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Home birthing supply kit and Tater preparations.

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I still can’t believe I am a pregnant lady! Spending my days at home doesn’t provide much opportunity for getting dressed up in much more than PJ’s or workout clothes. Naturally I have not been able to see just how pregnant I truly am since I am not getting dressed up and going many places these days.

Today was another story though. I had my 2nd followup chiropractor appointment to attend so I was up, dressed and even put on some light makeup today. I looked like my usual self except for the baby bump (that I am still not used to seeing).

I’ve been on the lookout for the inevitable stretch-marks and have been applying lotions and creams often. Then my mom informs me that they don’t actually appear until after you deliver… Dang! I though I was in the clear since I haven’t spotted any yet. My mom also referred to her breastfeeding is like orgasms thing again too. *sigh* Thanks Mom!

All went well at the chiropractor, looks like my pelvis has stayed in place since the first adjustment on Saturday which is good. I’ll check back again in two weeks just to make sure everything is still in place and feeling good. Thank goodness for chiropractors! My pelvis is happy despite the expanding and loosening of pregnancy, yay!

We’ve resolved to commit to getting the hell out of our current rental ASAP and I am packing up stuff in preparation…

As you can see from the photo I’ve also been working to get my birth kit together with all the necessary supplies and goodies for Tater’s Birth, Pamela (our midwife) gave us a supplies list that we are working on. I don’t have much yet but the birth kit is growing, slowly but surely…

For starters, we were given 2 packs of newborn disposable diapers (for the sticky meconium poop following birth), we’ve also got 3 stacks of free prefold cloth diapers that were given to us but we still need diaper pins and those rubber diaper covers that keep the leaking contained.

We may use the prefolds as burp cloths or  as we would prefer the newer cloth “bumGeneous” one size diapers over the old prefolds but we’ll make due with what we have either way.

We finally found a few containers of regular KY Jelly that we were advised to get for the labor. It seems these days stores only want to sell the “his and hers” or the warming KY Jelly which would just be weird during labor. Finding the regular stuff was pretty hard!

We also got 1 pacifier and 1 bottle through a freebie coupon that our doctors office sent us and I’ve added a smelly candle and a hot/ cold wrap to the birth kit for easing my own possible discomfort. I’ll be bringing my exercise ball for birthing and we’ll also be bringing tons of bedding and towels for absorbing the birthing mess.

We still need tons of simple stuff for the birth that we put on the wishlist like:

Then there is the other odds and ends we are required to get like cotton balls, alcohol, witch-hazel, 4 x 4 gauze pads, heating pad or hot water bottle, betadine scrub, 30” x 40” underpads, a perry or squirt bottle, a large bowl with lid for my placenta, Arnica 30x and all that other good home birth stuff.

Oh and I need a shaved ice maker now that I am loving juice slushies. A juice slushy makes the perfect refreshing, energy packed beverage while in labor, LOL! Some of it is going to be easier to find than others so it is good that we start looking for it all now.

By the way, thanks to everyone for all your emails and helpful tidbits of info! I’ve been given so much helpful advice and so much email support that N and I are pouring though. We’ve been taking notes, adding to our lists and taking it all in. We’re feeling ready for all this thanks to you guys. Now we just need to get out of this crappy house and in to a cleaner, bigger one before Tater comes huh? Maybe if you all harass our landlord… LOL

20 week ultrasound appointment. We're having a…

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[POPUP=IMG1]We got in for our appointment and got some nifty photos of our little one today. We even got a little CD with the photos in addition to the ultrasound printout. N was way excited about our appointment and he is super stoked at the news.

Lets see, I weighed in at 119 today and am super stoked. That is 9 pounds gained since the last appointment and the doctor even remarked at the weight gain being good.



The ultrasound showed that Tater is measuring in the 56th percentile as far as growth goes, which is just above average. All the baby’s measurements came back normal and the head is even a tad small which they think is a good thing since it makes for easier delivery.

My blood pressure was 108/62 which is also normal and all the ultrasound measurements are also coming back as accurate for my estimated due date of June 25th, duh! I know exactly what day we conceived thanks to NFP charting.

Here are the photos we got of little Tater today:

And now for the news you all came here for! Witchypoo was correct in her advice to “break out the tiara”. We are having a girl, a very aggressive and active one! N even wore his new bright, hot pink tie to work today to celebrate the occasion. Look how she is just freely baring the rump to proudly display those obvious lady parts! Better invest in a chastity belt now huh?

We were sure Tater was a boy because of how active and strong the movements were but I guess we just have one tough cookie of a girl. She must be destined to be a soccer player or a dancer or something based upon her kicks and movement, besides look at those calf muscles!

Here is another 4D shot of her face, though she was not happy about the picture taking. See how she is covering her face? Actually, she even rolled over right after this one was captured leaving us with only a view of her back. I guess the ultrasound was bugging her and disturbing nap time.

So there you have it, our first is going to be a little girl. Now we need to pick out a name and add some cute girly stuff to the registries.  It is kind of a bummer to be having a girl though, since all my friends had boys and want to give us their boy stuff, it is all good though. Boy or girl is fine with us and girl it is, yay.

We chatted with the mortgage people today too, they needed more info before they could approve or reject the application. It seems that student loan thing we had to deal with right before the move is creating a unique circumstance for us. Now we are sending over proof of payments on the loan and also some paperwork that outlines the repayment agreement per the collection agency.

Hopefully Obama will do somthing to prevent future abuse and name smearing that many collection agents have gotten away with in the past. It really is a shame that they make it so hard for people to make good on a debt once it is in collections, that just hurts your credit and takes years to correct once it is done.

Wordless Wednesday, Feb 4th 2009

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Nothing like crawling in to bed to find this:

Yeah, I know the picture is microscopic and hard to interpret thanks to some stupid photo file corruption that happen when the photo was captured (thanks for ruining my really funny photo Kodak!).

I’ll try to describe it all for you, see the stain in the bed? See me laughing my ass off? See that yellowish thing in the middle of the stain? No, I did not pee the bed!

It’s one of these greasy buggers under the covers on N’s side of the bed.

N made the funniest face when he saw it, it was a cross between a look of disgust and curiosity.

My reaction “Awe, dang! Sorry babe”, then we laughed hysterically.

You see we had Sonic breakfast burritos yesterday morning and then I got some side cramps so I moved to bed while eating my breakfast.

I had my nifty bed, lap table thing set up and had the food on it while I ate. I don’t like greasy foods touching the bedding and I hate crumbs in the sheets!

The tots that came with the burrito were nasty (thanks Sonic for not cleaning out your fryer grease, my tots tasted like fried cheesecake, chicken and even a little fish all at the same time) so I didn’t finish them. They sat on my table thing while I blogged, I even left the bed a few times to empty the bladder before discarding the remaining food.

I am assuming one of our cats snagged a tot off my plate, tried to eat it, was sorely disappointed (like me) and then buried it under the covers when they decided it was nasty (see Sonic? Even my people food grubbing cats rejected your sick tots! that really says something.).

The best part was N’s face, oh and the grease stain on the sheets is pretty good too!

N wasn’t quite sure what exactly he was seeing when he pulled the covers back. Around here you can find all sorts of nasty surprises thanks to the pets. He wondered if it was poop, pee or vomit but eventually realized it was just old greasy people food under the covers.

It made for a nice good 5 minuite laugh session for us that was sorely needed after our previous discussions that night about how N wont be getting paid paternity leave when Tater is born.

Welcome to the midwest! We're ice storm virgins from the westcoast.

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We are at the OBGYN right now My OBGYN is closed as a result of the level 2 state of emergency Evansville is in thanks to the power outages and road conditions! So I’ve scheduled this post to keep you all occupied until we get home, gather our thoughts and are able to draft up a post about our latest pregnancy news, stay tuned!  Better yet subscribe to the blog so you’ll know when the post goes live first!

Actually, the OBGYN never even tried calling us to inform us of the office closure so we’re not sure when we’ll be rescheduled for the ultrasound, guess we’ll be waiting a while to get news on Tater Tot’s gender… Tater Tot is jumping and kicking all arround as I type this, he too is bummed about the appointment.

Back to the post about our insane storm. Tuesday nights ice storm/ winter weather was pretty crazy for us. Sure we’ve seen our share of several feet of snow and have had driven on slick roads before. We aren’t snow virgins by any means but ice storms are an whole other ballgame, I freaking hate them!

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The beginning of the ice storm. Click the images for a larger view.

Last night after N got home from work we had dinner and were watching TV before bed when we started to hear the cracks and moans of tree branches. Rain was falling and the temperature was also below freezing so that meant everything that got wet ended up encased in layers of ice. The rain kept falling and the wet kept freezing until tree branches were covered in a good 1/2 – 1 inch of solid ice.

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I love how the fallen leaves froze during the storm. It kind of looks like icicles coming up from the ground.

The trees began to sag thanks to the added weight of all the ice. N parked our car out on the street since our driveway is covered by a nice big oak tree that was not looking to sturdy as a result of the ice.

We would hate to have that nice new soft top we just bought for the car to be ripped and destroyed under the weight of a huge fallen oak tree branch! On the other hand parking the car on the street meant it could be smashed by a person sliding along on the slippery road, it seemed road parking was the safer bet.

So we were relaxing and listening to all the unhappy tree groans when the cracks and crashes of the spent tree branches began. One after another branches came crashing down, some down the block or next door. Others came down in our yard and even right on top of our bedroom. We were amazed and shocked all at the same time.

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The first fallen tree limbs in our back yard.

Then the arcing of power lines began. You see when the tree branches come crashing down they often take out utility lines and poles. This results in the most deafening pops and explosions and also illuminates the night sky with blue flashes.

It was a crazy thing for us to experience since we’ve never been though an ice storm before. You see the real scary part of it all is not the loss of utilities for days on end, the poor road conditions or the frigid temperatures. It’s the unpredictable, huge falling branches and trees that are all around your house.

You just don’t know when or where the next branch will come down, you hear crashes against the house and you know if a big enough piece comes down it could very well come through your roof and kill you.

We debated sleeping in the basement or in the hall, you know a more interior room but figured the odds of something coming though our roof were slim. Needless to say we had a pretty sleepless night on Tuesday evening.

It is hard to sleep though the crashes of tree against your roof and the electrical explosions. Thankfully we only lost power briefly at about 2am and nothing came through our roof. Others in the area were not as lucky!

We are though the worst of it all now and are just waiting for the snowploughs to come and for the ice and snow to melt. It is a beautiful day now that all the harm is past. I love the snow! Here are some shots of the area:

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Photos of the aftermath of our January 27th ice/ snow storm in Evansville, IN. A pretty shot of the ice covered tree and the blue clear sky the morning after the storm.

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Debris in the road from our oak tree that couldn’t hold the ice weight.
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See how much ice coated the trees?
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Some icicles hanging from our window awning.
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Here is our bird feeder all covered in ice and snow.

Snow and ice are here but we still have power, woot!

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If you read yesterdays post you know we were supposed to be getting this hellish ice storm and tons on snow according to the forecasters. Once N got to work he heard the news and promptly informed me. They said we would loose lose power (thanks Josh for the typo catch!) and that we should all take steps to prepare for the storm.

Like I’ve said in previous posts people in this town are snow wimps, snow doesn’t happen that often here and is not managed well by the city so I guess it is only natural for them to freak out whenever a winter storm is headed our way.

Anyway we did get some snow and ice, not the 3 inches they said we would though. School is canceled for many and the roads are not looking good. Many people are also getting themselves in to trouble thanks to the weather. Here are some photos I took of the conditions. Just click on them to view a larger image.

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We are still doing fine here in Evansville. The roads are not in good condition and it turns out the city only has like 12 snowploughs so we don’t expect our residential streets to get ploughed at all unlike in Flagstaff, AZ.

Oh and the storm is supposed to last several days so that means we wont get sunshine until Thursday to thaw our residential street. Awesome!

N does have to work today so he’ll be braving the poor road conditions and dealing with all the crazy people speeding around on iced roads. Everyone needs to just slow down and refrain from erratic driving! If you don’t and you hit my hubby while he is driving you are going to have one pissed pregnant lady on your case! Just saying…

Oh and my site host sucks a big one as some of you have noticed. They had some database issues overnight and my sites database was inaccessible as a result. If you stopped by earlier and saw the database server error it is all thinks to them. Get it together Siteocity!

Better late than never- Delurking Day 2009

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Blog lurkers are known as those folks who visit, read and then run. They are either too shy to say anything, they are blog stalkers who don’t want you to know they are reading or they simply have nothing to say about what you’ve just talked about cause it was a boring post.

Delurking Day 2009 was 1/12/09 but I missed it in my excitement over birthing at The Farm and all. Thanks to Hotfessional and Juggling Life I learned of delurking day much like how N and I realized we were being legally married on halloween, too little to late.

Anywho, the idea of delurking day is to get blog readers who don’t comment to fess up and leave a comment below so we know they are around here and in the loop.

Some of you are related to me, some of you see me in person from time to time or know me form the past, some of you have never met me face to face but have built a bond through blogging. Either way you are sharing in my life by being a regular reader of my blog and that is important to me. Now I am calling you out and challenging you to speak up and delurk just for this one day.

This blog gets anywhere from 200- 300 hits per day (except for Christmas Day) and an average of 5-18 comments per day. That means quite a few people are lurking, like more than 100 of you!

If you are reading this post expose yourself! Simply post a comment below saying hello, you don’t have to have a blog to comment, just type your name, email address (don’t worry it wont be publicly displayed) and your comment. Lets see how many lurkers come out of the wood work today…

Also, Donna B. tagged me for a meme this week:

On her blog she said it was “a very non-important meme. (Is that redundant?) Cassandra at Villainous Company calls it a crappy meme, but I’ll not go there.”

The rules are as follows:

  1. Link to the person that tagged you.
  2. Post the rules on your blog.
  3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
  4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
  5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

And now my 6 not important tidbits of info for you:

  1. I have a nice mole type freckle in my left armpit, so does my mom. We share many of the same freckle markings. Strange huh? This armpit freckle/ mole is hard to shave around without cutting the darn thing off, luckily since my mom has one too she showed me the shaving tricks at a young age so I am good.
  2. Speaking of shaving, I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs until I was in middle school and I had some long ass blond leg hairs that everyone teased me about. Heidi do you remember this?
  3. All through middle school and even high school I would have a package of powdered doughnuts (or chocolate if they were out of powdered) and a soda for my lunch. I would also have a soda and a giant warm cookie everyday for breakfast throughout high school. Right now I am craving powdered doughnuts but have none, I’ll settle for a bag of warm microwave popcorn instead. There is a glimpse of what I’ll eat when I don’t actively try to have a healthy diet.
  4. I dated a guy for 4 years back in high school, we broke up because he wanted to “experiment” and all that jazz. I am pretty sure he is still experimenting… with penis… Nice huh? Luckily I met N shortly after the breakup with the gay guy and the rest is history…
  5. I hate when my foods mix on my plate. The contaminating of flavor really bugs me. N likes to eat several things at once like a bite of meat mixed with some veggies. I think it ruins the flavor of each individual items when you combine them, unless you are supposed to combine them like in shepherds pie or something.
  6. I am a SAHM- to be and my daytime TV consists of Desperate Housewives. I am not caught up to the current season so I am watching like 2 recorded episodes a day to get caught up eventually. I DO NOT like soaps at all and can’t stand talk shows or reality shows (except The Bad Girls Club)… I am not much of TV fan, why do we pay $70.00 a month for satellite again?

Okay so there you have it my 6 not important tidbits of info for you to chew on. I am tagging: Heidi, Becky, Janelle, Krystal, Connie, N and Witchypoo. Now that I just shared all that info you need to delurk okay? Lets see if we can get the comment count on this post to exceede 20 comments!

We love to travel (even though it is always insanity) and can't wait to get away this weekend!

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After spending most of the morning cleaning like a mad woman I think it is time for a nap! One of N’s coworkers is watching over the house and the pets while we go to our prenatal appointment at The Farm so I wanted to have the house clean, you know since an outsider would be in it and all.

Plus, I am real particular about the state of the house when I return from trips. I like to have vacuuming done, dishes washed, laundry done and everything straightened/ decluttered. I want to leave the place super clean because I know that while we are away the cats are going to go crazy.

Every single time we go away the cats tear the house up. They’ll knock over plants, vomit hairballs and food all over the carpet, they even find people food to consume (like bread, chips or cereal) and of course everything that was left on a flat surface finds it’s way to the floor before we return.

The pets make quite a mess for us to deal when once we return from our trip, this is why cleaning the house before we leave is important. It means less crap to deal with when we return.

So we cleaned a ton today, picked up the rental car and are ready to depart for the appointment this weekend. I am actually kind of excied to spend a weekend out and about. Back in the day, oh about 7 years ago, N and I used to travel ALL the time.

One month after I started dating him he took me on this romantic trip to San Diego that he compleatly planned. I had no idea what to expect from the trip but he sure had it all worked out. We stayed in a room with a giant whirlpool tub (of course we had champagne and goodies while in the giant bubble bath), he took me to a location where one of Maralyn Monroe’s movies was shot, it was this beautiful hotel on the beach, we did lots of fun stuff on that trip and best of all he arranged it all and surprised me with it.

That was the start to our love for traveling. Since then we have done all sorts of other traveling. Some notable times were the week long road trip to move out here oh and we’ve camped up the pacific coast highway and were almost attacked by a bear.

Speaking of that week long road trip, while I was looking back at the archives I was amazed at how much was going on during that trip! Did you read the whole 2 week series of “edge of your seat” drama? Here is a recap for you. We loaded 13 living beings (5 cats, 1 dog, 2 birds, 1 bunny and 4 people) in to our 1970’s Winnebago for a 1500 mile trip from Arizona to Indiana.

Anyway, I am totally looking forward to this weekend. I doubt it will be as eventful as our road trip to move out here was but it will be so nice to get out and to see some new sights! Got any suggestions about waht we should see along the way from Evansville to Nashville? Hope you all have a great weekend.

Weekly Winners – December 29th – January 4th

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This is the first attempt at Weekly Winners that I have made on this blog. All photos were captured using my new Kodak CD1013 that refuses to turn on when I need it. These Weekly Winners aren’t stunning examples of mad photography skills like the shots Lotus takes. Mine are just stunning glimpses of day to day life in my house. Enjoy (but pay no attention to the mess okay?)!

Don’t you just hate not being able to pinch off that last piece of poo?

Dragging your butt from side to side across the bathrom floor is not the optimum way to finish your business but hey, some just have to make due right?

Do you see the long, dark hair in the factory sealed package of salmon?

Jack, out kitty has a real bad habit of turning and running before he surveys the area. This results in him running in to the corners of walls and hurting this same spot time and time again. How many times does a cat have to face plant in to a wall before loosing one of it’s 9 lives?

… And then there are the Wii photos. How about a little Wii Fit Yoga that the dog gets in to?

She was really in quite a trance.

Then there is the spilled coffee thanks to N bashing the Wii controller in to the table following Christmas gif opening. Nice!

I am a blog slacker thanks to the new Wii.

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Today (actually, since it is 1:43am on 12/30 technically I am referring to yesterday) was the 3rd day of N’s 4day weekend. We try to spend as much of the off time together as possible since his work week schedule leaves us little “fun” time.

Anywho, we busted out the new Wii and have been having a blast playing all our games (Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit). We only did the Wii Fit for about 20 minutes each on Saturday, we went through all the strength training exercises and on Sunday morning we were both almost unable to wrench ourselves out of bed.

Personally it has been 7 months since I have vigorously worked out (remember when I performed with my students at a band concert?) so I knew the soreness was inevitable. I just didn’t remember how awful it feels the get back to working out after being lazy for so long. Oh and the extra weight distribution I have going on (in terms of the pregnancy growth on my chest and belly) is not helping me one bit.

Also, our car (the amigo) is still in the shop with the massive repair bill so to get to our scheduled mystery shop today we rode the bus. Our 15 minute obligation took us about 3 1/2 hours when bus travel time was figured in. All in all the bus crowd was not as bad as we suspected it would be (we were expecting something like the downtown phoenix bus crowd that we were exposed to back in Arizona).

Actually, the people we met on the bus today were the most genuine, caring bunch. We were quite surprised. One lady talked about how all she wanted for Christmas was a job, she got her wish and is now working. She doesn’t mind the multiple buses she has to ride and the fact that it takes her so long to get to and from work. She was also so cheerful and nice despite her lot in life. She even wished us a good night as we left the bus.

It is amazing how those who seem to have it the worst are often the most genuine and helping as opposed to those who are doing well in life but are just plain rude, nasty and all caught up in the day to day. Oh, someone did awkwardly and blatantly snap a photo of N with a camera phone while we were on the bus, nice huh? N couldn’t believe it, I am sure seeing someone who is on TV riding the bus is odd to them… Oh well!

Well, it is 2am now. I need to eat my corndog and get to bed already. I am beat! I’ll be trying to get some belly shots, measurment and weight updates posted soon so you can go get your guess figured out for the baby weight pool.

Oh, if you are a frequent lurker (you read my blog but you don’t ever comment) please do consider leaving a comment no matter how small or insignificant seeming. That way I’ll know you are getting the updates and traying in the loop, plus it creates a dialog for us to communicate more! I know many of my family members are readding and staying updated but I am having trouble keeping track of who and when.

Trying to get good at the new Wii is hard!

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For those of us old school video game children getting used to the newest and greatest video game systems is hard stuff. On Christmas night after N got off work we sat down and started playing the new Wii for the first time. Actually, N got to play Wii at a holiday party earlier this month so he had some more experience than me.

The bowling game was easy to pick up on for me but the pool game was hard stuff! Literally it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to hit the cue ball! N was laughing his butt off the whole time and I was getting super frustrated.

The Wii is tons of fun! We haven’t busted out the Wii Fit yet, we’ll have tons to keep us occupied this weekend! Oh, N was nice enough to make a video of me struggling with the Wii for your viewing pleasure, enjoy!

Yay Amigo!

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Remember when I mentioned that our only car (the poor amigo) was getting a new soft top? Well, the soft top arrived yesterday and N got it installed today. Hurray for keeping the cold air out of the moving vehicle!

This is a huge deal for us considering it has been about 4 years since we started talking about getting a new top for the thing. It is amazing what a difference it makes to. The car is actually not uncomfortable to ride in anymore. Before the wind would whistle through the car blowing dust, leaves and other debris in to your face. Also, people riding in the back were not protected from the rain or snow.

They day we dropped my mom and brother off at the airport after the road trip this was how the ride went:

Also, N had coworkers who would gawk and comment about the torn top, in general it was an eye sore and a pain but being our only car we dealt with it until recently! Here are some before and after photos for comparison:

We are so pleased to have the new top on the Amigo, it looks so much better!

Now I am off to take a bath, I have a killer hair headache that I can’t take motrin for thanks to Tater Tot so I am going to soak the pain away.

My reader has been acting up and I am just going through manually clicking through my blog roll now, if I haven’t commented on your blog lately don’t be mad… I am getting there, I promise!

Fleas make me a crazy lady!

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In an attempt to tackle the flea population we bought everyone a flea collar and we spent the weekend bathing our pets. We have the flea carpet powder, the dog has been treated with those flea drops and now we have introduced the flea shampoo and the flea collars. If the flea aren’t gone after this I’ll be surprised.

Fleas are nasty, nasty creatures. If you can’t tell the kind of make me crazy. It is all because of this one encounter N and I shared way back in the day. Right after we began dating N moved in to my tiny 1 bedroom apartment with me. It was in Tempe, Arizona in the dead of summer and our fridge died so I went to the complex management about it.

They wouldn’t be able to get us a new fridge for several days and all our food was spoiling so we were pretty put out. The complex management offered to let use a working fridge in a vacant apartment in the meantime. They could have just moved the working fridge to our place but whatever. So they gave us the keys to the vacant place, we packed up our spoiling groceries and headed over to store them in the vacant place.

As soon as we entered the vacant apartment we immediately were disgusted by how dirty and messy it was left, then we felt things jumping on our legs. We soon realized the place was totally infested with fleas and they were feasting on our fresh meat as we walked across the apartment. It was the most unbelievable thing. We were literally jumping all around and trying to run across the carpet to avoid the fleas.

After entering the flea infested apartment we would shake off and even left our shoes outside our apartment to avoid tracking fleas in to our own place. We had 3 cats at that time so fleas were the last thing we wanted. Unfortunately they were unavoidable.

Inevitably a few made it in to our place and began taking up residence on our clean kitties. We got rid of the fleas after several months and it was not a fun process. We were just thankful that our flea situation never even came close to the nastiness of the vacant, flea apartment. To this day fleas and roaches just make my blood boil (I’ll save the roach story for another day though).

Amazingly bathing the cats was mostly an easy task. Jack, our huge yellow kitty, was the handful of the bunch. He acted like we were trying to skin him or something, it was quite dramatic and man is he strong! The rest of the kitties were cooperative and now everyone smells and looks so nice. Also, they have all stopped itching so I feel good about the flea eradication.

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Want a comb that will electrocute fleas? I found this fun and evil little flea zapper online that ammused me.

Seven weeks pregnant and counting…

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Right now I am a sucker for malted milk balls… Mmmm Whoppers rock! I just made myself a bowl of strawberry banana Jello for later enjoyment and a yummy caramel apple is  too. The eating has not slowed down but the nausea has increased a bit. Still not vomiting though, yay me!

Today is the first day of NaBloPoMo, the idea is to blog every day for 30 days through November. I am pretty sure I can do this but my goal is to write more worthwhile posts through this month.

Pregnancy is something that is in the forefront of my mind so I’ll probably be blogging about that like crazy.

Speaking of pregnancy I caved in and scheduled my first prenatal visit with a regular doctor. The appointment is for November 3rd, it will be nice to get the appointment out of the way but I am not looking forward to starting this whole game with the doctor.

When I called to book my appointment one of the first questions I was asked was “where do you plan to deliver?”. Since only licensed doctors and nurses can legally practice midwifery mentioning a home birth to my prenatal provider is a no-no.

Then I asked some local home birth advocates about how the prenatal are handled when you may or may not choose a home birth. People just lie and string their prenatal doc along about their intended delivery until “firing” them right before the birth. I just can’t believe this is practiced and accepted by so many women, this whole thing is just crazy!

So, instead of just being mad about it all I went ahead a drafted a long letter about how the law should be revisited and sent it off to every single government representative in the sate of Indiana. You can get involved too or even contact your own state representative by using this link.

Anyway, our baby’s heart is already beating but we wont be expecting to hear the heartbeat at our 7 week appointment. Generally the first prenatal exam is fulled with recording family history, blood work and an assessment of the mothers general health.

I expect to hear that I am under weight, that I have a small vagina and a bunch of other obvious observations. We don’t expect to learn much else about the pregnancy. Oh and I just wanted to add that we wont be able to find out the sex of the baby until mid January when I surpass the 18-22 week mark, generally that is when the sexing of the baby is done. It is okay though, we are betting it is a boy. Hey Witchypoo what do you think? Haven’t you been rather accurate about baby sex predictions?

My brain is mush, la, la, la (might be the HGC huh?)

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My mind is in another place right now and has been for several days. I dropped a hint in the last post that nobody picked up on. Days like this just aren’t conducive to being focused and serious in blogging so I am just going to put it all out there and quit trying to pretend like it’s not on my mind. We have called our parents so now we can tell the whole blogosphere! You can click the images to enlarge them.

That is the 3rd pregnancy test I’ve taken. I have been feeling woozy. I am not sleeping through the nights, I am peeing a ton, have been dizzy and super achy in my lower back. I have been keeping a journal of my thoughts each day we tested. Looks like we’re having a baby.

Pregnant? Oct 9th 2008

N and I were discussing my monthly fertility chart yesterday. We use the TCOYF method of natural family planning. It is recommended that both partners take part in the process so N participates by recording my temperature data on the chart every morning. I am in charge of interpreting the chart and then we both make mental note of my fertile days.

Anyway we were discussing my fertility for the month yesterday, N was asking when we should try to “make a baby” so we grabbed the chart and started analyzing. We realized our chance of already being pregnant was good.

I have been feeling fatigued, have been having sleep irregularities, am feeling achy, crampy and have even been feeling nauseous. Today will be 8 DPO so that means I just have to wait 6 more days to know if I am pregnant or not.

Here is the next entry:

October 12th 2008

I took a second pregnancy test, it looked like it had a very faint pink line. The first pregnancy test was very obviously negative, it has a evaporation line but had no color. The second one totally has a faint pink line. Seriously, it is super faint though. Here is a photo:

N and I even had an argument about whether or not it was a pink line, he claims he can’t see the line. According to my chart I ovulated 10/1 so that means I am now 13 DPO.

I have been feeling tired and achy still. In a few days we’ll know for sure if we are pregnant or not. If we are that means that I’ll be having a baby 3 weeks before our projected wedding date.

Now that gets us to today, October 14th 2008 and we have unmistakable double pink line action now. Too bad I don’t have insurance, oh and what are we going to do about the planned wedding and the dress I just bought? Do you think I’ll be able to get married 3 weeks after having a baby? I guess at least I’ll have nice plump boobs.

😮

Oh, and Hailey actually pooed today! It was very little and it was super dry but at least she did it. Now we just have to fix her diet so she stops having pooing issues.

I need to drink after dress shopping at David's Bridal

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Guess who is hitting the boxed wine tonight big time, all thanks to the pain of petite wedding dress shopping… ME!

We went to David’s Bridal and I tried on several dresses. The one we loved was Oleg Cassini CT258 and it was on display in the window of the shop. We looked through all 12 of the dresses in the shop that were in my size.



Nothing was coming close to the dress in the window (which is very similar to the initial Jacqueline Exclusive #9811 dress I found) so we told a consultant we love it and wanted to try it. It was a size 4 and it was about 4-6 inches too big on me. It was also $1100 which is out of our budget.

The consultant pinned the dress to give us an idea of how it would fit me if it were my size, it looked amazing but I was still swimming in it.

They said if we bought it in the next 24 hours they would take $200 off the price with the sale that was only running for another 24 hours. They also offered to order in the size 2 for me but I had to buy it first before knowing if it would fit or look nice.

I am sorry but I can’t stomach paying that much for a dress plus how can I feel good about buying it without trying it on? Additionally I’ll have to pay for alterations on top of the already out of our price range cost of the dress. And there are so many ladies on craigslist selling dresses who were suckered in to buying a dress they loved in a size that the store didn’t have in stock to later learn that the dress didn’t fit them. Ugh, no thanks buddy!

On the positive side I did get to try on a dress that I sort of liked that WAS my size. It was my plan B dress though… It is a David’s Bridal #T8017. The picture on their site makes it look way poofy. When I put it on it looked nice. N and I both liked it but preferr the other style dress much more. Here are the shots of me in it.

Now we are scowering criagslist and contacting bridal shops around us to find either a:

  • Oleg Cassini CT258 in size 2
  • Jacqulin Exclusive 9811 in size 0
  • Forever Yours Intrigue 38223 in a size 1

To all my midwest blogging buddies, if I find one on craigslist in a city near you will you scope it out for me and let me know if it is actually in good condition before I rent a car to drive to the dress and try it on? I would love you forever!

The loading madness begins bright and early!

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We awoke to the sounds of our moving truck being dropped off this morning. The truck driver came a knocking on our door at about 7:30am to drop off our trailer so we can begin loading it. N stumbled out the front door in his underwear to greet the moving truck and advise them of where to drop it off.

After we got the moving truck parked and left in our driveway N crawled back in to bed and we were chatting about how the morning was beginning quite early. Then the home phone rings, he runs to answer it and it’s Qwest (or phone company) asking about how our shut off date is 9/2 but the new residents of this home want to turn on their service today…

After explaining to Qwest that we arent actually leaving this house till 9/1 they understood why our scheduled shut off date was 9/2 and they bumped back the new residents turn on date. N crawled back in to bed again and we snoozed some more.

After having the firts cup of coffee we ventured out to check out our moving trailer, it is a UPS fright truck. Strange huh? It is also freaking huge!

Since we were without a ramp and the truck was a good 4 feet off the ground we opted to tag team the loading. I stayed in the truck and arranged the boxes while N brought boxes out to the truck for me to pack. It worked well and we got quite a bit done!

We got all the boxes loaded that we could then we started loading the furniture. We’re at least half way done with the loading process and we are stoked to have gotten so much done in a day.

Tomorrow we are planning to continue the loading process and to take care of some other errands like visiting the post office, withdrawing cash at the bank and buying last minute grocery’s.

Yesterday N sucessfully drained the sewage tanks for the first time without spraying poo everywhere. He has nicknamed himself the “Sewage King” now, no poop spray is always a good thing right?

Ha! So that is the update for us in a nutshell! Only 3 days till we hit the road.

We've got 12 feet of space, can we make our house fit?

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The moving company was booked and now we are doing a “semi test run” to see if we can make all our belongings fit into a 12 foot long, 8 foot wide and 9 foot tall area cause that is all the space we booked through the moving company.

Yep, we are loading the truck ourselves and we only have a 12 x 8 x9 foot space, that is all we could afford. We are trying to keep this move under $10,000, that means more work for us- yay…

Here is what we have so far, we are up to about 101 packed boxes and we have only used up about 2 1/2 feet of our 8 foot wide space. Look how tall the stacks are! Shoot, should have photoshopped some boobs on, oh well. ;-P

Here is what the stack of boxes looks like when you are laying on the floor resting your poor back muscles.

There isn’t too much more moving preparations stuff we can do. We are just waiting for the RV to come back from the mechanic then we can load our things we won’t be packing (like non-perishable food, linen and extra bedding) and really get busy packing all the stuff that wont be going with us on the RV.

The station goes off the air this Friday so after that N will have much less work stress to deal with in addition to our moving stress. All in all we are ready for this. Indiana here we come!

Sharing the love!

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Ah, I am home again and back to my regular blogging. We are still waiting on the 2nd offer from Evansville, they are supposed to present it today so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to finish up this post that brags about and awards a little love!

Last week Teeni shared some award love with me! I was given the “I love you this much” award and I am just stoked that Teeni loves me and my wide range of interests! Over on her blog she said:

Talina – This girl is one always into something. A contest, a dance routine, making a commercial, you just never know. But amidst it all, she makes time to visit and comment and encourage and teach. With a wisdom beyond her years, she is a pleasure and I’m glad I’ve met her.

Now I am trying to figure out how many people I am supposed to award this to, it appears I need to give this to 10 fabulous blogging people. Man choosing is hard!

Lets see, I want to spread some love to Xbox4NappyRash because I know how hard it is when you are trying to conceive and he just has a way of making it all humorous despite the heartbreak. I have had a great time reading his posts and relating to them. I know he will knock her up eventually!

The next winner is Sarcastic Mom because she posted photo of her unshaved armpits and legs! It was snort worthy and totally made my freaking day, all her posts do! When life gives you lemons take photos of them and write funny posts about them for your bloggy friends. You rock girl!

I totally love reading …and the pursuit of happiness also, she has a great writing style. Every post makes me smile for some reason or another. Good smiles are a great way to spread the love and or feel the love so this blog totally deserves the award.

Oh and while I am awarding blogs that make me smile I can’t forget Someday We Will Sleep because she posted about vibrators and Ben-Wa balls and that totally made me smile and even blush a bit. Also because she just got preggo after much trying!

I also must recognize Whiskey In My Sippy Cup after her Where’s Waldo post about poo filled pants and destroyed lipstick that had me cracking up for about 10 minutes. The photos totally brightened my day and I think her little girl is just the cutest little trouble maker!
I also want to award some love to the rest of my favorite blogs: Memarie Lane, Psychicgeek, Hotfessional, Mommy Needs 5 Minuites and My Second Journal because they provide me with hours and hours on non-stop entertainment! Now go fourth, save the image and award some sweet, sweet loving to your favorite blog!

Old-Fashioned Know How- Do it yourself remedies

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I have always been interested in homemade remedies/ do it yourself remedies. Often times the remedies are cheaper, healthier and easier than conventional remedies plus they make you more self sufficient and they get you back to a simpler lifestyle.

In earlier posts I talked about how to make simple yet helpful cleaning solutions with products you already have in your home. You can remove stains, disinfect, whiten your teeth and much more without buying expensive specialized products.

In the next few weeks we are moving out of our current place and into an new one. This means massive amounts of cleaning and fixing will occur and I am trying to find simpler ways of doing this.

My first old-fashioned know how concoction I want to share with you is homemade spackle- hole patcher for your walls . Everyone hangs photos in their home, but when you move and your landlord expects you to patch the nail holes don’t go buy a product, make it yourself- from scratch! All you need is table salt, cornstarch and cold tap water. It doesn’t get easier than that folks! Mix 2 tablespoons of table salt and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch in a small bowl then slowly add 5 teaspoons of water to the mixture- it should for a paste. If it’s too runny the mixture wont work… Now just fill the holes with your mixture, allow it to dry and then sand rough spots down. If you want you can go over the spot with a wet sponge to remove the dust from sanding.

dirty-dirty-microwave.jpgIn the house we are renting they provided a microwave in addition to all the other appliances. We have the bad habit of microwaving stuff without covering it first.. Bad news, I know. Obviously we need to clean the microwave before we move and I thought it would be fun to use this simple and easy Microwave Oven Cleaner.

All you need to do is get a microwave safe bowl, add 1 1/3 cups of water and 3 tablespoons of baking soda. Put the uncovered bowl inside the microwave and run it on high for 3-5 minuites. After the 3-5 minutes is up carefully remove the bowl- It’s going to be extremely hot! and wipe the inside of the microwave with a paper towel or dish rag.

drippy-dirty-microwave.jpgThe water and baking soda will steam and cover the interior walls of the microwave then you just wipe the excess liquid and the microwave oven is clean! You can also substitute 3 tablespoons of lemon juice in place of the baking soda or you can simply microwave a bowl filled with 2 cups of white vinegar. They all will work to remove the mess that accumulates inside your microwave.

clean-microwave.jpg

Do you have a remedy you want to share? I would love to hear them.. I am expecially looking for a way to repair/ remedy a burnt wood counter top…

If you like this post consider reading some of these other do it yourself remedies that have been posted:
Homemade Cold Relief
Find the miracle products in your home that will clean and save you money.
Remove sweat/ perspiration stains naturally!
Alternative Hair Removal Recipe (sugaring)

When life gives you lemons…

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… smash them into a sorry pulp, take some photos and blog about it.

Things are crazy right now (that is quite the understatement)… Our living situation saga just keeps getting more and more interesting as the days pass.

Back on January 15th 2008 I wrote “You broke your toe? Want to buy a house?” where I shared with my readers the interesting letter we received from the owners of the home we are renting. They were expressing their “urgency” and wanted to work with us to make our ownership of their house possible. Back in August when we agreed to rent this house on a month to month basis my man was negotiating his contract at work. His contract stipulates pay over an agreed amount of time and a bunch of other legalities. We were considering refusing the contract and possibly moving to a higher paying area, possibly out of state. We want to buy a home and start a family… All of this depends on his contract.

Anyway we had expressed an interest in buying the home as we were signing the rental agreement… Come January when the economy is verging recession and we are locked into another 1 year contract the home owners contact us and ask us to make an offer on the house… We offered what we believed the house was worth taking our own financial situation into account and also the state of the economy.. No response from the owners.

Two weeks later on January 31st the stove catches fire (we don’t own it, the home owners do) and we are notified that the house has a contract on it and is in the process of selling. N thinks the owners only wanted us to make an offer on the house so they could be sure they were getting the most they could for it. Greed!
felt-like-this.jpg
So, (I am getting to the “when life gives you lemons part, don’t worry) we come to terms with the fact the we have to move in 30 days and we begin lining everything up. Found a new house to rent, will sign the 6 month lease tomorrow.. Got a replacement stove delivered, the home owners bought a used one and have been working to bust out my bulk purse order (only 16 left to make).

Last night N and I were home together and I had planned to make my favorite Moist roasted chicken recipe, I get the chicken all ready and I go to turn the oven on… Recipe calls for baking at 450 degrees, I hit the bake button and NOTHING happens!

N tries to turn the oven on, pressed various buttons, reset/ off, cook time, bake etc and the oven wont turn on… It gives us an F 13 error code. What the f? He pulls the oven away from the wall to unplug and re-plug it in, maybe it needs a “reboot” or something. No dice.. oven will not turn on, it’s about 9pm now we are snowed in and can’t cook our food.

I was planning to roast the chicken and to bake some brownies, both are not possible without an oven but we are resourceful (here is the lemons part)… N goes out to the shed to grab this old rotisserie thingy he purchased before we first got together. We wiped all the salt off the chicken shoved it in the rotisserie for cooking. Then we grabbed this old toaster oven thingy from the shed turned the temperature to 300 and cooked the brownies.

It was a frustrating night of cooking but what can you do? I considered throwing the defrosted chicken out into the snow out of anger but that would have just wasted a perfectly good chicken..

I just can’t wait to move out of this house now.. The stove/ oven replacement is used/ not fully functional and I just feel like the owners half-assed that whole thing. Seems like they just want to make a quick buck off the house and that they have no regard for anything else. They supposedly remodeled the place and did all this wonderful work on it but so much was just sloppily thrown together (this may just be my anger about having to move talking so you be the judge and view the photo slide show of the house). I just feel sorry for the poor soul that bought this little place.

By the way… you can click on the photos to get a better/ closer look at them….

🙁

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