For the family

They haven't seen me much this time and think I look very tired these days. Wonder why that is? LOL! So here ya go. See? I don't look that tired....that only happens when I've been up for a long time with a baby who doesn't want to sleep (make that 2 since A kicks at night). Sorry for the bathroom pics...still sort of hard to take pictures of yourself. Excuse the halfway finished paint job. Were in the middle of a remodel and the bottom half of the wall hasn't been painted yet.

Latest baby AJ update

I had a very uneventful appointment this morning. Will had to work, so it was just H and myself. (A FINALLY went back to school this morning completely bug free.)He loves going out with Mommy. For once he was also very well behaved! :D He did have a little bit of fun with Dr. Villers. She made the mistake of picking up a toy that he threw down and he decided that it would become a hilarious game of pick up sticks....only toys instead of sticks. You get my point.

A is doing great. Her heart sounds great, not one issue at all. She was kicking up a storm. I'm now at 125 pounds, still measuring small, but baby still measures a little big so I guess that evens out or something. Ha! I do think that she is going to be the one to give me stretch marks on my belly. I guess it was coming, the Lord couldn't let me have 3 and keep a decent looking tummy. That just wouldn't be right. It is perfectly ok with me though. They're my service stripes.

And just because I haven't posted any pics in a bit, here is H. All worn out from the car ride downtown and back.

The fun part of military life....

As I sit here in between lice-picking sections of my currently public schooled child's head, I also get to fight with Tricare over my prescription coverage. Apparently, even though I just picked up a script a couple of weeks ago, they now say that I haven't had Tricare coverage in over a year. Nice. This should be really fun at the OB's office tomorrow also. Funny how they have covered all sorts of things and all of a sudden I'm not covered. They also let me know that they don't have Henry's SSN. I've taken that into the DEERS office 4 times now. I was just saying today that it is the little screw ups that these people don't think about. To them its just "Oops, I screwed up." To me its wake both kids up early, get them bathed and dressed while they are still cranky, get H fed, get A fed, get them both into their carseats (yes..my 8 year old is still in a booster), drag them around base, force them to sit in a waiting room quietly so we aren't disrepectful to those around us, and still put on a happy face because with my volunteer position I can't make an arse out of myself, then drag them back home and repeat the whole process only backwards. It really is grand. *Please notice that sarcasm.*

Back to the lice. This makes our second time dealing with it within 4 weeks. Amazingly the teacher told me "confidentially" that the same child that also had it the last time, got sent home with it again. I know for a fact that her mother isn't treating it correctly. There is no way that you can pick them up at school, treat them, and have them ready for school the next day. This makes our third day of treatment and even the prescription shampoo didn't kill this stuff. A's head full of really thick, down to her butt hair isn't helping. She has agreed to a hair cut, but I just don't want her to go to school and be ridiculed....we all know that the one coming back with a haircut is quickly pointed out as the culprit. As of now I have it all sectioned off. It's not pretty. I thought I bought bobby pins but I bought some other kind of hair pins and had to make do. I'm definitely no hair dresser...that's for sure! And now I'm all itchy. You probably are too, aren't you? Welcome to my life. Only 17 more school days left and we are officially a homeschooling family!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's day to all of my mommy friends tomorrow! I hope your day is filled with lots of nothings....by that I mean you should have nothing to do with the cleaning, nothing to do with the cooking, nothing to do with anything at all. We can dream right?

I happen to be a mom to two of the most awesome kids. A wonderful, albeit talkative little girl and a mischievious, dirty little boy. They are both growing too fast for me to catch up and I don't like it one bit. A just turned 8 years old and I am in the midst of planning H's first birthday party. It is a big reminder to stop every now and then just to watch them grow. The little things are the best....like when A comes home and tells me her science book is wrong (and it is) or when H learns that the roll from the toilet paper that he just unraveled matches the roll that he pulled out of the bathroom trash can. Yes, even just taking a shower brings surprises these days. I normally just gate H in the little shower part of the bathroom with me if no one else is home.

A is not into as much as her baby brother of course...aside from the occasional stuffing of food where it doesn't belong when she doesn't want to eat it. I have to say that I honestly don't like this pre-preteen stage. The attitudes, eye rolls, head bobbing, and all that comes along with it. But we will manage and she is learning that there is a fine line between "expression" and rudeness. She can be very sweet most of the time though. She has a heart of gold when it comes to anything living be it an animal or a weed growing in the garden. She's a total nanny's girl and I have no doubt that when she grows up she'll be right back in North Carolina.

That's about all I have for tonight. I just wanted to take a little time to brag on my babies. :) Again, I hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow.

With a new baby on the way, I've been trying to find ways to be "thrifty". Amazingly this has actually turned into something fun and I'm learning new things in the process. Who on Earth ever pictured me making bread in a machine....wait, who ever pictured me making bread at all that didn't require me to twist a little tie to get it open?!

I just pulled a loaf out of the machine that I let bake overnight. YUMMY! Now I have to stop eating it before I end up with some extra weight.

I also used my food dehydrator (that in being thrifty, I found for a quarter at a garage sale!), but that didn't turn out so well. It wasn't until after I had cut up enough bananas to fill it up that I read online that bananas are hard to do. Apparently the stuff you get in a bag at the store isn't only dehydrated, but the bananas are first dipped in sugar water and fried...then dehydrated. So my bananas are a little, let's see...what's the word...rubbery! I am going to mash them up and try them in a banana bread instead. :D

All of this has me wanting to be the next Laura Ingles or something. If I ever get this house cleaned, I'm going to work some more on my knitting. I'm ok at it, but thats about it. I should start learning to sew again too. Imagine the money I could save!! And imagine how close to self-sufficient I could get us! See? Told you I was feeling all Little House on the Prarie...even though they weren't as self-sufficient as one would think. They were at that darn general store at least once a day. OH, I want to learn to can my veggies too! No way can we eat all that comes out of our little garden. We didn't last year and all we had were peppers! This year we have much more and I would hate for it to go to waste. The supplies are a little expensive though, so I'll have to save up for that one. I've got a while before the stuff starts to produce veggies anyway.

Oh and yes...with my learning to coupon I have saved us $113.55 in the past few days on groceries. I have enough free spaghetti to last us through the next great depression, eggo waffles too. Those weren't free, but can't beat .69 cents a box!

Garage sales and coupons are my new best friends. Cheaper than most consignment shops around here and recycling items to boot!

Why do I keep leaving?

This blog that is. NO, I'm not leaving anyone or anywhere else. Hehehe.

So....Where did we leave off? Oh yeah. I had just given birth to little H. Well guess what!! He isn't so little anymore! H is now walking, saying mama, dada, kikikikiki (babyspeak for here kitty kitty), baba, nanny, eeeeeeeeee (no clue what this is, but it sure is his favorite), and as of last night..puppy! We had our first TWO big scares last night. First he tried to escape out of the backdoor and then he choked on a root beer cap. Needless to say, mommy was fit to be tied for quite some time. But I calmed down and baby is alive and well so no need to worry. God really had an eye on that boy last night! :D He really is a great baby though. Normally, he's pretty happy, a good mixture of laid back and high strung, loving, and fun.


Here is little man now:















Then there is A. My baby is EIGHT years old now!! She is in the second grade and a straight A student most of the time. It would be all of the time if her teacher would just work with us. That won't be a problem next year though because we will begin homeschooling over the summer! We are both excited about this little adventure. :D It is past time to get her out of these horrible schools and into a learning envrionment that actually teaches her something. Here she is on her birthday. She insisted we use "face paint" to make her look like a cat. We only had black eyeliner, but it worked for her.














Perhaps the biggest news is our newest addition on the way. I'm sure everyone remembers our story about the struggle to get pregnant. It took a year and a half, metformin, and clomid to get our little Henry. Apparently we didn't need those anymore though because little Avaleigh is on the way! She is due on August 31st, just 2 days after her mommy's birthday.













For now that is our life. I am going to force myself to update at least weekly if not more so that family can see our progress and snag new pics of the babies as they show up.

Much ado about absolutely nothing

Well, here we are again. Another rare update in the life of the V family.

We left off with me being very pregnant and my husband still being deployed. My due date was June 1st, 2008. My husband was due to arrive at our local airport on June 1st, 2008 at 10 am. I could hold out right?

On the night of May 31st at around 11 pm I hear my doorbell ring and a knock. I was lying on the couch where I had slept every night since my husband left. It's just more comforting to sleep in a small place when you don't have someone behind you to hold you. As I try to wallow my big patooshie off of the couch, without much luck mind you, the Dane goes nuts. I finally manage to get up and stomp to the door as loud as I could making sure whoever was this stupid knew that I was angry. I look out of our small window only to see my husband standing there! Yes, you can say I freaked out a little for lack of better wording. That's actually probably an understatement. I think a good 5 minutes passed before I opened the door. And when I finally did open the door all I could say was "How the hell did you get here?! You aren't supposed to be here until morning!" Of course, after all of my nerves got settled, I gave him a huge hug and my favorite part of a deployment....our first kiss. You see? I always remind myself that there are good things to having your husband leave for six months to a year at a time. You get to have more "first kisses" than your normal, everyday family!!! That's my favorite one.

I was glad to see him. I had been having contractions all day long, but had decided that if I slept through them, it would somehow delay the onset of labor. Something worked! I still had a few pains throughout the night, but for the most part, I was fine.

The next morning was it! My due date! The day I had been begging for for months now! Yet, as I woke up expecting to feel at least a little something......BAM! Not a thing. We were supposed to be going to a get together at a friend's house later that day so I started my daily routine. Wake up. Cup of 1/2 caff coffee. Sit outside for 10 minutes. Proceed to be lazy until something has to be done. That was about it. My plan for the day had previously been to wake up extremely early because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway from the excitement of my husband coming home. I had planned on getting the house spotless in that time, but since he had already seen the wrath that having a 6 year old and her routine playdates and friends coming over could have on the house...well, I just left it. Meanwhile back at the V Ranch, I go for my 10 minutes outside almost forgetting that my husband was going to wonder where on Earth I had gone. I sat down under our arbor on the side of the house and.....BAM! Uh oh. That bam had something to it! Ooooo, that was a long one. Move forward about 5 minutes and Oh wow, another one. Yep, my contractions had started.

As I moved around the time between contractions got longer, so I decided that I wasn't really in labor and we would go about our day. We ran to a not-to-be-named mass merchandise department store and boy did I start to hurt! I called the person throwing the get together just to let her know that I had still planned on showing up, but if I didn't that I had a good reason. I didn't feel like coming home though, so we just went to their house a couple of hours early. I did well. I took a moment to myself and I said "Self. You studied hynobirthing at home. So just chill out." And it worked. I took a few more moments to get into a good state of mind and went out and enjoyed my evening with everyone else. Finally at 8 PM, I quietly said it was time to go. Of course they all thought I was full of it because I wasn't screaming bloody murder, but that would come later! We came back home to get things together for Abigayle, took her to a neighbor, and headed to the hospital with me driving because we never had time for my husband to learn how to get there.

Labor and delivery thought I was full of it also....still not screaming, but I was starting to get a little sarcastic and hateful. My contractions were 3 minutes apart at this point. So, off I go to my little room. No epidural please, I'm going ALL NATURAL! They had to give me fluids though because apparently all that stuff that I thought was normal in pregnancy was actually my water leaking. Oops. "Well, since you have an IV in there anyway, can you give me just a little something for pain?" Ahhhhh, Nubain. They should market that stuff for at home use!

The next morning I was only dilated to a 3!!! "Do you want to go home?" Ummmm, "Do you want to kiss my butt?!" I made the resident go downstairs and get MY doc out of the OR. We finally decided that as natural as I wanted, it wasn't happening. My water hadn't broken completely, but I needed to go somewhere with this labor. So, against ALL MEDICAL ADVICE EVER, she and I decide that I will go for pitocin. This technically shouldn't have been done since I was attempting a VBAC and my previous c-section had ended in a quickly sewn up single layer instead of a double. But, she and I both had something to prove and we had discussed it many times! Hook up the pitocin....okay...I need the epidural. Where's the anesthesiologist? Oh, held up in the next room. I'll wait. I've got hypnobirthing afterall!

Yeah, hypnobirthing. Ten minutes later I'm screaming so that the person in the next room hears me tell her that whatever she is doing that is holding him up...well she better stop it because I want my epi!!!!! I finally get it. Sort of. Turns out I'm one of those people who can't sit still while having a huge needle jammed in their back, so it only took on one side. Good enough though.

After much screaming and moaning and pushing. And after a cracked pelvic bone and a bumped noggin, we had our beautiful baby boy!!!!!

H was born on June 2nd at 6:32 pm. He weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 18 1/2 inches long.