We got some bad news at the dentist. My three year old daughter has six cavities While I was expecting it since our doctor already told us that lead poisoning could weaken her teeth and to be watching for issues, I was still sad and upset with myself. I felt like I failed her. I brushed her teeth like I should and did not give her bunches of sugar but yet we are still dealing with this issue.
My other three kids have no cavities I was hoping that the kids would not get them at all (I know wishful thinking on my part). I noticed the spots on her teeth and called the dentist right away. I knew she had cavities Over the phone he told me not to worry, it could be staining since she has deep pits in her molars and just to bring her in to get checked. My gut feeling was right.
Kairi did not do well at the dentist either, she let them look in her mouth but when they tried using any of their tools, she freaked. She started sobbing, covering her mouth and saying no over and over again. They only did a light cleaning, did not even try to get xrays and then wrote a referral to a pediatric dentist that will put her under and take care of all of her teeth at once.
Posted 05-15-2013 at 09:47 AM by
Krista
Being a parent is so, so hard. You know, today I had several moments where I wondered what I ever was thinking when I decided to reproduce. You know those Facebook statuses about people needing to pass a test before being allowed to become parents? Today I wondered what my score might have been.
I know these last few sentences sound like I am throwing myself a pity party, and trust me, at some point I’ll get over it. I’m not looking for attention, I swear. I’m just feeling very overwhelmed, and when wondering who to share it with I thought, who better than other mothers?
Today at my daughter’s speech appointment the director came out to speak with me—uh oh!—about my daughter’s progress. She first asked me how she was doing since beginning therapy. I absolutely raved about how much better she was doing, how much better she was able to communicate and how it had given us a better relationship. She seemed simply conversational…
Over the years I have tried several different methods of selling the kids outgrown clothes. I now have a routine down that makes me money, gets me store credit and helps others out.
When I first started to sell off outgrown clothes I tried eBay, it ended up being way too much work and turned little profit for me. I know some people make a good deal of money doing this, it was just not for me. I do love buying lots of clothing on eBay though. After that I tried Craigslist and a couple of resale shops and both of those ended up being a no go for me as well.
It took over a year before I got my system in place and once I got it, I have not strayed for it. The first thing I do is sort everything out into bins. I have a sell, recycle or trash, donate and give away bin.
I usually start with my give a way bin. I will call my sister to see if she wants some of my son’s outgrown stuff to hold onto for my nephew and then I call a couple friends and see if they are in need of anything for the girls they have that are smaller then my youngest. ( I keep almost all my girls clothes to use until the youngest has outgrown them ). I select some nice items for those people and set them into the bin.
I have written in the past about how our plans for another child are still up in the air and while I know it is best to wait, is becoming really hard for me. Since getting pregnant with my first, this is the longest I have gone between pregnancies and the thought of waiting another two years makes me pretty sad. There is only 15 months between my first and second children, 23 months between my second and third and 23 months between my third and fourth.
Amelia is my youngest and she will be two years old in June. I cannot believe that my little baby is so big already. Time really seems to fly by. It is even harder to think she will be four years old before we make our final decision on a fifth child.
The decision is already made when it comes to me. I know I want another baby. My heart aches for another baby. My husband is the one that is still undecided. He says he would like another child but he worries about my health since I had complications with Amelia. We have been doing research together and the studies I have shown him have calmed some of his fears but I know nothing will calm them completely. He also wants to wait so we can buy a different car, pay down more debt and possibly move. All those things are going to take time. I do know that he is coming around more and more to the idea of another, he no longer is saying IF we have another all the time, now he is saying when and even has told me a couple names he likes.
Posted 05-13-2013 at 01:14 PM by
Krista
I have had a lot going on in the last months. Between the craziness of December—and the bills, bills, bills that come with the craziness–, family issues, the death of a friend, school, potty training and trying to conceive…whew! I have truly been on an emotional roller coaster. It still feels like I haven’t come up for air some days. Some moments I can forget for a little while and just concentrate on my precious girls…and others I wish I could go to sleep for a month undisturbed, or however long it takes to get all the sadness and frustration out of my system.
I was reading a post on a website in which another woman shared her problems. She definitely has a full plate and as I formulated a response, I read “Don’t worry—God doesn’t give us more than we can bear.”
The truth is, I don’t believe that. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I believe in God, and I believe that He is there to help us. But the fact is that the Bible never tells us that God won’t give us more than we can handle. Believe me, I’ve looked. Those words are uttered by well-meaning people to remind you that you are not alone, and that you will get through your situation, no matter what it is.
Posted 05-13-2013 at 01:13 PM by
HollyRay
I am fat. Very fat. Every day I work out and eat right, and I have gotten less fat, but it has been slow going while nursing, then I had a brilliant idea. I want to teach dance again, but that means I need way more stamina, so I set off to increase my workout time from 5 hours a week, to 15. For 5 weeks I would wake up and workout, the workout would rotate between weight lifting, Zumba (I am a instructor), and ballet. Every evening I would do either a Zumba core workout or a high intensity Zumba, depending on what I did that morning. After 5 weeks I had to take a day off, and it hurt, and I knew it would. I used to dance like this in my younger days, and similar crashes would happen, you see it just isn’t healthy to workout everyday and this is why.
1. You need to let your muscles rest. Training causes tiny tears in your muscles, these need to repair. In order for these to repair you need at least 24 hours in between working those muscles, if you lift weights and work upper body one day, you can work lower body the next, allowing you more workouts throughout the week. However working out everyday can cause the tiny tears to take longer to heal, it is ideal to take a rest day every 3-5 days.
2. Everyday workouts can cause exhaustion. We all know that feeling of dread as we start a workout that melts away and after the workout we feel energized. When you workout everyday you have a higher chance of NOT feeling energized, instead you may end up feeling worse. Not feeling great can really deter you from working out anymore, so you may take a LONG rest (a week or more) only to have a harder time dragging yourself back to those workouts. Help keep yourself on track by keeping on top of rest days, and choosing workouts you enjoy.
3. If you workout during all your free time you have no balance. If every minute of your
I recently told a close friend of mine that I am starting a gender neutral diaper and woolies stash now even though we were undecided about a fifth and it would be two years before we started TTC if we had one more. She looked at me with a look of bewilderment and just asked me why? I laughed and then explained that I have a method to my madness.
My first reason is that I am slowly teaching myself how to knit new things. My knitting abilities are not that good yet and I want to do more. I am currently working on a pair of newborn longies, it is taking me a long time because I have a lot of other projects going on and I am very unsure of myself, I have to keep looking at the pattern and I keep second guessing myself. As I get more confident, I am hoping to be able to get projects done a lot faster and have more mama made items. I am hoping that I will also be able to teach myself how to make fitteds so I can have a large stash of those as well. I always love looking at all the squishy mama made fitted diapers.
Another reason is that I want to have a large stash. At this time I am not spending money on anything for this stash, only doing trades or making it myself. At this point in time I only have a few items for this newbie stash. I have a Christmas themed pair that is actually a size medium, they used to be my three year old daughter’s and I have just hung onto them, a pair of brown ones that I am trading for, the pair I am knitting, a couple diapers and some yarn. This is nothing compared to what I want.
We have been slowly redoing our home over the last six years. One of the biggest projects was redoing all the windows. The windows were very old, you could feel the cold air leaking in and they all had lead paint on them. The first windows to go were the kitchen, main bedroom and nursery windows. Those were actually a gift from my husband’s grandparents, they were replaced about a year after we bought the house.
That left us with the living room and upstairs rooms to replace. Chris and I wanted to get them all done right away but life happens and it was a couple years before we were able to get those done. You could feel the difference in the whole house right away after getting them done. That meant the main floor ( minus the front porch since we are not redoing those windows at this time ) had all new windows. Our heating and cooling bill went down that year.
As of a couple days ago, the windows upstairs have also been replaced. I know this is going to make our bill even lower. We had not been able to open those windows for awhile, the screens were broken and we were not comfortable leaving them open. Having new windows means on nice days we can let the rooms air out, we won’t have to use the window air conditioner up there as much and the heat/cool will stay in the room instead of leaking out around the windows.
The upstairs is also now lead free. This is a huge deal to us since our three year old daughter had lead poisoning last year. We have been working hard ever since to get our home free of lead. We only have a couple projects left and we will have completed that goal as well.
It is finally starting to warm up here in Iowa and that means garage sale season will be starting soon. While this year I have no plans of having one, I do plan on shopping at a lot of them.
I love garage sales. My husband and I like to go together, he is always hunting for old video games or collectibles that might be worth something. I like to go mostly to find great deals on kids clothing. We did not get a chance last year to do a lot of them, we really only went to a few but the ones we did make it to were pretty great.
The first one I went to last year was early in the garage sale season. It was a huge moving sale, the family had three kids that were all older then mine and they were selling all the outgrown clothes. I walked away with three large bags full of barely worn clothes for my kids and I only spent $20.00. The others we went to we were able to get some house hold items we needed and my husband hit one that made his day. My husband is a huge star wars fan, he is always looking for cool old collectibles but rarely finds anything. He was actually out with his mom when they drove past a yard sale that caught his eye. The owner was actually a customer back when Chris was a Schwans driver. He was moving out of state and they wanted to get rid of all the stuff he had collected over the years. He had an At At for sale, this is something Chris had been wanting for a long time. The guy had it listed for $40 but since he knew and liked my husband, he gave it to him for $15. Chris bought a few other star wars things there but his biggest buy was that toy. A friend of ours came over that evening and about fainted when Chris showed him. We were a little surprised when he told us that they sell for over $300. Chris has no intention of selling it but it was nice to know we were able to get something high valued for so little.
My oldest turned seven on April 18th. My husband and I had been trying to come up with a good birthday idea for him. We really did not want to get him toys since he already had so many but we wanted to do something he would really enjoy.
We had been talking about giving his room a make over. He wanted a star wars room, so we decided to surprise him a total room make over for his birthday. His room really had no theme before hand, the walls were still painted a light blue from when it used to be his nursery (before we decided to move our room and the nursery downstairs and let the big kids have the upstairs), there was no art work on the walls and he just had the red bed spread that he wanted last year. We knew this was going to be a big surprise and that he was going to love it.
I worked it out with my parents to have Alex and Destiny both stay with them for the two days before Alex’s birthday so Chris and I could get his room done. Of course the day we were going to start, it rained so much that our entire basement flooded and Chris ended up having to clean it. I worked in Alex’s room and actually stayed up almost all night long getting it done.
We painted the walls two different colors, there is a grey accent wall, the window trim is grey and the rest is a dark blue. These colors match perfectly with the bed set he got from one of his Grandma’s ( it was also part of the surprise ). I made all the art work in his room. The canvas prints I just painted, splattered to make stars and just the stickers that you can put on walls, the framed blue prints actually came with toys that my husband had as a child that he had kept and the memory board I made so he can hang pictures of his friends and family up. I found a darth vader alarm clock, I used the pillow case from his bed set as a table cover and my husband gave him an old book of star wars ships.
