I'm feeling the effects of late pregnancy. The drain of my energy, and the soreness of my hips... I really could live without it, but it's all for this child that I'm carrying.

Anyway, I've been busy this week sleeping, and cleaning, and sleeping, and doing some school work, and sleeping, and crocheting. I'm trying something new with crochet that I have never done before, and that is changing colors. I'm crazy though.. I couldn't take it easy and just crochet a blanket that had different striped colors.. I had to do a pattern. I found the perfect pattern to make Aaron a blanket for his birthday. I hope I get it done in time! Here is what I have so far:




It's white, which scares me, but the pattern part of it is black, and it's important that it's that way, because it will say Elvis and have an outline of his face... hopefully... by the time I'm done.

AJ and I have also been working on our second week of homeschool. He's learning about the Jungle, the letter B, and he will learn about the number two tomorrow. We did fall a little behind this week because of my energy problem. Not too far behind that we couldn't catch up during the weekend. Here is our learning poster from last weekend, and you can find the curriculum for that here: Week 1.

My Son

My son is amazing. I don't take enough time out to think about how truly amazing his two year old self is.

He's extremely smart, and very very sweet.

We went to gymnastics tonight. AJ was the only one there, which was actually kind of nice because the teacher was able to spend all her time with both us making sure that I was helping him correctly. She had nothing but compliments for how fast he is progressing. He can crawl across the foam pit by himself, he can climb ladders by himself, he can almost do a forward roll without any help, and he really tries to do the monkey bars by himself, but he's not really big enough to do it without help. He did wonderful being the only student as well... he barely got sidetracked with the big girls running and flipping all over the place. His class is about 45 minutes long and he lasted about 30 minutes before he tried to escape to see the big girls.

We also started Week 1 with our homeschool preschool. This week's theme is cows. He'll also learn about squares, the letter A, and the number 1 this week. Today though, we worked on coloring a cow, saying the word cow, and saying the sound a cow makes. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him to say the words and the sounds... but I have found out that he can say them almost perfectly, he prefers not too. We read the book Cow by Malachy Doyle, and by the middle of the book he was pointing out the cow, and either saying "There it is!" or "Cow, MOO". Although his cow sounds like his word for car which sort of sounds like "Caw". My expectation was that by Friday he would be saying Cow and Moo... not that he would be saying it the first day. Something else that I was surprised by was that when we started to read the book, AJ stood up and started pointing at the picture of the cow that he colored. Like I said, he amazes me.

I am so lucky to have a little boy who loves to give kisses and blow kisses and give hugs. I am so lucky to have a little boy who is so smart and beautiful, and completely mine. I couldn't have asked for more!

I can sum up my month of March so far in one word.... YUCK!

Last week was spring break for me, and I had envisioned going places and doing things with AJ while working my fanny off for some extra spending money since I would be free the whole week to work. Nope... didn't happen. I've been sick sick sick. Practically on my death bed! Ok, maybe not THAT bad, but it really hasn't been fun. And, I'm still sick. We're coming up on two weeks of being sick if I don't miraculously recover in the next two days. Since I'm pregnant there isn't much medicine to take to help me, and the medicine that is available hasn't really done much. I've had some good days where I feel much better, but then the next day I'm drained and feel even worse. At least I have a doctor's appointment on Saturday, so if it is still here by then, I'll talk to the doc.

I also had put my mind into working on AJ and the potty. That plan did not pan out. I was not feeling up to that much cleaning! So, instead the last few nights I have been working on getting AJ to sleep in his own bed. So for the last three nights, I have put him in his bed, and put him back in his bed, and back in his bed again and again and again. And for the last three nights, he has fallen asleep in his own bed. Now, he hasn't exactly stayed there the whole night, but baby steps! My goal is a whole week, and then we'll celebrate. It has gone pretty smooth. There are no tears when we walk back into the bedroom. Last night he was the most challenging because he'd run out and then run back to bed, giggling as if it were a game. It has really helped that there haven't been any tears because I'm dealing with a bit of guilt. While I do enjoy having my husband sleep in the bed, I kind of miss sleeping with my two year old bed hog. It's really amazing how such a little guy can take up so much of a queen size bed! Anyway, I have become accustomed to waking up several times in the night to make sure that his roley poley butt is covered with a blanket. Now, I'm waking up several times a night to tell husband to stop snoring. Oh well, in just a few short months I'll have a tiny little baby who will probably end up sharing my bed, and there really isn't room to have AJ sleeping in the bed as well.

Which is a whole new issue that I've started to deal with. I'm going to have a new baby, and I feel guilty because AJ won't have Mommy to himself anymore. I remember singing and talking to my belly all the time when I was pregnant with AJ. I think that I really bonded with the idea of AJ while I was pregnant, and that made it easier to bond after he was born and I wasn't so sick anymore. This time... I don't feel pregnant very often, and I don't talk or sing to my belly. I want this baby, but I don't know if I have bonded to the idea of this baby like I did with AJ. I'm sure that bonding after the baby is born will be just fine, maybe my issue is because I don't know very much about this baby. I don't know whether it is going to be a boy or girl, and I don't know if my due date is very accurate so I don't really even know when it will be here. I hope AJ bonds well with the baby too because he really doesn't have a clue that it's coming....

Relationship Advice

The title of my post makes me laugh, lol. I am in no way an expert on relationships, and I don't have the perfect relationship... but honestly, if you think you have a perfect relationship yourself, I say look harder, no relationship is perfect.

Actually, I just wanted to post about my husband and how sometimes he surprises me. Those surprise can be so heartwarming for me, and I don't think he realizes it or than any other guy could do something so simple and please their woman just as much as surprising them with flowers or something else like that.

There definitely is a huge stress put on the men to make a relationship romantic and smooshy for their women. AND, when going into a relationship where it is easy to be romanced and loved on... it can be quite disappointing when further down the line the romance doesn't last at the level it was at previously.

Honestly though, showing a woman that you love them doesn't have to be expensive and take a lot of time to plan. I was visiting my husband at work, and we were joking around. My husband's last comment pushed me to tell him that I didn't like him anymore. He responded by saying, "Well, I don't love you any less." First, for less than half a second, my mind registered the complete opposite of what he said and I was going to be angry with him, but when it actually sunk it what he really had said, I left smiling and giggling. His comment has left me feeling loved and happy all evening.

So, all I'm saying is something as simple as saying something surprising can be just as powerful as traditional ways of saying I love you.

I did it. I finally reminded myself to buy a new USB cord for my camera. So hopefully within the next week or two I'll be able to upload some pictures and actually start taking pictures again. I hate that my camera is full. One reason is that I started a new project and I'm super proud of it.

I had a small dilemma.. at least it was to me, it wouldn't have been for anyone else. Anyway, Aaron has a ton of old work shirts that have bleach stains and are faded or dingy looking. He only wears two or three of the better looking shirts to work and the rest just take up space in the closet. Thing is, he's constantly ruining shirts with bleach so our pile of useless workshirts grows rather quickly. We threw away all of his old work shirts over a year ago when he was let go. He's been back there almost a full year, and I swear there are at least 10 to 15 of those shirts taking up space. When he told me to throw them away, I just had this feeling like I couldn't. So, I looked up a way to recycle those shirts, and I came across rag rugs. So, I started to make one. I've already cut up one shirt and crocheted it into the start of my rug, and I super proud of it. Now, if only I could post a picture, lol. ;-)

Today was day 3 of 30 on my no eating out for breakfast or lunch quest. I'm not counting today as a failure although I won't be transfering the money into my savings account. I had an ultrasound today and my mom came with me. She asked me if I would take her out to lunch today, and how could I say no to that. I love going out to eat with my mom. We have our issues sometimes, but going out to eat is a special time, and I always enjoy it. Plus, my goal for the 30 days is to really stop eating out when I can take my lunch with me. The occasional lunch with a friend or family member shouldn't mean that I failed. I'll say that I just made up for it by not eating out for dinner. :-D So, yes day 3 of 30, and I've saved $12.

Science and Money

I had a lesson plan and presentation to do for class this week. My lesson had to teach that plants get energy from the sun, air, and water to make food for themselves. So, basically, photosynthesis. It was crazy writing this lesson plan. First, they aren't "real" lesson plans, meaning they aren't the kind that teachers will write when they are actually teaching. They go into so much more detail, and for a 30 to 45 minute science lesson, my lesson plan came out to be 7 pages with 5 more pages of attachments.
I tried really hard to make this lesson plan interactive and meaningful for my "3rd graders" (just my adult classmates). I introduced my lesson by discussing that we breathe oxygen to survive and plants provide that for us, then we did an experiment to show that plants give off oxygen, and then I had made a felt story board with felt pieces to put together a basic diagram of photosynthesis. I was so nervous about my presentation, but I received great compliments and comments, and everyone loves every part of the presentation. Although, I know that I could have presented 1000x's better if it were actually a group of third graders, but it's alright.

A note on that experiment... I had to change it last minute because my previous experiment didn't work. My new experiment required test tubes and I didn't have any and couldn't find any last minute... BUT.. the liquor sells shots in test tube like things and I ended up buying a couple of those and used an SOS pad to get the writing off. I of course didn't drink the shots because, you know, the whole pregnancy thing, lol.

So, I put a lot of myself into that lesson plan and I'm proud to say that I received a 92% on the presentation. I'll know on Tuesday how I did on the actual lesson plan. The lesson plan grade could be different because of all the detailed sections that can be confused and screwed up, and if I didn't get my accomodations correct then I'll take a huge hit on my grade. So, that's my news on school.

In other news, I've decided that while my family is doing well with a small cushion of savings in our savings account, I'm going to alter my life style a little bit. I found that when we have extra money, I decided that it is ok to go out and buy myself lunch, or breakfast if I'm not running late in the morning. For the next 30 days, I'm not going to eat out for breakfast or lunch. I'm making an exception for drinks and coffee because drink so much through out the day so I stay hydrated (preterm labor from dehydration was a reality for me last pregnancy) it would be crazy to carry around that much. I am going to limit my coffee buying though. So, everyday for the next 30 days, if I don't eat out I'm going to transfer 6 dollars into my savings account. I know that doesn't sound like a lot everyday, but if you do the math.... that's $180 on just lunch that just I would be eating!

One of my other reasons for doing that is because I've finally hit my prepregnancy weight and now I've surpassed it by 4 pounds. Now that I'm gaining, I want to make sure that I'm not just eating junk all the time, which is what was happening.

Today was day 1 of 30 and I have saved a total of $6 bucks!

AJ had his two years doctor's appointment today. He weighs 24 pounds 1 ounce, he's 33.5 inches tall, his head is 19 inches around, and his iron is back at a healthy 11.5! Here he is freaking out over the bandaid that they put on his finger after the finger prick.



I also finished a project last night. Yay! Finally I can cross one off my list :-) I did sacrifice my school work to do it, but it was worth it because I didn't want to work on my school work anyway lol. So here is the finished result of my valentine's day wreath!



Remember, I found the tutorial at Domestifluff.