Saturday, April 30, 2011

Gardening!

We put in our garden this week! It's not anything impressive or complicated--just a little flower bed that we put a frame around dumped dirt into. Our tiny yard is  shared with our neighbors, so we can't exactly just do what we want with it and fix it later. The only piece of dirt that is really "ours" is this 8 inch by 9 foot rocky flower bed.

I would have loved to do a full garden, but between the available "land" and my lack of energy during pregnancy, we decided it would be best to do just a salad garden. After exploring the many ideas out there for container gardening--most of which were expensive or ugly--we decide that putting a frame around the flower bed would be best. Wil found some scrap wood at Lowes (they had been frames for riding lawn mower boxes) and so was able to get all the wood for the frame for under $6. That number was much more to my liking!

He drilled some 3/8 inch holes (I think) and put stakes through them straight into the ground to hold everything in place. It works like a charm (so far)! We thought about going a bit deeper, but decided to see if what we have will work...so our raised flower bed is only about 6 inches deep. This is all an experiment anyways, so, yeah, might as well be adventerous!
I filled it up with dirt, marked off my sections and planted some seeds. I had thought about starting all my seeds before the warm weather showed up, but I couldn't find a toddler-safe place for my seeds. :)
We planted baby romaine lettuce, royal red lettuce, simpson elite lettuce, mesclun mixed lettuce, green onions, radishes, carrots, bush beans, sugar peas, cilantro, oregano, thyme, parsley, bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes. That sounds like a lot, but we only planted a few of each.
The herbs, bell pepper, and cherry tomato that won't go in the garden. The herbs will go around the tomato plant in its 10 gallon container and the bell pepper will hopefully go in the ground in front of our little porch... we'll see how it does there.
And a few gratuitous shots of my little helper "helping" mix the dirt in my tomato pot.
She loves mixing everything she can.

Happy growing!
~Regina

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Ahhh... Misunderstandings!

One of many, many past and future--but definitely hilarious!

While Aurora and I were running around looking for half-off Easter candy (heh...great use of time, right?), she started complaining that her eye was bothering her. But it only bothered her in the car, so after examining it, I figured it was either really mild or just one of those things that toddlers do. When we got back in the car, I handed her a wintergreen lifesaver, which she has had several times before, and told her it would help her eye.

We drove about 2 minutes down the road and Aurora started complaining that the candy was cold--to which I responded that, yes, mint can make you feel cold. After parking in our next conquest's parking lot (Walmart, so it took a while to park), I came around to get her out and found her with the lifesaver pressed against her eye! Poor thing! Her little eye was watering and looking a bit red. I hadn't even considered that she might think to put it on her eye when all she's done with the candy before is eat it! Ha! Thankfully we had baby wipes in the car, so I was able to clean up the stickiness that had developed all around her eye and had trickled down onto her cheek.

After explaining that she was supposed to eat it, she promptly shoved it in her mouth and within a few minutes looked and acted fine. No harm done. She didn't complain of her eye bothering her after that, either, so something fixed it! Apparently I need to be a little more clear about how you use candy to fix mysterious ailments--glad I didn't give her chocolate!!!

Finding ever-more-creative ways to warp my child,
Regina

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter!

Aurora has been talking for days about her "easer dess"--she couldn't understand why she couldn't wear it every single morning! We kept telling her "three more bedtimes...two more bedtimes..." but she still didn't quite get it. Last night we told her that in the morning she would be able to wear her Easter dress...at 5am she charged into our room exclaiming "up! up! up! mommy! up!" :) Wil put her back down and convinced her to sleep. At 7am the same performance was repeated...I think we have a glimpse of what Christmas will be like at the end of the year! But she finally got to wear her Easter dress!

And, of course, had to wear her butterfly backpack from Momma--in it was her diaper, wipes, and sippy cup for nursery. :) It went quite well with her dress, I think.
After church (which I'm thrilled that I actually managed to make it to!), we ran to a local flower garden to try to get a family photo. It was wet and in the low 50s, but it worked out. While walking in we scared a mommy duck away, so I had to take a photo of Wil and Aurora carefully looking at all the eggs---there were 12 in the nest! That's going to be one busy mama duck! ;)
And, we accomplished our purpose: a new family photo! Thanks to the auto-timer that can be set to take 10 photos at a time and M&Ms to bribe Aurora, we had a very nice, fast photo session. I'm so thrilled with how nice we look!
This afternoon we will be spending with some friends of ours and their family and hopefully having lots of goodies. A nice, quiet Easter is exactly what we needed...

And for just a bit of fun... Aurora last Easter:
 What a little cutie!
 She's gotten so much bigger in a year... *sniff sniff*


That's all for now! Hopefully I'll be around a bit more often again!
~Regina

Friday, April 1, 2011

Life

Well, now that my April Fool's day silliness is done on facebook, I suppose I should write a real blog post explaining myself. :)

Six or seven months ago, Wil and I stumbled across this article. We realized after reading and discussing it that we had lost sight of our dream for our family and had gotten stuck in the "right now." Those of you who know us well and have interacted with our family during Aurora's first two years can understand how this could have happened. We feel like we've been through hell and back (maybe) with Aurora. We love our precious girl and wouldn't change a thing about her, but she's not been an easy child to raise to this point. Thankfully, she seems to be getting easier (most of the time) as she gets older.

So, we were faced with a difficult decision. We felt the right thing for our family was a sibling for Aurora. But we really, really didn't want to go through another pregnancy. After exploring foster care and adoption, we came to the conclusion that there were simply no other options for us at this point. Were we sure enough that another child was the right thing to try to survive a pregnancy? We decided yes, with dread and a bit of excitement...but mostly dread.

So bear in mind, that is where we are coming from as we announce our second pregnancy.

Thus far, at 15 weeks in, it's been about as bad as, maybe slightly worse than, we expected. My sickness started to come and go before I even got a positive pregnancy test (at 3.5 weeks pregnant) and settled in to stay at 8 weeks. I haven't fixed a dinner since that point because the mere thought of food makes me nauseated. If I try to do much prep on it then I can't eat it. I haven't left the house by myself for at least 2 months and I would end up feeling so bad when I left that I gave up trying to go anywhere. From about 9 weeks through 13 weeks, I left the house a total of 2 times. Thankfully, the severe blood sugar crashes (hypoglycemia style) have gotten under control in the past two weeks and I'm actually able to leave the house without having one.

The morning sickness has begun to lift for a day or two and then come back--so it's nice to have a break every once in a while. The "I'm going to die of starvation if I don't eat right this moment but every food makes me want to vomit" feeling is slightly less intense. I've lived on peanut butter and honey sandwiches and pizza for the past two months. I still can't eat much meat and dairy in more than a few ounce quantities upsets my stomach. And the bane of my existence: water, WATER, makes me sick unless I lay down to drink it and stay laying down. Thankfully, I am not actually throwing up much--that is one thing I am very thankful for. I don't have to fight the dehydration or feel bad about wasted food.

Wil has taken on almost everything in the house. He plans and makes dinner, he get the table ready, he washes up Aurora and gets her ready for bed, he helps her clean up her toys, he vacuums, he mops, he does the dishes every night, and he works all day.

Me? I manage to get up and make Aurora and myself a microwave breakfast. Then I lay around somewhere and attempt to keep Aurora from jiggling me too much. Somehow we survive the morning and I microwave us some lunch (leftovers for Aurora if we're lucky, a peanut butter sandwich for me). Naptime is a lovely time and doesn't last long enough. Then we try to survive the last 2 hours or so until Wil gets home. Oh, and I try to do a load of laundry at least once a week. Heh. Our laundry is in a sad state. Poor Aurora misses her mommy and Wil has made similar comments. On the weekends, I collapse in bed and rest as much as I can, until Aurora's wailing for "mommy" draws me out. Poor thing. I manage to make it to church about every other Sunday, but we're hoping that I'll be up for more as we approach the half-way point of the pregnancy.

So, if you ask us if we're excited, we'll probably say something like "yes, but only about the baby after all of this!" THAT is why I have not been updating the blog much. I simply don't have the energy to keep up with it like I was doing before. It takes a lot of creativity and energy to write fun, cute blog posts. I simply don't have it in my right now. I have been trying to keep up a bit with our two tumblr microblogs: Adventures of Wil, Regina & Aurora and Snapshots of 2011. But even those simple blogs get significantly behind.

At this point, if you want to keep up with us, either facebook message me or send us an email (wilnregina@gmail.com). I am trying to keep up with personal correspondence. Once I start feeling better and can take back over some of my formerly regular duties around the house, then I'll try to blog again.

~Regina