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.

The medical profession

This is me venting so I'm sorry if it offends. Doctors and nurses have a very important place in the world. They do help people, but when they stop listening to the patient that is when it gets ridiculous. I got sick again this week and had to go to the hospital to get IV fluids. I told her first thing I have bad veins the only ones who are able to find my veins are the NICU (very tiny baby) nurses. She said oh ok and stuck me once, twice, three times, blowing 3 veins the ones the NICU nurses get the first time, every time. So she goes out for help, comes back and says she is the most experienced person here so Chet says can you call the hospital they can get her veins. And the nurse says some bull about how they can't do it, and pokes me 3 more times. After this the doctor comes in to see how the IV was started and amazingly it hasn't been, so she calls the hospital and gets another nurse. I am so very, very enraged but I know if I don't get the IV started it will just get worse. So here I am the next day yelling at the top of my lungs if you are a health care 'professional' who abuses people for fun I HATE YOU.

And again . . .

Owen helped clean up the family room tonight so I had nothing to do when the kids went to bed. As the ultrasound day, April 8th, draws nearer I keep thinking about Owen and Lily's birthdays and I just wanted to do another page for Owen's.


Watching your husband morph into a dad before your eyes after giving birth to your first child for me was amazing. It was like he was glowing with joy.

I'm Back!!!

After a long break from scrapbooking I finally sat down to do a page because well if you don't start one you have no reason to keep coming back to finish it. I didn't think I missed it that much until I picked out the pictures and template I was going to use and next thing I know it's 9:30 pm and I'm done and nothing else in the house is. :)

Phone

Phone, phone, wonderful phone!!! (In my head I'm singing that :)) I have a phone again which means now I need to learn how to use another phone which is going to be interesting without any sort of manual. It's a Kyocera which I have never tried before and as of right now I'm still trying to use it like my old LG its not working :) Oh yeah and since I didn't just buy a new phone on a whim my was destroyed if you want to talk to me and your number wasn't magically in Chet's phone your going to need to call me because the numbers are all gone.

Little Daddy

Every once in a while I try to stop taking my anti-vomit pills because they give me raging headaches and I would love that to be gone. So I went without taking my pills and woke up this morning BAD. I got Owen up and I went straight to the bathroom to throw up. Owen went to the kitchen got the barf bucket gave it to me, went back to the kitchen got some cheese and then proceeded into Lily's room, he sat next to the crib giving her little pieces until I was done. He is such a good boy.

The un-exciting

I have the feeling I should blog more but I look at our life and think I'm going to disgust people. Starting with the worst Owen has been, to put it nicely, plugged in the restroom department. I took him to the doctor because I didn't want it to get any worse he was holding it in and crying about it (enough to break a mom's heart). They gave us a stool softener and said once there's movement :) you may need to play with the dosing to get it right for him. Well, today there was movement of the worst variety. Of course, Chet was at work and Owen said to me calmly Momma I go potty. No warning signs go off at all until he starts walking to the restroom crying. I go to lend moral support and when we get his pants off he is covered bum to ankle thank goodness for cuffs on his pants in . . . sewage. I sit him on the toilet and tell him to stay but his is so traumatized by the poo that he follows me because I went to get some wipes to clean-up the bathroom floor, toilet and contain everything. I flip, I'm pregnant give me some credit get him in the bathroom and put him in the tub. Where the whole scene changes. . . Owen stops screaming and is laughing and playing because he's "Big" he's taking a shower. :)

On the Lily front. She is mobile her favorite thing to do is walk straight at the stairs and then turn right when she's about to plunge down them and I am bolting to save her life. And what does she do when she turns, throws her head back and laughs at me for once again believing that she would just walk down the stairs. She's 13 months old and a smart aleck. She has had her walking accidents so I am not crazy for jumping at her. We keep the kids books under the TV and she wanted to be big and without sitting down pick up a book. Yup, wham straight into the TV stand perfect square bruise dead center on her forehead. If that wasn't bad enough we were visiting with Great-Grandma Porter and Owen 'had to go potty' this was before the amazing stool softeners. She had to follow him to the bathroom and somehow (Chet was in there not me) she slipped and hit her head on the toilet. Forehead to cheek bone bruise, a nice round one to accentuate her face.

As for me and Chet were old. As I blog this at 10 pm I am thinking why am I not in bed. The past week we'd put the kids to bed and go downstairs and at 9 Chet would be laying on the floor with a pillow and blanket and look at me all blood shot saying he wants to go to bed. Our kids have made us so old. I wake up every morning at 7 and the kids get up at 7:30 I'm afraid to even move thinking they know I'm awake any noise I make will alert them and I'll have to go make breakfast. Yes it's the job I signed on for and I trained them to wake-up and within a half an hour have breakfast in front of them but goodness can't we take a day off and wake up at 8 or heaven forbid 9. Owen was up new years til 1:30 am we were at a friends house the next morning he was up at 8. It didn't even phase him. I was toast, we had cold cereal for breakfast and snuggled on the couch cause I didn't want to move :)