Scootin' on our Studer

The Flood Curse of 7605 NE 161st Ct

2012-01-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

As you may remember, we had a laundry room flood in the middle of the night six months ago when a washing machine hose burst. We called in the big guns and they dried us out, replaced the whole downstairs floor and a month later we were back in business. The nearly $15k job was covered by insurance except for our $2k deductible. We never want to do that again so we got the braided, auto shutoff hoses that are guaranteed to not burst.

Fast forward to last Monday. I unknowingly did a load of wash with the drainage hose out of the drain! It got loose and fell out so all the water drained onto our new laundry room floor and seeped into the carpet and walls of our family room and into the crawlspace. NOT AGAIN! We called the mitigation company back and they came to assess the damage which wasn't nearly as bad this time. They quoted us a price around $2k for dry out and re-installation. We had to do the tear out ourselves to get this price which took us over ten hours. We didn't want to go through insurance for something "minor" because it would raise our insurance premium by $500 per year from now until forever. Still this "minor" repair cost is really going to set us back. At least we're getting some home repair experience.

Last night I started taxes and can see that we're going to get a pretty nice return this year. Whew! We're going to be fine.

Now for today. The half bath toilet overflowed, and though we got to it quickly, water still seeped through the wall and over into the laundry room sub floor that just finished drying out Thursday. Can you hear us? NOOOOOOOO! At least we have that tax return coming. This time I feel like we know exactly what to do. We're buying a moisture reader like the mitigation guys have (except the one I just bought didn't work so Davin's out exchanging it) and rented some carpet fans from the hardware store. We've seen this done before. We're just hoping we don't have to rip up the laminate floor in the bathroom which would require removing the pedestal sink and toilet. At least the new laundry room floor isn't installed yet so no tear out required there. Just re-dry it! I'd best go change out of my Sunday clothes and start tearing off the baseboards so we can assess the damage.

January Update

2012-01-17T12:16:00.001-08:00

Kaylynn is eight months old now. My how time flies! She’s starting to do the hands and knees rocking motion so maybe she’ll advance beyond the army scoot soon. She’s enjoying more foods and her first top tooth has poked through; the other is not far behind. Carrots are her favorite veggie and bananas are her favorite fruit. She is signing “all done” sometimes in addition to “more” which is helpful. She’s still not sleeping through the night – the little stinker! We’ve got to train her out of that, but lately that’s been partly due to sickness.

Kaylynn got her first stomach bug after Desmond had it. It’s the first of many sicknesses the kids are going to pass back and forth now. For a few days she couldn’t keep anything down. That wasn’t any fun. I also decided to ditch the cloth diapers for a few days until the nastiness passed. The liners couldn’t keep up with that. Eww! Currently she’s in disposables again because she got a terrible diaper rash and we have to keep her super dry and covered with ointment. Desmond never had a bad rash like this, but it’s finally getting better. Hopefully we’ll be back to the cloth diapers soon.

Speaking of cloth diapers, I didn’t win the contest for free diapers but that’s okay. I think I’ll still get some more because I’m finding I have to wash them every other day and that’s getting to be a bit too much. I have to change Kaylynn more frequently in cloth because of the wetness factor and we double them up at night so we go through about ten a day.

Desmond is potty training and it’s going pretty well! Hurray!!! I LOVE having him out of diapers. For a few days there with Kaylynn’s sickness and Desmond’s accidents, I was about beside myself with cleaning up bodily fluids! Thankfully we’ve made it to the other side of that mess. With all Kaylynn’s extra diaper rash treatment baths, Desmond has been enjoying “crashing her bath parties.” He also got to run around in our snow flurries this morning, though it’s too wet to stick.

I just love my beautiful kiddos! They play well together and you can tell they both adore each other. Desmond is to the point where he begs me to not take any more pictures of him, but I can’t resist!

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-31T15:16:00.001-08:00

Christmas morning started with Desmond SLEEPING IN - of all days! He’s usually a seven-on-the-dot riser, but it didn’t take long to get him downstairs when Davin told him it was Christmas. Each year gets more fun with him, and his excitement is contagious. We read the Christmas story, opened gifts, and had a yummy breakfast.

Later that morning we went to church for a special Christmas service and I sang a solo called “Winter Snow.” Some of my family joined us for the service which was really nice. Then everyone came over to our house for a scrumptious clam chowder lunch made from scratch by chef Davin.

It’s hard to believe this year is coming to a close and a new one is right around the corner. I enjoyed spending time with both our little family and extended family. Life is rich because of the people in it. Merry Christmas!

Cloth Diapers are Easy and Inexpensive... Really!

2011-12-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

I am new to cloth diapering and must say, I love it! For any of you considering going this route, I think it's totally worth it. It's easy once you're set up to go and learn the new routine, and it saves so much money. Even getting started with baby number two, we're still going to save a ton of money. And believe me, I've done my research!

Earlier this week I went to Cotton Babies, the best place to buy cloth diapers (and also where you can find the best price on pumps if you need one of those). I love shopping there! The staff are very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. They walked me through all the cloth diaper basics and showed me samples since I went in knowing nothing. There are so many more options out there than when my parents were diapering me. You can definitely find something that works for you practically and for your budget. They also don't try to sell you something you don't need. They really are out to help you save money.

Now about the cost: I walked out of Cotton Babies with a full set of diaper covers, inserts, some prefolds and wet bags to last me until Kaylynn is potty trained for a whopping $177 plus tax. I meticulously track all my spending so I know that since Desmond was born three years ago we have spent $1830 on diapers, wipes, and diaper genie refills for both kids. That's with shopping sales, using coupons, and trying all the discount brands. And all these items have gone straight into the garbage. Ouch! I've noticed a drastic increase in cost with having two kids in diapers this year. Since we live on one income I'm constantly analyzing where we can save, and this is one change that can make a huge difference. Also I can sell the cloth diapers once I'm done with them for even more savings! Now if only we had used cloth when my son was born the savings would pay for a family vacation.

This chart shows how much I have spent on Desmond's diapers (hover over graph to view specific amounts) and how much I will spend on Kaylynn's cloth diapers assuming she's in diapers as long as Desmond has been although I anticipate her potty training earlier as most cloth diapered babies do. Buying the flushable liners for three years is more expensive than the cloth diapers so if you're okay with rinsing the poop off, you can save quite a bit more. Also you could spend more on diapers if you want a bigger stash so you can go longer in between washings.

When I first mentioned my thoughts about switching to cloth, Davin was less than thrilled. "I'll have to think about it," was all he said. He likes to save money too, but not at the loss of everything convenient and easy with disposables. Truth be told, no, it won't be as simple as folding up the mess and tossing it out, but using cloth doesn't mean you have to live with stinky diaper pails and your hands in the toilet dunking off poop.

I'm impressed with how far cloth diapers have come to make the process really quite easy. I chose to go with the Flip hybrid diaper system (now doesn't that sound fancy?) because it was the perfect balance for me in terms of cost and efficiency. The Flips use an insert that comes in either stay-dry microfiber, organic, or disposable material. I like how the stay-dry inserts keep much of the moisture away from the skin and are less bulky than a traditional prefold. If you have prefolds you can also use them in these covers so they're very versatile. These diapers grow with your baby so you never have to buy a new size. You simply adjust the snaps and you're good to go. I like how these fit, too. Disposables tend to gap in the back but these hug nicely. They are obviously a bit thicker than disposables, but Kaylynn gets around just fine.

I purchased a pretty wet bag that hangs on Kaylynn's bedroom doorknob, and it's been great for holding all the used, ready-to-be-washed diapers. I can even throw the bag in the wash when it's time to do a load. I haven't noticed any smell either, but my husband has a more sensitive sniffer, so I'll have to double check with him on what he thinks. The lady at the store said the key is to have good air circulation and not seal off your soiled diapers.

One thing that makes these cloth diapers a breeze is the biodegradable liners. This is what made Davin give me the green light. I have found I can get away with using half of a liner so that makes them only $0.03 each. Totally worth it to be able to pick it up and flush the poop. No mess, no rinsing, perfect! I've also made my own wipes with baby wash cloths soaked in a bit of water and baby soap. I keep them in a small tub so they're ready to go, and now after I use a wipe I can toss it in the wet bag with the diaper for washing later.

The biggest step for me will be keeping up with laundry to make sure I don't run out of diapers. Since I can reuse the Flip covers multiple times, there's not a lot of bulk to wash so I'll only need to do a small load every two or three days. Maybe this will encourage me to keep up with the rest of the laundry as well. You do need to use soap with no additives or softeners so you don't damage the absorbancy of the diapers, but this is all well worth it.

In a little over four months I spend as much on disposables as I have on my cloth system. I'm looking forward to enjoying pure diaper savings. Hurray for cloth diapers and starting a new year saving money!

Leave me a comment if you are considering cloth and I could help you start your cloth stash.

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I haven’t received any form of compensation for the content of this post, but I am entering this post in a contest. If I win I can choose a person who commented on this post to receive a gift of 12 bumGenius One-Size Cloth Diapers!

Cloth Diapers: Day 1

2011-12-28T10:23:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I went to Cotton Babies with Kaylynn’s Christmas money from her grandparents to buy a full set of cloth diapers. I went with the Flip “hybrid” diaper system. It’s a microfiber and suede insert inside an adjustable diaper cover that grows with your baby. I even found some used Flip covers in excellent condition that saved me even more money. (Every Tuesday Cotton Babies sells the gently used stuff they’ve bought back from people, so if you need an even better deal, check that out.) I picked up some $0.75 prefolds (the kind of cloth diapers my mom used to put on me) that can be used in the Flip diaper covers as well. I added two wet bags to my stash, one for the diaper bag and one for home.

The flushable diaper liners sold Davin on the whole cloth diaper idea. They’re $0.06 each and I think I might be able to get away with using half of one in each diaper so that would make them $0.03 each! I even got to test it already since Kaylynn pooped in her first diaper. It was super easy to pick up the liner and flush it. No mess, no washing off the diaper! So far so good. The first diaper didn’t leak at all, and I’m so excited to save money.

It’s hard spending all the money up front, but I picked up 7 covers, 13 stay-dry inserts, 9 prefolds, a snappi, flushable liners, and a large and small wet bag all for $177.03. This includes a free diaper cover and insert because I spent over $150, and they had a special going. Hurray! This supply should last me until she is potty trained. I spend this much money on disposable diapers for one kid in about four months.

We’re planning to potty train Desmond over the three-day new year’s weekend, so hopefully he’ll be down to just diapers at night soon. It’s time. Wish us luck on that one. Here’s to saving money!

Oh, Jingle Bells

2011-12-23T13:09:00.001-08:00

I was folding laundry yesterday while Kaylynn played on the floor in front of me. I looked up and had to do a double take to figure out what was in her mouth. It was a huge jingle bell that I had no idea would fit in there. It fit so snug I couldn’t even get my finger in there to pull it out, and she had to get it out by pushing with her tongue. Silly girl! She looked so ridiculous though I just had to laugh.

Kid Browser

2011-12-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

Desmond always amazes me as to how much he can grasp. Kids are such sponges and they can do way more that we think they can do. For example we let him go to a few websites that we have deemed safe for him to look at. I am amazed that he picks up how the games work without Melissa or I telling him how to do them. He has gotten really good at using the mouse.

Anyway, occasionally we would let him look at these sites and then later we would find that he minimized the browser and Quicken or something else that we didn't want him messing with was up on the computer. So, I decided to make a web browser specifically tailored to his age so that he can only go to the sites that we say are ok and he cannot click out of them into anything else. Also, I didn't want him to easily be able to minimize the browser or close it. Thus, KidBrowser was born.

I don't claim that it is any great work of programming, and it could probably be more visually appealing, but I am no graphic designer. Anyway, if you have kids and you want to use it yourself feel free to grab a copy and set it up on your machine. I don't claim that it will work perfectly on your machine. I have only tested it on my box, which is a Windows 7 machine. However, if you have issues let me know and I will try and fix it.

I have created a bitbucket project for this browser, so feel free to download the source and make fun of my coding abilities if you want to. Links and screenshots are below.

Bitbucket Project
https://bitbucket.org/fredclown/kidbrowser/wiki/Home

Latest Compiled Version
http://bit.ly/sfdF4P

This is what the browser looks like. The left navigation is the web pages that we have deemed are ok for him to look at. You can add as many as you like. If you add more than will appear in the column you will see scroll arrows appear so that you can scroll the nav.

This is the config module. You can use this to add sites to the navigation menu. Currently, I suggest using the Gecko browser option as IE seems to have an issue with at least one site I that I know of, Disney Junior. The configuration module isn't pretty and I will probably work on it a bit more, but I wanted to get something made so that the browser could be easily configured. I think most everything is pretty self explanatory. There are a couple things that I will explain below.

Resolves To:
This is mainly used in conjunction with the "Allow Sub-links" checkbox. Sometimes if you put in a web address it will redirect you to another page. For instance if you put in http://www.disney.com it might redirect you to http://go.disney.com. If you have allow Sub-links checked and your "Site URL" is set to http://www.disney.com then you would be able to visit any links that start with http://www.disney.com, unless specifically blocked in the block section. However, if the site automatically redirects the home page to something else such as http://go.disney.com then in order to get all of the pages under http://www.disney.com and the home page http://go.disney.com you would need two different entries. That is why implemented the "Resolves To" so that the browser will consider the redirected first page to be apart of the rest of the site.

Allow Sub-links:
This will allow any pages that start with the "Site URL" to be viewed. Thus is the "Site URL" is http://www.disney.com, then http://www.disney.com/junior would be available as well.

Blocked Sites:
Blocked sites take precedent over the Allowed Sites. By default everything is blocked except what is specifically allowed. However, if you allow sub links for a certain site there may still be a couple undesirable pages. You can block these pages specifically. Additionally you can block sub pages or any pages that start with a certain URL. Thus, if http://www.disney.com/junior was allowed with sub-links, you could block the Winnie the Pooh video page by putting in http://www.disney.com/junior/winniethepooh/video for a blocked url. If you clicked "Block Sub-links" then anything under http://www.disney.com/junior/winniethepooh/video would also be blocked ... such as http://www.disney.com/junior/winniethepooh/video/theblusteryday.

Baby Girl’s First Christmas–Then and Now

2011-12-19T13:48:00.001-08:00

Here is a picture of my first Christmas, December 1980. Mom kept this little dress so I sewed new elastic in the sleeves and put it on Kaylynn to recreate my Christmas photo from 31 years ago.

Kaylynn does not like sitting on this little chair! Of course, the crying came after falling off face first so I can’t blame her for not having anything to do with it after that. She is two months younger than I was at my first Christmas, so her sitting skills aren’t developed enough for stable chair sitting and she know it.

I see so many of Davin’s features in the kids especially the mouth and chin, but it’s fun to compare with my photo and see that my features are in there too. She’s definitely a blend of us both. Merry Christmas, darling! You are the best gift from this year.

It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

2011-12-09T23:26:00.001-08:00

We went to Thornton’s Treeland again this year and found a beautiful Nobel to bring home. Desmond ran up to the first scrawny little tree he saw and said, “Here’s one!” We convinced him to keep looking for a tree that could hold more than three ornaments. He played with a stick and Kaylynn slept while we found our tree. We then enjoyed the farm including the live animals, a hay ride, hot chocolate, and apple fries. A fun family day!

The week has been filled with Christmas preparations. I enjoy telling Desmond about the birth of Jesus and why we have Christmas in the first place. We’re also counting down the days with the bear advent calendar I made in high school.

We got our tree up, and of course none of our light strings worked from last year. We finally decorated the tree after our third trip to the store for lights. We discovered neither LED or energy saving incandescent lights would do. They aren’t strong enough to power our talking shuttle crafts or astronaut. It isn’t right if the tree doesn’t talk when we plug it in, so we had to buy the good ol’ energy sucking cheap lights. (Not that they use that much electricity.) I also made a door wreath from the extra tree branches, and Davin indulged me in stringing lights on the rooftop. Now we’re festive along with many of our neighbors. It really is quite cheery driving into our cul-de-sac at night.

A new holiday tradition is Hot Buttered Babies, a winter special drink we discovered at Gustav’s. Neither Davin nor I are one’s for alcohol, but this… oh, this is pure deliciousness. We bought our own ingredients to make them at home. Mmmm, mmmm! It’s an after-the-kids-are-in-bed treat.

May your Christmas season be merry and bright!

Changing Every Day

2011-11-30T16:33:00.001-08:00

Kaylynn is changing a little every day. While in Albany for Thanksgiving she started scooting forward and I don’t think crawling is far off. She can also stand if she’s holding on to something.

I love this little determined girl! I just spent the last two hours trying to get her down for a nap. She keeps turning all around in her bed, playing, and getting her binky stuck on her thumb which really bothers her. We were out all morning so I knew she was sleepy. Finally she’s asleep, but now Desmond is up. Well, some days just don’t come with a break.

She is cutting her third tooth right now. The bottom ones are in and the top ones are coming. It’s fun hearing her crunch on her baby crackers. Just don’t put your finger in her mouth. It hurts!

Cotton Babies was one of my stops this morning. I love that store! (It’s the cheapest place to buy a pump.) I’m seriously thinking about switching to cloth diapers after spending $100 in November for disposable diapers for two kids, wipes, and diaper pail inserts. The lady was really helpful explaining all the zillion types of cloth diapers out there. I like the new Flip diapers. I might even get the training ones for Desmond. That kid has got to get potty trained! Davin might actually go for cloth if we get the little flushable liners that make cleaning up poop a lot easier. Anyway, I think I know what’s on Kaylynn’s Christmas list!

Parenting Solo

2011-11-13T20:25:00.001-08:00

Davin took a trip to Spokane to visit his parents this weekend so I’m on my own with the kids. It’s been somewhat exhausting and I don’t know how single parents do it! I just feel like I’m battling so much of the day: Kaylynn fighting me on eating or sleeping, and Desmond is just in an inquisitive stage. Everything is “Why?” and “What does that mean?” and I love feeding his curious mind about stuff, but sometimes I just don’t want to explain every detail. We’re also working on him not challenging my authority and arguing. Oh, I look forward to the day when no one cries. I think we’re many years out from that.

On the positive side I have two adorable children! Kaylynn is six months old now. She’s starting to sit better and can even stand up by herself for awhile if she’s holding on to something. She has two bottom teeth now and she usually eats at the table with us for all three meals.

Desmond loves to build and spends quite a bit of time playing Legos these days. He impressed me by constructing his own Lincoln Log building for his cars.

My favorite part of the today was when Desmond made Kaylynn laugh by twirling around with his blanket. At first I thought he accidentally whipped it across her face, but she cracked up because she loved the breeze. He also made her laugh when he did the noise sounds in our bedtime story Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? Kaylynn definitely adores her brother.

Davin should be home within the hour. Thankfully the kids are already asleep. I look forward to next weekend when Davin and I can get away for an overnight at Family Life’s Weekend to Remember. Hopefully it’s a good worthwhile conference. We’ll see! If nothing else I’ll enjoy being kid free for a day and a half.

Oh My, He’s So Cute!

2011-11-02T16:54:00.001-07:00

Davin’s going to love it when he finds out I posted this, but I just had to share this super cute picture from when he played baseball as a kid. He’s eight years old here and so adorable!

Neewollah 2011

2011-11-01T12:52:00.001-07:00

We joined the festivities at Real Life church again this year. I had my doubts we’d make it there fussy, teething baby and all, but we had a lot of fun and stayed until closing. Desmond’s favorite activity was the barrel train. I was imagining Kaylynn riding with him next year. That will be fun! Desmond also liked trading in his tickets for prizes, jumping in the bounce houses, and we all got to go home with a bag of candy. We crashed when we got home and the kids seem a little extra sleepy today and are both down for a nap. Yay!

Handy Manny and Bee.

Desmond was Here

2011-10-27T19:02:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I listen to the lie that my only usefulness is to clean up messes. Then I feel defeated when I look at all that I haven’t gotten around to yet or guilty when I sit down to relax when the kids are asleep. I have to accept that messes are a way of life with young children and the cleaning will never be done. But sometimes the clutter makes me smile especially when it so clearly says, “Desmond was here!” He was entertaining Kaylynn with all five of his beloved snugglies.

Sweet, Stubborn Girl

2011-10-27T17:53:00.001-07:00

I’m running into Kaylynn’s determined spirit a lot lately. I love her so much, but this girl and I are going to have a standoff on more than one issue. She’s strongly opinionated on how and where she does things and it makes a mommy’s day challenging. She’s only five and a half months old! What will this determined spirit look like in three or ten years? We need to set up early who’s in charge here.

Sleep: She nearly refuses to fall asleep unless she’s home and then only if she’s in her crib swaddled and sucking on her binky. The problem is she’s also getting good at wiggling out of the swaddle, flipping herself over, pulling out the binky and therefore crying because things are not right many times during the night. I think I’m going to wean her off both the swaddle and the binky so she can learn to get herself to sleep wiggles and all. The next week or so could be really rough. We’ll see how long I last. Davin doesn’t want to attempt this at night, just during the day. Today she took a grand total of three twenty-minute naps. One of them she fell asleep on her own and it was such an exhilarating feeling. If she’s tired enough she will sleep!

Eating: Kaylynn is so strange about where she eats. Today we were out at a doctor’s appointment, the grocery store, and then lunch with Davin. Kaylynn wouldn’t eat the whole time we were out and she was getting cranky. Watching a baby at the next lunch table drinking her bottle didn’t influence Kaylynn either. When we got home she guzzled down six ounces. I knew she was hungry! Silly girl.

Every Girl Deserves a Pretty Dress

2011-10-17T15:41:00.001-07:00

I have recently developed a friendship with a local mom through MOMS group. She has a cute nine month old son and was due in January with her daughter. On Friday I could not get my friend out of my mind and I prayed for her often. Ultrasounds showed that the baby would have little chance of survival, and on Friday she was born at almost 27 weeks. After one breath she left this world to meet her heavenly Father. Now I know why my friend was heavy on my heart that day.

This has hit me really hard especially since I know the pain of losing a child. At eight weeks I never got to hold mine or kiss his face, but I can still relate to a mother’s grief. I have cried a lot the past few days.

I had a thought to make a dress for the baby, and my friend said it was okay. Newborn clothes are too big so I made a doll dress out of some beautiful soft fabric I bought in Salzburg shortly after getting engaged. I used some of it for my wedding. I think it is perfect. Every girl deserves a pretty dress even if it’s the first and last one she’ll ever wear. I just pray that it fits alright.

In a way this has been healing for me. I couldn’t give anything to my baby, but it has felt good to carefully craft something for another. We were never meant to burry our children, but still God is gracious. I thank God for the two perfect, healthy children I have, and I ‘m glad my friend has her son to love on and help her heart heal.

Dance with your Father, Eden Grace, and say hello to Emery for me. Your moms await the day when we can know you and hold you again.

My Little Goober

2011-10-13T20:39:00.001-07:00

Desmond is turning into more of a big boy every day. When I get out the camera now he loves to make silly faces, and then we laugh as we look back through them. I love his silliness and indulge in taking silly pictures because that’s just him.

Sometimes he wants Kaylynn to play in his room with him and then he asks me to leave. I don’t quite know what to do with myself when I’m not asked to join in the playing, but it makes me smile to see him be a good big brother.

We’re dealing with a fussy stage right now. He likes to be in charge and have things go his way – don’t we all? So while he’s still a sweet boy it’s a constant challenge to continue shaping him into a respectful and obedient child.

And potty training? Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t hit it hard again though I’m trying to encourage him in little ways. I don’t want to deal with the resistance and accidents right now. I think I ‘d like to send him off to potty training boot camp for a day or two and have someone else do it!

I’m enjoying teaching Desmond by responding to his naturally inquisitive mind. I feel like pretty much everyone sends their three year old to preschool, but we can’t afford that and I really think I want to take on his education in the beginning. This week he’s been interested in Saturn after watching a Disney’s Little Einsteins episode. So we made Saturn out of a bouncy ball and a glow stick bracelet. Today we went to the downtown Vancouver library (awesome kid section by the way) and checked out some books about our solar system. It’s fun looking through the books and answering his questions. He’s drinking it all in and knows half the planets just after today. I explained orbits to him by us taking turns being the sun and the earth. I let him play with Google Earth on my iPod. He knows now that we live on Earth but he suggested that the neighbors live on Jupiter. Well, at least he’s being exposed to the information.

Five Months Old

2011-10-13T19:34:00.001-07:00

Kaylynn is five months old! She is starting to scoot herself across the floor just a little, and she is being introduced to the world of solid foods.

She shows a strong preference for drinking her bottle in her room so I have started making her eat downstairs during the day. When we’re away from home she will hardly eat anything at all. She’s doing great with solid foods and has had rice cereal, mum mums, green beans, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, and bananas so far. It’s fun having her at the dinner table with us.

As far as sleep goes, Kaylynn has her own preferences on that as well. If we’re away from home she usually won’t sleep more than a few minutes and only in the Ergo. Her naps vary from 30 minutes to two hours, but one hour is usually the norm. She’s very attached to her binky and often fusses at night to have it put back in her mouth when she can’t reach it. I’m thinking about weaning her off it. Desmond slept through the night around 6-8 weeks so this not sleeping well for five months thing is new to me. She still likes to eat once or twice during the night, but I’m trying to make some slight adjustments to her bedtime routine to help signal her to sleep longer. She slept through last night (until 5 am) so maybe soon…

Kaylynn is jabbering more and more. I’m hearing more consonants the past week or so. I often ask Desmond what he thinks she’s saying or say she’s telling him secrets. When he wants her to talk he says, “Can she make more languages?” Cute.

Not long ago I couldn’t imagine having another baby. Now Kaylynn feels so much a part of our life, it’s like she’s always been here. I love my little sweet pea!

The Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-08T20:49:00.001-07:00

We had a beautiful day at the pumpkin patch! We decided to skip the 45 minute drive to the popular Sauvie Island spot and checked out nearby Bi-Zi Farms instead.

The weather was perfect and I was pleasantly surprised at how good this local farm was. Apparently everyone else in Vancouver knew how great it was because the farm was busy. They were organized and had lots of fun activities included in the admission price making it a perfect family outing. We enjoyed pumpkin launching, a hay pyramid, the long corn maze, a rubber duck race, and Desmond’s favorite – a hay ride to the field to find our pumpkins. Maybe next year we’ll also have time for the hay maze, corn shucking, petting zoo, and pony ride.

My favorite highlight was when Desmond found a frog. He squatted down to study something in the grass, and when I asked him what he was looking at he said, “There’s a hopping thing.” I came over expecting to see a grasshopper, but it was a cute little frog! I don’t think Desmond has seen a real one before. He wouldn’t touch it, but Kaylynn didn’t have a choice when I put it on her head.

Finding the Character Set For a SQL Field

2011-09-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

The other day I was working on a project and I needed to know all of the different types of characters contained in a SQL field so that I could make a regular expression pattern that would not fail. Thus, I decided to write a stored procedure that would loop through a range of characters and test if that character is contained in a specified field in any records. From there I can get a list of all of the used characters and then more intelligently write my regular expression pattern.

This could also be handy if you are trying to cast a field and you keep getting errors because of a character that won't cast correctly. An example would be trying to cast a varchar or char field into an int and for some reason or another one of the records has a letter in the field. Your cast will fail and it can be tricky to track down where the issue is. With this stored procedure you can quickly see what the offending character is and then query up all the records containing that character.

Example usage:
exec FieldCharacterSet 'dbo', 'mytable, 'myfield', 1, 0, 255

Feel free to use this if you find is useful, and leave a comment letting me know if it worked well for you.

-- =============================================
-- Author:		Davin Studer
-- Create date: 9/26/2010
-- Description:	This stored procedure will let you
-- know all the characters that are contained within
-- a field of a specified table.  This is handy for things
-- such as creating regular expression patterns and figuring
-- out casting issues.
-- =============================================
create procedure [dbo].[FieldCharacterSet]
	@TableSchema nvarchar(255) = '',-- this is the schema for table to look at
	@TableName nvarchar(255) = '',	-- this is the table to look at
	@FieldName nvarchar(255) = '',	-- this is the field that will be scanned
	@RTrim bit = 1,					-- should the field be right trimmed before finding the character set ... mostly for char field types
	@LowCharRange int = 0,			-- character scan start point
	@HighCharRange int = 255		-- character scan end point
as
begin
	-- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
	-- interfering with SELECT statements.
	set nocount on;

	declare
		@count bigint = 0,
		@sql nvarchar(max) = '',
		@selects nvarchar(max) = '',
		@error varchar(200) = '',
		@field nvarchar(264) = '',
		@sqlbuild nvarchar(max) = ''
	declare @chars table(
		[character] nchar(1)
	)
	declare @statements table(
		[sql] varchar(max)
	)

	if @TableName = ''
	begin
		set @error = 'You must supply a table name.'
		raiserror (@error, 15, 1)
	end

	if @FieldName = ''
	begin
		set @error = 'You must supply a field name.'
		raiserror (@error, 15, 1)
	end
	
	if @error = ''
	begin
		-- Bracket the table name to avoid naming issues
		if left(@TableName, 1) <> '[' and right(@TableName, 1) <> ']'
		begin
			set @TableName = '[' + @TableName + ']'
		end
		
		-- Bracket the field name to avoid naming issues
		if left(@FieldName, 1) <> '[' and right(@FieldName, 1) <> ']'
		begin
			set @FieldName = '[' + @FieldName + ']'
		end
		
		-- Should we rtrim the field to deal with trailing spaces ... mostly for char fields
		if @RTrim = 1
		begin
			set @field = 'rtrim(' + @FieldName + ')'
		end
		
		-- Create a temp table to hold our examples of each character matched
		if object_id('tempdb..##fieldCharacterSetTemp') is not null
		begin
			drop table ##fieldCharacterSetTemp
		end
		set @sql = 'select * into ##fieldCharacterSetTemp from (select t1.* from ' + @TableSchema + '.' + @TableName + ' t1 inner join ' + @TableSchema + '.' + @TableName + ' t2 on 1 = 1 where 1 = 0) X'
		exec(@sql)

		--Loop through the ascii characters low to high
		while @LowCharRange <= @HighCharRange
		begin
			--Build the from and where clauses
			set @sqlbuild = ''
			set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + 'from '
			if @TableSchema <> ''
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + @TableSchema + '.'
			end
			set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + @TableName + nchar(13)
			set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + 'where ' + @field
			-- If the character is A-Z or a-z then case sensitive compare
			if (@LowCharRange between 65 and 90) or (@LowCharRange between 97 and 122)
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + ' COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS'
			end
			set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + ' like '
			-- Deal with a few special SQL characters
			if @LowCharRange = 37 -- % character
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + '''%\%%'' escape ''\''' + nchar(13)
			end
			else if @LowCharRange = 39 -- ' character
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + '''%''''%''' + nchar(13)
			end
			else if @LowCharRange = 95 -- _ character
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + '''%\_%'' escape ''\''' + nchar(13)
			end
			else
			begin
				set @sqlbuild = @sqlbuild + '''%' + nchar(@LowCharRange) + '%''' + nchar(13)
			end

			-- Buld main counting sql
			set @sql = ''
			set @sql = @sql + 'select @countOut = count(*)' + nchar(13)
			set @sql = @sql + @sqlbuild

			--Get count of rows that have the character
			execute sp_executesql @sql,N'@countOut bigint = 0 output',@countOut=@count output

			--If any rows have this character add it to the result set
			if @count > 0
			begin
				insert into @chars values (nchar(@LowCharRange))

				-- Build the select sql to look at example lines that have this character
				set @selects = ''
				set @selects = @selects + 'select top 1 *' + nchar(13)
				set @selects = @selects + @sqlbuild
				
				insert into @statements values (rtrim(replace(@selects, nchar(13), ' ')))

				set @sql = ''
				set @sql = @sql + 'insert into ##fieldCharacterSetTemp' +nchar(13)
				set @sql = @sql + @selects
				
				exec(@sql)
			end
			
			-- Next character
			set @LowCharRange = @LowCharRange + 1
		end

		select * from @chars
		select * from @statements
		if object_id('tempdb..##fieldCharacterSetTemp') is not null
		begin
			select * from ##fieldCharacterSetTemp
			drop table ##fieldCharacterSetTemp
		end
	end
end

Weary Mommy

2011-09-14T20:44:00.001-07:00

Some days I feel I am losing the battle. The kids are so demanding and there is little gratitude at this stage. I just got both kids in bed. I did Desmond’s routine first, but then he literally screamed and wailed for me while I tried getting Kaylynn down. I find myself squeezing my eyes shut and taking a deep breath so I don’t flip out. I don’t always succeed. I got Kaylynn down, found the missing lambie responsible for the incessant screaming, and tried explaining to Desmond why I can’t always drop everything and run to him when he calls me. I tried reassuring him that I hear him and always want to get him what he needs but sometimes he’ll have to wait a little bit. (I’m sure he gets it now.) Then Kaylynn was crying again so I fed her some more and got her down again. I think her teeth are bothering her. Anyway, it’s silent now and I think I should probably go to bed.

I’m feeling drained: physically and emotionally. When I’m not dealing with kids I’m trying to do a load of laundry or dishes. I feel I’m just here to clean up messes and take care of everyone else. Many days I don’t even take enough time for myself to get out of my pajamas which sounds nice to stay in your pjs all day, right? But then I feel so blah and gross. It doesn’t help.

I’m also tired of being overweight. I need to find the time to get myself back in shape! I think I’ll join a gym down the road and go at 5:30 in the morning before Davin needs to go to work so I can do it ALL BY MYSELF without any distractions from the kids or the endless housework. The problem is I’ll have to go to bed around 9 so I can wake up at that hour. (Yeah, right.) Still I need to change something. I hate starting every day with a sigh and a groan. I know exercise will help me have more energy and feel better about myself. This way I’ll have time to refocus, talk to God in the quiet of the morning, and get the day started off right. I need to begin my day on a positive note before someone’s crying for me. I’ll have to sacrifice sleep to get “me” time, but when I start falling apart everyone suffers so I’ve got to do it. God, please give me an extra measure of grace!

September Birthdays at Oaks Park

2011-09-11T20:42:00.001-07:00

Saturday was spent at Oaks Amusement Park with my family celebrating Mom and Nathan’s birthdays. They wanted to do something different this year so this was it. We all had fun going on thrill rides and most of my pictures ended up being of the go carts. Kaylynn slept about half the time, and Desmond went on lots of kiddie rides but some were too scary. The big slide was too fast, but the Ferris wheel was slow and offered a fun view of the “race cars” down below. A fun time was had by all, and we ended the very hot day with a delicious ice cream cone.

Growing, Playing, and Shopping

2011-09-09T10:37:00.001-07:00

It’s hard to believe Kaylynn is four months old today! Gotta get a cute picture of her.

The other day Desmond enjoyed pulling Kaylynn around in his little wagon. It’s fun to see them playing together! He is very careful with her and likes bringing her toys to play with. Kaylynn likes to watch him and gives him lots of smiles. Sometimes Desmond can even get her to laugh when I can’t.

Yesterday I checked Desmond into Playland at Fred Meyer and got so much shopping done while Kaylynn slept in the Ergo. Amazing! Why haven’t I used this free service before? Desmond had a great time playing with toys – which is what he begs me to do whenever we go shopping anyway. I’ll definitely be doing more shopping here. What a great feeling to be able to get everything on my list and not have to chop it down to the bare essentials so we can get out of the store without a meltdown.

I’m gearing up for the JBF kids consignment sale next week. I’m tagging a few things to sell, and I’ll also be volunteering for one shift. Hopefully I can make a bit of money to cover some of what I need to buy. Kaylynn needs a few warm clothes for winter in a couple different sizes and Desmond needs pretty much everything. I love shopping this sale for good deals; it feels like a treasure hunt. It’s a bit time consuming though with three different trips for drop off, volunteering, and pick up, not to mention the hours needed to shop!

Things that Make Me Smile

2011-09-02T12:25:00.001-07:00

Kaylynn’s square toes! All her toes are the same length and it’s really obvious when she has socks on. Little rectangle feet!

Playing trains with Desmond and getting to create a new track just about every day.

The clean baby smell and pure, expressive baby eyes.

Oregon State Fair

2011-09-02T12:17:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday we went to the Oregon State Fair. Davin had the idea to leave Kaylynn with my parents who were thrilled to watch her so it was a win-win. It was nice to spend some time just with Desmond. After having two, one feels so simple.

We enjoyed some kiddie rides though many of them were a bit too adventurous for Desmond even if I was with him. His favorite was the blue dump truck and his least favorite was the little roller coaster. I wish I had been quicker with the camera because his face was priceless! His arms thrown wide against the seat and sheer terror on his face for his one time around the track. “Danger” may be his middle name, but he wants to take things easy for now.

It was a perfect day except for the 90 degree heat. We went to the indoor displays to cool down and enjoyed some ice cream in the shade. A fun day for sure!

All to the Glory of God

2011-09-02T11:23:00.001-07:00

The days can feel like such a rat race sometimes. Every day starts by waking up to a kid crying or calling for me. I’m usually very groggy and tired because I’ve been awake two or three times during my short night.

We’re trying to help Kaylynn go back to sleep in the middle of the night without feeding her since we know she’s capable of sleeping through. Last night we succeeded in postponing her 1am feeding until 3:30. During the day I’m trying to help her sleep more consecutive hours, too. She’ll usually only nap 45 minutes to an hour at a time.

I realized yesterday that an average day holds only two waking non-kid hours. One is during naptime IF I can get them both down at the same time. Desmond boycotts naps some days, but at least he’ll usually stay quietly on his bed for an hour. The other hour is after we get Kaylynn to sleep around 9pm. These times are also the only uninterrupted time I have to do dishes, fold laundry, or simply talk to Davin. As a result I’m often up too late to get an extra half hour to relax, but then I start the next day in a deficit and the cycle continues.

Exercise has fallen by the wayside for now. I just can’t pull myself out of bed any earlier and at the end of a long day I don’t feel like spending my final hour sweating. Yesterday’s exercise was playing “Larryboy spaceship” with Desmond and doing crunches with Kaylynn on my tummy. Oh well. The scale is still moving in the right direction it’s just moving slowly.

All that said, I’ve had a few refocus moments lately when I’ve heard of other families’ tragedies. Yes, this is a physically hard phase with precious little time to recover for a new day, but it is a gift. Some mothers would do anything to be able to hold their baby again – sleepless nights and all. And I am shaping these lives for eternity. Even the mundane tasks can be done to the glory of God. Yes, even cleaning poop off the floor… again.

Rolling Over

2011-08-23T18:15:00.001-07:00

Kaylynn is changing right before my eyes. Sometimes when I get her up in the morning I think she grew overnight. She just rolled over for the first time on Sunday. First she went from her tummy to her back and then later in the day she flipped from her back to her tummy. And I missed it both times! At least Davin got to see the first one.

Today when she was fussing in her crib I heard Desmond go in (I was listening on the monitor) and he said in a sweet voice, “It’s okay, Kaylynn. Don’t cry. I’m here.” And she did stop crying -for a moment anyway. Melts my heart! I love watching him love her.

Davin’s Birthday

2011-08-19T20:42:00.001-07:00

We had my family over on Sunday to celebrate Davin turning 34. Several of us pitched in and upgraded Davin’s dinosaur of a monitor to something a little newer… as in seventeen years newer! He kept hoping the old monitor would break so we would have to buy another one, but I think it’s going to last forever. Davin’s also thought about slipping someone $10 to drop it during one of our moves. No such luck. Anyway, I thought it was time to retire the embarrassing beast and get the web developer a decent monitor. Now Davin is enjoying some new games on his 23” flat screen when he gets a free minute or two. So long CRT!

Kaylynn wore her first tutu to the party. I love dressing her in all her cute new clothes! She’s starting to wear some of her six month stuff already. At her check up on Friday she measured in the 95th percentile for height and about 75th for weight. She’s 13 pounds 10 ounces. We’re loving her smiles and millions of facial expressions. She’s working on using her hands better and getting closer to sitting up and rolling over though she hasn’t done those yet. We’ve started swaddling her again and she’s slept through the night the past two nights. Hurray! On Davin’s birthday she slept her first nine hour stretch, and Davin appreciated that present a lot.

Summer Days

2011-08-13T22:16:00.001-07:00

Time has slipped away and I find a whole month has gone by with no blogging. Most days I just try to keep up with the necessities and everything else just falls away. I’m still having difficulty giving up the unnecessary things: a clean house, time to work on a personal project, browsing a store. My days are filled with feeding, napping, and changing diapers for the kids. I’m challenged to remember that these early years will fly by like the wind, and one day I’ll look back on them and wish they could return even with all the sleep deprived nights.

Some highlights from the last month include celebrating our seven year anniversary at the Portland City Grill, Desmond’s third birthday, a visit with Grandma Bettie, and Kaylynn reaching the three month mark.

I find it easier to stay home when I can. There’s always someone who needs to eat or sleep - often it’s me! We’ve also been enjoying some of the warm weather lately. The kiddie pool never warmed up enough for Kaylynn but she looks cute in her swimsuit anyway.

Twins: Just Three Years Apart

2011-08-13T21:20:00.001-07:00

When I look at Kaylynn I see so much of Desmond in her. Other people even notice that she looks a lot like him. They each have their own variations, but they are so similar at this age. I just had to go back and find some pictures of Kaylynn that match up with pictures of Desmond three years ago. Enjoy!

Fourth of July

2011-07-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

This is a bit late. I’ve been behind on blogging. I wanted to post a few pics from our Fourth of July celebration with the Guisingers. We had a lot of fun eating good food and shooting off our little fireworks while enjoying the barrage of huge ones the neighbors on every side purchased. Who needs to go to the fort for the big show? We’ve got it right here.

Two Months Old

2011-07-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Kaylynn is two months old! She still wakes up once or twice during the night though we had a one week stretch where she slept seven hours straight. Some of her favorite things include the ceiling fan and the flower print on the couch. She smiles and coos at them a lot. She is just learning to control her hands a little bit, and really likes to sit up. Even though she can’t do it on her own she sure tries hard. She’s also my little sneezer and she’ll complain when one gets stuck. She is so cute! I like her perfect swirl of a belly button. I love my little sweet pea!

Playin’ Hooky

2011-07-14T14:23:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, we skipped church and drove over to Cannon Beach. Weekends fill up fast so we thought we’d take advantage of the decent weather on a free day. Desmond enjoyed flying kites for the first time, and Kaylynn slept through the whole thing. Of course, we ended the day with clam chowder at Mo’s.

Cutest Kids Ever!

2011-07-14T14:08:00.001-07:00

There are so many little moments I miss capturing on camera, but here are a few bonding moments between brother and sister. Even with all the work they are, I’m totally in love with these guys!

Pumping: Iron & Milk

2011-07-14T14:01:00.001-07:00

I got off of my work out schedule when I was down in Albany for three days. I brought my stuff, but without my normal routine and both kids to tend to during the night and early morning, I just didn’t make it happen. It’s hard to get back on track! I’ve only worked out twice this week, but I’ve been eating really good, so I’m happy to see the scale still moving in the right direction. Today I did level three of the 30 Day Shred, and man, I wish I had three pound weights instead of fives, but it felt good to have sweat dripping off my nose!

I still nurse Kaylynn about once a day, but the pumping rhythm is feeling more manageable and it’s what we’ll probably stick with. I’ve cut way down on the amount of pumping I’m doing, but I’m still making lots of extra milk and I’m ready to donate to the milk bank. I estimate that I have about six gallons in the freezer. Gotta leave some room for food! My application will be complete once my OBGYN is back from vacation and signs the form. Hopefully it won’t be long after that to ship some of this off to a new baby who needs it.

Soccer!

2011-06-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

On Saturday Desmond had his first soccer practice. A friend from church thought it would be fun to have a group of three year olds get together and play soccer mostly for the social interaction. Perfect! It was so cute watching Des run around, kicking the ball, chasing friends, and mostly playing with the cones. He made his first goal and felt so proud of himself! It’s fun exposing him to things like this. I’m curious to see what will capture his interest.

Seven Weeks

2011-06-28T14:39:00.001-07:00

Kaylynn is seven weeks old. She still prefers her milk from a bottle though I’ve been keeping up with breastfeeding once a day. Usually it’s the early morning feeding while everyone else is asleep and I know I won’t be rushed or interrupted. I think the calm, dark setting also helps her not fight me.

Kaylynn likes to be awake more during the day looking around. She gives big smiles and coos when her tummy is full and I talk to her up close. It melts my heart! She is also getting better at controlling her head though I should give her more tummy time. I often sit her in the swing rather than put her on the floor because unless I’m right there, I don’t want to leave her on the floor with Desmond. He isn’t always aware of where he’s putting his body. He accidentally hurt her the other day and when she cried Desmond did too. He felt so bad!

Desmond is a good big brother and is doing great with the transition. Right now he really likes to help wash the bottles. We are working on obedience and respect with him which isn’t easy for anyone. At one point yesterday Kaylynn was crying because I had to interrupt her feeding to deal with Desmond who was crying because he wasn’t getting his way and was in trouble for being disrespectful. We’ve tried a few different methods of discipline to find the most effective one for him so now he requests to sit on the stairs to avoid a spanking. Hmm. If he is getting a spanking he asks us to give him a slow one. It’s so hard not to laugh! God grant us grace, patience, and wisdom in loving and shaping our children.

It feels normal now to have two kids. Kaylynn fits right in. We’re finding our rhythm though it’s still hard to get out of the house by myself with both of them. I find I need to feed someone, pump, or get someone down for a nap all day long so I tend to stay home. We made it out to pick strawberries over the weekend with Davin so that was fun! We need to go back for more soon.

Aurora’s Birthday–Memorial Day

2011-06-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Davin had Memorial Day off of work so we were able to join the family celebrating my sister-in-law Aurora’s birthday with a barbeque at their house. Also I got to do my first ever target practice with Daniel’s pellet gun. Yeah, it was fun! If I didn’t have a newborn I probably would have been out there with the guys the whole time.

After the party and before we left Albany, we stopped in to see Grammy. She doesn’t remember me, but I wanted to introduce her to her new great-granddaughter. Grammy didn’t say much, but she was obviously captivated by Kaylynn which made me smile. It was nice to see her and Grandpa together, too.

Back Together with Jillian

2011-06-24T09:23:00.001-07:00

I was cleared last Tuesday to start exercising again. I have 50 pounds I want to lose which seems daunting on this side but I know I can do it because I did it before. It’s just hard knowing I have to make lots of right choices that I often won’t feel like doing at the time and I won’t see an immediate benefit from it either. Getting up early to exercise and limiting desserts will be the hardest for me.

Last Thursday I started Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred video. I used this before as my “easy” workout when I didn’t have time for the full workout in Jillian’s book Making the Cut. Well, a year with little to no exercise and an additional 50 pounds sure makes a difference! It’s not an easy twenty minutes now. I’ve got a long way to go, and I can barely do a proper push up, but after a week of working out and making some better eating choices I’ve already lost two pounds. Today’s workout was also the first time I felt a little stronger.

My first goal is to lose eight pounds by our anniversary in a little less than one month. My second goal is to be three dress sizes smaller by Christmas, and my third goal is to be at my ideal weight by my birthday in March. Now, just so I don’t lose the weight too quickly and affect my milk supply.

Flood

2011-06-13T12:53:00.001-07:00

We had an unexpected adventure this week. I shall tell you the story.

Early Friday morning Kaylynn woke up at 1:30 am to be fed. Davin was taking this feeding so he went downstairs to get the milk. I jumped out of bed in a flash when I heard what I thought was the sound of him falling down the stairs. On my way down I heard loud rushing water and for a split second the thought went through my mind as to why Davin was doing laundry. Then I realized this wasn’t a normal washing machine noise, and something was very wrong. I was astonished to see a flood in the living room and about that time the waterfall sound stopped and Davin quickly came back from shutting off the water main. I realized later the sound that jerked me out of bed was the sound of him slipping in the water as he ran toward the laundry room knocking out a leg of his desk as he fell.

We quickly set to work moving everything out of the flooded laundry and living rooms. The water was a quarter of an inch deep in the laundry room and flowed down into the crawlspace. It spilled into the living room and spread all the way across to the patio door. Thankfully none of our furniture or electronics were damaged. We discovered the cause: a connection hose on the washing machine had burst.

I propped up Kaylynn with a bottle and we sopped up water with every towel we own, wringing it out into bowls. Three hours later we had done all we could and there was no more standing water, but already there was a noticeable musty smell.

We called our insurance company and a water damage restoration company in the morning. The restoration guy showed up within a half hour and assessed the damage. The floors, some of the walls and the crawlspace insulation were saturated. We basically hired him on the spot and by the end of the day we had the insulation pulled out and our entire living room and laundry room flooring ripped up with fans and a dehumidifier going.

So right now we’re living in our dining room and play room. Thankfully it’s a huge space and can accommodate all our living room stuff, too. We are all noticing the air in the house is hot (80-90) and dry. The fans are loud, too, so it’s not very pleasant to be home. The guy checked our progress this morning and said the house will definitely be dry by Monday when he returns again.

Thank goodness for babies needing to be fed in the middle of the night and for home insurance though we still have to pay a deductible on this. The whole downstairs flooring will have to be replaced since it’s all the same stuff and they can’t match it exactly. This floor was a do-it-yourself project by the previous owners so there are minor things that we thought would be nice to fix, but it wasn’t anywhere near the top of our priority list. Well, now it is, and we’ll be picking out new flooring soon. What a mess!

His Favorite Toy

2011-06-13T12:49:00.001-07:00

Desmond’s favorite toy right now is his tricycle from Grandma Linda. He rides laps around the house since we have a good loop through the living room, kitchen, dining and play rooms. Who knows how many miles he’s put in, but it’s quite a few since it seems like he’s riding most of the day. I taped some containers on the back so he could hold his cars and toys without them falling off, though now he fills them so full stuff is still falling off. So there he goes with his big load. He’s quite good at maneuvering around the corners at a fast clip. He still occasionally takes a spill, but he doesn’t crash into walls since he lost his tricycle for a day from doing that. He’ll beg whoever comes over to do laps with him so our company gets exercise, too. He’s sad he can’t ride now with half the floor ripped up and the other half of the house too full of furniture.

Some Feeding Progress

2011-06-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the joy of hanging out with Beka at the Enchanted Playhouse, and while the boys played we talked. Conversation consisted mostly about nursing our babies since that's the stage we're both in. We have similar situations with needing to teach our babies to breastfeed while dealing with the challenges of dealing with a three year old at the same time. She's just a few months ahead of me. I left feeling encouraged to keep trying breastfeeding with Kaylynn. For the past three weeks Kaylynn has had all of her feedings through a bottle. I've basically given up putting her to the breast since it makes her so mad. Every now and then when I have an unusually calm moment I may try for a minute or two before she gets too worked up, but that has been less than once a day. Yesterday evening I tried twice. This morning before Desmond woke up I tried again, and she actually nursed for fifteen minutes! I feel so excited about that, you have no idea! It wasn't a great feeding since she mostly did her flutter sucks rather than deeper sucking, but she was getting some milk and she stopped fighting me which is the first step. I'm trying to prepare myself for things going back and forth awhile before they get better and perhaps not working out at all in the end. Still, I'm hopeful for the first time in several weeks that maybe we can get back to breastfeeding with hard work and a lot of patient persistence. Meanwhile I've been pumping, and unlike last time, supply is not an issue. In only twelve day's time I have a full gallon of milk stored up in the freezer with another 15-20 ounces in the fridge. Even with so much extra milk I cringe if any of it spills. Yesterday I dropped a bottle and the cap broke spilling three ounces. I had to stop and remind myself of how much milk I have. It's okay.

Nearly Pulling My Hair Out

2011-06-06T13:47:00.001-07:00

I’ve barely had a minute to stop in the last two weeks. How I'm doing totally depends on the moment you ask me. I’ve thought often of blogging but I seriously haven’t had any time to sit at the computer. The only time I am sitting still (when I’m not trying to sleep) is when I’m pumping. Yep, that’s my down time and even then I often have to listen to one or the other of the kids fuss about something. Today I haven’t even gotten dressed yet. (Yes, I could be doing that now, but I just HAVE to write first. It helps me process.)

I’ve been on my own as a mother of two for a full week now. It’s one on two. While it’s nice to figure things out on my own, it’s very clear that I’m outnumbered. I feel like a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth between the two kids often leaving one discontented while tending to the other just long enough to calm them so I can get back to the first one. And all this on five or six hours of interrupted sleep. It’s exhausting.

Desmond has really done quite well with the transition, all things considered. He’s been more clingy to me, but as long as I’m around he has been playing by himself fairly well and I only have to tell him “No, I can’t play right now I’m feeding Kaylynn,” every couple minutes, but he usually doesn’t fuss too much about it. We’ve also watched lots of TV which I feel slightly guilty about but I must survive.

I was trying to feed Kaylynn this morning for the fourth time in the past hour or two so I could get her to sleep more than a couple minutes so I could fix Desmond lunch so I could get him down for his nap so I could pump. I felt like I was a broken record telling Desmond to stop doing things. “Stop climbing on the crib, please don’t take all the clothes out of the dresser, don’t go behind the chair while I’m rocking, stop swinging on the door, please don’t climb on me!” I like to state things in a positive way saying what he can do rather than saying “no” all the time, but with Kaylynn in what felt like non-stop crying mode I nearly melted down. I couldn’t understand why she would just eat or sleep. “Those are your two options,” I tried to tell her. Then out of frustration I sucked on her bottle to double check it wasn’t too cold (I don’t take time to warm up the milk from the fridge) and I realized the bottle was clogged. I’d been trying to feed her this bottle all morning. Once it was unclogged Kaylynn gulped it as fast as she could pausing only long enough for necessary breathing. Poor thing. No wonder she was crying.

After that I bounced back and forth between trying to get Kaylynn to go to sleep and feeding Desmond lunch. Kaylynn cried while I read Desmond a story and sang his naptime songs. Desmond then cried because I had moved the rocking chair out of his room and into Kaylynn’s so I could feed her in there. I got him settled into bed finally and went to pat Kaylynn’s back. Soon Desmond was calling for me again and asked for the little light to be turned on. He cried again when I told him we don’t sleep with the lights on. It took me awhile to realize he meant the monitor light. I had put it in Kaylynn’s room too. By this time Kaylynn had finally fallen asleep in her crib so I unplugged the monitor to move it back to Desmond’s room. He settled down now that his little green light was back and – dare I say it – both kids are sleeping right now! Quick! I need to… do something! In about an hour it will be time to feed Kaylynn again.

I remember thinking this with Desmond, too: It’s a good thing babies are so cute and snuggly and that the peaceful moments are so perfectly glorious because this is a lot of hard work! It’s doubly hard with an almost three year old to care for as well. The newborn part of it is a bit easier because I know some tricks already, though they don’t always work the same with Kaylynn. I’m also much more relaxed this time around about all the things me or my newborn “should” be doing. We’ll figure it out.

Caring for Desmond is the part I feel most guilty about. I don’t have time for him like I used to. In fact, I feel like I barely have time for him at all! I try to play for five minutes here and there, and we did manage to make a “birthday chain” this morning to count down the days to his birthday. I was bouncing and trying to feed a fussy baby on my knee the whole time so I wasn’t enjoying it like I wanted to, but his long chain is now hanging in the playroom and we’ll take one link off every day.

Well, that was therapeutic to share about my morning. Now I need to eat something and pump. Also I should probably see who called me several hours ago, and maybe I should get dressed.

Picnics and Pictures

2011-05-20T17:32:00.001-07:00

The weather has been beautiful the last three days. With my breastfeeding struggles at least it’s cheerful outside! We enjoyed a picnic lunch on Wednesday in our front yard.

Desmond loves his baby sister! He often wants to hold her and makes sure she has everything she needs. He even gives her the hug, kiss, eskimo kiss, high-five, knuckles, and thumbs up routine. She’s going to get lots of love from him. After spending so much intensive one-on-one time with Kaylynn, Desmond looks so huge to me! He’s my big boy.

I can’t resist taking pictures of Kaylynn. She’s so beautiful! I love to snuggle her and kiss her cheeks. It warms my heart in ways I can’t even describe just to hold her close. She’s my lovely flower – a precious gift.

Baffling the Lactation Consultants

2011-05-20T17:22:00.001-07:00

Feeding Kaylynn has been my life this week. I figured out I spent at least 12 hours solely focused on feeding and pumping the other day. We’ve been trying to get her to breastfeed again like she did at first. She’ll only feed at the breast if there’s a tube pumping it in. Otherwise she fights me and gets very angry. She wants to latch on and opens wide, but then once on she’ll pull away. If she does manage to calm down, she’ll do small sucks and fall asleep. I’ve been to two one-on-one lactation consultations and a lactation support group and so far none of the experts can figure out why she’s not nursing. I have the supply as evidenced by my 24 oz of pumped milk per day. Kaylynn just won’t work to get it out, but she used to and that’s why my milk came in so fast.

At today’s one-on-one the consultant wondered if she’s getting conditioned to scream on my breast so I want to do my best to get her comfortable and calm there. We’ll keep trying. I only had three hours of sleep last night so today has been a bit difficult in staying calm with her fighting me. We both end up crying. Davin also returned to work yesterday so I’ve got to do this on my own which is very difficult with the tube feeding. I have another lactation appointment on Tuesday with the expert in the office to see if we can figure this out.

Kaylynn had her first bottle yesterday and though I feel like it’s a cop out it also felt so good to just simply feed and enjoy her as her deep blue eyes stared at me over the bottle.

From Hospital to Home

2011-05-17T10:53:00.001-07:00

I have a few minutes before I need to feed Kaylynn so I’m raising my head out of the "I have a new baby and a 2-year old” abyss to record our first week.

Kaylynn Hope Eliana Studer was born on May 9, 2011 at 8:41 pm. She weighed 8 lbs 4.5 oz and was 20.5 inches long. I won’t go into the full birth story, but Kaylynn and I are both doing well. There are a few major differences between this and my first birth experience. For one thing I started off feeling very well rested since it was a repeat cesarean. Also Kaylynn knew just what to do for breastfeeding. She helped me out a lot and though she got down to 7 lbs 10.8 oz, she was back up to 7 lbs 12 oz before we left the hospital.

It was hard being away from Desmond and Kaylynn reminded me of him so much! Desmond came to visit on Tuesday morning and didn’t quite know what to think. He immediately came over to look at her and got a huge smile, but then she started crying and he teared up and wanted me to put her back in her bed. We gave him some big brother gifts from Kaylynn and he played with his new battery operated Percy train the rest of the visit. The next day he was more interested in her and wanted to hold her and give her kisses. He’s going to be a good big brother!

On Thursday afternoon we came home. My parents and Aunt Marcia were staying at our place while we were in the hospital, but they returned home Thursday evening. Friday all of Davin’s parents arrived and stayed through the weekend. It was fun having them here, but having all the company has also created quite the whirlwind as we adjust to our new addition. Cheryl is thankfully staying for two weeks to help me adjust to Davin’s return to work in two days.

My recovery is going just as well as it did with Desmond. I took some pain medication at first, but the last few days I haven’t needed any. The main downside is I have no abdominal strength and can’t pick Desmond up or get out of bed very easily for that matter. It is getting better, though.

And here we go again! Kaylynn fed like a champ for the first five days bringing in my milk in just over two days (which impressed all the nurses). Then Sunday she became really lazy with her sucking and wanted to nurse almost non-stop. I don’t know what changed, but at our first mother/baby appointment yesterday the lactation consultant confirmed that she’s not getting enough and is a lazy feeder. She falls asleep almost as soon as she’s on. So here’s my new regimen: breastfeed, feed her extra breast milk with the aid of a tube, pump, and repeat every 3 hours. Sigh! I was so hoping we had this thing down and I didn’t need all this paraphernalia! I can’t do the tube feeding on my own yet (if only I had three hands) and this whole process usually takes just over an hour to complete which means I can’t tend to Desmond for quite a stretch.

Yesterday was my hardest day after breezing through the first several days. I get frustrated with the new feeding process, but if pumping for 11 months with Desmond is any indication, we can make this thing work! I just have to find my new rhythm. My goal with Desmond was to get him off formula and I did. So far we haven’t needed formula with Kaylynn so my goal with her is to get her back to proper nursing so we don’t need the tube.

Easter Weekend

2011-05-01T13:48:00.001-07:00

The Saturday before Easter we went to Esther Short Park downtown and joined in an Easter egg hunt. There were tons of eggs in a sectioned off piece of lawn for the four and under crowd. Once they said, “Go” it was over in about 15 seconds. This was Desmond’s first hunt so he didn’t really know what to do, and all the people kind of intimidated him, but he managed to get six eggs and then enjoyed eating the candy inside.

Easter day we had my family over for a big meal, and the rain stopped long enough for Desmond to do another egg hunt in our yard. He was very cute to watch.

The games are fun, but what a gift to remember that Jesus conquered death for us that we may live forever with Him!

New Craft Project

2011-04-24T09:09:00.001-07:00

Thanks to a birthday gift card to JoAnn, I’ve been working on a new craft project. I’ve had my eye on this one for awhile. It’s kind of what I imagine our daughter will look like as a little girl. I work on it in the evenings when Desmond is in bed.

As I was thinking about it I realized this is the first cross-stitch I’ve done in about six years! I go in spurts. I’ll really get into one project for awhile then it will get old so I’ll move on to something else. I’ve been a bit knit crazy the past year so it’s time to switch. It’s been really fun going back to cross-stitch.

Convert CSV data into a SQL table

2011-04-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been working with some report data that is stored statically in a database in CSV format. I had a need to have that CSV data displayed in a tabular format. I searched around and couldn't find anything written to do this in SQL, so I decided to write a stored procedure to do this very thing. It will take a CSV and parse it out into a SQL table. For instance if I have report data that looks like this...

"FirstName","LastName","DOB","Children"
"John","Smith","1/5/1980","Bob,Sally,Joe,Chris"
"Jane","Smith","2/25/1982","Bob,Sally,Joe,Chris"
"Bruce","Wayne","5/13/1975",""
"Peter","Parker","5/23/1970",""
"","","",""

It would be transformed into this ...

FirstName	LastName	DOB	Children
John	Smith	1/5/1980	Bob,Sally,Joe,Chris
Jane	Smith	2/25/1982	Bob,Sally,Joe,Chris
Bruce	Wayne	5/13/1975
Peter	Parker	5/23/1970

Note that in the last column the commas are preserved because they are within the quotation mark text qualifiers. Below is the stored procedure that does this. Feel free to use it, and leave a comment if you found it useful.

-- ==========================================================================================
-- Author:  Davin Studer
-- Create date: 4/5/2011
-- Description: This will take a CSV input
-- and transform it into a table
--
-- Params:
-- @string          - The CSV string
-- @textQualifier   - Character that denotes a string within the CSV
-- @columnDelimiter - Character that denotes different columns ... doesn't have to be a comma
-- @rowOneIsHeader  - Does the first row contain column names?
-- ==========================================================================================
create procedure [dbo].[CSVToTable]
    @string nvarchar(max) = '',
    @textQualifier varchar(1) = '',
    @columnDelimiter varchar(1) = ',',
    @rowOneIsHeader bit = 0
as
begin
    -- set nocount on added to prevent extra result sets from
    -- interfering with select statements.
    set nocount on;

    -- We need and input string
    if isnull(@string, '') = ''
    begin
        raiserror ('Please supply an CSV string', 15, 1)
        return
    end
 
    -- We need and column delimiter
    if isnull(@columnDelimiter, '') = ''
    begin
        raiserror ('Please supply a column delimiter.', 15, 1)
        return
    end
  
    -- Make sue the user doesn't pass null as a value
    if isnull(@textQualifier, '') = ''
    begin
        set @textQualifier = ''
    end

    -- Make sue the user doesn't pass null as a value
    if isnull(@rowOneIsHeader, '') = ''
    begin
        set @rowOneIsHeader = 0
    end

    declare
        @columns int = 1,
        @columnNames nvarchar(max) = '',
        @stop bit = 0,
        @position int = 0,
        @temp nvarchar(1) = '',
        @dataStart int = 0,
        @sql nvarchar(max) = '',
        @qualifierToggle bit = 0,
        @tempString nvarchar(max) = '',
        @delimiterReplacementUTFNumber int = 2603

    -- Get rid of the ##tempCSVSplitToTable table if it exists
    if object_id('tempdb..##tempCSVSplitToTable') is not null
    begin
        drop table ##tempCSVSplitToTable
    end

    -- Get rid of white space
    set @string = rtrim(ltrim(@string))

    -- Set the EOL to char(13)
    set @string = replace(@string, char(13) + char(10), char(13))
    set @string = replace(@string, char(10), char(13))

    -- Deal with the delimiter character within the text qualifier characters
    if @textQualifier <> ''
    begin
        while @position <> len(@string)
        begin
            set @temp = substring(@string, @position, 1)
            if @temp = @textQualifier
            begin
                if @qualifierToggle = 0
                begin
                    set @qualifierToggle = 1
                end
                else
                begin
                    set @qualifierToggle = 0
                end
            end
            if @temp = @columnDelimiter and @qualifierToggle = 1
            begin
                set @tempString = @tempString + nchar(@delimiterReplacementUTFNumber) -- replace with UTF delimiter replacement character
            end
            else
            begin
                set @tempString = @tempString + @temp
            end
            set @position = @position + 1
        end

        set @string = @tempString
    end

    -- Get rid of text qualifier ... we don't need it now
    if @textQualifier <> ''
    begin
        set @string = replace(@string, @textQualifier, '')
    end

    -- Get column names
    set @position = 1
    while @stop = 0
    begin
        set @temp = substring(@string, @position, 1)
        if @temp = @columnDelimiter
        begin
            set @columns = @columns + 1
            set @columnNames = @columnNames + ','
        end
        else if @temp = char(13)
        begin
            set @stop = 1
        end
        else
        begin
            set @columnNames = @columnNames + @temp
        end
        set @position = @position + 1
    end

    set @dataStart = @position

    if @rowOneIsHeader = 0
    begin
        set @dataStart = 1
        set @position = 1
        set @columnNames = ''
        while @position - 1 < @columns
        begin
            set @columnNames = @columnNames + ',Column' + cast(@position as varchar(1))
            set @position = @position + 1
        end
        set @columnNames = substring(@columnNames, 2, len(@columnNames))
    end

    -- Build ##tempCSVSplitToTable table
    set @sql = @sql + 'create table ##tempCSVSplitToTable (' + char(13) + '['
    set @stop = 0
    set @position = 1
    while @stop = 0
    begin
        set @temp = substring(@columnNames, @position, 1)
        if @temp <> ','
        begin
            set @sql = @sql + @temp
        end
        else
        begin
            set @sql = @sql + '] nvarchar(max),' + char(13) + '['
        end
   
        set @position = @position + 1

        if @position - 1 = len(@columnNames)
        begin
            set @sql = @sql + '] nvarchar(max)'
            set @stop = 1
        end
    end
    set @sql = @sql + ')' + char(13)
    exec (@sql)

    -- insert values into ##tempCSVSplitToTable table
    set @position = @dataStart
    while @position - 1 < len(@string)
    begin
        set @stop = 0
        set @sql = 'insert into ##tempCSVSplitToTable ([' + replace(@columnNames, ',', '],[') + ']) values ('''
        while @stop = 0
        begin
            set @temp = substring(@string, @position, 1)

            -- end of column
            if @temp = @columnDelimiter
            begin
                set @sql = @sql + ''','''
            end
            -- EOL
            else if @temp = char(13) or datalength(@temp) = 0
            begin
                set @stop = 1
            end
            -- deal with apostrophe in data
            else if @temp = ''''
            begin
                set @sql = @sql + ''''''
            end
            -- column data that isn't an apostrophe
            else
            begin
                set @sql = @sql + @temp
            end

            set @position = @position + 1
        end 
        set @sql = @sql + ''')'

        -- Get rid of any UTF delimiter replacements that were put in to take the place of the delimiter character within the text qualifier
        if @textQualifier <> ''
        begin
            set @sql = replace(@sql, nchar(@delimiterReplacementUTFNumber), @columnDelimiter)
        end

        exec(@sql)
    end

    select * from ##tempCSVSplitToTable

    -- destroy ##tempCSVSplitToTable table
    if object_id('tempdb..##tempCSVSplitToTable') is not null
    begin
        drop table ##tempCSVSplitToTable
    end
end

Getting Ready for Baby

2011-04-02T13:25:00.001-07:00

Last weekend my parents came up and helped me paint the nursery. It’s now a pretty lilac color and I’ve had fun sewing curtains and decorating it. Desmond has been helping me along the way, and he likes all the baby things that are coming out of boxes. Speaking of boxes – I emptied one and made it into a house for him. It’s been a huge hit.

Today is our last free, unscheduled day before baby arrives. Weird! April weekends are full of Tae Soo Do events (Davin’s black belt ceremony and a tournament) and family birthdays. There are so many things I could do today… or I might just relax.

For more baby news and health updates check out my pregnancy blog.

Little Boy Blue

2011-03-24T19:39:00.001-07:00

Desmond has officially moved back into his bedroom! We moved him out of the “burgundy room” fairly early because it reeked of cat pee. I started painting it in September, and then it sat untouched for awhile through early pregnancy discomforts and a-fib episodes. I worked on it here and there, ripping out trim, sanding, retexturing, pulling out carpet, and sealing the subfloor. Last week we finally got our new carpet installed and Davin put in the trim (we just have the closet and window trim left to do). Today I finished up touch ups, and Desmond helped me move in the furniture. He was so excited! I was, too.

With this transition back into the “blue room” we are struck with how big Desmond is getting. He’s such a little boy and no longer a baby. Getting a new baby in a few weeks will change so much in our family dynamics. We’re phasing out the things baby will use such as the gliding rocker that will go in the nursery, but it was sad not to rock Desmond tonight. Our little boy is growing up! What a mix of sadness and joy all at once.

Cute Sayings

2011-03-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

Desmond hiding behind the curtain: "I'm a Jertain!" While reviewing our phone number with Desmond, Davin says it and Desmond replys, "Good job, Daddy." The next time Davin says it Desmond says, "Good job, Daddy, again." The third time Davin prompts him to repeat it, Desmond says, "Good job, Daddy, again and again." At Sweet Tomatoes Desmond was playing around rather than eating. Davin was trying to get him to finish his dinner and rather than saying it verbally again, he simply pointed to Desmond's food. Desmond then turned with a smile and pointed to Davin's food. We got a good laugh at his imitation. While making dinner Desmond was helping me roll out the dough and he said, "Dough. Doe a deer!" He's always making new associations. I'm not sure where he picked up this word because it's not like we're saying it all the time but in the car Desmond all of a sudden blurts out, "Husband." I told him that Daddy was my husband so he repeated, "Daddy is my husband." Later at dinner I was telling Davin about it and Desmond said again, "Daddy is my husband." We corrected him and told him that Davin was not his husband but his daddy and he was only my husband. Desmond was about to cry because he wanted Daddy to be his husband. We kept explaining about family relationships: daddy, mommy, son, husband, wife, brother, sister. Desmond just ended up confused but at least we avoided tears.

Our Not-So-Little Desmond

2011-03-09T14:55:00.001-08:00

It’s hard to believe that very soon we will have two children! I am looking forward to lightening my load and getting this body back in shape again. Desmond likes to give baby sister kisses. I think she’ll need to get used to getting lots of love.

I’ve been struck with how big Desmond is getting lately. Not only has he grown half an inch in the last 6 weeks (making him 38.5 inches tall), but he continues to surprise me with the things he says and his growing skills. He can dress and undress himself, count to 29, and recognizes numbers 0-10 which is handy when we tell him he can’t get up until his clock says 7. He knows all his letters including some letter sounds and can spell his name. He also just learned our phone number.

Recently a car honked it’s horn and Desmond said, “Somebody pushed the trumpet button.” He also reminds me to take smaller bites and made a joke the other day by saying “cheese” instead of “please.” He makes us laugh on a regular basis. I should be better at writing these things down because I forget most of it.

Last weekend we went down to Albany to celebrate the Boydston March birthdays: Dad – March 1, Grandpa – March 4, Daniel – March 6, and me – March 15. We had gifts and dinner at the Sizzler. Here’s Desmond giving Nana an eskimo kiss. He has a routine: hug, kiss, eskimo kiss, high five, knuckles, thumbs up. We’re getting everyone trained in that.

My Little Puzzler

2011-02-10T12:08:00.001-08:00

Desmond takes after me in his love for puzzles. Yesterday we had fun putting together every jigsaw puzzle he has. We have long since left the wooden peg puzzles in favor of jigsaw puzzles. A few months ago I did a 1000-piece puzzle and while I was sorting Desmond put together the first three pieces on his own. He can do 48 piece puzzles all by himself now, so I’m thinking of getting even bigger ones for him.

It was Desmond’s idea to not wear clothes so that’s why he’s only in a diaper and socks. And yes, he’s back in diapers. Our last potty training session lasted eight weeks, but he was still having lots of major accidents, and I can only remember about four times where he told us he needed to go potty. My hospital stay totally derailed everything so it is back to diapers for now.

Financial (or should I say “Faith”) Testing

2011-02-07T14:07:00.001-08:00

The second half of last year was expensive with a house purchase, unexpected hospital bills, a new roof, and a major vehicle repair. Well, the trend is continuing into 2011. We’ve been trimming down our budget for the last few months wherever we can, but it seems every little bit we save gets eaten up and then some by some unavoidable bill. We got zinged with another big hospital bill (have to put it on a payment plan this time), a car that failed emissions (there goes another couple hundred) and then decided to break down completely yesterday (actually make that closer to a thousand). Ack! At least I already had an appointment for the emissions work so we knew right where to have it towed.

The sermon yesterday talked about difficulties driving us to dependence on God rather than ourselves. I feel like waving my arms and saying, “Um, God, do you see what we’ve already had to pay for? Do you see what we have left? Do you see my pregnant belly ticking down to even more expenses?” His reply to me is, “Do you see what I’ve already provided? Do you trust me to keep my promise and continue to provide?” Yes, thank you for the Christian mechanic, the clearance baby clothes, Davin's mom giving us AAA, and for the previous house owners finally paying off their water bill. Of course God knows exactly what we’re facing and He’s asking us to trust Him. It’s all His money anyway and if this is how He wants to spend it, then okay. We’re just trying to make the best decisions we can with what we’ve been given. Here’s hoping for a nice tax return and that we can qualify for the kids to be on Washington’s Apple Health for Kids health insurance program.

Sledding Day

2011-01-29T20:41:00.001-08:00

This morning after our toddler alarm clock got us up, we got ready, packed our snow stuff and headed to Mt. Hood for some sledding. Thankfully Desmond’s snow pants still fit and some borrowed snow boots worked if we took the fleece inserts out.

Last year we took Desmond sledding for the first time and he didn’t like it, but this year was a whole different story. He was climbing in the snow while Davin and I got our gear on, and he laughed and kept saying, “This is fun!” as Davin pulled him along on the sled. We found a good gentle hill to ourselves and Desmond even took a few runs on his own. Even after two hours of snow play he didn’t want to leave this time.

I felt a bit strange with my pregnant belly hanging out of my unzipped snow pants (thankfully they have suspenders so they stayed up), and it was quite a work out pulling Desmond in the sled back up the hill after our runs together, but it was so much fun! We’ll have to try to go back before the winter is over.

Atrial Fibrillation Revisit

2011-01-16T10:29:00.001-08:00

At the end of lunch on Tuesday I felt my heart start racing. “Uh-oh,” I thought and paused to pay attention to what my heart was doing. Desmond was finished with lunch at this point and was playing under the table. It took me a minute to realize he just peed and pooped while I wasn’t paying attention. (He likes to go under or behind things.)

So I was cleaning up poop while on the phone with Kaiser advice. The nurse on the other end was calm until I mentioned I was also 24 weeks pregnant. Then she sounded a bit flustered and wasn’t sure who to transfer me to. We got it figured out though and as I thought they wanted me to go to the ER. “Here we go again!” I thought as I packed a bag of entertainment and snacks for Desmond and an overnight bag for me with my knitting, reading and personal items I missed last time I was in the hospital. I felt winded going up and down the stairs.

Davin rushed home because I’m not supposed to drive in a-fib. It was nice not doing this in the middle of the night, but the inconvenience this time was Desmond missing his nap. Still he was a trouper and did great. He remembered last time and wasn’t quite as worried this time around. He did cry when they left me for the night, though.

It was nice having familiarity this time which made it a bit less scary. I saw the same ER doctor and the same Kaiser doctor as last time though they see enough people they didn’t remember me. My heart wasn’t beating quite as intensely as last time though it was still up in the 100-120s most of the time with higher spikes into 160s.

The doctors talked sooner about cardioversion this time. We wrestled with whether or not to try shocking me out of it, but I didn’t like the idea of shocking the baby. The other option was trying to control my heart rate with more medication, but that gets to the baby too, so I really felt stuck. They said either option was most likely safe for the baby, but there aren’t any studies on pregnant women so they didn’t really know what option to suggest over the other. In the end we chose not to do the cardioversion because my heart could go right back into a-fib and then we’d be back in the same boat needing medication anyway. My prenatal doctor I’ve been seeing was told I was there and stopped in during her shift. It was perfect timing and I felt comforted to talk to her and go through my options again.

All through Wednesday they had me on more Metoprolol, the beta blocker I’ve been on since September. There wasn’t really any change though. I think it was Wednesday evening when they started Diltiazem, a calcium blocker to see if that would drop my heart rate. The only problem was my blood pressure. The lowest I saw it was 83/44 and I could tell it made the nurses nervous when the systolic pressure got below 100 so sometimes they wouldn’t give me any more meds. The cardiologist came in on Thursday morning and “cracked the whip” as he said to tell them to keep giving me the medicine as long as I felt okay. I’m a lot younger than their usual patients so I can handle a lower blood pressure. I never felt dizzy or lightheaded though when I saw the low blood pressure numbers I felt like I should have felt something different, but I felt fine. The Diltiazem started working (I was on an IV to get a quick and steady dose) and my heart rate went down a little though it was still high I was still in a-fib.

Mom came up on Thursday to see me and help out with Desmond. That was a huge help. Our friend Sarah was able to watch Des on Wednesday and he had fun playing with Chloe all day. Thursday and Friday he got lots of time with Nana and that freed up Davin to stay with me.

On Thursday evening while Davin was settling everyone in at home my heart went back into a regular rhythm. It was 6:18 pm and the nurse who worked all three nights I was there came in and gave me the good news. Whoohoo! It lasted 54 hours this time; the longest yet. I can feel when a-fib starts but it kind of slips back to normal quietly so I can’t tell the moment that happens. They still wanted to keep me one more night to transfer me from the IV to the pills and see how I tolerated the medication.

I rested much easier that night and early Friday morning they said I could go home and I was discharged around 9:30 am. It felt so good to get all unhooked from everything, especially the circulation leg cuffs that squeezed me for three days. I have a sore, itchy rash from those because my legs sweat so badly.

I’m so relieved to be back in a normal heart rhythm. It just doesn’t feel good to have a racing, skipping heart when I’m just resting. It’s like when you get startled and it makes your heart jump and beat fast except it never calms down.

The downside is that now I’m on all this medication. They’re being a bit more aggressive now that I’ve demonstrated the ability to go back into a-fib. I’m taking an aspirin a day to thin my blood since a-fib increases my chance for a stroke. (I turned down the blood thinner injections they suggested.) I just hope thinner blood doesn’t negatively affect my labor and delivery. I’m also on more Metoprolol, three times a day instead of two which can cause a low birth rate and they added the Diltiazem which can cause cardiovascular birth defects. The pharmacist was really concerned to give me my medication since I am pregnant, but it’s the safest stuff they’ve got.

I’m looking forward to seeing my prenatal doctor on Tuesday to go over how things are now and how the next few months might be. I wish I was delivering sooner so the baby wouldn’t have to be on my medications so long. At least I’m in the second trimester where a lot of the major development has already happened. It’s nice to know a good and all-powerful God is in control of both my heart beat and the baby’s growth. I just sure hope the next time I’m in the hospital is to meet my baby.

P.S. We hoped to hold off until May to meet my deductible and out-of-pocket maximum for the year since we're still recovering from our new roof, but here it is. We'll be paying it now instead. The upside is that there's a good chance the labor and delivery will be free now.

Potty Training Round 2

2010-12-30T16:03:00.001-08:00

The first time I tried potty training Desmond, it didn’t work. I gave up after watching him like a hawk and not leaving the house for six days rushing him to the potty every time.

Davin wanted to give it another go on his three day Thanksgiving weekend. I let him head it up this time and took a much more relaxed approach. I didn’t think it would just magically work in three days or less this time. And I was right.

We are now five weeks into potty training and we’re still not there yet. Let’s just say the three day method isn’t for Desmond. He knows what to do and how to do it, but he just lacks the inner motivation to actually do it. At this point it’s more about me being vigilant and taking him to go often enough.

Some days Desmond doesn’t have any accidents. Today we’ve had two. The worst so far was when he pooped while we were at Target. It was extremely difficult to clean up in a tiny bathroom stall with a shortage of wipes, but it felt good tucking the undies in a baggie and tossing them in the garbage on the way out. Not worth washing. On weekends I let Davin take the messy ones.

It’s nice saving money on diapers, but I find I have to do laundry based on Desmond’s underwear pile now. Who knows when everything will click and he’ll make the decision to be in charge of going potty, but for now it’s going okay. Just maybe he’ll take over by May.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T13:11:00.001-08:00

Christmas morning 2010 started off with Desmond finding his big train set we had assembled the night before. He is ecstatic about his new toy and has barely left it since except for when we make him eat a meal or go to bed.

After gifts we had a yummy bacon and eggs breakfast and read about Jesus’ birth in Desmond’s Bible. Then we headed over to Aunt Marcia’s house for lunch and festivities with my family. I think Desmond’s favorite gift that afternoon was Duncan or “Dumpkin” as Des calls him, his first Thomas train for his set. He also got lots of puzzles which he loves… if he can take a break from his trains long enough to do one.

We were able to video chat with Davin’s family so it was great being able to see everyone. Merry Christmas!

Christmastime is Here!

2010-12-24T12:54:00.001-08:00

The other day we made our first Studer gingerbread house. I picked up a kit because it was super easy and fast. Desmond was so excited to build it, and though it had potential to be a beautiful little house, it ended up with the design work of a two year old free to decorate as he pleased. And it was perfect. It lasted a grand total of four hours before we started devouring it.

Today is Christmas Eve and the advent calendar only has one more spot left. Desmond is excited for Christmas but doesn’t fully understand how fun it’s really going to be. He knows it’s Jesus’ birthday and that there are presents to open under the tree. Tonight after he’s in bed we build the train table. I’m excited to play with it and can’t wait to see his reaction in the morning.

New Roof Over our Heads

2010-12-17T13:53:00.001-08:00

This was the week of the new roof. The contractor said he’d call us to schedule the day, but on Tuesday a big truck pulled in unannounced and unloaded all the supplies to our roof.

Wednesday a guy backed in a trailer and not long after that a crew of men pulled in with ladders and the pounding began. They ripped off and repapered the back half of the roof that day.

Thursday they were back bright and early to finish the rest of the tear off and repapering. I’m not sure when they reshingled the back half because we can’t see that part from our yard. They also added more vents to prevent our mold problem from returning.

Today they were working where we could see them out the window, and I got my first look at the new shingles. Desmond liked the guy with the orange hood. I tried talking to these guys when they first arrived because we hadn’t heard from the contractor at all, but they only speak Spanish and my minimal high school Spanish skills have left me.

I was worried about the color we picked and wondered if a different color might look better because we didn’t really have time to discuss it, but now that it’s on I think it looks great! (And you’re right, it’s pretty close to the same color as before.)

Next for the exterior would be a new garage door, but that will probably be a year or two. Then after that we need a whole new fence because it’s falling down in a few places. And someday it would be nice to repaint and landscape. Anyway, it feels great to have a new roof over our heads!

Reflections on 2010

2010-12-12T17:18:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I finished my family scrapbook for 2010. It was good looking back on the year though not everything was a happy reflection. This year has had it’s share of pain, misunderstandings, loneliness and loss. I really struggled through the first half of the year culminating in the death of our second child who I named Emery. He or she was due two weeks from now, and nothing can explain a mother’s anguish during this time. Through this year’s pain I turn confused, heart broken to the only One who is unshakeable. God is opening my eyes to new possibilities and treasures to be found although the rebuilding is a slow process.

We had our first two hospital experiences this year with Desmond getting five stitches in his chin and my heart unexplainably going into atrial fibrillation for a couple days. We are really not the ones in control, are we?

This year also holds treasures I never want to forget. Watching Desmond grow is such a joy. He has left his baby ways and entered into the ups and downs of toddlerhood. He makes me laugh (and cry sometimes), and I just want to love him better as our simple days go by. We’ve enjoyed family outings to Dozer Days, strawberry picking, camping, and the beach as well as our sixth anniversary trip to Seattle. It’s easy for me to dwell on the sad things I wish were different but cannot change. I am challenged to renew my mind with the happy things that really do outweigh the sad ones.

God has richly blessed us. Davin got a new job here in Vancouver, we bought a new house and found good renters for our condo. In this struggling economy God has provided for all our needs. The richest gift is the life of our new baby girl who I feel moving in my womb daily now. We can’t wait to meet her in the spring!

New Roof for the Winter

2010-12-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

We finally signed away a good chunk of our savings to a new roof! Hurray and ouch all at the same time. It will be nice to get this done. We toyed with the idea of tackling it ourselves to save some money but there's the time factor, the learning curve, and the peace-of-mind knowing it's done right. In a few weeks we'll have to post some pictures to show it off. Also if you haven't heard here's our baby news: "It's a..."

A Test and a Tree

2010-12-04T22:31:00.001-08:00

Today was Davin’s first test for Tae Soo Do black belt. Hurray! He did very well going through all his basics, kicks, and speed drills. After three more tests and a demo he’ll be an official black belt. So don’t mess with him. He could beat you up for an hour and still have something left.

Later after Davin and Desmond had a good nap, we went to a nearby tree farm. They had hot chocolate and farm animals which was Desmond’s favorite part. We didn’t get there in time for a hay ride, but Desmond got his first ride in the truck as we drove back into the farm to find our tree. It will be fun to decorate it together tomorrow. This is Desmond’s first real tree since the first year he was born we were packed up for moving back to our condo and last year we went to Disneyland and didn’t want to come back to a dead tree. The house smells so good right now!

Money, Money, Money

2010-12-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Life sure gets expensive all at once it seems. We recently got a free truck from Davin's dad, and it's been a great luxury to have two vehicles! However, the truck died this week and it cost us over $600 to get it fixed. Ouch. After talking to my brother about it I think we paid too much but what's done is done. I'm trying to see it as acquiring a $600 truck which is still a good deal. Now as long as it doesn't break again. We also had to recently pay off my $1000 hospital bill and Davin is testing for his Tae Soo Do black belt test tomorrow (hurray!) but the series of four tests costs $400. Ugh! Our house still needs a new roof and I'm afraid we'll need to do it soon before our savings is too far gone. I wonder what's down the road - you know, other than delivering a baby in May - that will need that money, too. We're also in the midst of the Christmas season when we like to give lots of gifts, but I'm working on handcrafting what I can to save some money. It's more thoughtful that way, too, right? It just takes several hours to put together one gift so I've got to keep moving on those. God has always provided above and beyond for our needs and I know He won't stop meeting our needs now. Still I like to have my safety net in the bank where I can see it.

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-25T20:21:00.001-08:00

We had fun getting ready to host Thanksgiving for our family. Sadly, Davin’s parents were snowed in up in Spokane so they couldn’t make the drive down. We missed them, but did video chat before Desmond went to bed.

Our turkey was a 24-pounder and I had to buy a new roasting pan to hold it. We enjoyed tons of delicious food, and filled in our Thanksgiving tree with God’s blessings to our family.

It was fun to watch Desmond playing with everyone, and I enjoyed the respite from being his main entertainment. As soon as Aunt Marcia came in he wanted to do puzzles with her. He called Uncle Daniel away from the table to go play, and he had everyone take turns lifting him up for his Buzz Lightyear game.

We are thankful for God’s work in our family, for Davin’s new job, our new home, our new baby, our health, and carrots.

First Snow of the Season

2010-11-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

On Sunday it snowed during Desmond’s nap and when he woke up there was enough to go play. Desmond loved running around it in and his first comment was, “There’s too much rain!” I made him snowballs out of the slushy snow and he’d throw them on the driveway and watch them break apart. Hopefully it will snow more later so we can play longer. I just need to find him better gloves.

The Loved Bay-deht

2010-11-01T14:48:00.001-07:00

Before Desmond was born I made him a blanket with lots of different textures because I thought he’d like the feel. In this picture he is ten days old on his blanket. He grew to love it and always sleeps with it. I have to sneak it into the wash now and then but it’s showing wear. Desmond likes to feel the corners and they’re getting holes. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but now he falls asleep by finding two corner holes and putting his index fingers inside. Once he was trying to get his finger into one of the corners that didn’t have a big enough hole yet and he said, “It’s not working. Fix it?” so I helped him find a new corner with a bigger hole. Now I’m not sure I should fix the holes because if I did then his blanket wouldn’t work right.

Last October Weekend

2010-11-01T09:58:00.001-07:00

Davin took Friday off work– a small but welcomed compensation for all his extra work lately– and we drove to Spokane to visit the grandparents. Desmond enjoyed seeing them, their two dogs and playing with Davin’s old Lincoln Logs. We even got to eat breakfast in a train which Desmond loved.

On the way home we brought back a pick up truck that Davin’s dad generously gave us. It’s an ‘83 but it still looks and runs great. It has less than half of the mileage of our well-driven Honda so that’s a plus. After five hours in the car alone with Desmond our entertainment had degraded to who could do the funniest fake yelling. I needed a break so we switched and I drove the truck the final hour into town. That was an experience! It’s a stick but feels totally different than the Honda, of course. And it was getting dark and started to rain so lets just say I was a bit tense.

Before heading home we decided to stop in at Real Life, a friend’s church here in Vancouver that was doing a fun festival for the kiddos. Desmond had a lot of fun in the bounce houses, riding the horse-drawn wagon, and going through the dark tunnel maze with a flashlight. He got cars and some candy to take home so he was very happy. Desmond was the cutest Buzz Lightyear. In the car on the way home he kept saying, “I am the real Buzz!” He fell asleep right away when we got home. Another full, fun weekend.

A Bit of Excitement

2010-10-19T12:42:00.001-07:00

Story #1: Yesterday morning Desmond and I came home from Target and this wall heater was running. It’s turned itself on once before – faulty thermostat or something. It was in the off position and if I cranked on it hard I could get it to click off, but it wouldn’t stay off. I was standing there holding the knob trying to decide what to do when the smoke detectors went off. Great! I made a mental note of where the fire extinguisher was and where Desmond was as I dashed to the garage to throw the breaker. All was well and I safely got the thermostat unwired from the wall (my first dabbling in electrical work). Thank you, God, for protecting our house! Note to everyone: make sure to clean these things twice a year like they say.

Story #2: This morning as soon as Davin closed the door I said I forgot my keys and turned to go get them. “I did too,” was his reply. What? We were locked out at 7:30 am with no keys to the house or car. Looking up I saw that the bathroom window was open. Davin hopped up onto the fence and easily pulled himself up on the garage roof. After a bit of finagling he popped the screen off and was in. Whew. Thank goodness we left that window open. Now we need to remember to never leave it open again… as long as we have our keys.

Fun Outings

2010-10-13T15:02:00.001-07:00

Desmond and I were stuck at home all week last week because we were both sick. I’m making up for it this week by doing something fun every morning. Monday we went swimming at Firstenburg Community Center. Tuesday we went to the zoo. I’d never been by myself and it was actually a lot of fun just the two of us wondering around. Then today we had Chloe over to play and we all took a walk to the park. It’s great having two kids. They play so well together… most of the time, anyway. Chloe couldn’t always understand Desmond’s words which was funny.

Des: “Draw?” (Referring to coloring, but he doesn’t pronounce the “r”)

Chloe: “There’s a doll over there.”

Later…

Des: “Chloe, tent too?” (Asking if she wanted to come into the tent we made)

Chloe: “Yeah, I have a tattoo.”

The Little Red Hen

2010-10-06T15:52:00.001-07:00

On our walk back from Safeway this morning Desmond and I - no kidding - found a young little red hen along the side of the road. It was clucking and hunting for bugs and hoped we had food. I couldn't just leave it there to wander into traffic, and I knew a guy had roosters down the road about a block and a half and I wondered if it had come from there. We turned around to walk back to this house, and the little red hen followed us. I was calling to it, "Here, chick, chick, chick," and it would come running. Desmond was laughing. Gotta say I felt a little silly coaxing a chicken to follow me down the sidewalk of a busy street. I was concerned about getting it to follow me across the crosswalk when we came to a side street but the chicken finally crossed the road. We got to the house with the roosters and the guy was working outside. He said he wasn't missing a chicken but could use one unless we wanted to keep it. I'm not ready to take on a pet right now so we left it in good hands and it was getting fed as we left. I wonder if we'll see it on future visits to our park which is adjacent to the rooster house.

Desmond’s First Camping Trip

2010-10-04T11:01:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we packed up and headed over to Swift Forest Camp to squeeze in a camping trip before the fall rains are upon us. We enjoyed nice weather and since it is off season the site didn’t cost anything. Desmond’s favorite activity was chasing me through the trees as I tried to get far enough ahead to hide. He also liked the tent, the fire, throwing rocks in the lake, and pretending to be “Bugs Lightyear.”

It took forever to get Desmond to sleep and then he woke up for a couple hours at 2am. So it wasn’t a very restful trip, but fun none-the-less. Maybe next time Desmond will sleep for us a little better and we can stay a little longer. Then again, we’ll probably have two kids next time we get out for camping so who knows.

Painting

2010-09-26T18:18:00.001-07:00

This picture was taken the day I went to the hospital. Desmond and I had painted wall #2 in his room that morning. Desmond loved helping out and since the carpet needs to go it didn’t really matter where the blue paint fell. After I was checked into my hospital room I discovered that I still had paint on the bottoms of my feet. Whoops!

I haven’t touched his room since. I need to get back in there and paint another wall. There’s still a lot to do before we can move on to the nursery. Glad I started early!

Quick Update

2010-09-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that things are going well and my heart is behaving itself. I feel totally normal in that department. I'm avoiding frozen desserts right now because I've been eating one every time I've had one of my heart episodes. The doctors say that it's highly unlikely to be a cause, but why risk it? It's just too bad that I love frozen desserts! I've resurrected my Studer Baker pregnancy blog. I'll have brief baby blurbs here but for all the details you can go there.

My Hospital Story: A Heart Scare

2010-09-18T17:52:00.001-07:00

Wednesday night we had just put Desmond down for bed and started a movie when my heart did a hard, rapid series of thumps, and I noted the time was 7:18 pm.

This has happened twice before: once in June and again just two weeks ago. Both times I’ve come out of the irregular heart beat on my own, but it’s lasted for 6 and 10 hours respectively. I wore a heart monitor for 30 days after the first episode but they didn’t find anything.

I called Kaiser advice which takes forever on hold! Davin and I had managed to count my pulse and it was 144. It was hard to take my pulse because the beats aren’t regular and they kept pausing and jumping around. The ER doctor wanted me to come in immediately with my heart rate being so high, so we woke Desmond up and headed off to the ER at SW Washington Medical Center around 8:30 pm.

They got me an ER room right away and hooked me up to a monitor. My heart rate was jumping anywhere from the 120’s to the 160’s and the ECG confirmed that I was in atrial fibrillation. The doctors were concerned but couldn’t do the normal drugs or shock me out of it because I’m also pregnant. The doctor conferred with specialists and decided the beta-blocker metroprolol was the safest so I started receiving that. My heart rate decreased to between 90 and 110 but the fibrillation continued. They decided to check me in to the hospital for the night.

Desmond was a trooper during this long night. He behaved well and didn’t get fussy. He was, however, very concerned about me. When the nurses came in and put me on oxygen and hooked me up to heart monitors he had the most concerned little look on his face. He put his head against Davin’s shoulder, his little mouth turned down, and a tear trickled down. It broke my heart! I smiled really big and kept telling him I was ok and talked about how the tubes tickled my nose, but he wasn’t convinced. Davin took him out for a little while. Sometime between midnight and 1 am Davin and Des went home and I got settled in my hospital room.

I got maybe three or four hours of interrupted sleep that night because they kept coming in to take my vitals, give me more medication, take more blood, or the doctor would come talk to me. Dr. Bean (great name, huh?) explained atrial fibrillation to me and possible treatments. He could tell I like information so he printed off tons of info on A-fib for me to read.

Thursday was basically a day to try and find the right level of medication. They were trying to get my rate down, but beta-blockers also drop blood pressure and mine was getting too low. They also ran more tests, and the lab results and echocardiogram all came back normal. I talked to more doctors: Dr. Lundsgaarde was my main doctor and my cardiologist was Dr. Lamberton. I have lone atrial fibrillation which means there are no other contributing risk factors. That means they can’t explain why it’s happening but also it means I have a much lower risk of stroke normally associated with this heart rhythm. All through the day my A-fib continued. It’s never gone on this long and I kept thinking it could pop back into normal rhythm any time now. Davin and Desmond joined me around 11 am and we quickly decided to send Desmond off to play with the Lees for the afternoon. Thank you, LeRoy! Davin had to leave around dinner time to get Desmond. They stopped back in briefly on the way home for the night. I had hoped to go home, but they weren’t happy with my heart rate yet so I had to stay. I cried after Davin and Des left.

I got a lot more sleep on Thursday night and started Friday feeling refreshed and hopeful that I’d get to go home soon. I was feeling a bit better and at one point wondered if my heart had gone back to normal. But no, a little while later the nurse came in concerned because my heart rate was still too high but my blood pressure was too low. I started to feel discouraged. I was going stir crazy for one thing. There’s only so much sitting in bed knitting and watching TLC that I can take.

It was about 9:20 am on Friday. I stood by the window thinking and wishing Davin were there. I’m a healthy 30 year old. I shouldn’t be in the stroke unit with all these old people. (I was the only one under 65 there.) The other thing that keeps going through my mind is that I KNOW God is in control of the situation and that one word from Him can put my heart back in rhythm. I could feel my heart rate increase, my chest got tight and my breathing started coming fast and shallow. Something’s really not right, and I thought about pushing the nurse call button. Am I going to be okay? Will my baby be okay? Maybe my heart will stop and baby and I will both die. It was a hard moment standing there by the window looking at the cloudy sky. I took a few deep breaths, picked up my Bible and randomly opened to the Psalms which is my comfort book. It fell to Psalm 19, “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul… The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.” I continued to Psalm 20:

¹ May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. ² May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion. ³ May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings. Selah ⁴ May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. ⁵ We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God. May the LORD grant all your requests. ⁶ Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; he answers him from his holy heaven with the saving power of his right hand. ⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. ⁸ They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm. ⁹ O LORD, save the king! Answer us when we call!

As my heart pounded out of my chest, God gave me words of comfort, and I rested knowing I was in perfect, all-powerful hands. I found out later that Dad was reading Psalm 17 and praying for me at that exact moment.

I heard a little voice in the hall and Desmond came running in. A minute later at 9:33 the nurse came in and said, “Good news! Your heart converted at 9:32 and you are back in a normal rhythm.” Really? I sat there and tuned in to my heart beat. Yeah, the fibrillation is gone! It happened just as Davin and Desmond showed up.

Dr. Lundsgaarde came in about three minutes later to do morning follow up. He starts talking about going ahead with the cardioversion – shocking me out of it. He said my heart rate jumped up to 175 a short while ago (when I was feeling really bad) and he really wanted to get me out of this fibrillation. Davin and I looked at each other and told him that the nurse just said I came out of it. The doctor was confused because he had just looked at my heart monitor ten minutes ago. He went to double check and then said I’d be able to go home as long as I stayed in a normal rhythm the rest of the day. The specialists he’d been conferring with also wanted to get an ultrasound to confirm my pregnancy was viable.

Nothing much happened the rest of the day. We had Desmond with us and the nurses loved bringing him treats. Then when the doctor came in Des asked him to get him some apple juice. He thought the staff were all personal waiters. It was pretty funny. Desmond took his nap in bed with me which was some nice snuggle time. We also got a visit from a therapy dog and Desmond cried his eyes out when they left. Aunt Marcia came to take him home at dinner time. We were all getting restless and getting on each other’s nerves so this was a welcomed break. I finally had my ultrasound sometime around 7 pm. It was so good to see our baby for the first time and that beautiful flashing hear beat! I was discharged shortly after 8 pm.

What an experience. I’ve never been in the hospital except to give birth. My atrial fibrillation has happened before, but I sure hope that it doesn’t happen again. I’m also afraid that we just spent our roofing budget. God knows what our needs our and what the future holds so we’ll just have to take it as it comes.

Desmond’s Cute Ways

2010-09-11T15:15:00.001-07:00

The other day Desmond pulled out his Cars pajamas from the folded laundry pile and asked to put them on. Nana made these for his birthday and they’re his favorite. Then he added striped socks to his hands, and this is how he looked when we went to go pick up Davin from work.

Another favorite is his new-found “robot helmet.” He loves to put it on and become a robot. Thanks to Grandma Linda for the perfect box. (He loves the bath blocks, too.)

On the way to the beach we were snacking on trail mix and Desmond was just eating out all the M&M’s and then asking for more. I told him he could have more after he ate the nuts and raisins too. About a minute later he asked for more and handed me his empty bowl. I praised him for finishing it all, but as I handed him more he says, “I spilled it out!” I looked and sure enough, there were the nuts and raisins I had asked him to eat dumped in the car seat next to his leg and partially up his shorts. We had a good laugh. He’s getting sneaky except for the fact that he still tells on himself.

On the way home from a friends house late last night we pulled out onto the main road and passed a strip club with lots of flashing lights. “Oh, look! Pretty lights!” Desmond points and exclaims excitedly. “Yes, those are pretty lights,” I reply as Davin and I again have a good laugh.

Oh, Baby!

2010-09-10T16:05:00.001-07:00

This new little one is causing me grief! Well, nausea really. I didn’t feel sick with Desmond and when I did feel a little icky a snack took it right away. I try to snack on this or that and drink 7-Up but it’s just not helping much. Feeling sick all day really slows me down and wears me down! I don’t feel like I can work out or chase Desmond around to play. We’ve been watching lots of TV unfortunately. At least we made it to the park today. I try to look on the bright side that this part should be done by second trimester, but that’s about 7 weeks away! Blah! Long time to feel like throwing up. At least it’s a reminder that this little one is there and doing well.

Labor Day Weekend - Monday

2010-09-10T15:53:00.001-07:00

It was great that Davin didn’t have to work on Monday! We decided to get in our annual beach trip before summer was completely over. Of course Desmond didn’t remember last year so it was like a whole new experience for him.

Before we even got there Desmond was saying he didn’t like the beach. We got down to the sand and he refused to walk in it. Finally he discovered how fun it could be when Davin wiggled his toes into the sand. He enjoyed digging with his shovel and watching the kites. The first time we went down to the water and it touched Desmond’s feet, he ran away saying, “No! No! No!” But by the end he was throwing rocks in the water and wanted to go all the way in. He cried loudly for the water when it was time to leave. It was fun to see the progression from wanting nothing to do with the beach to discovering how fun it really was. It takes him a little bit to get used to the idea of new things.

We finished the day with a late lunch at Mo’s, and Desmond was asleep in 8 minutes after we got back on the road. What a full, fun family weekend!

Labor Day Weekend - Sunday

2010-09-10T15:52:00.003-07:00

Davin and Desmond stayed home from church because Davin was quite sore and tired from his ride on Saturday, and Desmond had a runny nose we didn’t want to share. After naptime we went in to Portland again so Desmond could ride the train this time. We had fun hanging out as a family and got dinner at Clackamas Towncenter.

Labor Day Weekend - Saturday

2010-09-10T15:52:00.001-07:00

Saturday was a full day! We started off early driving Davin in to the MAX station to meet LeRoy for their century ride. Desmond wasn’t happy when the train left with Daddy. We then picked up Jeremy from Multnomah and drove down to Albany for Nathan and Mom’s birthday party. We stopped in to see Great-Grammy on the way. Desmond had a good time at the party playing with gravel and doing puzzles with Aunt Marcia. He’s really into puzzles right now! I guessed right that though Nathan is 34 now, he still likes Legos. We drove back and picked up Davin on the way home. It was strange to think that they were biking the whole day. He and LeRoy rode 113 miles and had a surprise hill at the end, but had a great ride overall.

So Many Wonderful Blessings

2010-09-02T15:40:00.001-07:00

Desmond will occasionally request that I sing my Destiny solo "For Every Mountain." He calls it "Mommy's Song," and it really is a fitting song for this year of my life. In April God gave us our second child and six weeks later He took him or her away. Shortly after that I was brushing up on this song for my Multnomah college reunion and the words spoke so deeply to me.

"I've got so much to thank God for. So many wonderful blessings and so many open doors. A brand new mercy along with each new day... You've been my provider, so many times You've met my needs. So many times You have rescued me. I want to thank You for the blessings You give to me each new day. That's why I praise You, and for this I give You the praise."

God provided friends to surround me during the darkest grief of my miscarriage. Then he gave me peace and hope for the future of our family, and I could truly praise Him for His blessings in the midst of loss.

As I performed this song at the reunion I didn’t know it but I was pregnant! I am now five and a half weeks along. Some recommend waiting until the second trimester when the miscarriage danger is over, but I can’t help but tell people. It so much more meaningful to share the news this time especially with those who have been praying us through this year.

I feel different this time. I'm dreaming of life as a family of four with a new little sibling for Desmond. I feel peaceful and excited about this baby unlike the last time when I wondered if something was wrong. Of course if I think about it too much I wonder if my feelings are off, so I just have to rest and trust in God knowing He has it all under control and has our good in mind.

My Relationship with Weeds

2010-08-31T08:09:00.001-07:00

Here’s an understatement for you: Our yard needs work! We’ve got mostly dead grass in the front and whatever is green is a weed. We have a sea of weeds everywhere up to Desmond’s armpits as well as moss, uneven ground and lots of rocky soil. I’ve been working on the weeds off and on for about seven weeks, and I’ve finally finished pulling all the ones out front. Hey, now we don’t need to mow there anymore! I’ve pulled some in the back yard, and now I need to tackle the sides. As I pull, Desmond finds the white tops and blows fresh seeds everywhere. I really like gardening so it will be fun to slowly transform our yard… over the next five years or so. My deep thought as I weed: Tackle the weeds in your life early on and make sure to get the roots. When ignored weeds take over everything, but with patient diligence your life can be a beautiful, peaceful garden again.

10 Year College Reunion

2010-08-24T22:40:00.001-07:00

How can it be ten years since college? Well, I guess for me it's been eight since graduation, but Multnomah put on a ten year reunion for students there between the years of '98 and '02. The best part of it was Destiny got to sing again! There is nothing else that ministers to my soul like singing with these people. I didn't realize how much I missed them until we were back together again. Friday afternoon we met up to rehearse, went out to dinner, and then joined the class reunion for dessert. Saturday was a full day of practice and then we put on a concert that evening for the rest of the reunion folks. It was so much fun, but it was way too short! I didn't get a chance to talk to everyone for as long as I wanted to, but still it was a sweet time and so great to hear testimonies of God's continued faithfulness through the years.

Desmond was juggled between friends and family and stayed up way too late both nights. He had a lot of fun, but we had a very cranky boy on our hands by the end. I think we're getting back on track now.

A Note about Potty Training

2010-08-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

It is hard work when the toddler doesn't want to do it! I worked at it for about 6 days and then back to diapers we went. Desmond was holding it in as long as he could so then things started to get really messy. He just wasn't motivated in the least to tell me when it was time to go. He knows when he needs to go and he can definitely communicate with me, but he's in a willful stage where "No!" seems to come out more than anything else. We'll give it a rest for now and try again later when I have fresh energy and new ideas for motivating him. It's not worth it to me to be locked in a battle of wills over poop right now.

Potty Training – Day 4

2010-08-08T18:11:00.001-07:00

This morning was rough! Desmond stayed dry at his night time potty trips but woke up wet even though I was right there waiting to take him to the bathroom. (I think the first thing he does before sitting up is pee.) We stayed home from church and Davin went in to work. Desmond then proceeded to have three accidents in a row, protesting loudly at being taken to the bathroom, and the third time I was ready to give up. I told him we could put him in a diaper or his big boy underwear. He chose the underwear, but I told him it was the last time. “If you wet again without telling me you need to go potty I’ll put you in a diaper.” This is NOT abiding by the 3 Day Potty Training Method, but I was feeling frustrated… which also is a no-no for this method to work. The next two times he wet again but he ran to me telling me he needed to go potty. That’s a start. Throughout the rest of the day the only accident we had was during naptime. Hmmm. Maybe we’re on to something. He also loves the new stickers Daddy brought home which is helping him want to go. I don’t want to throw away the four days of work I’ve put into this, but I don’t want a daily battle on my hands either or having to pack around half a dozen extra sets of clothes everywhere we go. We’ll try another day and maybe venture out into the world tomorrow to see what happens.

Potty Training – Day 3

2010-08-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

Today was the magical day three of our potty training journey. Desmond was wet at his early morning potty time but woke up dry after that and actually slept in until eight o’clock. Six is normal so the extra two hours of sleep were glorious!

The morning went well with only 1 accident and 5 successful trips to the potty. He woke up wet from his nap and then the afternoon consisted of 3 accidents and 3 times of making it to the potty dry. We had company over for dinner to celebrate Davin’s upcoming birthday so that was a huge distraction, and 2 of his 3 accidents happened then. Des actually initiated the last potty trip on his own with no prompting. Could we be getting somewhere?

Running score: Day 1 had 13 accidents with 2 successful trips, Day 2 had 9 accidents and 7 successful trips, Day 3 had 4 accidents and 8 successful trips. I’m glad I’m writing this down so I can see the improvement.

I think it really helped this morning to have Davin around to help and add his fresh energy and praise to the mix. Still Desmond complains nearly every time we go to the bathroom. I am getting tired of trying to stay enthusiastic and never being able to leave the house or do anything that takes more than a minute or two. We’re making headway but it’s slow and it still hasn’t “clicked” yet. Maybe this is due to not waiting the 30 days to reset his potty training mindset from before. We’ll give it one more day and then see where we’re at. Davin has to work tomorrow so again I’m doing this solo.

Potty Training – Day 2

2010-08-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

During the night I woke Desmond up twice to go to the potty. He was dry both times, peed on the potty, and went right back to bed. Yay! I slept the last couple hours in his room so I could know exactly when he woke up to get him on the potty again. Well, before I could even tell him “Good morning!” he had peed in the bed. Hmmm. I started off my day tired and with a bad headache.

Mid-day: I feel much better after taking something for my headache. We had 4 successful trips to the potty initiated by Desmond (after I reminded him to tell me when he had to go). And we’ve had 7 accidents including 2 poops. Yuck. I’m on my break while he naps.

Evening: Desmond woke up from his nap wet. We only had 2 other accidents this afternoon including another poop and 3 successful trips. Davin’s on the early morning shift so we can see if Des can stay dry tonight. I don't like poopy undies!

Potty Training - Day 1

2010-08-05T19:57:00.001-07:00

So today I decided to start the 3 Day Potty Training Method. I've had several friends have success with this method, and now that the dust is settling from our move I figured now was as good a time as any. Desmond has been using the potty on a regular basis for over a year. He never tells me when he needs to go so we have a few set times we'll put him on and he'll do his business. But just this week he started pooping in his diaper and refusing to do it on the potty. I have my doubts about this working with Desmond's new found stubbornness. Also this may take a bit longer than three days since I don't feel like waiting the recommended 30 days to un-program him from our previous potty stuff.

Here's how day one went: I followed him around from the moment he woke up until the moment he went to sleep waiting to catch him peeing and reminding him over and over to let me know when he had to go. We had 13 accidents and 2 times where he actually told me he needed to go but then complained loudly as I took him to the potty. He complained for all but two of the potty trips we took today although I was heaping on the praise and trying to make running to the potty as fun as possible. I feel a bit drained. We'll do this all again tomorrow. So far no sign of him getting it, but maybe there will be a glimmer of hope tomorrow. We'll see!

The Huge “Catch Up” Post to Cover July

2010-07-30T19:38:00.001-07:00

The biggest news from the last few weeks is that we moved into our new house! Our first night was July 3rd and the following day we had a few friends over to celebrate the 4th. The kids loved the little fireworks.

Desmond loves all the new space to run and play. The formal living room is his play room since we don’t have any furniture for it. We go outside nearly every day, and his favorite activity is splashing in the kiddie pool.

We enjoyed a long overdue visit with the Hardys the following weekend. We went down to a festival that was going on at a nearby park. After the kids were in bed we played games and laughed the evening away.

Ah, the not so fun task of deep cleaning the condo. We scrubbed that thing from top to bottom, touched up the paint, and finally dug out the blocks Desmond had dumped behind the fireplace insert. Now to find a renter. We are posted on craigslist so if you know of anyone needing a place…http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/apa/1869725730.html

July 17th marked our sixth wedding anniversary! We took three nights up in Seattle while my parents stayed with Desmond. We stayed at the new Maxwell Hotel right across from the Seattle Center. Highlights: the Auburn drive-in, the Pacific Science Center, cherries from Pike's Place Market, and dinner at Bahn Thai.

Desmond is quite the little helper and helped me make the truck cookies for his birthday party. Always so much more clean up afterwards, but so much fun when I remind myself the mess is cleanable and the laughter is priceless.

Desmond is 2! He loved his dump truck cake and we enjoyed hosting friends and family at our house. Desmond had fun opening all the gifts and is totally spoiled with so many new toys! (But it has been a little easier to get things done during the day as he is well occupied.) Davin’s parents all stayed with us for several nights and it was the first time Desmond had all his grandparents together.

Life has been fun and full for the last month, but I’m looking forward to settling back into a routine. Our next focus is getting the condo rented and fixing up the new house. Coming soon… a new roof.

My Artist

2010-07-14T12:47:00.001-07:00

“Yeah, I was keeping the paint on my paper, Mommy.”

My trade-off for five minutes of uninterrupted pantry organization was fifteen minutes of clean-up. He makes me smile.

The Proud New Owners' Learning Curve

2010-07-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

For better or worse we are the new owners of this four bedroom house in NE Vancouver. We closed on June 18th but finally got the keys today after the past owners moved out. We stopped by this evening, and Davin got to see inside for the first time since our showing back in February. Desmond loved running around the open space and hiding in all the closets. We know the roof needs replaced and we have to treat some mold in the attic. The surprise was when I called to get our name on the water bill and found out that it's been $400 every two months! The lady told me to check for a leak since that's extremely high. We looked today and yes, with everything turned off inside the meter is still spinning. Great! I'm trying not to worry about the finances. We tried calculating out all the extra costs beforehand, but we've only purchased a brand new condo so we're not used to all the maintenance expenses that come with a fifteen year old house. We have many projects to fill the coming months, and the new water problem might involve ripping up our driveway and yard. I don't even know who to call about something like that. Guess we'll find out.

Reaching a Big Goal

2010-06-30T13:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve been continuing my Jillian Michaels workouts and following most of her nutritional plan. I have one workout left to complete the 30 days. (Davin’s planning on joining me as I go through it again next month.) I’ve lost five inches and 8 pounds this month, and I’m feeling good! I’ve also finally dipped into my normal BMI range for the first time in probably 4 years. Normally I like to reward myself by eating ice cream, but this time I think I’ll go shopping for some new smaller clothes that fit me better.

Last week I went out with some of my mom friends to California Pizza Kitchen. I looked up the nutritional information beforehand and felt empowered to make a wise decision with my food. Normally I would have easily made a 1600 calorie choice and justified it because I was out with friends. This time I ate within my limit for dinner totaling 560 calories and it was satisfying. I control the food; it doesn’t control me! Before going out for the evening I snapped a few pictures because I was feeling cute. It’s still hard for my mind to catch up to my slimmer body.

Visit from Aunt Ashana and Ed

2010-06-19T20:39:00.001-07:00

In April we had the pleasure of visiting with Davin’s sister Ashana and her boyfriend Ed. They hadn’t seen Desmond since he was three weeks old! Desmond warmed up to them right away, and I thought it was hilarious that he called Ed, “Odd.”

They gave Desmond this cute Leap Frog dog named Scout. Davin likes it because it plugs into the computer. We programmed it to say Desmond’s name and some of his favorite things. Desmond loves it and is almost inseparable from Scout. His favorite song is the one that spells his name. I seriously think he has even started laughing like Scout. Wow.

Strawberries!

2010-06-12T11:56:00.001-07:00

We enjoyed the beautiful summer day and went strawberry picking this morning at Philbrook Farms. Desmond did well picking only the red ones… mostly, and Davin filled a bucket too even though it’s more like a difficult Easter egg hunt for him. We will most definitely be back.

Workout Day 12

2010-06-12T08:32:00.001-07:00

Just finished my Jillian Michaels workout for day 12. This is my second time around getting to day 12, but last time I only went as far as day 15 when I found out I was pregnant and backed things off. I look forward to completing the whole 30 days this time. These workouts are tough, but the fun part is that it makes me feel strong afterwards! I’m starting to get the arms to prove it.

Desmond-Doodle

2010-05-31T19:45:00.001-07:00

I captured a picture of Desmond napping the other day because I want to remember the little moments like this. He’s developed some distinctly Desmond ways of doing things. When he’s getting situated in bed to go to sleep he likes to snuggle all the way under the covers or he’ll at least make sure his head is covered. He likes to have bear, puppy, and blanket when he goes to sleep. He is a fidgeter with his blanket and often falls asleep with a corner in his mouth and a corner in each hand.

He loves to play outside. His favorite activities include drawing with chalk, blowing bubbles, pushing around his wagon, collecting rocks, and running through the bushes. He innately knows that trees are for climbing though there are no low branches on our little tree.

So Desmond got his first major boo-boo one week ago today. We usually run to the front window to look out and watch Davin put his bike away when we hear him come home. Desmond fell down a couple stairs and landed on the hardwood entry splitting his chin open. Yeah, it was a nice way to welcome Daddy home. We immediately took off for the ER, and three hours later we were home for a late dinner and bed. Desmond was a trooper but it was really hard to see him get five stitches. We got them taken out on Friday and the steri-strips came off tonight. His cut hasn’t bothered him at all, but now it will be my job to keep sunscreen on it to minimize scarring. But with a name like “Danger” you’ve got to have a scar, right?

We enjoyed the Waterfront Village this afternoon. The best part was the cowboy show. He got Desmond laughing with his fire juggling. Here’s Desmond sporting his cool tattoos.

Dozer Days

2010-05-31T19:05:00.001-07:00

A few weeks back we went to check out Dozer Days here in Vancouver. We told Desmond we’d be seeing backhoes and when we pulled in to the parking lot Desmond excitedly says, “Backhoe!!!” “Do you see a backhoe, bud?” I asked. (No backhoes were in sight yet.) “No,” he replies matter-of-factly. Davin and I got a good laugh out of that.

We didn’t think many people would be at the quarry to check out backhoes, but man were we wrong! This was quite the event with at least 30 backhoes and bulldozers that older kids could sit in with an “drive” with an operator. We got ushered in by riding in the back of a huge dump truck. Desmond was thrilled to just watch the action and play with the gravel. Although he was super excited about the backhoes he didn’t want to get too close or touch them. Funny guy! They also had rescue vehicles which Desmond loved. We were all covered in a layer of dust by the end and there were many tears when we had to leave. (That’s when you know he really had a good time!)

Us in the dump truck and Desmond watching the action.

In the ambulance and fire truck.

Crawling through the tunnels and not wanting to get too close to the huge backhoe.

The "House" Ball is Rolling

2010-05-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

We heard on Wednesday that we finally got the written approval from the sellers back to go ahead with our home purchase. The problem is that the bank says we've had this letter since April 23rd. This means we have missed the ten day window to do our inspection and we're supposed to close by the end of May. Umm, yeah... not possible. So we're asking the seller's bank for an extension until June 18th, and we're scrambling to get our financing in order. On top of this our original loan approval has expired and our bank says they're swamped and closing will take a minimum of 30-45 days from our application renewal. Well, that won't work even with our extended deadline. We'd need a second extension which increases our likelihood of having this sale fall through. We met with two new lenders yesterday to see if they can meet our short deadline and maybe even give us a better interest rate. The new lenders both say they can meet our deadline so it comes down to the bottom line of how much our monthly payments and closing costs would be. Of course this all happens on a holiday weekend so we can't find out anything until Tuesday. The ball is rolling, but we're running to try to catch up with it!

Back on Track

2010-05-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here I go again trying to loose my last few pounds to get to my goal weight. I was doing well until I found out I was pregnant. During my month of pregnancy I gained about 4 pounds. Man, it comes back fast when you stop vigorous exercising and indulge in celebratory ice cream! I don't think I'll stick solely to Jillian's Michaels' Making the Cut diet this time because it more than doubled our grocery bill. I'll keep several of her easy and more affordable recipes and track my calories again to control my intake. I also started Jillian's month of workouts again starting from day one. The first time I did her exercises I went through each circuit once, but this time I'm going to try to do the recommended twice through. The main problem I run into (besides failing endurance) is time. The workouts take about an hour and you're not supposed to rest. Desmond can get bored and/or start climbing on me which makes my routine impossible. My goal is to loose 10 pounds by our anniversary.