Maternity photos

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Naive, strict, old-fashioned, out of touch - what am I?

I liked how I was raised. I think my parents did a great job and I turned out pretty well. My parents weren't perfect & made plenty of mistakes, but they let me explore my surroundings & gave me a stable foundation in which to build my life. So, I learned from their mistakes, but I try to raise Trinity with the same values I was raised.

However, DH & I seem to be the only ones who subscribe to our parenting style. Not that this bothers me, but I'm wondering if I'm out of touch with how children are raised today. For example, we expect Trinity to have table manners, well actually, manners in general. We follow through with what we say, so if she is misbehaving and we tell her 'x' will happen if she doesn't stop, then 'x' happens. Not sometimes, but every time. We expect her to be quiet during church and not run in stores. She has to hold our hand to cross the street & she only watches age appropriate TV & movies.

It is the TV & movie rule that seems to be criticized the most. My SIL sees nothing wrong with letting her 3 1/2 year old watch Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. My good friend lets her 7 year old watch Star Wars, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc. I won't even allow Trinity to watch Hannah Montana, because I think high school issues are meant for an older demographic than an almost 5 year old. I don't think the humor in shows like "Back in the Barnyard" & SpongeBob are appropriate for her age either.

So, am I just old-fashioned, out of touch or too strict? I know that I am comfortable with my parenting style & I have no plans to change anything, but I am interested in knowing if I am the only parent who feels this way.

I survived Vegas, pretty much.

Vegas was a blast, for the most part. The flights were fine. I met some new cool people & I got about a months worth of walking in. I slept very little & it caught up with me Saturday night. The rest of the girls went out clubbing Saturday evening, but I went back to the condo after dinner, because I knew I had overextended myself on Friday. Well, after everyone left I got ready for bed, and after lying down I started violently vomiting. I think in the end I slept less than the girls, because I was so unbelievably ill. I managed to get through the flight home without being sick, and I even slept a little. Once I got home, it was another story. I am so grateful for the PICC line, because I think it is the only thing that saved me from a hospital stay. I slept from 3pm on Sunday until 7am Monday waking for an hour to attempt dinner (& promptly throw it back up). I feel much better today and ate an apple for breakfast & some lunch. I can tell I'm still dehydrated, so I may do three bags of fluid today to get myself totally back to normal.

When I'm feeling a bit more normal, I will post some Vegas pictures. We had so much fun!

I'm going to Vegas

I've had this trip planned for several months, but it has always seemed so far away and now I'm leaving in less than a week. How did that happen? Where did the time go?

DH's cousin is getting married, so I sort of put the idea in her head that she needed a Vegas bachelorette party. Okay, maybe I just needed to go to a Vegas bachelorette party, but that was before I got knocked up. Obviously my initial plan of partying like a single girl in Vegas isn't going to happen now & I'm okay with that, but I'm still looking forward to the trip. I adore DH's cousin & her sister (who is also coming). DH's sister lives in a suburb of Vegas, so I get to see my niece (& my SIL & BIL) which I am excited about. I don't know the other girls going, but I'm sure they are tons of fun. We plan on going to the 'Thunder from Down Under' show on Friday night and one of my favorite Italian restaurants on Saturday. I know I will have to pull out of a couple of the activities, but hopefully everyone understands.

Of course I've been in a panic for two days because my SIL is one of the most stylish people I know & so is DH's cousin. I have no clothes that fit or are appropriate for Vegas nightlife. I guess I will survive or I'll just go naked. That's okay in Vegas right?

I will post all about it after the trip as I'm trying to get by without dragging the laptop with me. I really want to travel as light as possible.

Our daughter's first solo adventure

Sunday started as any other Sunday - up early, breakfast, church, Home Depot, lunch, nap, etc. Little did we know that our evening was going to be far from routine. First, we discovered our upper cabinets had to come out in one piece, so we had to call in favors for people to rush over and help us remove them. We are trying to reuse our cabinets, so we wanted to take them out gently. Second, I developed a clot in my PICC catheter so I had to run to the emergency room to have it de-clotted. Right before I headed to the ER Trinity asked if she could play outside, but since I was leaving and DH was in the kitchen, I said 'no'. DH then yells from the kitchen that he let her do it on Saturday while I was at work. *sigh* Okay, I caved and said fine assuming DH & Trinity had worked out some kind of arrangement. I'm waiting in the ER, which is pretty busy, when DH comes rushing in, looks around and runs out again. Uh, what the hell, I am thinking. So I have a friend of mine who is keeping me company when it dawns on me that Trinity must be missing. I can think of no other reason for his behavior. She leaves to help him search and I'm stuck in the stupid waiting room of the ER unable to do anything.

Turns out in the end that Trinity had asked if she could push her baby in her stroller on the sidewalk. DH had said yes, assuming she meant the sidewalk in front of our house. However, she decided to take her baby for a walk on the sidewalk on the busy street at the end of our block. Then, she apparently decided it would be fun to visit the park. The park is about 1/2 a mile from our house and involves crossing one of the top 5 busiest streets in our town. DH found her and she spent the rest of the evening sitting in the recliner. She is also unable to play outside for a few days at all and after that she must be supervised. She also had her TV priviledges taken away for last night and today until bed.

I'd love to be able to say 'I told you so.', but DH was so freaked by the whole incident I just don't have the heart. The bigger problem I see is that while she understood she was in trouble, she doesn't actually seem to think she did anything wrong. I have to admit that this worries me. We have always told her she cannot cross the street without an adult and we still enforce holding our hands when crossing streets, driveways & parking lots. When asked about why she thought it was okay to cross the street, her response was "But I thought I was old enough to cross by myself."

Call me crazy, but I see lots of gray hair in my future.

I'm finally back

I have been feeling pretty miserable lately & typing does not help. I've had a PICC line for almost 2 weeks and it has helped. I am able to give myself IV treatments at home or at the studio. So it helps me stay hydrated and I still get to be productive - woohoo!

Trinity is back at Montessori and doing well. I have kept her teachers apprised of what is going on at home, so if she has any behavioral issues or anything at school, her teachers know what is going on. So far everything is good. She is such a trooper through all this chaos of me being sick. We heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time in the ER. Trinity was with & she thought it was pretty cool. We are letting her come to the 20 week ultrasound and she is excited for that.

Today is construction (destruction) day 1. We are gutting our kitchen. We've hated our kitchen since we moved into this house 8 years ago, but there have been so many other projects that needed to get done, so the kitchen got dropped to the bottom of the to do list. Well, now it has made its way to the top. On top of gutting the kitchen and completely changing the layout, we are replacing all the plumbing and moving the laundry room from the basement to the second floor where all the bedrooms are. We are also going to gut the upstairs bathroom, but that will be more of a winter/spring project. DH is doing most of the work himself. This is good and bad. He is very talented and able to do the work, however, he isn't always the most motivated. We have several projects in various stages of 'doneness' around the house. We've picked out the new flooring and paint. I have an idea of what I want for lighting, we are keeping our existing appliances, since they are only a couple years old. DH & I still have to agree on cabinet hardware, a faucet & sink. We have it narrowed down to either a concrete countertop or we found this awesome granite tile today that I want most desperately. DH is crunching numbers to see which is in our budget.

So, lots of stuff going on. I am starting to get more energy, so hopefully I will get caught up at the studio and be able to post more often. I feel like I've been neglecting all of my friends. I hope to be better. And hopefully next time I will have pictures of my torn up kitchen.

Exaggeration versus Lying

Trinity loves pretend play. She loves to dress up as a ballerina and dance around the house or put on a cowboy hat & boots and pretend she's in a rodeo. She pretends to be a singer, a basketball player, a volleyball player, a princess, the list is quite endless. While in the pretend mode, she will often say she is giving dance lessons or teaching someone what she is doing. She loves to put on concerts and parades. While I love seeing her be creative and using her imagination I've begun to worry lately. Sometimes her pretend play leaks into reality. We will be out at Home Depot or the grocery store & she will be dancing around and someone will ask her if she is in dance & she'll state emphatically "Oh yes, I love taking my dance lessons." Except she has never taken a dance lesson in her life. Or while she is watching Michael Phelps win multiple gold medals state "I am a better swimmer than he is. I could beat him." She has been taking swim lessons for a month & has yet to swim without their flotation devices. She also claims in public that she is a wonderful horse rider and she takes singing/guitar/piano lessons. She has ridden a horse once at a fair where it went in a circle & she has never taken a music lesson in her short life. I know that part of this is her age (she's 4 1/2), but at what point do I correct her and tell her that actually what she is doing is lying. I don't want to embarrass her in public, but I also don't want people getting the wrong information. How much of this is normal and how much should I be concerned about? I'd love to get opinions from all of you. Thanks.

Pop/Soda/Soft drinks/Carbonated beverages

I'm not sure what you call them in your area of the globe, but I'm talking about Coke, Pepsi & all the in between carbonated, sweetened and most of the time caffeinated beverages that most people consume. I dislike these drinks overall and generally consume them on rare occasions. People find this odd, because I also dislike water, but that is a post for another day. Why am I blogging about my dislike of soft drinks? Because for some reason it seems the only beverage that does not make me queasy right now. WTF??? I would think this would be bad enough, but no, it gets worse (at least in my mind). When I have a soft drink I tend to be a Pepsi or Pepsi product drinker or an A & W root beer fan (I make an exception for root beer floats - yum!). I don't think there is a nastier product on the market than Mountain Dew and Coke & any diet products come a very close second. Why am I telling you this, because for some reason my beverage of choice at the moment is Cherry Coke. I gravitate towards it at restaurants, when we do eat out these days I choose restaurants that I know serve Cherry Coke - basically, I am a Cherry Coke addict. I am hoping this phase does not last long, because I don't think I can handle the long term affects on my body. And, please no comments on how I shouldn't be drinking caffeine while pregnant, because I've gotten the okay from my doctor and right now we are just concerned about getting any fluids at all in me.

Guilt

I hate guilt. I think it is a wasted emotion for the most part. I really try to own my actions so I live a pretty guilt-free life. However, I am currently feeling some guilt. Because I have been feeling so crappy and when I'm not feeling crappy I am so freaking tired I've been *neglecting* the physical needs of my husband. He hasn't been pressuring me and he even tells me it is okay. But I'm not an idiot, I see he is having a difficult time. The problem is that with Trinity I'm pretty sure we only had sex once while we were pregnant and he went like 6 months without sex. I would prefer not to have a similar situation this time. This is why I hate guilt, you cannot win. ARGH!!!!

Rough week

I've been a little out of touch and I apologize for that. This week was a bit rough. I have been very nauseous lately, but keeping it under control with the Zofran and Zantac. However Wednesday I took the Zofran in the morning as usual and then promptly threw up. There was some blood in my vomit, but when I talked to the phone nurse she didn't seem concerned. It happened again on Thursday & the nurse didn't seem concerned again when I called. Friday I was unable to keep anything down, but since when I had called it hadn't been 24 hours they told me I was supposed to wait. Didn't keep anything down all day on Friday and all morning today. I didn't dare go for fluids this morning, because I had a wedding today and I couldn't risk being late. So, Mike shot my wedding today while I stood (sat) around looking pathetic. Immediately after finishing the wedding Mike dropped me at the ER & I got two bags of fluids & some IV Zofran. I had a great nurse & doctor & I was out in less than 2 hours. I'm trying to eat something now, then I'm going to bed.