Dear Earwigs,
I feel that I should make it known to you, you are not welcome in my house. I'm fine with seeing you outside, on my back porch, even in my garden and on my flowers. I have tried to be as kind as I could be about this whole situation, but yesterday was the end. You are MOST definitely NOT allowed in my bed, and thanks to my husband who only just informed me, in my MILK! I hate to hurt your feelings but frankly, thanks to the story my sister Laura told me when I was little about the possible origin of your name (think something brown with bulgy eyes and yucky little antenna crawling into your ear) well, my relationship with you has never really recovered. Let it be known among all your kind, my house is no longer a refuge for your little families. Inside or outside.
Sincerely,
A Violated Homeowner
Loving our ever changing, crazy, fantastic life
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
One of My Favorite Summertime Treats!
We have some awesome neighbors who love that we help them eat their zucchini. And we think they are awesome for sharing! Here's one of my favorite things to do with zucchini:
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
2 1/2 c. flour 2 c. sugar
1/2 c. cocoa 3 eggs
2 1/2 tsp baking powder 2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp baking soda 2 tsp grated orange peel
1 tsp salt (I use orange flavoring)
1 tsp cinnamon 2 c. shredded zucchini
3/4 cup soft margarine 1/2 c. milk
1 c. nuts (optional)
instead of nuts, I like to use chocolate chips!
C ombine flour, cococa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside. Blend sugar, egg and margarine until evenly blended. Add vanilla, orange peel and zucchini. Add dry ingredients and milk. Bake in greased and floured Bundt pan (I just use a regular cake pan) at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Cool in pan 15 minutes. Drizzle with this glaze:
2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 Tbsp milk
Beat until smooth.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Fortunately, Unfortunately
Today, both girls got to go see the Dr.
Fortunately, Aftyn didn't need any shots.
Unfortunately Bronwyn did.
Fortunately, the nurse was QUICK about administering them.
(I was a little concerned she would be slow at it.)
Unfortunately, quick or not, Bronwyn YELLED and held her breath and then yelled some more about the whole thing.
Fortunately, both girls went down for a nap as soon as we got home.
Unfortunately, Bronwyn woke up in a big puddle of poop. No joke. Sorry, but it's true. Leaked clear through diaper, clothes and blanket.
Fortunately, someone invented laundry detergent, washers and stain spray. :)
Unfortunately, Reed's not home to tell all this to. Yet.
Also, Fortunately, and totally off topic, I fixed our long broken vacuum today
The End
Fortunately, Aftyn didn't need any shots.
Unfortunately Bronwyn did.
(I was a little concerned she would be slow at it.)
Unfortunately, quick or not, Bronwyn YELLED and held her breath and then yelled some more about the whole thing.
Fortunately, both girls went down for a nap as soon as we got home.
Unfortunately, Bronwyn woke up in a big puddle of poop. No joke. Sorry, but it's true. Leaked clear through diaper, clothes and blanket.
Fortunately, someone invented laundry detergent, washers and stain spray. :)
Unfortunately, Reed's not home to tell all this to. Yet.
Also, Fortunately, and totally off topic, I fixed our long broken vacuum today
The End
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Some Product Reviews
Here are my favorite things:
I stumbled across this product because of the possible free coupon you could get when you play this game on their website. After watching all of their videos and being really super surprised at how well their products really appeared to work, this was my first purchase with my free product coupon. I LOVE this stuff! As a mom to a semi-newborn, I am still trying to cash in on as much sleep as I can, and I don't always get to shower as often as I would like. That's where this stuff comes in for me. I just spray it into my hair and it helps eliminate any grease on my scalp by absorbing it, it contains some sort of cornstarch-y stuff to do this, and the smell is fabulous! I have also tried the anti-frizz smoothing creme and the mousse. I have REALLY been impressed by all of the professional line styling products I have tried, and I don't even mind the price for when I run out of my free products! At Walmart currently, they are running about $2.70 per item. I generally have to pay much more for other brands for the same kind of thing. Also, I love the fragrance of all the products I have tried. Yum!
These are my next favorites. I tried them because of some coupons I had. Wow. No joke. Even more awesome is that they have flaxseed in them. It's your basic pre-packaged oatmeal, except the flavor is SO much better and the little paper package they come in is also how you measure how much water or milk you add to them!! I can't begin to tell you how awesome that is unless you have made a whole lot of other prepackaged oatmeal. It is such a hassle to always have to get a measuring cup out because if you don't measure out the exact amount of liquid to go in, your oatmeal comes out of the microwave too wet or too dry. Also, the price is right for me. Under $1 for 5 awesomely flavored oatmeal packets. These are the two flavors I have tried. The strawberry one is my fave.
Here is one of my current UN-favorites. It's hard for me to really not like something. I generally always give things 2 or 3 tries until I really decide I don't like them, so trust me on this one.
Sorry, this was the only picture I could find, and no, you can't print the coupon from my page.
FiberOne 80 cereal. Yuck. Something ickily sweet about them, and the texture of the little cereal pieces is just not so appealing. Reed commented to me this morning, his second morning of eating them, that there was just something not right with this cereal. So, please, do yourself a favor. Unless you are desperate for cereal and this is on sale for $.50, don't waste your money. Really.
That's it for now! If I remember anything else I need to pass along, I'll just add it to this post.
Halo Sleepsacks
I had been wanting to try something along these lines since Aftyn was born, but was much too afraid of their price and luckily my hospital gave us a newborn size Halo Sleepsack for free as part of a program they had just started. I love it! It's so much easier than trying to wrestle your baby into a tight swaddle with a blanket. With this, you just lay your child into the sack part and put their arms through the arm holes, zip them up and then velcro those little arms nice and tight to their bodies. Bronwyn sleeps so well in it, and even Reed can manage to put her in it. He was a little wary at first because he's not so good at swaddling, but I've seen some of his swaddling jobs and comparatively you really can't go wrong with the Halo Sleepsack because you can't do it wrong. I give it a 10 out of 10. Ours is nice and lightweight too so I can throw a light blanket on top for our little girl who likes blankets by her face. By the way, I understand that right now Target has some of these on clearance, and frankly I'm tempted to go and buy one in the next size!
Here is one of my current UN-favorites. It's hard for me to really not like something. I generally always give things 2 or 3 tries until I really decide I don't like them, so trust me on this one.
FiberOne 80 cereal. Yuck. Something ickily sweet about them, and the texture of the little cereal pieces is just not so appealing. Reed commented to me this morning, his second morning of eating them, that there was just something not right with this cereal. So, please, do yourself a favor. Unless you are desperate for cereal and this is on sale for $.50, don't waste your money. Really.
That's it for now! If I remember anything else I need to pass along, I'll just add it to this post.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Pictures of Our Backyard!!
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| Before mowing, all the weeds that grew with our grass are really tall |
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| The man with the plan to make this backyard beautiful |
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| More before |
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| After! Woohoo!! |
Monday, July 11, 2011
Bronwyn's Birth Story - Not For The Faint of Heart, or For That Matter, Men
I've been debating about writing this, but I love looking back at previous posts on this blog and remembering things I've forgotten and so, I'm going to write this down for myself. Nobody has to read it. Really.
It all started on Friday the 13th. Really. I had been hoping and dreaming what fun it might be to have a baby on Friday the 13th. So I got up that morning, pumped up with a plan. I had a day full of shopping planned all over the city of Nampa. I walked through Target, Costco, Winco, and Walmart while hauling Aftyn and getting lots of groceries because I knew I was going to be having the baby in the not too distant future, (remember I had 11 days left until my due date).(by the way, another reason I wanted to have the baby on Friday was because 2 friends were having get togethers at the same time on Saturday and we had said we would go to both and didn't know how we were going to do that without having to say no to somebody. Having a baby was the easiest answer.)
I arrived back home tired and just in time for nap time for Aftyn. I had some homemade strawberry limeade. Mmmm. Nothing happening, no contractions, just me really tired. I was a little disheartened, but at almost 10 months pregnant, what woman isn't?!
Fast forward to that night after dinner. It was nice outside, and a storm was fast approaching, but Reed and I took Aftyn down to our local greenbelt and did about a half a mile. Nothing happening.
I went to sleep that night pretty dang tired, only to wake up about 2 am with heartburn so I retreated to my usual spot on the couch, sleeping sitting up which is so terribly comfortable. Not. I slept that way until about 6 or 7.
I got up and went and crawled back into bed with Reed so I could have somebody to talk to because there was no way I was comfortable enough to go back to sleep.
Reed started preparing himself for the day in the bathroom, so I laid there in bed. And got the great idea of pushing on the pressure point in my hand to see if it brought on a contraction. It did. "Wow!" I thought, "it really works!" And then another contraction came. And another. They were getting harder and were not in any way predictable. They weren't timeable, because one would be 2 minutes later, and another would be 30 seconds later. Just crazy. After about 15 minutes of breathing my way through them, it seemed like they were starting to come on top of each other which scared me, so Reed called my parents and my mom drove to our house in 4 minutes. Luckily, she only lives 4 minutes away, so it wasn't as if she sped. :) Since I already had Aftyn's bag packed, we just handed it and Aftyn and her car seat off to my mom and I hopped in our car while Reed quickly grabbed all the bags I had already packed for us and we were off!
Of course the whole drive to the hospital I worried they would send me home. But the contractions weren't slowing down and were still pretty painful, so I had hope. We arrived at the hospital, and I had only progressed a half a centimeter, which was still something. So they set me up in a gown, some socks, and a whole labor and delivery ward to walk around in for an hour. Our nurse was so kind! She asked if I had had any breakfast and when she found out I hadn't, brought in a whole LOAD of food for me, which Reed mostly ate and I had an Italian Ice and some jello, mostly anything to keep my blood sugar up and water. My midwife had scheduled an induction for one of her other patients that day and so she was already at the hospital and saw me shortly after we got there. It was a nice surprise.
Reed and I walked around for an hour or so. I tried stopping walking when the contractions hit and leaning all my weight on poor Reed, which worked for awhile. Then I tried "hula-hooping" my hips, it worked a couple of times. Finally, I just decided to just slowly walk through the contractions with Reed leading me and my eyes closed and focusing on relaxing.
After the hour, at about 10:45, the nurse checked me and I had progressed a whole centimeter! Yay! I decided it was time to hit their jetted tub, and the nurse made sure to send me with lots of snacks and MANY cautions that if I felt ANY pressure to push, I was to call her immediately.
I just laughed her off, because I had heard that before with Aftyn. I stayed in the tub for about an hour until my bladder was so full I could hardly take it and the contractions were starting to get pretty uncomfortable in that tub. Reed and I made our way back to our room and the nurse checked me again. 8.5 centimeters! Yay!!
From there on, I just laid/sat in the bed in a slightly reclined position. It was the only position I could handle because the contractions were getting really hard. Luckily I had Reed to talk me through them because it was REALLY hard to relax my body. My midwife also broke my water about this time, but all the water was behind the baby's head, so there was hardly any that came out then.
After about an hour or so, I could tell it was almost time to push. I told Reed and he frantically tried to find the nurse call button. Since he couldn't find it, he ran out to the hall to get the nurse and my midwife. BAD idea! I found the button while dealing with the mounting pain in my body, and I think I told the nurse who answered something about being in labor, duh, and then I said I need to push! About that time, everybody showed up back in the room and I started crying and hyperventilating because I had never gone completely through labor with no pain meds and I was scared. With Aftyn I had steidol, which must have made a difference because I don't remember feeling so much of the pain that I did with Bronwyn.
With many people trying to get me to breathe deeply to stop the hyperventilating, I figured it out after Reed gave me a hug. I told him he shouldn't leave me anymore. :) A woman in labor is not someone who should be left alone. So, after trying to not push because it hurt too much, I finally took my midwife's advice and gave a good solid push and after a total of only 4 pushing contractions, Bronwyn was born at 2:10 pm.
So, what did I learn with this birth? Reed's a great coach, I don't like to be left alone at all while in labor, pushing hurts so just prepare yourself for it, and natural birth is awesome. But definitely not for everyone. The first hour after I delivered I hurt, but seriously from that point on there was little to no pain in my body associated with the delivery. Now the afterpains are a different story, but luckily they have meds for that. :) My recovery has been so painless! I would definitely do another natural birth. Loved it.
It all started on Friday the 13th. Really. I had been hoping and dreaming what fun it might be to have a baby on Friday the 13th. So I got up that morning, pumped up with a plan. I had a day full of shopping planned all over the city of Nampa. I walked through Target, Costco, Winco, and Walmart while hauling Aftyn and getting lots of groceries because I knew I was going to be having the baby in the not too distant future, (remember I had 11 days left until my due date).(by the way, another reason I wanted to have the baby on Friday was because 2 friends were having get togethers at the same time on Saturday and we had said we would go to both and didn't know how we were going to do that without having to say no to somebody. Having a baby was the easiest answer.)
I arrived back home tired and just in time for nap time for Aftyn. I had some homemade strawberry limeade. Mmmm. Nothing happening, no contractions, just me really tired. I was a little disheartened, but at almost 10 months pregnant, what woman isn't?!
Fast forward to that night after dinner. It was nice outside, and a storm was fast approaching, but Reed and I took Aftyn down to our local greenbelt and did about a half a mile. Nothing happening.
I went to sleep that night pretty dang tired, only to wake up about 2 am with heartburn so I retreated to my usual spot on the couch, sleeping sitting up which is so terribly comfortable. Not. I slept that way until about 6 or 7.
I got up and went and crawled back into bed with Reed so I could have somebody to talk to because there was no way I was comfortable enough to go back to sleep.
Reed started preparing himself for the day in the bathroom, so I laid there in bed. And got the great idea of pushing on the pressure point in my hand to see if it brought on a contraction. It did. "Wow!" I thought, "it really works!" And then another contraction came. And another. They were getting harder and were not in any way predictable. They weren't timeable, because one would be 2 minutes later, and another would be 30 seconds later. Just crazy. After about 15 minutes of breathing my way through them, it seemed like they were starting to come on top of each other which scared me, so Reed called my parents and my mom drove to our house in 4 minutes. Luckily, she only lives 4 minutes away, so it wasn't as if she sped. :) Since I already had Aftyn's bag packed, we just handed it and Aftyn and her car seat off to my mom and I hopped in our car while Reed quickly grabbed all the bags I had already packed for us and we were off!
Of course the whole drive to the hospital I worried they would send me home. But the contractions weren't slowing down and were still pretty painful, so I had hope. We arrived at the hospital, and I had only progressed a half a centimeter, which was still something. So they set me up in a gown, some socks, and a whole labor and delivery ward to walk around in for an hour. Our nurse was so kind! She asked if I had had any breakfast and when she found out I hadn't, brought in a whole LOAD of food for me, which Reed mostly ate and I had an Italian Ice and some jello, mostly anything to keep my blood sugar up and water. My midwife had scheduled an induction for one of her other patients that day and so she was already at the hospital and saw me shortly after we got there. It was a nice surprise.
Reed and I walked around for an hour or so. I tried stopping walking when the contractions hit and leaning all my weight on poor Reed, which worked for awhile. Then I tried "hula-hooping" my hips, it worked a couple of times. Finally, I just decided to just slowly walk through the contractions with Reed leading me and my eyes closed and focusing on relaxing.
After the hour, at about 10:45, the nurse checked me and I had progressed a whole centimeter! Yay! I decided it was time to hit their jetted tub, and the nurse made sure to send me with lots of snacks and MANY cautions that if I felt ANY pressure to push, I was to call her immediately.
I just laughed her off, because I had heard that before with Aftyn. I stayed in the tub for about an hour until my bladder was so full I could hardly take it and the contractions were starting to get pretty uncomfortable in that tub. Reed and I made our way back to our room and the nurse checked me again. 8.5 centimeters! Yay!!
From there on, I just laid/sat in the bed in a slightly reclined position. It was the only position I could handle because the contractions were getting really hard. Luckily I had Reed to talk me through them because it was REALLY hard to relax my body. My midwife also broke my water about this time, but all the water was behind the baby's head, so there was hardly any that came out then.
After about an hour or so, I could tell it was almost time to push. I told Reed and he frantically tried to find the nurse call button. Since he couldn't find it, he ran out to the hall to get the nurse and my midwife. BAD idea! I found the button while dealing with the mounting pain in my body, and I think I told the nurse who answered something about being in labor, duh, and then I said I need to push! About that time, everybody showed up back in the room and I started crying and hyperventilating because I had never gone completely through labor with no pain meds and I was scared. With Aftyn I had steidol, which must have made a difference because I don't remember feeling so much of the pain that I did with Bronwyn.
With many people trying to get me to breathe deeply to stop the hyperventilating, I figured it out after Reed gave me a hug. I told him he shouldn't leave me anymore. :) A woman in labor is not someone who should be left alone. So, after trying to not push because it hurt too much, I finally took my midwife's advice and gave a good solid push and after a total of only 4 pushing contractions, Bronwyn was born at 2:10 pm.
So, what did I learn with this birth? Reed's a great coach, I don't like to be left alone at all while in labor, pushing hurts so just prepare yourself for it, and natural birth is awesome. But definitely not for everyone. The first hour after I delivered I hurt, but seriously from that point on there was little to no pain in my body associated with the delivery. Now the afterpains are a different story, but luckily they have meds for that. :) My recovery has been so painless! I would definitely do another natural birth. Loved it.
Friday, July 8, 2011
What We Do For Fun
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| Use Baby Doll-sized toys to put Bronwyn on. Here at 5 weeks old, her bum is on the ground. At birth, she fit perfectly. |
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| Try to catch those elusive first smiles |
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| Got it! |
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| Take pictures of Aftyn in the tub. Just for giggles. Mostly from Aftyn. :) |
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| Put on our rain jackets and run outside in the rain! |
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| Per Aftyn's request. She loves putting on jackets. :) And she loves running around outside. |
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| Take pictures of Bronwyn sleeping in funny positions. |
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