Football Party

Its almost party time and I am exhausted but so excited about Harrison's party. We changed a few things around but are still going with the football theme. I knew that I wanted to do a dessert table as the main decoration in the room and I was able to sketch up what I had in mind. This actually made things so much easier as I was able to get a better idea of what I needed and how things would fit.

I decided to go with a football ice cream cake  and orange dreamsicle cupcakes since we were entertaining little guests and figured that would be easier to serve and quick for them to grab as they were playing. I also stayed with the orange,brown and white color scheme and it was so much easier to make decisions based on the coordinating colors. We put out all sorts of orange colored snacks and drinks and even had a popcorn machine. 

 I wanted to do a custom banner and cupcake toppers but did not want to have to purchase a template so I looked around and was able to find a few free ones.I am in love with all things TomKat but again, I was trying to keep costs down so I decided just to use some of her parties for inspiration.  I am in love with this crab shack ideaI 

I have my own cupcake towers and will use a trifle dish for a pedestal for the cake. I'm going to have bagged football cookies for favors and orange cake pops. I picked up a few different orange and brown candies to have on the table as well. I love how she coordinates all of the little labels and although I didn't do that this time, I'm going to try to get started a little bit sooner on the next party so I have time to complete everything.  I love this tablescape and think any child would flip to see a table of treats like this.

I mean are you kidding me!? so stinkin cute! This again was my inspiration and I strive to one day be able to emulate what she does. I would like to think I am pretty creative but this lady blows me out of the water. Her blog  is full of the prettiest little parties you have ever seen.

So back to Harrison's big day, I knew that I wanted little pennants as the toppers to stay with the theme and found a free template at fogandthistle for these cute little guys.

 

They are available in boy or girl colors and looked so cute sticking out of the cupcakes. I also found a template to make a happy birthday banner. I can't remember where I found it but if you search for "paper pennant" you will find a ton of tutorials. I ended up cutting the triangles from scrapbooking paper and cut the letters with my cricut machine. I used a hole punch and embroidery floss to string the letters together and hung it on the front of the table.

Next year I would like to make a fabric one like this. It is so cute and would be perfect for a boy or girls party.  

I am loving the little ruffled edges. Do you see the little flame on each letter? So cute.

I've got to get things set up but I will post pictures of the party later. 

Harrison is turning 4!

I can't believe my little guy is going to be four years old. He has decided that he wants to do a football themed party this year and thankfully we have a big back yard so we can do lots of sports themed games. I am still searching for fun ideas for the party although I always seem to get overwhelmed with all of the options. I think going one step further with the football theme and making it a VOLS football party will be a lot more fun since we have some die hard UT fans around here. Anyway,here is what I've got so far.

Party Games:
o.k. I figure these are four year old kids so they arent going to want games that are too difficult to play. A friend has corn hole that Im going to ask to borrow and i saw an idea for throwing a football through a hula hoop or a tire. We are also going to borrow a small bounce house that should keep them busy for quite a while.

Food:
I thought we could stick with the whole football concession thing and serve nachos and cheese dip, hot dogs and popcorn. I think our local rental place has a popcorn machine that we can rent to make fresh popcorn. I'm gonna check with chloe's school and see if I can get a stack of the little paper boats that they serve hot dogs in to use for the food. I'm gonna make some orange and white punch. I'm thinking something easy like orange fanta and vanilla ice cream and some yummy orange tea for the adults. We will have cheetos, carrots with ranch, and probably a few other little treats that are orange and white.

Cake:
Harrison decided early on that he wanted a football cake so I'm gonna do an orange dreamsicle cake that looks like a football field. I found a delicious looking recipe that I am gonna tweak just a little bit but I think it will be amazing.

Dreamsicle cake recipe

1 package (18.25 ounces) lemon Supreme cake mix
1 small package  orange jello (3 oz)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon orange extract
1-1/4 cups orange juice
1/4 teaspoon unsweetened orange Kool Aid

Preheat oven to 350°F and spray 9x13 pan with cooking spray.
Place cake mix, jello, oil, eggs, and orange extract in mixingbowl.  Add orange juice and Kool Aid and beat on low  until moistened. Increase to medium and beat a few minutes longer. The batter will be smooth. Pour into pan. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Don’t overbake.

If the creamcicle cake humps up in the center, when you take it out of the oven, put a folded towel over it and press down with your hands. Viola – a perfectly even cake (what you are doing is pressing the air out).  Let cool while making topping:

Pineapple cream cheese topping for the creamcicle cake.

Beat together:
1 can, about 20 oz, crushed pineapple, drained or not – whatever you like (undrained your frosting will be a little softer – I like that version since it has more flavor)
3 oz cream cheese, softened
3.5 oz package instant vanilla pudding
Then fold in:
8 oz or so thawed whipped topping
Spread on cooled cake and garnish as desired.

If by some turn of events the weather is hot, I think I might make this version as well. 

      

  Orange-Raspberry Dreamsicle Cake

• Recipe Ingredients

•  2 pkg (13 oz each) coconut macaroons (we used Archway)
•  3 cups (1 1⁄2 pt) raspberry sherbet
•  2 pt vanilla ice cream
•  3 cups (1 1⁄2 pt) orange sherbet
•  Garnish: pretty iced cookies Recipe Preparation

 1. Line a 13 x 9 x 2-in. pan with foil, letting foil extend about 2 in. above pan at both ends. Lightly coat with  nonstick spray.
 2. Line bottom of the pan with macaroons; press to flatten and form a layer. Freeze 20 minutes, or until firm. Meanwhile, refrigerate raspberry sherbet and 1 pt vanilla ice cream to soften slightly.
 3. Drop spoonfuls of softened sherbet and ice cream into crust, alternating flavors and packing them down as you go. Freeze 2 hours, or until firm. 
 4. Repeat with orange sherbet and remaining vanilla ice cream. Freeze 30 minutes to set, then swirl surface decoratively. Freeze 6 hours, or until hard, and serve, or wrap airtight and freeze up to 2 weeks.
5. To serve: Lift foil by ends onto cutting board; remove foil. Cut in 9 bars; cut bars in half diagonally to make wedges
Decorations:
This should be super easy. We are gonna stick orange and white pom poms everywhere and hang orange and white streamers from the doorways and over the table with the cake. I may try to print out big football players and tape them to the floor for the kids to color. I'm gonna head to sallys to get some orange and white spray for the kids to put in their hair. We are going to invite all of our guests to wear their orange and white and im going to try to find someone to borrow ref shirts from for monty and I to wear. 
 

Oh Baby

Shout to the heavens! It is one am and Jacob is asleep in his crib. So it is night two -well technically 3 but Monday didn't count because I gave up at 2 a.m. and finally just brought him to bed with me- of teaching Jacob that he doesn't have to sleep with his tiny baby feet in my back and neck any longer. As with the other two, I felt that co-sleeping was the best option for us when Jacob was preparing to make his way into the world. I have thoroughly enjoyed cuddling with him every evening and did not mind at all the middle of the night feedings and waking up at 3 am just to lean down about an inch from his face to make sure he was breathing. I only got out a tiny mirror and held it under his nose once. ok, twice but you have to really make sure when they are so tiny. It is hard to tell if their chest is rising and falling so that really was my only option. back to the point. I have been so blessed to have a healthy baby boy who loves to snuggle right up next to his mommy. I was not in any kind of a hurry to make him go sleep all the way across the hall in his huge crib all by himself. My husband on the other hand is ready to get our bed back. He has been sleeping on the very edge of the bed for about six months now and I think he is over it. He informed me the other day that it was time to begin the transition into the crib. I, being the flexible, supportive wife that I am said, "of course! you are so right! It is important to develop good sleeping habits at an early age and if we ever hope to sleeping soundly through the night with all children tucked into their own beds then we must get Jacob used to sleeping in his crib now." That is a lie. What I really said was, "are you kidding me? he is so little! He still likes to eat a few times during the night and needs me near him. His room is so far away. all the way across the hall! and his crib is so big and he might get cold but he cant tell us because he cant talk and what if he gets too hot and starts having trouble breathing? SIDS has been linked to babies getting too warm while they sleep. No, we need to just wait a little bit longer. What about when he is one?"

So here we are....night number two of him sleeping in his crib. We are trying to establish a nightly routine but I'm still haven't figured out what the magic number is for his bedtime. We have tried 645 and 8 and both times he woke up around 11p.m. ready to play and have a snack. Tonight I put him down at 9 because he had a late nap and he slept soundly until about 11. I went up to feed him and got him back down. It is now 1:45 and he has woken up crying six times. I know they are supposed to learn to self soothe but I just cant seem to get on board with that one. When he wakes up he starts crying and if I get there soon enough, I can give him his pacifier and he will go back to sleep but if I wait and try to let him "cry it out" he flips out and gets more and more worked up. I don't know what I'm doing at all! meanwhile, I'm like a zombie walking around half awake trying to get through my day. He has been quiet for the last 45 minutes so I guess I'm gonna try to go on up to bed. I thought maybe I could wait it out and stay up until he was good and asleep for the night but I did not know it would be this late.

Do you ever get tired thinking about the next day and you haven't even gone to bed yet? That is just sad. Oh well, it won't be like this forever. I must remember that and be thankful for all that God has blessed me with. Thanks for stopping by and supporting my ranting. Talk to you soon.

swagbucks!!

I love swagbucks! If you haven't heard about it, it is a search engine that gives you the opportunity to win "swagbucks" for doing things you probably do anyway:search, shop, answer polls and more. Your points are tallied up and you can redeem them at anytime for items in their swagstore. The best thing I have found is the amazon gift card. I have redeemed points for amazon and smilebox gift cards and am currently saving up for another $25 gift card from amazon so I can get a new gps that they have on sale for 67.00. I have heard of a few people adding up their points all year and redeeming them in october for amazon gift cards and using them for all of their christmas shopping. I think I may try to do that for a few months at least.


Another great thing about swagbucks is that you can refer people and when they sign up, you get points as they win points. Imagine if you got even 10 people to sign up. Ive racked up almost 3,000 points in just a few months. It is basically free money for something you are going to do anyway. It is free to sign up and they will award you 30 swagbucks to get started. http://swagbucks.com/refer/momof3intn

creating a banner

So as scatterbrained as I am, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I sat down two hours ago to write a post and ended up getting sidetracked when I decided to change my banner really quick. I created this blog over a year ago and the design is pretty generic. I have been wanting to personalize it for some time but I just haven't got around to doing it.


As I mentioned before, I started to just change my "about" info and decided to look up a quick tutorial on designing a banner and here I am two hours later with no post and no changes to my blog. SO frustrating. I found a few different tutorials that seemed pretty straightforward but try as I might, I just am not any good with reading code. I tried over and over again to cut and paste new code into my html but I kept getting an error message.  Am I seriously just retarded or have any of you had problems with this as well? I actually think I may have found a site with a step by step on creating a banner and plugging it into the header section. Hopefully it won't involve reading any code. Hopefully it will look something like one of these pics below.

I think the bottom right is my favorite!

I watched The Social Network again this weekend and it is amazing to me to think about sitting and writing code for hours upon hours. I took a web design class my junior year in college and somehow managed to create a website from scratch. I remember bits and pieces of what I learned but I think it was mostly just copying from the book and plugging in a few words here and there. Maybe its time to dig through the book shelves and see if I can find any of the books from my class. I think I am going to give it one more shot. Hopefully before my next post I will have a pretty new personalized banner. Once I figure it out, I will share what I learned.

Kristy

Favorite Dinner Ever!

A friend of mine shared a recipe with me the other day for bruschetta chicken and I decided to go ahead and give it a try. I am not so good at picking winners when it comes to new recipes so I was a bit nervous but oh my goodness. It was amazing! This is probably one of the best meals I have made in a long time. I was thrilled because, for once, everyone liked it. 

Bruschetta Chicken. Yum!

I have had soo many requests for this recipe already so I thought I would pass it along to all of you. I served it with Ronzoni garden delight fettucine and asparagus. If you like bruschetta at all you will love this dish. I actually doubled the topping and used it for traditional bruschetta tonight. I am so excited for you to try this.  It actually is a really quick and easy meal that is sure to impress. The recipe calls for traditional bread crumbs but I use panko because it stays really crunchy while baking. Let me know what you think!

BRUSCHETTA CHICKEN

• 4 Servings
• Prep: 10 min. Bake: 30 min.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup egg substitute
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 ounces each)
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 2 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 3 tablespoons minced fresh basil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions

• Place flour and eggs in separate shallow bowls. Dip chicken in flour, then in eggs; place in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. Combine the Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs and butter; sprinkle over chicken.
• Loosely cover baking dish with foil. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until a meat thermometer reads 170°.
• Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Spoon over the chicken. Return to the oven for 3-5 minutes or until tomato mixture is heated through. Yield: 4 servings.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving (prepared with 1/2 cup egg substitute) equals 358 calories, 13 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 86 mg cholesterol, 623 mg sodium, 22 g carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 36 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 4-1/2 lean meat, 1 starch, 1 vegetable.

Cleaning House

I finally had a yard sale this past weekend. Yes, I know it is November. Yes, I know that people usually don't do yard sales this late in the year. My husband was threatening to throw everything away though so I figured it was now or never. I have made him move those boxes around for the past three years. I always meant to get rid of everything but things always came up so the pile actually grew and grew and collected dust. A local preschool offered to "host" the sale for a small donation from each person selling and it worked out pretty good because the school is located on a busy street.

So here is what I learned about yard sales:
-I am definitely a rookie when it comes to having one. I had no idea what I was doing.
-apparently just showing up and setting everything out on a table is not such a good strategy
-your stuff isn't going to go for nearly what you think it is worth
-people are cheap,cheap,cheap
-be prepared to haggle and don't back down!
-it is a lot less stressful if you have at least one other person to help you and if you price things beforehand
-next time(of there is one) I will color code everything and use a master price sheet

I was genuinely surprised at how cheap and aggressive people were with my things. I was second guessing myself on a lot of things because people were commenting on how they didn't want to pay what i was asking. I ended up settling for a lot less than I could have because I was unsure of myself. I have a feeling that some of my things will probably be resold for a bit of profit. Oh well. lesson learned. at least the garage is somewhat organized now. I spent about 4 hours out there yesterday afternoon organizing and going through things. Our plan is to be able to park the car in there by December 1st.

It is amazing to me how much stuff we collect as we move along in our lives. I am the type that gets distracted easily so it was very difficult to stay on task while cleaning the garage. Every time I would open a box I would sift through it and get caught up looking at old pictures and art projects. Little toys that got shoved here or dropped there. I have talked about "cleaning up" and becoming more organized for the past three years but I just can't seem to get it done. I hate clutter but it makes me sad to get rid of old things. I guess mostly stuff that Chloe made or gave to me. Its all just stuff though and its not the stuff that matters.

We will see how long the cleaning streak lasts. I'm sure I will find another project to focus on before too long.

Winter seems well under way. Stay warm. We'll talk soon

Kristy
-

Catching Up

  Well the last time you heard from me I was a little over halfway through my horrendous pregnancy. Things actually ended up going pretty smoothly the last few months. I was able to embrace the fact that this would be my last pregnancy and I think God healed me of my sickness and allowed me to really enjoy it and I felt I was finally able to really bond with my baby before he was born. Things got pretty busy there for a while. Once I was well enough to have my pump taken out, I was nonstop. I felt like I had so much to catch up on.

 We stumbled upon a great house(we had been half heartedly searching for months) about a month before my due date and decided rather in a hurry that we needed to go ahead and take a leap and try to get into it before baby Jacob got here. That was an insane week. Yes, I said week. We somehow packed up and moved our entire place in 7 days. All of this while monty was putting in  9-10 hour days at work.Oh and did I mention that we painted the entire house. All 3 levels. 8 rooms total. all different colors... and not just a coat of white. We decided that we should go ahead and do custom paint in each room. Well, we had to score,soak & rip off the 20 year old wallpaper that was plastered all over the house first, then we had to prime, then we painted. seriously. what were we thinking?  

The kitchen had no floor and we were tempted to leave that lovely trim. not really.

 This was the bedroom in the lower level off the family room. Again, no floor. and some mold problems. My husband had(has) high hopes for this place. Glad he could see through the mess. I on the other hand, could see nothing but what needed to be done.

 This burgundy wallpaper was the bane of my existence. I hate wallpaper. hate it. We have been in the house for about five months now. We are slowly getting settled. We still need to re-do the family room downstairs. My dear husband really wants to decorate it in everything UT but we promised Chloe that it would be half fun hangout room for her and her friends and half playroom for the boys. Im sooo bad at decorating and have no idea where to begin as far as picking a color palatte.

 We are in the process of fixing Chloe's bedroom but we have been having issues with flooding and had to have the floor ripped up again and had industrial dehumidifiers all over the place for a week. I will have to take some pictures of the rooms that are finished so you can see all of our hard work. Wait, that would only give you one picture. I have yet to complete one entire room. There are 2 or 3 things in each room that I still need to make it finished. Maybe I will get around to that this year. Hope you all have been doing well. I promise we will catch up more soon.

Have a blessed day my friends. Talk to you soon....

Kristy



It's a boy!

We had our ultrasound this past week and were happy to find out that the new baby is a boy. We took the kids with us which was a decision I fought for as my dear husband wanted it to be just the two of us. I thought since Chloe was old enough to know what was going on that she deserved to be there so she felt included and she really wanted to go. We took Harrison because we had no choice. We have no babysitters! I don't understand how we have lived in this town for 10 years and we still do not have a list of reliable, trustworthy people to babysit for us. We have asked around but I guess there is a shortage of teenage girls who want to make extra money caring for our sweet, wonderful children. o.k. I got sidetracked. We thought we would make the appointment fun by buying pink and blue balloons and planned to have the kids sit in the hallway while we found out and then we would throw whatever color balloons were fitting out at the kids. Well we never made it that far because Harrison started fidgeting and miss bossy pants started trying to make him sit still (we could hear everything going on outside the room) and he started yelling and she started knocking and the moment was ruined as they both busted in the room. Oh well, it was a good idea in theory.

Chloe was mad anyway because apparently she wanted it to be a girl. Until now, I didn't think she cared as she didn't want me to have another baby anyway lol. It is SO much fun having a preteen. I am learning sooo much about her and myself. Things like it isn't really a good idea to be a moody pregnant woman while trying to deal with a cranky 11 year old. We are like oil and water. I keep thinking it has to get better.    She and I actually get along pretty good compared to how she and my husband are with each other. He just doesn't get it. I don't think he has ever been around teenage girls and he is learning the hard way. I keep trying to explain (tell,yell,command) to him that he shouldn't take everything personally and that he needs to relax a little bit and give her some space. That seems to be one of our biggest arguments. Any suggestion s on how to deal with this?

On another note, I have finally started taking cake/cookie orders again. I was worried there for a while that I wouldn't be able to do any baking while I was pregnant because for the longest time the smell of buttercream would send me running. I have done a few cakes over the past two months and a have two due in the next two weeks. I will try to get some pictures up soon. For now, I am going to finish American Idol and head to bed. Good night to you all!

perfume in my eyes

I spent most of my morning holding Harrison down while trying to flush his eyes with water. He snuck a bottle of perfume past me this morning and ran out of my bedroom. He just shut my door when I heard him scream. Yep. He sprayed it in his eye. I opened the door and he was standing there crying trying to hand me the perfume. I rush him into the bathroom, strip him down and put him in the tub(this seems to be a reoccuring theme for me). He would not allow me to get ANY water into his eye. Monty was at work so I was alone in this which I do not suggest. I fought with him for a good 30 minutes trying to pry his little eye open while he yelled "please don't put water in my eye mommy. just put the towel on it" over and over again. It seemed the only relief he could get was when he had his eye closed with the towel pressed against it.

I finally got him quiet enough to get the doctor on the phone and they suggested I take him to the childrens hospital emergency room which was 40 minutes away. They were concerned that because he was still crying, the alcohol in the perfume might have scratched his cornea. Chloe had a friend over and we were all in our pajamas so we began rushing around trying to get dressed. I got Monty on the phone and he was able to come home for a minute. Harrison seemed to be feeling better but would not open his eye and upon trying to even remove the towel he was holding up to his eye he would start screaming again. Monty finally got his boss on the phone and was able to come with us so we headed out.

Harrison at this point decided he felt better and had both eyes open and said he did not need to go to the doctor. We decided to go on just to be safe. This however was a bad idea. We had only been on the road 5 minutes when my car began to overheat. Oh yes. I was soo happy. I was driving at the time and Monty had me pull over because the engine started making a really loud noise. We were on a backroad trying to get to the interstate and the first driveway I came to was not much more than a clearing in the brush. We sat there for a good 30 minutes trying to decide whether we should try to drive it back home or call a tow truck. Fortunately, the man who lived there worked in an autoshop and his son called him on the phone to see what we should do. He said we would probably be okay to drive the car to his shop which was just down the road.  My dear husband thought it best to get it home and deal with it on Monday since the shop we usually go to wasn't open today. It was at this point that he decided he should drive.... and he backed my car straight into a ditch. mmmhhhmm. not only in a ditch but up over the large concrete/steele rod barrier that was there to keep cars out of that ditch. It was at this point that I began yelling and crying almost hysterically. lol . Chloe's poor little friend in the back seat will probably never come to our house again.

Fortunately it was mostly cosmetic damage although the running board got jammed up so bad that the back door gets caught on it. Can you see that I am having a great day? lol. I don't know if I want to talk to much less see my husband anymore today. But I am stuck with him. And tomorrow is his day off. Hooray....will we survive?

Harrison just woke from his nap and he says his eye feels great and he can see out of it so I am not sure what to do. He is too young to tell me if his vision is cloudy but there isnt any redness or swelling so I guess I'm gonna give it 24 hours and see how it looks then. Well I hope you all are having a better weekend than us. Talk to you soon!!

Mommy Im Sick...

My week has been filled with vomit and for once it was not my own. Monday started off pretty smooth and stayed that way until mid-afternoon when Chloe yelled down the stairs "MOM!! Harrison puked on my couch!!!" I ran up the stairs to see harrison sitting on the little pink couch in her room with his hands straight out in front of him. He and the couch AND the curtains were covered. I mean completely covered in puke. It was horrible. He was crying, chloe was laughing/shrieking and my dear husband didn't move off the couch. I yelled for him and told him that I needed help. We each took an end and carried harrison to the bathtub. I thought Harrison had gagged on the candy he snuck out of my purse but it turns out that my poor son who has a weak stomach happened to turn and look right as the dog had an accident on Chloe's floor. He threw up immediately. And so the week began. On Tuesday Harrison woke at 7 a.m. calling for his dad. Monty went in to check on him and soon started yelling for me. Harrison was once again sick and this time, he threw up right on Monty. I spent most of the day carrying him to and from the bathtub,stripping him of his clothes and cleaning him up. He was so pitiful and everytime I would get him cleaned up, he would say "mommy I'm sorry i frew up on the blanket/couch/floor/you....." he melts my heart. I managed to keep him drinking sprite all day so the cleaning up was fairly easy. My hubby got home that evening and while I was upstairs changing sheets(again) I guess he asked Harrison if he was hungry and told him he needed to try to eat a sandwich. I made it downstairs just in time to see Harrisons eyes get real big as he threw his hand over his mouth and threw up an entire pb & j sandwich. DIS-GUS-TING.
  
Wednesday started off really good as harrison seemed to feel great. Monty however came dragging in the door around 10 am and went straight to the bathroom. He was sick with it for 2 days. yikes. I slept on the couch. It is a lot harder to take care of a grown man than a baby in my opinion. I must admit that I didnt really take very good care of him. I brought him cold drinks and just tried to stay out of his way. He is a lot better at the "in sickness" than me. So the week was finally over..well so I thought until my poor chloe started feeling bad Thursday night and actually came in at 4 am friday morning to tell me that she had thrown up. She spent Friday and Saturday in bed and the bathroom but thankfully was better by Sunday.

So that was my week. Sorry these past few posts have been so gross but I'm here to share it all. The good,bad & ugly and hopefully you will stick around to see things get better.

 One last thing....if any of you are pregnant or nursing, you can log on to http://www.uddercovers.com/ right now and get a nursing cover for free minus shipping with the code "onefree". Im not sure how long this promotion is going on but ordered one a few days ago and am super excited to get it. Hope you all are staying well and keeping your food down!

Puking my life away

Whew! I am so glad that is over. Hopefully some of you noticed that I have been gone. Maybe even hoping I would come back soon to share more crazy stories with you...I did read your comments so I know some of you are keeping up and I really appreciate all of the well wishes. I don't even know where to begin with the insanity I just went through. My last post was short and simply informed you of the morning sickness that had accompanied my pregnancy so far. It was bad but I thought it would pass in a few weeks and we could move on like normal.I was wrong. Very, very wrong. 11/2009-2/2010 will forever be known as the worst months of my life! I will try not to go into too much detail but the 3 weeks following my last post I lost 16lbs and was in the hospital half a dozen times. I was so ill that I could barely move by myself.I would actually get motion sickness when I would sit up. I couldn't even keep water down and kept being hospitalized for dehydration. I was so sick that I started pulling muscles in my stomach from dry heaving so hard. yuk. Aren't you so glad you joined me today? Don't go away! please! I will keep it short and to the point while hopefully sharing a laugh or two.

So, I was finally diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum or HG for short, which is basically a severe form of morning sickness with unrelenting, excessive nausea and/or vomiting. I honestly felt like I was going to die. The pain was not simply physical but mental as well. I remember lying in bed wondering how I would make it though the day. How I could make it another week. I couldn't take care of my children or myself. It really started getting my down and began affecting my moods. I lost interest in doing anything but sleeping because that was the only time I got relief from the pain. I spent most of my days tossing and turning in bed trying to get my mind off of my cramping stomach & constant nausea while hoping Harrison's brain wasn't turning to mush from watching hour after hour of cartoons. He seems to have survived and somehow through it all learned how to spell his name and count to 20. Unfortunately, I don't think I was responsible for teaching him either one. From me, he learned the importance of properly holding your hair back when throwing up and that when mommy is lying in the bathroom floor she probably can't get you more juice for a while.

My doctor finally decided that I wan't going to be able to keep the pill form of the medicine I needed down and set me up with a home health nurse who came to the house and hooked up a small machine that pumped the meds straight into my stomach. I must say that after only a few days, I began to feel a difference. I was able to sip on liquids and not immediately throw them up and after only a week and a half, I was able to move around without getting motion sickness. I finally started getting some of my energy back after about 2 weeks and was able to go visit with some family for a few hours on Christmas day. I was told that I may have to keep the pump in throughout the entire pregnancy but there was a possibility that I would start feeling better once I hit my second trimester. 13 weeks came and went with no change but I was at least able to move around and the vomiting was somewhat under control so I wasn't complaining. I am now 17 weeks and I was finally stable enough to take the pump out this past Friday. Hooray! I have only felt nauseous a few times but I think I can handle it. The baby is still doing ok and I have finally started to gain a little bit of weight.I actually started feeling it kick last week. I go back in a few weeks to do the ultrasound and we will finally find out the sex. I am so excited.

 Sorry if this post was a little bit long and maybe boring but this has had such a huge impact on my life that I really wanted to share it with you all. Maybe some of you have experienced the same thing or are maybe going through it right now. If so, let me know. I would love to talk to you and offer some encouragement if needed. Hope you all are staying healthy! I have lots of exciting things to catch you all up on and look forward to seeing what you all have been up to as well!