Refusing Pit

Neat story about refusing Pit in labor: http://www.theunnecesarean.com/blog/2009/11/26/refusing-pitocin-in-labor-helens-story.html I hope I'm able to refuse pit this time around!!! In case you were wondering, despite my attempts at interviewing midwives, etc...sadly, due to our insurance, it will be cheaper to have a delivery by an OB. I'm sure the insurance looks at "risks" too. But whatever. I hired an awesome doula that helped deliver the baby of a friend of mine and has worked closely with the OB office quite a bit, so she'll be able to be my defender! It's pretty sad that even the the hospital birth will be a lot more on "paper" by the time the insurance picks up their portion, it will be far cheaper than the midwives or birthing center in Indy, which I looked into as well. Both more natural options we would have to pay completely out of pocket. Sucks. Once again, medical decisions are made based around money.

Black Friday Buys

Last year I bought nothing on Black Friday. Today, I did go to two stores! I got some steals:

Frog Princess Tiana $14.99 vs. $7.44
Snow White $19.50 vs. $7.44
Cinderella $21.35 vs. $7.44
Belle $16.50 vs. $7.44
Ariel $23.95 vs. $7.44

So I got FIVE dolls for $37.20! If I bought them all at "full price" it would have been $96.29.

I also got her some playdough for her stocking....ooooh Christmas is fun!!! I need to control myself. She isn't even begging for anything at this point.

I stopped at 5! They are basically Barbies and super cute. Claire's in love with Princesses! Sorry the sale is over. They also had a Barbie on Special for $5 but I didn't see any left. Bummer. Next time I need to go in the middle of the night apparently.

Among other things, I got my table set for our Thanksgiving which will be tomorrow. I also made homemade cranberry sauce according to the recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray bag. I sampled some, and it is really good! I also made some Lemon Pudding Bars for dessert. Pumpkin Pie is ok, but I'm not super crazy about it. It's generally too rich/thick for me no matter what recipe. I excited about cooking the rest of the stuff tomorrow for our big meal!

Plesantly surprised!

Well...I am amazed at how much I can get done! Especially now that Claire can somewhat help....of course, sometimes her helping slows me down, but sometimes she really surprises me. I've been having her set the table for me. I give her the plates and she knows where to put them. She can get the silverware out herself!

Last night Josh put on some Christmas music and we decorated the tree. Claire actually did a really good job hanging up the ornaments! So now the whole house is completely decorated. I am compensating for last year since I did nothing to decorate. Ha. And I have no idea what next year holds.

I got through all my boxes today ... there are about 12 boxes of baby girl clothes sizes newborn through small 2T sizes. Claire is wearing 3T already!!! And I managed to find 2 entire boxes of neutral stuff in reds, greens, yellows, and whites. I have a few "questionable" items I'll have to ask some people about if they think they are neutral. But I still have enough! I am actually pleasantly surprised! And here I thought I had nothing. But see, I started going through the bigger sizes, which are definitely more girly! I have a lot of small newborn-9 months stuff that is particularly white, yellow, and green. I even have a surprising amount of some blue stuff, but I had forgotten about it since I never put Claire in that stuff usually more than once!!!

I swear I have enough girl clothes for clothing triplets though size 18 month at least. Ha! So I got the boxes labeled and stacked nicely, but what a freaking PAIN IN THE BUTT! I put the shoes and coats in storage with the stuff now as well as matching blankets, since there were like 4 that matched outfits. Seriously...how do people organize their stuff between kids. I actually have several neutral baby blankets, too, so that rocks! And of course all the big stuff like the stroller, highchair, crib set, etc...I got neutral in case we had a boy in the future or the ultrasound was wrong with Claire. Ha! Good planning on my part.

There were a few outfits that I found frustrating...they were too boyish to put Claire in, but they are definitely too girly for a boy. This would be like a solid blue onesie with a little tiny pink flower in the middle. That might work under overalls or something, but really...there were several things like that which were not neutral, but too boyish, but still girly...does that even make any sense??? LOL! We are set with little socks too...lots of white and yellow ones of those!

So now...sometimes I want 4 kids...sometimes I think...2 will be plenty. But we'll take it one at a time and go from there.

Tomorrow we will be starting cooking and getting ready for my parents and brother Rich coming here for Saturday Thanksgiving. I plan on trying to have Claire set the big table and help me dump lots of stuff together. She enjoys doing that!

I got all my boxes put away today and the upstairs vacuumed. Now if I could just get a vacuum that was lighter so Claire could have fun pushing it around for me...

Anyone have any great storage tips on how to do the clothes for kids? I tried to fold matching outfits/socks together, as well as group the sizes together. I'm afraid some of the sizes are a little mixes up, but not horrible.

And how do you store shoes/coats once they get past a certain size. I'm thinking they are too big to mix with the clothes now. And Halloween costumes? What do you do with those? Keep them separate or put in with the right size clothes?

And the stains? WTH! I put away everything clean, and now several items have spit up stains that have crept out. And whoever said bf babies don't stain was full of it! And if that's the case, I'd hate to see formula spit-up stains. I'm wondering if these stains will come out with washing or not?

And if Claire is missing any toys in the next few days, it's totally because she tossed one in one of the boxes when I wasn't looking...

Wish me luck cooking tomorrow.

I got bitten.

Something bit me. It's the nesting bug. Seriously. I am have been going nuts cleaning/organizing and baking/cooking. Tonight I made some BBQ chicken pizza with onions and green peppers. It was glorious. Instead of a red sauce, you use BBQ sauce. It's kind of like that pizza they have at Papa Johns, but the chicken doesn't taste like it's been frozen. :)

So right now the downstairs is super organized and ready. We are having Thanksgiving here on Saturday. That means I have 2 days to finish the upstairs. Eep. Last night I decided it was a good idea to pull out all of Claire's clothes to go through them and see what I have that is neutral. I am about halfway through and found 2 yellow onesies. SCORE! Lol.

Then I thought I needed to pull everything out of the hall closet to get out the upstairs decorations for Christmas. Yep. I thought that was a good idea. Now the hall is full of about 42 boxes and plastic storage bins. I'm also going through my teaching stuff right now finding some cool stuff I can use with Claire. Really...because this is just the time of year I need to pull out 8 paper boxes full of teaching crap.

I better get busy. Wish me luck. Damn nesting bug.

HEY! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Breastfeeding by African American Moms

There was an interesting bit on NPR about African-American moms and breastfeeding rates. The rates are lower among them vs. Latina and White women. YOu can listen to it or read the script here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120748048

I got the link from one of the breastfeeding blogs I enjoy following, called Blacktating: http://blacktating.blogspot.com/2009/11/breastfeeding-often-avoided-by-black.html

I don't know his name!

Today Claire wanted to know her baby brother's name. She asked, "What baby brother's name? I don't know his name!" TOO CUTE! Well, we don't know it either. We are completely clueless. Ha...we didn't name Claire until less than 2 weeks before I was due, and even then, we weren't entirely sure.

I don't really like specific name suggests from family members like, "You should name the baby XXXXXXXXXX because so-and-so was named that." That is a complete and 100% total turn-off for me. Those names will go on a "Definitely will not name list." I want something semi-original, yet classic. I want something that people will recognize, but it's not like in the top 10. I like traditional spellings. Plus we can't please everyone by picking a name one family member liked. So in order to keep things fair, we will just avoid all of those types of suggestions.

I also don't like names that have overly unique spellings or are trendy. Super-trendy spellings just make the parents look like they can't spell. For example, Jackson should be spelled Jackson, not "Jaxsin." I was a teacher. I've seen it. It just makes the parents look like they didn't know how to spell the name. Trendy names are just plain stupid IMHO. I don't think a name like "Blade" would look good on his job resume in about 20 years.

I've read the entire boys name section of our baby name book over and there is not one single solitary name in there that I like. NOT ONE. Not even one that I USED to like but then some student with that name came and ruined it. I just don't LOVE any boy's names like I do girl's names. I also hate city names like Austin or Dallas or whatever. Those fall under the lines of trendy. A hot new girl name is "London." Really. City names are for cities. People names are for people. It also drives me nuts when people name pets real people names instead of something animal-appropriate like Spot or Fluffy. So this is sort of turning into a rant. DANG IT. WHY ISN'T THERE A SINGLE BOY NAME THAT I LIKE!!! I'm sure we'll think of something in the next few months...

But as a teacher, I don't want a name that people haven't seen before or won't know how to pronounce. I don't want him to have to spell his name every time he gives it. I also don't want people to say "What's his name?" with a funny look when I tell them his name. I've seen moms do this to other moms and it's so terrible. I also don't like anything that could be gender-neutral like "Sam" or "Pat." It makes me think of that Pat character that used to be on SNL.

I guess I'm pretty opinionated. I don't like "job" names like Mason because of the meanings behind them. Are all the poor Masons in the world destined to lay bricks? Probably not because most people don't really look into the meanings of names. I generally don't like last names as first names, although there are a few that work well as first names.

So what do I like? I do like most biblical names, but not the funky, hard-to-spell ones that nobody knows how to read. I like Josh, but I don't like the Jr. thing. I think the baby needs to be his own, original person, not version 2.0.

Claire has suggest Oscar and Elmo for the baby. Ha. Nope. She also likes Falcor which is from the movie Labyrinth, but again, nope! I like a lot of German names like Johann, but would never do that to my kid, living in the US. It would never get spelled or pronounced right.

Any suggestions that go well with Starr? Watch out for initials. Don't want to be spelling PMS or ASS or GAS. geesh...

Like Goldfish?

So today Claire helped me make banana bread. Basically she sat on the counter and dumped stuff into the mixer while impatiently waiting while I measured out the next thing. Then after it went in the oven, we sat down to read. There were 45 minutes on the timer when we sat down to read. Before I knew it the timer started ringing. Man. I can't imagine her sitting for 45 minutes at this time last year to read straight through...we looked at about 5 books. And she didn't want to get up when it started ringing...but I promised to let her taste some bread, which we added chocolate chips to the banana bread recipe. Mmm.

But here's a cute story. When we were reading, she started playing with my wedding ring. She loves jewelry and is fascinated with it.

C: Daddy give that to you?
Me: Yes.
C: When you got married?
Me: Yes.
C: That you wedding ring?
Me: Yes.
C: What is it?
Me: It's a special present from Daddy.
C: What is it?
Me: It's a wedding ring.
C: What is it? (LOVES TO REPEAT QUESTIONS NOW.)
Me: It's a ring with special rocks called diamonds.
C: What is it?
Me: It's got a band made out of gold.
C: Like GOLDFISH!?! (She was referring to the little fish-shaped cheese-crackers.)

(FINALLY SOMETHING SHE KNOWS!)

I just started laughing.

Free Diaper Sample

Huggies has a new line of diapers out. Sign up for a sample here: http://www.huggiespureandnatural.com/Default.aspx And then gift it to me for my new little one. :) Hehe. Kthnxbai.

Stem Cells in Mommy's Milk

Amazing stuff: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stem-cells-could-be-the-secret-reason-why-breast-is-best-1825558.html Just when they think they know everything, they find out something else. I'll be eager to find out what's new when Claire starts having kids in the future. For example, there was nothing in print about nursing strikes when I was a baby. (I checked my mom's old books.) And now EVERYONE knows about them. Stem cells are amazing little things!