yum...

Amazing what an evening of chocolate tasting/wine drinking can do for you.
We had a little gathering in our back yard tonight with 6 moms in the neighborhood. Each person was to bring something sweet and the hostess had about 15 different types of drinks. Many wines/wine coolers/beer etc...
If you haven't had River Gold and you like sweet wine (and inexpensive) you should try it! Yum.
So, 1 glass turned into 3, and here I am thinking that maybe my tipsy self would have something to blog about.
Really, I don't.
We had Miles evaluated by a Speech Language pathologist this week. Very interested in hearing what she had to say. She's apparently going to email me the report before our meeting to go through it all. Seeing he has no words yet at a few days shy of 18 months, I'm sure he's a bit delayed.
As bad as this may make me sound, I'm SICK of the "ah-ah-ah-ah AH-AH-AH-AH's" over and over. It's almost impossible to decipher one "ah" from another. I'm dying to be able to have him communicate with us. Sure, sign language is helping, but dammit, I want him to be able to tell me he'd like milk or a cracker or UP or down or out or bed or bath...you get the picture.
SOMETHING.
ANYTHING.
And, of course if there is one child to worry about, there is another.
So, Logan has had this nightwaking/sleep walking thing going on for the past month or so. He's definitely not awake, but his eyes are open etc....but the really strange thing is is that he's SOAKED with sweat. So much so that his pillow is soaked all the way through and he is even soaking completely through his shirt and comforter.
I thought nothing of it really (although I did make an appt for next week)but I decided to 'google' it. (Does anyone else hate this term as much as my husband.) Night sweats don't seem so innocent anymore.
So, we'll see what our trusty doctor says. As much as I respect him, a lot of times his answer is, " you know, I'm not positive on this one....blah blah..blah"
Ah well, such is life as a parent. Always worrying about one or the other.
So...in even more exciting news...I made some calls today that might be unexpected to the readers who have been here for a long time. I called to get some packets on adoption. Dave and I are really thinking hard about adoption. Not now, but possibly starting the process in 6 months or so.
Oh, and not a baby...a toddler.
We very well may have a family of five. HELLP and infertility be damned. We'd be playing on our terms this time.

Good people doing good things.

I heard two stories this weekend that I had to share with you.

We all know of the wacko's at Westboro Baptist Church, right? You know, the one's who protest fallen war hero's because they believe that it is God's punishment for America being tolerant of gay's. At least that is what I believe their reasoning is. They're all just a bunch of messed up people though. I'm sure that God would like them to PROTEST a funeral. Yes, God is punishing the world by sending these men and women to heaven.
So when Dave told me about the Patriot Guard Riders, I couldn't help but be amazed. Then, when I saw some pictures, I couldn't help but shed some tears.
This motorcycle 'gang' goes to the funerals and stands as a block between the family and the protestors. They are there to respect the family and the fallen hero. Many of them are past veterans.
If I have learned on thing from my dad, a Vietnam Vet, it's that it doesn't matter what age you are, what color your skin is, where you are from, what your past was like, once you are in the military, you are a brother. So, obviously having a father who is not only a Vet, but also a Harley rider, I see him there. I imagine him respecting and honoring those men who died just like many of his friends did.

On the subject of good people doing good things.
This weekend, my dad was out to breakfast. As I stated earlier, he's a Vietnam Vet. Drafted when he was 19. Sent to Vietnam just a week after he married my mom. He lost most of his fellow soldiers in one day. He was lucky. He's had a hard recovery from the war, even 36 years later. He went into PTS program for veterans last year for 9 weeks.
He's always felt different. He remembers getting spit on when he returned from the war. He remember the alcoholism that plagued him when he got back. He remembers losing his best friend, in his arms, along with the rest of the men he couldn't save. He remembers wondering why he made it when so many did.
After my dad finished up his breakfast and was walking out to his car, he noticed a note on his windshield. He joked with my sister, 'I wonder what church wants me to come visit'.
It was a hand written note.
"I want to thank you for serving your country. I want to thank you for everything you did for your fellow Americans."
(My dad has vet plates on his car, as well as his company flag sticker in his window)
THAT was a good thing. That lifted his day, and I know that is something he'll NEVER forget. It was the respect he never got after he got home from Vietnam.
This stranger who left him that note will never know how great it was.
It's something I'll think about doing for someone else.

Go do good things people.

It's going to be one of those years

You know how you look back on New Years and think either, 'thank GOD this year is over' or you look back hoping the next year will be as good as the last one was.

Here we are only half way through, and if things continue to go the way they have the first 6 months, it's DEFINITELY going to be one of those years I'll look back on and hope to repeat the happiness.

Dave got a new job. His dream job to be exact.
Big fat raise-better hours-less travel-more opportunity-did I say fat raise?
This is almost life changing for us.

I joined a 'boot camp' at the athletic club this week. It's 8 weeks, 2x/week. Then you have to do a minimum of one other exercise on your own time.
Every single muscle in my body hurts. The GOOD hurt where you know you really worked.
I feel like I am finally totally comfortable in my skin. I'm not over weight, I'm not under weight. I'm happy.

I'm getting braces soon. The one thing that has bugged me my entire adult life is finally going to be fixed. I'm going to do the invisiline ones I think. They move really fast. At a consult I did a year ago or so I was told I could fix my teeth in 4 months. That sounds like something I should do this winter, doesn't it?

Really, it just seems like one thing after another is going right this year.
No more stresses about TTC or pregnancy or infanthood.
I've got a 4 1/2 and a 1 1/2 yr old. I'm almost to that easy part. Those of you with older kids know what I'm talking about. The part where they can go off an play together without you having to be 100% on guard at all times. The part where whe *gasp* can see the end of gates and diapers. (OK, diapers in a year, but still!)

Dave is in the air on his way home from Vegas. He was there all week. We survived just fine this week as we were super busy the entire week.

Ahhh...I'm really feeling like life is good.

Never let your child old answer the phone

I was waiting for a call from my dad.
JUST as soon as I put Miles on the changing table the phone rang.
"Logan! Get that, will you please?" I said.

"Hello? Oh, hey Grandpa......Mommy IS here.....yeah....she's changing Miles poopy diaper....ok.....MOOOOM TELEPHONE!!!"

"Tell Grandpa I'll be right there!" as I slowly finish up.

"Hey!" I say as I take the phone from Logan.

"Jen? This is Steve from the Wisconsin State Journal"


...shit...pause....


"I completely apologize about that" and I thought to add more, but heck, he knew I was changing a poopy diaper and nothing else needed to be said.

In a totally unamused voice he said, "I guess someone has to answer the phone, right?"

right.

Good News=we will be in the WSJ (not wall...Wisconsin) in their new business announcements.
Bad News=I think I've sealed the deal of never EVER being approached by them again.

But, the truth is, I'm a full time mom and a part time at home business owner, right?

Bible Codes?

Dave and I were watching a show on I believe the History channel the other day.
It was all about Bible codes.
I'm not sure if you know anything about these, but if you don't, take a minute and check out that page above or google it yourself.
It was so crazy to me to think that God has left us a blueprint of what will take place in the future. It's all there for us to figure it out?
Somehow I don't believe that God would do that, but then again, it's amazing what I saw on that show.
These codes predicted SOOO much that has happened in the world.
One disbeliever said it's like comparing seeing an object in a cloud. You see what you want to believe.
Others said that there is no other choice but to believe what we see in front of our eyes.
I listed with simple interest until the last 10 minutes or so when they talked about the codes depicting when the last days would be.
The end of the world.
judgment day.
According to these codes, it tells WHEN the world will be destroyed.
It tells HOW the world will be destroyed.
Apparently these codes tell us that a huge comet will crash into earth.
That's it...we're gone.
AND it says it's going to happen...are you ready for this...2012.
6 years from now.
My babies will only be 10 and 7.
Now, I don't REALLY believe that God would tell us when the world will end. I just don't.
However, to think that it might possibly be only 6 years from now is terrifying.
Like sick to your stomach-throw up kind of terrifying.
It does go on to give a possibility of a close call-but no destruction. So really, you don't know.
And I'd like to believe if NASA or whoever has advance knowledge that there is even the slightest chance a huge comet will crash into us they'd look for it and figure out a plan. Right?
Do you know anything about these bible codes?

Why yes, that would be great thank you...

I sent out press releases to a few local news channels and papers a couple of days ago.
Imagine my surprise when I got a message on my machine from one of the local news channels telling me they were going to do a 'blurb' that night and then wanted to know if I'd be interested in coming on air to do an interview.
Excuse me?
Check out the blurb...(Go down and on the right you'll see a box that says 'featured video'...mine is the one that says 'new baby tshirt company.'
http://nbc15.madison.com/

I couldn't have been happier!

Today I have to call back, but as you can imagine, I'm a bit nervous.
Hmmm...not thinking that I personally am really news worthy, but I guess I'll try, huh?

Exciting people, exciting!!

As I sit on the floor pretending...

Logan has quite the imagination.
He could play with a stick or a piece of string for the entire day, as long as he had someone to imagine with.
If you were a fly on the wall in my house, this is what you would hear countless times a day. countless...

"Let's pretend I'm a .....and you're a .... and we're going to ....."

Today I was sitting on the floor building blocks with Miles.
Wait, let me rephrase.
Today I was sitting on the floor building blocks while Miles knocked down every last block I put up. Logan had this great idea of pretending that he was a balloon man selling balloons.
Oh, but when you have so many balloons, you float up in the air.
But you see, that's no problem for Logan because he has heavy suction cups on the bottom of his feet.
You hear, 'whoooop' (you know, the sound effects he makes as he's landing back on safe ground)
So, seeing HE had so much fun, I had to become the 'balloon mom' and he would take care of putting on my suction cups as I got too high.
Over.
and.
over.
and.
over.
When that got boring, we got to pretend that our house had a Dairy Queen inside. We could only get vanilla ice cream cones though.
And I didn't have to hold it, because it was a magical cone that would float to my mouth whenever I needed a lick.
But I seriously had to lick, because the freaking cone was dripping and that is not good.

I sat there, after about 45 minutes of pretend play that included not a single toy.
He was still ready to go, as I sat and licked my magical cone.
I pictured myself on camera and everyone laughing at this poor woman who got to 'whoop' herself up and down from big balloons while wearing suction cups on her feet. The woman who got to eat a magical ice cream cone.

What happened to kids who built cool things with lego's? What about painting or playdoh?
Not my kid, he needs only his mind....well, his mind and me.

Luckily tonight is a ladies night out. I need some REAL ADULT INTERACTION!

I pass along to you my ice cream cone. You better lick the sucker because it's MELTING!...oh no!

Do you know what the sign is for...

During our quest to get Miles to communicate we've been using quite a bit of sign language.
The results have been amazing. He usually starts telling me he wants something by having a meltdown. If I start making guesses, he gets mad because I don't guess what he wants.
After a few minutes of meltdown mode, I will ask him to TELL Me what he wants and he'll do the sign for 'eat' or 'more' or 'milk'.
Logan thinks this is great.
We had the one and only Mom Underground over with 'big G' and 'little G' last week. Logan was completely amazed to hear 'little G' say with such clarity, "Mama".
"HEY! He said MAMA!!!!" like it was thee coolest thing to hear a little kid say a word.
All day long he talked about how 'little G' can say this and that.
I try to convince him that soon enough Miles will be able to say words, but Logan has his doubts.
So when we started teaching Miles to sign, you can only imagine the excitement that Logan had. Miles communicates in other ways that crying so loud that Logan can't hear the TV. Yeah for that! :)
Apparently we may have gotten a little too excited for Miles because Logan now thinks he knows the signs to everything.
In the car, when he hears the radio, his fingers and hands are doing all sorts of movements.
"What'cha doing kiddo?"
"I'm signing the song!"

When he wants more of something, he'll make up the sign.
"Do you want to see how you say, 'I want more turkey sandwich'?" he says as he shows me his hands and fingers flailing around.
"Awesome! Show your Dad!" I say as I watch him show Dave something completely different.

Hopefully Miles will decide that he can communicate by speech, but heck, we're doing pretty good making up signs along the way!
Although, I'd like to learn a few more that would make life easier.
*Water
*Tired
*outside
*brother

Can anyone help?

You gotta do what you gotta do

One thing I love about toddlers is how honest they are.
Miles doesn't smile at strangers.
He's one of those babies that just looks at you-ok STARES at you.
You can smile at him, wave to him, talk to him, even make those silly high pitched noises and he will NOT smile.
Usually I'm completely happy with his lack of effort to include the lady behind us in the shopping line in our conversation.
The other day we were shopping and this older man was trying SO hard to get even a small smile. He was waving, playing peek-a-boo, even going so far as to tickling his tummy gently.
I said, 'miles, are you going to wave?'
And just like that he shook his head 'no' and looked the other way!

Sometimes I wish I could just be like Miles and other toddlers. If they want to do something, they will. If not, they absolutely will not.
Today, Miles felt like doing this for about 5 whole minutes:

And of course I had to take a picture or two.

I think we could all learn something from toddlers. They just don't give a darn what you or anyone else in the world thinks of them!
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Look at my sad SAD version of a button/tag whatever you call it.
Not bad for my first try, but if ANYONE out there is good with that stuff, I'd be eternally grateful if you could help me create a button that doesn't look like you sat and copied an online tutorial! (hint hint)
====================================

OK, Tonya not only is super talented, but TOTALLY rocks! If you are now looking at the button, this is the super improved, way better than my piece of crap one! You missed it! Go visit her! Thanks Tonya!

The unveiling

Approximately one year ago, Dave and I embarked on a new journey.
Task after task of getting this business up has shown to be a bit more than what we thought it would be.
In our little minds it would take us mere months to get everything ready and our business would be open.
Not the case, however, we have learned so much about all aspects of opening a business.
Today (well, last night to be exact) is the day that the lights turned on, the open sign is up and the door was unlocked.
We still have a few changes to make on the website, but nothing that would keep the 'closed' sign on our door for another day.

I'm happy to share with you all.
Now you know you want to spread the news...hee hee! (to ALLLLLL your friends)
*Psst! See if you recognize any of the babe's.*

You can blame this on Lucky Lum

She's the one who asked for pictures!
I really have slacked on pictures lately, but have no fear, you all are about to catch up!
It's fun being brothers...
The big one can teach the little one what's fun to watch on TV...

The big one can help give the little one a bath. The little one can teach the big one that it's OK to get a little water in your eyes.

You know, it is tough work being a superhero. But everyone knows all tough superheros have to take time to eat healthy food. When my parents make pizza, I ask for a salad. With Ranch please.

I have the bluest eyes you will ever see. Aren't I cute?

Not only am I cute, but MAAAN can I give a devilish smile. See my 5 teeth in there!

Many days we work so very hard. Some days we find catapillars to feed and watch. Other days, we just gab away all day on the phone. Ah...Life is good.

Such fun exciting news

This weekend, my sister got engaged!!
It was a while coming, and we all knew it was coming. My sister didn't know WHEN it was coming, so she was knocked off her feet.
She got a very pretty ring, and is feeling so good and positive.
It's a good thing.
She's had her share (and probably a few of your share) of BAD fish.
Her fiance is a good fish.
He's got his quirks, but we all do, don't we?

So, next May I'll be standing up as the Maid of Honor (or isn't it matron?) and Dave will be an usher and Logan the ring bearer and Miles will attempt to walk down the isle in an adorable tux.
Ahhhh....this is going to cost a fortune! haha!
Luckily I know I won't be wearing one of the horrible possibilities of bridesmaid dresses, as she already showed me what she's thinking.
A very classy strapless-to the calf-beautiful.
And I can never pass up an opportunity to see my hubby all dressed up in a tux.
I can't believe it's happening.

And my wedding wish to them-TWINS!! (they have NO idea what it's like to have kids and always give their opinions, as I guess everyone does who doesn't have kids yet)

17 months

Here we are, 2 days shy of 17 months.
Can you believe it?
It seems like it was just yesterday that I was bouncing away on the ball holding sleep deprived baby, while being sleep deprived myself!
The good news is that I can announce to the WORLD that we are 100% sleeping through the night. Every night. Yes, I know because I wrote this we will be woken up tonight.
But even so, given the fact that no more babies are going to be added to this family, I truly believe we are completely past the sleepless nights.
Sure, some of you may be thinking, 17 months! I'd HOPE so.
Well, so did we my friends.

We are down to one 2-3 hr nap, and a good 11-12hr stretch of sleep.
Insert a big, 'PRAISE the Lord' in on that one!

Some other little quirks and fun stuff.
Miles will not eat a vegetable. None. You can squish them, stick them in a bite of mac n cheese and he will find that pea with his tongue and pop it out of his mouth all while chewing his noodles.
It doesn't matter what vegetable it is, what dipping sauce I give him to dip it in, he will not eat a vegetable.

Miles loves the wiggles. He can be in the middle of the biggest temper tantrum and all I have to do is pop that wiggles tape in (or CD in) and I can happily continue cooking dinner. I don't care what anyone says, the wiggles are my friends. And there's nothing like a little exercise while I 'shake my hips with Wags the dog' while I'm chopping vegetables.
I'd be my house on being able to sing each and every Wiggle song without missing a word.

Miles just popped his 5th tooth. Five people. He's been teething for..um...EVER. His first tooth popped in 9 1/2 months ago. For the LOVE of GOD we need some more teeth here.

Miles can sign the following words:
~more
~eat
~all done
~milk
~please
~thank you

Miles can say the following words:
~

Right. OK, so I guess I sortof lied. 50% of the time I think he really calls Daddy dada. And then 50% of the time he calls his grandpa bapa. The other 50% dada and bapa is just whatever he is holding.
Miles isn't talking yet. He does a lot of noises with this mouth closed and a lot of Ah's and whines and crying to get what he wants.
At his 15mo appt we had the option of getting referred to a Speech/Language Pathologist or we could give him 2 months and see what happened.
NOTHING has happened. NO improvement what so ever.
We made the call and will have someone come out and do an eval. I'm actually looking forward to it. I want to see where he falls in the whole scheme of things. I'm just really not looking forward to being asked about his birth story and then thinking, 'hmm..with all his decelerations in his heartrate during labor, did something happen. But I won't think that, OK?

I'm Miles favorite toy. Who wouldn't think I was a great toy? I bounce, I sing, I have a great nose to push and ears to stick fingers in. If I'm on the floor, Miles is in my lap. If I'm in the chair, Miles is sitting next to me. Me=Miles Oxygen.
Honestly, SOMETIMES it bothers me, but the last few days, I've just been taking the time to do NOTHING but sit and have my nose poked and my eyes examined and my tattoo played with and my teeth counted. Fun times, my friends.

So strange it is seeing blogosphere trying to get pregnant again. (At least a lot of blogosphere)
I was right in the midst of all the pregnancies with Miles. It's odd because I have that natural desire to again start trying for another baby. Obviously it's not possible given the ablation and little snip snip, but it's funny how it naturally happens right about now.

Happy JUNE everyone!