Spring Projects

It's that time of year again, when it seems as though all weekends from here until June will be filled with projects. Part of that is the glory of home ownership. Unfortunately it seems as though I always seem to be pregnant when we have the most to do. I guess that will just keep me in shape, right? Well here is what is on Brett and I's to-do list for the near future:

• Get our pool cleaned and ready for the summer (just an above ground, so it shouldn't be too much work).


• Assemble Carter's swingset.


• Kill off half of our backyard, lay weed fabric, and spread rock in the area that won't grow grass real well. As well as replacing all of our mulch with rock.


• Plant 12 screening trees to block out our sex offender neighbor who likes to call the fire dept. on us for having small fires in our fire bowl.


• Power wash and stain our deck. Brett wants to also do the fence, but I don't know about that.


• Have a garage sale (I hate this idea, but it's a must to clear out Carter's new big boy room).


• Paint and decorate Carter's new Dr. Seuss themed room. Assemble the new crib, dresser, and storage shelf.


• And just keep up with the typical weeding and yard work that comes along with owning a house.

This may not seem like anymore than a couple of labor intensive weekends, but when we both work every or every other Saturday and have a 16 month old that requires constant supervision; it's very tough to get some of these things done. Oh yeah and we need a new roof, but that's a subject for another day. My neighbor who owns his own construction business likes to remind us on a constant basis that we need a new roof and my thought is "yeah just add that to the list buddy". So anyway, that's what we'll be up to for the next several weekends. Oh and we'll also be finding out if we're having a boy or a girl next Thursday. I'm stoked! Praying for pink!! haha. But I sure wouldn't mind another boy.

15 months-Full Steam Ahead

Carter just turned 15 months old on the 19th and I figured it was time to share with you what's been going on in his life. He finally started walking at about 14 months and although I kept urging him to do it for a long time, I'm now wishing I hadn't rushed him into it. Needless to say, we have 5 baby gates up now, including one on our bedroom door, because he has learned how to turned the handle and open the door. And we don't have round knobs, so the gate was our only way of keeping him out. He has also become quite the climbing machine and I can't seem to keep him off of anything. He climbs on everything!! He climbs on his play table, he stands up in his rocking chair, and he even climbs on the shelves of our built in media center. He's a little monkey, I tell ya. With all this climbing, he's also done some falling, but that doesn't seem to stop him. Anyone got any suggestions on how to stop all the climbing? It's rather nerve wrecking.The only time I get him to sit down and give myself a break from chasing him around is when it's bathtime. He loves the bath! I swear I could leave him in there for hours and he'd be pefectly happy. He has even gotten used to me tipping him back in the water to rinse out his hair. His daddy also helps with baths and likes to give him bubbly mohawks.
Carter is quite the social butterfly as well. He has never suffered from separation anxiety and he definitely isn't shy. I credit this to him being exposed to lots and lots of people since he was born. He loves daycare and gets along with the kids great. He is quite the ladies man if I do say so myself (but that might have something do with the fact that there is only one other boy there).
He went to work with me a couple of days last week, because his daycare provider was sick, so needless to say I got zero done and ended up leaving early. Here he is sitting in his seat next to me.
So I have to say, this past month our lives have really changed. We can go outside and play more, we are wearing shoes all the time (except in the house), we have gotten our first moler, we are ordering off the kid's menu, we have been expressing our strong will more and more each day, and we have kissed the paci good-bye for good. Although some nights I wish we still had the paci, but I refuse to cave after he's been without it for a few weeks. Brett and I feel more worn out at the end of the day, but we are loving every second with our little man more and more each day. All the chasing Carter around has kept my pregnancy weight down. I'm 13 weeks along and have yet to really gain any weight. The doctor's scale said 1 lb, but that was right after lunch and my scale says none. By this point in my first pregnancy I had already gained like 5 - 10 lbs (yeah I know, shut up!). So we love you little man and we are looking forward to watching you grow up!!
*Note the obnoxious look on his face. I'd say that describes his personality well; he's a very strong willed individual. Kind of like his momma.*

Ticker's a Tickin'

Well tomorrow I will be 12 weeks pregnant and I went for my second checkup today. They weighed me in (always my favorite part....barf) and I only gained 1 lb. I guess I can live with that. According to my scale I hadn't gained anything (and actually lost a couple since I was so sick the last couple of days), but I blame it on eating a pretty hefty lunch right before my visit.

The doc went to listen to the heartbeat and picked it up right away. Success!! I guess since I haven't had most of the terrible pregnancy symptoms I had with Carter part of me has been thinking "knock knock, you still in there baby?" I'll take today's visit as a yes.

So we're just plugging away. My mom has already been gracious enough to purchase new bedding and a new convertable crib for Carter. We have decided to do his bed in the Dr. Suess theme and found some really great bedding at Pottery Barn. My plans for his room look a little like this:

Except he's getting a Chocolate finish crib, because I just couldn't bring myself to putting him in a white crib. White would be great for a girl, I'm just not sure about it for a boy. We're going to keep the nursery just the way it is. Except I will definitely need to buy a new sheet for the mattress. Carter has been pretty rough on it.

The only thing I'm finding that I'm dealing with a lot more than I did when I was pregnant with Carter is that I'm sick a lot more often. Partly because they say having a kid, a miscarriage, and another pregnancy all in 14 months is a lot for your body to handle. So I guess I'm pretty depleted, but then I have Carter in daycare and the kids in there are constantly sick. So he's constantly sick, so I'm constantly sick. He actually managed to not catch a stomach bug that was going around daycare, while I did catch it. Out of nowhere, I became violently ill on Wednesday morning and pretty much didn't get out of bed for the next two days. It was miserable.

So I guess that about wraps it up. We've got a healthy baby so far and now I just need to worry about keeping him/her healthy and keeping myself as healthy as possible. Here's to hoping winter comes to an end very soon!! (please don't remind me of this when i'm bitching about the heat in August).

25 and already having EKGs run

Well yesterday proved to be a kind of scary day for me. It started off like any other day, but around 11:00am I started to feel pretty weak, so I decided to eat lunch early in hopes that would make me feel better. Well it didn't. I found myself struggling to catch my breath and feeling worse by the minute. I then started to feel a flutting in my chest and after about an hour, it dawned on me to take my pulse. That's when I noticed every time I felt the flutter in my chest, my heart was skipping a beat. It wouldn't have bothered me, except that it was skipping a beat about every 5 seconds or so. I called my dad and told him what was going on and he said he'd be back to the office in a few minutes.

Once my parents got back to the office, I let my mom feel my pulse and within just a few seconds she felt my heart skip two times. So we decided it was best that I go to the walk-in clinic to have them take my vitals. Well, we went to 2 different clinics and they were really backed up, so my mom just told the nurse practitioner what was going on and that's when she referred me to the E.R.

So it was off to the E.R. we went. It's amazing how when you tell them you're having heart problems, you get rushed right in without even having to wait 5 mins. It wasn't long after I was there that they ran an EKG to see if my heart was okay. That came back normal, so they hooked me up to a monitor to watch my heart beat for a while and they took some urine and blood. They also tried to listen for the baby's heartbeat, but it wasn't loud enough to get a good count. I also went for a chest X-Ray and that came back normal as well. After a couple of hours, my heart went back to normal and the doctor said he saw it skipping beats, but couldn't watch it long enough to see if anything was abnormal. My blood work did show that my potassium level was low and that could have very well caused the irregular heartbeat. So they gave me 4 big potassium pills, a referral to a cardiologist, and sent me on my way.

They also recommended that I drink Gatorade and eat a banana everyday. I just hate when things like this happen. I leave feeling like I just spent a whole lot of money to be told "we don't know what's wrong with you". Awesome. I also feel very frustrated because I feel like I'm falling apart. Two visits to the E.R. within 6 months. Really? I mean, my OBGYN did express concern that 2 good pregnancies, and a miscarriage all within 14 months is a lot for my body to handle. But I never expected this. I just feel like my body has been completely drained of all the "good stuff".

Anyhow, I guess I will make a follow up appointment with the cardiologist and she if that leads anywhere. My guess is my heart will act completely normal and he will not see anything like what was going on yesterday. I guess that'd be a good thing though.

Goodbye Suck Suck

Well Carter is 14 months old and I have finally tested my will power and took away his "suck suck". We got back from dinner Friday night and he was about 45 mins past his bedtime, so as I was changing him into his PJs, he kept laying down. I thought to myself, I will embrace his super tiredness and see if he'll go to sleep without the paci. Well it worked, he went right to sleep without any crying.

So for the rest of the weekend (except when my mom was babysitting him on Saturday morning), he didn't get his paci. At times he put up a little fight, but at other times he would just go to sleep. During his afternoon nap yesterday, he really fought it and after about a good 45 mins of hearing him cry, I went to rock him back to sleep. That's when I smelled a poopy diaper and figured he may have been crying about that rather than not having his "suck suck". I changed his diaper and put him back down, but had no luck on getting him to sleep. So we just skipped the afternoon nap.

By the time bedtime rolled around, he went to sleep without any fussing. I felt somewhat successful. Now, I had to pass my responsibilities onto our daycare provider. She said she'd not give it to him and I was just praying he wouldn't give her too much of a fight. Well, I checked in after his morning nap and she said he went to sleep without any crying. Success!!! Now let's just hope the same goes for his afternoon nap.

People keep telling me "he's still young, you know", but I just figured I found an opportunity to start getting him off the paci and I jumped on it. I also figured, the longer he has it, the more attached he will get. Plus, with the new baby coming in August, I want the paci to be long in his past, so he may not have such a hard time seeing the new baby with one. Of course, it doesn't help that my husband put a paci in the cupholder of his carseat before we left for church yesterday. I looked back and saw him grab it and almost put it in his mouth. I asked Brett why he would do that when we're trying so hard to break him of the paci during sleeptime and he hasn't gotten it during "awake" hours in a long time. There's no explaination for some of the things men do.

Anyhow, I'm really hoping we are successful on this one, because I will feel like I accomplished something big. Plus I will be extremely proud of my little guy. Well, wish us luck!!

Birth Plan

When I was pregnant with Carter I kept hearing ladies talk about birth plans. At the time, I didn't even know what the heck a birth plan was, but when I figured it out, I laughed. Birth plan...really?? I mean I'm a control freak, but when it came to giving birth (especially for the first time) I figured the nurses and doctor had it figured out better than I did and didn't need any instructions from me. So needless to say, I went in to have Carter and had absolutely no list of expectations.

Well after having Carter, there were several things that really upset me and I'd definitely want to make sure they didn't happen again. So this time around, I will definitely be having a birth plan. No I'm not one of those extremely brave women that wants to do things naturally, I'd just like to be a little bit more in control in what happens in my labor and delivery room.

The first thing is, I want to make sure of is that I never get asked again "how do you feel about students?" Are you kidding me lady?! I'm exposing my most sensitive parts to two family members, 4 nurses, and one doctor...I don't need any students getting a peak too!!

Also I do plan on getting another epidural, but I will make sure that only nice anesthesiologists apply. I will list that I have a very sensitive back and my muscles spasm on their own and that I need not to be yelled at when it happens.

One of the most important things will be restriction on who comes in and out of my room. The one thing that bothered me the most was that I didn't get my "hour" with Carter before family was barging in. I was literally still throwing up in puke buckets when my dad, MIL, and SIL started knocking on the door to come see the baby. I hadn't even really got to hold him yet!! Of course the stupid nurses thought nothing of keeping people from coming into my room.

Finally, there will be no lactation consultants allowed. I can not even describe my disgust for those people. They say they are trying to help, but I believe they had a lot to do with me not being able to breast feed. They would come in at the most inopportune times, they were pushy, and they practically made me starve my child, because they refused to let me supplement him with a bottle when he wouldn't latch on. They stressed me out and they made me feel inadequate when I couldn't feed my baby naturally. So for that reason, I will personally slam the door in their faces if they even think about entering my room this next time.

But for real, the very most important part of my birth plan is serious discussion about a C-Section. After Carter coming out so large for my body and having so much trauma that lead to so many medical problems, I'd rather have gone through a C-Section. If he had been born that way, he wouldn't have had a broken collar bone, which means he wouldn't have had Torticollis, and probably wouldn't have developed that flat spot, and never would have needed a helmet. For a first time mom to take her newborn for repeated X-rays, physical therapy, CAT scans, to see bone doctors, plastic surgeons, and orthopedic specialists was a little much. So with that said, I will have a serious discussion that if the next one is close to the same size, I'd like to consider a C-Section.

So I guess birth plans aren't just for the tree-hugging naturalists. I can definitely see how they ease the stress of the situation. The nurses won't have to bother me with their stupid questions if they know the answers ahead of time. Not such a bad idea afterall.

What about you ladies? Have any of you used birth plans and if so, did you find them to be helpful?

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

Well for those of you who don't already know via Facebook, I'm pregnant again!! Yep, I waisted no time after losing my last pregnancy to start trying again. Brett and I found out about a week before Christmas and we kept it to ourselves until Christmas day to surprise our families with the news. We did also decided to keep it quiet until we felt that we were in a safer stage in the pregnancy to announce it to the world. After announcing the last one and then having to go back with the bad news that we lost it, I just didn't want to have to do that with this one.

As it happens, I did have some more than normal spotting/bleeding issues a few weeks ago and I was terrified that I was losing this pregnancy as well. But the bleeding stopped and I was still pregnant according to E.P.T., so I went ahead and scheduled a doctors appointment. I met with my new doctor and he said everything looked normal, but he went ahead and scheduled an early ultrasound to make sure anyway. Last Tuesday I went in for the ultrasound and beside the fact that my bladder was full of water and the tech was running an hour behind, everything looked great. They could see the baby's heartbeat and it was beating at 170 bpm. I was thrilled!!

So at this point, I'm 9 weeks pregnant and my due date is August 27. Yes, I said August 27. That means I will be at my absolute biggest when it is often times averaging 100 degrees here in Nashville. I may be crazy and I will probably wish I had chosen a better time to be pregnant, but right now it's feeling pretty good. I am actually having a much easier pregnancy thus far than I did with Carter. With him, I threw up every morning and stayed sick and tired all day long, everyday. With this pregnancy, I've had little to no morning sickness. Really, I've had a couple of times that I've gotten a little sick feeling, but nothing that I'm really going to complain about. As long as my head stays out of the toilet this pregnancy, I'll be satisfied.

I'm watching my weight extremely close this pregnancy and will not allow myself to gain the 52 lbs that I gained with Carter. Not to mention, I still had a good 15 lbs that I never lost, so I definitely can't gain that much again. This time around I actually have a scale and weigh myself every morning. So far I haven't gained any weight, but I am definitely growing in size already. Of course they say you start showing sooner with your second pregnancy, so I guess I shouldn't be too upset that my jeans are already almost not fitting at this point. I actually think I will be digging out my bella band soon. Oh gosh.

So anyway, Brett and I are very excited and are hoping for a girl this time around. Of course, if we have a boy we will be equally excited. A girl would just be something different. Carter is also getting upgraded to the big room on the other end of the hallway. His room now is really only good for a nursery, because it's so tiny, but his new room is as big as our master bedroom and there will be plenty of room for a lot of his toys.

I guess that about sums it up right there. I'll keep ya'll updated and am very excited to bring this next child into our lives.