Friday, July 18, 2008

  • V Day

    Finally, after almost ten years together, some intermittently successful FAM thrown in (with brief early bouts of hormonal birth control in the beginning), and almost five kids later, hubby is going in to be snipped. I've been more than ready for this for a long time, but of course he's taken quite a while to get used to the idea.

    Naturally I keep hearing about procedures that don't take (even just this past week a local mom announced a post-vasectomy pregnancy) but I feel pretty confident we'll fall in the majority, and of course we'll do the follow up testing. Dave is pretty nervous, but I feel confident he'll be fine and it will go well. Quick healing vibes welcome!

Thursday, July 17, 2008

  • 30 weeks

    Life and summer have been ambling along. Nothing seems exciting enough to blog about and my mind generally draws a blank these days. My convenient excuse of course is placenta brain drain. Found out at WIC yesterday how much weight I have gained - bleh.  Yet the baby gets bigger and happily moves about constantly, thought I would share. Oh, 30 weeks is going by LMP, which sounds better to me at this point than 29 + weeks,

Sunday, July 13, 2008

  • Splash Pad fun

    We went to a little splash pad (well I thought it was big, the splash fountains back home were put to shame!) in a public park today and the kids had a blast!

    The set up above was all the splash pads consisted of back home.


    This one had a rainbow!


    And  a water cannon!


    Which of course was a favorite


    The green thing mysteriously controlled what devices the water would come from



    Good and cooled off....




    Afterwards we went to see Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at the air force base.  We had four free tickets and kids were only 1.50 so it cost our huge family a total $3.00 to get in! (The two medium drinks and two medium popcorns deal was $12.00  however, but not bad concession prices compared to those I'm used to). Kieran and Donovan was really into the movie, Liam was pretty restless and some of it was too loud for him, but he says he liked it; Rhiannon just went back and forth between Daddy and Mommy's laps for most of it. I liked the movie, but I never read past The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe so I didn't have a good comparison, and my attention got drawn away from it constantly.

    We finally got home and had chili in the crock pot waiting for us. We heaped on cheese and tortilla chips and sliced up italian bread, yum yum! After all of that, I am extremely exhausted! It was a long weekend.
            

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

  • We have a vehicle!

    A bigger vehicle, that we all fit in! I'm too lazy to retrieve the batteries and throw pants on to go outside and take a picture, but we all know what minivans look like, right? Here's an example anyways:
     
    '03 Dodge Grand Caravan "Sport" - wow I even got the color right.

    I could see it from my living room window last night and had to keep rubbing my eyes that it was actually there. We had a hellacious thunderstorm blow through so with every lightening strike it would indeed be illuminated. (That's pretty dramatic but I thought it was funny). I'm so stoked out. I actually can't wait to be able to drive now!

    That said, the car dealership we got it from wound up being terrible, IMO. I had some foreshadowings too, like the cruddy public bathroom I took the kids in that had removable seats from cars shoved in the corner with cleaning products in milk boxes and the soap available for handwashing was dollar store dish detergent. The outside of the building was spiffy and shiny of course, the insides needed a cleaning and remodel. There was a fishtank in the lobby that was nasty.  I don't think they detailed (cleaned) the van as well as they could have, and I'm going to go through it with a wet rag later. Things went ok until Dave went in to give them the downpayment. The guy said "oh and $150 for doc fees?" Uh no, that was included in the financing, what the heck? Of course he didn't give him any extra. Then the guy said "If my father asks, you only put $500 down". What? Hell no, what is this guy, does he have a gambling problem? We put twice that amount down, and it says that on our paperwork, so I think we're ok. But Geesh!

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

  • Broken record

    • Stop jumping on the couch!
    • Stop hanging off of the cupboard door!
    • Simmer down before someone bashes their head on the fireplace!
    • Please put your socks in the laundry room!
    • We don't color on the walls/table/toys!
    • No more printer paper for coloring!
    • Please get something on your butt
    • No there is nothing for a snack right now
    •  argh - Ask daddy!!!

Monday, June 30, 2008

  • Randoms

    I'm not feeling bloggy today, so bullets seem appropriate...
    • Mom sent me a box of loves in the mail that arrived today...several maternity shirts and a gift card Unfortunately the GC is showing a balance of zero (after I scratched off the back to plug in the # to see) so I'm trying to figure that one out.
    • The boys all had their glasses repaired (yeah, already they needed it - Liam's three times!) and for the first time since the end of school they are all at once bespectacled again. I myself am immensely enjoying being able to see well. When I take them off I can't believe the difference and how used to it I was
    • It's been the same with Rhi and the potty. She goes pee on the potty most times during the day if I leave her naked or just in a dress. Sometimes she doesn't make it. If I put training pants on her she's guaranteed to get them wet so I haven't bothered with them much. Any kind of disposable (that I've used at night) now is giving her  a horrendous rash, so I've decided when I get more training pants they'll be good pocket types I can customize the stuffing with. It's a catch-22 though. She definitely has encopresis like her brother and despite a laxative every day, it's getting worse When I know she's "leaky" I reach for the training pants. But then she'll pee in them too. Argh. But if I don't - then it would be random poo all over the place. She tells me when she needs to be wiped off but still sometimes it's quickly a mess and she can't help that. I'm wondering if this is how it has to be until she totally gets the peeing down.
    • I'm still having mixed feelings on taking on a car payment to the budget.
    • Kieran's new thing is repitition, with words. Not the echolalia thing, but a constant word or phrase or even sound effect over and over and over again ad nauseum. I've been trying to be tolerant to no avail - it hones in on my last nerve in .6 seconds. So I'm trying to not act too agitated and just tell him nicely that hunny I just can't listen to that thank you

Friday, June 27, 2008

  • Time for a pre-owned vehicle that we all fit in

    With the price of gas these days, it's crazy to think about actually wanting to get a minivan when we have an economical sedan that is finally paid for and running well.

    But, I'm trying to think of it as a mental health expense. I am almost always home. With all of the kids, only one adult fits in the car (the driver, of course). I don't drive (yet) so that means I get to stay home, unless we have someone to watch one or more of the children. For the past almost four years, this has been quite tedious.  Now with another baby on the way, it's going to be impossible. Impossible to get out at all, impossible to safely fit,  impossible to contemplate the walls caving in on me for much longer.



      I can hear the angels singing....

    I'm nervous about the financial leap this will be. I'll need to get driver's insurance. The vehicle will need insurance. To get something decent  though obviously shooting for "pre-owned" (polite way of saying used) is still going to be a lot of dough because of the size of the vehicle. It's looking to be about as much as our sedan was brand new, which is a shock. That means car payment, even with a down payment. It is nice to not have to worry about a car payment right now. Interest rate is a concern. And the gas. Oh the gas. I already plan on taking it easy, perhaps one or two trips a week, including needing to do things that need to be done, like getting to appointments.

    We've decided to not trade in our economical car though. The most is spent in gas on transportation to work, work being a necessity of course. I looked around and though we'd get a loyalty credit  if we went through Saturn again, we would not get much for the car (maybe $2,000 tops) for value - it's been through the ringer, looks wise. The interior needs more than the average car detail cleaning and one of the door panels is still bent in from a parking lot hit-and-run. It's a good car though: things aren't breaking every other week, I think worth more to us as an asset than as a trade in.

    I'd thought of spending $2,000-$3,000 of buying one outright. That has it advantages too - no car payment to worry about. Those ones are over eight years old and I would worry about something going wrong with it quickly and continuously. Thus, I need to look into more what makes and models and years were "good" and what to pass over with either old or newer.

    Nothing is set in stone, though I'm anxious to get on the road, it's not going to be overnight. Just more stuff to think about in the meantime...

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

  • Note to self: You're pregnant, relax

    Not that I find it easy to "forget" that I am pregnant, with having to wear mama pads now because of sneezing (TMI, sorry), feeling so easily touched out, and feeling the baby move about -who's big enough now to really be pounding away.

    The house has become a disaster this week. This weekend I was especially tired and while I caught up on sleep, I have yet to catch up on housework. With everything pushing up on my diaphram, I find I'm not only low on energy but low on breathing room. To get up and bustle about for a bit makes me feel like I'm gasping for air.

     Dh was home from work early yesterday and while it had been a busy day for him, I had no qualms about batting my eyelashes to get him to make dinner. That I even managed to clean up the kitchen while he was at it amazes me. I don't feel bad because having him cook (and sometimes load up and start the dishes) is about all I can get him to do without having to ask much on a regular basis.

    I will have the kids help pick up toys, find dirty laundry and vacuum the kitchen floor. A mountain of laundry needs to be folded, and I'm hiding from even getting that done. I won't even think about what a project the rest of the laundry room/crap repository room that Rhiannon has further torn apart is.

    I just remembered that we have a friend coming in from out of town this weekend. Since a clean house never lasts, I'll just wait until Friday and do it all then, lol. Save for the kitchen, lest it make the ants come back. (To update on that bit, Dh ended up just buying a can of Raid. Nice. I'm ashamed to admit, it worked very well)

Monday, June 23, 2008