Here we go again . . .

Well if you have been following our life lately you would think we had enough on our plates but Heavenly Father felt we could use another life altering event.

Last night at 10 pm my dad got dizzy and passed out in the kitchen. He landed face first on the kitchen floor. When my mom found him he was laying in a pool of blood because he broke his nose. She flipped him over and he was like a limp noodle. She called 911 and got him to the hospital where they found out he fractured his neck and they would need to take him to Oakland for further tests and surgery. As of right now all we know is he is slightly numb in his extremities and he has an MRI scheduled for noon tomorrow. Prayers are welcome.

On a lighter note I did have my 28 week appointment today. Taylor is doing great. The placenta previa is gone so we are not high risk anymore. Hip hip hooray something going the right way. Hopefully tomorrow we will have more good news.

The Birds

Our life is nothing like Alfred Hitchcock's movie but lately it seems like it could go that way. Last spring we had the fun of birds using our garage as a nesting ground. We tried to keep the doors shut to no avail I was cleaning up nests and bird feces all the time. This spring we thought we were prepared we knew the birds would want to nest so the second we were out of the garage we would close the door behind us. Sunday when me and the kids got home from church there were no less than 5 birds sitting on top of the garage waiting to get in so we didn't park in the garage I didn't want to deal with it. When Chet got home from work that night he went into the garage and there was new nests. Drive me batty I was sick of it. So we were playing outside on Monday and I happen to see a bird fly into the garage through a hole from an old chimney. Chet got home from work I made him cover the hole. We again cleaned up the garage and what do we see on Tuesday some bird had squeezed through the insulation, moved it out of the way to get back in, so now there is a huge cover over the hole. Hopefully that works.

99 days!!!

I started this post when there were 100 days left, but now we are officially into double digits!! I am 26 weeks along and I'm hoping to get through this summer, its going to be rough since I was out playing with the kids and got to hot and started throwing up. I hope we have some cool moments this summer so we can play outside since the kids love it.

Owen is my running jumping bean. Grandma and Grandpa Porter gave him a trampoline as an early birthday present and he is loving it. He wants to jump with Lily but she has no balance and just flops around as he jumps her.

Lily is our resident dirt eater. Can't get her to stop. Last night she tried to see how many rocks she could get in her mouth at Gene and Lisa's. It was a lot. I feel like I'm going to be finding rocks in her diaper later today.

Scrap page

I'm so sad the picture quality isn't better but it was taken on a disposable camera that the kids had fun with.

Picture update

I've had these pictures on the computer since just after Easter but never blogged them so here are my wonderful children since Easter.

I couldn't get the kids to hold still Easter morning or get Owen to wear clothes so here is Easter morning.

We just finished lunch before church and Lily is looking for remnants.

She's so proud she found some!!!

This is Lily when she learned how to fold her arms. She's praying Gerber Graduates will help strengthen her body against the next days attack.

Owen's masterpiece. I went downstairs to pay bills and this is what I found upon returning. Chet was a foot away oblivious.

For the next week this is what Lily's hair looked like we couldn't comb it down it just poofed right back up. What's really funny is she only has peach fuzz right up front so it looked completely styled flat front, curls in the back.

One week down so many to go . . .

We are offically 24 weeks now and I feel so very very pregnant. I think chasing a one year old and a 2 year old have something to do with the increased body aches. It also isn't helping that the munchkins are sick with a cold and have opted the wake up at 6:30 every morning. We spent the first 15 minutes this morning trying to get all the snot out of there noses so we could ease breathing. They both pretend to blow their noses now but they blow out there mouths not their noses. When I try to get Owen to blow out his nose he just sucks it back in.

We had our 24 week appt. and nothing crazy happened it was just the run of the mill are you OK, here's the baby's heartbeat see you in 4 weeks. My next appt. is the gestational diabetes appt. I always get super shaky which they say is a sign that you have it but I'm never even close.

Owen is getting to be super smart. He loves letters so his favorite shows are Super Why which is about stories and they talk about letters and words and word world where everything is made of letters. I was shocked when they sang the alphabet song and Owen sang along of course he missed a bunch but then he brought me a book and told me all the letters in it.

Lily is just crazy because Owen is in the mine stage so is she. This morning she was holding her sippy cup upside down and I was going to fix it she put it behind her back and said "MY". When Owen tries to get something of hers its NO NO NO MY NO!!! Until he stops or I step in. I try not to laugh but I just remember Owen's first word was Dad and that's what he said forever until he learned more. Lily knows Mom and Dad and bubble and book so many words but none are as useful as NO and MY.

Lilykins Elizabeth

As we all know Lily is the cutest thing in the whole world and is only getting cuter as more of her hair starts to curl up in the back. She is so smart to this week she learned how to fold her arms to pray and she gets so excited that she sways while she's doing it. We have also been practicing high fives. She doesn't quite get the point but she'll hit your hand and clap and walk away. I'm am also glad to report she is understanding more words and is able to get her point across to me a lot easier. When she's hungry she's learned that you stand by the fridge or point at the snack cupboard (thanks to Owen). If she wants her bum changed she finds the baby wipes or stands by the closet that has her diapers in them. She knows what sit, stand, lay down, and out mean (just like a little puppy). I'm trying to get her to stop whining for things and as we both learn more its getting easier. She likes to sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and wait for food to be ready and for the first time yesterday I said go play with Owen and she got up and went and sat with Owen for a few minutes. That's the most peace in the kitchen I've had in a long time. As I was proof reading this I found that raising children is just like puppies except hopefully my kids are a little cleaner and get more trained over the years.

The Ex-Lax Miracle

If you haven't been following Owen's potty training missteps for about a month he decided he didn't want to poo anymore. It became the bane of my existence. Everyday there were accidents skid marks in ever pair of underwear and even though we had bought 3 packages of underwear there were never enough. Well, to get him to start going again we had to give him chocolate ex lax and mix stool softeners into his drinks. It still wasn't helping. I was at my wits end. Who knew you could get so frustrated with going to the bathroom. The day before our ultrasound I gave Owen one of his ex-lax squares and hoped it would help. Hours passed by and nothing. Lisa and Cole came over to play so we went downstairs and there I saw the empty box of ex lax. Owen being the amazing kid he is ate 20 more doses of the chocolate ex-lax.

Being concerned parents we called the ex-lax hot line which I do not recommend because "mike" couldn't speak English couldn't understand the last name Porter after a few minutes I gave up trying to spell our last name and Chet called poison control. Apparently most cases of children having to take the chocolate ex-lax ends the same way they find the box and eat the whole thing. Needless to say Owen was finally able to go the the bathroom that night in total I think he and Chet were up 8-10 times. But here is the miracle so that night and the next day completely cleared out everything in his body and for a week now no accidents, he isn't trying to hold it in anymore. I'm thrilled!

It's a . . .

Sorry it took so long but after the ultrasound we went to Chet's parents house and they watched the kids for us while we had a night off. It was great, but for what we've all been waiting for it's a girl. Maybe, she was very pristine sitting cross legged, upside down. The ultrasound tech had issues getting any proper pictures of this little one.

If you can read ultrasound ultrasound blur, this is little Taylor Jean (we think that's going to be the name). When trying to find names for this little one it was hard because we just had a girl so we were thinking boy. Chet wanted to name him Taylor and I said that can be our girl name think of something else. That should have been our clue that it was a girl because when naming Owen and Lily we would immediately come up with a name for the sex that it was and not agree on anything for the other, so we agreed on Taylor for a girl and nothing else ever came up.

Everything else came up normal except the placenta is blocking the birth canal so if it doesn't shrink by the due date we'll have to have a C-section because there is no way out. They said in 95% of cases it does so we have another ultrasound in 12 weeks to check again. Fingers crossed we've had 2 easy deliveries naturally so I'm afraid of C-sections its not our normal route.

New joys and toys

Well, its been an expensive week here at the Porters, but everyone is happy. When we first moved into the house Chet and I went back and forth over where the TV would be upstairs or downstairs and if you've seen our Dinosaur TV that weighs a thousand pounds you would understand that every back and forth was painful and slow. Here we are a year later and the topic came up again Chet wanted a TV upstairs to give the kids a distraction so hopefully I could get more things done around the house, instead of having to be downstairs with them all the time. So to remedy the problem I bought this . . .

and Chet bought this . . .

Now our upstairs actually looks like a living room not just two couches sitting there very lonely barely getting any love. For Christmas this year Chet wanted to get a 4o something inch LCD flat panel . . . yeah he could tell you a bunch of numbers and letters about it but it goes over my head. Well, with the old dinosaur TV upstairs of course he needed to get a TV for downstairs he found one on craigslist for a great deal and its only 37, I know I said only but it is plenty big and I personally never wanted anything bigger. So, he got his awesome letters and numbers and saved a thousand dollars and I got a armoire for upstairs and I'm actually folding laundry again. :)

On another note Owen decided he needed a haircut and got out the electric razor while I was making dinner the other day. I thought he was brushing his teeth (he has an electric toothbrush) because that is one of his favorite pastimes so I told him to shut it off and play with Lily until dinner was ready. Before dinner I had to go to the bathroom and much to my surprise there was a chunk of brownish blonde hair on the floor. My first thought was please let it be Owen not Lily. He never did actually get in trouble for it because he did just shave his own head. But it was the front so the only way to make him look normal again was to shave it off.

As you can tell he is very proud of himself. After I shaved his head we went into my room to read and say prayers and that was when he saw himself for the first time in the full length mirror. He response was 'Momma, hair gone, where hair?' and he went into the bathroom but I had already vacuumed it up and he went into the living room it wasn't there so for the rest of the night he kept going back to the mirror and checking himself out with a big smile. Funny thing is if he hits his head on something he still tells me his hair hurts.

For those who are watching the calendar with me the big day is tomorrow the ultrasound to find out what were having is at 10:00 am!!! When we were driving Chet's TV home yesterday I was amazed to here him say, 'You know I'm excited about the TV but I'm way more excited for the ultrasound tomorrow.' He is such a daddy.