kugoi

Solomon is walking!

2009-11-14T09:10:00.000-06:00

My bitty baby boy is walking! A few days ago he took his first step and now he can make it across the living room. My earliest walker. Yesterday the big kids were running in circles and Solomon got this look like "I can do that too!" and off he went. For about 4 steps before his body got ahead of his feet and he fell. Then he just crawled with them, lol.

Things are going well around here. It seems everytime I turn around we have new animals. We started with a turtle and 2 cats, we now have one cat, one turtle, two dogs, one fish, 4 mice and 3 chickens. Where did they all come from? At least it's a start to our farm, lol.

Updates!

2009-07-25T21:15:00.000-05:00

We're on slow dial-up now, so I haven't been getting on the internet more than about once a week since we moved. I feel like I'm wasting time waiting for pages to load, so then I try and get chores done while it's loading, and then I forget about it and no one can call for hours on end, lol. We're doing good though. Progress on the house has expectedly slowed. Between the house and his job, Austin had been working double shifts for over a month when we moved, so he's taking it easier now and mainly only working on the house on his days off. We also had some car issues, so he had to work on that for a few weeks as well. But hopefully soon we'll be able to move into the rest of the house and have more than just one bedroom, kitchen and living room to live in. We're not really too cramped right now though, which is good. I do have to make sure the kids get a lot of outside time. The biggest aggravator really is that until the other 3 rooms are finished I can't finish unpacking and I'm tired of not being able to find the things I want. But that's a small complaint to be sure.

Solomon is doing wonderfully. He's been inch-worming along for a little over a month and now he's figured out to really crawl, sit up and has started pulling up the last few days. I can't believe he'll be 7 months old soon. It goes by so quickly. The kids are already asking when I'll have another baby in my belly, lol. I have to say, I'm starting to wonder myself, though I know in reality, it probably won't be next spring/summer, just like before. I've got a long way to go if baby fever is starting to hit already!

Genesis is a wonderful little girl, who loves to help out around hte house and with the baby. On Monday she got hit in the face with a shovel by the neighbor girl (totally on accident) and had a deep gash on the bridge of her nose. I took her to the ER where they determined she needed one stitch. I was a little concerned about tetanus, since she's not vaccinated and a lot of risk factors were there, but the ER Dr said the chances of her getting it were very remote and not to worry. We removed the stitch today and it's healing wonderfully. Other than that, she's very two and has her moments.

Canaan is growing up so fast. He's a delight to have around as he's also a willing helper and I love watchign the things he comes up with.

Asher can't wait for us to start school next week. He knows that by the end of 1st grade he'll be an independant reader, and that's very exciting for him. I'm also excited to teach him this year as there's just so much to learn. Other than the reading, we'll also be doing more formal math and memorizing math facts and such along with fun science experiments and a Bible timeline. It just looks like it will be a fun year.

I'm doing great. Solomon is quite a bit more needy than I remember any of the others being (or maybe it's just b/c I have 4 now) and I'm having a hard time getting my groove back, but now that he's starting to take longer naps and plays on the floor more I can see the light at the end of hte tunnel. It's frustrating to feel like the house is always in survival mode, but I wouldn't trade all the baby snuggles I get for more housework time almost any day of the week. One day a week I would like to be able to actually get more done Which I think is also partially why I don't mind not having the rest of the house done. I'm working hard enough just keeping what we have clean!

Tomorrow's the day!

2009-05-30T19:58:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow we move. I'm excited to get on with this next phase of our lives. We'll spend the summer finishing up the house and then in the fall we figure out what to do with all our apples and whatever else kind of fruit we find. In the winter we start figuring out next year's garden and building the chicken coop. So exciting! I am not, however, looking forward to the next several days. Tomorrow we're starting bright and early at 6:30am, supposedly. First thing, we're all going to the new house, so the men can finish my floors (sigh) and I can start cleaning (double sigh). It should prove to be a long day. And then of course we'll spend the next couple days juggling things around until we find half-way decent places for everything. Though we can't do too much unpacking b/c half the house isn't finished yet. But it will still be an exciting adventure and a great beginning to our new blessings.

Asher is sad to be leaving his friends. He regularly plays with an 8yo boy and 4yo girl that live across the street. He said he wished we could live here forever. I explained to him that we can't, and besides, the neighbors are moving in a month or so anyways, so it wouldn't do any good to live here. But that doesn't take his sadness away. This is the first time he's ever experienced regret at moving. Before he was always excited. But this is also the first he's been old enough and had friends to really get it. But moving on is a part of life unfortunately. I, too, will miss our neighbors and being able to walk up to the store, and to visit friends and family, but I'm much more excited about the life we have ahead of us.

Don't know when I'll be able to post again. Of course we have the busyness that comes with moving. The phone guy should be out on Monday to get us all set up, but then we'll only have dial-up. That may be good for my blogging, perhaps I'll get so fed up trying to do anything else I'll just blog instead to keep my busy, lol, or I may get so frustrated I just about give up on the internet all together (yeah right) or spend all my time waiting for pages to load up that I don't have time to blog. Or maybe, I'll blog while I'm waiting for other pages to load. Only time will tell.

For now, goodbye and pray for us!

Making progress, sort of

2009-05-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

We got a bunch of boxes moved today, pretty much everything I've packed so far. For now, we're just putting most of the boxes in the (no where near completed) master bedroom, until we have time later to juggle things around. Things to do before Sunday: fix bathroom floor, install toilet and sink, cover big hole in the kids' bedroom closet, put a floor in the utility room for my washer and dryer, buy a stove, move everything, clean both houses, did I miss anything. Oh, and as of this morning, DH is the only cook at the restaurant, though he's already told his bosses he can only work Friday and Saturday evening, and MUST have the mornings and Sunday off.

YOu've got to be kidding me

2009-05-28T18:17:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday we paid the deposit to get water turned on at the new house. We left explicit directions to call before turning on because we just put new plumbing in and didn't know if there were any leaks, etc. We were assured they would call and even if no-one was there, they would keep the water turned off at the meter, just in case. No call on Tues. Wed morning, DH got up early, all ready to put the toilet and sink in. Walked into the house to discover a flooded bathroom, no kidding. The sink, bathroom and shower were all turned on. And remember, the toilet and sink weren't installed yet, so their pipes were just spraying everywhere. After numerous calls to the water company and having fans blowing all day, they will not charge us for the 8000 ( :O) gallons of water used and things dried out fairly well, so it shouldn't be too much work to fix. I think they should pay for what does need fixing, but DH isn't too worried about it. Fun times, hey?

Here we go

2009-05-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

We have less than one week to move out of our current house. Before we can live in our new house, we need to finish the bathroom (it's about 3/4 painted, needs the toilet and sink/mirror put in), put a floor down in the utility room so my washer and dryer can be put in and buy a stove. I would prefer we get the joists taken care of under the wall between the 3rd bedroom and the kids bedroom, but I don't think that's going to happen. So we'll probably just put a piece of plywood there for now and call it good. And of course I need to finish packing, which I am working on, but it's slow going with a baby who I think is teething. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Busy, busy, busy

2009-05-19T19:35:00.000-05:00

We've been busy around here. Everyday we get up, eat breakfast, I take a shower (most days), then we head to the new house. DH and I get as much done as we can with a baby who likes to be held, a 2yo who likes to help and a 4 and 6yo who go back and forth between helping and exploring, which means constant checks to be sure they haven't gone too far. By the time we get home and eat lunch, it's 3-3:30. Dh takes a nap with the 2yo, while I sit and catch my breath! At 4:30 Dh is up and getting ready for work. When he leaves it's time to do as much picking up, laundry, dishes and packing as we can in the next 3 hours before the kids start getting ready for bed. They shower, eat and go to bed and then I collapse on the couch for an hour or so until I crawl into bed.

The kids' room is all done, painted and everything, just waiting on laminate. The living room and kitchen need the ceiling and floor painted, then they will be done. Bathroom needs a little more mudding and sanding before we can paint. the shower is in and plumbing hooked up, the sink/vanity is all ready, just waiting to paint first and the toilet is almost ready to put on. We still need some plywood put down where the washer and dryer go, and a wall, and the utility room will be usable. Oh, and now we found out that we need to get the garage, which was used as a barn, cleaned out ASAP so my FIL can stay there. We have just under 2 weeks to get it all done and get moved in. Then we'll worry about the rest of the house ;)

Baby and house updates

2009-05-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

The baby is all better. About two days after his rash appeared, it started to disappear. 3 days after that, it was all gone. Still not sure what it was and nobody else has come down with it (though it has a 2wk incubation, so we'll see)

I put together a little slideshow of the house project, though it looks worse then when we started. Today we bought all new bathroom stuff. Fun!

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/0803/kugoi/new%20house/?albumview=slideshow

Roseola? Rubella?

2009-05-06T16:48:00.001-05:00

Last week Solomon had a low grade fever for two days, no other symptoms. Yesterday he had what looked like a heat rash on his face, then his whole body. Today, all the little bumps are bigger, as in spread out, not taller, and the fever is back. A lot of people said it looks like Roseola, but some said it looks worse than any Roseola they've seen. And Roseola is usually marked by a high-grade fever, not a low grade. So I did some more research and I'm leaning towards Rubella. Rubella is marked with a low-grade fever and starts on the face. The pics of Roseola and Rubella online look a lot alike, but based on symptoms, I'm thinking it's more likely Rubella. Well, if I've got to pick on of the MMR, I'll take Rubella any day! I wonder if the other kids will come down with it... Want some pics?

House update

2009-05-05T21:45:00.001-05:00

Let's see, we ended up not having to get the electricity inspected. It seems the first lady we talked to didn't know what she was talking about. We did however have to pay a ridiculously high deposit. We'll get part of it back after 12 months and the rest back after 18 months (assuming all payments are made on time).

We discovered we need to tear out the entire bathroom because all the walls were full of mold. Reason for mold? The drainage pipes in the sink, bathtub and washer weren't connected and just drained onto the ground under the house. I think we're going to buy one of those one-piece bathtub/shower dealies so we can just put it in without having to worry about caulking, etc. Just much less work. We also need to buy a new toilet because the old one got broke when DH moved it. And we're goign to go ahead and buy a new bathroom sink/cabinet becuase the one that was in there is only 18in wide and there's enough room for a 30in wide one and the $150 is worth it for the counter and cabinet space.

We've accepted that in order to move in by June 1st (so we'll get a month with no rent/payments) we will most likely be moving in with just subfloors. Not a problem, as far as I'm concerned. There's more than enough space that we can shuffle rooms for a bit until it's all ready.

The last couple days I've been going up to the house with the kids and while the men work on fixing floors, pulling out bathrooms, etc, I've been doing little things. The previous owners had an open fire in the fireplace, so the walls are covered in soot. I've been washing that off, though I'm not sure how clean the walls need to be to paint. I also spent a good amount of time removing carpet tack board and padding staples from the living room and kids bedroom. I still need to remove a wallpaper boarder from the living room and we need to buy some spackle, so I can start filling in holes, etc in order to paint. For now we're just going to paint everything off-white and later we will decide on colors. I'm the kind of person that needs to live in a house for a while to see what colors I want. But we're making progress and I'm glad that I'm able to help even though I'm constantly interrupted by the kids.

Packing is going slow. I've had a hard time lately with the baby just keeping up on dishes and laundry, so that doesn't leave much time for packing too. I've only managed to get about a dozen boxes packed, but I'm working on it. We haven't had to leave anything behind yet because of my packing procrastination, and we've made plenty of moves!

I officially graduated Asher from Kindergarten last week. We didn't finish the curriculum we're using, but he knows everything in it so at this point it was just extra practice. Now I'm not stressed everyday when I don't get school done! School things are also on the list of things I can pack now.

Speaking of school, in the family room, which we'll be using as a dining room, we're going to have two walls covered in shower board. It works just like whiteboard and isn't too much more than drywall. My sewing desk will also be in that room, so I'm excited about that.

I think that's about it for now. I would post some 'during' pics, but they're pretty scary at this point, what with walls and floors tore out and a bathtub sitting in the master bedroom, etc. Maybe you can see the 'during' pics when I put up the 'after's , lol.

My battle against laziness

2009-04-22T08:19:00.000-05:00

I've always been a lazy person. Lazy and procrastinating by nature. Since having children, this has bothered me more and more and I've been consciously fighting it. There are some times in life though where it's an easier fight. Right now is not one of those times. Everyday I have to sit down many many times throughout the day to take care of the baby, and every time is new battle to get back up. It's so easy to just hold the sleeping baby and not get anything done. It seems by the time I finally convince myself to get off my behind, he's waking up and needs to eat! Case in point: by my schedule, I should have been in the shower half an hour ago, but here I sit, with a sleeping baby on my chest, blogging. I may or may not be able to put him down right now without him waking, I wont' know until I try. The good news is that it actually bothers me now when my house is a mess and I keep loosing the battle to get up. When Asher was a baby, I didn't much care. So off I go, to fight the good fight and every time I win I become a better person.

Mystery Solved

2009-04-21T12:05:00.000-05:00

For the last week or two, Solomon has been getting little sores and scratches on the top of his head. I had no idea where they were coming from. I thought they were appearing at night, but that's all I knew. It was driving me crazy and you can just imagine the ideas going through my head since we have issues with bugs and mice! Last night, I figured it out. When he nurses while we're both laying down, he takes his arm that is furthest from me and reaches up and around to the top of his head. He mainly plays with his hair, but he scratches and picks too. Mystery solved! Now I just have to decide what, if anything, to do about it...

Pulling up carpet

2009-04-19T09:14:00.001-05:00

We pulled up carpet yesterday and set off some odor bombs called Room Shocker. I had read about it online and it got pretty good reviews. Plus, it has a money back guarantee, so we went for it. I think it's pretty much just a gaseous form of bleach, which I normally don't mess with, but sometime you gotta do when you gotta do. They say for strong odors to let it work for 24 hours, so well see how well it worked this afternoon. The house will probably reek of bleach, but thats better than the smell that's there! We talked to a neighbor, and he said they had chickens living IN the house. We're not talking about little chicks in a box here. They didnt have an adequate chicken coop, so the chickens were in the house. So you can imagine the smell in the house. And the desperate need to replace floor coverings!

Today DH is out at the house with a neighbor digging a french drain. The house has water damage and we heard it was from water coming off the hill, so we're trying to divert the water run-off. We think a lot of the water problem is also just from the gutter not being connected. Where the worst damage is, is where the gutters end and it all spills out there.

So that's where we are. Reconstruction has begun.

We have the keys!

2009-04-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

The keys to the farm are ours! A little unexpected fee came up. Turns out the previous owners haven't had the electricity turned on since '05. The electric company requires an electric inspection on anything that hasn't had the electric on in over a year. Of course we have to pay for it. Doh. Weren't expecting that. The inspector guy is out ot lunch right now, so we won't know until this afternoon what it's actually going to run us. But that's okay, because we own a farm!

Pics of our new house and farm!

2009-04-13T15:55:00.004-05:00

Here it is! The house is 1700sf, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath. This could only have happened through God's miracles, so praise the Lord with me! We hope to move in before June. Here's some highlights.

The pics are (I think I got this in order):
The front of the house, The hill right behind the house, Our fruit trees, The back of the acreage from the top of the hill, All the ways back is ours, The view walking back

Next post:
Master bedroom, Family room, Kitchen (don't hate me!) and The living room fireplace.

2009-04-13T15:53:00.003-05:00

2009-04-13T15:49:00.002-05:00

TWO daddies!

2009-04-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

The other night my BIL stayed over and slept on the living room floor. When Genesis got up with the boys, she came to our bed and fell back asleep with me. I got up a short time later, but she stayed sleeping. Eventually she came out and half awake, saw her uncle laying on the floor. She was at his feet, so she couldn't see his face, and he was sleeping in a position that DH sleeps in often. Her eyes got so big, and she exclaimed with the most wonderful voice "TWO daddies!" She was completely awe-struck. Unfortunately I had to break her heart and tell her that one was Uncle Amos. She was very disappointed. Can you tell she's a Daddy's girl?

Well, darnit

2009-04-09T10:09:00.000-05:00

We may not be closing on the house on the 15th. The bank is having issues getting all their paperwork in order. But that's okay, it gives us more time to get firm numbers on things we need to fix up the house. In the meantime, we just wait patiently, I suppose. And try and remember to take the camara next time we head out there...

Planning the farm

2009-04-03T16:03:00.001-06:00

So we've spent the last week or two planning our farm. We eventually hope to go off the grid and maybe even self-sustaining. By off the grid we don't just mean to have alternative sources of electricity, but rather to go without. So a lot of plans are working towards that goal. First thing, of course, is getting the house livable. We can start work after the 15th. I still don't have any pictures, but promise to get some as soon as possible. I should probably start packing, since we move in less than two months, if everything goes to plan. But alas, the baby hasn't been feeling well so I'm barely keeping up with laundry and dishes. Right now we're having discussions about where to put the wood stove. There's already a place where one was, though we would have to protect the walls and such, but it's in the middle of the master bedroom and clearance would take up a lot of our room and DH is worried it'll be too hot in there to sleep. So he talked about moving it to a corner of the bedroom, but I"m thinking, if he's going to move it, he should just move it to the family room if he's that worried about the heat at night. We also have been discussing about the whole summer cooking thing when we go off grid and what we want to do about that. Here's our plan so far, though subject to change as we learn more. We have a fireplace to heat the front of the house and we'll be getting a wood stove big enough to heat the back of house. Then we'll build a cook/wash house off of the kitchen to put a cook stove in. That porch area will have fold-down walls and screens so in the summer we can open it up and not heat up the whole house while cooking, but in the winter I can close it up (so I won't freeze!) and can hang laundry up in there as well. Right now we'll just get the wood stove to heat the back of the house, but in the future will buy the cook stove. DH wants to go all out and get one that has a water tank on the back for hot water. Less work for me!

We've also been planning the garden and chicken area. My dad grew up on a farm and told me this great idea that I only found mentioned in one place so far online. What you do is fence in two garden plots, and put the chicken coop between them. The first year, you let the chickens out on one side and put your garden on the other side. Then the next year, you switch them. So the chickens are eating up all your left over garden stuff and composting it, completely weeding the area and fertilizing it. So every year you have a great garden plot to plant in. Awesome! We're going to go ahead and raise layers and meat birds. Hopefully, every 2 months or so we'll get a chicken to raise a brood of chicks to slaughter. Which means we'll need a rooster. I think we said if we start out with 18 or so chicks that should be plenty to get us through until we get some good layers to raise up some more for meat. I'm so excited. Not so much at the thought of slaughtering chickens, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Speaking of slaughtering, DH is also planning on learning how to slaughter deer (shot on our own land!), and eventually cows that we'll raise too. We're not sure yet exactly how many cows we'll be able to pasture on our land, so that will have a big impact on how we do that, of course. We know for sure we want a dairy cow, and we'll have to freshen her every year or two so we might as well raise the calf for meat, but we don't know what we're going to do about mating her. I don't think we want a bull just for one, at most, two dairy cows, but I don't want to pay to get them inseminated either. Maybe we can find someone to trade use of their bull for something...

But I'm rambling and really need to try and put the baby down so I can switch laundry and wash two days worth of dishes. Thanks for listening to my rambling!

Some people

2009-03-28T14:24:00.000-06:00

After church today we stopped at McD's for lunch and while in there we overheard an interesting conversation between some partons and an employee. The patrons were black and complaining quite loudly that there was something wrong with this town because there wasnt a single black person working there. The employee responded that there was a black person, he was in the back, so then the patron started to go on about how unfair it was that the poor guy was washing dishes, etc etc and how he's from North Carolina and people there don't care about color. Then he asked the employee what he thought of Obama, to which the employee responded he didn't much care for him or his politics and so the patron went on and on about how hate is wrong and there's no reason to hate Obama, etc. Hello? The employee never said he hated Obama and the patron was making the whole town out to be racist throughout the conversation when there was no reason for it. There simply aren't a lot of black people, or any other minorities for that matter, around here. You can just tell that he came here to "redneck Kentucky" expecting us all to be a bunch of KKK members or some such nonsense. If it had gone on any longer I would have stepped in to defend the poor employee, but luckily the patrons left in disgust before things got too heated. People like that drive me crazy. Who's the real racist here?

We're getting a farm!!

2009-03-27T17:05:00.001-06:00

God has given us the wonderful opportunity to buy a small piece of land with a house on it. It's 12 acres, mostly pasture but with a good amount of woods too, maybe 2 or more acres? The house is 1700sf (twice what we have now) and the main part is 150 years old! It has this beautiful old fireplace in it and the kitchen is huge with tons of cabinets and counter space. What else? 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and 2 living spaces. The bedrooms are big enough that we shouldn't have a problem fitting all our future children :) There's also a detached oversized garage that already has electricity run to it and everything. The laundry room is big enough to fit a good size deep-freeze, or maybe we'll jsut put another fridge in, lol. There's fruit trees behind the house. We know there's apple, and maybe pear? We're not sure yet. There's a smokehouse that's been used as a root cellar, we'll probably use it as both at different times, lol. It does need some work, but that's okay, we have some money to get the things done that have to be done. Oh and it'll be summer before we move in, so we don't have time to get a good garden in. Oh well, next year! That gives us this year to get the yard cleaned up and learn how to can all that fruit. Hopefully by next spring we'll be ready to put in a big garden and get some chickens! We're so excited. It was only maybe 6 months ago when I asked DH if he thought we would ever get our farm because I didn't see it happening without a miracle. Well, God is performing that miracle and I am so blessed to be the reciever of it. Praise God with me. (pictures hopefully to be coming soon)

Another tooth!

2009-03-15T09:01:00.002-06:00

Asher lost his second tooth 2 days ago. It's been loose for a while, but he said it hurt to wiggle it, so he was leaving it alone. It finally got loose enough he thought he could wiggle it out, and sure enough, he did! His first permanent tooth is just starting to peak out of the hole left from his first lost tooth.

He also has a slightly loose top tooth already. He's getting so big!

Life with 4

2009-03-08T11:50:00.000-06:00

If you can't tell from the lack of posting, we've been busy! Solomon is a wonderful baby. He sleeps well at night and usually when he's awake he's in a wonderful mood. He's starting to smile lots and cooing and all those cute things. He does like to be held while sleeping though, which makes for an interesting time. Some days he'll take good naps in his porta-crib, but other days I can't put him down for more than 5 minutes. So yeah, I've been busy! I'm either trying to get chores done, playing with a happy baby, or holding a sleeping one.

We're also trying to get our schedule going, but life has thrown us a few curve balls the last couple weeks, so we're not getting much school in. And Solomon almost always wants to be held in the evenings, which is my only chore time, so that makes it interesting. But we're getting there.

Today is Sunday, so it's my big cleaning day. I'm trying to tackle the kids closet, but seeing as how I'm holding a sleeping baby who won't be put down, I don't know how far I'll get. That closet is always in disaster mode. It's the length of the kids room, so probably 8ft or more, but it only has one regular sized doorway. So even when it get all pulled out, organized and put back in, as soon as I need to put something in it again, it just gets thrown in on top. And while I'm in there, I need to get stuff organized for the big clothes switch I'll have to do in another month or so. Oh and go through all the clothes I pulled out of the boys dressers to make more room and decide if I should keep it, donate it, toss it, etc. I've also been given a ton of clothes for Asher to grow into, nice clothes all the way up to size 10, so I need to go through those and get them organized. And I have to get it all done by bedtime tonight so Genesis's bed can be put back on the floor. Think I can do it? I don't know either, but we'll give a shot.

Looks like Solomon is pretty out of it and may let me put him down, so I need to get work. Wish me luck!

Oh, I forgot!

2009-02-22T09:44:00.000-06:00

I forgot to mention, for all those that don't know yet, Asher lost his first tooth last Sunday. While brushing his teeth in the morning I noticed it was loose. We were so excited. By mid-afternoon he had pulled it out. I can't believe I have a child old enough to loose teeth! He enjoyed spending his tooth fairy money earlier this week at Dollar Tree.

A new church

2009-02-21T17:15:00.000-06:00

We haven't been to church since I moved here a year and a half ago. I've been craving the fellowship, but DH hasn't wanted to go. Well, he finally decided that it was time for him to get back into the Word. There's a church we've been following online for a while now. I actually found them while in MO and gave DH some of their publications, all of which we agreed with, so we knew when we started going to church again we would want to check them out. We were a little worried it would turn out to be a mega-church, no offense to mega-churches, but we prefer smaller churches. We were so happy when we got there, because it wasn't huge at all. Quite small really. They have a morning and afternoon service, so I don't know how full the afternoon is, but we liked the morning service. It had the perfect mixture of old and young, with several families with kids the same ages as our kids. We were the largest family there though. I sometimes forget that 4 is getting in the range of "a lot." I spend so much time on message boards with large families that I feel like we're small! There was even a comment about us taking up a whole row, lol. It's not my fault their rows are only 7-8 chairs wide. And Solomon didn't even have his own chair, lol. But anyways, DH and I both really enjoyed the service and the fellowship, so we think we found a home church. I'm so excited. And even more exciting, DH is excited too! And the kids! Asher is the only one who remembers church and all he remembers is having friends there. His excitement about going was so contagious, Genesis was giddy this morning, lol. And they did awesome. I was so afraid we'd be taking kids out constantly since they're not used to sitting still and quiet but they behaved wonderfully. We almost had to take Genesis out, but she straightened up real quick. Oh, that's another thing I just remembered. They all keep their kids with them. I usually feel like a freak when we visit churches because I won't put my kids in the nursery/kids church type things, but this church doesn't even have those things. They have a mother's room which I believe has speakers in it so you can still hear the sermon, which is great! That's all a church really needs, imo. Pretty much, the only problem we found so far with the church is the distance. It's an hour drive, so add that to an almost 2 hour service and most our day is gone by the time we get home, but it will be worth it.

Oh, here's an interesting note. Last night was the worst night Solomon has ever had. He cried and fussed off and on all night. He would only sleep if I was rocking him and patting his back in an upright position, etc. He spent all morning fussing too, which made it hard for me to get me and the kids ready! But as soon as I put him in his carseat, which he usually hates, he settled right down and has been a happy baby since. I think Satan was trying to get us out of going this morning. I have a feeling the next couple weeks will bring some major excuses to not go, but we are determined to go anyway.

That's my exciting news for the week!

Figuring out a new schedule

2009-02-14T15:50:00.001-06:00

With DH's new work schedule I'm trying to wrap my mind around what's the best way to do things and how it will work. Here's what I'm thinking so far.

Monday:
6am-me up, Bible time, exercise
7-7:30am-kids up, dressed with beds made
Bfast, kids gets computer time
8am-me in shower, kids brush teeth, etc
9am-start school
School should be done by 10 or 10:30, DH should be awake by 11, then we have free time, lunch, etc until he goes to work
4:30pm- daily chores, dinner, free time
8:00pm-start getting ready for bed
8:30-45pm-kids in bed
9pm-me in bed (I'm hoping I'll be able to move this 11pm before too long, but right now I need the extra sleep

Tuesday
repeat of Mon

Wed
repeat Mon morning
DH off from work, so we run errands, go grocery shopping, relax

Thur
DH off from work

Fri
repeat Mon

Sat
6am-me up, Bible, exercise
7-7:30 kids up
8- bfast
9:30 leave for church
2-3pm get home
4:30pm-repeat Mon evening

Sun
I have two options for Sun, I haven't figured out which to do yet
repeat Mon morning, working around DH who leaves for work at 11:30am
11:30-lunch, quiet time, then weekly chores, like mopping, vacuuming around edges, cleaning out fridge, etc
8pm bedtime
OR
wait to do school until after DH leaves, then lunch, weekly chores, etc.

Most likely DH won't be up until it's time to get ready for work on Sun, so we won't really be missing time with him if we're doing our morning schedule, but I think I'll feel like I'm working all day long, which is why there's a quiet time in there. But I wonder if I things will go smoother if we do our school morning routine as usual rather than completely changing around the day

I want another!

2009-02-02T17:38:00.000-06:00

I love babies, especially newborns. I can't believe Solomon is 4 weeks old already :( Before long he won't be a newborn anymore, just a regular baby. And I love the newborn stage. They're just so precious. So yes, I want another. I don't know that I'm up for being pregnant again already, seeing as how my house is not even put back together and I'm still on light duty, but I just love having a baby around the house. It'll probably be another 6 months before I get major baby fever, but I'm already constantly telling DH that I want another one, lol. He just laughs, says he knows and that he'll do his best :) How can you not love the newborn stage? They're just so cute and cuddly, like warm, squishy stuffed animals. Just perfect.

That should make things interesting

2009-01-25T12:22:00.000-06:00

A quick update on our health first. The older 3 kids are no longer snotty, just have slightly stuffed noses and occasionally cough. Yay. The end is near. The baby looks like he's feeling better. We were a little worried on Friday as he wasn't eating much, and therefor wasn't peeing much either, and he just didnt seem well. He also lost his "voice" which means when he cried, all he would do is squeak. Yesterday he started nursing better and just looked better. He also had some good awake time, whereas on Friday he slept all day. Today he's doing even better. He's already had some good awake time, he's eating like he used to and his wet diapers are much more frequent. He also is starting to get his voice back some, which is wonderful because you only get the newborn cry for so long and I miss hearing it.

Now to my blog topic. Having a new baby always make your schedule more interesting. Everything takes longer, to start. Constant interuptions, learning how to do it all one-handed or with a babt-strapped to you, etc. Well, DH just made it even more interesting by starting a new job with a new schedule. He'll still be working 2nd shift, but instead of going it at 3, he won't go in until 5, taking 2 hours out my already tight schedule. Yay. I'm thinking we'll move school time to the mornings while DH is still sleeping. I've been wanting to get a stricter morning schedule, for myself, in place anyways, so maybe this will force me to. Overall, this is a good job switch though. We'll have a little more money in our budget and DH likes this kind of cooking better. Oh, and he might end up on day shift, which wouldn't be so bad either :)

1 step forward, 2 steps back

2009-01-22T12:56:00.002-06:00

I got laundry caught up, I got dishes caught up and I got the bathroom cleaned! And then I came down with the kids nasty cold/cough. The older 3 have had for about a week now. Really icky noses, horrible sounding cough, that while infrequent, can bring them to the point of throwing up when they do start coughing. Fun stuff. I've been trying to keep them away from the baby, but that's near impossible. Night before last Solomon started coughing, just a few coughs, but I could tell they were sick coughs. Yesterday we both had icky noses and he had more coughs. I haven't coughed yet, but I know it's probably coming. I pray it goes through us quickly. I also started taking garlic today. I cut up a clove into about 8 pieces and swallowed them. Science will tell you you have to chew or mince the garlic first, but I've read many anecdotes that say swallowing whole works too. Now to find a way for the kids to take it...

Day Two!

2009-01-20T20:33:00.001-06:00

My second day back on the job. Today I decided to clean up the kitchen. I just can't function with a messy kitchen. Especially if I need to cook. And while DH has kept us fed, it hasn't been the most nutritious, filling food, if you kwim. So I NEED to start cooking again. Lucky for me, I still have a few meals in the freezer and some easy stuff around the house, so I shouldn't have to work too hard. So now I have a functioning kitchen again. I feel like I'm really doing good. DH kept the living room functional, I got laundry and kitchen caught up, so once I get the bathroom caught up tomorrow I'll be able to just do daily maintenance for another week while I continue to heal. My body hasn't shown any signs of over-doing it, so I think I'm alright to keep up at this pace.

The only thing I need to work on is my sleep schedule. I've been staying up late to ChaCha and earn some money, but that makes mornings hard. I really miss my quiet time in the mornings and not waking up to complaints of hunger, etc. The last couple nights I've tried getting up after 8 hours of sleep, and I just can't do it, but I never could before either. I need either 9 hours of sleep (what I've been getting) or 7 hours it seems. So I'm going to try going to bed at 11 and getting up at 6. The kids have been getting up between 6 and 7am, but I'm thinking they'll be told to stay in their room until 7. They have a clock and both boys understand "when the little hand is on the 7 and the big hand is on the 12." Before Solomon was born, I had tried getting them to sleep in longer by keeping them up later at night and some how it completely backfired on me. They had been getting up closer to 7-7:30 and before I knew it they were waking up at 6! Right now they're going to bed early b/c, to be honest, by 7:30pm I am just done. I have lost all patience, etc. I'm really hoping having early morning time will help with that though.

My first day back to work

2009-01-19T12:56:00.000-06:00

Solomon is two weeks old already. It's amazing how quickly 2 weeks goes, but at the same time, it seems like he's been here forever. But now that he's two weeks old my vacation is over. I plan to take it slowly, but that might be hard! DH has actually tried very hard and done a half way decent job keeping the house, but we all know how that goes. There's clutter everywhere, the floors are sticky, the bathroom hasn't been wiped down. My goal today is laundry. Nothing but laundry. That's plenty though. For two weeks clothes have not been put away, so you can imagine the pile(s) of folded clothes I have (I did the folding). Genesis has been putting her own clothes away with nobody going behind her and folding and putting in the right drawers, so I can't find anything of hers. And I have a mountain of dirty clothes to wash. DH tried to keep it caught up, but to give you an idea of how that went: One day he did 3 loads of laundry, failing to get any of the clothes out of the kids' room. 3 DAYS later he goes "how can there be so much laundry? I just did THREE loads!" Um...I do 2-3 loads of laundry 5 days a week in order to keep it up, and that was before we added a new baby. Of course you're going to be backed up after 3 days of not doing any. I'm trying to decide how much laundry I'm going to have to do everyday now with the baby's stuff, after I get caught up.

Speaking of the baby's laundry. He's already adding more laundry than the others did. The boy is a pee-er. I've been peed on more times in his short two weeks than I was in the past 6 years. I think he gets me or himself 2 out of every 3 diaper changes. And when he doesn't pee during the change, he seems to pee out of the side of the diaper between changes. So clothes are being changed often due to this. And not just clothes, but extra blankets, burping clothes and cloth diapers. Yeah, he's adding a good bit of extra laundry.

I'm still debating what my goal will be for tomorrow. I'll probably have to work on laundry some more. I doubt I'll get it all done today. But after that, should I work on the icky dishes, counter and table? Maybe the icky bathroom that as previously mentioned hasn't been wiped down in 2 weeks, and I have 2 boys and a 2yo girl who insists on using the big potty, so you can imagine what it looks/smells like in there. Or do I plan to mop the dining room floor that is sticky because the kids split juice all over it and nobody bothered to clean it up? Decisions, decisions...

I love the newborn stage

2009-01-16T14:53:00.000-06:00

I just love the newborn stage. They're just little lumps who let you hold them and snuggle them. So precious. They don't stay newborns near long enough.

Midwife visited today. Everything looks good. His belly button is bleeding a little bit, but with the way it sticks out, it just keeps getting hit by his diaper and whatnot. I'd been keeping a close eye on it and it's not infected or anything and still healing good, so we're just watching it. I was relieved to have the MW agree with me though that it looks fine and is probably just being hit. Other than that, it all looks great!

In other wonderful news, I filed our taxes today and in about two week we should have a good size chunk of money. First thing on the list, paying off the midwife and ordering next year's school stuff. I love tax time.

First real day alone

2009-01-12T19:29:00.002-06:00

I had my first real day alone with 4 kids today. I think we did great! Of course the kids watched TV a good part of the day, DH had bowls of soup already made up that the kids could microwave and they all CHOSE to go to bed early because they have a cough. So I basically did nothing but sit in bed all day, again, except to change diapers and tuck kids in. Oh, and I gave them some honey for their coughs before they went to bed. I haven't heard much coughing thankfully. So that's our update for the day, lol.

1 week

2009-01-11T17:50:00.001-06:00

Solomon will be one week old in about 11 hours. I can't believe he's been here a week already. I can't believe a week ago I was trying to figure out if my water broke or if it was a leak that would heal itself or what. I look at this beautiful little boy and can't believe I made him, or rather that God made him inside of me. It's just unbelievable. Every child is such a miracle. This week has been great. DH took Monday off from work, we spent the day sleeping while the kids were at his mom's house, then we just enjoyed the newest member of our family. On Tues my step-mom came down so DH could go back to work. She was very helpful on Tues and Wed with the kids, the house and food. She also left a few things to reheat in the fridge. Thur we went up the health department for Solomon's PKU test, which they say we need for a birth certificate. We probably could get around it, but it's just a heel prick, so we went ahead and did it. My step-mom was still here so we left the kids with her. Then she cooked lunch and headed home. We enjoyed the rest of the day Thur and all day Fri just lounging around the house. It turned out that even going to the health department was too much for me that early, so I needed the good down time. DH decided to call in Sat because I needed more down time still and there was no one to help with the kids. Today was supposed to be my first day alone with the kids, but my SIL picked them up about 11am and MIL came over and cleaned the house. Genesis was returned to me a few hours later, but the boys spent the day over there. In fact, they're still there with DH. So it's been just me, Genesis and Solomon since about 2pm I think.

I've never conscously taken time off after a baby was born. I never said "I'm going to do nothing for 2 weeks." But I'm so glad I did this time. I can really feel a difference. Don't me wrong, I wasn't one to sweep the floor hours after giving birth, but I fairly quickly was back to my normal stuff. This time, I only get up to go potty if at all possible. DH is being great. He's not a very good housekeeper, but he tries and of course he doesn't mind that I'm not doing anything. He had agreed with me that I get 2 weeks "vacation" after baby is born, then 4 weeks of "light duty" where he'll still help me out. We decided my overall long term health is the most important. We want me to be able to keep having babies, so we need to keep my baby making parts healthy. I've been trying to figure out how to slowly add more in, what to add first, etc. This coming week I'll have to feed the kids, but it's going to be all pb&j, hotdogs in the microwave or leftovers. I also have to put them to bed, but other than that, nothing. The next week I'm thinking I'll work on a daily shower (a must for me, really) and doing some light cooking with the freezer meals I made up that DH hasn't used. Then I'll add laundry and more cooking, followed by dishes (we're using paper right now), counters, tables, sweeping floors etc. The last week of "light duty" I'll add in daily bathroom maintence. This is of course all subject to how well my body reacts to the added duties. I'm hoping by taking it slow though that I'll be able to add things in and by the end of 6wks be able to do most of the work around the house. We'll start school again in March. March seems so far away, but I know it'll be here before I know it. I also get to figure out how to add this all in while nursing a newborn.

It seems like forever since I've had a newborn. This is the longest time inbetween babies, but only by 2 weeks. I think the big difference is how much more mature Genesis is then the boys were at her age. She talks, a lot, in pretty much complete sentances, she's potty trained, dresses herself, takes directions well, and overall is just a big help. The boys were just starting to do all those things when the next baby was born.

Anyways, that's enough babbling. We're all just doing great and everybody loves the new baby.

Birth story

2009-01-07T10:54:00.003-06:00

At about 5:15pm Sunday night, I was cooking some eggs for dinner when I felt a tiny gush and then had a very consistent dripping. I thought it was my water, but couldn't be sure. I called the midwife, who said it was most likely either a high leak or liquefied mucus plug, both of which could be nothing or could be something.

About two hours later I got my first painful contraction, which was exactly how I remembered the first couple of contractions with Genesis. At first they were very far apart and sporadic, of course but by about midnight they were between 5 and 10 min apart and I was feeling a lot of pressure, so I called the midwife and told her to head out. She had a few things to do, and I wasn't in a big hurry, so it was close to 1:30am before her and the apprentice showed up.

When she got there, contractions were one and a half to two minutes apart, and I felt a little pushy, but they weren't all that intense. The MW immediately knew what was going on and said the baby was rotating around. Hands and knees was the best way to get him to turn, so that's how I went. At this point the MW said that after he was rotated, labor may stall out and it could be a few more days. I informed her that the kids would be awake between 6 and 7 am and this baby MUST be born before then.

At some point I started to fall asleep sitting up between contractions, so we moved to the bedroom where I laid down on my left side, also good for rotating babies, and slept between contractions. At about 4am the contractions changed and "real" labor started. I quickly felt pushy, but we were worried about a cervical lip, since I had one with the last two. The MW said that he was mostly rotated and as soon as he got all the way around that lip should go away. She said I could push if I wanted to, but if it hurt more, especially with a pinching feeling in front, then not to. Basically, I was to do whatever it took to hurt the least. Yay for less pain. I took most of these contractions on my hands and knees and some just kneeling, some I could push a little, some I couldn't.

A little after 5am, the contractions changed again, to definite pushing contractions. The MW checked for the baby's position with the doppler, declared him fully rotated, and said I could and should start really pushing. Pushing is not my favorite part of labor. I had done really well handling contractions up to this point, but now I lost it and declared I was not going to push the baby out. My body had other ideas and push I did. I changed positions regularly, with whatever felt right, some on all fours, some squatting, some kneeling, but most in a semi-squat. Sometimes I got downright mad at the contractions that always came too close together and never seemed to let up soon enough. I did my best pushing during those ones. Finally I could feel the extreme stretching that meant baby was getting closer. The last 3-4 contractions I was squatting next to the bed and just wanted that baby out NOW. When he finally started crowning I was yelling "Get out!!" while pushing. I was so done.

After 50 minutes of pushing, he was finally out. That is actually my shortest pushing time. It was 5:58am. The placenta was delivered just few minutes later. We got me sitting back down with babe in arms. We were surprised he was a boy, as both DH and I had fully felt we were having a girl. Not 15 minutes after he was born we heard the kids get up and come running. DH stopped them in the living room, giving us time to cover me up. They had heard the baby cry and DH said all their little faces were just lit up with excitment. We let them peak in for a few minutes, then DH got them some breakfast while we got me moved to the bed and the baby started nursing. He was a little snotty/mucusy at first and it took a while before he got it cleared out, but other than that, there were no problems.

We decided to leave the placenta attached until the cord dried out, about 24 hours later. He still has a few inches of cord , though we could trim it up more if we wanted. The whole thing should fall off in a couple more days. He his so beautiful. I was surprised at having a boy, which took a bit to get used to, but now I'm thrilled with another son. The original boy name we had picked out wasn't working for us anymore, so it took a few hours before we decided on his name. Now I look at him and just know that he is Solomon Russell. He's perfect.

I'm very happy with how the birth went. It was so natural to do it at home and the MW was everything I expected. I didn't plan much how the birth was going to go, though I wanted a night birth so the kids wouldn't have to go anywhere. With no expectations I had no let downs. Other than pushing, I felt like I did beautifully during labor. With Genesis I felt like I completely lost it, so I'm happy with how I did. Solomon's brothers and sister are already in love and can't get enough of him. He's a nursing champ, is wonderfully wide awake after eating and just so aware. I'm in love.

It's a boy!!!

2009-01-05T11:43:00.001-06:00

After 13 hours total of labor, boy#3 was born at 5:58 this morning at home. He weighs 8lbs 4oz and is 19inches long. He doesn't have a name yet. It was my easiest birth yet. More to come later.

ETA, we decided to name him Solomon Russell. Russell is my grandfather's name.

Visit with my dad

2009-01-03T19:58:00.000-06:00

First I just want to mention that there is still no baby. Which is fine b/c I had great weekend visiting with my dad. By this far along I had had both Canaan and Asher, so it really could be any day now. And now that that visit is out of the way and we're getting closer to my due date (the 13th) I'm starting to feel more like this baby will be coming, but I'm not sure it'll be soon. Who knows, maybe I'll go over this time!

As for my visit, it was great! My dad's new wife is just lovely. They actually won't be married until May, I think they said, but they're both wearing wedding rings already and they're going on a honeymoon cruise at the end of the month, so they might as well be! On the first night they got here she offered to cook dinner, though DH helped, then she cleaned up everything afterwards, did the dishes and everything and wouldn't let me help. The next morning, we were invited to join them for bfast at the hotel and she completely doted on the children. She put more food in front of them then they could possibly eat, but they just picked what they wanted and left alone the rest and she was okay with that. After bfast we went swimming in the hotel's pool. The kids had a great time. We went back to their room to change into our dry clothes and I was asked if there were any museums or anything around and I said I was sure there were some in Cincinnati, but I had no idea what. So she looked it up and decided we would go to the Children's Museum and off we went. Before I knew it, we were eating lunch at the museum with tickets for the Children's museum, the natural history and science museum and the omnimax theater (all in one building). It was afternoon by the time we got started and they close at 6 (on holidays) so we didn't get to see everything, unfortunately. But I mentioned in passing to DH that we might want to consider a family membership at some point, since they were only $115 and it included the two museums we visited and the history museum (also some museum) and before we left she took it upon herself to buy us a premium membership, which includes not only our family, but also a guest!

We stopped for dinner on the way home and of course the kids were all asleep before we got home. This morning we got up, I took DH to work, and we headed back to the hotel for more bfast and swimming. Then while Asher watched cartoons, Canaan and Genesis fell asleep for much needed naps. By the time they woke up, we went to DH's work, had lunch and when dh was off we headed out. We looked at a few houses that were for sale. The first night they were here I mentioned I saw a house on realtor. com for $25,000 on 10 acres and Liz (my Dad's wife) wanted to check it out. Turns out it's under contract, but there were a few others that we checked out, one looked promising and there's another that might be even more so, but we couldn't find it. Apparently, she is interested in co-owning a house with us. I'm not sure exactly how it would work out, especially with our credit, maybe we'd do a land contract type thing with her, I'm not sure, but that would be so cool! We didn't talk any specifics, and she really didn't even come out and say she wanted to buy a house with us or anything, but it was implied and my dad said she was interested when she was out of the room. So that's exciting. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it's hard.

After that we went back to the hotel, the kids swam a little more, then had pillow fights while the grown-ups talked. She is really planning on coming out again as soon as the baby is born, even if it's this week! My dad may come if it's a weekend, but we'll see about that. I have no worries about her coming and being a burden either. I'm sure she would be a wonderful help, especially since DH will only be able to get a few days off of work and that even depends on when the baby is born. But it was said, if I call her at 5am and say baby is here, then she'll be here by noon. So I'm actually looking forward to that bit of help.

Anyways, that's my update. We had a great weekend. I'm very happy with my Dad's wife and think she'll be wonderful for my dad and a wonderful step-grandma to my kids.

My dad is coming today!

2009-01-01T09:13:00.000-06:00

Well, I don't know that I'll have much time to keep you all updated this weekend. My dad should be getting in sometime today with his new wife. Actually, I don't think they're married yet, but she'll be his wife soon enough I suppose. I can't wait to get to know her. From what I've read in her e-mails I think she'll be really good for my dad and will really get him involved in our lives. She doesn't have any grandchildren of her own and she's always wanted some, so marrying my dad gives her an instant, huge family (my baby is grandchild #17 for my parents). She's already talking about coming down after the baby is born to see it and she's invited our family to join them at her timeshare in Virginia for week this summer.

But thinking about my dad's new wife brings me to thinking about my parents and thier marriage. I was 12 when they got divorced. My dad wasn't really around much when I was growing up. He was in the house, but he wasn't mentally present. He was always in his workshop or reading a book. As I've gotten older and learned more about marriage and how it should be, I understand why. My mom walked all over my dad. She didn't respect him and she certainly did not submit to him. She did what she wanted. 3 of my siblings are adopted and my dad will tell you, if it had been his choice, they probably never would have adopted. He did it for her. There is one thing that speaks the most to me though. The last time my dad visited he started talking about our old house. Now I don't remember this house, we moved around my 3rd birthday. It was obvious in hearing my dad talk about it that he loved that house. But alas, my mom was not happy with it. So they ended up moving. You can hear the sadness in my dad's voice. He would have been happy in that house for his whole life. He'll tell you himself, something broke in him when they moved and their marriage was never the same again. I'm sure to my mom it was no big deal. It was just a house and she wanted something bigger/better for all the children they had. To my dad, it was obviously more than a house. I sometimes wonder if I do things like that, without even knowing. Is there some issue that is no big deal to me but big to my husband? Am I tearing down our marriage without even knowing it? Just something to think about at the beginning of this new year.

And in case you're wondering, I don't feel any closer to having this baby then I did last time I blogged. Ask me again after my dad leaves ;)

Water adventures

2008-12-29T19:22:00.002-06:00

Did I tell you our water adventure this week? First some background. Our landlord is about one step above a slum lord. He has 10 properties in the area, he charges rock bottom rent prices and the places aren't all that great. He does what needs to be done, but no more and has a tendency to half-do things. For example, all the wooden frames in this house were rotted out, so before we moved in he replaced all the frames. However, he failed to fix the leaky windows, so almost a year later the new wood frames are showing water damage.

Earlier in the week we noticed a very small leak under the bathroom sink. This bathroom we don't really use because the toilet runs, so we just keep the water turned off to the toilet and use the other bathroom except in emergencies. Unfortunately there are no turn-off valves to the sink, because of our landlord's tendency to only half-do things. DH kept meaning to get to it to fix it, but things came up or he forgot etc, so it just kept leaking. The only way to stop the water would be turn it off to the whole house.

On Saturday I had a huge mountain of laundry from not doing it Wed, Thur and Fri, DH's long holiday weekend, so I went to start that and my washer wouldn't start. After much trial and error, the problem was the breaker had flipped. So I turned it back on, no problem. Then I had a light bulb. The washer and dryer are across the hall from the leaky bathroom. The wetness from the leak had caused the breaker to flip. In case you're worried about water damage under the sink, don't be. There was already a significant amount. Half way into my third load of laundry, the breaker flipped again and would not stay unflipped. Fun.

Of course DH did not get to fixing the sink that day. Sunday he went to fix it and what was a small leak quickly turned into a gush when the whole pipe busted. It was actually already busted, just in a position where it only leaked. As soon as DH moved it, it fell apart. So water to the whole house got turned off. And it was late Sunday so no trip to the store to get parts to fix the pipes.

So early this morning DH ran to the store to get turn-off valves, installed those and just turned the water off under that sink. The pipes don't even go all the way to the faucet. Definitely a bathroom only for emergencies now! Oh, and to make things fun, my breaker still won't stay on. I managed to finish the load that was in the washer, but that's it. We're praying once things dry out it'll work okay. We're also praying that happens before this baby is born! Can you imagine a home birth without a working washer? Icky birthing stuff all over towels and whatnot and not being able to wash them. Blech.

Did I tell you...

2008-12-28T13:32:00.002-06:00

Did I tell you that Genesis is just about weaned? Not by my doing! She asks to nurse maybe once a week, if that. I'm thinking there's a chance though that once the baby is born and she sees it nursing that she may start asking again. But I'm okay with that. I think it would be weird she hadn't nursed for months, but she does still nurse occasionally so that's okay. I should have known she'd wean this early though. By the time the boys were this age they only nursed before nap and bed out of habit and I didn't let Genesis form that habit. So yeah, I should have figured she'd wean sooner. I'm really kind of hoping she picks it back up after the baby born. I'm not ready for her to grow up yet! As it is, she's pretty much completely potty-trained. Which also means, for the first time in 6 years, other than at night, we're diaper free. And really, I think we could go without the nighttime diaper, but I"m not ready for that leap. Canaan still wets the bed at least once a week so I don't want to deal with two doing that, yk? But Genesis wakes up with a dry diaper more of than not.

Speaking of baby coming. Had a visit with the midwife today. She doesn't think we'll be having this baby soon, nor do I. I just don't feel like it's coming soon. With all the others, by now I would wake up saying "today could be the day" and I don't feel that way at all this time. And the midwife says I haven't hit my plateau yet, I'm still growing. So this baby may need a while to cook yet, which is okay. So that's my update!

37 weeks!

2008-12-23T07:41:00.000-06:00

I'm officially completely full term! Now I get to wake up every day and think "Today could be the day I have a baby." So what do you think? Is this an 08 or 09 baby? Boy or girl?

Midwife home visit

2008-12-20T09:26:00.002-06:00

Yesterday was our home visit with the midwife. We went through what she'll do if something is wrong with the baby, the tools she has, etc. Everything is looking good. My hemoglobin is down still, but I'm clotting fine, and she says if she has to choose between one or the other, she'll take good clotting. So while it's something we wish were different, it's not really something to worry about. I'm supposed to continue taking my probiotic iron supplement, but if it doens't work, that's okay. She wasn't concerned about my bh contractions. She said that as I have more children I'll probably find that they get stronger. Fun for me! Every visit with her just confirms in my mind that she is the right midwife for us. She's just perfect.

And one of the best parts is that the house was all nice and clean for her visit, and by the time she left it was time to get kids in bed, so we have no chores this morning while DH is at work. We were done with school by 10am, so we've got all day to just take it easy. I'll probably make that lasagna I've been wanting to make. I always double the recipe, so we'll have one in the freezer for after baby. And of course we'll have to do a toy pick-up before Daddy gets home.

36 weeks!

2008-12-17T09:38:00.002-06:00

I'm 36 weeks! My midwife is officially on call and I'm finishing getting everything set up and ready for baby. I'm really going to be having a baby soon! I'm so excited. I finally feel like we have a real family now. I know this sounds odd, but before I always felt like we were just getting started, and now, while I don't feel like we're complete, we're at least "there" now, we're not getting started anymore. We've arrived in a way. Maybe it's because since Canaan was born I've been a member of a message board where you're not a full member until you have 4 in 8 yrs. I don't know. But DH has said the same thing, about feeling like we were just getting started before. And now we enter into the land of rude comments regarding family size. Bring 'em on!

Had to cancel my midwife appt

2008-12-12T07:51:00.001-06:00

I was supposed to have a midwife appt yesterday, but we ended up canceling b/c we still have pink eye floating around the house and the midwife didn't want it in her office. Can't say I blame her! Right now Canaan and Genesis have it in BOTH eyes. They look horrible. The garlic is doing the trick, but as soon as I get one completely over it somebody else starts to get it. We were planning on having the midwife do a home visit next week for our next appt anyways, so we may just go right to that. That way I don't have to cancel again if it's still floating around and I don't think she'll mind coming here to pink eye as much as us taking it there. She doesn't want it getting on all the toys at her office.

I need to call her today about setting that up and also ask her about these contractions I keep getting and how easy I should be taking it. DH is doing the best he can, but he needs to step up a bit, imo. He did great yesterday though. We went grocery shopping and when my cart started getting too heavy and was giving me BH he made the boys get out and walk and let me push the almost empty cart. And he's always great about unloading the carts unto the belts (which is really hard on a pg belly!) and he loads up the car. Then he let me come inside and sit while he unloaded the car and had the kids put the groceries away. I'm sure if I had done all my normal stuff I would have been having horrible contractions by the time I was done, but instead, I only the normal few. It was great.

I think I've decided though that when I take my 2 week "baby vacation" I'm going to stay in the bedroom so I don't have to see the state of the house, lol. Hopefully that will make it easier to stay down!

A little update

2008-12-08T16:43:00.003-06:00

Carseats are all in, except the infant carrier base, which we'll probably put in next week. It actually looks more spacious in our car now. Before the kids were all scrunched into one row, but now they're all spread out. Asher ended up getting put on the end of the back row, instead of in the middle b/c his new carseat is too big too fit in the middle. So the boys have about a foot of space between their seats. We're a little worried about when we need to fit 5 carseats, but the front row is slightly wider than the back, so it may fit better there when it gets to be time for that. We also decided to put Genesis rear-facing. I explained the dilemma to DH to get his opinion and at first he was all for putting her forward-facing, but then the next day he said he wanted to leave her rear-facing so she could see the boys. Fine with me!

I'm taking it easy today, I've actually been taking it easy for several days now. At first I just had no motivation, but now I think my body was telling me to stay down. After several days of just getting the bare minimum done, I want to do more, but I'm getting a ton of strong braxton hicks contractions. So I'm just doing hte basics again today. The kids got the house all picked up and are now watching a movie. The only thing I plan on still doing tonight is the dishes and finishing up some laundry. As long as I spread them out, I should be okay. I have a feeling it may be this way the rest of the pregnancy, though I'm hoping not, b/c weeks of doing just the basics, then having DH in charge for two weeks is going to make it really hard to do just the basics for 4 more weeks, which is my plan for optimal recovery after baby. Maybe over DH's two weeks of being in charge I can convince him to do a few of the extra things I try and get done every week. That's about it for now!

eta: I just realized that even if I do need to slow down for these BH, I won't have to until the baby is born. Once I hit 37wks, I can completely ignore them, or hope the work will turn them into real contractions!

It's official

2008-12-07T13:41:00.000-06:00

I now have a 2yo, a 4yo and 6yo. Asher's birthday is today and it's the last of our "birthday season" (though we still need to have their bday party with cake and stuff). I'm actually looking forward to this baby having a slightly later bday so that it's not quite so all at once, yk? Two weeks ago I had a 1yo, a 3yo and a 5yo. That's a lot of growing up in two weeks!

In other news, I cured pink eye!! Two days ago, Asher was asking in the late morning/early afternoon if you could have eye snot instead of just eye boogers, b/c he had a lot of snotty stuff in his eye. A few hours later he was complaining his eye hurt. By bed time, it was red and swollen half shut. I woke up the next morning with lots of "eye snot." I did my research and was happy when I found a home remedy that we could actually do. It doesn't do me any good to know a tincture of eyebright and a bunch of other stuff will do it, I don't have any of htat stuff. So here is what we did. In a rag, put a minced clove of garlic. soaked it in hot water for about 5 seconds, then squeezed out the extra juice. Placed the compress on the eye for 60 seconds or until it started burning, whichever happened first. Rinsed off the eye to be sure juices didn't get in. We did that 3 times yesterday. By the end of hte day, I had no symptoms and all of Asher's redness and itchiness was gone, though he still had some residual swelling. We're doing it again today just to be sure we kill the infection. I am so proud of myself for curing this at home and not having to take him to the Dr (or the ER since it's a weekend). I think garlic is a gift from God. It kills almost every bad, but none of the good, like antibiotics do. You can eat it, or just put it in a compress. It's wonderful stuff. Thank you God for garlic!!

Still feeling "girl"

2008-12-04T18:46:00.002-06:00

For most of this pregnancy, DH and I have felt we're having another girl. Every body we see says we're having a girl. The biggest thing for us is the names. Near the beginning of each pregnancy we've had a girl's and boy's name picked out. By the end of the pregnancy, one of those names just doesnt' feel right and the other feels perfect. Since the end of the 1st trimester we've both been unsure about our boy name, but love the girl name we have picked out. I was starting to think maybe we should be looking for a different boy's name, just in case. But now I'm pretty sure we're just having a girl. We got baby clothes from storage today, a tub of girl clothes and a tub of boy clothes. I have almost no desire to go through the boy clothes. The girl clothes are calling to me. The only other time the girl clothes called like that was with Genesis. When I was pg with Canaan, we were only 75% sure we were having a boy, from what I thought I saw during the u/s (we had asked not to find out). I had no girl clothes (though my sister was coming to visit near the due date and could have brought girl clothes with her if need be), but I never found it necassary to buy girl clothes. When I was pg with Genesis and only had instinct to go on, I had a whole box of newborn girl clothes, but I still went out and bought girl clothes. Not a lot, but a few things here and there. It's the only time I've been drawn to girl clothes. Until now. I want to wash all the girl clothes and put them in the drawers, which is silly. This baby could easily be a boy. So I'll still pull out a few boy clothes, and I won't go crazy with the girl clothes, but I can gurantee I'll have more girl clothes washed and ready then boy clothes. And just to confirm things, I've had symptoms I only had with Genesis; insomnia and constant stuffy nose are the main ones.

So what do you think? A little sister for Genesis? Or another boy?

34 weeks!

2008-12-02T18:30:00.002-06:00

I'm 34 weeks today. I think I've made it past the small freak-out I had of not being ready (buying some stuff helped with that I believe) and now I'm on to getting excited. In 2-6 weeks I will have a new baby!! I've been getting stuff done around here to prepare. Like I said, the birthing kit is ordered and should be here in a few days. I got more sewing done so I can start my diaper covers soon. I pulled the stuff out I need to make diaper covers and pulled the newborn diapers out (so cute!). Tomorrow we're supposed to be getting stuff out of storage, like baby clothes!! I can't wait to go through all those teeny tiny outfits and pull out a few favorites of each gender. And all the tiny blankets, and the bouncy seat. Yup, definitely getting excited. Next week I'll probably be freaking out about labor and delivery, lol.

Just rambling

2008-11-29T17:31:00.001-06:00

So we got our new towels on Friday, spent a whole $15 for ten new towels, yay!! They were running low by the time we got there (I told DH we needed to leave sooner) and we don't really have a color theme or anything in our bathroom, so we just grabbed ten towels of different colors. I made the mistake of throwing them all in the wash at once. We had bought 2 white towels, but now I have two off-white towels, lol. The funny part is that they have a pink tinge, but we didn't buy any red colored towels! The only thing I can figure is that it's from the couple of brown towels we got, with maybe a bit of blue mixed in? I don't know. Luckily, 1. I don't care about the color of the towels, if they dry you off, they're good! and 2. they look like they may have come in that color and not just been dyed in the wash, lol.

We also got in some money we've been waiting for, so we bought everybody new socks and underwear, which we desperately needed. And now my little girl is wearing big girl underwear! She looks so cute in them though. We also ordered Asher a new carseat. He's out-growing his current one, actually all the kids are, so it's time to move everybody up the line. We bought him the Graco Nautilus, which has a 5-pt harness that goes up 65 lbs. He's just now about 40lbs, so it should fit him a while. I'm anal when it comes to carseat safety. Asher asked the other day why his cousin (who just turned 5) has a carseat without seatbelts (ie, a low back booster) so I had to explain that that's just the kind of carseat his parents want for him, but we want Asher in the harness still b/c we feel it's safer. I'm debating about turning Genesis forward facing. Right now she's till rear-facing, and seeing as how she's not even 25lbs and the carseat goes rear up to 35lbs, she should be okay in it for a while. But when I rearrange carseats to fit the baby, that will give me two rear-facing kids in the middle row with the bigger boys in the back row and that's going to be difficult. I won't even be able to hand Genesis anything, let alone the boys. But I guess that's the way it goes with lots of littles, huh? I'm thinking we'll have to make sure the boys have a drink of water in the back with them. They'll both have cup holders on their carseats, that will make it easier, for sure. But now when we stop for fast food (usually on errand day) we'll have to actually park the car just to pass out food. That doesn't sound fun. And it's already hard to hear what they're saying, they'll have to yell just so we can hear them. I have a Suburban, so right now we're planning on keeping one of the middle row seats folded up so it's easier to get into the back row. Asher and Canaan will go in the back, most likely with Asher in the middle, but I need to see if that's okay with his new carseat since it just has a lap-belt. I'm thinking since we'll be using it with the 5-pt, that should be fine. Then Canaan will be on the side with the seat folded up, so we can reach him easier to get him buckled and unbuckled. Asher can buckle and unbuckle himself. Then in the middle row will be Genesis and the baby. I haven't decided who goes where yet. It'll probably be easier to put the baby on the outside, with Genesis in the middle. I'll have to climb in to buckle Canaan in anyways, so I can do her from the same spot. And it'd be hard to reach the middle to put the baby carrier in, I think. And then there's the whole rear-facing/forward facing dilemma with her. The boys were over 2 when I turned them around, probably closer to 2.5 and even then, I wouldn't have minded keeping them rear-facing longer. Now that I think about it, Canaan was rear-facing when we moved here, at almost 3, then we didn't have a car until he was 3.5 and he got put in forward-facing. DH turned Asher around at 2.5 I think. I really want to keep her rear-facing for the safety benefits, but it would be so much easier if she's forward facing. I could hand her things for the baby and stuff like that. And I shouldn't feel guilty if I turn her around now. After all, plenty of people do it a lot sooner and for less reasons. Decisions, decisions.

Oh, I also ordered my birthing kit today. Yay!! I can't wait for it to get here. I think that will make the upcoming birth seem more real to me. Who would have thought I could get so excited about sterile gloves, peri bottles and Chux pads? We also bought a package of newborn diapers on Friday. I got an 80 pack, which I'm thinking will get us through the first couple days until I swtich to cloth, and nighttimes until the baby grows out of the newborn and into size 1. At least that's my hope. I really need to get busy making a few more cloth diaper covers. I think have two in newborn size. I had more with Genesis, but they fell apart about the time she grew out of them. Two will NOT be enough. Really, I could get by if I even made 2 or 3 more. Must get that done!

But first I need to finish sewing panels onto my curtians so they insulate better. We get a lot of cold air through the windows. We covered them in plastic, which helped a lot, but insulating hte curtains helped a lot too. I've got about half of them done. It only takes a few minutes to do each one, I just need to get on it.

What else is there? Oh yeah! My husband makes the best coleslaw in the whole world. It tastes just like KFC coleslaw, which is the only kind I'll eat. I admit, I was skeptical when he told me he could, but his Grandma asked him to make some for Thursday, and sure enough, it tastes just like KFC's. I was so glad there was enough left over for our Tday yesterday and even some for today! We had a good Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. And other than getting the massive turkey in and out of the oven, I cooked the whole thing myself. I even made gravy from the drippings. Yay for me. I hope to find more things to add to our menu to make it a bit more diverse, but I don't know what. We don't eat a lot of the more classic tday things, like sweet potatoes and green bean cassarole . I'm wondering I can't find a mashed sweet potato recipe that is a bit more savory and not sweet, like regular mashed potatoes. That might be good. And it would add more color and nutrients to our plates. That reminds me, I made a pumpkin pie from scratch, just for DH and he hasn't even tried it. He probably forgot it. I don't like pumpkin pie, so I hope he eats it all!

I think that's about it for now. I'm done rambling.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2008-11-27T10:54:00.001-06:00

I love Thanksgiving. It's always been one of my favorite holidays. And now that we don't celebrate Easter, Christmas or Halloween, Thanksgiving and 4th of July are about all we have holiday wise. This morning I went over to Dh's Grandma's house and helped her get things ready for the big family dinner. We finished up early, so I came home to spend some time with the family before heading over there to eat. This is actually my first Thanksgiving with DH's family. Last year there was a family conflict just prior to Tday, so we had our own dinner. All the other years we were in Missouri for Tday.

Then tomorrow we're going to cook our own Tday dinner with all the things we like and none of the things we don't. Mainly so have a bunch of leftovers, lol. We bought a 23lbs turkey so there should be LOTS of leftovers. We're also headed to Walmart early in the morning. We are in desperate need of towels, we only have 6 full sized towels and that's just not enough. Plus we'll need lots for the homebirth. Walmart is having a Black Friday sale and towels are $1.50 a peice!! Eventually I'd like to buy a whole set of bamboo towels, but this will get us through for now. And you can't beat $1.50.

So that's how we're spending our holiday. How about you?

An update

2008-11-25T18:37:00.002-06:00

Things are going well here. I just feel like I've been really busy, though I don't know with what. I had a midwife appt and the baby is head down now. I think s/he turned shortly after my last appt, but I can't be sure. The baby is also really low, which isn't unusual for me. I've always heard 2nd and subsequent babies tend to drop later, but not mine. Both Canaan and Genesis dropped by about 37 wks, if not sooner. The midwife was quite surprised at how low the baby was. Everythign is going just great.

This pregnancy has snuck up on me though. As of today, I am 33 weeks and I have no idea how I got that far along. I am not at all ready for this baby and I'm supposed to be completely ready by 36wks. That's only 3 wks away!! How is that possibly. I feel like I have tons of time left, and I just don't. This is the least real pregnancy I've had. It's like I'm so busy, I haven't had time to just be pregnant, if that makes any sense. In less than two months I will have a new baby. And I am not ready, phyisically or emotionally. Somebody give me a swift kick in the pants to get a move on it!

Can you pray for me?

2008-11-09T17:14:00.001-06:00

I'm having a hard time emotionally right now and could really use some prayers for peace and resolution of some issues. Thanks!

I'm getting old!

2008-11-08T13:59:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I turned the ripe old age of 27. Where have the years gone? I know 27 really isn't that old, especially with #4 on the way, but it sure feels old. I'm officially in my late 20s. Before I know it, I'll be 30. Not that 30 is old either, but yk. Luckily, I get to make myself feel better by making fun of DH, who will be 31 tomorrow.

Anyways, Happy Birthday to me!

My first gray hair!

2008-10-30T07:35:00.003-06:00

I found a gray hair this morning. I knew they were coming soon. My sister said she was 26 when she got her first, so I actually purposely do not look closely at my hair for fear of finding one. Here I am, 8 days shy of my 27th birthday and I just happened to see it in the mirror. One, very long, gray hair just sticking off the top of my head. It makes DH feel better. He's going bald, so now he's not getting old alone.

I decided years ago that when I started going gray, I was just going to let it go and not dye it. I want to go gray naturally and gracefully. I am still determined to do that. I struggle with vanity, so this is one way I can grow in that area. Besides, it'll be years before the gray gets really noticable, right? Especially since I wear head coverings most of the time. Surely I'll be in my 30s before I start looking gray. Right? Right?

My dad is getting married!

2008-10-20T12:52:00.001-05:00

Almost 15 years after my parents divorce, it looks like my dad is getting married! He sent out a mass e-mail last week talking about this lady he works with. Apperantly they've been chatting at work, then a possibility of lay-offs came up and the next day she called my dad and started talking about all these plans to both leave work and travel the country, etc. After discussing it some more, they both realized that they are in love and are goign to get married! Amazing. I was sure my dad was a bacholer for life. He had one girlfriend for years and I never even met her because she wasn't important enough to bring down for a visit. This lady that he's marrying, they're already planning for her to come down with my dad to meet us after the baby is born in January. Apperantly they're just goign to go to the Justice of the Peace at some point and not tell anybody until after it happens. They're dont' have the patience for a formal wedding. Right now, both their jobs are secure and they actually like working so they plan to stay put. She has a lease on a house until July, so things might change after that, I guess. I've been e-mailing with her to discuss the January plans and she doesn't expect to have any grandchildren (she has one son who she describes as "failure to launch") so she's thrilled with the fact that my dad will soon have 17 grandkids, lol. Just thought I would share the news!

Day of Doctors

2008-10-17T16:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day full of doctors. First we went to see our family physician. He had done some blood work with me and wanted to go over it. Everythign looks great. I have no RH sensitivity, which is what we were specifically looking for since I got the RhoGam shot late after Genesis was born. So that was all good.

Then we went to the ENT for a follow-up on my ear and that Dr gave me a clean bill of health. He said unless I have returning symptoms we're goign to say that I'm healed and I'll never have to see him again. He checked my hearing and everything and that's back to 100% (it was at one point at about 50%) and he said my eared looked perfectly normal and healthy. Yay.

Then we went to see the midwife. Another great appt. She was glad to hear both about the RH and the ear thing. I'm done with antibiotics so we can spend the next 3 months getting myself back into tip-top shape for giving birth. Since our family dr was so willing to help out with the blood work, she wants me to call him and see if we can get some tubes for collecting the baby's blood after it's born and drop it off there to blood type the baby. Then we can see if we need a RhoGam shot of not. I know he's willing to get me in with a Ob/gyn to get the rhogam if I want to go that route, so hopefully he'll be able to do this as well. We could also get the shot through the midwife, but then we have to pay for it at $166. If I go through a Dr, then it's covered by Medicaid. I'm not sure if the hassle with an ob/gyn is worth it yet, we'll decide on that later. It may be our only option depending on finances at the time. We also talked about the things I need to start getting together for the birthing kit. There's a lot of stuff you have to buy to homebirth! Luckily I"m a bit of a pack-rat and still have a lot of things that I saved from the hospital after Canaan was born, so I don't have to buy any of that. Things like a peri-bottle. And last but not least, we dicussed the position of hte baby. The baby is breech right now, not a huge deal, there is still plenty of time for flipping, but this baby has been in that same position for well over a month and seems pretty comfortable there. The others were all head down by now. So we discussed possibly doing an external version next time (I'll be 30wks) if the baby is still breech. I think we're going to try it. It's probably much easier to flip a baby at 30wks then 36wks, and like I said, this baby is pretty comfortable, so I don't know that it will flip on it's own any time soon. If it was flipping back and forth regularly, I would jsut let be, but it's not. It's just staying in that same breech position. So we're goign to try a few more natural things in the next 3wks to get the baby to flip on it's own, hands and knees exercising and things like that, plus just telling the baby to turn. I know some people think that's crazy, but I'm a firm believe that a Mommy's thoughts do influence the baby. There were some experiences with Genesis that just aren't coincidence and had a lot to do with my thoughts. But if the baby is still breech, we'll go ahead and try and flip it and hope it stays.

I think that's about it, health update wise.

Nesting much?

2008-10-14T18:55:00.000-05:00

I am officially in my 3rd trimester, and officially nesting. How can I tell, you ask? That one is easy (as anyone who has nested knows!)

This week I went through all the boys' clothes, pulling out too small ones, packing up most of the summer ones and rearranged their drawers. I went through all of Genesis's clothes, packed up summer stuff, pulled out winter stuff, washed it all and put it in the newly vacated drawers in the boys' dressers.

Yesterday I took every book and toy off the bookshelf and scrubbed the whole thing down with a magic eraser, then took the diaper drawers (one of those plastic, rolling 3 drawer things from walmart), emptied them all, packed up what I never use, scrubbed the whole thing with my magic eraser and put it all back together.

Today I found it necessary to rearrange the dining room, which actually just means pulling the table a few feet in one direction and moving some chairs, though I'm not sure it'll stay that way. Then I mopped the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, which I actually do every week, but this time I got all the corners really really good and washed down the baseboards, then cleared off what is supposed to be the boys' craft table that has been piled with stuff for weeks now.

Tomorrow the dining room is getting a good scrub down, along with the washer and dryer area and I'm thinking I need to go down to DH's Grandma's to look for that missing box of winter coats and hats that I know is there.

On the list for next week are mine and kids' room, hopefully getting Genesis moved out of our room and cleaning out the boys' closet, which is a complete disaster. Yup, I'm nesting.

Still getting tomatoes from the garden!

2008-10-07T05:50:00.001-05:00

Dh and I were sure we weren't going to get anymore tomatoes this year. There were plenty of green ones on the plants still, but the plants were starting to die, so we didn't think they'd turn. Boy were we wrong! I went outside yesterday and noticed a bunch of red tomatoes. We ended up picking almost 2 dozen! There's still at least a dozen green ones left, so we'll see if they turn. Now I'm slowly processing the tomatoes (running through the food chopper, then freezing) as they get completely ripe. I also have two pie pumpkins to process. Mmmm....pumpkin bread. We hope to buy a few more before the end of the month, but we'll see how that goes. Wouldn't it be great to have pumpkin bread in the middle of the summer?

That's about all that's going on here. The boys are done being grounded, but still complaining because they don't get near the outside time they used to since I can't be out there all the time.

Oh, Genesis had a well-child checkup last week and she looks great. I was able to schedule the boys and myself for an appt for this Friday. At my appt we're goign to do some bloodwork to check for RH antibodies. He's just goign to order the whole prenatal blood screen. I also found out I can go up there after the baby is born and get the rhoGam shot, so we won't have to pay for that out of pocket. The dr was really nice and didn't seem to care at all that we don't vax and I'm having a homebirth, which is wonderful! I've very happy with the provider we picked.

We also have the exterminator coming out on Thur. So that's going to be a busy day, pulling the whole house apart, cleaning up a bunch of dead cockroaches and then putting it all back together again. But that's how it goes, I guess.

Well that was fun...

2008-10-01T19:17:00.000-05:00

We had an appt for the exterminator today to come between 8 and 10am. This was our "free" service call for problems between appts (ie, we still have horrible cockroaches so we're going to take all the spraying we can get!) with our monthly appt scheduled for end of next week. We would have preferred to have them come out last week, but couldn't get scheduled in. So this morning we all got early (well, I got up at my normal time, but immediatly got moving), got showered, dressed and spent a good bit of time pulling furniture away from walls and pulling stuff out of dressers/cabinets. Then we spent 2 hrs waiting. 10am rolls around and no exterminator. So DH calls the 800 number, they'll call us right back. Half an hour later I call them again. No explaination for why they didn't get back with us before, but this guy finds out that the exterminator never got our work order. Great. They found somebody else who can come out between 1 and 4 today. Fine, whatever. We run a few quick errands and then commence with waiting. DH goes to work, and I wait some more. Kids ask to do school, no sorry, don't want to get it all out and then have the guy show up. More waiting. 4:15 I call Terminex again. "It appears your service tech is delayed" Yeah, I noticed. So I told them this is what is going to happen. They were going to cancel my service for today, because I am done waiting. I've spent 6 hours of my day waiting already, plus time prepping for the visit and now clean-up. All for nothing. So the end of next week, they're goign to come out for our monthly visit like scheduled, but I am NOT going to pay for it. I refuse to put my house back together to make it through the night, just to pull it out again tomorrow and wait some more. I spent the next few hours trying to get my house back together, taking many frequent breaks, b/c there was lots of bending over and stretching and things like that that my belly did not like. A lot of furniture is still pulled out, b/c I need DH to push it back, but otherwise I got it all done. And next week I get to do it all over again, plus clean up dead cockroaches everywhere and wash all the dishes. Fun for me!!

I'm still here!

2008-09-29T07:11:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-21T18:19:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-21T12:14:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-20T05:16:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-19T14:26:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-17T18:54:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-16T18:30:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-12T18:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-12T07:08:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-09T20:30:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-09-05T07:03:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-09-03T17:31:00.000-05:00

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!

2008-09-03T05:20:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-01T20:15:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-01T16:26:00.002-05:00

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.

My first weekend as a natural housekeeper

2008-08-30T08:25:00.001-05:00

I've been putting off practicing my natural housekeeping habits while DH is home, but this weekend (our weekend is thur/fri) I got lots of motivation Wed night. So all weekend I stayed on top of the dishes, swept the floors when they needed it, picked things up as I saw them, etc and today I have an almost clean house!! I'll need to wash bfast dishes here in a bit, the kids needs to pick up their room and I need to vacuum, but that won't take anytime at all. Usually I spend ALL day cleaning on Sat to make up for hte weekend. I'm so excited!

Oh, and while I'm blogging, I'll tell you I got my dryer fixed to. We've had the belt sitting on the counter for well over a week now, but DH hasn't gotten around to putting it on. When, Wed morning, I had a load of laundry sitting the washer that had been there since the night before, and it was raining, and was supposed to rain all day. I NEEDED to get those clothes dry. So I asked DH to help me fix the dryer. I got the typical "later" which means "I'll forgot until it's too late to get it done today." So I pulled the dryer out as far as I could by myself and got to work. It was still all disconnected from when we discovered the broken belt. I got to work until I reached a point where I just wasn't strong enough, then I asked DH for help. He had been completely oblivous to what I was doing, so he was shocked to see me sitting in front of the dryer with it half taken apart, lol. But in less than half an hour we had it fixed :) There were at least two things I wasn't strong enough to do myself, so I was thankful to have my strong hubby to help me out :) I'm so proud of us though for saving hundreds of dollars and taking the chance to fix the dryer ourselves even though we had no idea what we were doing. The dryer is now working great and I'm still using my clothesline as I'm able, lol. Except now I don't have to put laundry off b/c it's raining, lol.

Too hot

2008-08-24T13:12:00.000-05:00

We had a window a/c for most of the summer, so we did fine, but it was just a borrowed one and the owner needed it back several weeks ago. Not a huge problem b/c they said the "heat wave" of the summer was over and we enjoyed temps in the mid 80s. Just my luck, the last week has been in the 90s and it's been HOT in here. We live in a single wide trailer (ie, big metal box) with no shade, so it warms up pretty quick inside. I'd been doing alright, though on Wed none of the chores got done until after the sun went down, but yesterday and today were not good. Yesterday morning I managed to get all my chores done (DH works mornings on Sat/Sun), but then we had to walk down to my MIL's and back right around noon. Normally it isn't a problem for me, but being in the heat for last several days, walking, and then carrying Genesis part of the way was just too much. By the time DH got home from work in the afternoon I was done. Anytime I got up and walked around I started feeling a little dizzy and light-headed. I ended going down to DH's Gramma's house just down the street and cooled down in her a/c for a bit, but still had to take it easy the rest of the day. Which left DH in charge of dinner so we didn't exactly eat well. Heat, lack of protein at dinner yesterday and pregnancy resulted in a cranky Mommy this morning with a headache. So I've spent all day today sitting in front of the fan, with my feet up, drinking lots of water. Yesterday, the forecast for today was 92, then morning it said 88 which made me hopeful. Yeah right, that's why it's 93 right now.

Luckily, it really IS supposed to cool tomorrow and get us back into the mid 80s with nights in the low 60s. I should be fine after today. HOpefully. Now to figure out how to convince DH to cook a NUTRITIOUS meal for dinner without sounding naggy and ungrateful...

"Almost" grown up

2008-08-22T07:33:00.001-05:00

Do your kids ever reach a time when they suddenly mature on you? All 3 of my kids have done it just recently. I used to a 1yo, a 3yo, and a 5yo. Now I have a very definite "almost 2yo," "almost 4yo," and "almost 6yo." Not to mention an "almost new baby." It's so very exciting and so sad at the same time. It's just amazing how they grow up right before your eyes.

Asher has grown up a lot in doing school. Part of that is b/c *I'm* actually getting school done every day with him. Now that he's officially doing K and I'm keeping records and such, it's just so much more real and exciting. My boy is really doing school and I'm really homeschooling him. Everythign before now was just fun and practice, but now we're getting down to the real stuff, yk?

Canaan has matured a lot in his speech and actions. He's definitly a preschooler now. He loves to learn and is picking stuff up so quickly (though that's probaby b/c some of it I started teaching him really late!) He's just very almost 4.

Then there's Genesis. She's lost almost all her babyness. It makes me sad to see her growing up, but what a beautiful and helpful little girl he's becoming. She's got the sweetest heart, when she's not trying to throwing a tantrum, lol. I'm glad I have another baby on the way though b/c I love having a baby in the house, and she's just not a baby anymore.

Going Green(er)

2008-08-20T18:49:00.002-05:00

We're actually already pretty "green." Cloth diaper, no paper products except toilet paper, etc. Of course now my dryer is out of commission so I'm hanging my laundry. Which, btw, I hung all our laundry out to dry last summer and absolutly loved it, but we haven't had a clothesline here so I havne't been able to. Even the line we have up now is not great. It doesn't quite hold one big load of laundry, and it's stretched all the way across the middle of our yard, which isn't really convenient for kids playing. But it's still been nice to hang my laundry out. Which is probably why even though the new dryer belt is sitting on my counter I haven't nagged DH to help me get it on yet. Maybe this weekend, maybe next...

And our newest big step, was to buy some reusable bags from here. We actually got them through a co-op so we got a great price on them. The biggest reason I haven't done this before is simply cost. Good reusable bags are not cheap. But this deal came up and we had a few extra dollars and there's been talk lately around here about stores starting to charge for bags, so it seemed like the right time. We only got 6, but I think we'll need some more. The website says 6 bags will fit a whole cart, but I'm thinking my cart is fuller than theirs. No matter though, there were extras in the co-op so if we need some more, I can still get them cheap. I also haven't done it before now b/c quite frankly, we use our grocery bags! I don't buy trash bags, just use Walmart bags and take the trash out every day. It cuts down on the smell from trash sitting too long and being in the routine of taking it out every day means they rarely overflow. I'm a little concerned about this, but not too much. For one, we have a good size stock-pile of bags. Even though we actually get at the store about what we use, family hears that we use them for trashbags and give us all their surplus. Or at least they did, until I finally started saying no thanks and recommending they drop them off at the recycle box in WM. But we still have a lot. And should we eventually run out, I'll just go without. I already empty the trash everyday, so instead of taking a bag out, I'll jsut take the whole small can and dump it. Then rinse the can out. Who doesn't need to wash their trash can more often anyways? So that's my plan.

Midwife appt

2008-08-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

We had another appt with the midwife last week. It went great of course :) I'm measuring about a week and a half ahead, but given that this is my 4th and I tend to go a week or two early, that's okay :) She rarely uses the doppler to hear the u/s, prefering the fetoscope (is that the right word?), but she couldn't pick up the heartbeat with it this time. She said "I love it. I keep getting kicked, but can't get a heartbeat!" So that baby is doing good, was just too far back for her to pick it up. But as she said, you can feel the kicks! I love to sit and just feel the baby move. Definately one of my favorite parts of pregnancy. We signed the contract and paid our deposit, so she's officially our midwife. Of course we still have quite a bit more money to pay her, but it's so worth it. She gave us some great ideas for getting more veggies in me. I've never been a big veggie eater, so this it's really hard to me to get them in. Especially since I'm supposed to be eating all those wonderful leafy greens for good blood health, but I don't like them! So she gave us good ideas. And I"m so proud of myself. Today with lunch (our main meal), I served a side salad, and I actually put cucumber and tomatoes on mine (from our garden). I do not like either of those, but I used my food chopper to cut them up real small, and I used a generous amount of cheese to mask some of hte flavor, but it was actually good and I made myself a second salad. Yay for healthier eating and getting more veggies in.

A Visit with the Dentist

2008-08-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

Well, after years of putting it off for many reasons, we finally visited the dentist. DH went about 2 months ago b/c he had a wisdom tooth break off, so we made appts for the whole family (minus Genesis) for a time when we knew we'd have a car. We all got cleanings, DH got one cavity filled and Asher got 2 cavities while we were there. I was in the chair when Asher got his cavities filled and DH was with Canaan who was getting a cleaning, so I have no idea how they did it. He didn't seem numb or anything so I wonder if maybe the didn't drill as deep since it was just baby teeth? DH has to go back and get another cavity filled and I've got 2 that need filling. I also have a wisdom tooth that is cracked, but since I'm pg and can't take the good pain killers they don't suggest pulling it until after the baby is born. And then they'll probably want to pull all three! Yikes. But the kids did great and the dentist even complimented us on how well behaved they were and how good they did. The boys did great I hear. In 3 wks (when I'll have another midwife appt) we go back to fill our cavities. Fun times!

Why don't more people homeschool?

2008-08-13T20:37:00.000-05:00

I just don't understand it. I'm on a private message board for moms of kids who were born the same time Asher was born. Almost all of the kids are starting kindergarten this year. And I've already heard a whole bunch of complaining about lack of individual attention, kids who are goign to be bored, or behind, bad influences, somebody else having control of their kid and what they're learning or not learning, etc etc. So why don't these moms homeschool if they're so worried? "I would be bored" "I don't have the patience" "I simply have no desire to" Several of these same moms considered homeschooling for at least a bit, and yet, out of 30-40 moms, I am the single homeschooler. I don't understand. If you don't like what the schools have to offer, than don't take it! Get over yourself and what you want and do what's best for your kids!

Sorry if I offend anybody, but this just really bothers me. Why take the status-quo when you don't have to?

Anybody know how to fix a dryer?

2008-08-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I went to get a load of laundry out of the dryer to discover it was still pretty damp. Odd, I thought, but it was a load of jeans so I figured it just didn't run long enough, that happens sometimes, so I started the dryer again and walked away. Fast forward about an hour to the dryer buzzing, I open it, while it's still running. Usually in this situation, the dryer stops and I see clothes falling down. Not this time. The dryer stopped alright, but no clothes fell down, b/c they weren't spinning! Great. Now DH and I know very little about dryers, but we know enough to know this is probably a belt issue. The dryer is 6 years old after all. It's about time for this kind of thing. So we spent an hour googling how to fix a dryer belt and nobody told us how to take the thing apart in the first place! It was all about routing the belt, but nothing on how to get to it in the first place. We have a handy neighbor across the street, but he wasn't home, of course. We finally just took the top off the dryer, the only thing we could figure how to get off, which was enough to verify that it was a broken belt. So we put the top back on and called and ordered a belt, praying that our handy neighbor would be willing to help us put the belt when it gets in. As our luck runs, the company is switching facilities right now, so it'll be 2-3 wks before it gets here. Oh, I could have gotten it here in one week instead, but it would have cost me more in shipping than I was paying for the belt! Besides, if I can make it work without a dryer for a week, surely I can do it for 2 or 3, is my thinking. So tomorrow DH is supposed to be rigging up a temporary clothes line for me. Good thing I already have lots of clothespins from hanging clothes all last summer!

Fun at the Fair

2008-08-12T20:33:00.001-05:00

The county fair is this week and we had free passes for tonight, so off we went, even though Austin was working. We went with some neighbors so I had some help for a while, and overall the kids did great. The problem was Canaan. He's always been a bit more nervous and new people and situations than the other two. I can recall when he was 9 months and a stranger helped me get his stroller onto the city bus and Canaan just screamed and screamed b/c the guy touched his stroller! So Asher went on a few rides while Canaan assessed the situation and eventually decided he would like to go in the funhouse. All was well until the end. He was nervous about going through the spinning wheel in order to get out so the nice lady who works the end went in to help him. She made the mistake of grabbing his hand and he just hit total meltdown. By the time I handed Genesis to our neighbor and got up the stairs the lady and just picked him up and carried him out. It took several minutes for him to calm down. Next he rode the flying cars and the carosal just fine, thankfully. Then we get to big slide. He watched Asher go down it several times and decided it looked like fun. So I decided to go on up and take Genesis down, too. We walked up all those stairs and then Canaan refused to slide down. I offered for him to ride with me and Genesis, for him to ride with just me and I would send Genesis down with Asher, for him to ride with Asher. Nope. He would not go down. Back down the stairs we go. So we do the cars and carosal another time or two then head back for the Dragon Wagon (kiddy roller coaster). Asher had ridden it when we first got there and had fun, so Canaan decided this time he was goign to ride, too. On he goes. By the time the dragon made it around the second time he was crying so hard, they stopped the ride so I could get him off and then started it back up so the other kids could finish. After that Canaan stuck with the cars and carosal. Which I have no problem with! On one hand, I want to give him props for trying new things, even if he did end up scared. On the other, good grief child, I can only stand so much. Does anybody else get this kind of fun?

Oh, and before you asked, I had every intention of taking lots of pics and then forgot the camara. But we'll probably go back on Thurs or Friday when Austin is off from work and I will do my darndest to remember the camara and take lots of pics!! Genesis looked so grown up on the flying cars. I was nervous about letting her ride, but she loved it!

Back to Real Life

2008-08-09T20:12:00.001-05:00

Well, vacation is over. After several days of camping, followed by several days at home where we weren't actually at home much, it's time to go back to Real Life. Although technically today was our first day after vacation, I still didn't get much done b/c that "Longest Yardest Sale in the World" is this weekend. So I spent all day working that. I think so far we've made a whole $30-40, lol, but at least we're getting rid of a little bit of junk. And what's left I'm freecycling. I don't imagine we'll do much business tomorrow. Around here Friday and Saturday are the big yard sale days. Which I think is odd, but I regress. After working the yardsale all day I got to come home to a complete disaster, b/c what house isn't a disaster after vacation? So I got to spend the whole evening cleaning the house and getting kids to do their chores too. Yup, a fun-filled day, lol. And unfortunatly, we have no pictures, b/c the camara was misplaced. *sigh* The county fair is this week, so I'm praying I find it before Tuesday when we have a free family pass.

All day at the yard sale while I was sitting outside making a whole dollar or two an hour I worked on my cleaning routines and schedules and thinks of that sort. And to top things off, I just started Organized Thanksgiving. Have you heard of Organized Christmas? If not, you should Google it. The author takes all those crazy holiday chores and seperates them into weeks so you don't have to do squash it all in the end. Well we don't celebrate Christmas, but we want to do up Thanksgiving a bit more this year, with holiday baking and such, and then the kids all have thier bdays, so I still have all the present buying to do...So I took Organized Christmas and tweaked it so I'll have it all done by Thanksgiving, and then hopefully I'll only have to maintain until the baby is born. So I wrote out all my todo lists for that. Hopefully my house will be wonderfully clean and organized before I know it. yeah right...

Visit with the midwife

2008-08-07T19:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, first off, we LOVE her. She's so great and we just really mesh well. That's always good news :) She was great with the kids and answered all our questions. She seems to have the perfect amount of fact based practices and instinct in her practice. Just over all great! Today was just a meet and greet, though we did hear the heartbeat b/c Asher wanted to. I have to go back next week to go over diet sheets and stuff like that. She recommended I go ahead and get on state Medicaid, just in case we need tests done. Otherwise we'll have to pay out of pocket. She wants me to get an RH antibody titer b/c I got my RhoGam shot a week late with Genesis. Most likely, it won't be an issue and I'll be fine, but it'll be nice to know. That way if I do have a few antibodies and things start to go wrong we'll have idea of where to look for why and we'll know if we need to be watching for signs for RH incompatibility. I"m also so excited b/c she does breech and twin births. My biggest fear is that I'll have another c-section b/c of something relatively minor like breech or twins, but now I don't have to worry about that. In fact she was telling us about a birth she just did, primary vbac twins and the first baby was breech. So she had all 3 "big risk" things all in one birth. Isn't that awesome! She also is very supportive of our wanting a large family and was talking about all the things we can be doing now to help that happen and be healthy and such. She also said somethign about a repeat customer discount, so hopefully the next baby will be cheaper, lol. It was just really great and I'm so excited to have her as my primary "baby doctor"

We're back from camping!

2008-08-04T07:14:00.001-05:00

We had a wonderful time camping, but you'll have to forgive me, as my pregnant brain forgot the camara!! I was so upset when I realized it. I told DH his mission for the rest of his vacation is to take lots and lots of pics!!

We had a great time though. We got up there Thursday afternoon and found the perfect camping site on the river beach down this huuuuuge flight of stairs. So I took Canaan and Genesis down while DH and Asher made several trips. We got the tent set up, then took a little break for a swim. Afterwards DH decided that the sand would drive him crazy, so back up we went, with all our stuff!! We went further back into the park and found a new perfect camping spot that had a wonderfu, though steep, path down to the river from where are tent would be. So we completely set up camp there. About that time it was time for dinner and then it started to get dark so we headed for bed.

Friday morning the boys went down fishing after bfast while I cleaned up the camp a little bit. Then Genesis took a nap in the shade. Afterwards we headed down to the water for a little swim with the boys. We eventually headed back up for lunch, we all laid down in the shade for a rest, then we went to the playground at the front of the park. Came back, had dinner, and hung out around the fire until bed. Repeat something similiar to this on Sat.

We were undecided if we were going to come home Sunday or Monday and had actually decided to go wait until Monday, but then DH woke up Sunday morning with a really sore back from sleeping on the hard ground, so we decided we would pack up camp after lunch. Well, after breakfast the kids were restless so we went for a little road trip. We stopped at a park for a while so the kids could play, then just went driving around. Canaan and Genesis soon fell asleep so we just kept driving. Eventually we got hungry for lunch and stopped at a cute Mexican restaurant that was wonderful. Headed back to camp, packed up and came home.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation and I wish we had stayed longer. I could do that for a week, easy. DH still has 5 days off of work, that's including today. Today he'll be helping a neighbor set up a huge pool that they got for free. He hopes they'll get it done today, they've been working on it for a while. Then we're supposed to go through yard sale stuff. This coming weekend is a huge yardsale that runs all down the highway that backs up to our backyard. So we're getting ready for that. Should be a fun week though! Hopefully I'll have some pictures to post before we're done ;)

First visit with the midwife

2008-07-29T21:29:00.000-05:00

Well, I've finally scheduled our first visit with a midwife. Our appt is for next Thursday. Kind of sad really, I'm 15wks, will be 16wks by then, and I'm just now seeing someone. That's life though. REally, I didn't intend to put it off that long. First we looked at our options, then we heard of this mw, but when I e-mailed her she was leaving the country for a few weeks, then she was busy with births, etc. So anyways, I just now got an appt made. I don't mind that much really though. Sure, lots could go wrong in the first half of pg, but there's not much anybody can do about it either. Now is when we get to the really fun part, anyways. Which reminds me, I think I felt the baby move earlier today. Genesis was nursing and was sitting right on my uterus, so the pressure from her allowed me to feel some pressure from the other side! I can't wait until it gets more frequent. Definately the best part of pregnancy!

Going on vacation

2008-07-29T05:33:00.001-05:00

DH took some time off from work, so I probably won't be around much. Starting tomorrow he's off for the next week and a half (b/c of his normal thur/Fri weekend). Hopefully I'll be able to pop on now and then and let you know how we're doing, maybe even post some pictures. I know we're going camping probably on Thurs through Sun or Mon, haven't decided yet. It should be fun. See you later!

I can't believe we did it again

2008-07-24T10:12:00.002-05:00

We are one sad couple. For the second time, we forgot our anniversary. The first time we forgot was our 4th anniversary, and this was our 8th. It was on the 15th. Do you know what today is? The 24th. We're obviously too busy day-to-day to remember such minute things as our wedding anniversary. sigh. Ah well. Two days after our annivesary was when we got our car and went with the kids and saw a movie and just had a good time as a family. So I guess that's as good a way as any to celebrate, lol.

A cure for insomnia

2008-07-24T05:35:00.002-05:00

My last pregnancy and this pregnancy are the only times in my entire life I've suffered from insomnia (can we say, another girl?). I've always loved sleep and never had a problem with it. I generally sleep like a rock. So insomnia drives me crazy. I as laying in bed as long as 12 hours a night and getting only 5-6 hours of sleep. I'd sleep a few hours a soon as I went to bed and then I'd toss and turn until the wee hours of the morning when I'd fall back asleep. So I decided to try getting up earlier, figuring maybe if I was in bed less hours, I'd be more tired and be able to sleep better. Plus I really needed my early morning quiet time back. So for the last 4 days I've been getting up at 6am. And surprise! I'm sleeping WAY better. And the really interesting part is that I'm even taking a 1-2 hour nap during the nap. So I'm getting a full 9-10 hours of good sleep throughout a 24 hour period. I feel so much better when I'm fully rested.

A natural housekeeper

2008-07-23T05:21:00.002-05:00

I am not a natural housekeeper. Oh how I wish I were. I work very hard to keep my house looking even decent. And you can blame it on the kids, but I know they're really not the problem. It's me. I just can't seem to keep a house clean. I am an adequate housekeeper, at best. Sometimes I really think my life would be so much easier if I were a natural housekeeper. But most likely, if I were, I would lack something else that I know have. Maybe I would be more uptight and not able to relax unless my house were spotless, and that would be a BIG problem with all the kids we want to have, lol. So what I'm trying to do is see what kinds of things natural housekeepers do and pick up some of their habits. For example, they probably sweep their floor more than once a day, especially if it needs it more often. I have a tendancy to let things go until it's "time" to sweep the floor. "Oh, Genesis spilt dry oatmeal all over the floor. It'll be there in a few hours when I get ready to sweep." Is it any wonder my house doesn't look all that great except at the end of the day, after it's "time" to clean everything? I need to be more on top of messes and take care of them right away, and I think that will help things a lot. Even if that does mean I'm sweeping floor more than once a day!

Sleeping through the night

2008-07-22T05:53:00.002-05:00

As the time for the new baby approaches, I've been moving Genesis out of our bed. Right now she's got a little bed at the foot of our bed, but will eventually move to the boys' room on the other side of the house. She's been doing great with her bed. She goes to sleep in it well for nap and bedtime, as long as she nurses fairly close to bedtime, if not right before. She just crawls into our bed when she wants to nurse at night. Some nights she'll cuddle with me for a while before asking to nurse and some nights, when she's done nursing she'll crawl back into her own bed. But then she usually returns an hour or two later. But the big news is that last night she spent the whole night in her own bed!! The first time she has officially slept through the whole night!!! I knew it was coming soon. The boys did the same thing when my milk started drying up and I know she's only getting a few swallows at most when she nurses. But I'm excited to be entering this new phase in her life. She's getting to be such a big girl!

I'm back!!

2008-07-20T13:05:00.002-05:00

As luck would have it, several weeks ago the kids broke the power cord to our laptop, our only computer. No power cord, means no comp. And they're expensive! So we were without our computer for a while. But all is well now. We got a check that we weren't expecting for a few more months and were able to buy not only a new power cord, but also a car!! It's a 94 Suburban, runs great and was a great price. We're so excited to finally have a vehicle. And I'm so happy we didn't get a minivan. I cannot stand how little cargo space minivan's have. It's just horrible. For now we actually have the back seat folded flat so we have even more cargo space and since we only need the one row of seats. The front bench is a 40/60 split, so we're thinking after the baby is born we'll fold the smaller portion flat to keep it easier to get into the back seat. So it'll bascially be set up like a minivan then, but with lots more cargo space of course. We had so much fun the day we bought it. We were able to go out as a family and really enjoyed ourselves. We've not been able to go anywhere as a family unless we walked, and living in a tiny town, there isn't much you can walk to. Of course the biggest problem is affording gas, but we've decided that we will basically continue to live as though we don't have a vehicle. DH will still ride his bike back and forth to work, and we're pretty much only going to leave town on grocery shopping days, but we'll make them fun :) And it'll just be nice to get out of the house as a family.

In other news, Canaan is night trained! I've thought for a while that he might be able to do it, but I just haven't been ready to try it out. So one night there was a miscommunication between me and DH and Canaan got put to bed without a diaper. He actually got up to pee in the middle of the night. So we decided it was time to go without diapers at night. He didn't have any accidents until he was diaper free for over 2 wks, and then it was b/c he had been up too late the night before with no nap so he was overtired. I'm so excited to only one in diapers day and night.And since we only use disposables at night, that just cut our diaper use in half! At least for 6 months or so, lol.

On the pregnancy front, things are going good. My morning sickness is pretty much gone and it's so nice to be back to myself again. All the sickies are out of the house, finally. I ended up having to take Genesis to the emergency one Sunday b/c she had a bad ear infection. I'm pleased to say though that this our first ear infection ever, in any of the kids. A few days later I got it and it took a good two weeks before it was completely gone for me. But we're all good now. The house is clean, meals are getting cooked, school is getting done and DH is happy.

Speaking of school, the kids are doing great. Genesis gets her time first. We've got a color/shape sorter thing that she does every day. She has other options but that's what she always chooses, so I let her do it. I tell her the color as she puts the shapes on and she's starting to repeat them back to me. After she gets all the shapes on she usually plays for it a little bit longer and then she starts coloring. Meanwhile, I start with Canaan. He doesn't know hardly any letters, so we're working on that mostly, and then he has a few other toy type things that he gets to choose from where we solidfy colors, shapes, counting to 5, etc. Then he likes to color, or I've got some tracing sheets he likes to do. Last is Asher. We're only a few weeks into the K program we're using, mainly b/c a lot of weeks we only did school once a week, lol. But now we're doing school 4 days a week and I'm trying ot get it up to 5, but the first day of hte week is always so busy cleaning the house after having dh home for 2 days. Anyways, Asher is doing good but I knew he would b/c we started with stuff he already knows. I'm really looking forward to in a few weeks when we work more on reading words. He can sound words out, but he has no retention or comprehension, so we'll be focusing a lot on that. He is learning a lot about science and God though. He's learned how Jesus is like the sun and is the light of the world and how we're like the moon and reflect Jesus' light. He also learned about the phases of the moon, how the Earth, the moon and the sun rotate around each other and create day/night etc. This week we're talking about leaves and how we need God in our lives just like leaves need the plant they're attached to. Sometimes he zones out when I start talking too deep (or start getting too long winded!) but he's really remembering and understanding a lot.

I think that's a pretty good update of our household for now.

Sickeness

2008-06-25T16:35:00.000-05:00

My house is full of sickies!! First Asher was running a fever and had a headache, for like 2 days. A few days after that the other two got it. And you know how a baby is when sick! Then Asher got a cold, which turned into a sinus infection and it wasn't long again before hte other two got it! So now, Asher is almost all better. He's a little stuffy and has an occasional cough, but he doesn't have thick green snot coming out of his nose at all times. Canaan's didn't turn into a sinus infection, so he's almost over it as well, with a slightly runny nose and residual cough. Genesis is still full blown into it, with snot everywhere, coughing at night etc. And of course, yesterday it hit me. I had to take DH to the dentist to get his top two wisdom teeth pulled out b/c one of them was breaking apart and causing him major pain. By the time we got home I had a huge sinus headache, and a stuffy, runny nose.

Luckily the house was clean two days ago so I've been able to let it a slide the last two days. My head is still killing me and I feel dizzy whenever I stand up. Of course now would be the time that we desperatly need me to do laundry. Thank goodness for 5yr olds!!Asher has been a huge help on laundry. I seperated it and start the washer, but he loads it up and helps me switch things to the dryer and empy the dryer. I don't think we'll be getting anythign folded today though ;)

I've been taking lots of vit C and garlic, but I'm not optimistic since the kids were taking it too and it still lasted over a week for them. If I could just get rid of this sinus headache I'd be alright I think.

Yay for a clean house!

2008-06-17T19:37:00.000-05:00

So Sunday morning, DH went to work and then so did I! I spent all day cleaning this house from top to bottom. It looked better than it has in months. DH was so happy when he got home and saw it. As much as he says he understands that I'm sick, he also gets annoyed at a dirty house! Of course by the time he got home I was so tired and sick I didn't do anything but lay on the couch for the rest of the day, but he didn't care. The house was clean. So it is my goal to keep it from falling apart again in the next couple weeks until my morning sickness is gone. Yesterday and today I've done great. I've gotten the dishes done, the floors swept, all the toys are picked up in the evening. And I've even gotten a few other things done that I didn't get to on Sunday. Celebrate with me YAY FOR A CLEAN HOUSE!!!!

Lack of Motivation

2008-06-11T08:32:00.000-05:00

I lack serious motivation. I have a tendency towards laziness. Over the last several years I've made huge strides, but as soon as I have a semi-decent excuse to not do my jobs, I don't do them. So my house is falling apart big-time. Yes I'm nauseus. Yes, I'm tired. But I'm not THAT nauseus, and I'm not THAT tired. I can still be doing my jobs! I haven't actually thrown up, which I guess is good, lol. And I only feel mildly worse when I'm working. So I need to jsut get over it and do my job! I'm slowly adjusting to having morning sickness and more is getting done, but I'm still barely keeping up with the basics. My love-seat is covered in clean clothes. Half folded, waiting to be put away. My dishes are only getting washed every other day rather than twice a day. The bed isn't getting made, the floors aren't getting swept. It's horrible. Luckily my DH is understanding, but he also knows my tendency for laziness so sometimes he gets frustrated. He has helped me out some though and has actually cleaned the house twice in the last couple weeks. I'm thinking about asking him to do one thing for me every day, if he's up for it. Things that I"m just not getting to but need to be done. Like mopping the floor, cleaning the bathroom. B/c I really am wiped out after just daily stuff, if I even get it done.

A post on a message board the other day really gave me some things to think about. A mother of many children (I think she has 12) was saying how after you have about 4 or 5 kids you really need to work like a professional. It takes more skill, more education and more dedication than the average mom of few. (No offense to moms of few, just stating the facts!) So right now is my training period and I need to take it seriously! This is my chosen profesion. It needs my dedication if I'm going to be any good at it as my family size increases. Of course about the time I was ready to get started we had a water line break and I was without water for two days so the laundry and dishes fell even farther behind. I'm just now getting caught up from that with dishes and laundry all washed. I guess I'm telling myself that I need to get off the couch and get to work! It's almsot 10am and I"m still in my pjs!

The changes morning sickness brings

2008-05-27T19:14:00.000-05:00

Today I went grocery shopping with my sister-in-law and her grandmother. All our groceries were in the back of the minivan (with the back seat taken out) and while somewhat separeted they still kind of meshed together. After we got back, DH was unloading our groceries and I was going through and trying to pick out what was ours and what wasn't. DH picked up a bag "Hotdogs, that's not ours" "Um, yes it is honey" "Oh. Well this bag with 4 boxes of Mac n' cheese isn't ours..." "yes it is" "oh." The joys of a mommy with morning sickness!

Been MIA

2008-05-25T19:04:00.000-05:00

I know, I've been MIA. Wouldn't you know it, insomnia kicked in actually right before my bfp, then the kids got sick, and now morning sickness has hit. So I'm not in much of a mood for anything right now, lol. The tiredness is kicking in too so I've lost like half my internet time since I'm now sleeping during that time, lol. My house is falling apart already and I've probably got a good 6wks of this left. Save me now.

So much for the benefits of not being pregnant

2008-05-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

Because I just got a positive pg test this morning!! It was a very faint line (but DH saw it, so it couldn't have been too too faint) so I'm gogin to test again in a few days, but it was definatly positive. We're pregnant!! Baby #4 is due somewhere around January 16th. It's a little later than normal for us, but that's ok :) I"m so excited. I've been jumping around the house all morning. Now I really need to get this house in order so it will stand the 3 months of morning sickness and extreme tiredness!