Zoe

It's very hard for me to write this, but I feel that I need to. Our three year old Giant Schnauzer, Zoe, passed away this morning. We took her to the vet yesterday and they kept her overnight, and we just got the call. She died of Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, here is a link for those who don't know what it is- http://www.geocities.com/aihadogs/index.htm. Here is a picture of her, it's not good but it was always hard to take a picture of her because she was so black.

February 6, 2005-February 28, 2008

Fat

I now know why adults get fat after they get older and have children. No, it's not because their metabolism changes, I know that's what everyone wants you to think. It's because after you have children, you become lazy. Ok, maybe lazy isn't the right word, but let me explain my philosophy. When your can of Coke is empty but you're watching a good movie and you don't want to get up to get another Coke, what do you do? You call your obedient child into the room and ask them to get into the fridge and bring you another Coke. Or another example is you need a wet-one to wipe the baby's face off, who do you call? Your older, obedient children. My kids aren't angels by any means, but they do come when I call them and they do obey me (most of the time). So there you have it, my philosophy on getting fat.

First Time

Everyone should remember their first times of most everything they do. For example- your first kiss, the first time you drove a car, your first marriage (hopefully your only marriage), the birth of your children, etc..... Well yesterday I experience my first, or should I say my youngest daughter experienced her first pee in the potty. I'm pretty excited, I know it doesn't mean that she'll be potty trained anytime soon, but it still gives us hope. Now don't get me wrong, I love my cloth diapers, so the whole potty training experience will be bittersweet. We do want one more child, so at least I'll have one more little bottom to cloth diaper. I've been thinking that I haven't shown everyone a picture of my current diaper stash, so look for that sometime really soon. It's hard to take a stash pic whenever there are always at least a couple diapers that are in the diaper pail. I even added up what I think I have paid for all of my diapers we are currently using. If you have heart problems, please stop reading here. I believe the cost of the diapers that currently fit our youngest is somewhere around $750. Now keep in mind that figure is not including smalls and larges, only mediums. I know some spend thousands on their stashes, but I think I am comfortable with the amount we have spent thus far. For those who are wondering if my husband knows, yes he does, I tell him everything (he's ok with it too).

Three going on Sixteen

My title says it all, no we don't have three kids and working on having sixteen. My three year old is acting as emotional as a sixteen year old. I know she is sick, but I'm about ready to go crazy with all of these hormonal women. Ok, I guess they aren't hormonal women, but they sure act like they are. We have so many fights and crying fits during the day, I'm at my wits end. Our youngest even is showing signs of becoming a little woman, she is starting to get very finicky anytime her sisters touch her. I've always heard that girls are more emotional than boys, and mine are proving that theory true.

Anticipation

Have you ever waited for something and after it arrives you are kind of let down? Well, that's how I feel, I guess it's really the wait that is exciting. I had two amber necklaces and seven Green Mountain Diapers prefolds arrive yesterday. I was so excited and when they finally got here, I thought to myself why did I get so excited about prefolds and necklaces. Don't get me wrong they were everything I thought they would be, but I was still let down a little. It's like my grandma told me, after you've been waiting with anticipation for nine months for a baby, you give birth and reality hits. I think with my diapers and necklaces, reality hit and I realized that the diapers are just going to be peed and pooped in and the necklaces are just going to be worn.
It turns out that our middle daughter does have strep too, in fact she is still running a fever today. So we have three children taking antibiotics at the same time, I hope this doesn't happen often. Our oldest and youngest are starting to act a little better, so I have hope by this weekend everyone will be 100% again. Our middle daughter that no longer takes naps, is now laying in our bed sleeping at 11:37 am. You know she is really sick if she asks if she can go to sleep during the day because she normally begs us not to put her to bed at night.

Sick and Afflicted

It's been a week since my last blog entry, and sadly nothing has changed except we have three sick children instead of one. Our oldest daughter has strep throat, our middle daughter is at my parent's house and has a high fever and complaining of her throat hurting (probably strep too) and our youngest is congested with occasional screaming fits. So tomorrow when we meet my mom and get our middle daughter, we will also be taking her to the doctor's office. Last night I was so tired that I went to bed before 9:30 pm, that is almost unheard of for me. Hopefully my husband and I will stay healthy and all the girls will get better soon. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers, my sanity is depending it.

Sickly again!

At church this morning, my husband said that there was a lot of people missing because of sickness, unfortunately we are included in the missing people. My oldest daughter is sick, she is coughing and complaining of her head and throat hurting, she also has a low grade fever. So I stayed home this morning with her and our youngest, my husband didn't want to take our youngest with him because he was afraid she may want to nurse while he had her. Hopefully all this sickness will soon pass.
I am selling a lot of our small diapers on Diaper Swappers because our youngest is now in mediums. With my paypal that I am receiving I have been buying more medium diapers for her. I am really excited because I bought a Muttaqin diaper to try. Ever since we have begun cloth diapering I have heard how awesome Muttaqin or Mutt diapers are, and I didn't even have to stalk her website. I also bought a new Cuddlebun diaper, I've heard a lot of good things about them too. I admit, I am addicted. My husband actually doesn't mind this obsession of mine, he thinks it's really nice that I have a hobby. He gets a backoe and I get diapers, seems like a fair trade to me.

Stumped

The stump is finally out! My husband got up early this morning to start work with his backhoe. Luckily the ground was a little firmer and he didn't bury it this time. He pulled the stump out and a small piece of concrete that was in the middle of our backyard. Our yard looks like a mess, but at least he's getting experience before he starts excavating for our new house. I forgot to mention that his backhoe is a John Deere 310, but as you could tell from my pictures it isn't John Deere green.
I just ordered another Baltic amber teething necklace for our youngest. I am in love with them, they are so cute and they work great too. She has a multi colored necklace now, but I ordered a milk and honey colored necklace this time. My mother-in-law bought her first one off of ebay and it was about $22 with shipping, but I just bought her second necklace from Inspired by Finn on Hyena Cart and only paid $12.50 and shipping is free. My mother-in-law bought her own amber necklace from Inspired by Finn last week and it is really well made, so I thought we would try them out too. No, my mil doesn't have a drooling problem, amber is suppose to help with any kind of inflammation. In fact, I just read today that a amber necklace will also help with diaper rash and the inflammation that comes with it.

It's Here!

Today we brought home the newest member to our family, our backhoe. After driving it 2 1/2 hours to our house, my husband went right to work. His plan for today was to dig up some tree stumps in our backyard, shouldn't be a big deal right? Well, he picked the wrong day to do anything in our backyard, with our wonky weather our whole backyard is very damp and soft. He didn't have any trouble at first, he was just taking it slow because he was still learning how this particular backhoe operates. After he started getting a audience, that's when things went south. A little background about our neighborhood, when we are outside every one of our neighbors join us in our yard, garage, driveway, deck, pretty much anywhere we are. So today my husband had a crowd of about ten people watching his every move. He dug a huge area around the stump because it was a huge stump and he was still trying to get things figured out. Between the soft soil and his lack of experience, he got hung up. Then on top of trying to figure out a way to get the backhoe out, all of the neighbors had an idea. Some thought he could use a truck to pull out a 13,000 lb backhoe, yeah right. Others just stood on watching my husband struggle. Finally one of our favorite neighbors offered a great idea, hook a chain onto the backhoe and the other end onto a tree. We finally got it out after about an hour of struggling. Now the backhoe is sitting on a firm piece of land in our backyard, and there is no more digging up of stumps until all of our soil firms. Below are some pictures I took of the whole ordeal. You'll have to excuse our neighbor's mangy garage in the background, it's where their dogs live.

When it first arrived at our house-

Our girls watching Daddy at work-

Working on the stump-

Hung up, if you look closely you can see that all four tires are off the ground-

Breastmilk, it's what's for dinner!

Oh, the joys of motherhood and breastfeeding. Our youngest daughter is the first baby that I have been able to nurse longer than three months, and I love nursing her almost as much as she loves nursing. Being almost 13 1/2 months old, she can be a little bit of a booger sometimes. A couple of nights ago when she wanted to nurse, I was talking to my husband and not really paying attention to her gently patting my leg. When she wants to nurse she usually just makes this funny sound, almost like a laugh and then she lays herself down across my lap. She couldn't easily climb onto the couch and on my lap, but she finally got my attention and I picked her up. She then started repeatedly nose diving into my chest, my husband and I were laughing hysterically. Some people may thinks it's inapproriate to nurse a child that is this old, but I feel as long as she wants to nurse and is getting nutritional benefits from it, it's alright. Now my mom on the other hand thinks it is "new age" to nurse a older child, but I totally disagree. I personally feel that extended breastfeeding was something that women have been doing since the beginning of time, there is nothing new about it. In fact, I think that saying a child needs to be weaned at one year old is the "new age" thing to do. I don't want to make my mom out to be a horrible person because she is not at all. She was a stay at home mom the whole time my brother and I were in school, she even nursed both of us until we were around ten months old. She is very pro-breastfeeding, but not so much pro-nursing in public or extended breastfeeding. My mom is a wonderful person and a awesome mom, we just disagree on some things when it comes to mothering. Now don't even get me started on nursing in public!

Smiles

Our yougest daughter had her one year pictures taken yesterday, they were a month late, but we finally got them done. She was all smiles, the photographer wasn't much, but our little angel looked beautiful. The first few pictures were of her in a white prefold that I pinned on, she didn't have a head band on, it was a very old-fashion looking picture. She looked adorable of course, until she peed in her prefold, then I had to change her into her dress and fix her hair. After the pictures were done we went to O' Charley's for dinner with my parents. Our oldest daughter announced while eating shrimp and broccoli that her favorite restaurant is no longer McDonalds, but (you guessed it) O' Charley's.
I'm still waiting on our huge winter storm that was suppose to start Thursday night and end yesterday. Like I have said before, I HATE Indiana's weather. On Friday morning (during the winter storm, lol) our whole family went and looked at a backhoe. My husband really likes it, so hopefully by this weekend it will be ours and we'll finally be able to start on our house. We also bought blueprints on Friday for our garage/house, I am so excited to get the ball rolling on this. Our current house is only 1040 square feet with a huge attached garage and a full basement. The plans we have decided on is 1005 square feet with a three car garage. In our current home we only have one bathroom, in our new garage we will have one full bathroom with a powder room (that means two toilets, yay!). So we aren't really even downsizing, we are going from three bedrooms to two bedrooms, but the bedrooms will be larger. I think we're just going to stick the three girls in a room together and we'll share our bedroom with the two dogs. I'm very excited about this, just in case you couldn't tell. I don't dislike our current home, but I don't like it either. For some reason it has never felt like mine, I guess I have always thought of it as a temporary home.
Oh, I almost forgot. My husband backed into a mailbox the first time in his life yesterday. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but when he does it in my Cadillac Escalade that I have only had for a little more than a month, that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At least, there is only a light scratch on the side, hopefully he'll be able to buff it out. I've always told him that he was way too overconfident while backing up, but he somehow managed to blame the whole thing on me. Men!