!!! Yesterday she took her diaper off BEFORE she went poop, and went on the potty. And now this evening, she had a few minutes to run around naked before I put her night-time diaper on her, and she peed in the potty! I'm so excited. Do you think there's any chance she'll train quick and will be out of diapers before the baby is born? Probably not, but I can dream can't I?

Well, it's hot again

After a nice little break of mid-lower 80s, we're back in the 90s for a few days. The current heat index is 95, but I'm thinking it usually starts cooling down about this time. I'm afraid of over-doing it again like I did with the last bit of heat, but I also want to keep my house clean since I seem to have a handle on it right now! Normally I do a room a day, where I wipe down shelves, clean under furniture, declutter, etc, but I think we'll be skipping that for a few days and just focus on dishes, laundry and daily pick-up. Hopefully that will keep the house looking decent without me over doing it.



Thankfully, it is in the 60s at night, so we get it nice and cool in the house and it's early afternoon before it starts getting too warm.