Baby boy or baby girl?

We went to the doctor yesterday as a family. Mike and the kids had not gone to an appointment with me yet. Before this appointment, things were not too exciting, so I thought I would wait to bring the kids. Yesterday was pretty exciting! The baby was moving and squirming, and the kids loved it. Mike said it really had not been real to him until yesterday.

We gave decided not to find out what this baby is. Well, I have decided, and mike is just going along with it. He really wants to know, but I want to know what the surprise of not knowing is like. I have stuff for a boy or a girl, so I want to be strong and not find out. Yesterday the doctor glanced at the area between the baby's legs and said, "oh, do you want to know what you are having?". I hesitated and said, "no, we don't want to know". We finished up the ultrasound and I asked, "could you really tell what we are having?". She said yes, but if it made me feel better, she can't say with 100% certainty. I gave felt like it is a bit this entire time, and if she could tell that fast, I think it IS a boy. However, I would be just as excited if it were a girl.


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Life is changing

My sweets is starting kindergarten tomorrow. I am filled with tons of thoughts and emotions. This day feels like it came too fast. How did my baby turn into a kindergartener? She is so excited for kindergarten, so I am really excited for her, but it is bittersweet that she is growing up.

I hope we prepared her enough for this. I hope our decision to send her to public school was the right one. I hope she has a great experience this year, and she develops an even greater love for learning. Oh man, I hope she is prepared!

I am sure I am not the first parent to feel this way! I am
So proud of the girl she is, I could explode. What a gift I was given when she was born. I feel so lucky that God chose me to be her mom. I just hope I can hold it together when I drop her off tomorrow. My hormones are not helping things right now!


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I don't care what your opinion is!

Why is is that if you have more than 2 kids, people have an opinion? I have had people shake their heads at me in disgust that I would have another baby. I have people assume that baby number three must have been an accident. Let me set the record straight, BABY NUMBER THREE WAS PLANNED AND IS VERY MUCH WANTED. We are thrilled to be having another baby. I also want to make clear that I AM aware that I work. I LOVE my job, and I will be just as good at it with three kids. I can work, go to school, and take care of my three kids just fine.

What is with society acting like kids are burdens? People get irritated that I post mostly pictures of my kids on my facebook. I have heard people who get grossed out when a pregnant woman posts a picture of her pregnant belly on her own personal facebook. If you don't want to see pictures of someones pregnant belly, or their kids, don't look. People also like to let me know that I might lke having children now, but I don't have teenagers yet. While I won't be nieve and say, "my children won't be bad teenagers", I will say that my parents survived through it, and I will too.

I am not sure what people are trying to gain by being negative about having children. Are people trying to make me regret having kids? My kids are the joy in my life, and without them, my life would be empty. I will never regret having them, and I will keep floding my facebook, blog, and anything else with their pictures, because they are what is important to me. Without children, society will end. We should be encouraging good parents to have as many children as they want.

home birth?

It is a growing trend to have a home birth. I have looked into this, mainly because my two previous bith experiences were not ideal. I was induced with Scarlett because I was "showing signs" of pre eclampsia. I get that I was induced because there might have been complications, so I am not too upset about that one.

I was in a car accident when I was pregnant with Owen. They had stopped my labor one time, and had been moitoring me from the time I had the accident to the time I had him. At thirty six weeks, to the day, I went in for my regular NST and they said I was having mild contractions, and admitted me. After they admitted me, they gave me pitocin. Really, what they should have done, was let me go home until I was in labor and dialated more than 1. I did not see any reason why I needed pitocin if I was in labor.

I think it would be great to be able to be more in control of my birth experience. Women used to have babies at home all the time. No interventions from a doctor who wanted to speed up a natural experience. I also think it would be great to be in the comfort of your own home. The only reasons doctors give a woman pitocin is to speed up labor, and then they give them an epidural which slows labor down, so they have to increase the pitocin. It becomes a cycle of medication.

The only issue I have is that there are no midwives in our tiny town, so I am going to have to settle on a birth at the hospital. The great news is, I have a new doctor, and she seems amazing. She has two kids who she breastfed for 15 months each, while being a doctor! That is completely impressive to me. I think this birth experience will be better for me because of many reasons. I have been through this more two times. I know what to expect. I know what I want, and I am not afraid to ask for it. I am going to have a positive attitude this time, and I can't wait to meet our new baby. We have decided not to find out what we are having, and I am excited for that surprise too.

Number 3

It is official, I am haveing another baby! WE have wanted this for awhile now, but I wanted to loose 30 pounds first. I lost 36 pounds, and decided it was time. WE are so excited about this, and we can't wait to meet our new baby.

I posted a video on facebook of us telling the kids. I was not going to do that because it was pretty personal. I wanted to record their reactions to share with our families, but it was too funny to not share with all of our friends and family. I know the rule is to wait until 12 weeks to share the news, but I don't typically follow rules, so there. I am 6 weeks, and the more prayers the better, so we decided to let everyone know.

Scarlett understands it much better than Owen. She has started helping me out more, especially with Owen. The other morning I heard the kids get up, and Scarlett took Owen to go potty, made him wash his hands, and got him some milk. What a great help she is going to be. Owen still wants to jump on me all the time, and when he is holding dolls, he is usually throwing them in the air, or stabbing them in the eye with something. :/

Where do babies come from?

So the other night I told the kids to pick out some books to read. Scarlett picked out a photo album of when she was born and wanted me to tell her about all of the pictures. We were looking at a picture of Mike and I giving her her first bath at the hospital, and she said,"mom, was you healing in this picture?". I was completely shocked. Why would she think I was "healing"? I have never talked to her about how babies are born. I said,"what do you mean?". She said, " was your foot healing?". I said, " what do you mean, was my foot healing?". She said, "what I came out of your foot, did it hurt?". Part of me wanted to say, "yes, of course you came out of my foot". Then I thought, "why do I have to explain this to a 5 year old?!?!,I thought I had a few more years before that conversation!". I knew I had to say something about it because I can't let her think women give birth through their foot(although, that might be more pleasant than where they really come out of, AND, for the record, it would be much easier if we fed our babies from our fingers). So,I said, "Scarlett, babies don't come out of mommies feet, they come out of our privates." She said, " GROSS!!!!". I hope she is not scarred!!!


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Growing pains

Today I took Scarlett to a tour of the kindergarten she will be going to in August. For the last two days, the school has taken groups of kids on a tour of the school. They get to look at the rooms, meet teachers, do an activity, eat lunch, and play on the playground. I have always assumed this transition was going to be easier on Scarlett than it would be on me, but it was confirmed today. We went to 6 different classrooms, and Scarlett knew someone in every class. I decided to let her go to the bathroom with all the other girls, while I waited outside. After a while I thought, " it is taking her a long time, I better go see if she is okay." I walked into the restroom and saw Scarlett and 4 other girls talking. She had not even gone to the bathroom, she was too busy making friends in the restroom! She was so sad when we had to leave. She can't to go back in August. It was hard for me to imagine her old enough for school, but it made me happy to no that she will have NO problem adjusting.

I also want to point out that being a kindergarten teacher has got to be an entertaining job. I was only there for 3 hours, and I learned a ton of things from the kids. One boy told me that his parents just bought a house for 180,000 thousands of dollars, and he got a new belt buckle. A girl asked Scarlett if she had a dad, and Scarlett said yes. Then the girl said to Scarlett,"I have tons of dads and two moms, but Nathan, he is the dad that can never come back to our house with his girlfriend. Her name is Lydia, do you know Lydia?" to which Scarlett replied, "I know Lydia." kids have the funniest conversations. Sad, but interesting.


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Dinosaur lake

Scarlett has been learning about dinosaurs in her class at daycare. The week Owen was sick, she had a dream about a dinosaur that had sharp teeth and was throwing up purple and orange throw up. (she has a purple and orange lava lamp) Since that dream, she has been scared to go to sleep, and has been having night terrors again. Last Friday, while the kids were in the bathtub, Scarlett started crying because she did not want to go to sleep. Keep in mind that I had been dealing with night terrors (any mom who has kids that have night terrors knows how crazy they are, so I was getting tired of the crying and I knew I had to come up with something to stop it. I said, "Scarlett, if you are so afraid of dinosaurs, I am going to take you to where they used to live, so you can see they don't exist anymore." As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew that this could be a bad idea. I got the kids out of the bath and got them in their pj's and drove them out to a lake in the woods. This is a good 20 minute drive, in the middle of the forest. When we got to the lake I said, "Look, do you see ANY dinosaurs?!" Scarlett said, "they must be extinct because I don't see any of them." Score, I assumed she was over her fear. Then, Owen said, "Mom, this place is creepy, I'm scared". It was dark so we could not see the lake really well. I said, "Owen, we will come back during the day to see the lake, and it won't be creepy." That night both kids went to sleep with no crying, and it has been great ever since.

The next day we decided to take the dogs and go to the "dinosaur lake". We had such a good time. I am loving my new phone, and the great pictures it takes.

Best daughter!

Last weekend, Scarlett and I drove to Las Cruces to she her bestie. One of my good friends from growing up has a daughter that is 2 weeks older than Scarlett. Scarlett and Naomi have been friends since birth. The sad thing it that we live two hours away from each other, so we don't get to see each other very often. Naomi's mom called me a few weeks ago to see if Scarlett and I could come to Las Cruces for a princess party. I thought it was a great idea, and it would be a chance for Scarlett and I to hang out together. We had such a great day. We took the girls to lunch, then to the princess party, and then to Starbucks for dessert. We also did some shopping without any boys. After our fun day with Naomi, we met up with my brother and sister in law for dinner. Here are some of the pictures from our awesome day.

Mixed emotions

After debating for a while about homeschooling, we have decided that public school will be best for Scarlett. She is way too social to be at home everyday. She loves to be around other kids. We asked her if she wanted to go to school, and her face lit up with excitement.

Next week, we are taking her to the kindergarten to look around and meet some teachers. We are lucky enough to live in a town where we can request teachers for our kids. We are able to request teachers that we know and respect, and who we think will be best suited for Scarlett's needs.

So, this August, our baby will be going to school. I am so sad that she is old enough for school, but happy at how excited she is to go. With Scarlett, I can promise that it will be much harder for me to let go than it will be for her. I am already preparing myself for this transition in our lives.

It's been a while.

During the crazy freeze, our pipes froze at our house. We could not go home until they thawed out, so we had to stay at my mom's house for a week. It was -28 degrees here in Ruidoso! Luckily we were in California in the nice sunny weather when it was freezing here.

When we finally got into our home, we had to deal with some busted pipes, (or should I say Mike had to deal with it) and then the sickness came! We went to church one Sunday, and then to birthday party after church. At the Birthday party, a child threw up everywhere. That was our cue to leave. When we got home, I texted the sick kids mom to see how he was doing. She said he was SICK, and that she was sure he got it from a kid that her child had been with the night before, who was throwing up all night. The sick kid who had been throwing up all night was in church the next day, and proceeded to spread his sickness to three other kids.

Owen got sick that following Tuesday night. He was so dehydrated that his eyes were sunken in, and he looked like the walking dead. I called the doctor and she told me to take him to the ER immediatly. I thought that was a little drastic, so I decided to wait one more hour. Finally, after he had been sick for 12 hours (every thrity minutes during that hour) he kept some Gatorade down. He did not eat food for 5 days, I missed three days of work, and then Mike got sick and missed two days of work. All because one mom HAD to bring her sick kid to church. I respect people enough that if my child is acting like they don't feel good, I stay home. I would appreciate that same respect from other people.

the biggest tree ever!

This year we decided to cut down our own Christmas tree. We went on a picnic with my parents and then hunted for the perfect tree. I was looking for a Douglas fir, but than I realized that we don't have those here!!!! Just so EVERYONE is clear, the trees that you buy at the "tree farm" do not exist in nature!!! I know, because I look long and hard for one. I saw quite a few in peoples yards, and I must admit, I was tempted to snatch on in the middle of the night, but I did not. I settled on a beautiful pine tree. It was not perfect, but it was pretty close. The experience was amazing! I think we will do it every year. It was like finding a wedding dress, I knew the minute I saw it, it was our tree. I can not say it enough! It was the greatest experience EVER! we had so much fun finding it, and then we watched Mike cut it down and we hauled it to the car. I recommend it to every family!

hormone free family...

This post is about eating. Some people frown upon shooting deer and elk, and turkey, etc. about a year ago, I began reading about hormones in meat, and we switched to eating mostly hormone free meat, eggs, and milk. Most of the meat we eat is deer and chicken. I buy bison when I can. My dad owns deer ranches, and we can get pig, turkey and deer off of his ranch. This is the most pure forms of meat, and completely hormone free. It is lean meat and extremely healthy for you, so this is what we choose to feed ourselves and our kids.

I have always been a person who has said that if I were ever in a situation where I needed to provide for my family I could. I can grow my own food, kill my own food, live with no electricity, or running water. If I ever had to be, I know I could be self sufficient. I am not saying that I WANT to be self sufficient, but I could if I had to. I decided that I needed to put my money where my mouth was. I am in my 29th year of life, and there are some things I have always wanted to do before I turned 30. One of those goals, was to kill a deer so that we could have meat without having to buy it from the store. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I grew up with a dad who hunted, and raised us to understand the importance of hunting. Even though hunting has been a big part of my life, I have never done it. I shot a mocking bird from the window of a moving car once, but I did not mean to, so that does not count. Plus, I was really sad after I did it. Mike has hunted before, but he has never shot anything. He would not shoot anything we would not eat, and I feel the same way.

During thanksgiving, I decided that I needed to shoot a deer. We were running low on our meat supply at home, so we needed more. Mike also wanted to hunt to try to get a turkey for thanksgiving. My dad said he would sit in a blind with me and Mike would sit in one by himself. We dropped Mike off at his stand, and my dad and I went to another area and sat in a stand. We waited and waited, and then heard a shot. Mike had shot something. Then 5 seconds later we heard another shot. Mike had shot his gun again. right after we heard the shots Mike texted my dad and told him he shot a turkey. I was happy for him because he felt a since of pride in that he shot a turkey on thanksgiving to feed his family.

As my dad and I sat in the stand together, I had many feelings running through me. I thought about my paw paw and how proud he would be of me if I shot a deer. I wished he was there. It was an incredibly special moment for my dad and I. We talked and he told me how to hold the gun and how to pull the trigger if I saw a deer, and where to shoot the deer. A few minutes after mike shot the turkey, a deer walked in front of our stand. I aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. I had shot my first deer. That moment after I shot the deer was surreal. I was not excited that I took the life of an animal, but I was happy that I could provide some food for my family. I was excited that my dad had been there with me. I can admit that when I see hunters who kill for the fun of it, I get really sad, but when I killed this deer knowing that it would be food for us, I was not sad. We ate turkey for weeks, and we will be eating deer for the next year.

One more thing... When a hunter kills his/her first animal, it is customary to have the blood of the animal smeared on their face. My dad did it to my brother, and my grandpa did it to my dad. I told my dad that I would shoot a deer, but he was not allowed to smear blood on my face! He did not listen to me! He did not smear it as bad as he did for my brother, but he still did it. Here are the pictures...