whats going on...

Well right now I'm watching JW play with his wooden trains talking to his 'guys' and they are saying 'Thank you, Thank you' and 'Thank you very much'. He's so polite lol! And Jace is trying to crawl! He gets on his belly and scoots his self every where to anything he wants on the floor and he's trying to get his legs up and arms to the crawling position!! It's crazy how fast he's learning.

We've been outside a lot these past couple days. Swimming in the kiddie pool, riding bikes and walking lots of good stuff. My hubby moved our extra furniture and TV from the basement to the garage for his 'man room'. Which has been attracting men from all over the neighborhood! He also put his PS2 in there so there is lots of gaming going on and sometimes after the kids are in bed I hang out with him and play a little myself. He has me try to help him beat the hard parts lol!

We are almost all ready for my sisters wedding!! I'll be heading out soon to stay with my mom for the week before to help them as much as i can with my two little men with me. I'm not going to lie it's rough dragging two kids around when your not at your home base. They really know when they are home or not even as babies. Our last trip JW wanted to go home the entire trip! Hopefully this next trip will be better since we are staying for a whole week and we are just going to try to keep them at my moms. At least she will be there to help out.

My new finds!
Disinfectant Spray: Half Hydrogen Peroxide, Half Water Works great!!! Even as a cleaner!
Wipe Solution: 1 Cup Chamomile Tea freshly brewed. (it will stain your white wipes but I don't care) I also bought some Chamomile/Lavender tea to try. Just make the tea and add it to your wipes add water if you need it. Chamomile is a natural inflammatory so it helps with diaper rash and irritation. It's helped Jace stop scratching his bum raw. I also mad a double strength cup and put it in JW bath to help with his rash from his swim trunks.

Well I can't add pics booo!!!!

sights and smells....

Oh man I have that new mom smell... moms you know... that milky musty smell of spit up, sweat and maybe a little urine.... Sniff sniff ahhh!!!! I need a shower! So yeah you know your a mom when you think to yourself "what would be better buggers, pee, or crayon on the wall?" I came to the conclusion pee... technically sterile when it comes out and cleans up fairly easily. Buggers make me just want to BARF!!! and Crayon won't come off my walls, PERIOD! Flat wall paint should be banned from existence! But I do have this fear that the germ police will come to my house and quarantine it because its a bio hazard with all the little boy potty training accidents we have or maybe i didn't know happened... our carpet sucks it totally absorbs everything so i can't tell where things are so i just get the ol Lysol out spray and get the carpet cleaner and do my best to get it all clean. How annoying! Anyway we do the naked potty training approach :D My 2 year old runs around naked and goes to the bathroom when he has to go. Works AWESOME unless we have a super awesome balloon that must be played with... oh boy... now that I think about it its just freaking hilarious! So he got that 'look' any one with a tot in training knows the 'look' of wonder in their eyes as they are about to pee all over Gods creation! With us there are two separate look the 'Pee': a look of wonderment and aw, the 'Poo': a look of concern and deep concentration. So he was playing with his awesome balloon and had the 'Pee' I say hey do you have to go potty lets go try. His reply, 'No! Play!' well you can't make them pee, can you? So 3 minutes later he starts peeing on his shirt. So I thinking I want to make sure he knows to go to the potty and half mommy mush brain pick up said toddler mid stream and take him to the bathroom. What was I thinking!!!!!! Seriously what?!?!? I was like well maybe he will stop... uh no!!! Who can stop midstream! So Dads looking at me like I lost my freaking mind which is very well possible! There's pee going every where! TV, Floor, Dad's legs, some hit the baby, pantry door, Hallway Walls, Bathroom Door, then finally the Tub!!! Yeah he was um... done before we got to the potty! So what to do now clean up the mess or the tot? Yeah clean up the mess, tot is fine because he didn't pee on himself just everything else possible! All is well and clean and on to the next adventure... Oh the Joys of being a Mom!! Seriously I love it. Who else has these daily encounters to discuss on a regular basis?

And tada!! The culprit pee body :) A fitting pic don't you think!

Spring Time!!!

I'm so glad it's spring! I'm ready for warm weather, lemonade, the smell of BBQ and fresh flowers! We're going to have a busy spring. Our niece is graduating high school and my sister is getting married. So that means lots of trips to KS. Hopefully in June I will have time to see some friends! I can't believe my little sister is getting married it seems like we were just playing with our barbies together and I was just hauling her away in our wagon from another dare devil bike spill. Or fighting over her always stealing my clothes. Or picking up the phone when one of her boys called asking them how old she was and if the answer was wrong (normally was) I would tell them the right age! She could definitely pass for 16 and 17 when she was 13 and 14. Oh man did we fight at teenagers whew! We had some big ones! And now she's talking about having babies and buying houses! And I have the privilege to be her maid of honor and JW is going to be the ring bearer. It's pretty cool to actually be a part of her wedding instead of playing wedding in our basement! Maybe that's why hers is going to be so beautiful! And why we all love planning them! We've been practicing for a long time!

This is on my wedding day and Melissa wanted
to know what it felt like to be under the vail!

Melissa the Bride to be, Me, my littlest sis Crystal

Baby Jace just started using his saucer! I'm so amazed how big and alert he is seems like we had JW in there with blankets forever!
JW had the hand, foot and mouth disease this past week and is cutting his last two teeth, poor guy but we are on the up and up with all that he seems to be in a better mood today. His new favorite thing is to kiss his baby brother on the head and play with his hands. They love each other!

Here are some more pics!

What I'm a mom and its hard???

So yesterday on Oprah it was the Secret lives of a Mom episode. Cool, right! We're going to find out other mom's dirty laundry. So they were talking about how hard it is to be a mom and how some people thought they may have make a mistake of becoming a mother and questioning their abilities. I so get all that! We all as mothers deal with that. My problem was how they were taking lite on daily things that your children depend on you for. Examples: Not bathing for 3 weeks, Not brushing hair which turned in to dread locks, forgetting to feed them, stating you have a favorite child. These things are just not okay to neglect or say. When you have a child that child depends on you 100%. A lot of moms said no one told them how hard it was going to be a mom. No you really never know before your there but to think it's going to be easy is just lying to yourself! I knew I was in for anything and everything. I sometimes feel like my first child is the experimental child since I was a young mom and didn't do my own research! I have had 2 totally different births, one child is circumcised the other is not one had the full vaccine schedule one will have a delayed schedule. We all question things on a daily basis. But find your support group (which as seen in my previous blog I need to find a new one) and stop complaining about all the inconveniences of being a mother! You had sex you made the child if they can't depend on you who can they depend on? One of my friends put this very well: "Group thinking it into acceptance is bullshit!"

JW Playing

Feeding the fish his cheerios at the zoo with daddy

Stupid Funk

Oh man I need to get out of this funk I've been in... Kevin's been in one too. I really miss all my friends and playgroups from Kansas. We just need to start making more friends that are like minded. It can be hard to hang out with people that are so different from you especially on parenting choices. We started making friends from our Friends of Missouri Midwives group so that great! We just need to meet with them more often! So anyways I was talking to my awesome hubby last night and our goal is to watch less tv less internet and go outside more and find more friends. For a lot of people is it so easy to get in to just being lazy and feeling sorry for yourself. The hard part is doing something about it but if you have help it is so easy! I just love Kevin for starting the conversation and knowing me so well and knowing what we need to do to change. So here's to a new chapter in our life! For our boys because they don't deserve the parents we are at the moment! And we love them way to much to let it continue...

Snow in April! Thank goodness it was gone as fast as it came!

Heartbreak...

Okay in Missouri midwifery was illegal until this past June... literally you could not have a birth with a midwife period. They could go to prison for it and still can if they are not a least Certified Professional Midwife (CPN). When moving from Kansas to Missouri I didn't know that. In Kansas my plan was to have our second child in a Birth Center and I was sure St. Louis would have tons of Birth Centers on every corner! Not the case! You see to have a birth center a Dr has to oversee the whole operation and in Missouri not many Drs want to even associate with midwives. :( So it makes the choices for parents very limited before June you options were OB and hospital birth, Midwife and home birth (break the law), or unassisted which means you deliver your baby yourself. So sad for parents to not be able to make a choice on how they want to experience the birth of their child. Parents who choose Home birth typically are very educated in making that decision because lets face it you are totally going against the grain and you want to know all the fact when your family thinks your crazy that you want to have your baby at home :) At least that was the case for me. So its not like they are just sitting at home clueless to whats going to happen ready to pop out a baby. Midwives have check up just as OB's do just not quite as invasive. And in my experience much more hands on care. I learned more about how my body worked with my midwife on my second child than with my OB (technically she was a midwife too but it was in KS where they work with Dr's and she was basically a OB with a Midwife title) with my first. So with the care you receive you form a bond with your midwife, i knew she truly cared about me and our baby almost as if we were part of her family. We had a Home Birth not totally free of complications but we knew we made the right decision and trusted the ability of our midwife and I truly believe that she helped me avoid a c-section. If you want to read my birth story go further back in my blog. But what I didn't add is the tragic loss of a baby whose mom was in labor the same time I was. Only God knows what happened to that poor baby. And I can't begin to imagine loosing a child. Tonight at our monthly midwife meeting the Dad was there furious at the Midwife, with a mission to keep her from practicing. I think as a Husbands and Fathers men feel an obligation to protect their family and I really believe that is what his goal was coming to our meeting tonight. I don't think he has come to the place yet where he knows nothing could have been done. If it were me I would be questioning everything my decisions, religion, the ability of my midwife, my ability to birth... And going through the what ifs because what if the tables where turned and it happened to our family. It could so easily happen to anyone, life is a very precious and fragile, especially a child's life. For a while the death of that baby made our birth almost bittersweet for me. I kept thinking what if I had chosen to have a hospital birth would the midwife then been able to save the baby. But driving home last night as I tried to process everything I realized she could have done nothing more. She was meant to be at my birth as devastating as it was for the other family there is nothing that could have been done even at the hospital. Yes if she was in the hospital she would have been monitored more which may have shown the baby in distress or may have not. We will never know and that has to be devastating for the parents... I would want answers... I did not introduce myself to the Dad in fear I would just make his pain even worse. What he said really tore at every ones heart for him 'this is supposed to be the happiest time of my life and it's the most horrible time of my life'. I also feel pain for my midwife for a long time she is going to wonder if there was more she could have done. That would be more than I could bear and you could see the pain she felt for them which the dad was blind to in his anger. Well I really don't know what else to say I 'm still in shock about this and I think it makes it harder to put a face with the event that happened and see all the pain that came with it.