Found an app for this, lol!!

I may be rejoining the blogging world if this app is all it is said to be!

Blogging on tho go! Perfect!

Thomas says hi!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thomas at two months

Just some quick photos because he's so damn cute!! Every month I take a photo of him in the same chair with the same stuffy. This is the puppy that the kids made him before he was born. His name is "Peanut's Puppy". Maybe eventually it'll be shortened to Peanut. Y'know, when we stop calling Thomas that!

Both kids wanted to get in on the photo shoot.

Jackson LOVES being a big brother. Always helping me, always kissing and hugging Thomas. Very sweet.

Lexi LOVES being a big sister too. She likes to help (when she feels like it) and is always so sweet and gentle with Thomas.

Here is a comparison of Lexi when she was 2 months old (I don't have one on this computer of Jackson at 2 months).

And some of Thomas when he was one month old. See how much he's grown!!

Four years ago

Four years ago today was the worst day of my life.
Four years ago today we found out Benjamin had died.
Four years ago today was all about his death and the heartbreaking loss.
Four years ago today my life changed forever.
Four years ago today I found out I would have to birth my dead baby.
Four years ago today I found out what true despair felt like.
Four years ago today.
Four.
How in the hell did that happen?

We are NORMAL!!

Holy cow, I don't believe it! For once we get to play on the normal side of statistics! Imagine that.

Peanut was born on Friday, October 12th at 12:19pm. We only had 4 requests during the c-section.
1. Leave the cord long so that Brian could trim it (he cut the cord for Jackson and Benjamin and trimmed it for Lexi).
2. Lower the drape when they pull the baby out so that we could both see him/her be born (the c-section took place in the main OR so there was no mirror available).
3. Don't announce the gender, let us see and announce it ourselves.
4. Make the baby cry right away. Even if they had to poke it and annoy the bejeepers out of it, we had to hear a cry.

So at 12:18 they lowered the drape. At 12:19 we got to see those perfect little boy bits and announce that we had another SON!! A loud, screaming, glorious son. He was 8 pounds 2 ounces and 20" of perfect baby.

The c-section went well with absolutely no complications. We were taken to recovery and then our room in the mother babe unit. Jackson, Lexi and Aunt Sarah were able to come and visit that afternoon. It was wonderful seeing all the kids together. I think everyone was surprised that Peanut was a boy (except me, my mom and Brian's mom, we all thought he would be a boy). We debated over his name for the rest of that day and most of Saturday. His name is Thomas Ross Hussain. His nickname is still Peanut (I have to admit Lexi and I mostly call him Peanut, lol).

The amazing part? Peanut did not have jaundice. Yep, you read that right. OUR baby did not have jaundice! Did not need phototherapy. Did not need to visit the NICU. We got to go home TWO days later!! We honestly felt like it was all too good to be true and we had to speed away from the hospital before they realized their mistake and admitted him back to the NICU.

But now, 11 days later and he is still perfect. Still not yellow. Still healthy and loud. It still seems surreal.
 

 And I have another son. Bittersweet. Mostly sweet. As you can see from the photos. He's so sweet you just can't help but want to kiss him all day...

36 hours...

ACK!!!!

In 36 hours I will be wheeled into the operating room. In 36+ hours we will find out if Peanut is a boy or a girl, Brian will get to hold him/her, I will get to see the little being that has been beating the bejeepers out of me for the last few months. Soon after that I will get to hold my little sweet baby. There isn't much better than that.

So wish me luck that Friday afternoon everything will go well, Peanut will be born healthy and screaming, I will get through the surgery fine, and we will become a happy family of 5 (6? Do I count Benjamin or not, I'm still not sure on that one). Wish me luck that Peanut has my blood and we don't have jaundice issues and a NICU stay. Wish me luck that I get to leave the hospital with my baby in my arms. Just wish me luck that just this one time I get to be on the 'normal' side of the statistics.

I've lost my mind...

I think entering my third trimester has sucked all the energy and motivation out of me. I find that I prefer to sit on my butt in front of the computer all day instead of cleaning, unpacking (yes, there is still lots of that left to do), or enriching my children's lives. Ah well, they play well together so I know they aren't really suffering. And isn't summer all about lazy days?

But lately I've had bursts of energy. On Thursday afternoon I made them a mailbox.

 

Yep, It is held together by way too much duct tape, lol!

 

  There is a slot to put the letters in and a bigger drawer to drop parcels in. Then in the bottom there is an access door for the postman to remove all the letters. I did not come up with this idea on my own. I found it on... ready for it? Pinterest. Yep, that's what I do all day. Until I build cardboard monstrosities.

On Friday I cleaned/dusted the entire upstairs. Today I made them a pirate boat.

 I did not enjoy making this. The duct tape didn't stick like I thought it would. I thought I handled my frustration well but then Jackson told Lexi not to get in the boat until it was done or the pirate would yell at her. And she was a mean pirate. LOL! Okay, fine. I didn't handle it well. Again, I found this on pinterest. There were no instructions so we winged it. Naturally it did not look like the example, which Jackson pointed out to me obnoxiously. But it's fun and they are now decorating it. I might surprise them and doctor it up a bit more tonight... but probably not.

 Maybe this will teach Lexi pirate-ese. She currently says "Aye Maybes" and "ho ho ho" instead of "yo ho ho". It's pretty cute. And that little snapping gesture she is doing is her doing the pirate arm gesture thing. Wow... I hope that provides a better visual than I think it does.

That's right. I've found a use for the many boxes we have. I already gave a ton of them away to another family that is moving. I made sure we saved a bunch of them for the next move (even though Brian says we are never moving again). And the rest are just a free for all for either crafting, saving, giving away, or recycling. Jackson is in heaven. When we were packing up the house he constantly asked me if we could build something with the boxes. He saw a commercial on Treehouse that had kids building a giant fort out of empty boxes and then painting them. He was desperate to do it too. So now we can finally do all that.

A few weeks ago I also did another craft from Pinterest. It was supposed to be a really fun activity for kids. Basically you take a water bottle, cut the bottom off, rubber band a piece of cloth to the bottom (I used the kids small dishcloths), dip it in bubble solution and then gently blow into the bottle. Fun right?

Jackson thought it was a blast. He was able to make really long bubble snakes.

Lexi? Nope, she was not a huge fan. At first it was fine. Then she sucked into the bottle instead. She was sputtering bubbles for a bit. In between glaring at me for this horrible idea of mine.

Ah well... It was fun for me to play with. Lesson learned.

I also made another Pinterest recipe. And holy moley was it tasty!! Do not, I repeat, do NOT try this at home. It is called Terribly Terrific Toffee. And yes, yes it is. All it is is a layer of Saltines (did you know that nowhere on the box are they called Saltines? Premium Plus Crackers), then boil up some brown sugar and butter, spread that on the crackers and bake it. Then spread chocolate chips on top of that so that they melt. I also put some crushed pecans on half of it. It was so easy to make and so tasty. But made a TON!

Mmmmmm...

In non-pinterest news... Lexi is now in a Big Girl bed!! 

Yes, yes, yes, it's about time! The kid is almost 3 and has still been in a crib. But y'know what? She liked it, we liked it, so why mess with what works? She never tried to climb out, she happily went to sleep there, and she was contained! Worked great. But with Peanut due in 3 months we wanted to get her used to not being in a crib. Her crib converts to a toddler bed so it is a nice transition from that to a single bed. Last night was night 2 of Big Girl bed. The first night she was out of her room 3 times, but apparently out of her crib in her room many other times (evidence of her playing with her toys, lol). And she fell out once. Then she was up and out of her room at 6:40am (keep in mind my kids sleep in until 8:30/9:30 normally). We had a gate up in the hallway before the stairs so she was not able to come to our bedroom since it's on the other side of the stairs, so as soon as she saw me and saw the gate she turned around and ran into Jackson's room, totally waking him up. Brian went in and got her to go back to her room where she promptly fell back asleep. But by then Jackson was wide awake and I was wide awake. She slept until 9:15. Nice, no?

Last night she didn't get out once. She was very tired and went right to sleep. She cried for me around 3am but never got out of her crib. Then this morning when Brian was leaving he came back into the bedroom to get me to come out to the hall. Lexi was fast asleep in the hallway beside the gate. LOL! I brought her back to bed and she didn't even wake up. She slept until about 7:30 and then was back into my room. But it was definitely better than yesterday, so I'm hoping she will transition well.

 She loves it!

And lastly, we went to the Stampede a few weeks ago. Well, saying we went to the Stampede is a bit of a stretch since we never saw a single animal. We just wandered around a bit and spent way too much time and money in the kid's midway. We all had a lot of fun. Maybe next year we'll see a horse.

 Lexi was finally big enough to ride the majority of the rides. Jackson is such a good big brother that he was totally content to only go on rides that she could go on. Sweetie.

 This was the funniest ride I have ever seen. Or maybe, Lexi was the funniest rider I have ever seen. These cars simply went around a small oval. When the car got to the turn Lexi would slide (with a bit of force) to the opposite end of the seat. She would then wiggle and shimmy her way back to the driver's side. Only to be at the other turn, where she would once again slam to the other side. Every single time she burst out laughing. Finally after doing this for about 10 turns she just stayed on the passenger side, lol!

 They had a lot of fun on all the rides.

 We played a couple games too. They each 'won' an inflatable hammer and a stuffy. Lexi sleeps with her piggy stuffy every night. Jackson won a green gorilla. It sleeps by his bed. The hammers have been taken away numerous times but I think the novelty of them has worn off a bit. Finally. I'm tired of being hit by them.

And that's what is going on with our family lately.

I'm on a roll!

In the past week I've made 3 more recipes from Pinterest and one kids craft (type thing). And ALL of them were successes!!!

First I made this one:

 from Pinterest (only uses frozen berries, box of white cake mix and a can of pop)

It turned out like this:

I really should have read the full instructions first, or at least checked to make sure I had all the ingredients. I'm sure it would be better made correctly, but nonetheless it was delicious!! I didn't have enough pop to cover all the cake mix, so it was powdery in areas, but it was still really tasty.

Next day I made this:

Bubble up Enchiladas (ground turkey, enchilada sauce, tomato sauce, refrigerated biscuits and shredded cheese)

Mine looked like this:

I used ground beef instead of turkey. We also could not find enchilada sauce (trust me, we searched) so we used pizza sauce and more tomato sauce. In the end ours were Italian Bubble ups. The biscuits were delicious in it! Jackson's comment summed it up: "I looked at it and it didn't look too bad, so I tried it. And I liked it! I want to have it every night!" Each kid ate almost their entire plate of it (which was impressive because I served them an unrealistic amount, or so I thought).

For dessert that night we had these tasty little morsels:

I couldn't find the actual recipe for these and could not figure out how they made pretty little pockets of them. It is simply refrigerated crescent rolls with a dollop of Nutella in the middle.

This is how ours turned out:

Creative looking, but holy moly! They were good!! Jackson probably would have bitten someone to get the last one. 

They were very very good. Dangerously easy to make and tasty.

Last night, being Canada Day, I had the opportunity to try out the sparkler shield. I saw this on Pinterest a little while ago and the comment from the poster made me laugh. She said "Sparkler Shield... In case you have whiners like my kids. ;)". Ha!! That sums it up. Last night we went for a BBQ at Adam and Charlene's. There were 4 kids that were doing sparklers; a 5 year old, almost 3 year old and two newly 2 year olds. The sparkler shields worked pretty well! All the kids loved the sparklers.

Lexi liked them but really didn't move around much.

 Jackson was worried the cup was going to burn, lol!

Have I mentioned how much I love Pinterest?