Anyway, we have batteries in our weather radio and it is set to alarm so it goes off alerting us whenever a warning or watch is issued. These aren’t just issued once either, the alarms and sirens do a great job at making you very aware of the situation at hand!

The somewhat messed up thing is that now Evansville sounds the sirens and radios for severe thunderstorms that could produce massive sized hail. I guess hail damage has been an issue in the past and they decided it was something people needed warning for. To protect their cars or whatever.

So now we hear the sirens for severe thunderstorms or tornadoes which normally isn’t a huge deal. Unless it is 3 am and you just fell asleep. You can’t ignore the sirens and alarms because what if that thunderstorm has now escalated in to a tornado or something?

So we both wake, head out to check that the patio plants/ furniture are secure and that the animals are in their homes with shelter for the storm. We turn the TV on to see the weather coverage (because whenever the sirens go off N’s station cuts in and does a weather update, even at 3 am). Once we hear all about the weather situation and are sure there are no threats of tornadoes we can go back to bed…

Unfortunately the town sirens keep going off and the thunder, lightening, rain and hail aren’t easy to sleep through. I mean Tater was even being startled by all the noise, she would jump at the loud thunder claps and was also wide awake with all the chaos.

So, N is able to drift off back to sleep a few times while I lay there being kicked, prodded and startled by all the jumping and startling inside my uterus. These sleepless nights are good parenting practice right?

So yeah, I am pretty tired and am also noticing that my energy level has begun to impact my decisiveness about things. We are still living out of boxes and N wants direction about where to hang things and how I want to set things up.

Really, I just don’t give a crap about anything much these days. Which means my floors need moping, carpets need vacuuming, boxes need unpacking, cupboards need organizing, the bathtub needs to be cleaned, the garage is a disaster of exploded boxes and all I can do is lay and think about how effed up the place is and how I just can’t do anything about it.

What is better is once we get home with Tater we’ll have all sorts of company here at the house. Do you think they will mind the coffee splatter on the kitchen tile and the cat hair all over the white carpets? —-

[and now an abrupt change of subject]

Yesterday you might have noticed how I was tweeting weird stuff, it was me testing out the live blogging capabilities of a new twitter plugin I found. The idea is to allow me to tweet via text message (if I have cell phone reception) while I am at The Farm and to have those tweets seamlessly show up here on the blog. You know to give everyone some sort of info about how the days are progressing and when labor starts. Plus, I don’t want to leave the blog all empty and sad while I am away.

So, yeah… Got the live blogging all worked out. I am also adding a few people as guest posters to the blog in case they want to blog something while I am away.

Oh and…

• Don’t forget about the live chat tomorrow on my web baby shower site. Stop by and hang out if you can. I’ll have photos to share and fun slideshows plus it will be a realtime chat where we can talk about anything.
• The mad-lib birth announcement is making it’s rounds to those who have said they would like to be included. There is still time to sign up if you wanna play too, the more the merrier!
• We still need more people to sign up for the Talina’s Baby Weight Contest, you’ll win a cash prize and all you have to do is guess my weight! Go forth and enter now…

[okay, brain dump complete]

The post What a night! No sleep, hazardous weather and baby fun… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

I’ve been trying to bust out some posts in advance that I’ll schedule in June to keep the blog fresh while I am away from the internet waiting for Tater to come. That is the idea at least. If anyone wants to guest post here just sign up as a user and I’ll get you all hooked up to be a contributor.

Okay, so over the weekend we did get lots done, as usual… For starters we wrangled the freecycle dog home through our back gate so now Dixie has an even nicer shelter to enjoy. Problem is Haily, the outdoor cat, is smarter than Dixie and she manages to take over the dog house every time. Dixie refuses to fight for it and just sleeps out on the deck.

Mind you Hailey has her own house that we built but she refuses to use it unless absolutely necessary. So when we go out and lure her out of Dixie’s home, Dixie can use it but it seems every time the rain starts to fall or when it gets windy Hailey is in the dog house and Dixie is outside… I give up! If the dog doesn’t want care to fight for her home that is her bad, right?

We also went by the old place to do some deep cleaning. We spent 3 hours there doing the kitchen and basement. We’ve only got a few rooms left to do now and then we’ll be totally done with that shit hole. Yay. Oh and while the cleaning was happening guess what we discovered growing on top of the basement carpet and up the outside of the wood paneling in the corner…

MOLD!!!

Yep, you can see it with your own two eyes just growing right on top of all the carpet and wood siding. We had a freestanding shelf in that corner holding my business stuff but once we moved all our things out of the basement and began vacuuming we spotted the fairly big moldy corner. N took some photos of it on his iPhone. I’ll share them soon.

It’s been over a month since we met with the slumlady and started the ball rolling on having them sign our mutual release letter. They’ve been avoiding us now for over a month and N has begun the harassing phone calls to them again. We’ve not paid them April’s rent and are trying to set up a meeting time to turn over the keys and complete the final walk though. It seems they could care less, still.

Last night N put the freecycle crib together in Tater’s room. It was an interesting process since it’s an older crib that needs work, plus the assembly instructions were nonexistent so we were winging it so to speak. It is now pieced together, just needs some wood glue and some screws tightened. We’ll buy a crib mattress for it sometime after Tater is here if we still haven’t found anything better/ safer.

We spent Sunday thrift store hopping. We were window shopping for a washing machine since come May 1 we will have no way to wash clothes (other than a laundry mat), we also thought we would keep our eyes peeled for some necessities for Tater while we were there. Things like cloth diapers, receiving blankets and a variety of sized onesies.

We managed to find some clothes and a few receiving blankets that we spent $6.00 on. We didn’t see any pack n’ play’s or newborn sleeping solutions and we didn’t see any washing machines either. We plan to keep looking, hopefully we’ll find all that we need in due time.

It’s was a windy, rainy weekend but we still managed to get some good progress made! We even found a work around for our failing external hard drive (I’ll post more on this later) and N painted my toenails for me since I can no longer reach them. Isn’t he a trooper?

We took my blood pressure at the grocery store and it was 108/70, I am still not swelling or having any heart racing or blood sugar issues. I haven’t weighed myself since we moved in, the scale is still missing but I feel like I’ve gained a few (5 or so) pounds. LOL. What do you think?

We’ve got a shower in our honor taking place in Phoenix, AZ courtesy of Krystal on May 2nd that we are getting excited about. We’ll be there via video conference to talk to and enjoy everyone’s company. If you are going to be out that direction and haven’t already received an invite shoot me an email and I’ll hook you up with the details.

We’ve also got a web baby shower going on right now and a live shower chat scheduled courtesy of another bloggy friend, Maiden53, that you can check it out here.

Don’t forget to put your dollar in and place your baby weight bet! Remember 2 winners split the pool of cash so the more people who enter the better it is for YOUR pocket book, lol.

Okay, I am off to try finishing those 3 blog posts and I’ve got to feed the animals and such. Have a good monday everyone!

Oh, and if you aren’t afraid to see how an actual homebirth was featured in a commercial check out this video. Thanks Ryan and Kari for blogging this! Don’t worry it is peaceful and beautiful. Just graphic, shows nudity and you know a baby coming out from down there:

The post Weekend #2 in our new place, it's been busy! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.