Hello Elmo!

Kinsley will be Elmo for Halloween and we got to practice! Every year her daycare has a parade where the kids walk around outside in their costumes. At first I had to bribe her with her passy to get her to wear it, but once we were outside she was very into it! I think she looks cute, needs a hair cut but she's cute!

K's best friend Yaya.

Kinsley has a style all her own.

maybe this will be the start of a fashionesta or another Lady Gaga (oh dear lord, while i like her music i don't think i want my baby girl taking fashion advice).

K and I were getting out her PJ's for the night and I asked her which ones she wanted to wear. She started digging and found Elmo... then she also wanted Mickey. K..... then she needed her shoes, on the wrong feet.

Toddler fashion. Why fight it?

She's a hambone

I swear i have NO idea where she gets her sassy personality... it HAS to be her father!

I asked Kinsley to cheese for me Friday morning at school because i thought she looked so cute in her little outfit and this is what i got...

I said if she would give me a decent cheese i would give her a spoon for her yogurt...

I don't know if i would call that "decent" but I'll go with it since she's almost 23 month (OMG that means its one month and one week away from her second birthday and i think i just died by her oldness)!

Kinsley's personality has been coming out more and more. From know exactly what she wants (even if we have no idea what she's saying) to "I do it" when i can't help her at THAT EXACT MOMENT.

She still needs me though, so that's nice. Like in the mornings when she wakes up before I've dried my hair (because i only wash my hair every third day she wakes up early on THOSE mornings, thanks) and wants to sit on my lap WHILE i dry my hair. Have you tried to dry your hair while sitting without a mirror and with a toddler on your lap... skill, i have MAD skills!

Kinsley also knows when she wants to use a spoon or a fork. I when she needs one or the other, but when she wants to use one or the other. We might use forks with soup and spoons with pasta, but that's okay. LET HER!

The pantry has a lock on it, along with our new cabinet in the Kitchen. In the pantry is dog food that she will feed NON-STOP to our dogs AND fruit snacks that she will get out without permission and then bug the hell out of you until you open them. The new cabinet is her new playground where she likes to crawl into and hide. Both needed locks.

K loves to brush her teeth, most of the time. She gets to use Elmo, momma gets to use the poop tooth brush. All goes well, unless i didn't get her memo about how i was supposed to use Elmo and SHE was supposed to use pooh... Geezz!~

She's a cutie and tootie, but i can't wait to see what she'll be next!

Parker Parker Parker

Yeah that's his name... everyone keeps asking if that's his "official" name and I've decided that it is. Unless Chris decides that it's not, at which case we will done our gloves and throw down, and i will win because who is REALLY going to hit a pregnant woman? mmmkay?!?!

So here's Parker at 23 weeks in my belly

yeah he's a bigen. AND he's a wild man. If he's not tap dancing in my lower abdomen then he's practicing his break-dancing moves and turning flips in my belly. Doesn't help the queasiness when he does this. Kinsley always had a party after i ate. Parker has a party whenever and where ever he chooses. No reason needed for this man to party (oh so like his Dad already~).

Right now my guy is right around the size of a papaya

His face is all formed, just needs to fatten up. He can hear everything and by his movement he likes it. Or maybe he doesn't and is pissed at being constantly woken up. Eh, get use to it kid, wait until you meet your sister, no sleep ever again!

He's very curious. He's been trying out all kinds of different pregnancy symptoms on me. Sciatic nerve issues, tailbone moving (learning bad habits from his sister!), extremely bad acne, constant evening heartburn (even before i lay down), aversion to many smells, aversion to foods still, should i keep going?

We have decided on his nursery bedding... i know you thought we had before but we changed our minds and here it is:

I know i was all "I'm going to do a boat theme without boats" but Chris wasn't a fan of my previous choice so here's what little man gets.
We'll do the top half of the room in a light light blue, the bottom in that dark navy blue you see and then we're going to use a natural rope as the chair rail. There's more but i can't give away ALL my secrets yet!

So yea, we're 23 weeks. CRAZY i know! He's due in just less than 4 months, K will be two in just over a month. Throw in Thanksgiving, Christmas, and dog that has a death wish* and time is FLYING!


*As of Friday afternoon Sadie was still not able to keep food down. She is "looking" better and they are going to give her more meds to help keep food down. Hopefully she'll be home soon. I'll update you more after the weekend.

K's new room!

I told you it was coming and here it is! I still have to put the maternity pics from her old room above the flower decals and some decorative shelves above her bed, but i think it's pretty darn cute!

The curtains are from her nursery.

her closet sucks, see that "step", that's for the stairs below... totally takes away needed space. oh well! she likes that her shoes are at her level~

The lamp, clock, and pink bins are from her nursery as well~

The mirror above her bed was in her nursery, the wall to the right (which is next to the window) will have 2 decorative shelves on it that are still in her nursery. Her bed is a hot mess because that's how she likes it. She likes all of her "things" with her, so i just moved them over from her old room to make her feel at home.

The bed was a hand-me-down gift from our neighbor's mom, it was natural color wood so i sanded it down and spray painted it white.

The bow holder was in her nursery and I made it using a white canvas from Michael's and ribbon I already had, just hot glued the ribbon to the back of the canvas.

The dresser is my FAVORITE! This was a hand-me-down gift from my awesome sister-in-law. She didn't need it anymore and K needed one so it was meant to be! It was a medium/dark wood so i knew it needed some glamour brought to it for K's big girl room. I sanded it and spray painted it and then just reused the knobs from K's nursery! I'm in love!

I found these cute decals and sprinkled them through the room. Above this one will be the 4 maternity pictures from K's nursery. As soon as she walked in the room she said "FLOWER!"

And we can't have a puppy room without a puppy on the wall!

Hope you like as much as K and I do!

I just saw Sadie... and K REALLY loves shoes.

So the first part of this post is sad, to me. I know i complain an awful lot about Sadie the Labrador from hell but honestly I love her sweet little puppy face. I hate her big jumping paws and snatching ways but i love her. I went to visit her at the vet and sat down on the floor to pet her in her crate and she just curled up on my lap and laid her head on my knees like "Oh there you are mom! I've been waiting to sleep all day!". I cried. My big pregnant self sat on the floor of a vet hospital crying for my dog to eat and keep food down so that i could take her home. I also might have contemplated curling up in a ball in her crate with her so that she could curl up in a ball and lay her head on my belly like she likes to do, but then i realized this might seem strange to the roaming tech and decided against it, I mean WAS in work clothes and had to return to work.

So we're waiting for her to eat again and hopefully keep that down since she didn't keep down what she ate last night. cross your fingers!

The other day we were out and about and we went past a Rack Room Shoes. So i told the hubs i was going to run in and see if they had black boots for K. We (K and I) ran in, I squatted down to see if they had her size, they didn't, so i turned around to go and MY daughter was on the ground shoes off and trying on whatever pair of shoes she could grab. My heart swelled with pride!

This morning while we were getting ready in her new big girl room (more on that later) she saw her shoes all lined up nicely in her closet. "SHOES!" she squealed with delight and ran over to get her Elmo rain boots. She asked for my help and told her i would help her as soon as she was dressed, so she told me "I Do it" and she got her shoes and insisted on wearing them to school. Girl loves her shoes! I love my girl!

Dog for Free! Dog for FREE!

Honestly i don't know how much more i can take. I know i know, with all of these GLOWING reviews of my lab it's a wonder people aren't lining up on my side walk to take her home... oh but wait! I have ANOTHER great story!

Remember the awesome poo story of 09? Well i can't locate the post to remind you but it involved Sadie's ass exploding all over my upstairs and me and my pregnant nose having to clean it up.

Fast forward to 11'. Sadie decided to floss her insides with hair from one of Kinsley's dolls. BUT her insides were just fine as they were and so she's been vomiting every since. Not.Kidding.


OKay, started THAT post on 10/25... today is 10/27... here's the what happened.

Later that night Chris and i went to get into bed and Sadie, who hadn't eaten all day, jumped up and started throwing up water and bile into our bed... again. So we looked at each other and decided to take her to the emergency vet.

We dropped off K's monitor with our neighbors and headed out with a very docile (which is not like her) and sick 5 year old puppy. We arrived and they started with x-rays, didn't see much more then gray area they were concerned about and LOTS of backed up poop. They went in with a scope and didn't see anything perforated. Stuck in an enema and gave her an IV and we left her for the night around midnight.

The next day we got a call that she was still throwing up. Not good. They had a radiologist do a scan and saw stringy material going from her stomach to her intestines and they couldn't tell if it was a blockage or irritation that was causing her intestines to contract. So they recommended surgery.

She went into surgery and i got a call around 630pm saying they pulled out a lot of hair and other material from her stomach and intestines. That her intestines were in really bad twisted state but they were looking healthy again by the end of surgery. Also, that her pancreas was swollen and irritated but that would be treated with antibiotics, which she'll be on anyway to prevent infection after surgery.

She'll spend another night there at least to make sure there aren't complications from surgery and then she might be able to come home on Friday. and $6000 later we are looking into pet insurance.

Combine that with the drama of the rest of my family and I'm ready for this week to be over. Oye!

I love Fall!

We went to the pumpkin patch!!! I love going and doing Holiday related activities with Kinsley, no matter the season, but there's something about fall! My little bean was VERY excited about going but once there I think she got a little overwhelmed. She had this shy smirk on her face a good chuck of the time, but over all she was running everywhere and VERY excited to see "PUMPKINS!"

Last Fall with a family of three!

Look it's "Uh Dan" as Kinsley refers to Uncle Dan! "Essie" (Aunt Jessie was there too, she was just one of the paparazzi)

Kinsley would kick and cry before going on these slides, even though she said she wanted to go on them. But, as she was coming down she remembered how awesome they are!

I was thirsty so i bought a HUGE lemonade, Kinsley stole it...

I told Kinsley she can only have a pumpkin if she can pick it up...

... those big brown eyes work on Daddy every time! lol

Happy Fall and Halloween!

I said it before, i'll say it again...

MATERNITY LEAVE SUCKS... oh that's right, the government doesn't have "Maternity Leave" They have leave you can take if you have a baby, also known as Emergency Medical Leave. You can sign up and have donated to you 6 weeks of leave. Period. The End.

IF i save my leave and try really hard and save, say, 4 weeks of leave, I don't get 10 weeks off with my new born, I get 6... because I can then ONLY accept 2 weeks of donated leave.

6 weeks of leave. Do you know how little that is? If I want to take more leave I have to do so without pay. The government tries to make it all roses and rainbows saying "You can take up to 12 weeks of leave" yeah UNPAID! Where is the silver lining in that? I WORK BECAUSE WE NEED THE MONEY! I would be a stay at home Mom if we could go 3 months without my paycheck!!!!

So now my family has a decision to make again. How many weeks of unpaid leave will I take? Only this time we have one in daycare.

I know some of you are thinking why didn't you plan better and save your leave better? Well here's why:

Each year I'm really lucky. I will earn 156 hours of Annual Leave (around 19 days) and 104 hours of sick leave (13 days). So that's a total of 32 days off!

I would LOVE to take a "normal" 12 weeks off (62 days) but I would be happy with 10 (50 days). Oh, so I only need to wait two years before I can have a kid to have enough leave right?

Well are you never going to be sick in two year? Will your toddler never be sick in 2 years? Are you not going to go on any form of vacation for two years? Will there never be a family, house, etc emergency for 2 years???

Exactly.

AND when you have a husband that has a job that makes it 90% impossible for him to take off with the sick child, that doesn't help. When you have family that lives 7 hours away making any visit to them need to be on a long weekend, that doesn't help.

Maternity Leave, or lack there of, SUCKS

a little up date

So on the Kinsley front: Zyrtec is AMAZING! It did a complete 180 with my child... so now she's off it. SAY WHAT?!? Yeah when my child and my house is finally happy i like to ruin it by pulling my child off the medicine that is making this possible, kidding!

I took her to the allergist because i wanted to know WHAT she was allergic to. Was this going to be a seasonal thing? A lifestyle? I needed to know. The appointment nurse said there were test they could do if i didn't want to take her off the Zyrtec so like a person crawling through the desert to only JUST find water, I left her on it! The DOCTOR (why can't doctors and nurses communicate better???) did not like this and prefers the skin test, which cannot be done while K is on Zyrtec. The blood test tells general areas of allergies, where the skin test says Yes THAT is the cause, not these other environmentals, and it tells the severity better.

So now my child is OFF of the Jesus Juice (it's the meds new nickname since something that worked that well could only come from the Savior himself). She now gets to snort (or have squirted up her nose) her meds like any decent addict would do. So far we've noticed she's not singing as many Hymns but isn't shouting Ozzy yet either. We just have to make it until Wednesday. Then they will prick her baby soft skin into looking like a quilt and we'll know if the dogs get to stay.

On the other miniature human front, Parker is giving me an UNBELIEVABLE pizza face. and a few of those pepperonis hurt. Thanks. Love you too. I will dress you up as tinker bell for your first Halloween just to mess with you and give you the love you gave me.

I'm 21 weeks to day and so excited! It's only 7 weeks until Kinsley's 2nd birthday AND my baby shower that my BFF is coming up from NC to throw for me with a BFF up here! YEA! I'm super blessed. Oh and that NC BFF? She's a DOCTOR! Uh huh, she got her Ph.D. She's pretty hot shit! I'm so proud of her! Go Christina!

The hubs and I have a MAJOR to-do list for our house (that we've mostly agreed upon) but not that much time to do it. Here's the list and then the schedule

1. Paint K's new room (ceiling, walls, trim, doors)
2. Install fan in K's new room
3. Paint k's new bed
4. Paint K's new dresser
5. Buy K's toy shelves
6. Put together night stand and toy shelves
7. Paint the Kitchen
8. Paint hallway, stairs way, and trim and doors
9. Paint nursery
10. have fireplace inspected
11. create a will
12. paint kids bathroom
13. Decorate K's room and nursery
14. Wash and set up bassinet, pack n play, car seat, swing, and bouncer
15. Was breast pump and buy new supplies
16. Reorganize kitchen with new cabinet
17. Donate/sell some of K's toys
18. Donate/sell K's old clothes
19. Put together Hospital Bag
20. Pre-register at hospital
21. Prepare for maternity leave
22. new car?
23. Add Chris to K's bank account
24. Make a bank account for Parker
25. pick a middle name for Parker
26. Finish plans and have K's 2nd birthday

I know there's more but here's our schedule:
10/15 Take K to pumpkin patch, Friend's annual Pig Roast
10/16 Visit friend's new baby and watch football game with then go to K's friend's 2nd birthday
10/21 5 year anniversary
10/23 K's friend's birthday party
10/29 Sadie vet
11/5-11/6 Friends wedding
11/11-11/13 Go to NC to visit BFF
11/18 thirty-one party
11/19 Friend's Baby shower and another friend's house warming party
11/20 K's 2 year pics, our family pics, and maternity pics
11/23-11/27 Go to NC for Thanksgiving
12/3 K's birthday party day
12/4 Parker's baby shower

NOT A LOT OF TIME THERE... especially when you add in naps for Kinsley and ME! And during the week is just NOT an option for us because i'm a zombie spitting fire by the time 7pm rolls around.

BUT on a positive note... remember the Dog Hair trapper couches? GONE! We got new (to us) ones!!! YEA! I love them, the hair wipes right off! I'm so happy! WOOT!

peace out

I'm at a loss for what to do...

So my poor little girl I think has allergies and so does the pediatrician. But this course of action is making me VERY impatient because I hate to see my little bean suffer.

The course of action is as follows. Trying a few over the counter meds (zertex, clairitian) for a week each to see if they work at all. If those don't work then come in and we'll try nose spray. If that doesn't work THEN we go to an allergist.

Here's my problem. It's been a week, we've moved on to the next OTC med because the first one didn't work. So now my child has been suffering for over 4 weeks. Daycare says that about an hour after I drop her off she starts to get puffy under her eyes and all drowsy and fussy. Then she won't take a good nap. Which then makes her even more fussy and irritable (the girl needs at least 2 hours), so by the end of the day she's an inconsolable bear.

Do i just bypass everything and schedule her for an allergist appointment. Do i follow the course of action. I feel so terrible because i get frustrated with her whining and irritabilness but I know a lot of it she can't help because she doesn't feel good. This sucks!

I keep forgetting to put this in writing!

So i want to track my weight this pregnancy and really try to stay healthy (despite the urges to pull over at every McDonald's/Taco Bell I pass). So this week I started a new eating plan from Baby Fit which is a site linked with Spark People. It's all free and awesome. BUT i has having issues trying to figure out my starting weight... FINALLY I have it!

Started at 172 (I know it wasn't pretty to begin with, get over it)
At now? 180!!! I've only gained 8lbs and I'm half way!!! ARE YOU KIDDING!?!?

Yeah I'm pretty stoked. Especially since i look like this:

Do you SEE THAT BELLY! WHOA! That kid is riding HIGH. And good lord when did my belly get so big?!?!? My neighbor is 8 weeks FARTHER along than me but i look the same size as her! MAN.

So I've been feeling a lot of kicks in the bladder area, this was confirmed by the fact that he's tends to be a head up feet and butt down baby. He also enjoys break dancing and playing with his penis in his spare time (true story).

I still have MANY food aversions, Chicken most of the time, seafood most of the time (i can handle shrimp sometimes), or anything else depending on how the wind is blowing. Something that sounds good one moment may make me gag another.

Still can always count on Mac and Cheese, Cereal, burgers, and tacos!

I had EVERY intention of working out this week to help with the multiple dimples on my thighs but alas I am sick and using it as an excuse to curl up in a little ball in my office come lunch time! But I do have a z-pak now so hopefully that will get my nose and cough in line.

Kinsley is very fond of her baby brother already. She even gives him hugs! And there have been times where she'll randomly ask about Parker (like she's met him)! lol. Love it!

So here we are, 2 days shy of 20 weeks and looking and feel good (well at least in the eye of this beholder).

Our family is/will be complete!

So last night Kinsley was reading to her baby doll and a few stuffed animals. I could hear her downstairs. She knows her books by toddler heart (meaning she knows the point of each page if not each specific word) and LOVES to read to her babies. So I snuck upstairs to record a brief moment of this, sorry about the lighting but i didn't want to do anything to disturb her.

Chris and I also went for the big anatomy scan of 2.0 and there was no doubt left in our minds, we're having a boy! One of each and our family is complete! We're so excited!

People's perception is amazing!

So I'm on the hunt for a couch and a dinning/kitchen table set. AND since the hubs and my budget is like $0 I'm looking on Craigslist. You can SOMETIMES find decent stuff on there but WHOA there are some special pieces on there. I mean it's amazing that people actually bought some of this stuff at one point AND think they can sell it now! It's truly terrible!
You know to stay away from ALL post with "Beautiful" in the Headline, it's NOT going to be beautiful. I promise!
"Good Condition" means it is in good condition, especially since it's from the 60s!

For example, look at this gem. It's titled "Sofabed- great color fabric, nice condition"

Great color? Which one? there's like 10 different colors in it. good condition, well YEA considering it's from the 1980s and lived through some questionable activity.

This one made me laugh: "Formal Luxury Gilded Round Coffee Table" and it's ONLY $1600. I mean who wouldn't want a $1600 coffee table right? Especially when it looks like this:

but take note that the glass top is NOT original. I mean they most likely took $2000 off because of that, since they originally bought it for $4160! OMG! WHY people? WHY?

This one was a little more honest: "Multicolored Patterned Sofa/Couch"

You knew going into it that it wasn't going to be pretty, but they want $155 for it, REALLY?

Now my favorite post are the unsuspecting ones. Ones that are titled very plainly: "Sectional and TV combo"... not combo is NORMALLY not a good thing, but you can never be too sure, so you open it up and BAM

They hit you with the red leather and brown suede couch. MAN! it's a STEAL at $500!

Do you love craiglist as much as I do?