Reader requests

Damselfly wanted some tips on how to garden with little "helpers". When it is time to work in the yard I try and do what I do when I want to attempt something in the house. I try and find some aspect of the chore they can help me with to start with. If that is not working I find them something similar to do in another area away from where I am working. If that is not working then I banish them from the area altogether.

When we were planting the bulbs last fall we let the kids help put them in the ground after my husband dug out a trench for the bulbs. We ended up having to go back and put most of them the right way up, but the kids had a fun time until they got bored. When they got bored and we still needed to plant more bulbs I let them dig dirt in another part of the garden. That entertained them enough that we were able to finish the bulbs. Had the digging caused problems then I would have shooed them off to the back yard where we could keep them contained and out of the way with out having to do more than check on them every so often.

As the boys get older they are able to do a lot more around the house. Harry loves helping with the dishes and can be trusted to put the silverware away in the drawer. He will even separate the smaller spoons from the bigger spoons instead of putting them all together like certain husbands. When I was vacuuming the dining room this morning he rushed downstairs to get his toy vacuum to "help" me. Both boys love doing laundry and could almost do it on their own if they were a bit taller and had a bit more discernment about what they would put in the washer. It is nice to have two short people to do all the bending down for me now that I am getting on in my pregnancy. We now expect them to help clear the table of dishes after the meal (well often it is from the meal before, but we can pretend it is right after the meal). Heck Harry will even get me a new garbage bag when I take out a full one to the trash can and I am sure that if he knew how he would change the toilet paper roll. If Harry keeps his helpful ways up he is going to be a dream husband.


A couple of you have asked to see my pregnant belly. The picture is not that great but I don't really care enough to go and take another. I need a new camera since mine is over five years old and starting to show it's age. The sad thing is that I just now actually figured out how to turn the flash off when I want to. I don't feel as big as I did with my other boys but that also could be my imagination. I do know that my weight gain has not been nearly as insane thanks to my strict diet.

Grrr!

I think my kids are out to get me. Not only is Harry still a bit hit and miss with the potty training, but now Evan seems to want in on it too. He had an accident yesterday and had two today. One was mere moments after I asked him if he needed to go potty. Luckily this week is our downish week where I am not completely slammed with appointments, I am only kind of slammed with appointments. I am going to get our timer back out and have them going every hour. Maybe that will drive it into their brains. I can always hope.

On a nicer note I have been able to get out into the garden. After I posted those lovely pictures of my bulbs coming up it snowed. Boo! Then later in the week we hit a record 86 degrees! Woo hoo! This weekend we managed to find a source of compost (at a local big box store that I hate shopping at, go figure) and other organic gardening goodies. If you don't want to use chemical fertalizers in your garden here in Kansas it can be tough to find stuff. A nice nursery that was close to my house stopped selling compost and I was rather miffed. The big box store that I can tolerate shopping at had nada, so I took a chance and looked at theone I hate shopping at. Now I am planning on slowly piling on the good stuff into my front beds. The former owner was of the let's use shredded trees as mulch school of gardening. I want something that will actually break down into the soil and enrich it instead of just sitting there forever. Hopefully we can get the front beds looking nice.

Happy Birthday Evan!

This post is a bit late thanks to me deciding that I was going to stop complaining as much. It has been a bit rough the last few days thanks to naughty children (more poop messes and a food dye incident both thanks to Harry) and my hormones. Angry Pregnant Woman is out in full force and roaming my house.

Evan did not get to have his cake until tonight because he decided to test it out early yesterday. It was one of those I have to go to the bathroom really quick and while i am in there something messy and bad happens incidents. The cake was not too badly damaged but since I had just told him right before I went into the bathroom that if he touched it he would be in trouble I had to follow through.

Here are some pictures. Elmo did not quite turn out the color I wanted but I had already used so much food dye that I did not feel I could really add any more. That frosting wanted to stay pink even though it did get darker as it dried turning a lot redder. I am never ever going to make another one of these cakes. It is just too frustrating for me to try and get that color right. The artist inside me wants perfection and has to have the perfect color and it just drives me nuts.

This was a tough shot to get because my baby belly kept trying to get in the way.

The last two shots are why this cake will not be hanging around too long.

Yargh!

My kids are so amazingly lucky they are cute because after today ugly kids would have been sold off to the gypsies.

One of the highlights of the days was Harry attempting to clean up his own poopy underwear. I was taking a nap since my husband got home a little early from work and woke up to a lot of yelling and sobbing. My husband was trying to get Harry to tell him where he had put his underwear out of fear that he had flushed it down the toilet in an attempt to clean up. Poop was everywhere in the bathroom, on Harry and some even made it downstairs. I calmed Harry down enough to get him to tell where the undies were and then realized that he had poop all over his shirt and on his hands. Nice huh?

This is the second time this week that Harry has tried to clean up after an accident and it went just as well the first time around. He hopefully knows now that he gets help from mommy and daddy next time he has an accident. I think I may stop giving him any fiber containing food just to cut down on the mess. Other than the poop potty training is going tolerably well. He has finally realized that he can't just pee any old time he wanted like he did in a diaper and is able to go longer between reminders. We are still having accidents but not nearly as many.

Evan is still playing up his "injury" even though his physical therapist gave him a through evaluation and could not find a blessed thing wrong with him. There is no reason he should be refusing to weight bear on his left foot other than the attention he gets from being hurt. I almost bumped into him with out actually touching him and you would have thought that I had gravely injured him the way he was carrying on. It is getting irritating and I am having a hard time getting him to realize that he is more likely to get a real injury if he carries on like this. I am trying to give him more attention at other times in the hopes that this will snap him out of it.

Both kids are suffering severely from selective deafness. They are only hearing me when they really want to and if it is something that they don't like they think that whining and crying about it will change my mind. Sadly all it does is earn them trips to their bedrooms (mostly so I can calm down and stop feeling like I want to smack them). I wish they had not hit this naughty stage simultaneously. I think I could handle it a bit better if they had just gone through this phase one at a time. Thank goodness it is the weekend!

This make me want to squee!

Oy!

It has been one heck of a week. Cranky kids (thanks to colds) and a cranky mommy (thanks to a mild cold and cranky kids) do not mix well. I though it would be a snap week since my husband had two extra days off. Ha! That is what I get for thinking.

Evan injured his foot but since there was no actual sign of swelling or other injury we were baffled as to the true nature of the injury. All we knew is that he was refusing to weigh bear on it. Of course this happened on a day when I absolutely had to be somewhere so I ended up dusting off our stroller to cart him around in. The foot is better and he has been hamming up the pain for attention's sake. When he is at home he can walk almost normally but when someone else is around the pain is almost unbearable. Sigh.

Evan also got a nasty bloody nose thanks to his inability to keep his $%@$##ing finger out of his nose. He is still doing it and it is frustrating the heck out of me. Luckily it did not take too long to stop the bleeding but there was a lovely blood trail for my husband to clean up with the carpet cleaner.

Harry is having mixed results with potty training. I have a time set for every half hour to remind him but he is not showing much initiative to go on his own unless he is bored. When he is bored he would spend hours on the potty if he could. He loves flushing the toilet so much that it clogged last night and overflowed. I was rather irate about that one. I am not sure but I think he is pooping in the potty which is a very good sign. I have not seen any logs in the toilet since he loves flushing but he has also not been going in his undies. He is either constipated or actually using the toilet.

The baby is still a boy (nothing has fallen off in utero) and developing fine. He would not hold still so they were not able to get very good pics of his heart. I am going back for yet another scan in a month thanks to my gestational diabetes. They want to make sure that he is not growing into a monster baby.

I did my oh so delightful 24 hour urine test (my mental voice is dripping with sarcasam as I type that line) only to find out when I dropped my jub off that my orders were lost. I was about ready to loose it when I heard that. It was humiliating enough to have to do the supid test in the first place and the possibility that I might have to repeate it was stress inducing. Luckily I had a lovely tech that took the my jug and also a blood sample (to cover all bases) and called the doctor to get everything figured out.

I got my eyes looked at (yet another gestational diabetes thing) and got the "why are you even here?" vibe from the doctor. He said that unless I had been diabetic before my pregnancy that the likelyhood of me having eye damage was quite low. I had a blast having various lights shined into my eyes and various eye drops put in them. My eyes were also dialated which was loads of fun and even with the sunglasses they gave me I ended up with a headache.

I am hoping that we can do some fun stuff next week so that I don't have to keep complaining in my blog. Evan's birthday is coming up and I have to start planning it now.

Potty training or bust!

Harry is a boy on a mission. He wants to wear underwear in the worst way. Sadly he is not able to keep said underwear dry, but hey that is just details right?

Harry started flirting with potty training a few weeks before Evan's surgery. It was not a really good time to have this happen since I really did not have the distraction free time to devote to making sure that he was going on the potty regularly and keeping dry. I have been stringing him along a bit by letting him go when he asks (which is generally after he should go, again details) but now he is stepping up the pressure. On Saturday he took off his diaper and put his pants back on minus the diaper. Of course since he is still not getting that you just can't go on demand and have to go when your bladder is full an accident resulted.

I gave in to his demands even though I was hoping to put it off until the weather was warmer and tried to start the half nekkid training that I did with Evan. Harry was having none of that and would not settle for less than pants and undies. I think that I am going to have to try a new technique on him so that we can stop the accidents. I ask him a million times if he needs to go when he is wearing the underwear but he always says no and then of course an accident happens. I may try a timer or something. It is a bit exciting to think that there may be a small time period where I have no kids in diapers.

This whole potty training battle also illustrates the vast personality differences between the boys. I think that had I not forced the issue Evan would still be in diapers and happily crapping his pants. Peer pressure did not phase him a bit, he was happy to do his own thing. Harry on the other hand sees everyone else around him using the potty and therefor he must use it too so he can be like us. We all wear underwear, so he must also wear underwear. Let me tell you Harry is a force to be reconed with once he gets an idea in his head. The Terrible Twos have nothing on the Terrible Threes.

Happy Valentine's Day

Today is also Heart Defect Awareness Day (Get it? A day about hearts and love is a day when we should remember that some hearts are born wonky.) Any way it has been one draining week for me, so I don't have a special meaningful post to put up. One of the realities of having a child with a heart defect is that there are a lot of doctor's appointments to deal with and often there is therapies as well adding to that my heavy load of appointments leads to a tired mom and this week was jam packed with appointments.

Evan finally got into occupational therapy. We were on the waiting lift forever but I hope it will be worth it. In California Evan's physical therapist was doing a ton of the things that on OT would do so we were able to have only one person taking care of both therapies. At the center he goes to for his PT things are a bit more rigid. I wanted to get in at this center though because they also work at the school district that Evan will be attending Kindergarten (gasp can he really be that old?). I wanted there to be some continuity of care with his therapy.

The crazy thing with the evaluation was that the woman doing it was able to get Evan to do a lot of things that I have been trying to get him to do for months now. He happily tried to trace letters for this woman. If I had tried to get him to do it he would have looked up at me angelically and told me "Mommy you do it." He even did well with cutting a shape out of a piece of paper considering that I have never purposely let him touch scissors fearing all the damage he could inflict on the house with them. I was never worried about him doing too well since he had the obvious handicap of only doing all these things with one hand. It does prove that he is a slacker at home when he thinks he can get me to do stuff for him.

I had an OB appointment today and the baby is still in there. He kicked up a storm when they were getting his heart rate. I get to go to an ophthalmologist to have my eyes checked out since I have gestational diabetes and they want to make sure that I am not loosing my eyesight thanks to that. I also get to collect my urine for 24 hours so that they can see how well my kidneys are functioning. I am oh so thrilled that I get to go to yet another appointment and get to store my pee in the fridge for a day (the things you do when pregnant). Now that I am heading into the home stretch for my pregnancy I have bimonthly appointments to add to the mix.

I swear it seems like for the last few months all I have been doing all the time is going to doctors appointments. I am really hoping that Evan's appointments taper off now that his pacemaker surgery is over. Evan doesn't seem to mind a bit though and has actually asked to go see a doctor when faced with the dreary prospect of spending a morning at home. I will never see going to the doctor as a form of recreation no matter how hard I try.

Oops

I can't believe that I have been such a slacker blogger. This week has been just a boring normal week filled with rather boring normal stuff. The weather has been insanely nice for the last two day so a lot of time has been spent doing stuff that we have not been able to do all winter. My poor filthy minivan is now a lot cleaner on the outside. In fact we actually spent a lot of time today cleaning since it was our family's turn to help clean the chapel. Evan and Harry had fun running around in the church "helping" clean. We gave them dry rags and occasionally they swiped them on something. They were quite entranced by the wringer on the mop bucket and helped squich the mop. We had a lot of good clean fun.

In case you were wondering

Things are getting back to normal. Evan has decided that he really likes the flavor of the Tylenol we were giving him for pain, so he now plays up his non existent pain and then immediately asks for "tummy medicine". I figured out his con when he decided to crawl all over me while I was lying on the couch. The entire time he did not even let out a whimper yet when asked later on to go upstairs he groaned as he got up from the couch and really hammed up the pain. The "tummy medicine" is now officially gone (even though it really is not) and he will just have to suck it up if he gets a twinge now and then.

We went back to church as a family for the first time in three weeks. Harry did not have an issue with his new class the first week, but this week he objected strenuously to it (crying and sobbing very piteously). My husband had to sit with him for the first part of Primary while I taught our class. I noticed them pacing the halls later on when it was the Jr Primary's turn for classes, so I switched with my husband. Harry would not even enter the class room for my husband, but with mommy in tow he warmed up a tiny bit to his class and consented to a little bit of coloring. I am hoping that eventually he will decide that Sunbeams is not such a scary thing and that maybe he could go all by himself.

As far as my gestational diabetes goes I think we are getting an handle on it. I started the insulin while Evan was in the hospital (I felt kind of odd going into the bathroom to shoot up my drugs) but was not noticing a difference in my fasting numbers. I gave it a few more days after Evan got home before calling my OB just to make sure that stress was not throwing my numbers off. My dose and the time I took it changed and that seems to have helped a lot.

I am not very keen on the idea of injecting myself, even with the ultra tiny needle that I am using but I am sucking it up and doing it. I am questioning if I want to go through all this again if we do decide to go for a fourth child like we had planned. It does not help things that I am entering what I call the Old Lady stage of my pregnancy. I am showing a lot and starting to slow down. I get hip pain at this stage in the pregnancy and that makes walking not very fun, but if I don't walk my hip pain is worse. I can't just sit up rapidly any more and have to take it slowly in stages. Rolling over in bed at night is also starting to get difficult. A big up side is that my heart burn is not nearly as bad as it was with my other pregnancies. With Harry I had it so bad I had to take Prilosec or I could not eat. This time around it is more occasional and easily treated with Pepcid.

One fun thing we did this weekend was get the boys bunk beds. We have been looking around for a while now and a guy at my husband's work reccomended a store in a nearby town. We found a really sturdy set for a very nice price and even managed to get mattresses for a really nice price to boot. Getting everything home in our minvan was a lot of fun. We had planned on stopping to eat lunch out but since we kind of blocked the kids in the back with the cargo we ended up just eating at home. The boys love thier new beds and Harry is thrilled to be sleeping on the top. This set comes apart into seperate beds but the boys were so enamored of the idea of bunk beds that we decided to put them together for now, but if Harry gets wild with them then we will seperate them so there is less chance of injury. I will post pictures later when I actually take them.

Hospital pictures

We are moving back to normal (whatever that is). Evan is still adjusting to the fact that I am not here at his beck and call any more and Harry is adjusting to not being the only kid at home any more. There has been a lot of fighting and a ton of whining (I want to cover my ears and hide). It helps that Evan is finally over his poop issue, which I am sure was causing him a lot of discomfort. I kept telling him that he would fell better once he went, but being 4 he did not believe me. Thankfully we have turned the corner on that one so sharply that we are now having the opposite problem. I never thought I would be so obsessed with poop before I became a parent.

Here are some pictures from the hospital. I did not take many, I kind of forgot that I even had my camera with me.

Here is a cheerful pre-op Evan. They had a lot of toys for the kids to play with. One was a Transformer which really weirded Evan out. He would not play with it when it was in robot form and kept telling me that cars did not have hands.

A not so happy one day post op Evan. He did not like that the nurse and I kept dragging him out of bed to walk around. This was taken after he was finally allowed to be on a nasal cannula for his oxygen. Before that he had a mask which pissed him off to no end. They wanted the mask because it worked better on Evan since he tends to be a bit of a mouth breather. It was jut not worth the battle so they changed it to the cannula. Note the milk shake that was in his hand. It was his first meal post op, I wanted him to have something tempting and easy to throw up should his stomach object to eating.

My husband and Harry visited on Monday. Harry was quite interested in the bed and Evan was more than happy to show him how it worked. Evan loved making the bed go up and down repeatedly. I had to be quite firm with him at times since he preferred playing with the bed to napping.

Aaaaand the sock is off!

Harry thought it would be fun to take his socks off and was quite put off when I made him keep his on.

We are home!

I am exhausted and my back is killing me, but I am oh so happy to be out of the hospital. Evan is equally as thrilled for the most part, although he is sad to leave the frequent TV watching and constant attendance of mother behind. We still have a slew of follow up appointments in the next few weeks but it will not be long before our lives are back to semi normal.

Update

We are doing better. Friday after I wrote my update I talked to the Pacemaker Cardiologist about my concerns about Evan's pain. She came up with a great plan that involved a combo of Oxy, Tylenol and a litocane patch to numb the area around the incision in his side. He was also allowed some morphine as needed. This seemed to help a lot and the day was relatively pain free.

We got him out of bed to help speed the healing process along. He did need some morphine after our expeditions but otherwise was quite comfortable. He was also allowed to start eating again, which I am sure helped his mood some. We were supposed to be transferred to the floor but they were short on beds. Last night was filled with a whole lot more sleep than the night before it.

We got to transfer this morning and are happily situated in our room. All the rooms here are single, so we do not have to share or worry about loud roommates. He also got his chest tube removed and they stopped giving him oxygen. The chest tube removal was icky but he looked a million times better after. He is a lot more willing to move around and get out and about. I am working on the nurse in hopes that they will remove one of his two IVs ( he has one in each hand).

Got to go but will write more later.

Doin time

Evan's pacemaker surgery went well. He went under about nineish and was out by about 11:30. His lead was replaced and instead of going through his chest again the surgeon went through his left side. He was concerned about the possiblity of scar tissue from is previous surgeries.

Evan spent most of the day tranked out on morphine and oxycodone but the doctors became a bit concerned about his breathing and the fact that Evan was having a hard time going pee. Honestly I am not sure how much of the pee issue is him rigidly adhering to his potty training or if it is truly an issue from the painkillers. They cathed him to empty his bladder and are considering leaving one in if he continues to have issues.

Last night was tough because of pain control issues. The oxy alone was not enough to get him comfortable enough to sleep so another painkiller (fentynil ?? not sure of spelling) was finally ordered despite his bladder issues. It was quite heartbreaking seeing him in such pain and not being able to do much about it. Sometimes kids with incisions in the side are given epidurals for the pain, because it is a lot worse than if they go through the chest but because Evan is going to be getting back on his blood thinners an epidural was nixed due to the possibility of bleeding issues. Pain control seems to be something that is tough with a kid like Evan. Morhpine and other related drugs can depress breathing which Evan depends on to help pump his blood. Motrin and other related drugs can mess with his INR and cause bleeding issues. That leaves only a few painkillers that he can take and sometimes they are not as effective as the others.

The hospital here is quite nice. The PICU is huge compared to the one we went to in California (although to be fair they did recently move to better updated quarters). Evan's room actually has it's own bathroom, so I don't have to leave the unit every time I need to go. All of Evan's nurses have been very nice and helpful. I have not seen much of the doctors which is something I really miss about California. We got a lot more face time with them and they were very good about coming around and explaining the plan for the day. The surgeon that did Evan's surgery was nice enough but he was not nearly as compassionate and caring as the surgeon that did Evan's first heart surgeries.

Today we are hoping that Evan gets moved from the PICU and into the cardiac stepdown unit. I am also hoping that we get a good handle on his pain so that he can get the rest that he needs to heal.

Lots of stuff

Surgery is on for tomorrow morning. It was a really long day today filled with a lot of "fun" stuff. One really nice thing was that we got to stay in one room for most of it and only had to leave the room for the chest x-ray. They also had a lot of nice Car's related toys that kept Evan entertained for the majority of the time. I was bored out of my mind but did not dare bring my knitting.

The surgeon has decided to replace the lead so we will likely be in the hospital until Sunday. Instead of going through Evan's chest he is going to go through the side. He felt that the scar tissue from his previous surgeries would probably cause more trauma than was really needed to replace the lead. I am really keeping my fingers crossed that we have an uneventful stay so that my husband does not have to take any more time off of work. His current shop is a lot more sticky about stuff since his bosses are civilians and not military.

While I was gone my OB's nurse called and talked to my husband for a bit. I called back later and got educated over the phone about injecting the insulin (since there was no way I would get in any time soon to get face to face instruction). It was kind of redundant, since I was already well aware of how to do a sub-q injection having had a lot of practice when Evan was on Lovenox. I got enough to insulin at the local pharmacy to last me until the home health care place that is handling my testing supplies can process everything and get me my drugs mailed to me.

Frustrating

I am seriously frustrated with my OB right now. I got shoved into the first diabetes education session that they could schedule despite what it would mean to my schedule (I ended up rescheduling it because there was no way I could make it) and yet when it comes to finding out if I will be using insulin or not all I get is delays.

After the consultation with the dietitian that I wrote about earlier i was given the impression that things would move quickly. So I was surprised when I went in for my appointment last Thursday when I found out that the OB was not even in. I spoke with the nurse and found out that the OB's kids were sick but that I would find something out on Friday. No call happened at all that day and then of course was the three day weekend. I call this afternoon to see what was going on and after a bit of runaround I find out that the doctor is not even expected to be in until this Thursday!

I really would have appreciated some sort of notification instead of having to call and dig it out of the staff. I am waiting for some important information so a courtesy call is only polite in my book. I ended up hanging up on the receptionist and bursting into tears thanks to my lovely hormones.

I would like to clear up my last update a bit. After a lot of back and forth between the doctors it was decided to not admit Evan to the hospital prior to his surgery, so we are not in the hospital at the moment. I realized that after I talked to my mother last night I had not even mentioned that here. The good news is that when I tested him INR this afternoon that it was the 1.5 that the surgeon wanted, so it is looking like we will not have to change our already tight schedule any more. I am going to be so glad when this is over. I am getting really tired of doctors at the moment.

Sigh

Well Evan's pacemaker surgery has been pushed back a day. When we did his INR test at home this afternoon the results were a bit too high for the surgeon's liking so he wanted to give Evan more time for his INR to fall. I plan on trying to get Evan to eat as many green leafy vegetables as possible so that we don't have to move his surgery date again.

I love warm buns!

Back when we were shopping for our minivan I though it was so silly that all cars with leather seats came with seat warmers. After all, how long did it really take to warm the seat with your own body heat?

Now that I live in Kansas, where it can get fricking cold, I am deeply in love with my seat warmers. I think I would marry the person that invented them if I was not already married. I would do horrible things to anyone that threatened to take my precious away.

When you are shivering waiting for your car to warm up nothing is nicer than feeling your seat warm up underneath you. It is the first thing to heat up in the car. I love you seat warmers!

BTW in case you can't tell it is crazy cold here in Kansas again. The bank singn as I drove by read -3!

Ah well

Last week I talked with a dietitian and got educated about how my gestational diabetes would change my life. I got a good meal plan that (for the most part) is easy to handle and very doable. I was getting really good numerical results from my blood sugar testing but I was also having ketones in my urine (which meant that I was not getting enough carbohydrates in my diet). Upping the carb content of my evening snack resulted in fasting blood sugars that were too high. I can't cut back on the carbs because I and the baby need them, so now we are moving on to insulin.

I had hoped to avoid needing medication and I was so hopeful that I could lick this thing with diet alone, but my body says otherwise. It is looking like I will only need one shot in the evening before I go to bed, but of course that final determination is up to my OB who I talk with on Thursday. It will not be a big deal to poke myself one more time when I am already jabbing my poor fingers four times a day.

As a bit of an aside, Evan was very interested when he saw that I had to poke my finger. The process is very like the testing I do on him to check his blood thinning levels. He has even asked me to do it again just to amuse him. Both boys love to gather around when it is finger poking time and watch in fascination as I do my thing. I am pretty sure they are convinced that I am doing it for them.

The hardest part about the new diet had been the need to change my breakfast habbits. The placental hormones are strongest in the morning, so that is when insulin resistance is highest. That means that my bowl of cherrios and large glass of milk are gone and have been replaced by one piece of toast, a small glass of milk and eggs (which gives me wicked bad heart burn). Milk has been the hardest hing for me to restrict, I have discovered that I was the main milk drinker in the house because we are not going through it nearly as fast as we used to. I am looking into sugar free drinks because I am getting very tired of plain water and I refuse to invest my carb servings into juice because you get so little juice per serving. I still get some milk, but not nearly as much as I used to drink.

The main thing that is motivating me is the hope that I will not have another 10 pound baby. I would be nice to be avle to use some of the newborn sized clothing that I have stashed away. Evan and Harry were into 0-3 months at birth.

How not to make a good first impression

Evan's pacemaker surgery is fast approaching. I had not heard from the surgeon's nurse about when to stop Evan's coumadin so I called the office to see how they wanted it done. Every practice is slightly different so I did not want to just rely on my memory of how his previous surgeon did things.

I called and apparently they had no idea that he was even on blood thinners!!! I was more than a bit flabbergasted at that bit of news. The secretary tried to excuse it by telling me that they had not received his records from his current cardiologist, but I pointed out that he has been on blood thinners for a good long while so it would be in the records from California too. Sigh.

The good news is that they are now aware that Evan is on blood thinners. The bad news is that this office likes to admit children on blood thinners before the procedure and put them on heparin (which has a shorter lifespan in the blood stream) . So while the procedure is not scheduled until Wednesday, Evan and I will be headed up to the hospital sometime Monday. Fun times! I really missed eating crappy hospital food and trying to keep a bored and very healthy child entertained. I even get the fun of trying to sleep in a hospital room with all the noises and interruptions that happen.

Fooey

Gah! I hate heart burn. That is all.

Hey look something shiny!

To distract you from me updating about how I am doing with my gestational diabetes (I don't want to jinx anything) I am going to tell you something funny that Evan said this morning. I was peeling a hard boiled egg as part of my breakfast. Evan saw me and told me that I should let the chick out of the egg. I laughed but had to think of a way to explain to him about how this egg was unfertilized. I ended up telling him that some eggs had chicks and some did not and this was an egg with out a chick.

Sunday Cuteness

Today was Harry's first Sunday as a Sunbeam. It is strange to think that both of my boys are old enough to be in Primary with the "big" kids and are no longer the "babies" that are in Nursery. My husband and I got to meet our new class. Previously we were teaching the 11 turning 12 boys but since there were only going to be 2 this year we got the girls too. It should be an interesting but fun class. Some of the girls could potentially get the teenage attitude but I think that they will behave during class if I can keep it fun and interesting. the boys I know will be no trouble since I am friends with both of their mothers. They know I would have no issue with talking to their moms if they misbehaved.

I was trying to take a picture of just Harry but Evan decided to get in on the action too.

Harry looking introspective and serene.

I tried for a smile picture but he would not take his fingers out of his mouth and we were running late.

Happy New Year

We rang in the new year in our typical way, everyone asleep except for me. 2008 was a very interesting year for our family, it was not bad but at times it was quite stressful. It has been interesting adjusting to our new home and missing all our old friends. At times I have been more than a little homesick. All those stresses came with good things though. It was exciting becoming first time homeowners when we had previously thought we would end up only in areas where we could not afford a house. My husband's promotion has given us extra breathing room and a chance to pay off our debts early.

We are hopeful about 2009. We know we will welcome a new addition to our family in the spring. Hopefully we will not have to move yet again this summer. Evan will start kindergarten this fall, which is going to be hard for me since I just can't get my mind around the fact that my first baby is now old enough for school.

I am pregnant so I am taking it easy on the resolutions. I am only setting one which is taking more pictures of the kids. I discovered when I went to assemble our yearly picture calender that the latter part of the year was very thin when it came to picture selection and I want to change that for the upcoming year. Here is a start.

Sigh

During all the craziness of the holidays I had to do my oh so lovely glucose test to determine if I had gestational diabetes. I have quite a few of the risk factors. Having sailed through the tests on my previous pregnancies I blithely assumed that the results would be the same. Sadly they were not. After the delightful fun of starving and then hanging around the lab for 4 hours (they were running behind so the test started later) I got the diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes.

I have the feeling that I was borderline with my other pregnancies but that my holiday eating tipped the balance for the tests this time around. Mostly this means that I will have to be very careful about what I eat, so if I am good it should not be too big of an impact. The part of all this that really has me frustrated is that it means more appointments. I am heartily sick of waiting rooms. I have been spending a high amount of time in them of late and only have more to look forward with Evan's upcoming pacemaker surgery.

And now for something a bit more upbeat. We have been enjoying nice "warm" weather of late. I took the kids to the zoo for the first time in months and we did not freeze. All we needed was our jackets to keep the chill off. This warm weather has given me an infusion of extra energy. I actually felt like cleaning this morning instead of wanting to crawl back into bed and sleep.

Christmas pictures for the Grandparents

We had a nice quiet Christmas. The kids got way more toys than they needed but that was to be expected. Our Home Teacher invited us and some other people to his house to eat waffles with ice cream, a tradition that they started a few years ago. It was neat to be able to get to know some people in the ward a bit better. We suspect that the family that has been anonymously leaving parts to a nativity scene on our door step during the 12 days preceding Christmas was there also. they drive a dark blue mini van and we would frequently see one drive past when we went outside do get the next piece.

What is in the box?

Animals! Harry knew all the names of the animlas except for this one. I need to look it up so I can figure out what it is.

What is this?

A car carrier truck! This is one of Evan's favorite things, a vehicle that you can put other vehicles in.

One of the coloring books that I got the kids. We kept gifts very minimal on our part, but they really needed more fun pictures to color.

A pretend cookie making kit. I have been eating a lot of pretend cookies which are the best kind since they don't have any calories.

The winner of the Most Annoying Gift of Christmas goes to this one. It was a gift from good old Auntie H (who should she even get married and have kids will be open for massive retribution on my part). Not only was it excessively loud (what is up with the high volume on kid's toys?) but my husband had to go to the garage several times to even find the right screwdriver to get the stupid thing out of it's packaging. The only thing that saved it from a emergency batteryectomy was a mute switch that turned off the music and talking part. It can still drive much to Evan's delight.. Those batteries are a goner if the kids ever figure out that switch.

Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Big surprise

Today I had another ultrasound to check the development of the baby's heart but they also looked at the whole body to make sure everything was developing as it should. I found out that we were having........






a........









boy. Big shock huh???

The ultrasound tech asked me if I was ok with that and I told her yeah since I already had all the clothing ect. It is not like I can exactly exchange the baby at the baby store any way, so either way I would have to deal with what I had.

Now the hard works starts since we will have to come up with a name for this kiddo.

My harrowing snow adventure

Yesterday it snowed all day and we got several inches of snow. We were supposed to head to the mall for playgroup but in the process of cleaning the snow off my car I dropped my keys and lost them. I think that was Heavenly Father's way of warning me that I should not go out driving in the snow especially with kids in the car.

Later that evening was a cookie exchange that I had been looking forward to. Boy Scouts was canceled for my husband so I got to take the minivan to the activity. I thought it was heavy enough to handled the still unplowed roads. Apparently it was not since it could not make it back up the hill that was near the house where the activity was being held. I was not the only one that was having trouble and the host's husband ended up helping several of us by towing our cars up the hill.

I am still nervous about driving but have a ton of things to do all week. I just wish the city was better about keeping the roads clean and ice free. In Utah there really was no such thing as driving in snow, the roads were very promptly plowed and sanded. Growing up I never understood why my parents dreaded snow but now I know exactly why they hated it.

Easy

I have a crazy fun filled week ahead of me. There are a lot of activities and appointments packed into a short period of time. I think that I have managed to get a handle on things but I may be white knuckling it. Added to this is the fun icy cold that is Kansas at winter time. We went grocery shopping this morning and it was 7 degrees F outside and that was not accounting for the wind chill which temperature at below 0. Evan had the nerve to ask if he could stay outside and play when earlier he had been whining about the cold. I had half a mind to let him stay out there for a short time all by himself.

Something that has saved my tenuous sanity and made me seem a whole lot more together than I really am is the discovery that fudge is a seriously easy treat to make. All you need is a bag of chocolate chips, a can of sweetened condensed milk and a small amount of butter. You melt them all together, spread the goo onto wax paper and throw it into the fridge. Two hours later you have a yummy treat to share. I bought some mint and orange extract to add some different flavors to it and have also been digging around in my pantry for leftover things that go well in it. Marshmallows have been the most popular additive so far, but I like the orange walnut batch that I made.

Snow!

Tuesday we had our first significant snowfall of the winter. The boys were pretty excited about the whole thing since this is their first chance to experience the wet and bitter cold that is snow. It was fun seeing them so excited but that fun wore off quickly as the cold penetrated my body. Luckily most of the snow has already melted away and the rest will soon follow after.

Evan's not too sure about the whole snow thing.

Harry jumps right in.

Harry's attempts to make a snowball. It was a rather dry snow, so it was not very good for making things like snowmen.

Evan throwing a snowball that daddy made.

Our back patio turned into a bit of an ice slick. I told my husband that we should make it into an ice rink, but he was not going for it. Harry had fun sliding on it and even laughed when he fell on his bum.

Sunday Cuteness

Evan has this new phrase that he likes to use. Instead of being happy he is cute. It all started one day when I was questioning him about his behavior prior to allowing him out of his room where he was being punished. "I am not sad, I am cute now" was his reply to me asking if he was done whining and crying about some imagined slight. This phrase has made it into his regular vocabulary and I find it rather.. well... cute.

Yesterday my husband's work had a kid's holiday party. It was mind numbingly boring for the adults, but the kids had a fun time. Santa even came and brought books (secretly supplied by the parents) for the kids. They even had some people doing balloon animals for the kids. With the amount of popping that was going on I could tell there was a balloon animal slaughter going on.

They got to "decorate" their own cookies which was basically spreading frosting on the cookie and then adding sprinkles.

Evan with his green lips after eating his green cookie.

The big guy himself. He stopped and talked to many of the kids Evan included but some guy got in the way of my shot of him talking to Evan. Santa was played by a guy that my husband works with and according to him that belly is not padding. Also that other kid standing next to Harry was quite the.. um how shall I say it?.. "active" little boy. My husband sometimes moans about the kids misbehaving but they were perfect angles compared to that kid.

I will have more pictures of the boys and Santa but not right away. There was a photographer at the event so I have to wait to get the close up pictures. Harry surprised me and actually sat on Santa's lap this year instead of freaking out like he did last year.

Grr!

Putting up the Christmas decorations was fun and exciting. I thought that I had properly impressed upon the children that they should leave the ornaments on the tree and that the lights were off limits. Yeah I know, funny huh?

Yesterday while I was doing something else I heard "Lights are broken, owie!" which of course set off my mommy danger alarm. I got Evan to show me what was wrong. He had broken one of the bulbs of the lights on our Christmas tree. I was steaming at that point but also searching his hand for any cuts. Thankfully there were none and he earned a trip to his bedroom until dinner time. I unplugged the lights and picked up all the glass that I could find.

Not too much later I hear "Lights working" which also set off my mommy danger radar. Harry, who had witnessed all that had happned to Evan, had plugged the lights back in. Steaming again Harry earned himself a trip to the bedroom until dinner time (which with all the giggling I kept hearing was probably not much of a punnishment).

I had reached my limit of frustaration and promptly after dinner removed the lights from the tree. We now have a light less tree which removes a lot of the prettiness from the tree. Sigh. I know that the kids are very sad about not being able to see the lights on the tree too, so maybe the lesson that we do not touch things that mommy and daddy tell us not to will sink in. I am not holding my breath though.

Brrr!

I am in a bit of a blah mood. Life is chugging along with it's little twists and turns. I am over the majority of the whole morning sickness although there are certain things that send my stomach into flip flops, often rather suddenly. Mostly it is exhaustion that I am fighting. I wish I had the energy to do more with the kids, but mostly I want to sleep. It is not like I can take them to the park or anything with out freezing (not that they mind).

Speaking of the cold, it is kicking my bum in a huge way. We made a half hearted attempt to keep our lovely winter gear that we owned when we lived in Utah, but with all the moves we ended up getting rid of a lot of it. I still have my warm coat, but the icy wind of Kansas cuts through it like I was not wearing much of anything at all. I think the boys are decently outfitted but they don't really complain about the cold, so it is hard to tell. I know about cold, but I have really grown soft after six years of not having much of a real winter.

I am trying to save energy by keeping the house at 68 degrees. I did it fine in California. I could even wear short sleeved shirts in the house at that temprature. Here in Kansas my thrifty ways are not working out so well. I am freezing my bum off. I have to pile on the clothing to even feel a tiny bit thawed out. I don't get it, it is the same temprature but some how it feels so much colder.

I also am rather low on maternity long sleeved shirts which is only adding to my frustrations with the cold. When I was pregnant with Evan a nice friend of mine lent me her collection of maternity clothing, so coming into this pregnancy I had a grand total of one long sleeved shirt and one sweater that I found last summer at a thrift store (it is horribly frumpy but very warm). I am also lacking the shopping resources I had when it came to maternity wear, so I have resorted to wearing large men's shirts. They may not be shapely or trendy but they cover my body and keep me warmish.

Sometimes I really wish I was a bear so that I could snuggle up in my cave and sleep the winter away. When I woke up the baby would be out of the tiring newborn stage and into the toddler age.

Thanksgiving day report

We had a fun thanksgiving. My husband's cousin and her family came over for a visit and helped entertain us. We also had the missionaries over, so we had a very full table.

There were a few spots of trouble. My husband sliced off the tip of one of his fingers so his cooking abilities were rather compromised. Luckily he found the bit of skin before it accidentally got mixed in with our stuffing. I was able to hold my nausea in check long enough to put the herbed butter rub under the turkey skin. I forgot to make the mashed potatoes but as was discovered later all but 4 of them had become rotten, so there would not have been enough for everyone any way. I also forgot to put out my homemade cranberry sauce.

Despite all that there was plenty of food to eat and leftovers galore. One of my ulterior motives in inviting the missionaries was so that I could send them home with as much of our leftover food as I could. I hate having piles of turkey left over. I am not all that fond of it in the first place so being forced to eat it months later is torture. We had enough that my husband could have turkey sandwiches for a few days and we could have a meal of turkey noodle soup. That was enough for me.

Poor Evan had a rather tough day today. He tore one of his fingernails in church so we had to scare up a bandage to keep the blood from dripping on everything. Later on in the evening he was goofing off and tripped into the laundry bag holder. It was not until I saw blood seeping though the bottom of his blanket sleeper that I realized why he was making such a fuss about his toe. He had cut the bottom of it somehow. Another band aid soothed him.

We put up our Christmas tree today. It has really been fun watching the kids change from infants who could care less about holidays to kids that are excited about the whole thing. I am having a hard time with this Christmas simply because I have no idea what to get them for presents. They already have so much stuff that I feel like I don't want to get them anything because it will just add to our burden of stuff. I am thinking that I may get them each something small and then donate something bigger to charity so that those with out will be able to share in our good fortune.

Thankful!

I hope that everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. My husband's cousin and her family are over for a visit, so we are going to be busy all weekend.

I thought I would share something that I am super thankful for.

On Tuesday we went to see Evan's pacemaker doc for a followup to check on his battery life. Apparently she was already planning on him having it replaced very soon and had already presented his case to the surgery folks. I was quite taken aback as last time we talked I did not get that there was any sense of urgency when it came to the need for a new battery and possible lead change. Maybe I just had my head in the sand or something.

Leaving the office we thought that it was going to happen December 16th which was already a very full week for me and a bad week for my husband to have to take off of work. I was feeling rather grumpy mostly because of all the rescheduling of appointments that I would have to do to free up enough just in case he has to stay a few days in the hospital time.

The next morning I got a call from the surgery office to schedule his surgery. The lady on the phone presented me with a number of days in January and gave no explanation as to why the later dates were suddenly opened up. I did not probe further into it because I was thrilled that a better time was offered to me when it had seemed so firm earlier.

So, January 20th Evan will be getting a new pacemaker generator and hopefully a new lead. Putting in the new lead will be a much more invasive procedure, but this lead has been giving us headaches for a while now. This is the same one that was acting up after his surgery and drained that battery. Really he should not be needing new batteries so soon, they are supposed to last 3-5 years instead the paltry 2 that this one has lasted.

Three!

It is hard for me to believe, but Harry is now three years old. Time sure flies! It is amazing the things he can do now and how much comprehension he has gained. On Friday I bought him an Elmo balloon for his birthday. It rather rapidly deflated much to his dismay so I promised that as soon as daddy got home and we had dinner I would go to the store and get him a new one (I returned the old one as it was obviously defective). He was so very calm an mature about the whole ordeal. He was thrilled with his new balloon and calmly accepted that he could not take it to bed with him until he realized that I meant what I had said and then he sobbed like the two year old he still was. That sure beats the almost instant temper tantrum of a toddler, that is for sure.

Harry's birthday cake made by yours truly. It is based on one that I had when I was about his age. Harry had been strongly campaigning for some Elmo cupcakes that they have at Sam's Club, but I did not see the need for 24 icky cupcakes with gross frosting since it was only going to be family. I thought that this would be a fun and much tastier alternative.

My husband had to help with the candle, Harry is still not a very good candle blower outer.

Cookie seems a bit worried about something, I am not sure what though.

Mmmmm.... eyes.

Evan chowing down. He is quite excited for his birthday to come even though it is still months away. He wants an Elmo balloon too.

This is how I often feel, poor momma bear.

Wow!

Picture # 1 was pretty easy to guess. Those are the wee little feet. Picture #2 is the femur. Teh technician tried to get hands and arms but the baby was keeping them tightly crossed and they were hard to get pictures of. Picture #3 is supposedly the baby's face. The technician seemed pretty confident of that, but to me it looks like there is an alien inside me.

I just read this article and all I can say is wow!!!

Baby pictures

Today was rather a crappy day and it was topped off by my destroying dinner thanks to my addled pregnant brain. I forgot to make sure we had the right cheese for the lasagna, I totally forgot to get ricotta cheese and it was too late to ask my husband to pick some up at the store as he was already at the store getting me the mozzarella cheese that I needed (we only have one cell phone and he never remembers to bring it with him) and finally I barely avoided burning the top of the dinner thanks to me forgetting to put the aluminum foil over it. The odd thing is that my lasagna hating kids actually ate it and my husband loved it. I didn't, but I guess I will just be happy that others did.

A part of my grumpiness was that my ultrasound showed that I was actually not as far along as my last menstrual period would suggest. My new due date is May 11th. Sigh! I guess that midwife must have been imagining things when she thought I was measuring bigger. At least the dream that I had that I was having twins was debunked as only one baby showed up in the ultrasound. And before you ask, it was waaay to early to tell what sex the baby is. It was hard enough to even get a very good peek at the baby thanks to the earliness of my pregnancy.

I now present to you the amazing gray blob pictures. See if you can guess what each picture is a picture of. The people that get them all right will get an imaginary prize which will be determined later.

Stop repeating me!

Back in the day a great way to drive your sibling insane was to repeat everything that they said. It was delicious fun that was only ruined when the sibling finally stopped talking altogether. Now I am not laughing. Evan is in one of his phases and this phase is him repeating me. Sometimes it is just the last word I say and sometimes it is the entire sentence.

My patience has been getting quite the workout. I find it quite ironic that part of our job as a parent is to teach our children patience and to do that we have to develop an even greater amount of patience than we had previously. If you had an adult at work following you around repeating everything that you said you would go insane and might even have murderous thoughts. You would have the option of talking to someone with higher authority or even quitting your job if the annoyance was great enough. With your kids a higher level of behavior is needed. You can't just quit on your kids or shut them in the room so that you don't have to hear them. It is a good thing that Evan is so cute and lovable.

My mom hates me

Harry got an early birthday package from my parents today. Of course it had to be ripped open right away. Inside were two Sesame Street DVDs and a musical card. Harry was immediately taken by the card, he laughed so hard that I was worried that he would collapse. At first I was amused and thought the card was kind of cute. After a long afternoon of Harry playing that song over and over again I was convinced that my mother was out to get me. My husband became the mean parent and took the card away after being home only an hour. Apparently he does not have the noise tolerance that I have developed.

This card is not the only noisy thing that has been gifted to my kids by my parents. There have been numerous toys that have earned battery removals. I think the most notable was the Tickle Me Elmo that they gave Harry last Christmas. Elmo is quiet most of the time now, but every so often he gets rediscovered and my day is shot. I think that next time we visit I am going to give each of the boys a musical card to play with at grandma's house. I wonder how long they would last.

Oops

In my flutter over our new computer I forgot to post about my oh so delightful (I am being sarcastic here) OB appointment. It same on top of an already crappy day so I kind of wanted to just avoid the whole thing but went any as I had already blown of the previous appointment thanks to my pregnancy brain.

One of the Midwives in the practice did my exam. It was horribly uncomfortable and the Pap smear part was actually quite painful, which has never happened to me before. Yeah it has been very uncomfortable but never painful. Oddly enough before this one I had only had male doctors doing them on me. You would think that a woman would be more aware of discomfort issues.

The best part of the visit was when I got to hear the heartbeat of the baby. Until the baby is big enough to really make it's presence known it really is hard to internalize that there is a living being existing inside of you. It was nice to be able to hear the proof. I will be getting an ultrasound next week to confirm my dates (my cycles are super wonky and I was feeling big for gestational age) so I may have some blurry gray baby pictures to post. Hopefully it will cooperate and be photogenic. Most of Evan's are of his spine and Harry's are not much better.

Nerd girl

One of the things that both my husband and I have in common is our love for computer games. It is probably the only hobby that we both share which is why my husband wants to set up our old computer so that we have two that are working. Any way the point I am trying to make that is we have both been playing with out new toy and it has been wonderful.

Part of the reason he was so motivated to get the new computer built is so that he could play World of Warcraft like the guys at work are doing (a lot of his hobbies seem to be things that guys in his shop are doing). We have both played and beaten the original Warcraft games and were aware of the existence of WoW, but had not wanted to get sucked in. We recently decided to cave in, after all the monthly subscription cost was probably less than what I have spent on yarn and he did just get a raise.

I must say that it is an amazing game and everything that everyone said it would be. Blizzard is one of the top computer game companies out there and they keep on making winners. The user interface it very intuitive so that you can pick up a lot as you go along playing the games. They do a great job of making the games challenging but not so hard that you give up in frustration.

Don't worry I have not forgotten that I have kids, but it hard to remember that I do have a blog. I think that the fact that the game will only run well on the new computer will be a saving grace. I will be forced to share now and then.

Speedy

We got the computer case yesterday and my husband assembled the whole thing in a few hours. I was surprised at how quickly it went together. He just has to download a few updates and we will have a speedy new computer to blog from.

Yipee!

Today did not start out well. The kids thought it would be fun to wake us up at 5 in the morning. My husband shooed them back into their rooms, but I am pretty sure that no more sleeping was done. I was mean and made them stay contained until 7:30 which is their normal waking time.

The day did get better when my husband unexpectedly got some time off work. We went out to lunch to celebrate his promotion which was made official today. When we got back we found a large package on our doorstep. Evan thought that it had cars in it, he seems to expect cars in every package that we get. What it contained was this:



This is our new computer, neat huh? My husband being the super cool computer guy that he is will be building out new computer himself. We are going to get a much nicer and faster computer than we could hav afforded to buy premade. I can't wait to see what it can do.

Sigh

Well the first cold of the cold and flu season is upon us. My husband seems to be hit the hardest with it but no one has escaped entirely. Evan is especially sensitive to snot dripping down the back of his throat and ended up throwing up this afternoon. My morning sickness (that is really evening sickness for me) is getting better, but the smell was almost more than I could handle and it was all I could do to keep it together. Luckily I only had to deal with Evan and his gross clothing. The bulk of it was on the couch which my husband cleaned up. I am really hoping that this kind of thing does not happen when I am home alone, it might end up being more than my poor stomach can handle.