Yay! High Speed Internet!

We took a huge leap of faith this month and got rid of our home phone. I already have a cell phone, dh has one through work and we got the kids a phone with my parents family share plan so it seemed a natural step to just get rid of the home phone. It's working ok although we've had a few glitches like when my phone got dropped in the toilet and I had to use the kids phone for a few days. It meant leaving the kids home by themselves without a phone. It might be a good reason to get a insurance plan on my phone.

Anyway, we used the money from getting rid of the home phone and put it towards internet. LOVE IT! I can finally start watching the fun videos from Utube that people love to pass on. I can also navigate much faster which means I can keep up on my blog better and keep up on others blogs too. The transition from no home to internet took us a few weeks plus the laptop, where all my links are, is dying so I haven't been able to update for awhile.

I've started going to births. I'm now up to grand total of 8 births attended. I know, not much, but it's a start. The hardest part is leaving my baby when he is sick. We've had croup and stomach issues going through the whole family. Not fun. So far, though, all the births have been either at night or on the days dh is home so it hasn't affected my family a whole lot.

Yay, lots of good news.

My Mom came home from the hospital last Thursday, the last day that I posted. They shocked her heart and it worked so they sent her home several hours later. She still isn't doing so great, though. Occasionally her heart goes into A-fib and she is tired all the time. I'm going up several times a day to help her with various things and take her places. I hope she starts improving soon.

JZ is 99% weaned! Friday night was the end of my rope. He woke up about 1:30 to nurse and suddenly I realized why I really do not enjoy nursing him. He has this annoying habit of latching on for a minute, nursing then pulling off for a minute. Latching on again, pulling off. On and off for 20 min straight. Usually I eventually put an end to it when I get fed up but Friday night at 1:30 in the morning I'd had all I could take. I was done. Dh took him for awhile and rocked him to sleep. We were up from 1:30 until 5:30. We would just get him to sleep and lay him down and he would wake up. I won't tell you what I eventually did because it isn't pc but he eventually got exhausted enough that he stayed asleep.

Since then he hasn't even asked to nurse at night. I can't say our nights are any better than when I was nursing him but at least dh can take him and he won't throw a fit. He asks sometimes during the day but I just sign all gone and get him a drink or food and he does fine. For the most part he really doesn't get upset when I won't let him nurse. Over all it went much easier than I thought it would. I did let him nurse on Sunday and then again this morning because I was full but I suspect it will be the last time.

So, overall I'm getting a bit more sleep. I was awake from 2:30-5:30 Tuesday morning but it wasn't his fault. I just couldn't sleep. I slept good last night.

So the last bit of good news is that my house work is all caught up. It's cluttered and my fridge desperately needs to be cleaned out but it's all stuff that would only take about a few hours and then it would be all clean. But my laundry is all caught up and all the organizing is done. My next big project is to get some curtains on all the windows. I think my kids would appreciate that! After that I want to clean all the carpets.

Still working on weaning

It will take forever, I think! LOL I seem to have gotten it down to just once or twice during the day. Night time is still insane. I hate to admit but the nights that we do the best are the nights I give him Motrin and Benedryl. He fell asleep before I gave it to him tonight. He woke up at 11:45, it's 1:45 and he is awake again. Yes, I've been awake since the first time he woke up. The night before when I gave him the meds he woke up once at 2:00 and then again at about 5:30. I could handle only twice a night.

My Mom is in the hospital. She went in on Sunday because she was dehydrated and bo explanation for it. She was also have wierd heart rate patterns. 4 days later she has had an angiogram and a stent put in. No idea when she will be home but she still had a funky heart rate so I'm not sure it will be today or even tomorrow. The insane lady started a daycare a few months ago so I've took it over for. I'm near exhausted with taking care of two households and way too many kids!

I'm also worried about a friend. I want to be there for her. I'm just not sure how.

The end of next week I will start attending lots of births. Hopefully things will return back to normal. Not by any means calm but at least normal. Baby, I need sleep!!!

Whats new in our lives?

Not much. I desperately need/want to wean JZ but he doesn't like it so much. Some days it's pretty easy to distract him, other days it doesn't work so well. He has been waking 5-7 times in a night. It's been suggested that if we wean he will quit waking at night. Maybe, it worked for A when she was a baby but I can't figure out a good time for me to miss at least three nights of any sleep at all to get up and walk him back to sleep a dozen times each night. Yes, dh would help but he has been crazy busy doing overtime at work. He needs sleep too. So either I get a little sleep nursing him 5-7 times each night for ever and ever or I get up and walk with him until he goes back to sleep. Biggest problem is that he is a super light sleeper. It's very hard to lay him down after we put him to sleep and have him stay asleep. So I get up, walk with him for 1/2+ hour until he is limp asleep, lay down with him, wait until he relaxes again, move him over to his spot and pray he doesn't wake up. If he wakes up we start all over again. Most of the time if he does wake up right away he wants nothing but nursing. I've never been one to let my babies cry themselves to sleep but I've been tempted a few times. It's sad because the biggest thing stopping me is that I don't have a crib to put him in and wouldn't have anyplace to put it even if I did.

I need sleep!

I need to post here first

It seems I get all my internet stuff done first and then there is no time left over for posting on my blog. Maybe I will start posting here first then read email and if there is time left over then I can read others blogs. We will see. I soooo enjoy reading about others lives! Yep, I admit, I'm nosy!

JK and JA are so very very busy with school. It seems they have more work to do than they have time but they chose to take the classes they took so they will just have to figure it out. JK needs to figure out there is not time to read whatever he wants to anymore. He needs to read the assignments first and then read leisure stuff when he gets done. JA does pretty good and gets most of his stuff done but he also needs to buckle down a bit more. They have memorized "To be or not to be" this week. They are working on elocution, that is speaking in public, using it. This week they have to memorize the famous part of Romeo and Juliet "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art though Romeo" That will be fun"! LOL I'm going to have a couple of romanticists hanging around my home for awhile!

M is learning about Egypt. She is doing great at going above and beyond. She has read most of the books on the additional reading list and is studying all the books that we have around the house on Egypt. Last week she got to dress up like an Egyptian princess, make up and everything! She is on the verge of going beyond me in math. She is doing fractions and fractions is something I've always struggled with. I told her her brothers or her Dad may have to take over very soon.

A is thoroughly enjoying her art class. She made a tooth fairy box and a bag last week. She very desperately wants to learn how to read but doesn't want to put in the time to learn. She also memorizes everything really quickly so I never know if, when she reads to me, it is words she has memorized or if she is really reading it.

S is just S. She seems to follow in her sisters footsteps with everything so it's hard to know what her interests are. Her birthday is Sunday and it was very hard to pick gifts that I know SHE will like and not what her big sister would love and therefore S would like. We bought some things last night so hopefully we will be ok.

JZ is still on the verge of walking but just not there yet. He can stand for long periods of time and take 4-5 steps but thats about it. I was watching another little guy at church that is 2 days older than JZ and he is walking so well. His Mom had to take him out of the meeting and I watched as she was able to send him out the door in front of her and she was carrying only her bag. Yeah, I have to admit a bit of jealousy. Otoh, the list of words he can say is growing by leaps and bounds. The other day JK got in the car and JZ says to him "Kaboom"! LOL He also said "Grandma" yesterday. He is signing a ton, as well.

As for midwifery, it's going. Thats about it. I did have some good news, though. The midwife I'm working under told me I was going to be crazy busy with births in October. I am getting much better at find fetal heart tones and measuring bellies. Not so great yet at figuring out baby position but I haven't had a lot of chances to try yet.

For now I'm busy trying to get my house completely organized. I'm tired of the "for now"s. The little things that I put someplace and say "I will put this here for now and figure out what to do with it later". I'm nearly done with my bedroom and about 1/2 done with my bathroom. We got the garage nearly done but we can't finish it until some things are done in the house, so it's ok. It's close enough that I could park my car in there with just a few adjustments.

Oh, yeah, my trip to Vegas. Lots of fun. Especially the drive down by myself with my 14mo! LOL Actually he did really good. We left very early in the morning so he slept through the majority of the drive. I had plenty of time to get down there so it wasn't a problem the few times I had to stop to take care of him. Unfortunately when we got there we had a huge mishap. I put him in the stroller for just a second while I turned around to get some things to load into the stroller and he fell out. He cut open the inside of his lip really bad. I was not thrilled about finding an instacare by myself in Vegas so I didn't get it stitched up and it looks like I made the right decision because it looks fine now. He just spent the whole time in Vegas looking like he had a pouty lip!

It's been a crazy few weeks

School has started but we have been busy with all the back to school activities and meetings. We've also been busy cleaning out our garage so that we can park in there this winter. Unfortunately now the mess is inside my house! LOL So now I get to spend the next week getting it all put away.

JA started an English class today, AC was supposed to start a craft class today but the teachers daughter was sick so she will start next week, the boys youth group classes will start this Thursday and M's history class will also start on Thursday. Wednesday I have a staff meeting with the midwife I'm apprenticing with, Thursday is our Anniversary. We are going up to our family cabin to spend the night. Without my baby! That will be weird. AC's birthday was Monday but we are having her party on Saturday. So.....we have a very busy week planned! Next week will also be very busy.

The best news is that I've lost 10 pounds! Yippee!

A title

I'm terrible at coming up with titles for my posts because my posts just seem to be about life in general. I suppose it could be "free soap!" because I got 5 bottles of free laundry soap yesterday using PYP and a $10 gift certicate. That should last us about 3 months! I was pretty happy about that.

I guess I could also title it "Happy Birthday JK" since today is his 15th birthday. 15 years ago today at this time I was checking in to labor and delivery. It was a textbook delivery. 12 hour labor, epidural at 12, prom at 2, pit at 3, push twice and deliver baby about 7. I wish I knew then what I know now but I learned things so it's ok. He is such a sweet boy! So incredibly responsible and easy to get along with. I tell him to be home at a certain time and he is home. Tell him to clean his room and he cleans it. We rarely argue about anything. JZ adores him and he is a very responsible babysitter.

I could title it "Finally over the sickies!" JA and A got it Saturday night but the only thing that happened was that they couldn't sleep and just didn't feel good. M and JK got it Sunday and they got it really bad. Both threw up and got diarhea and felt terrible for two days. Yesterday was the first really good day for everyone.

M saw the dr on Tuesday for her tummy pain. She said the symptoms point toward two things. Chronic constipation, which I doubt, and gallbladder. We did an xray to rule out the constipation and a bunch of blood tests. If the xray comes back normal we will do some tests on her gallbladder. I should hear back from them today.

For those in my area, you need to come to a pampering/ moms day (hour) out open house at my house. I have a friend that makes lotions and other pampering fun out of her home. Everybody raves about her lotions! Plus it's kind of cool cause she leaves everything unscented and you get to choose your scent from about 50 different scents. If you want to come it's from 11-2 on Saturday.

Hum I think that is all for this update. Oh yeah, rebecca asked me about recipes. The lasagna recipe was just a basic lasagna recipe. You don't have to cook the noodles first either. Just layer it in your crockpot, noodles uncooked but hamburger cooked, and then cook it until it's done. I started it on high about 3 and we ate at 6 and it could have used at least another hour. As for the yogurt, I will post that later since I have to look up the recipe.