Don't be scammed

I have said before that I am a big Obama fan.  Having said that, I feel the need to prevent good women from falling victim to the ploy that John McCain has set out for you.  A lot of young women voters would love to see a women in the White House.   I too, think that would be great.  If the woman were the BEST choice for our country!  Ladies, we are smarter than this.  Just because we see a woman on the ticket doesn't mean she is ready to lead.  Our responsibility as citizens is to do our best to pick the person who best represents our country to be the leader of the free world.  I know that we will see a woman in that position someday, and I know it will be because she is a kick ass woman who can hold her own with the super powers of the WORLD, and run our county like it should be.  This woman will have had to be tested over a period of time in order to prove herself as worthy, and ready to lead.  The last thing our county needs is to have an unprepared woman find herself in a position of National or International tragedy/turmoil and breakdown and cry because she is over stressed.  Yes, I said it, I am a woman, so I know that it happens.  It is in our DNA, we have to learn to control it.  It takes time and small challenges to overcome these female downfalls.  Sarah Palin has been prematurely placed in a position of power.  If the Republicans achieve victory, she willLITERALLY be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.  Her background isn't impressive enough to give me confidence in her.  I think she has done great things, and am proud of her becoming Governor of Alaska.  It takes more than being Mayor of a town of 6,000 and a less than 2 year Governor of the 47th populated State in the Union to be ready to lead our Nation.  Let's face it Ladies John McCain played on our hopes.  Instead of picking a tried and true running mate that has shown abilities to lead, he picked the former Beauty Queen, who has a compelling story to try to trick us.  We are smarter than that.  Lets show him that it takes more than female anatomy to win our votes, we want brains and proven action.

Daddy Duty

Well, I guess that heightened sense of hearing that I have always had for my children goes away when I am this pregnant.  I have always been able to hear the littlest sound Jake makes at night, but Colby usually doesn't wake up until I am already out of bed.  These last few weeks (and few weeks ahead) Colby has been having to sleep in the guest bedroom, across from Jake's room.  Not because I kicked him out, but because I snore like a man at the end of my pregnancies.  The last week Colby has been telling me that he is up a time or two with Jake at night.  What?  I don't hear a darn thing.  Last night was the funniest.  Colby asked me if I heard Jake up.  No, I didn't, not AT ALL!!  Well, I guess Colby woke to hear Jake up in his rocker, just rocking away.  He asked Jake from across the hall if he was rocking in his rocker.  "yeah" Jake replied.  Colby asked him why and he said "because".  Then, he also started turning his light off and on until Colby had to get up and tell him to get back into bed and go to sleep.  Now, Jake is either a night owl, had something on his mind, or is a sleepwalker like his mom (I have been known to make pudding, and even made my sorority sisters get out of the house because I told them it was full of smoke).  Either way, I am glad that I am not the one who had to deal with these shenanigans :)  Thank goodness for pregnant snoring. 

Naked Pride

I just love being at home with Jake!  I know I have said that before, but it is so true.  We have a neighborhood pool that we go to very often.  This is the last week that it will be open and Jake and I are trying to get in as many swims as possible. Last year Jake asked to swim EVERY time we went by the pool after it closed, even during snowstorms.  He loves the water, he is my little Michael Phelps : )  In fact most days (like today) I have to call daddy and promise that we will come back when he gets home from work in order to prevent a melt down when it is time to come home for lunch.  Today when we arrived home, he stripped down and we put his swim trunks on the back porch to dry before we went again to the pool.  As I was finishing hanging his towel, I looked to my left to see a naked Jake standing in the SuperMan position (feet apart, hands on hips) and telling the dog Bo in a very Tarzan voice "I am Naked Bo".  I couldn't help but laugh, I wished I had the camera at that point.  I am so glad that I don't have to miss moments like those!

So excited

Can I just say how excited I am to have my new baby!  This week, Colby, Jake and I painted Devon's room.  Colby put up his crib last night, and we went through Jake's old baby clothes. Today I am washing them and putting them in the dresser for Devon. OMG (sorry, it just felt right) I forgot how little they are.  It seems with every outfit or onesie I found, there was a memory attached to it.  I love Jake at 3,  but I miss him as an infant.  I guess I just can't wait to do it all again!  Only 9 weeks left to go!  I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait!  (ok, I can wait long enough to have a term baby though) : )

Gymnastics

Well, most of you know that I was an aspiring Olympic Gymnast when I was younger.  Mary Lou and Nadia were my idols!  No, I didn't have the talent or the perseverance to actually make it very far, but I had fun and learned a lot along the way.  For several years, I spent about 4-5 nights at the gym and during meet season was on the road every weekend.  I love gymnastics, and watch it when I can. It is for this reason that I have good reason to gripe about the judging and results of the Olympics this year.  1st...those Chinese girls are pre-pubescent...they need to wait their turn to go for the gold.  Let the honest girls who put in more hours at the gym, and incurred more injury and/or risk of injury take their turn for glory.  Stupid cheating Chinese...and the IOC doesn't think that Communist China would fake passports to win? Well, I hope that sorts itself out after the games.  2nd  I do like Nastia Liukin, but I think that because we got an American All Around Champion, we overlooked the injustice of poor judging given to Shawn Johnson.  Shawn lost Gold to Nastia by .600 of a point.  Not much folks.  If we look at the events of those nights, Shawn got a less than deserved score on Vault, Bars, and Beam.  Lets say for argument sake that Beam was our only point of contingency.  Shawn has a higher start value for her Beam (the highest in competition) a 7.0 compared to Nastia's 6.6.  Shawn had an awesome event, she really only had a small wobble and took a small step on dismount.  Nostia had several small wobbles and also took a step on dismount.  So how did Shawn get a lower score than Nostia?  Nastia's start value is .400 less than Shawn and she had more mistakes, at least .200 worth if not more.    All this on only 1 event.  If you add up the the missed deductions from the other 2 events, Shawn gets the Gold.  I think that Shawn was targeted because of her Pre-Olympic fame.  I will say that she is a very gracious loser (if you can call Silver losing) she had nothing but a big smile and hug for Nastia, anyone notice Nastia's face when she didn't win the Gold on Beam.

Talent in my family

I am so lucky that my kids have a dad with some artistic talent!  If you didn't already know, Colby is a Graphic Design Artist, and even though he doesn't draw per say at work, he is capable of doing it.  Jake loves playing with sidewalk chalk (as do most kids) and he has been spoiled by daddy's drawings.  He now loves to see what we can draw.  I came home from a quick Price Chopper run last night to find that Colby had drawn a complete Solar System...compleate with Haley's comet (see below).  

Now, even though I love seeing Jake so exctied to have such artwork on our driveway, I feel very sorry for him.  You see my art skills are very poor.  I am lucky to draw a straight line.  Yes, I took an art class in High School, but only because it was the last semester of my Senior year, first hour, the teacher never knew I was always late, and I got to gossip with Cori all hour.  I didn't learn a darn thing.  So as you can see below,  when I draw a basketball, or even a football, my son will tell me "no, thats not it"...even he knows (at 3 years old) that his mom is a sucky artist.  He will tell me "when daddy get's home, he play with chalk with me"  : )  Gotta love their honesty!

Devon's 3D

I know that some of you think that 3D ultrasounds are kind of creepy.  The fact is you can see your baby while they are inside of you!!! That is the coolest!!  Yesterday we went for our 3D for Devon.  I was very surprised and upset to learn that he is breach...yikes any suggestions to get him to move are appreciated!  I think he may have moved last week when I had my glucose tolerance test, if you recall I thought a cartoon cat and dog fight was going on inside of me.   I am only 29 weeks, so I know he has time to move on his own.  I am honestly not concerned about having to have the C-section itself if he doesn't, but how much more out of pocket we will have to pay if he doesn't move.  This may sound trivial to some...but when you have crappy insurance like I do then yes you tend to worry how many thousands the hospital/doctor will want to take away from you. (Remember we are trying to get out of debt too).  This is my third child, and I would like to just go in and do my thing like always.  Bottom line...stories of babies moving on their own are the only ones allowed to be told to me.

Anyway, I was very excited to see how much alike my boys look...at least in utero.  Because Devon was breach he usually had a foot or a hand in front of his face, so we didn't get the best pictures of him.  What we did see, was very cute (I think) and has me very excited to meet him in person.

While we were at the facility having the Ultrasound, Jake lost his favorite Lightening McQueen car...bad news for all.  After several minutes of searching by Nanny and Mr. Grandpa it was determined that it wasn't in the waiting room, but we had to wait an extra hour to search the US room as a new family was in there.  While we waited, we reviewed pictures of Devon, Jake looked  at them and said in a very serious way "Devon took him" and pointed to the picture.  I told Colby that may not be the last we ever hear that.  After exhausting our search, it was determined that a little boy who was leaving as we were going in may have swiped it (he was seen leaving with a 'Cars' backpack).  A tough lesson to learn at such a young age...except he has 2 other McQueen's at home so one of them will regain the favorite position.

It's HOT!!!

Ok, I would like to know how our grandmothers ever made it to term with their pregnancies?  Seriously, I would have NEVER had kids if I lived in a time with no  AC.  If I am at the pool I can tolerate the heat, but since Jake is banned from the pool until his hand is healed, no pool for me.  Monday night Colby and I went to the Royals game with my friend Ashley and her husband Brian.  Yes, the hottest day of the year, I sweltered in the heat.  I thought at the time I was doing ok, just sweating like a faucet.  Yesterday I woke up and felt like I had a hangover.  I managed to get my errands done, and when Jake took a nap, so did I... for 3 hours.  I woke up and didn't even know who I was...one of those kinds of naps.  Today it is supposed to be "cooler"  Ok, cooler maybe but when the humidity is 99.9% it still feels like I live inside a volcano.  Don't get me wrong, I would rather be outside in the heat, than cooped up inside while it is 12 below outside, I guess I should stop complaining, and learn from those big fat hogs...and go find a cool mud puddle to slide my big ole' pregnant self into.

Jake's 1st trip to the Urgent Care for Stitches

Friday was supposed to be a fun afternoon with friends at the pool.  However, after only 30 min of playing at the Gardner pool, Jake's fun was cut short.  He was swimming to the base of the playground in the zero entry pool, and when he pulled himself up he started crying.  Like a good mom, I told him "oh your ok, let me see".  Much to my surprise he had blood pouring from his palm.  I held pressure on it and went to the first aid station.  The life guards there wanted to put on a band-aid.  I knew though that since the blood hadn't stopped with the pressure I was putting on it that a band-aid wouldn't cut it.  I told them to let me see what they had and I would just wrap it myself.  I put a very nice pressure dressing on it and wrapped it with Coban (the stuff that looks like ace, but sticks to itself).  We then proceeded to get our stuff together, thanks a ton to Sara and Ali for helping me so we could leave the pool.  Jake was so pissed off that he had to stop playing/swimming. He didn't understand that he couldn't just shake this one off.  After Colby met us at home we headed up to CMH South.  By now Jake is fine, playing in the room, being excited to have a "watch" on his arm (name band), even telling the nurses that he wanted to go back to his "party, with his friends".  It wasn't until they came in to sew up his hand that things changed.  Jake had to be papoosed (placed on a board to keep him from moving, he looked like a mummy) and that was the end of the fun.  He cried for daddy to "help me get out of here" and bucked like a bull the whole time.  It took 2 nurses and me to hold down that one arm/hand/shoulder.  I felt so bad because they to give him shots of lidocaine in the cut because the topical didn't work for him.  Even still there were some areas that you could tell were still not numb when they were putting in the sutures.  Poor guy, he was so upset.  All he wanted was for daddy to hold him (I think he was mad at me for holding down his shoulder) and to go get "doll Woody".  Colby was already going to get him a new "Woody doll" for doing good at pooping in the potty this week, so we used this as an incentive to make it through the sutures (we also took him for ice cream).  So after 3 hours in the Urgent Care, we left with 4 stitches and a very tired little boy.  I have gone through this with Victoria before too, but it always hurts me when they have to go through this, I would take all the pain for them if I could.  Well, like Ali pointed out...Jake is following in daddy "Crash"'s footsteps.  Lets hope he finds another path.