Weekend

It was yet another work weekend. It seems once good weather hits it becomes a race to see how much we can accomplish before winter arrives (or the baby comes in this case). Unfortunately summer seems to be racing in quickly which will slow us down in our outdoor endeavors. It's already in the mid 90's here, although it's not consistently that hot just yet. Sean has been outside all weekend playing with his new "man toy". Last week he bought a chipper/shredder to chip up all the piles of tree limbs that have accumulated over the years. Last spring he took the chainsaw out into the walnut grove, which consists of over 200+ trees, and went to town trimming the lower branches. We had no idea of how many limbs we would be left with after he got done. There are about 15 piles throughout the grove that have been there for a year now. We just had no idea what to do with them. We finally decided on buying a chipper and one happened to be for sale on craigslist last week that was the right size for the job. It's amazing how fast this machine will gobble down these large limbs. I think Sean's kind of enjoying himself out there, even if it is hot, dirty work. Don't ask me what we plan to do with the growing pile of wood chips, we haven't a clue.



I spent yesterday outside cleaning, disinfecting, sanding and painting Nachos new palace. The old rabbit hutch was pretty sad looking and not at all stable on its legs. Sean helped me brace it up and I took a hand sander to the old paint. After two coats of new house paint the hutch looks really good. It got moved to its new location which is right under a nice shade tree and in the fenced in backyard to protect poor Nacho from dogs. I took Nacho out there this morning and showed her her new house (yep, naturally Nacho is a girl. I wanted a boy bunny ended up with a girl bunny. Let's just say boy and girl bunny parts look very similar). She seems happy out there. A couple of times a week we'll bring Nacho inside to play and get a break from the heat.

Bunny hutch before makeover, pretty sad eh?


Bunny hutch after makeover, with a fresh coat of paint, new leg bracing and a good old fashioned cleaning job. We're even thinking about replacing the shingles.


Nacho enjoying her new digs


Wesley has become much more independent lately. He likes to run around outside by himself, I'm outside with him but he keeps himself fairly well entertained. It's a nice change. It allows me to be able to accomplish tasks again, something I usually only am able to do during nap time. Yesterday I was able to start scraping the old paint on the back of the house in preparation for painting next weekend. I had my wire brush and Wesley had his hairbrush and was helping me scrape. He's a very helpful kid. :) Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Meet Nacho

Usually when one animal leaves our place it's not a tremendous amount of time before another arrives. I'd like you to meet Nacho.



Nacho is a 6 week old Holland Lop baby bunny. As you can see he is just about the most precious thing ever. Seriously. He fits in the palm of my hand and will only be 4-5 pounds at maturity. His full name is Nacho Bell Grande (can't tell a pregnant woman named him eh?). He's Wesley's first pet. When Sean got home from work yesterday he looked at the bunny and said "Ah the first of many pets purchased in Wesley's name." See now I have another pawn in my love of animals. A child, a person that needs a pet to learn responsibility (and all that other crap). I can say "But Sean, Wesley really needs that duckling." When in all reality these pets are mine. I'll have to clean and feed and do everything else at least until Wesley is old enough. I'm ok with this. This morning Wesley came out of his bedroom and ran over to Nacho and said "Hi Nacho Rabbit!". He does this every time he passes his laundry basket, I think the poor baby bunny just about has a heart attack being yelled at by a toddler.

Yes poor Nacho is living in a laundry basket for a few days while I clean and refinish his hutch this weekend. This is a hutch that has seen a whole lot of bunnies in it's lifetime. My Dad and I built it when I was 12 or 13 years old and housed my one rabbit that I used to show in 4H. It then got moved over to Jessica's parents house when I moved off to college. There it was used to house several more rabbits. The old hutch is around 18 years old and I think it's kind of neat that it will house my sons rabbit now (excuse me, my rabbit).

Nacho sitting on my huge belly (I wish nachos were in my huge belly instead)

Dancing in the daisies

We went over to my friend Jessica's parents house for a Memorial Day cookout on Monday. We had a really nice time and it was sweet of her folks to invite us over. Wesley ran around their place looking at the baby kittens, baby chickens and the horses. He was in hog heaven. We got some cute pictures of the kids playing in the daisies.

Personality Plus

Wesley is coming up on 23 months old and this age is proving to be quite an experience. I've talked about the approaching terrible two's in the past (here and here)but I haven't talked about the other side, the absolutely funny side. In his process to becoming his own little man he's developing quite a personality. I thought I'd share some of this.

1. Nearly two months after Easter, Wesley is still infatuated with his Easter basket. He fills it up throughout the day with random little knickknacks that he finds in the house. Lately these include his hairbrush, old toothbrush, random wash clothes (usually wet ones from bath time), rubber ducks and his toy cell phone. In fact he throws a fit at bed time if we don't bring the Easter basket in and put it in his crib with him.

2. He really enjoys playing in his crib at bed time and before nap time. We pile toys in there that he can't live without. Our daily routine consists of him standing in his crib dictating what other toys he needs to sleep with. In the end he has about a two foot by two foot square to sleep in. He likes to take his phone to bed. This is like a desk phone with a roladex and speed dial buttons. I've told him that he can call Noni and Papa by hitting the speed dial #1 (the one with the doggie on it) and that will let him talk to his grandparents anytime. After I leave the room I hear him on the baby monitor dial and "talk" to Noni and Papa about his day. It's a hoot.

3. In the mornings I get him dressed in his crib before I even take him out of it. It allows me to keep a naked kid contained and keeps me from having to get up and down off the floor (something that is getting more and more difficult as the months go by). I strip off his jammies and dirty diaper and he stands there naked telling me his "hiney itches". This happens every single day. He then proceeds to tell me his "itchy hiney needs lotion". So I go get his lotion and lotion up his rear end. This seems to take care of it until the next morning when his hiney itches. I'm wondering how long I'm going to have to do this.

4. He's been becoming a bit of an impatient little kid around meal times. Usually he starts to get whiny if he finishes his food and needs something else to eat. Sean and I have been trying to teach him the meaning of patience during these times when he gets himself all worked up. It's actually working. Now when he starts to get himself all worked up (like while I'm in the kitchen chopping up strawberries) he'll stop himself mid whine and say "PATIENCE". He states it very clearly like "PAT-ience" almost like it's two words, he even included two head bobs for good measure. It is freakin hilarious and proving to be an effective way of keeping him from loud dinner time outbursts.

Productive Saturday

The day started off better than yesterdays, nothing died today. My friend Jessica often clues me into cool kid toys that she finds on Craigslist. The deal with Craigslist is that if you find something you want, you need to act fast. Good stuff moves fast. I've been looking for a toy kitchen for Wesley since he loves to play with the kitchen at her house. She sent me a link and this morning I went and bought it. How cool is this?


It cost me a whole $15. It's in perfect condition and Wesley just loves it. He puts all sorts of things in the oven and cabinets. I've discovered I need to invest in some toy pots and pans and maybe even some fake food. I figure with a little girl on the way this kitchen will be much loved when it's all said and done. When I went to pick this up the woman that sold it to me asked if I was having a girl, I said yes and she asked if I needed any baby clothes. She lead me into her basement where she had boxes lining the walls with sizes printed on the boxes. Instead of having a garage sale she decided to post everything she had for sale on Craigslist. She said she'd sold $550 worth of kids clothes and toys in the past 3 days. Sure seems like the way to go, that is if you don't mind a parade of strangers walking through your house (personally I couldn't deal with that, ick). Anyways, I walked out of there with a big bag of darling tiny girl clothing, many still having their tags attached. Have I mentioned how much I like Craigslist?

This afternoon Sean and I went out and started painting the house. It's truly amazing how something small like a coat of paint can transform the look and feel of your house. It really looks good, too bad we didn't do this sooner. That was my day. I'll leave you with some pictures of Wesley's favorite new past time. He's always enjoyed YouTube. Being able to watch a couple of Sesame Street clips brings the boy such happiness since we don't get PBS (nor would he be awake early enough to watch it). Well, every night before his bath he asks to watch this extremely catchy (and annoying) Abby Cadabby video called "I Love Words". If you have a toddler I'm sure you've been submitted to this torture. And by torture I mean having this song stuck in your head every moment of every day.


And when the main computer is being used to download GPS maps, I get Dad to show it to me on his computer

Buddy

What a strange day. Last week one of my goats, Buddy, decided to stop eating his grain. This is not a good thing since goats love food more than anything else in this entire universe. So when one goes off his food it usually means something is pretty wrong. He was still eating hay so I didn't think much of it. He started to get quite a bloated look a few days ago which made me think he had Bloat. Bloat is a condition that ruminant animals can get when they ingest too rich of foods and gases build up in their gut. This can happen often in the spring where there is ample amounts of fresh green weeds and grasses. This is usually not a huge deal. You have to give them baking soda and sometimes vegetable oil to break down the gases in their gut. I did this with no result. Poor Buddy was looking worse and worse each day.

Buddy is my favorite of the four livestock animals we own. He's a sweet, very tame goat. He was bottle fed as a baby and actually lived in his previous owners house because he was born early in the season when there was still snow on the ground. He's an all around good natured animal.

Today Sean took a day off of work so I loaded Buddy into our one horse trailer and took him to the vet. Amazingly enough I had a hard time finding a vet that would look at my sick goat. I assumed that most farm vets would do goats but I assumed wrong. My normal horse vet didn't but I finally found one that would take a look. The vet came out to the trailer and automatically commented on how wide he is. When an animal gets bloated their little sides just stick straight out. Buddy was about as wide as he was tall. She told me that fixed male goats (whethers) can often get a urinary tract problem where bladder stones get clogged in their urethra and will prevent them from being able to urinate. I'd heard about this but didn't once think that's what was ailing him. She decided to tube him by placing a tube down his throat into his stomach to release some of the gases. Before she did that she wanted to make sure that it was air inside his gut and not something else so she stuck a needle in his underbelly and withdrew a syringe full of urine. It seems poor Buddy got a clogged urethra which prevented him from urinating thus causing his bladder to burst inside of his abdomen. He was bloated from all the urine filling up his belly. It was awful. Poor goat.

The vet kindly said the most humane thing would be to put poor Buddy out of his misery. Sweet Buddy is now in the big goat pasture in the sky. It really was not what I was expecting. I thought they'd tube him and release the supposed gases and home we'd go, no harm no foul. It just amazes me how such a sturdy little animal like a goat can succumb to something like a bladder stone. She said it is common in goats and very common in fixed male goats. There wasn't anything I could have done to prevent this. Bye Buddy, I'll miss ya.

Buddy and I in 2006 when he was just a few months old

Buddy and Rocky 2008

Appointment

I had my 22 week appointment today. Everything is looking great. The little skittle had a strong 155 beats per minute. I was a little worried about getting on the scale since my appetite seems to have kicked in this past month. I'm literally hungry all the time. This pregnancy I'm craving watermelon (I can't get enough of it), mac and cheese and salty stuff. With the first pregnancy it was chicken fried rice. Wherever I went I'd always come home with some chicken fried rice. Funny how different this one is. I'm eating small amounts throughout the day since big meals just don't fit in the stomach like they used to. Things are definitely starting to get squished inside the old abdomen. I gained 5.5 pounds in four weeks which seems like a large amount but overall not too bad. I'm trying not to worry about the weight gain since it does come off in the end. I gained 43 pounds with Wesley and it was all gone within six months postpartum. I attribute that to breastfeeding. Natures Jenny Craig.

I asked the doctor about the tick issue again since they seem to be getting worse. It doesn't freak me out anymore when I find them, but I still get concerned with the threat of Lyme disease. If I take Wesley outside for 30 minutes I will always find at least two stuck to me somewhere. It's always a scavenger hunt trying to find them. My question to the doc was whether I should be using bug spray to try and deter them. I'm kind of wondering which is the worse of the two evils. Chemicals verses tiny ticks. I'm really trying to go all natural with this pregnancy and spraying my body down with nasty chemicals just doesn't do it for me. She said bug sprays are ok to use, although some is absorbed into the blood stream. Oh decisions decisions.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Wesley I used to know and love has been replaced by a whiny, angry, (almost) two year old. Where did my sweet little laid back baby boy go? I've gotta say I didn't expect this. It just came up like a wave and now I'm left with a kid I don't understand. He'll go from happy to screaming mad in a quarter of a second flat, all because he dropped a rock or I gave him the wrong book or he isn't able to wear his favorite pajamas, you get the idea. There is no consoling this new found child. A hug from Mom used to make tears go away, now it brings on new tears and louder wailing. Oh terrible two's why do I already have to deal with you when my kid is not even two yet? WHY!?

Cloud Nine

What a great weekend we're having. I'm so excited to announce the birth of my newest niece! Yesterday evening my sister-in-law Stacy and brother-in-law Nate (Sean's older brother) welcomed their beautiful little girl, Berkley Wren, to the world. She's a beauty with a head full of dark curls. I'm just thrilled to be an aunt to all these wonderful little girls. I can't wait to see more pictures! Keep them coming guys!

I've been riding on cloud nine with the news of the little one's birth. It sure makes ya smile knowing there is a new member of this crazy, wonderful family.

Wesley and I went outside this morning to try out our newest purchase. I felt it was time to invest in a sandbox for the little dude. We don't have much of anything in the way of outdoor toys which really isn't a problem. He finds plenty to do outside with out them. But I thought every little kid needs a sandbox at some point. Boy, did I hit the jackpot. He wasn't so sure what to think of it at first, he just stood over it and dug around with some of the toy rakes. He didn't seem to understand that you could get in the box to play.


I decided to help him out a little bit and took off his shoes and plunked him down in the sand. Of course, at first, he didn't like the feel of the sand on his bare feet.


This only lasted temporarily and he just dug in. He acted like a little boy in a sandbox. Dug and piled sand everywhere. Put sand in his Tonka dump truck and wheeled it around. He sat in there and played for half an hour while I did yard work. It was great! This particular sandbox came with a lid to keep Miss Kitty from using it as a litter box. It was pricey but well worth it. We'll get a lot of use out of it.

Signs of Spring

I love some aspect of each passing season, but spring has got to be the best. Being able to get out of the house and soak up the sun (and let a toddler run off his energy) is just splendid. I thought I'd share some of the more obvious signs that spring is in full swing around our house.


#1. Cecil, the leopard tortoise, has moved to his outside pen during the nice sunny days. He normally lives upstairs in a spare bedroom during the colder months. I refer to his cage up there as a "coffin" for no other reason than it looks like an old time wooden coffin. Something out of a old western movie. It's open topped and he's got plenty of room to move. Pretty much he just lies about under his basking lamp and eats. What a life. He does enjoy the warm months and being able to go out and gorge himself on dandelion and cover.


#2. The water iris in the koi pond are in full bloom. They are such a beautiful flower. The two clumps that I planted two years ago have tripled in size and are starting to skirt their way around the pond. I figure at some point I'll have to dig some out and give them away so they don't take over.


#3. Today at the park Wesley and I saw so many baby ducklings. I've got to say there isn't anything much cuter than a baby duck. I didn't get any pictures since I was just staring at their cuteness and plotting a way to get a couple of baby ducks for our property.


#4. The cockatiels are laying eggs like crazy. I'm removing an egg about every other day now from their food dish. I learned my lesson on NOT removing the eggs. Four years ago I decided to just let my pair of lutino cockatiels lay a clutch of eggs and sit on them. I put a nesting box in there and she laid six eggs. Luckily since they were first time parents only one hatched. Anyone who knows me knows I can't get rid of animals, so it was a blessing that only one hatched.

#5. I'll be nice and not post a picture of the last obvious sign that spring has sprung. My two goats are in love with each other and every spring they show it. Mind you that they are both fixed male goats. I know I could do without their constant show of affection. Darn horny goats.

Little boys and their toys

So I've mentioned here about the GeoTrax train set that my father purchased about a year ago. Wesley hasn't really gotten into them until about a week ago. Now all he wants to do is go downstairs and play "choo choo". He has figured out that each engine has it's own color coded controller and knows to go get the blue controller for a specific favored engine. We were downstairs playing for 3 hours on Tuesday. It's nice that this giant train set is finally age appropriate for him. And it's not just this train set, he's in total train mode now. If we are in town and he hears a train whistle he starts yelling "choo choo!" It's fascinating. I wonder if little boys just have a different gene that draws them to trains, cars and planes. I will test this out on the little Skittle"ette" and see if she is naturally drawn to princesses and ponies.

The train set is great except when Wesley gets it in his head that he needs to go down and play with it NOW, this very instant. If he doesn't get to go play with it he totally melts down. Screaming, crying, you name it. I feel the terrible two's are on the way in (I'm so lucky). He decided he wanted to go play with it right before lunch today and I told him "No, we have to eat lunch first". He went nuts. Started throwing his food, wailing, refused to eat anything for lunch. Have I mentioned what a fun stage this is? If it wasn't the train set it would be something else, I know this, so to make this all a little less painful I went downstairs and brought up a large section of the train track and a couple of trains. We now have this set up in the living room as to keep the tantrums to a minimum. I hope it works.

Progression of the pool

The pool demo is officially finished! Sean started taking the deck and pool apart in October of 2007, so a year and a half later it is done. The grass is growing like crazy with all this rain and it is so strange looking out the back row of windows and seeing grass instead of a pool or a muddy hole in the ground. It's simply wonderful. Definitely one of the best improvements to this house that we've made. Sean worked so hard doing this project and I can't thank him enough. I'm lucky to be married to such a determined worker. I've chronicled through pictures below the demo and the end result.

October 2007

March 2008  

 
March 2008  

 
April 2008  

 
June 2008  

 
July 2008 (isn't the goat a nice addition?)  

 
September 2008  

 
March 2009  

 
May 2009, taken today during the rain. It's done!  

 
Off to the next project! Now we plan to add a nice smaller deck along the back of the house, this won't be started until next summer at the earliest (since I want to help).

Happy Mothers Day!

I want to wish all the Moms (and soon-to-be Moms) a very Happy Mothers Day! We just got back from going out with my parents to celebrate by stuffing our faces. We gorged ourselves on a delicious breakfast buffet at Granite City Brewery. It was good food and good company. Wesley sat in his hook on chair and pigged out on cantaloupe (I think he ate his weights worth), ham & eggs.



PostSecret has some really interesting entries for Mother's Day. Check them out if you have a few minutes.
Everyone have a great day!

20 Weeks

Today marks the official half way point of this pregnancy. The only noteworthy thing I can mention that happens around this time in a pregnancy is the awkward question..."are you expecting?" This has happened a few times now, usually with people I haven't seen in a few months (or years). For example yesterday I went to the local Wally World to buy flowers and ran into an older lady that I used to work with at the vet clinic while I was in high school. She and I wandered around outside looking at the flowers and chatting and ended up at the check out lane. She then (after we had been walking for 10 minutes) timidly leaned in and asked in almost a whisper if we were expecting. Kind of like she wouldn't want to embarrass me if she was wrong and I was just packing on the poundage. It cracks me up. For one, women do not carry weight like this. Never in my 30 years on this planet have I seen a woman with all of her extra weight right out front like a beer belly. No, we get it all over....hips, rear and every where else in between. Two, it's not like I would have gone off and smacked her for asking. Hey, we all get curious now and again (sometimes our curiosity does get us in trouble eh Randi...remember Phoenix?). I'm just happy that it now appears that I'm pregnant and not just chunky, that phase sucks.

This little lady has been kicking up a storm. I forgot how powerful those little kicks can be. It amazes me since she's still so tiny. According to my online calendar she's around 10-12 ounces (the tech said she was 8 ounces at the ultrasound 2.5 weeks go) and 7 inches long. Of course my little helper is in the photo above. It feels like I'm looking at a Where's Waldo picture, maybe we'll rename it Where's Wesley.

Toddler antics

I love this kid. He is such a hoot sometimes. Every other week I go into the grocery store and do our big two week shopping spree. Wesley spends this time in the grocery cart saying "Hi" to everyone that passes by. It's not a timid little "hi", it's a booming, toddler voice "HI!" I'd say about 80% of the people say Hi back. Most laugh and ask him how he is. The older people are always the nicest. There are always a few that don't know how to respond and just walk away. Today at the checkout lane Wesley yelled HI to the cashier, he said Hi back. Then Wesley would look around for someone else to talk to...find no one and go back to greeting the cashier again. He did this at least eight times. The cashier, poor guy, didn't know what to do at that point. He certainly sped up the check out process, I could tell he was thinking "crazy kid". Then on the way out of the store he yelled "BYE!" to anyone in hearing distance (possibly the whole store). I even heard one guy two isles over yell "BYE". It was a funny day at the store.

No way No how

We've officially entered into the "NO!" phase. Looking back, I should have enjoyed the "Yes" phase a whole lot more than I did. Wesley used to say yes to everything. Do you want to get dressed? Do you want to go for a ride in Mommy's car? Do you want to eat lunch? Yes! Now whenever we ask him anything he gets this little furrow between his brows and says "No?" It always sounds like a question. Oh the frustration. Do you want to read this book? Will you please finish your dinner? No?
I'm thinking this lovely phase is going to last into his teens.

The rain has let up for today only so I'm going out to plant oodles of flowers and veggies. It has rained nearly every day for almost two weeks. This is wonderful for everything except the ability to mow the yard. Sean is going to have to bale it soon if it doesn't let up. I'll leave you with a cute little video of Sean doing his nightly chase game with Wesley. It's the simple things.

Weekend progress

• Yesterday we made our annual family trip into the fish pond store to get our starter fish for the koi pond. I've spent the past several weeks pumping out the murky nasty water that has been in it all winter long and then raking out the huge amount of nasty deteriorating leaves left behind. I'm being serious here when I say you could fill half of Wesley's room with the amount of leaves I removed from the pond. It's a job that I absolutely hate every year but once it's finished I truly love having the koi pond. It's a very peaceful area of the property that I tend to gravitate towards when I'm outside.
  
  We only got three medium sized fish this year to join the 12 or so that survived over the winter in our upstairs bathroom. You might remember I had originally saved around thirty last fall, and we are down to twelve. I've learned that a 40 gallon stock tank can successfully only hold about 10 fish. They might have faired better if I was religious about once a week water changes but they were lucky to get once a month water changes. Taking 10 gallons of water out every week got really old. This fall I'm only going to save the really large fish, the tiny ones I'll let Mother Nature take care of.



• For my birthday I got a Garmin GPS unit. Now this is something I would have never spent the money on myself since we are home bodies and don't tend to travel much. But we are really having fun with this thing. We actually all loaded up in the van yesterday just to drive around and try it out. I guess I didn't know that you can look locations up on it. I assumed you had to have an address in mind. We could be in town and look up restaurants within a 10 miles range. Very cool piece of electronics. I'm really looking forward to doing some geocaching. I think when Wesley gets older we could have a blast doing that during the week. Our little adventure.



• We've been battling an ant problem in our kitchen for a couple of seasons now and we've tracked it to the fact that we never completed the caulking job around the window. I tiled the backdrop back in June of 2007 but never felt confident with caulking to complete the job. So the ants have been taking over. Yesterday we caulked the kitchen and, surprise, the ants are gone. I feel like an idiot for not doing it sooner. The confident builder came from using a nifty tool called a Pro-Caulker. This is a "As seen on TV" product and it worked great. It made a smooth edge that I cleaned up with a sponge. It is so nice to see the kitchen project finished after nearly two years.


That was our productive weekend, hope you all had a nice one.

It's time to pig out....

Happy May Day everyone! I have the privilege of turning 30 years old today. Boy did this sure sneak up on me! I swear one day I'm in college minding my own business and then I turn around I've got a mortgage, an awesome husband of almost 8 years, 1.5 kids and a mini van. Not that I'm complaining about any of this, I wouldn't change a thing. It's just fascinating to watch time march on.

Tonight we are going to drop Wesley off at Noni and Papa's house (we are trying to get Wesley to call my Dad "Papa John" because how funny would that be?) while we go out and have our annual pig out fest on snow crab. I have been looking forward to this for several months when I started thinking about whether snow crab is actually ok for me to eat. Yeah you're probably rolling your eyes at this one, but pregnant women are supposed to really watch their mercury intake and some seafood contains high levels. Snow crab is in the moderate risk category, meaning don't eat more than 6 oz every week. So I figure a pound of it once in this pregnancy isn't going to harm anyone. I've given up every other harmful thing, I refuse to give up my birthday crab feast. I'm drooling thinking about it.

Wesley has been hamming it up for the camera the past couple of days so I thought I'd share. All I gotta say is boys will be boys.

Example one: Boys love to be anywhere they aren't supposed to be.

Example two: If it has wheels and says Tonka on the side of it, it totally rocks man.

Example three: Don't come between a boy and his pudding.