I've Just Gotten LAZY!!!

Sad isn't it...it's been more than a month since I updated this blog. This pregnancy has left me with NO energy whatsoever. The good thing is, I've only thrown up a handful of times, although I do feel nauseous almost everyday.

So...what have you missed. Luke picked up his new lens and took the floor model back. He loves it and has been taking some nice pictures, but he hasn't updated the photo blog with anything.

We had an ultrasound a couple weeks ago at 7 weeks (we are 9 weeks now). We saw the heartbeat, but the doctor called later and said there was a spot of blood behind the placenta. She prescribed some folic acid...because it certainly can't hurt you, and put me on pelvic rest, which I turned it into not doing much of anything until the next appointment which is May 7th. I haven't had any bleeding or cramping though, so hopefully that's a good sign this time around. We got a picture but Luke still needs to scan it in.

Kendra, the little girl I babysit, fell off a chair at her house and buckle fractured her foot! How does that happen? She even tried walking on it, and that's how they noticed something was wrong. She has a cute pink cast on, but only for a few days. The doctor says kids heal really quick when they are this young, and she isn't even 2 yet.

We took a mini-vacation to see my grandparents in West Virginia on the 16th-20th. The girls had a blast, although the creek was too cold to play in. Chris came with us, so the guys shot some guns into the side of the hill one evening. It was nice to not have to cook or clean or worry about the girls. I'd hire grandma in a heartbeat to come 3x a week and clean my house and play with the girls...it's nice.

Luke's brother got his bees in (he bought 2 hives) We missed them going in because we had just got home from WV, but we went over last Thursday when he had to check on them to make sure the queen made it out of her little box. Luke took pictures and I ran the camcorder. It was pretty cool! If we get our land cleared enough this year, and if Jeremy's bees seem to do well, we are considering getting a couple hives to put out on the land next year.

Luke and I will have to go through all the pictures and find some to post to make up for this "lost month" I have going on. The house just seems to be falling apart and I go to bed earlier and earlier every night it seems. I can't slack much this week though, because this Sunday is Lilly's 2nd birthday party (her birthday is Saturday), so I need to get the ball rolling and get things set up and ready to go. I'm hoping to at least get one photo shoot with her (she just doesn't sit still). I made construction paper invitations Saturday for my side of the family, and everyone else is getting verbal reminders. I just fell so far behind with her birthday planning. Ugh...

Hopefully I can keep up to date a little better, but my biggest problem is falling behind with pictures, because I don't really know how to post them, so I have to wait for Luke, and he seems to be busy a bunch. I guess I could always add pictures after I post...hmmm...maybe that's what I'll do, kinda like this post!

Is that one line...or two??

So yeah….where to begin? Obviously, the pictures show that we had a positive pregnancy test last Wednesday (18th). What is weird about the whole thing is that I’ve never had a positive pregnancy test before Aunt Flo was due…and Wednesday was 2 days early!! With Alexis I was a week late before the positive showed up, and with Lilly it was the day I was due. The estimated due date from the online calendars suggest a date of November 27th. That’s Luke’s birthday, and Black Friday!! (No shopping this year… lol) We are very excited and of course quite nervous.

For some background, in February 2008, my SIL had a miscarriage at about 6 weeks. That rocked the family, and kind of fast tracked our want for another baby. In March, I got pregnant, and so did she. She was two weeks behind me. We found out on April Fool’s Day that we were expecting, and I had my first appointment April 29th. On April 30th, I started to bleed, so on May 1st we had an ultrasound. That revealed a little baby bean, only the size of 6 weeks (we were supposed to be 8 weeks) and no heartbeat. We had started miscarrying. That weekend I had 2 birthday parties planned for Lilly (her first birthday parties). I had to go through one of the happiest moments in my life with something devastating happening to us. It was hard to tell everyone, because at the time, no one even knew we were pregnant. We made a stepping-stone for the lost baby (We named Riley Willow) and placed it out on our land in remembrance.

Since May, we have been trying to get pregnant again. At the end of October, I got another positive pregnancy test. Five days later, I started bleeding. Since it was so early (I was 4 weeks, 5 days) I went in for blood testing every 48 hours, and after 2 rounds, my progesterone was stable at below 5, which means no pregnancy. That miscarriage is called a chemical pregnancy, since it was so early an ultrasound wouldn’t have detected anything. I didn’t feel much with that one. It all happened so quickly; I was just numb from it.

Fast forward to December. That was our due date, and we took lovely pictures of some roses (you can see on the photo blog), and took them out to the land. SIL’s pregnancy was doing great, except the little booger decided to come 16 days late, so she wasn’t even born in December, she was born in January!!

So here we are now. We have some personal milestones to hit for this pregnancy, and we’ve already lasted longer than the chemical pregnancy we had, so that is makes us a bit hopeful, even though anything could happen. March 31st is our nurses’ appointment. We will be 5 wks 4 days. We never made it to an appointment with the chemical pregnancy. April 17th will be our 8-week mark, which is how far we made it with Riley. May 15th will be our 12-week mark, which will significantly decrease the chance of miscarriage, because we head into the second trimester. We will have heard a heartbeat by then if everything goes well.

I really do believe though, that loosing Riley was due to a viral infection. I started loosing my voice on what looks like the day after we would have conceived, and I didn’t get my voice back until I started miscarrying 8 weeks later! At 6 weeks, I went to a family physician and he prescribed a medication I took for a few days that he said would be safe. When we had our ultrasound, the baby had stopped growing at 6 weeks. I can only think that the medication along with the viral infection stopped the pregnancy.


So I nervously wait until the nurses’ appointment. I will then see if they want to treat me any different since I’ve had these previous miscarriages. It didn’t seem like the receptionist took notice of the message I left regarding them when I called in for an appointment. There’s nothing much that could be done anyways, besides blood testing that I would pay for out of pocket at $50 each time. That’s the great thing with crappy insurance. We pay for everything until the deductible is met, so lets hope we have to pay the full $2500 for a little one this year!

A New Lens for Daddy!

Monday we took a little road trip to Cleveland. Luke’s new Minolta 100-400mm APO just didn’t impress him as much as all the talk surrounding it should have, so he sold it on e-Bay, and we went up to Dodd’s Camera in Cleveland to pick up a new Sony 70-300mm G series. They actually have to order it in, but they let him bring home their showroom sample. All we can say is “WOW!!” That thing takes phenomenal pictures. We stopped for gas and came across some seagulls in a parking lot, and then we played around outside when we got home getting some bird pics and some other miscellaneous. I cannot wait to go to the zoo or an air show. We will get fantastic pictures.


I also received some 3T summer clothes for the girls from a lady on freecycle. I have a special email address set up just for freecycle so I get all of the posts emailed to me. Sometimes you get really great deals, and today was one of them. There were really nice clothes from Old Navy, Target, The Children’s Place, and Wal-Mart in the two grocery bags I picked up. I had at least 5 full outfits, along with tons of shirts and shorts. It will really help out, since I’m pretty sure all of the 2T summer outfits I have waiting in the closet for Lilly are going to be too small for her this summer, especially while wearing cloth diapers.



A Seagull in a K-Mart parking lot.

A fluffy bird trying to keep warm in the wooded area behind our house.

Athena.

Lexi getting bird seed out of the bird bath.

A picnic for dinner.

Lilly in her purple car.

An American Robin (Isn't that picture fantastic?!)

Luke stalking his prey with his new lens.

The Wilderness Center in Wilmot

On Sunday we went to The Wilderness Center so the girls could get in a little walk and enjoy the nice weather. We went into the building first, since it was only open till 5pm, and we got there at 3pm. The girls loved the fossils on the walls, and it was jam packed with kids. Apparently it was Space Day. They had telescopes set up and activities for kids (older kids). They had a tree that had fake animals on it, and Lexi proudly told me that those animals were dead! (They were plastic, not dead) It amazes me what she knows! We checked out the indoor areas a little more, and bought them each an insect finger puppet at the gift shop. Lilly had a butterfly, and Lexi had a ladybug. On the way home she called it a Ladybird Beetle, because that’s what her insect book says it’s real name is. Did I tell you she is smart? Back to our adventure though, we took the trail that goes around Wilderness Pond. I didn’t bring a stroller, but the girls had their exploring backpacks on, so I was using Lilly’s as a handle to keep her near me. We saw some Canadian Geese, and went out on their little dock and threw in some bread to feed the geese and fish. Then trouble struck! Lilly dropped her butterfly in the pond. She immediately started running up the walkway to turn into the pond and go after it! She had a nice little meltdown, and we decided we should turn around and head back up to the building. They were only open for another 45 minutes, and we told Lilly we would buy her another butterfly. We ended up picking up a couple clearance photography books about birds, and packed them up to head home. We played outside for about an hour before heading in to get them cleaned up.

We also found out that The Wilderness Center is having a photo contest in April. Entries must be submitted by the 11th, and the judging will be the 18th and 19th. The photos and awards will then be presented on May 2nd. It’s $4 a picture to submit, but Luke may submit a couple and see if he places.

Sean stopped over around 8pm to go over the pictures Luke took of his kids a couple weeks ago. We just burned them on a disk after resizing them to different print size crops, so he can send them wherever to get copies.

All in all it was a great day, and hopefully we can have a lot more of them. We think we want to modify the girls’ backpacks though. They tend to fall off their shoulders, because they are still a bit big, so we will make them into harnesses to help keep the shoulder straps up, and while we are at it, we will probably connect a leash to them in the event that we need them in super busy place. That Lilly hates to hold hands, and I don’t know how else to keep her from melting down right now until she gets to the point that she understands, because I know she isn’t there yet.

Lilly inside the tunnel.

Lexi inside the tunnel.

Lexi standing next to her "dead" animal tree.

Lilly pointing to some fossils on the fossil wall.



We also got some cute video of them on my little Canon Powershot camera. That thing really comes in handy.

Here's Lilly honking like a goose.


Here's Lexi pointing out the geese. At the very end you can hear Lilly crying. She had just dropped her butterfly in the pond!


Here are the girls at the fossil wall inside. Lexi called the the fossils snails (a lot looked like snail shells) and Lilly calls dinosaurs "dragons" for some reason.

Cousin Cody's Birthday Party!

On Saturday we did a quick stop in Canal Fulton to see our friends' new house they have been working on for weeks! We didn't stay long since Keith was feeling sick, so we headed back to my dad's to pick up my brother and head out to my Aunt and Uncle's place for the birthday bash. The girls were angels, and everyone wanted pictures when Lilly started eating the cake. Cody made out too! I can only hope I get that many presents for my birthday!! It was a full house, with 4 or 5 of his friends over, and all of Taresa's side of the family, and then us. He had a yummy DQ Reese's PB Blizzard ice cream cake. That's my kind of guy. I love ice cream cake!

Here's Cousin Dylan playing ball with Alexis and Lillian.

Here are the girls looking out the living room window watching Uncle Jesse (my brother) doing a flip on the trampoline.

Cody and his new fishing gear.

Cody tearing the paper off his new TV with Aunt Taresa watching.

Lilly devouring her cake.

Lexi being neat and clean with her cake.


Here's the video of Cody blowing out his candles. He blew so fast, I don't know if anyone got a good picture!

Happy St. Patty's Day

Hope you have green on! School was a pain the entire day if you forgot your green. Just a quick update to say we are alive and well, and for everyone to not worry about last week. I was sick and grumpy, therefore nothing was done around the house. We are playing with play-doh, The Backyardigans are on TV, and we expect Kendra in a half hour to play for the day. All is well. Luke is off working at Jeremy's, since it's his normal Tuesday. We hope to make it outside later today, because it's supposed to be gorgeous. And besides some cough and runny nose, we are all pretty much back to normal. I have some babies and a large pile of laundry calling my name for the day.

Our Wildlife Sunday

The girls and I still have the runny/stuffy nose. I just don't think it's going away. Saturday consisted of getting the house back in order from us being lazy throughout the week. We were supposed to have a photo shoot with my boy cousins on my mom's side, but they found out we were sick, and didn't want to be infected, so we rescheduled. So our Sunday was now free, and it was very nice outside. We bought a bird feeder and a bird bath, and worked on making a little nature area in the backyard that we will grow a bunch of wildflowers in.

While working at the top of the yard, Miss Lilly wandered away and by the time I looked up to realize, she was at the sidewalk in the front of the yard...clear down the driveway! I of course screamed at her in shear panic as a darted the almost 150 foot down the yard. The neighbours across the street heard me and made sure she wouldn't have ended up in the road, but she turned when she heard her name and came running back towards me. That was my first major heart-attack. I think Luke's set in later, but he didn't even realize what was going on until I was already half way to Lilly and there was no danger posing anymore. After that shake up, we packed in the car and got Starbucks for the first time in over 2 weeks (I'm so proud I had gone that long!), and decided to do some birdwatching.

We drove to our land, and down to Funk Bottoms, and out to Killbuck Marsh in Shreve. The girls had their spotting scopes, I had some binoculars, and Luke had his camera. They had a lot of fun, and Lilly took a nap. Our land had some cardinals and other birds, Funk bottoms didn't have much but some far away geese, and Shreve had some geese and a beaver. That was pretty cool! When we got back home, the girls played in the backyard for awhile.

I'll have to get pictures up of our entire wildlife area, but Monday morning we had our first visitor...a squirrel! We still haven't seen a bird on that thing, but the squirrels will climb right up the pole and get it. So here's some shots from the weekend.