They once were lost, but now are FOUND!!

The keys, that is. We searched and searched inside the house (everywhere the kids had been playing, under beds, under and behind couches…) and quite a bit outside yesterday, but with no luck. This morning I sent the kids outside for recess and to get their wiggles out and told them to keep an eye out for the keys. A little while later I heard excited pounding on the carport door, which was locked, and saw 2 little heads jumping up and down outside the window, rattling a set of keys!! :) Yay, got my thumb drive back, van key, house key, fire safe key… Thank you Lord!

Lucy lives!

Our doggy is going to get the “life-saving” surgery (as in she probably would have been put to sleep if not for this surgery because of finances) she needs to live a hopefully long, hopefully happy, hopefully healthy life. At least she has a chance now. All because 2 very dear, generous, benevolent, caring individuals who have a certain close grandparently tie to 4 certain little kids and who also probably didn’t like knowing how torn up I was getting… decided to pay for the whole kit and kaboodle and get the surgery to fix her foot, complete with pins for proper alignment of the bones. God is good! (Thank you Mom and Dad ;)

Oh where…

are the van keys?

Oh where are the van keys?

Oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where,

     oh where, oh where, oh where….

are the van keys?

 

Eli was playing with them or took them out when he went to play yesterday and he can’t remember what he did with them… they haven’t been seen since. I’ve checked in the tree house, under the tree house, by the swings, by the picnic tables, around the yard, on the back porch, down the stairwell, in all the bedrooms, behind the couch, under the couch… everywhere I can imagine I would put keys if I was 4. We we were supposed to go to Nina’s homeschool music class today but it doesn’t look like that will happen. :(

Could this be good-bye?

Our little dog Lucy broke all 4 of her metatarsals in her front right foot this morning. She was chasing a swinging child (yeah, one of ours) and somehow her foot collided with the swing (wooden porch swing type). I saw the x-rays, they don’t look good.

Our choices are: 1) splinting the foot and hoping for the best ($200+ for all care), 2) amputating the leg ($500+), 3) “doing it right” and having surgery to put pins in the bones so they will grow together the right way and hopefully insure years of pain-free dog life (~$900), or 4) euthanasia ($13). We’ve already spent $130 just to have her checked out and x-rayed. Aye!

DH and I are NOT leaning toward just splinting the leg, but there’s no way we can afford surgery either. So it’s a difficult choice. Do you put a dog down because she broke 4 bones or do you become indentured servants to pay for surgery? I really don’t know what to do. She is spending the night there so we can pray about it and try to figure out what to do. It was a sad day for me :( I didn’t think it would hit me so hard, but whenever I had to talk about her, I had to fight hard, let me tell you.

Crawling out from under my log

I admit I’m not much of a blogger, life gets so much in the way sometimes and just takes over. But I’ve been feeling the pull to express myself lately so here goes again. This time I’m messing around with Windows Live Writer since I have a sort of mental block about having to log in to Blogger to post to my blog each time. Maybe this way it’ll mentally not seem like such a chore (not that it’s really that difficult, but I’m that way with webmail too [I use Thunderbird] and if I could get onto Facebook without logging on to the website, I probably would). Ok, so anyway, I’m baaack! (at least for awhile ;o)

How to get most of your kids to stay in bed at night.

Not too long ago I was pulling out my hair because my kids wouldn't stay in bed when I tucked them in. They were like super rubber bouncy balls, I'd tuck them in and ... booooiiiinnnnnggggg, they'd bounce right back. All evening long I was listening to "Mooooommmmmmm, Geo came in my room" or "I can't sleep, Eli is bothering me." Multiply that by a hundred or more creative variations of reasons not to stay in bed and you can see why I was starting to get a little stressed.

Out of desperation I went searching on the net and found something I thought might work. It suggested giving your child 3 tickets that they can use for coming to see you, if they want water (and didn't get it before going to bed), they can use one ticket, if they're afraid of the dark, they can use one and come see you, if they just feel like getting up, they can use one more, but then after that, they have no more get-out-of-bed-free coupons. If they get up any more times after that, they don't get any tickets the next night (I was SO hoping my kids didn't just say "so what?").

To sweeten the deal I decided to throw a reward into the mix so I told them that they had 3 tickets to use how they wanted, but IF they didn't use any of their tickets, they would get a sticker on a chart the next morning and when they filled up the whole line (10 stickers) they could have an ice cream cone after lunch, (if they were sick, they would get an ice cream rain check to be used as soon as they were sufficiently well).

Well, that really motivated them! My older 2 said "Mom, this is easy, it's easy to stay in bed." I wondered to myself why, if it was so easy, hadn't they done it before? Anyway, they haven't been down one night since I started it about 20 days ago, we're still working on Eli, he only 1/2 gets the concept that if he even uses one of his tickets, he forfeits his sticker, but he really is getting better.

My evenings are more peaceful, I'm less stressed, much happier; they stay in bed, go to sleep sooner, get more rest. ♥☺ Of course your mileage may vary, but I just had to share what's working for me.

My Thanks For The Day

The last two days has had me fighting with my computer, trying to get my new OS to play nice with my old(ish) Epson printer. I got the HP online, no problem, but I really wanted to get the Epson up and running because it takes cheaper ink. (When I finally run out of ink, I'm going to try a continuous ink system, but for now I have some cheap ink I've had for several years that is still good).

I spent the equivalent of about a day on the computer chatting with 3 different tech support guys. The first guy was quite helpful and got it working for awhile, but then it stopped printing again. The second guy was hopeless, basically told me "hopefully Epson will come out with a driver soon, ... I was happy to help you." Ha! He was no help!

Then I connected with just about the best tech support person ever. He tried every trick in his play book. We installed, uninstalled, restarted more times than I can count, he took control of my computer for awhile to try to figure it out, finally (I think as a last ditch effort), he had me reinstall the OS over the existing OS installation to try to repair anything that might be damaged and ... drumroll ... my printer still wouldn't print.

So then I went online and started searching for reasons why documents would go into the printer queue and not go any further and definitely not print. I tried restarting the print spooling, read a little further and read that if the printer is out of ink, it won't print. It also said that if the light on the front is solid red, that means the printer is out of ink and won't print. Um, yeah, you guessed it, the light was on and yep, it was solid red. I had known that my ink was low, but I was expecting the printer software to tell me that it was time to put in a new cartridge (I think my other printer does that), but it never did. So I put in a new cartridge. I clicked print... it started printing and I just started laughing. What else could I do? I felt so foolish and so relieved at the same time. I needed my printer and it was finally back and for that I was so glad, but it was also pitiful how much time I spent trying everything but the actual solution. But, it's finally back up and running and I am SO thankful to have my printer back. And that's my thanks of the day; and the moral of the story is, if your printer ever quits working, check the obvious, is it plugged in, is it connected to the computer, does it have enough ink? 'nough said.

MOTH to the rescue

No, not a flapping-winged fluttery thing, MOTH stands for "Managers of Their Homes" and is a "duh" sort of common sense approach to managing all the little details in a homeschooling-mom-of-more-than-a-couple-kids' life. I have always balked at the idea of a rigid, by-the-clock kind of schedule, but a dear friend of mine suggested I try it for a month or so and just see what it might do for me. Well, I'm always one to try a new challenge so I opened up my friendly Excel, made a bunch of tables and started populating all the little cells. I have a column and so do each of my kids. The schedule starts when we get up in the morning and ends when I go to bed at night. It has actually helped our days to flow much smoother, the kids seem happier knowing what to expect, they are pretty much guaranteed a nice bit of free time in the afternoon, the house stays neater because I have something planned for them one way or the other all day. Either it's meals or chores or school or playing/free time, ... and having something to do keeps them out of trouble and keeps the messes to something like a minimum. I don't have the book, but as soon as I can, I'm going to get my own copy, I've heard great things about it. But till then I'm implementing it as best I can imagine how with a few pointers from my friend. It's going well, really well and now I can truly say I love my strict, line by line, 1/2 hour by 1/2 hour schedule! I'll get a sample of my schedule up asap.

My Busy Life

I feel too busy to blog, but I DON'T like to see "inactive account" wallpaper on my page so I'm going to post to get rid of it. I've been meaning and meaning to post on here, maybe this is the feet-wet-again that I need. In the last year I've had a baby, added a new student to our homeschool and those two things have been enough to make everything else slide a bit. SO, now that Ana is almost a year old, I have started to get more organized and get a handle on things. Thanks to a friend who challenged me to try out a MOTH (Manager's of Their Homes) schedule, I went way overboard and now have one for every day of the week (and they are constantly changing, though I hope that eventually we'll settle into a nice routine and they'll stay put for awhile). I'll post more about MOTH in a separate post. Basically I'm making baby steps in the right direction so follow along, hopefully I'll have interesting things to say real soon.

A Frog Story...

Geo just brought me the next installment and since I know you'll all be dying to read it, here it is...

Once a pon a thme ther lived a frog He was so ciwet. He lived in a log. He in vidid his frends to come over to his hose. One day wen his frinds wer playing he sed dos eney of you want to wath a movy Thay sed yes so thay sat down to wach it the video. It was polor express, now the part wen the track went into the warder came up the kids wer scard thay tride to stop it but thay wer happy.

becomes...

     Once upon a time there lived a frog; he was so cute. He lived in a log. He invited his friends to come over to his house.
     One day when his friends were playing he said,"Do any of you want to watch a movie?"
     They said "Yes," so they sat down to watch the video.
     It was Polar Express. Now the part when the track went into the water came up. The kids were scared, they tried to stop it but they were happy.

A Cat Story...

Geo (my second grader) wrote a story and I just had to post it...

Oncea pon a time in the woods ther lived a cat named Chesey[.] She was so small and so cewt. She oftin sed "Mew mew, I sed to her Here cidy cidy cidy, now a snake herd me say Her cidy cidy cidy and the snake was hungrey He sed Mmm cat wood be good to eat The cat herd the sawnd and mewd so long she made the snake deth He codent here at all the cat tot the snake a lesen and you better be good and not to try a lisson and if you her a cat don't eat it.

Grammatically correct translation:

     Once upon a time in the woods, there lived a cat named Chesey. She was so small and so cute. She often said, "Mew mew."
     I said to her, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."
     Now a snake heard me say "Here kitty kitty kitty," and the snake was hungry.
     He said, "Mmm, cat would be good to eat."
     The cat heard the sound and meowed so long she killed the snake.
     He couldn't hear at all. The cat taught the snake a lesson.

     And [the moral is:] you'd better be good and ... ? ... if you hear a cat, don't eat it!

Fancy feet

I'm so jazzed by my new shoes! I found them at a quaint little thrift store on top of a mountain in the middle of a freak snowstorm. Thankfully the snowstorm only lasted a few minutes and I got my shoes (3 pairs of Clarks leather clogs [or maybe they're called mules(?), I'm not really up on shoe terminology]). I looked them up when I got home and depending on the site they ranged anywhere from $30-$60 a pair, so I got anywhere from $90-$180 worth of shoes for $11. Yeehaw, that's the way to do it! I love these shoes because they are really comfy, easy on/off, and will go nicely with the skirts I've been wearing more of lately. I had been wondering what kind of shoes to wear with skirts as my ratty tennis shoes just wouldn't do and I didn't want to wear my church shoes out; these will do quite nicely!

Diapers from flannel shirts

Here's how I recycle a flannel shirt (this one was 50 cents from a local thrift store) and turn it into a cloth diaper (Rita's Rump Pocket in this tutorial).

1) Cut sleeves off of shirt.






2) Cut collar off and cut along seam between neck and shoulder.






3) Cut front panels off from back section.






4) Sew front halves together where they were cut from back piece (to make outside piece). Or (in the case of this shirt which happened to be huge, I was able to align and sew one of the front panels on to the back after I carefully lined up the stripes. I 3-step zig-zagged them together, then zig-zagged the seam flat to the back of the diaper.

Cut out pieces; If there is a wrong and a right side, make sure that the prints are facing the right way.






5) Sew up diaper.






I'll be placing the seam on the outside of Missy so as to minimize chance of irritation.

Fleece Mittens tutorial

My kids needed some mittens and I figured I could make them some from some fleece scraps I had "lying around." I found another tutorial online for fleece mittens and I really liked them. But I looked at a pair of store bought fleece mittens that I had and I liked the way they were constructed a little better so I altered their pattern to work the way the store bought mittens did and I really like the results.

You don't have to use this pattern, but it will give you an idea of what it's supposed to look like. I actually made patterns for my 3 older ones by tracing their hands, drawing an upside-down U about 1/2" all the way around their hand (fingers together, not spread out), marked where their wrist was (for the elastic placing), and finished the pattern using this as a guide.

The original tutorial said to enlarge the patterns till the grid was 1 inch square (for adult size), maybe 3/4 inch square for a child's hand. Play around with the sizing, find what works for you.

I trace the hand 1/2 inch in from the fold (on a piece of paper folded lenghtwise), make the upside-down U, fold it in half again and cut the rounded part off the top (to make sure it's nice and even on both sides). Then I fold the thumb side in half to the middle fold to get the thumb width. Fold the paper in half from top to bottom to find out how far the cutting line for the thumb should go. Then about 1/2-way from the top of the thumb cutting line to the bottom of the mittens, start drawing the curve for the thumb-tip. Fold the paper in half again from edge to thumb cutting line and cut the curve for the rounded thumb-tip. Fold the thumb part up and make the pattern piece for the thumb. Make it a little longer than it calls for, then cut down if need be. I discovered that the thumb pattern piece runs a bit short.

To cut out the pieces, fold over a piece of fleece, line the pattern up on the fold, and cut the rest out. Then open the fleece, lay the opened pattern on top of it and cut out the thumb flap. If there is a right side and a wrong side to the fleece, make sure to flip the pattern over when cutting out the other thumb flap.

To sew, line up the thumb pattern piece with the thumb flap, sew from the notch around to the other side of the thumb. Stop. Line up the long edge of the thumb piece with the long part of the main mitten piece, and sew together. Sew some elastic to the wrong side where the pattern indicates (or where you noted the location of the wrist). Place right sides of mitten together and sew mitten together. Hem the edge. Turn inside out, enjoy :)

CDing again

I had planned to cloth diaper Missy, but really wasn't looking forward to having to do an extra load of laundry ever 3 or so days. I used 'sposies for the first few weeks to get me back in the groove again and still use them for overnight (till I get my courage up, lol). But getting back in the CDing saddle again wasn't as hard as I anticipated. It's really rather fun to cloth diaper and you get to be so much more creative than you can be with "go 'n throw" dipes (which really have zero room for creativity). And while babies are 100% breastfed, you don't have to "scoop-the-poop" as there are no solids, everything gets nicely washed away, so it's really no trouble. I wash about every 3 days, and have an ever revolving supply of soft, fluffy non-landfill-clogging diapers. And as far as the creativity side of things, here's what I've gotten to do so far:

The diapers are made from a large, soft sheet using the Rita's Rump Pocket pattern (I managed to get 10 from one large, flat sheet; queen or kin size, not sure). They were so fun to make and super easy too. This tutorial helped immensely when it came to adding the elastic. I can't wait to get a hold of some more flannel to make some more! I'd like another couple of sheets' worth at least. I stuff them with a trifolded small prefold (I have used premium diapers as stuffers too, but they're kinda big!, might be good for overnight) and they aren't too too bulky, easy to get on and off (just use one pin), I love 'em!

Update, here are a few more:















The pink (acrylic) diaper cover is my rendition of a Flapper Bottom soaker which turned out nice, but I still don't like it as well as the Warm Heart Woolies plain wrap that I made from recycled red wool. It's so pretty and so easy to get on and off, also is a good fit (this pic is so far from doing this soaker justice it isn't funny. It's a much deeper, darker red in real life and the color is nice and even, not faded looking like in this sub-par photo).








I also made an Ottobre soaker (.pdf; the Ottobre is my favorite pull-on soaker, very quick and easy to make, easy on/off, contains wettness well...) out of some chunky recycled wool which is my bullet-proof diaper cover (the blue and green one above is an Ottobre soaker, but the one I made most recently is a cream color). That with a premium stuffed RRP might be the ticket for night time when I run out of disposables.

She's here!

Ok, admittedly I'm VERY very behind, but all truth be told, I've been just a tad busy lately :).

The 23rd was indeed the day; I had contractions almost all night (got an hour's sleep a couple of times) and they gradually got stronger and stronger toward morning. I got up at 3:30 to eat some breakfast and was still very able to manage the contractions as they came. I kept track of them in my Palm with a program specially for that. Finally around 5:15 I was so drowsy I thought I'd try lying down again so I went and lay down on the couch in the family room. Dh got up to use the restroom a little while later and came looking for me. So since he was up, I went back to bed. I got a little more rest (the 2nd hour's sleep I think) and woke up when Eli did just before 7. I got up and helped Eli get breakfast and dressed...

Then around 8 I went in to take a shower and suggest that Dh start inflating the pool (we set it up in the family room). I had a banana with p-nut butter to eat and a glass of milk. Then around 9 a.m. I was feeling tuckered out again so went to lie down on the couch. I had called my midwife at 7 a.m. after what I thought would have been at least 9 hours of sleep for her, but turns out she had to be at another birth the night before from 12 midnight to 6:30 a.m. so she had just gotten to sleep (I felt bad). So then I called the other midwife and she said she's be on her way. She and the apprentice got here around 10 and by then things had gotten more serious. I was quite uncomfortable during each contraction, but they were still not real long at this point. She checked the baby during a contraction and she was doing fine. I was dilated to 5cm and -2 station at that point.

I was given the green light to get in the pool if I wanted to and oooooh, it felt SO good to get in. The water was delightfully warm and my contractions did slow down a little bit and were much more tolerable. At least at first... Then around 11 the contractions started getting downright painful. I couldn't help but groan thru them (though I'm always very ladylike if I do say so myself, LOL; Dh says I make it look easy... whatever!). I kept thinking "I can see how women want epidurals"... and "I just wanted this to be OVER!" There weren't many positions that were comfortable for me. And then at one point I had to get up to empty my bladder and had several contractions on the trip to the bathroom and back, which was NO FUN. I finally managed and back to the pool I hobbled.

Sometime around noon, I started feeling like I was getting close to transition and/or pushing stage. I checked myself and could feel quite a bit of head, still in the sack. I couldn't tell if I felt cervix or not. I asked the midwife if I could start pushing and she said "listen to what your body is telling you." So I started trying little pushes for the next 3 or so contractions. Then I got serious and on the next contraction (about 12:15 p.m.) I gave one good long push and out popped her head. Dh said she was blinking her eyes under the water :) Then on the next contraction I pushed the rest of her out and Dh caught her and confirmed right away that she was a SHE :) (She was born at 12:17 p.m.) The kids got to witness her entrance into the world from the doorway of the next room (they didn't really see too many details tho!).

Missy (short/nick for "Miss Magoo", lol) was covered in vernix and looked little. I didn't think she was a 9 pounder like I had been expecting. She didn't have a lot of hair, but 5 fingers, 5 toes (per hand and foot that is, lol), 2 adorable little ears, 2 pretty eyes (which we still don't know what color they'll be; kind of a dark grey/brown/blue/green color right now, lol, could be anything but for now I'll put my $ on brown), chubby little chin and knees..., and a precious little face. She cried as soon as she was out of the water, but then settled down. I kept her warm in the water and tried to stimulate her a little just to hear her cry some more (and clear out any wetness that might be in her lungs...). She had passed some muconium at some point in the past, but she never appeared to be in any distress, though we watched her carefully. After just a few minutes she showed signs of being open to nursing so I helped her latch on and she did great. Because she was nursing so well, I stayed in for a while longer. Then Dh cut the cord and took her so I could get out and take a shower. After I got dressed I came back in and nursed her some more. Then the apprentice did the newborn exam and she checked out beautifully. I caught it all on tape.

Here are her stats:

20.5 inches long
8 pounds, 9 ounces
born at 12:17 p.m. on November 23 (her due date :)
after 10 1/2 hours or so of labor (but only 2 minutes of pushing and 2 pushes to get her out)

I was SO glad when she was out, let me tell you. I was NOT having fun the hour or 2 before she was born.

After she I was born I basically felt fine, though a bit tired and a little "peekid" feeling. The midwife estimated my blood loss at 4 cups so I made a point to eat iron-rich food the few days after she was born to help me feel a little more perky. I felt shaky right after getting out of the pool and was a little unnerved by that, but that didn't last long and went away after a few minutes. Dh had done well to keep me well hydrated with electrolyte drinks all during labor. I ate a good lunch after the midwife and apprentice left, then tried to take a nap as Missy was zonked out after her trip; however my brain was so hyped up that I couldn't drift off. But I guess I did get some rest. Gigi held the baby the whole time I was "napping" which was a little over an hour. She didn't want to get up until I got back and my mom started talking about going to Wal-Mart for a few things we needed ("Can I go, please?!?" lol).

We were so pleased with the outcome, another little girl (awwww) making our tribe an even Boy/Girl/Boy/Girl. We couldn't have planned it better if we'd tried (we did sorta try for Gigi, but the rest... no). I think everyone was secretly hoping we'd have a girl so that Gigi could have a sister. I was also very relieved to see that she was normal and in good health as I'd had that "irrational fear" all during pregnancy that something might be wrong. This was partly fueled by the knowledge that I had been exposed to x-rays when I was holding Eli for his arm x-rays (this was before I knew I was pregnant) and also because I'd used a heating pad on my back one night when I was newly pregnant (also before I knew). So I am very grateful and thankful that our little girl is fine.

Since then we've been battling thrush/yeast which has been no fun at all. I'm taking probiotics to help my body fight it. I thought that I was over it, but now am feeling shooting pains in my milk ducts (a sign of ductal yeast) that I'm hoping is not yeast. Also Missy's tongue does have white on it that won't wipe off which is a sign of thrush so I don't know for sure that it's over. I may have to start my grapefruit seed extract regimen again (groan!)

Missy started smiling around 3-3 1/2 weeks, and is developing really great head control, she doesn't like it when we try to put her head down on our shoulders, she wants to be looking around. She started making little cooing noises last week which is really too cute.

This is the day! (I think, I hope)

I've been having contractions starting from about 4 yesterday afternoon (light ones then) to somewhat stronger ones in the evening and during the night. They've been averaging about 3 - 5 minutes apart lasting a minute or a little less. At around 3:30 I got up for something to eat and they didn't slow down any, but they aren't lasting quite as long. I'm SOOOO sleepy tho, thank goodness I got a bit of a nap yesterday afternoon. I'm using the dandy little Contraction Timer program for my palm to keep track of my contractions. Makes that part of tracking things so much easier! Still trying to let the midwife and hubby sleep as long as possible (of course in two different houses in two different parts of the state! Whew, just wanted to clear that up!). Can't decide if 7 hours is enough sleep for the midwife as she was planning to go to sleep at 10. Hmm. DH on the other hand didn't come to bed till after midnight so he'll need a little more time if I can manage it.

Ooooh baby baby

I'm still infanticipating... Things are good, I'm still able to get around just fine, I can get down on the floor no prob, up is a bit more of a challenge, but not bad. Still somehow managing to keep up with housework, taking care of the kids, Geo's homeschool, and my school. But I'm mighty ready for this baby to be here already! My ribs are hurting from the baby pressing against them, it's sometimes hard to get comfortable when I'm trying to sleep at night, and I've been fighting to get completely over a cold I caught a couple of weeks ago. The midwives say that the baby's head is still quite floaty and hasn't started dropping yet so it'll probably be another week or two. I was hoping I could somehow, through the powers of suggestion (and I've been suggesting very loudly) convince the baby to shave some time off of the 40 week duration thing, but apparently this baby has other ideas (want's to keep up with the Jonses of his/her brothers and sister, being fashionably late by a few days). But I know it won't be much longer now. Just have to somehow manage to stay patient and ignore any "What!? you're still pregnant?" comments which will invariably come my way in the next couple of weeks. I've already made it through the "Are you sure you're not having twins?" comments so this would just be gravy, lol.

My school progress

For awhile it was slow going because I let myself get bogged down in the grammar module (so many rules to try to remember!), but I finally got through all the reading, zipped through a computer module, and on to medical terminology. Then after that my pace picked up considerably and now I'm on module 9 (grammar was 3 btw) and having a blast. Every module now has sentence clips where I can practice listening to medical jargon and trying to type it. I am getting better and certain grammar rules which keep cropping up are getting nice and ingrained in my head through all the repetition. I almost feel like a detective sometimes, especially when I'm faced with an odd-sounding word that I can not find in my medical dictionary or in Google... Then I'm forced to get creative to try to figure out what else it could possibly be. It's fun. I had set a goal of one module a week, but I'm finding that I can get through at least 2 so that's nice. I know things will really slllloooowww down after the baby's born, but for now, to help keep my mind off of wishing he/she was here already, I have my school which is a whole lotta fun :)

Get your ePatterns here!

Remember the graceful, flowing gowns from such movies as Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, and Emma? Well, they can be part of your wardrobe (if you know how to sew, if not learn!) thanks to a very cool website called (aptly enough) Sense and Sensibility. There are so many awesomely awesome patterns there for the most feminine and lovely dresses ever and I have long drooled over and dreamed of owning one of the Regency patterns for my own. Well, now it may be within my reach as Jennie (the owner) has added a new product branch to her site... ePatterns! And their price is very reasonable. Go check 'em out, drool over the many offerings and make out your Christmas wish list. I know I will :)

Full House...

For the last 2 weeks we've had a FULL house; DH's mom, sister and 2 kids, aunt, 2 cousins and 1 friend, and another aunt, uncle and cousin. At highest capacity we had 16 people staying in our house! Yikes. The friend went home last week so now it's just 15 which is still quite a few sardines to squeeze into our modest 3-bedroom. We and our 3 are crammed into our bedroom (older 2 sleeping in the closet, lol), DH's mom, sister and kids are in Geo's room, aunt & uncle are in Gigi's room, other aunt, her two kids and cousin (from other aunt and uncle) on the floor in the living room. It really hasn't been too terrible except that the first week we were almost all hit with a nasty stomach virus. I think our nephew brought it with him because he was sick early Sunday morning (they got here Friday night). Then Monday night Gigi and I both were dealing with it, then DH, etc., and one by one the dominos began to fall. It was not a fun time between not feeling great, laundry mountains every morning to deal with (bleugh!), and having to try to keep the house somewhat moving (washing dishes, feeding people who felt like eating). I really hope to not repeat that any time soon!

Hurricaine Gustav had the majority of our company in a tither because it was heading straight for their island (Grand Cayman), and with Ivan still a recent and terrible memory, they were right to be a little concerned. But thankfully it is just a category 2 (at the moment) and, according to our favorite carribbean hurricaine tracking website, the winds were high, but no storm surge (or very little) and limited damage to buildings and vegetation. They seem to have weathered it well. It still remains to be seen whether or not the relatives will be able to leave Sunday morning as planned or if they'll have to wait for flights to get up and running again.

School starts on Monday. I'm not at all sure I'm ready, but that's the plan for the moment. I registered Geo for 2nd grade and was very pleased indeed to find out that the local education department will let me email his attendance this year instead of driving or mailing it in. YAY!!!

I had quite a bit of success reclaiming images from my SILs messed-up drive. I didn't get nearly all the pics she had had on there, but according to a computer shop she had taken it to, the pictures were not retrievable so I guess I showed them! I used PhotoRec to get as many pictures as it would find for me and now, at least, my SIL has pics of her daughter when she was a brand-new baby (they were lost before), and lots of other pics which were supposedly "gone." I just wish I was able to get more... Oh well, some is better than none!

Next on the docket is to do one last pass of my hard drive (probably with PhotoRec) to make sure I didn't miss anything, then reformat it and begin the rebuilding process. After that I need to retrieve stuff from our backup drive, then work on DHs crashed hard drive (likely a casualty of our network "bug"). Then (or maybe sooner) I'll set up backups to make sure my data doesn't get lost again! People, for your sake and because I wouldn't wish this on anyone, please back up your files!!!

My school progress is slow but sure. I was about to start on Module 5 when my books arrived so now I'm doing the book readings that I missed for Module 3. It's all about grammar and it's an awful lot of stuff for my brain to absorb. I've read through it all, highlighted lots of things and now I'm typing my notes into my handy-dandy KeyNote software. It will be much easier to find things there, if I need to review, than to try to find things in the book! Then I'll be back on to Module 5 (with bits of Mod 4 here and there when I feel like it. It's all about computers and so far has been booorrrrinnng so we'll see). We had a Medical Transcription trivia constest on our last Thursday night chat and I came "this close" to winning against an advanced student so that made me feel pretty good. It was right that she won over me tho, it would not have done for a wet-behind-the-ears newbie to beat her! (But I did come close, lol). With all my computer problems I haven't been able to practice my Colemak keyboard layout lately so for now I'm still only qwerty. Oh well, maybe soon.

Crash!

Went my data hard drive. Grrrr! It was working fine one minute and the next it was giving me an error that a file was corrupt or something so that I couldn't access the drive. Then when I rebooted, Windows told me the drive wasn't formatted, would I like to format the drive, Yes/No. Nooooooo!!!!! So all day I've been researching ways to get to my files that I'm sure are all still there. Not sure what happened. I don't think there was a power surge or blip, the computer wasn't dropped or otherwise damaged... All I can think is maybe a virus did this, but I do have an AV program on my computer and it's up-to-date. Sigh. The drive is listed in the Windows Explorer tree but doesn't do squat when I click on it. Just gives me the "not formatted" error.

So I'm running a free program called TestDisk and it has finally told me that my boot sector is bad. I'm in the process of trying to repair the boot sector. It also told me that my backup boot sector is ok so if this doesn't work I'll try to copy the good boot sector over the bad, see if that works. I just want my files, people! A word of caution to the wise (let them who have ears hear!), please back up your data! I was "this close" to copying a zip backup of my important files to a dvd when this happened. Wish I had gotten around to this sooner! If I lose everything on my disk I will be very discouraged. I did backup the documents a few months ago, but I've made a lot of changes to files and created new files since then, I would really hate to lose those. I'm praying that this works!

For backup, I'm using Back2Zip to backup my important files to .zip every night (or at least once a week!) and Cobian Backup (or I will be when/if I get my files back!) to back up my zipped files to an off-site FTP server. We do have a backup disk, but it is somewhat out of commission as well at the moment.

Moving Thunderbird

I tried just backing up my profile and then replacing everything in the new profile folder with everything from the old profile folder, but that didn't work. Finally (and for future reference) what did end up working was the advice given here. I copied my old profile into Documents & Settings/user/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles, then opened up the profiles.ini file and redirected it to look at the name of my old profile. Then I was able to delete the new profile. Et voila! It's all there :) Whew!

Dry night

This morning I heard noise in the bathroom and I just thought it was one of the older kids going potty, but DH told me that Eli was trying to go potty. So I got up and sure enough, he was standing on the step stool, turning on the light. I helped him get out of his one-piece jammies and took his DRY(!!) diaper off and he ran over to the toilet. He wants to be able to pee standing on the ground (not the step stool) just like his big brother so he tried and tried, but I told him he's not tall enough yet. So finally he listened to me and stood up on the step stool. The last wet diaper he's had was Thursday morning. Not bad!

The other funny thing that he did this morning was to go around singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," except he only says "twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle" but it's very obvious what he's singing by the tune and timing.

To reformat or not to reformat, that is the question.

My computer has some major issues, possibly virus related, we're trying to rule that out (i.e. I can't load McAffee, Adaware crashes when I run it, the keyboard layout that I installed is gone and I can't reinstall, can't do a windows update...). If DH can't find the cause, I'll probably be facing a reformat tomorrow. Lovely.

A good day

Eli did really well today in the potty training arena. I put him in regular undies for church and took some dipes and extra pants in case of an "oops." I took him potty before Sabbath School and then again just before church. I also had to take him out a couple more times during the service and once after church, before potluck. He peed every time and pooped a couple of times. He kept his diaper dry during his nap and then sat (for a long time) on the potty after he got up and ended up peeing and pooping a very nice amount (isn't it funny how we moms can get so excited about stuff like this?). Then he kept his pants dry and clean the rest of the afternoon. Oh! and he kept his diaper dry last night too. I hope tomorrow goes as well.

Hiccups

I noticed the baby hiccuping for the first time yesterday :) I've also in the last 2 or 3 days felt the presence of relaxin which I am not too happy about. My hips and joints (especially when I sit too long) get to really hurting! It's about right I guess, the first 3 months are, in a word, Bleugh!, the middle 3 are smooth sailing, the last 3 are pain riddled months with decreased mobility thrown in to boot. Oh well, it's all for a good cause!

2 steps forward, 1 step back

Yesterday morning Eli woke up with a dry diaper which I thought was a pretty big deal. But then he proceeded to poop on the floor later in the day so a big step back. Today he had one #2 accident (in underwear this time, whew!), but one really good on-the-big-potty success and he's been dry consistently during the day for the past few days so we are making progress. He also does well when we're out and lets me/us know when he needs to go potty. Potty training is not for the weak of heart, let me tell ya!

Computers, bah Humbug!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely sure that I could survive without my computer (well, I might be able to, but there would be some serious withdrawals), but sometimes they get on my last nerve. Last night after a reboot, my computer got to the black "loading Windows" screen and stopped, said there was an error with a file in the system32\config folder, "corrupt or missing." Uh-oh, that didn't sound good. I didn't really know what to do so I tried calling DH who was working, but he didn't answer his phone. I popped in the Win2000 disk and attempted a repair, but it didn't seem to do any good. DH worked on it some when he got home, but I still had to do one more fix this morning before it would finally boot again. But a lot of my drivers were gone so they had to be reinstalled. Our internet was down for a couple of hours this morning so I couldn't use that to aid in reinstalling drivers. Plus, there was something wrong with my computer and even after the internet came back up, I still couldn't get online. Finally, after powering down the modem and router for a loooong time and shutting the kids' and my computer down completely and restarting, internet was back. But there have been other weird gliches and it might take me into next week to get them all ironed out. Grrr. If I had the money, I'd be gettin' me a mac!

A messy day

Every so often I have "one of those days" when messes just abound, like some kind of invisible mess machine gets delivered to my house and I don't know it till I'm in the middle of the myriad of messes. It seemed like the messes today would never end.

Let's see, I had to contend with 5 or 6 (yikes!) "steenkie" diapers, most of them Eli told me about right away so they weren't ground in, I could just dump the contents into the potty, clean him up in the tub and we were off and running again. One time, though, it kind of squished onto him so it was a bigger chore, but the worst one of all was the one he tried to clean up himself. Groan, sometimes independence is a good things, other times, however... anyway, he took his undies off, dunked them into the toilet, managed to get poo all over the toilet seat, the hall floor and even his hands and face (GROSS!). It took me quite awhile to get that mess cleaned up.

Then there was the flower water that got spilled not once, but twice on the family-room end table, Gigi's supper that got dumped on the floor, Geo's juice that got dumped all over the table, his chair and the floor by Gigi, milk dribbled on the floor when Gigi was mixing it (that was this morning, forgot about that one), something, probably applesauce trailing across the kitchen floor, the mess from Eli dropping the potty as he was on his way down the hall to "dumpit."

I'll toss in the crumby dining room floor and the soaking wet bathroom floor for a bonus. I'm sure there are more, but they are all just starting to run together. You ever have one of those days? I can't possibly be the only one... can I? Kinda glad the day is done, I can start tomorrow fresh and hopefully it won't be "one of those days."

Gj;ukd... I mean typing on a new layout

I've been doing a bit of reading on alternate keyboard layouts and how they can increase speed and productivity while cutting down on errors and reducing hand fatigue. I compared a bunch of alternatives including the second most popular Dvorak layout, and after much thought, I've decided to try Colemak. I don't think I'll go cold turkey as I would like to retain my qwerty ability; ideally I'd like to be able to type in both formats as needed. I do expect my qwerty speed to go down as a result, but in the long run I think it'll be worth the effort in light of my future career in medical transcription and all the typing I'll be doing. So far this is my first attempt at typing in Colemak and it's taken me forever to do, but I can also see it's getting a little easier as I go along. And my fingers are doing a lot less traveling (my backspace key is getting a workout, that's for sure; trying to get used to the new "backspace key" [the old Caps Lock key]. I'll have to remap the Caps Lock key to a seldom used key (such as "right Windows key" or "Scroll lock.") I'll let you know how it goes.

Added 7/30/2008... I just tested my speed and was able to type an agonizingly slow 18 words per minute, but this was without looking at the keys (99% of the time). I'd love to see it up to 30 wpm by next week. We'll see.

Last night...

...was not a very good night. At 3 a.m. I woke up to whimpers and cries coming from Gigi's room. I went in to investigate and she said "my tummy hurts!" I picked her up and shuttled her across the hall to the bathroom in case she needed to empty her stomach in the toilet. She didn't want to and didn't want to, ad infinitum.... but finally she gave in and did. I was hoping and praying that that would be it and she'd be able to go back to sleep, but no sooner had I gotten myself settled in bed and had been comfortable for about 10 minutes than it started up again. I was the one to deal with it since DH had to go to work today and he needed his rest for that. I can always (theortecially) get a nap but he can't. So every 10-15 minutes after getting her and myself settled, I'd hear the whines again and get up to go help her clean up when she was done, give her water to swish out her mouth... It went like this from 3 till when I finally got up around 6:45 (Eli woke up and said he was "stinky" so I had a diaper to change). I got 4-5 hours of sleep last night and I'm really really tired today! My brain is in a fog. I've already established that we're having a nap time this morning, any time now really, I was just making sure that Gigi's stomach could tolerate it first. She seems to be doing fine and might even say she doesn't need a nap, but I know better! She was very willing last night to agree to a nap, that's for sure. I really hope that Eli can be convinced to take a nap too so I can get some sleep. I may go in Geo's room instead of my room as I hear every toss and turn coming from Eli's crib and it negatively affects my sleep.

Oh the joys!

I've started potty training Eli and it's going slow. The first day we had both #1 and #2 accidents, yesterday he didn't have any pee accidents (I don't think) but had about 4-5 pea-soup poop accidents in his underwear (the kind that dribbles down legs and trickles down on the floor/carpet, whatever). Yuck! He was so hesitant to even sit on his little blue potty that I finally resorted to bribing rewarding him with "sweets" when he does manage to do anything on the potty. He gets about 3x as many sweets for #2 as for #1 since the former is less frequent and also he seems to be more hesitant in that department. So.... this morning after I got him up I had him sit on the potty and, whatd'ya know, he pooped! A small pile, but it was something. I was very happy, clapped my hands, got real animated and gave him a small handful of sweets (raisins, carob chips, stuff like that) as a reward. I really do hope that starts a nice trend in that direction. He also went pee in his potty all by himself this morning, without my having to remind him so that was pretty cool too. I saw him in the kitchen trying to move a stool over to the counter where the "sweets" are kept so he could reward himself. I didn't catch on right away, but finally did see his deposit in the potty and paid him his dues. He's keeping dry for at least an hour between pees, maybe more, so he's doing well with that. I'm hoping to have him mostly trained by the end of this week. We'll see. I will still probably put him in pull-ups for going out, but for now, at least at home, he's in big boy pants and seems to be finally catching on.

Potty Training?

I'm being very lazy about potty training this time around. Eli has shown little signs like he might be getting ready, but I just wasn't ready for the accidents that come with training so I've been procrastinating. But today I decided to put some "big boy pants" on him right after I changed a stinky diaper (so hopefully he won't be doing any of that in his underwear) and he stayed dry for about an hour or so. He wanted to go outside with Daddy so I told him he had to pee in the potty first so we went to do that. He decided he's not ready to pee like Daddy yet (standing up) and wanted his potty seat. When I sat him down, he tried and, sure enough, was able to go.Woo hoo, that's my boy! Now, I'm not harboring any grand ideas that this is some huge milestone or anything because he's gone in the potty before, but it's the longest I think he's kept his diapers dry in a long time, and he's always peed in his underwear in the past so dry undies is a good thing. I'll take what I can get!

Home (not) Alone

Geo started telling me yesterday afternoon that he was feeling like he was getting sick and sure enough, in the middle of the night, both he and Gigi work up with sore throats. Geo asked for some Tylenol to help the pain, but Gigi just went back to sleep. I decided it would be best to keep them home from church today (don't want to expose all the other kids) so it's just me and the kids today till DH gets back from teaching his Kindergarten Sabbath-School class. I'm sure he's planning to stay for church too. Eli is entertaining himself trying to sing along with some Kid's Time Praise videos and the older two are off being creative with the play food. I'll probably read their lessons a little later and review their memory verses... It won't be quite the same as Sabbath School, but... oh well, I can only do what I can do.

On at OT school note, my books came Thursday! That was just about 2 weeks from when I joined MT Advantage :o) Not bad, not bad at all. They came just at the right time because the couple of days before were spent decluttering the bonus room (slash office/school room/craft, toy and other storage/laundry launchepad/ironing station/filing room...) which was a tremendously huge job, but it's done now :) well, mostly and it's SO much nicer. But I'm kind of glad my books didn't come earlier in the week because I would have wanted to delve into them instead of cleaning which was very very necessary! I'd like to continue on in this fashion (cleaning) so that the house is presentable for the baby when he or she arrives in November. The bonus room was the biggest hurdle so the rest of it should be a piece of cake, right? LOL Here's a pic of my nicely arranged storage closet shelf complete with MT books :o) Notice how nothing is spilling out all over the floor in front of the shelves (like they used to). Everything fits on the shelves and if there ever gets to be too much, then it'll be time for another purge! I think I might go thru all the boxes in 6 months or so and see if there's anything else I can let go.

Back to my books... there's a set of 1000 flashcards of medical terminology (words, prefixes, roots, suffixes...) that I have to have learned by the end of the course, so I've started plugging them into my handy-dandy jMemorize program. I have about 120 keyed in so far and that was just in about a day so I think I could have them all in in a month or less (I hope!). Interseting medical terminology tip of the day (and something I remember from A&P): acetabulum (hip socket) literally means "little vinegar cup."

Flashcard update

I did some snooping online and learned about the Leitner System for learning things for the short as well as the long term. Basically what it does is it remembers the cards you get wrong and you see them more often until you start to get them right. Then the ones you get right come back again in a week or two or three to see if you still know them (refresh and strengthen your memory). I found several freeware or open source programs that were based on the Leitner method and after trying out 3 or 4 have decided that my favorite is jMemorize.

Pros:

Free
Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows
Can arrange flashcards in categories
Text formatting on cards (very simple tho, no highlighting)
Attach images to cards
Has nice charts to keep track of progress

Cons:

Doesn't allow sound attachments
Doesn't allow highlighting of text

All in all, not too many drawbacks. There's another one called Memory Lifter which I think I will use to practice typing commonly misspelled words. Memory Lifter has a function for adding sound where you can either add a sound file or you can record a sound, so I can just speak them into the microphone and off I go. The con for me with Memory Lifter is that it makes you type out every answer, doesn't just take your word for it, but that will actually be a pro in regard to my misspelled words list.

I'm in school!

Yup, after years and years in the real world, I'm finally in school again and lovin' it. Uh-huh, I'm a nerd, a bookworm, what can I say, I love school, or probably more accurately, learning. And I've never stopped learning, but now I'm officially enrolled. I'm going to be a Medical Transcriptionist when I grow up, lol.

After much research and indecision, trying to decide whether I'd go with the cheepest of the "big 3" MT schools, or choose another school which seemed to offer as much and more, if not the designation of being one of the "big 3." In the end, due to prompt replies to all of my emails and honest answers to all of my "difficult" questions, not to mention an awsomely awsome discount which brought it within range of the other school I was considering, I chose MT Advantage (Medical Transcription Advantage Career Center) and I'm so far very happy with my choice. The school boasts a 100% job placement rate which is very encouraging and so far, in working thru the lessons, I really feel that there is a lot there for me to learn. I feel that I'll come out with a lot of knowledge and practice that will translate well to the real word. It will probably take me at least a year to complete, what with homeschool, a new baby and the possibility of my having to pick up some part-time-at-home work while DH is in school, not to mention just staying on top of the running of a household... Sometimes I think I bit off too much, but I'm having such fun with this program and the good thing about it is that it's a do-at-your-own-pace course and they are fairly flexible about how long it takes you to finish. Right now I'm just trying to perfect my grammar, spelling, and my attention to detail (or occasional lack thereof), finish a few non-required, but helpful computer classes and improve my typing speed... I just found my old Harbrace College Handbook so I'm going to look thru it and hopefully pick up some helpful pointers in the grammar department. I don't think I'm horrible, but I think I definitely could use some improvement. And MTs generally have impecable grammar and spelling.

For note taking I'm using a dandy little feeware app called KeyNote. It's a wonderful little notes program that supports tabs and an unlimited tree structure within each tab. It's marvelous; I'm sad it's not being updated anymore, but I'm really mostly fine with it how it is.

Also, I downloaded a flashcard freebie called CueCard which will help me drill myself either online or via the printed version of the flashcards (will do either, or so it says).

So far I'm on Module 4 of 30 that are in the course and I've been given the green light to start Mod 5 if I want (since Mod 4 is about computers and is not graded or required, but helpful and so far [for me] boring as all get out). I'll have to skip back to Mod 3 when I get my books (in 3-5 weeks, sooner I hope!), but at least I can keep up the forward momentum. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

20 down, 20 more to go

Weeks that is. Actually I'll be 21 weeks tomorrow so slightly less. I made it to the halfway mark! Things are going well with this pregnancy so far. A few weeks ago I was having early morning mid-back pain that would force me up at 6:00 a.m. or so. But that has recently eased up, not sure what has changed, but I'm not going to complain! My belly is getting to that slightly uncomfortable, makes-it-hard-to-breath stage, but the baby isn't so big yet that it's kicking my ribs or my bladder so I guess I can be thankful for small blessings. Also, thank God, the relaxin hasn't kicked in yet. I hope it waits for a good while! The baby is probably close to 12" long now and wiggles now and then. I love the wiggling part :)

Sore Throat finally gone!

I'd had a sore throat for the last week or so and couldn't shake it. Normally all I have to do is up my water intake, suck on a zinc lozenge, and try to get extra sleep and that does the trick. But not this time. After a day or two it started getting very sore on my left tonsil and it hurt like crazy when I stuck my tongue out. So I got this wacky idea to "paint" my tonsil with hydrogen peroxide. I put some on a cotton swab and dabbed it on a couple of times. It burned for awhile and I drank a bunch of water to try to dilute the burning. And here comes my word of warning... I don't think that was the best thing to do. My tonsil did indeed stop hurting initially, but the hurt came back and it seemed to be worse and I think it may have caused it to last longer than it would have on its own. So next time I won't be doing that!

So my next weapon was... da da da daahhhh! garlic. My dad suggested a garlic/tomato sandwich so I diced up a clove, put it on bread with mayo on it, then slices of tomato, salted. It wasn't too bad, but it was spicy and stroooonnnnngg. But it did seem that after each dose of garlic, the soreness abated for awhile or felt a little less severe. I had 2 sandwiches one day, none the next, 1 the next (I think, as I recall). Anyway, it was almost gone yesterday and today I truly feel free. Hooray! So glad to be done with that! Oh, I forgot, I also tried gargling with cayenne in water which ended up being too spicy for me, but I also put it on my food which did seem to have a positive effect.

Medical Transcription

I've recently gotten a bit of a nudge from mi Papa RE: taking a medical transcription course online so I've been looking into it. I stumbled upon a terrific blog devoted to MT and have been having great fun reading thru the first few posts. It does rather sound like a lot of work (the coursework, the actual work work), but I also think it's something that might be right down my alley. I'm interested in things medical if just from a distance (couldn't actually be a nurse or anything like that), I type decently enough (I was the typesetter for my college newspaper for a year; incidentally I learned on a very old manual typewriter in eastern Africa), don't mind sitting on my computer for hours on end and have a love of the English language. Check back in a year or two and we'll see what comes of it all, but for now, I'm having fun investigating the prospect of it all.

Too tired for words (no not me)

The other day l'il bub was woken up from his nap by dad because he'd "slept long enough." Then dad and the older two went to run a quick errand and left Eli at home with me. Well, after a few minutes things got REALLY quiet and I went to investigate. I walked into the family room and this is what I found:


Then going around to check the other side of him:

Nothing sweeter than sleeping babies. Cracks me up the position he chose to cat-nap.

Projects

Here are a couple of my fairly recent projects that I hadn't had a chance to blog about yet. The first one is the bible cover I made out of old jeans for Geo's 7th birthday. I stayed up into the wee hours of the night the night before finishing it. Gigi has already requested one, but if I do, I'll start it months in advance, lol.


The next is the Cinderella Topsy Turvy doll (a la Jean Greenhowe) that I made for Gigi's 5th birthday. I'm really happy with how she turned out. Still need to make some little flowers to go around her bun, but otherwise she's done.


Here are a couple that Geo made for his sister's birthday. The bunny finger puppet was knit in the round using the magic loop method (ears knit by me, whiskers added by me), The pink bunny was knit in the round (magic loop) too, I think I did the ears for that one too, but pretty much everything else he did.

Sleepy Days, Restless Nights

I've had a bit of a revelation that if I don't get enough sleep I can't function the next day (now why is this news? LOL). Anyway, I guess the revelation was that I need to make sure we eat lunch between 12 and 1, eat supper at 5 and have kids in bed before 8 so that I can have some time with DH before I need to hit the sack between 9 and 9:30. One of the reasons for this early of a bedtime is that my back is starting to really bother me in the morning (mid to upper back). No matter when I go to sleep, I wake up between 6 and 7 and can't stay in bed past that time because my back hurts so bad. It stops hurting when I get up so it's a very good alarm clock. Also it's getting much more uncomfortable to sleep at night and I do quite a bit of tossing and turning till I can finally fall asleep. But if I don't get enough sleep the night before, it sets me up for complete exhaustion and inability and total lack of desire to do any of my routines and as a result the house falls apart. SO... this is the new plan in hopes that I'll be able to maintain a certain amount of functionality. We can hope. Next stop, relaxin and aching joints. I hope that stop isn't for awhile yet (like 2 or 3 more months at least!).

Revamped My Routines

Awhile back I decided that my visual side really needed a bit of a crutch when it came to my FlyLady control journal which lists my Morning, Afternoon and Before Bed routines as well as weekly chores and space for To-Dos and the like. I had it to where I liked it, ... for awhile anyway. But I've decided that it's time to simplify my routines a little so I redid my control journal. Here's a snapshot of my Morning Routine:
It sits in a sheet protector and hangs on my fridge where I mark off each task as it's completed with a dry erase marker. I even made the kids their own routine sheets (great for when they actually look at them, lol).

Biblical Womanhood

For awhile I've known about Crystal's (of MoneySavingMom blog fame) website about Biblical Womanhood and in the past I never gave it more than a cursory glance. But I have had the opportunity to read a few of her recent entries and I'm totally and completely impressed by her maturity in the light of her tender age (in her 20s with 2 little ones). I probably have 10 years or so on her and I feel that I am way behind where she's at. But I feel God is leading me to be more deliberate in my attempts to live out His directive for my life (Titus 2:3-5 talks about how older women are supposed to teach younger women [where I find myself at the moment] how to be sober, love their husbands, their children, be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands so that the word of God be not blasphemed). I feel that this is my true and highest calling and I will walk in faith as I attempt to do the best I can with God's help and pray He fills in all my inadequacies (of which there are many).

Part of Biblical womanhood includes modesty in dress and speech. I have felt a calling toward more modest dress for awhile now, but have no means to achieve that end at the moment. I would like to wear more skirts, but for now my swelling belly regulates me to whatever I have in the maternity department which is mostly pants and shorts. But after the baby, I'd love to get into making more of my own clothes, lots of pretty, feminine skirts and simple tops to match, some pretty and functional aprons for working around the house (and eating, lol) to keep my clothes tidy. It will of course be more practical when/if I'm able to cull a good portion of the extras that have been hanging around this house and the last like a millstone around my neck. I'm working on decluttering a little each day to achieve that eventual goal. I really would love to live a simple life... no TV (or very limited), just a few good toys for the kids, fewer clothes for everyone (means less laundry, water, soap, work for me...) and just the things we need or love allowed in our house. Someday...

Father's Day

Happy Father's day to all you deserving dads out there and most especially to my DH and my dad. The kids made cards for Daddy today and I found a simple little poem for Elliot to repeat after me and pulled it into Audacity to edit out all my prompts. I think it came out cute if fairly unintelligible. The text is as follows:

Daddy, I love you
For all that you do.

I'll kiss you and hug you
'Cause you love me, too.

You feed me and help me
Learn how to pray.

So smile 'cause I love you
On this Father's Day.

I'm baaaaaaccckkk!

Yeah, ok, I've been absent for quite awhile now, about 3 months, and in my defense, wasn't feeling great for most of those months. Why you might ask? Well let me go ahead and spill the beans all over the place.

Very shortly after I stopped blogging in March, dh and I found out that we were expecting baby #4. When I got a positive within seconds, it was almost too much to be believed. Dh and I were still sort of living in the fantasy that my cycle was just being a little crazy this month, it would come. But it didn't and, well, after the initial shock of it all wore off and we had mulled over what bad (in our minds) timing this was to be having another baby, we decided to leave it in God's hands and accept it as a blessing that God's Word says that it is. Now that I'm past the almost constant feeling-like-I-majorly-overate-and-need-to-relieve-my-stomach feeling, I'm actually really looking forward to the rest of the pregnancy and for the next addition of our not-so-little-anymore family.

Imitation = Flattery; the ER

Yesterday I heard Eli "do-do-doing" in the kitchen, kind of singing a song and I happened to glance in there to see what he was doing exactly and there he was with a piece of pvc pipe (I use it to wind my yarn) and was pretending to play it like a flute. And he was holding it fairly correctly too. If I didn't think he'd move or clam up, I'd have gotten a pic, but it didn't last long. It was very cute while it lasted tho.

At some point in the evening on Tuesday we noticed that Eli wasn't using his right hand like normal. Geo was the one to pinpoint the cause of Eli's crying, not sure why I didn't catch it. I had tried to change his diaper and give him a snack thinking he needed changing or was hungry, but sure enough, his hand wasn't doing much, he wasn't wanting to use it. We didn't know what might have happened. I didn't think he could have fallen hard enough to hurt it and even if he did, it was odd that it was his right hand since he's apparently left-handed. So we gave him some Tylenol and hoped he'd feel better in the morning.

I wrapped it up in an Ace bandage to try to keep it still in case it was a sprain or something like that. Well, he did better on Wednesday, but still wasn't using the hand and was complaining if we touched his hand or fingers... so finally after lunch I got us ready and off to the ER we went. There weren't that many people there at that time of day so maybe was a good time to go. We got in to triage and then a room very quickly.

Once in the room we had to wait a little longer between being seen, but Eli had fun and entertained himself by peeking outside the door every time the automatic doors down the hall opened or closed; he also enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with the curtains and thought that was a riot. The lady who saw us was a nurse practitioner and couldn't have been nicer. She said from what I told her that she suspected "Nursemaid's Elbow" where the radius bone gets pulled away from the ulna and humerus enough so that one of the tendon's holding the bones in place can slip down behind the bone and gets pinched and hurts! Poor baby!

So she tried to pop it back in place (simple procedure), but it didn't want to go back in. After 2 or 3 tries of this she decided to rule out anything else going on (a fracture or anything like that) and ordered x-rays. Well, the x-rays, thankfully, came back normal so she tried the procedure again and this time she said, "ah! there it went, I felt the pop." So we just watched him for a few minutes, tried to get him to pick up stickers or keys or my cellphone... He finally was able to hand me my keys which was the most he'd used his hands since the day before. After that he did some baby signs with that hand and then it was a very steady and quick improvement till, by the time I got him to the car to buckle him in, he was pretty much back to normal.

Apparently, one of us had taken him by the forearm and pulled a little too hard, or maybe he fought/resisted us while we had him by the arm (could have been me, DH, or Geo for that matter; he's bad about fighting diaper changes so I'll have to be careful with that). So we had a family meeting and I told them that no one should pull him by the hand or try to pick him up that way... only picking up under both arms or by the upper arm. So, all in all, I'm glad it wasn't worse, glad he's back to normal, and glad we know what to do to make sure it doesn't happen again!

My baby turned 7, *sniff*

Geo had his 7th birthday today. Even he is feeling the rush of time I think because he kept insisting that he was still 6. I think he's afraid that he'll grow up too fast and have to move out of the house. I tried to reassure him that that wouldn't happen for many years and that for now, this is his house, he lives here with us. When he gets older, he'll get the urge to get out on his own (well, hopefully, lol). But for now, he's still a kid and he doesn't have to worry about any of that. He still didn't seem too impressed and will probably be 6 for a few more days till 7 gets more normal sounding. He did try to use 7 in his defense yesterday, though. He told me that he was old enough to watch Polar Express even thought I was sure it would be too intense for him. He said that it wouldn't be too scary for a 7 year old. LOL So we let him watch it, and you know what? He watched it all and swore up and down that it wasn't scary. Guess he is growing up. We didn't have a big party but we did take a break from school in honor of his day, we did an egg hunt in the front yard (enjoyed the lovely weather, he really picked a good time of year to be born!), ate cake and I gave him a bible cover that I had stayed up late the last two nights wrestling with. Now Gigi says she wants one, but... I don't know. Geo's was a real bear, not sure I want to tackle one again any time soon. I think he had a good day, hope so :) But back to the grindstone again tomorrow!

107 years, one amazing woman

My 107 great-grandma, great-great-gran to my kiddos, passed away yesterday afternoon. She had had a heart attack the night before but it wasn't caught till yesterday morning. Apparently she was somewhat alert and talking till her very last breath, and then very quietly, she was gone. We are all very much at peace with her passing because she was so ready to go and she had lived a long long life. She had lost her eyesight a few years ago and became more and more dependent on my grandpa (her SIL) for assistance (as my grandma has health problems of her own). So I say a fond good-bye to my "grandma" and I know that her very next thought will be the 2nd coming of Jesus, so for her this quiet resting time will seem like the blink of an eye. Rest in peace dear lady.

The day's happenings

My plan was to wake up this morning early so the younger two and I could get over to the health department (for WIC recertification) and beat the rush so we wouldn't have to wait a million years to be seen. But, I ended up staying up till after midnight (my new bedtime is supposed to be much closer to 10) getting everything together (finding birth certificates, getting proof of income and address..., getting clothes out for the kids, getting things together for them to do if we had to wait...) so I really was not in the mood to wake up at 6:30 in the morning. We didn't manage to get over there till 10 a.m. They don't make appointments for anything there anymore, it's first come first served (I hate the new policy!!) so we sat and sat and Gigi got bored and more bored... About an hour later, they called us in. I had to sign some things, answer some questions, then we had to wait in another waiting room for awhile. They they called us in for weighing, measuring and hemoglobin check (for Eli only, Gigi was rather relieved!), then we waited some more, saw the nutritionist, waited some more, then finally got our vouchers. They really make you earn them I tell ya :) Oh well, an hour an a half later, we were free for another 6 months when Eli will have to be re-certified (Gigi will by then be too old). So that took up all of my morning.

After lunch Gigi and I went out for a mother-daughter jaunt. I thought she would like it, feel important... but all she did was grip and complain about one thing or another so I think maybe the concept is lost on her. I suppose she'd rather do other things so I won't be in such a hurry to take her anywhere in the future! We went and got some things laminated for DH for his Sabbath School class (class rosters and memory verse charts...), then we popped over to a nearby thrift store. I had very little money on me, but was able to get several really large, huge, gigantic dresses that I'll be able to take apart and re-purpose them into something for me :) I'm thinking lots and lots of aprons because I really have the bug to start wearing pretty things more often, less jeans and sweats and I don't want nice clothes to get dirty so lots of pretty and functional aprons will be nice! Here are some of my favorites: ruffly, paisley, apron from dress [pdf], slightly bizarre but functional "Lady Artisan", cute, not free, halter apron, slight ruffle apron, Christmas apron.

I went to CVS last Saturday night to take advantage of a diaper deal they had going on. Actually there were a bunch of things that were part of the deal. If you purchased $30 worth of the items, they would give you $15 back in ECBs. Good deal, but when I added $6 in diaper coupons and $1 battery coupon and a $4 off CVS coupon and $9.98 in ECBs, it was a really great deal. The only problem is that when the receipt printed off, they only gave me ECBs for the 5 Boost Smoothies that I had bought (because they were free after ECBs). So I asked the lady about it and she tried to tell me that because my coupons took the grand total under $30, that was why the ECBs hadn't printed. She even got another manager to agree with her. I didn't think so, but I walked out with my stuff, rather upset because I was sure I was supposed to get those ECBs. When I got home I looked more carefully at the receipt and it said that the amount that I had credited toward the reward was $26.97 which was the exact price of the diapers. So I saw that they hadn't given me credit for the batteries. I was elated when I figured that out because I was sure that I would be getting my ECBs :) So I called customer service and I must glow and wax complimentary about CVSs customer service. I got a really nice lady who, when she looked at my receipt on her end, saw what I was talking about and she said that my ECBs would print on my receipt the next time I shopped at CVS. So thank you CVS, it was pleasure doing business with you, I hope you get lots of business and have many happy years.

The breakdown of my transaction goes like this:

cost of 3 packs of diapers	$26.97
batteries	$5.29
subtotal	$32.26
coupons ($7.50)	$24.76
CVS $4 off $20 coupon	$20.76
used $9.98 in ECBs to pay	$10.78
get back $15 in ECBs	$-4.22

Not counting the ECBs that I used to pay with (because I had to build them up in the beginning with real money), I got 3 packs of dipes and 1 pack of 8 AA batteries for $5.76. Not bad say I!