So we got back from our ultrasound a few hours ago and folks we're having another GIRL! We are excited. I know Noel was pulling for boy this time, but he's excited as well. Out-numbered by females now, but still excited. We won't have to purchase new boy clothes, which will be nice since lots of McKennas baby clothes are in excellent shape. Kid #2 will be happy about perpetual hand-me-downs, but oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles! We also brought a rw CD and got a 3D movie of the baby made and I'm sure Noel will get that up asap on our greenhousegamer.com site most likely. McKenna came with us (no fever today) and thought it was pretty neat seeing the baby in 3D... she has a cute little mouth! It's mostly a profile of her face, showing also her shoulders, upper chest and arm. Pretty sweet! That's it for now, my tummy is growling! :D

Sickness is our constant companion these days! McKenna woke up with a mid 99 temp today but was pretty perky for half of the day. Noel and I cleared out the shed since it was a really nice day today and she was out with us for most of it, 'helping' us and playing with her toy shovels. She did really well, actually. After lunch though, she lost her luster and just now around 6pm I took her temp and it's 101.5. I decided to give her some kids tylenol since it's higher than it was. (I don't like to give fever reducing meds unless the temp gets about as high as it is with her, after all fevers have a job to do!) If she's still carrying a temp by tuesday I'm going to call her ped and see what he suggests. It's an on and off low-temp/high-temp/no-temp (Noel's b-day) and it's kind of frustrating! She really doesn't seem to have any other symptoms of illness, except for a little runny nose here and there, but nothing to write home about!

So, in other new you can actually walk into our shed now instead of literally having to climb over stuff. I re-organized all of my fish stuff and made a big pile of stuff that can go in a yard sale. There's lots of stuff I kept though, because eventually once my kids are older I may want to get back into my fish. As it is, I did bring in my 30 gallon to set up once I know what I want to do with it. I didn't want it to get buried in the back of the shed again. With the 30 gallon set up, I'd only have 2 tanks, and that's only if I keep the 10 gallon going, which I think I do want to do, especially since I'm getting plants into it. Besides, it can always be used as a VERY nice quarantine tank for new arrivals! ;)

Tomorrows the big day! We'll find out the sex of our baby and let everyone know. I'll post here and send out an email. Catch ya later!

Forgot to mention that I have a picture of my 10 gallon tank after I re-vamped it. It's the bottom-most pic on my blog, all the way at the bottom. I'll keep updating the pic as I get more and better plants in there. It's still hazy as I was impatient and took the pic before I let the dust settle. All I have right now is the moss near the top, the anubias in the bottom right and some bacopa on the left hand side and also floating at the surface. I'll probably move the bacopa around a bit as I'm not too sure of where it's going to end up or grow best. In the upper right hand corner there's also some pothos roots growing down into the tank. I find it's a great way to root my cuttings is to just stick them into the top of my tank.

Up this morning to a child with 100.6 fever, she went down, ate breakfast and snuggled with her daddy for awhile, then laid on the sofa for awhile longer. Noel went out to get groceries and while he was gone I re-did my 10 gallon with the Schultz aquatic soil I picked up topped with a natural-colored gravel. Placed the plants I have back in there and I'll have to take a picture soon. I want to get a couple more plants in there, but I have to say it looks so much more relaxing and nice for the fish. They did nothing but pick at the driftwood after they went back into the tank. McKenna perked up enough to help me pick the MTS snails out of the old gravel, since they're a good algae cleaning crew and they don't eat plants. She kept picking them out and holding them, and I kept telling her to put them back in their bowl of water so they don't die. So far, so good. She was so engrossed in what she was doing, that she had an accident, but I had her help me clean it up. She hasn't done any pees today or yesterday in the potty, but it could be because she's been sick.

Noel worked on putting a satellite up on our roof and I was on the phone with him telling him the signal strength. The whole time, McKenna had her head on my tummy trying to 'hear' the baby, and she'd blow on my tummy and kiss it. It was really cute. Right now, Noel's discovered he's locked into the wrong satellite, so out he goes again with me back on the phone, I suppose. That's it for now, folks!

Happy Birthday honey! Okay, it was yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post. We hit McDonalds for lunch, then Lowes to spend some gift card money and then went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse for dinner. McKenna got to dress up in her prettiest dress, which she loved, but she didn't do too well at dinner. She was pretty grouchy although she didn't have a fever or anything. We picked up a german chocolate cake at Wal-Mart and went home and feasted! Overall, I pretty nice day.

So I'm feeling a little better today, mainly just a hang-on cough. McKenna woke up with a 101.3 fever that I knocked back with some tylenol and she seems to be doing fine otherwise. She's taking an extra-long nap today that is probably well deserved! It rained a little while ago and now the sun is out. Guess I should think about dinner. Probably spaghetti. It's cheap and easy... maybe I'll get up the energy to make some bread to go with it. I've been looking at all of the beautiful shell-dwelling species of fish that I want to get as soon as I'm able to get my 75 gallon up and going. Probably not for another couple to 3 years, though. Having a newborn will make it a little tough to keep up with the cleaning routines! Here's a pic of the two different species I'm trying to decide between:

http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_Lamprologus_stapper

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1753si.php

I'll need to work on saving shells for them... escargot and whale eye shells tend to be preferred, with an opening between 1 to 2 inches. They have some really neat behavior. Will bury themselves in the sand and will kick sand out of the way of a shell so that they can get it to turn. They'll even bury the shells until just a tiny opening is left for the babies.
Right now though, I'll just have to concentrate on my 10 gallon. See if I can't keep any plants alive! That's it for now. Snack time!

I'm feeling a little better today, but McKenna has a low-grade fever that we took care of with some tylenol. She's still her perky self, so hopefully it'll pass her by relatively quickly. She's having some chocolate milk before a little quiet time. Had a good conversation with my dad just now. We chatted for about 1/2 hour while McKenna played a lovely song on the piano! Nothing much else going on. I think I've got enough energy to make a pizza, so around 4pm I'll get the dough started. We've eaten out a bit too much while I've been sick!

I was hoping to dye easter eggs with McKenna today since we didn't get around to it on Sunday, but I'm still sick. Managed to get through the day alright with McKenna and this evening I have a low-grade fever. Feels like whatever I have has decided to take up residence in my lungs, so maybe this won't be a 48 hour thing. Of course, I've been feeling really crappy since Friday so who knows? Noel cooked dinner though, which was a huge help! I was thinking that I haven't had the flu in a long time and last time I had it, which was 4 or 5 years ago, it started out like a cold. So I'm crossing my fingers that that isn't where this is leading.

McKenna was very good for me today. Earlier today when I was feeling better, we took a short walk. Didn't manage to get around the whole block because it started sprinking so we turned back. McKenna checked out the worms and slugs that were coming up onto the sidewalks. She thought they were pretty neat.

Kiddo #2 was kicking up a storm all day today, so he/she wasn't feeling affected by my health, that seems pretty sure! Other than that, nothing to report!

Happy Easter Everyone! Unfortunately for me, not so great but McKenna had a visit from the Easter bunny and loved her basket. I wanted to get her to an easter egg hunt, but it probably won't happen. Noel's not interested really in taking her to one, and I'm not feeling up to it, so I suppose we'll do something next year. She's back into her basket now, after eating her healthy snack of banana, grapes and cheese stick. Sure brings back memories of chocolate ice skates and telephones and tons of other weird things. Tomorrow when I'm feeling better (hopefully) I'll dye some easter eggs with her.

Well, still sick here. Had a massive headache last night and Noel gave me a scalp massage which really helped. It's gone this morning, but the sore throat, runny nose and cough aren't going anywhere. I woke up at 5:30am this morning because it sounded like there was someone with a buzzsaw in our room. Turned out it was just Noel snoring and since I felt like crap and couldn't sleep anyway with my nose running I just got up. I taped a couple episodes of The Biggest Loser, which I was disappointed to find didn't record properly. I got the last half of the first episode and none of the second one. Freaking home theater system!

Anyway, I'm hoping to get a break today. Noel did a bunch of shopping yesterday and was out a lot so I had McKenna. Nothing got done around the house. My lovely clean kitchen fell completely apart and so I'm depressed. Yay! What a great post, huh?

Well yesterday there was no effort on McKennas part to pee in the potty. She woke up late and took her quiet time around 1:30pm, for which she got a pull-up. Didn't fall asleep until around 3pm and finally got her up and going around 5:30pm. When she got up it was loaded with poo AND pee, then she didn't pee again until her bedtime when she got another pull-up. I'm thinking yesterday she really didn't get enough fluids. She usually goes more often. I think I'll only give her pull-ups right before her bedtime when I've gotten her into her pj's. That way I'm not breaking up her day with pull-ups and confusing her. Ugh... I've got to get some routine settled or she's just going to be more confused. She really likes her potty power dvd though... watched it back to back yesterday morning!

In other news (thank God, right!?) I'm sick with some sort of throat thing. Yesterday it was mainly a dry hot throat but today it's a lot worse and I'm feeling pretty worn out and breakfast isn't even over! McKenna seems to be fine, but hopefully if she gets sick she'll wait until I'm better. Of course, I've got milk to deliver next Thursday so hopefully there will be NO sickness by then!

Anyway, that's really it for now.

My husband deserves vindication as last night when we went to bed he offered me a back massage. I must say it put him back into my good graces although he never knew he was out of them! LOL He's a good doobie - putting up with my moods lately must be tough, but he's always been pretty thick skinned.

In other news, there have been no accidents so far today! I borrowed a CD from my friend Patty called Potty Power and while it's cloyingly sweet and cute and just barely tolerable to an adult palate, McKenna loves it and has watched it 3 times today. It's a half-hour long. She did a pee after her quiet time today so we did the song and dance and went downstairs for the sticker. She was very proud. Now if she keeps it up, we'll start discussing all of the toilet paper I'm finding in the bowl after she goes! Nothing else major to report. I scored some newspaper for my garden project from my neighbors Ron and Shirley across the street so McKenna had a trip out and about before it started raining. We also hit the library to get and return some books. They are having the story time right now so we'll probably go next week.

That's it for now!

Okay, pity party time! My lower back is killing me and it feels just like the Sacro-Iliac joint dysfunction that I had with McKenna, only it's starting earlier this time. I've dropped a broad hint and a direct request today to my husband for a back rub and have gotten no response. I'm not going to nag him about it, so I don't think I'll ask again if I don't get any offers of a massage. I brought down my exercise ball that I purchased when I went through my physical therapy for this last time and am doing the exercises I remember. At least we have a new pump in our bed and I'm not having to pump it up 3 times a night.

In other news, after McKenna's two accidents today, one of which was on the couch I got the bright idea to have her help me decorate her potty with stars and moons. She thought that was pretty neat and while I was cutting some more in the kitchen to put on, she went pee on her own on the potty. Thank God! I just hope she keeps it up! I also made another potty chart with new stickers for her.

It's mostly been a rough day with McKennas one bright spot.

Well, McKenna is backsliding during the day for number 1 and I think it's because we're doing the no pull-ups at night (there have been accidents the last 3 nights) and also gently pushing for number 2's in the bathroom during the day. I think it's too much for her and since night-time wetting really isn't a potty training issue, I'm going to postpone that. She is co-operating with number 2's during the day and by that I mean she gets a pull-up after lunch and will go to the bathroom if she has to go number 2. She'll stand by the sink to do it. I could go back to giving her a pull-up at naptime but then I'm not up there to supervise when she goes and to make sure she's standing in the bathroom when she does it. SO, by eliminating the nighttime training, hopefully we can focus just on the number 2's during the day and she'll stop having accidents during the day. And her accidents aren't all the time, it's mostly the first pee of the day and an afternoon pee. She still will sit on the potty at other times and go. When she does have an accident I do make her take off her pants and take them to the washing machine and have her help clean up the mess. We call it an accident and don't give it anymore attention (except for the cleaning up!)

Anyway, it's frustrating but I know I need to chill and talk with Noel because he's talking about 'shouldn't she be doing this already?' Sounds like Joe when Christi was going through her potty training issues. *Sigh* Ah well... that's the latest.

We just got back from Eagle with 4 70lb bales of wet straw... it'll work well on my garden for a mulch. We got that for free since it was wet otherwise they would have been 2.50 a piece. Then we headed for south Nampa and picked up about 2 yards worth of wood chips. The guy there also had some barn litter from his neighbors horse, which is mostly small chips, straw, urine and a few poos combined. There was a huge pile of the stuff anyway that would work out as a compost. He charged us $10 bucks for the wood chips, which filled up our utility trailer (and was worth paying since he had a top-loader (not sure if that's what it's called) that he used to dig into the pile and dump it into our trailer. No manual labor. Noel especially liked that! lol If we come back for barn litter later, he'll charge the same thing. There is a place in Eagle that has horse manure for free and they will help you load it, but it may be a shoveling operation. But that's okay, when we go for manure, we'll want manure and not the litter... the litter would be for a later mulch, maybe in the fall or something. The manure we'll want to till into the ground, then put down newspaper to discourage weeds and then the straw as a mulch. I'm hoping for great vegetables this season!

While we were getting wood chips McKenna and I petted a nearby horse that the guy called his 'lawnmower' Original, right? LOL She didn't seem very impressed, but he was a friendly straw colored guy. At the place with the straw bales they had cows and chickens and she seemed more interested in the cows.

Anyway, time to start planning dinner, I guess. We've worked up an appetite. Spaghetti for dinner. Yum!

McKenna is back in underwear at night and the last two nights have been pee-free. She's very proud of herself! And we're proud of her too! To ease the constipation issue, I'm giving her a pull-up before quiet time. When I see that she's going I make her go stand in the bathroom while she does it. Yesterday she took herself to the bathroom and stood near the sink and today she just went in there while I was typing this. The next step will be getting her to sit on the potty (with pull-up still on) and go that way. Hopefully, the end result will be that I can simply remove the pull-up before she sits on the potty and there we go! It sounds easy... but we'll see how it goes.

I've been trying to get back into flylady. If I can do it, I'll have a routine to follow and get used to before the baby is born. Lately, my house just seems like a disaster area and when I was doing flylady it looked great. And it really wasn't that much work, either! So wish me luck. I'm catching up on laundry today so I can get back to one load a day. I've shined my sink and cleaned my kitchen so that I can KEEP it that way. I'm having McKenna pick up her toys if they're laying around more than half an hour without her playing with them. Stuff like that.

I'm thinking about setting up my 30 gallon tank and getting rid of my 10 gallon, which is on my kitchen counter. I've been trying to grow aquatic plants and so far I have cabomba, java moss, anubias and bacopa. The cabomba is the only one not looking well. I picked up a couple of liquid fertilizers for the water column, so I'm hoping that's having an effect. I would love a nice low-tech planted tank with some rummynose tetras. I love those guys! But my water here is 8.2 and pretty hard. Cichlids are more up my alley, so once my kids are past the toddler age, I may break out the 50 and 55 gallon and set those up with some Tanganyikan shell dwellers. I like Stappersi and Ocellatus Gold... my favorites so far, but I'm doing more research. Both of those species are aggressive, and mulifasciatus are less so, but I'm not as impressed with their coloring. I may do Julidochromis marlieri as they bred very well for me, although they had to have a tank to themselves. They are also Tanganyikan. Whatever I do, I'll have to save up some money for it. Many of those fish aren't exactly cheap, but they are prolific breeders and a couple local fish stores around here take trades or give credit for fish, so at least I can supplement my hobby somewhat. For the time being, I'm just playing with keeping my plants alive in my ten gallon and watching my guppies. And enjoying my one tank and McKenna's interest in it. I let her feed the guppies and she always wants to hold my malaysian trumpet snails, which bury themselves in the substrate during the day. Fish tanks will be a good learning experience for her - chemistry, life and death, etc...

That's it for now!

More later!

So, we got the results of the afp (Alpha fet0-protein) test back and my chances of having a baby with spina bifida were 1 in 4 according to the screening. So we went in for an ultrasound of course dreading it, but nothing major was found. The doc (different one from my normal OB) thought there might be a vertebra with a slightly bigger opening than the others, but skin was covering the spine there, so if there is something it's very minor. He even said as much since he had to look so hard to find anything. His exact words later were "I'm not actually sure I even see anything" But he wants us to come back every month so he can watch that spot.

Personally, I'm just happy he didn't find a major loss of backbone with spinal cord protruding from the area. He wanted us to do an amnio but we declined after speaking with a genetic counselor. I have what he calls 'lakes' in my placenta, which are these dark spots on the ultrasound. They might be blood-filled or not, and it's probably left over from the tearing of the placenta I had early on when I had a moderate flow of blood at 5 weeks. The dark spots could just be whats left and are healing up. The blood flow is good from me to the baby through the placenta though, so the lakes don't appear to be anything to worry about. The doc says they are very rare, and I think it's his curiosity that prompted the amnio request.

There's a 1 in 500 chance of miscarriage with amniocentesis, so if we have it done it will be very late in my pregnancy where the chances of a live birth are greater is anything goes wrong. The genetic counselor even said that amnios are more often for the practitioners benefit than the patients, since they pinpoint what exactly is going on inside, if anything, and can help them plan what type of delivery might be best. Anyway, it was a load off to know that there was nothing major, and most likely nothing wrong at all! I do resent having to see another doctor throughout my pregnancy, even though it's probably for the best. It's a lot more driving (to Boise, not Nampa) and later in my pregnancy both docs will want to see me more frequently which means I'll probably be seeing both docs every two weeks. A pain in the butt, and I hope this doesn't lessen the likelihood of having a natural birth. Oh well, that's the update on the saga. I wasn't planning to tell everyone about it, since I was hoping it would be a false positive and a 'oh, you're fine go on home', but since I have to have follow-up care and there's a suggestion that there could be something very minor, I figured I'd document it in my blog. Can't have kiddo number two thinking I don't want to write about him/her as much as the first one!

Well, this Wednesday the 5th we will find out the sex of the baby. They are also checking for other things, which is why it's earlier than normal... but we're excited and will let you all know on Wednesday what we're having!

I put McKenna in a pull-up and she did a #2, and unfortunately she was constipated. She just wanted me to leave her alone while she did it. I'll continue with her pull-ups at quiet time and bedtime and call her doc after Wednesday. Gave her some mineral oil and prunes today to keep things easy on her.

After doing more research, I've decided that tomorrow I will give McKenna a pull-up for quiet time since that's when she does her #2's, and will call her pediatrician to see what he thinks. If she's holding back, then she's not ready to use the potty. I'll keep you updated!

Last night was night #2 of an experiment with McKenna and potty training. She does #1 just fine with only an occasional accident, but has only done #2's a few times, both of which occurred right before we left on vacations last year. She hasn't done anything since and I'm hoping to get her jump started by putting her in big girl undies 24 hours a day. I was noticing that she only did her #2's in her pull-ups..... SO,

Night #1 consisted of limiting liquids after 5:30pm, a bedtime pee, and then another pee before Noel and I went to bed. She also woke me up around 2:30am to blow her nose. I sat her on the potty to do so, and she peed! It worked well. She was dry throughout the night and a big celebration ensued!!

Night #2 consisted of the same thing with liquids, a bedtime pee, an 11:30pm pee, which she was still awake for and she slept through the night, coming into our room (dry) to get into our bed with us this morning. I had her pee before doing so, which she did and more celebration and lots of snuggling with mommy and daddy. So far so good... I'm feeling good about this part, since she had been waking up dry in the mornings anyway at times. Limiting liquids really seems to work.

Now, we just have to see about her doing #2's. I'm hoping that by her having underwear on, she won't want to poop in them and will use the potty. We'll see. Her last poo was Friday, so I know she's holding it. I'll let her go another day or two maybe, then see what the doc has to say. I don't want her to get constipated on top of everything else. That would just make sitting on the potty painful as well and scary and new. Ergh, anyway wish us luck with the potty saga!