I'm alive.

I'm alive. Tired and sick and hot and sore but still riding the high of excitement that I'm carrying another baby! :) The insomnia is really starting to get to me again though which isn't good because it usually leads to depression and you know I don't wanna go there. :p Who would?! So I guess it's time to dig out my Valerian again and keep the Tums handy because it gives me heartburn. Lol!
Wednesday night I choked on a tuna bone. It was a bit scary. I coughed it up and then my throat was bleeding. Not alot, just like a papercut. So then I was coughing that up too. Fun. It slowed down pretty quick. My throat was super swollen and sore the next day. Still a little sore tonight as I write this but I've barely noticed it all day so that's good.
It's earwig season. I hate those things. I have to remember to turn off all the lights when the sun goes down or they come inside by the thousands. Not kidding. The basement is full of them. They are so gross. I guess we get those instead of cockraoches here- they behave pretty much the same for all intents and purposes except they're smaller, without wings, and have big pinchers on their behinds. Ew...
I am taking back my kitchen from the clutter-monster sloooooowwwwly but surely and it's really got me in a good mood! I hope to post more on this at a later date. For now I just wanted to pop in and say hey, how's it going, yeah I'm still alive, still excited about the baby, and got lots of fun family activities coming up in the next few weeks to post about.
I'll be back... muahahaha! ;)

My monitor is going out, modem too.

So just before Christmas when my husband got me a new computer to replace my old dying one, I declined to have him get me a new monitor too. I like my monitor and it was familiar and reliable! So I thought. Well the last couple weeks my modem has been overheating and my monitor starts getting all twitchy like it's having a seizure and then blacks out. *sigh* So despite a new and working computer tower, I may be vanishing soon and for an indeterminable amount of time due to monitor and/or modem issues. Just thought you should know. *sigh*

Camera found, Family visited, Memories made!

It's been a very busy past week and a half here! :) First of all, my husband took last week off work because Monday was our anniversary! Mother's Day was, as I'm sure you know, on Sunday. I am not sure if I mentioned this on here or not but it seems the second I hit 20 weeks pregnant, that's when the contractions started, and sometimes they HURT like crazy. Now you should know this is typical for me to spend the last few months contracting. With Buggie I spent pretty much the whole pregnancy scared that he was going to refuse to wait and be a preemie. There were alot of real bad scares . Then I hit the magical "safe zone" of 36 weeks and the contractions just... stopped. He wound up being born 2 days "late." This time it kind of caught me off guard when the contractions got so painful at 20 weeks because they hadn't been very often or painful during the first half. It made me realize that I need to make it a priority to go see my mom ASAP - before I'm too far into my incessant-painful-contraction phase to be driving through miles and miles of uninhabited prarie. So we made our plans to drive up on Mother's Day and stay for a few days so I could spend some quality time with my mom.

The drive on Sunday went better than expected. Buggie does not ride in the car well so we had some ...moments... and he wouldn't take a nap for longer than a few minutes at a time. But I was expecting way worse so I'm thankful it went as well as it did. We arrived at my parents' house at dinnertime and there was a family BBQ in progress for Mother's Day. My inlaws, and my sister's inlaws were there, as well as us and my sister's family. My baby brother lives out of state now so he was not there. The BBQ was great and it was nice to see everyone at once. The only bad thing was how bad it seemed to wear my mom out. The last "guests" left at nearly 11pm and by that time my kids were already in bed and hubby and I were eager to join them. My poor mom sleeps in a chair in the living room so she looked absolutely exhausted by the time she was able to go to sleep.

I had found my camera to take on the trip but, other than snapping a few scenery pics out the car window on the way, I was so used to not having it that I sadly forgot to take pics of most of our time up there. :(

Monday, our anniversary, we visited my husband's parents in the morning and then drove an hour to another city so hubby could visit his brother and I could meet up with a friend. Actually I've known this friend for years but only on the internet and telephone so it was a real treat to finally get to meet her in person. :) Her kids and mine had so much fun together and I really enjoyed our visit! Here's my car all packed full of kids, aren't they cute? My 2 are on the left and my friend's girls are on the right. I was walking around the front of the parked car to buckle Chicklet in as my friend snapped this pic. :) (So in case you're wondering why she's the only one not buckled in, that's why- I hadn't waddled my preggo self all the way around the car yet!)

After that we took a drive across the state line to see the house my sister is trying to buy. Then all the way back to my inlaws, and left the kids with them for an hour or so while hubby and I went out to a quick Chinese dinner for our anniversary. Happy 8 blessed years to us! :) Then we zoomed back to the inlaws to pick up the kids and drove back up in the mountains to my parents' house and went to bed. It was a reeeeeeeally long day but a a good day! :)

The next day my hubby was in and out. He went out varmint hunting and took a drive and went to town for milk. Me and the kids spent all day just hanging out with my mommy (and my dad when he wasn't working!). It was so wonderful to be able to spend a whole day with her! Again, I wish I'd been better about remembering my camera and taking more pictures! I did get some of Chicklet doing a puzzle with Grammie and Grampy:

And hubby got a few of Buggie and I -Buggie was "flying" in case you were unsure. ;)

Bug got a tremendous kick out of the hummingbirds at my parents' feeder. He was running round their front yard giggling and shouting "Zoom! Zoom! Catch 'em! Catch 'em!" while clapping his hands in the air in the general direction of the zooming hummingbirds. Of course I forgot I had my camera until we were all back inside and Bug was busy with the toys and had forgotten the birds. I did take a couple pics of the hummingbirds once I finally remembered the existence of my camera.

The next day, Wednesday, we made the long trip home.

I took this pic at a rest area because the cloud shadows looked really awesome on the prarie below. Don't let the snow fool you; it was a nice warm day with a cool wind.

The kids did AMAZING on the drive! I think Bug only had one meltdown the whole way home! And Chicklet didn't have a single potty accident the whole time we were away from home! We were so proud of them!

I hope you enjoyed my little recap with a boatload of pics! Or perhaps you did not; so sorry to have bored you half to death! ;)



P.S. Don't forget tomorrow is Toddler Tales Tuesday! I'd be tickled pink if you would join me in posting the cute things our toddlers say and do!

I'm workin' on it!

Okay bear with me as I do my updates. I'm having some seriously ouchie contractions right now and they're assisting the kids in distracting me from getting my Toddler Tales Tuesday post up! ;) It's coming! Really! I promise! ;)

Toddler Tales Tuesday - A Confession

*dirty laundry alert!*
Those who have been with me from the beginning remember when, in September of 2009, I started a meme-wannabe called Toddler Tales Tuesday. I say "wannabe" because I tried for months to get people to participate but nobody ever did. I looked all over to try to find out if anyone else was doing this first before I went ahead and named and started it and after much searching it appeared that I would be the only one doing this. I didn't want to inadvertently appear to be stealing someone else's idea. That would just not be nice at all. I really really wanted it to thrive but it didn't even get noticed, so I took to just posting it myself and hoping that someday my blog would have some followers who wanted to join me. Well when I got pregnant, with the morning sickness being so bad, the Toddler Tales Tuesdays became a bit less official (as in some were dual duty, some I forgot to label that they were toddler tales tuesday posts and they have now been misplaced, etc.) and farther between. More recently I have been feeling a bit better and have been squeezing dual duty toddler tales posts in a tiny bit more often again in the hopes that someday people will want to participate. My philosophy was that if I keep doing it, it's a good idea and someday people will discover it and it will take off.

Well it has just come to my attention that a well known giveaway blogger started doing this same thing, under the same name minus 1 word, on the same weekday, with a very similar purpose originally stated. She started hers in March of this year... a full 6 months after I started my Toddler Tales Tuesday. In her first one, she said it was going to be to share "activities and moments that we have with our toddlers," which is aggrivatingly similar to the purpose of my Toddler Tales Tuesday, the purpose of which is to share things our kids have said and done that are cute, sweet, or funny. When I saw that, I felt... well I felt cheated. Being a well known blogger with like a million times more readers than I have, I was sure hers would take off and then, worst of all, I might become the assumed copycat since nobody ever really participated in mine but me. That would really hurt. Really. To be accused of copycatting an idea that I thought of 6 months before the one I supposedly copied began. So as you can see, I was understandably concerned. I wondered if I should quit my Toddler Tales Tuesday, melt into the shadows of linkydom and lick my wounds and pout. Yes pout. I think if it weren't for all the preggo hormones in my body I may not have taken this *quite* so harshly... If I weren't preggo I'd have thought of all the same things and still been upset, but I might not have actually cried about it. Yes, I did cry. And I fully intend to blame the crying and pouting parts on the preggo hormones. I mean really what good are baby-induced-mood-swings if you can't blame things on them once in a while? ;)
So back to the serious topic at hand... I really don't think this blogger had any idea that I was already doing something so similar. I don't think she'd purposely try to steal an idea out from under someone. I don't know know her but she seems like a nice enough woman. Since the start of her meme, she has posted activity ideas for preschoolers each week. That's pretty much it. If that's all it's going to be, it isn't like mine and I was worried for nothing. But her description this week says it's for sharing "fun toddler related activities, memories, and whatever else toddler related you would like to share." which once again plants it firmly in uncomfortable territory for me. :-/
So here is my confession. I'm having a really hard time with this. I'm going round and round in my head, one minute feeling cheated and indignant, the next feeling sorry for myself because I've been trying to get this going for 6 months and it's not budging and wondering if maybe I just don't get to keep this fun little idea of mine no matter how hard I try. My hubby would shrug like it's nothing and nonchalantly tell me to just let it go and forget it- then he would promptly forget it by the time I got my next sentence out. Lol! Well hey that sure sounds great but I'm an emotional hormonal pregnant woman and my upset doesn't have a magical "off" button! I sometimes envy him that he seems to have that magical off button. I feel bad and kind of sick about my idea not only failing but that it's now someone else's idea and it's working for them. It's like kicking someone while they are down or rubbing salt in a wound to not only fail but to have someone else take up the torch and do better at inspiring participation by their second post than I have in my whole 6 months combined. So I'm not sure whether to just concede defeat and leave mine in the dust, or to keep plugging along in my failure, waiting for the inevitable day when I get accused of copycatting the meme that began 6 months after mine. Hmmm... Not sure. It just keeps going round and round in my head and I feel bad, then I feel bad for feeling bad about it, then I stop feeling guilty for feeling bad about it and just feel bad, then I feel guilty again for feeling bad...

So hey I have no idea what the real point of this post was. I think just to kind of vent and get those yucky feelings off my chest. (I'll tell ya what it was NOT so that you can tell me how childish I'm being and make even more yucky feelings well up inside me, thanks! So if there's anyone passing by and reading this who has the inclination to do so, please, just don't. I know I'm not handling this in a good way- didn't I say so several times in several ways already? Good so now that we have that established...) Like I said I am pretty sure the other blogger has no idea I exist, let alone that I host the same meme. So I'm not blaming her or anything. Just venting. Because if I let those yucky feelings swirl around inside for too long I'll start getting really short with hubby and the kids and that wouldn't be appreciated. So here is me, letting them OUT. Goodbye rotten feelings! Good riddance! ;)

Good morning...

I'm a natural Night-Owl. I do't know about you, but I do my best thinking after dark! I'm getting to be less of a night-owl out of necessity (or merely pure survival) from having kids. Moms know if you don't sleep when they sleep... you don't sleep period. Well, I just so happened tonight to get *ahem* distracted on the internet. When the house is quiet and I'm browsing all sorts of new fun crafty sites or reading blogs... well, the time sometimes (read: frequently) just gets away from me.
So long about 1:30am I glance at the clock and do that, "Oh crud!" thing where you ponder the laws of the universe and mentally curse the one that disallows rewinding time so you can go back to, oh, say 8:30pm again, and get a good nights sleep to deal with all the Mom-ing you'll be doing when the sun comes up. Since I could of course not rewind time as I so desperately wished, I took my thimble-sized pregnant bladder to do it's business and crawled into bed to stick my cold feet on hubby's legs. (Something I'm sure he appreciates ever so much. But he's such a good egg, he never complains about it.)
After laying there for a grand total of 3 minuites I begin to feel the congestion coming on. You know what I mean. When you're preggo it seems like every allergy you ever thought about comes out to play for 9 months solid. You can go all day only blowing your stuffy nose 12 times and then the second you lay down you're suddenly magically so full of ick you can't breathe and feel like you are choking. Which is precisely what happened to me. And now, even blowing my nose 12 times a minute cannot seem to tame the clogged-up ick in myh lungs. After nearly choking three times, gagging, and deciding I'd rather get back up than choke to death or throw up, I decided to make a cup of tea! Or rather a whole pot of tea! But instead of digging out the teapot or filling the coffee maker, I decided to use an open pot so I could breathe the steam while my water boiled and the tea steeped. So I made my tea, enjoying the minty delicious smelling steam and hoping it would help my ick problem.
While the tea steeped, I sat back down at the computer with the pot steaming in front of me, to keep busy until it was drinkable. Suddenly I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and a really BIG spider was inches from my elbow, rapelling down the wall. I was scrambling to switch hands with my tea, grab a tissue, and smoosh the little big bugger before it escaped. I managed to spill some hot tea on my chest but the arachnid vanished behind the computer tower. *sigh* I am reminded of the time I had one run up the mousepad onto the mouse, on my hand, and run out to the end of my thumb faster than you could blink. It was a big as the end of my thumb and to see it sitting there just chilling out was rather disconcerting. I'm not an arachniphobe but I draw the line at having them use my thumb as an easy chair. Particularly when I can't tell if it's a harmless wolf spider or a highly poisonous hobo.
But anyway, back to my pot of tea. Now, usually Sleepytime Tea is one of my absolute favorites! It's relaxing, it's delicious, it smells heavenly... Except that the dishwasher must not have cleaned that pot out so well. My delicious tea tasted just like... boiled dirty sock water. Not that I've ever tasted boiled socks but it tasted like what I would imagine dirty sock water would taste like. Oh well, I wasn't really in the mood for tea anyway.
So now I'm off to bed, hoping the sock tea steam unclogged my breathing tubes enough to get to sleep. Now that it's 3:00am... The kids will be waking up in precisely 4.3 hours so I'd better get in there and take all the sleep I can get. I think a Mama-nap will definately be in the schedule tomorrow today.

I'm sorry...

I'm sorry for pulling the vanishing act again. If you all are around on Sunday I will be able to explain then!

**update: I will be able to explain soon. Maybe sooner than Sunday. Maybe today!

Coming Soon!

Some exciting news and changes are coming soon! The new background and buttons were just the beginning! I hope that now that the Christmas season is over I will be able to blog more often again and there will be a few neat changes and surprises to keep your eyes out for. With the travelling done for a while, I'll be able to be a better blogger I hope. ;)

Nov. - Dec. 2009 recaps, Part 2

Day before yesterday I posted about my new baby nephew and my sister's visit during hunting season.
The next exciting thing that happened was going up there for Thanksgiving. My sis spent it with her hubby's fam. but I got to see everyone else. I wrote this shortly after returning home from Thanksgiving: My mom has been fighting breast cancer for 8 years. She has half a dozen large tumors the size of grapefruits in her abdomen. Where her right breast was there is an oozing scar tissue hole in her chest. She had had a lumpectomy over 7 years ago and it didn't work- the cancer was already in the lymph nodes and just came back to eat the breast off and leave a gaping hole. Her right arm therefore is swollen and barely functions because it's pretty much cut off from her body. She has tried more different cancer treatments than I've ever heard of in the last 8 years. Her left breast is a tumor. She is on super doses of mega painkillers and it barely touches the constant pain she's in. She can't sleep anymore, just rocks in the recliner all night with tears streaming down her face, humming to herself to keep from sobbing out loud. She takes care of the 2 story farmhouse, dad's pigs and other farm critters when he's working late. She only has one working hand (her left- she's ..was... right handed) and tries to do everything with it. I told her she needs to stop trying to do everything and she started crying and said she can't. She said, "I can't stop! When I stop it means I've given in to dying and I can't give in or I will die!" She can't do any of the finer things she loves. She's always loved to sew and she cries because she cannot sew anymore. She cannot make it to the city because it hurts too much to be in the car. So she only travels between her home and her mom's to help her mom. Yes she takes care of her mother!!!
Her mom, My nana, is not well either. My Grandpop died July 1st. September 7th my Nana fell off a ladder. She was hanging curtains. She broke her leg. She was hospitalized. She wouldn't eat so they put in a feeding tube. She was finally released. She's in a wheelchair now. My mom and Nana are the strongest women I know and to see them both so weak and helpless sucks the hope right out of a person.
Unless God does a miracle, this will be my mom's last Christmas. Maybe Nana's too. Seeing them both at Thanksgiving brought that home for me.
Right now I'm in a bit of pain myself. I have a head cold or sinus infection or something- my eyes are draining, my mouth itches, I can't breathe, my snot is yellow, and something else showed up last night. My kids are not sleeping well and I'm in pain head and abdomen and up with littles all night. When I'm sleep deprived or physically worn down (right now I'm both) it's very difficult for me to keep my emotions in check.

I was have been in a bad place emotionally with this. It's so hard to see those I love hurting so! I'm a fixer- I want to fix everyone. I want to hug them and hold them and make it all better. I want to make the bad things go away. There are things you just can't kiss away...

The kids got sick when we got home from Thanksgiving, one right after the other, and followed shortly by me as I mentioned in the quoted portion above. Then my poor husband got sick too. We were sick most of December and got better RIGHT before Christmas! Barely in time to go up to my family's for Christmas. Which I will continue in another post so I don't bore your eyeballs right out of your heads. ;) Have a great weekend!

Overwhelmed

I will bet you've noticed I've been barely here these last few weeks. You probably assumed it was because of Christmas, and well, it was, a little bit. But there's alot more to it. I will get to it, I promise! But I've decided to try not to spend so much time editing my posts. I lose hours doing that, getting them all non-confusing and pretty to post. I'll try to keep the typos to a minimum- LOL! But as for the rest... well I'm just gonna get it out and get back into the rythm of blogging and not worry so much about the finer editing. Hopefully I don't confuse you all cross-eyed trying to make sense of my ramblings. ;) I do tend to go on sometimes. And on. And on... Not that you would have noticed I'm sure... Yeah... K I'm gonna go now. Bathroom break. Then I'll be back to ADHD blogging. And rambling on and on. And on....





P.S. Hey I have GIVEAWAYS on my review blog! If you're into that whole winning free stuff thing, check it out! New one coming this weekend too! ;)

P.P.S Oh and speaking of giveaways, Givers and Giveaway Lovers, don't forget my big fun posty post of giveaway links galore! I keep it up all month and delete them out as they expire and new are added constantly so check it often and add any giveaways you're having! ;)