April

I need to try to get a "template" for each month's update...


Joey: It's his half birthday month, which is kind of a big deal. He is officially closer to being 7 than he is to being 6. Next year is the year he can choose to be baptized. That thought didn't cross my mind until yesterday!
He has lost a total of 4 teeth (front top and bottom teeth) now. The bottom two are I think fully grown in. The top teeth have taken a bit longer to grow in (or so it seems). Finally, one of them started poking through about a week ago! I'm so curious to see what he looks like with adult front top teeth.
School for him has been going well. He gets lowercase d and b mixed up still. He knows the sounds if you ask him "what sound does letter B make?", just the reading of it can be a challenge. We have had to take a few unexpected breaks, so I'm sure that isn't helping. He could definitely read the BOB books with help, so I'm pretty pleased with that. He's very good at doing math (adding AND subtracting) on his own (I showed him the signs, had him use counters, and gave him 3 worksheets to do on his own. He got all of the problems correct except one!! It feels amazing to be able to see him do the work and learn it, and to be the one to teach him). I think he may like math more than reading, but he wants to do ALL the schoolwork, so we're happy about that.
He has 4 lessons left of his workbook, and then his supplement, and then for the summer, I think we're going to try just reading simple books (like the BOB books), maybe go back through his workbook, and then later in the summer, we'll try out the Kindergarten curriculum we got (according to The Good and The Beautiful's unofficial facebook group, Level Kindergarten is closer to first grade stuff, as far as matching up with public school levels).

Emmalyn: There isn't a glitter font color or that'd be the one I use for her haha.
She is almost 100% fully potty trained (she is 100% day trained, but nighttime is a bit harder. She usually wakes up dry, but has to be told to go change herself. I think once she understands that she NEEDS to go to the bathroom on her own to change in the mornings, we'll be golden).
We stopped doing a workbook for her. We kept trying to do a lesson a day (each lesson was the uppercase of a letter, then the next lesson was the lowercase of the same letter), and she was just too distracted. She loved doing it, but was regressing knowing the things she already knew. It was hard to decide to wait until she's at least 5 before starting the workbook again. She picked up the knowledge she had of academics -and more- after we stopped the workbook. The kids get to watch PBS Kids in the mornings, and Word World is a big favorite. She has been sounding out letters and such, kind of what seems to be on her own! So I'm not worried about her. She's only 4. She has plenty of time to learn to read.
Yesterday we tried a lesson in her workbook. She did well, and really listened. I think we might just do one lesson a week maybe...Not sure. We'll try some more later, maybe this weekend, and see how she does. She remembers the letters in the flip books, so I'm happy. She even remembers the sounds of some letters if we ask her "does 'frog' start with 'f'?", for example, so I think we're progressing a bit!
She loves helping with Perrin. She often will grab him while she's sitting on the floor (while Perrin is trying to crawl and play of course) and tell us she's babysitting, all while Perrin is screeching to be let go. I think she'll enjoy the new baby much more haha.
No lost teeth yet. A bottom one might be loose, but not sure on that. She does need a device that will correct her crossbite. She has to be about 6 or 7 though, is what the dentist said. I'd like to ask if she can have it next year though, because she bites her cheeks constantly. So sad. She also has enlarged tonsils, so we need to get her an appointment with the doctor for that, to check that out. I'm glad the dentist caught that.

Benjamin: Benjamin is 3 now. Hard to believe.
He has been getting angrier lately. He uses his words and says "I'm MAD!", so that's good. I just need to figure out how to help him be done being mad and learn to let things go. He got so mad the other day he was crying tears. That broke my heart. I cried too. It sucks to be so mad that you don't know what to do. He sometimes gets mad at funny things (like cows), but I think that's his way of trying to explain why he's mad, without really knowing why.
Potty training isn't happening at the moment. I hate it. The diapers we're using for him are either too small or too big. He's in sizes 6 and 7, which are the biggest of the sizes, so we're not saving much money there. Jonathan would like to potty train now, and if Benjamin regresses when the new baby comes, oh well. I'm in the same boat; I'd rather have a month or two of no big diapers, and then have to go back if we need to. But the potty training is on me, and I'm huge and uncomfortable at 30 weeks already...
Benjamin is SOOO smart! Jonathan asked him the other day "do you want to read a book?" and Benjamin said no. Jonathan then asked "do you NOT want to read a book?", trying to be funny, and Benjamin said yes! He's so quick to catch on to what people say, you can't do any reverse psychology, you can't twist your words around him at all. He'd make a good judge I think haha.
Benjamin is also the sweetheart of the bunch so far. He remembers his manners, and cares about other people without really needing to be "reminded" of it.

Perrin: Perrin is 13 months old!
Not walking yet, but I'm not surprised or upset. He gets into everything anyway, just by crawling. He'll crawl to a chair, grab the chair and stand up, but when he needs to get somewhere else, he's back to crawling. He even climbs chairs that are low enough for him to get a foot up on. Then he stands on that chair, and rocks it, and just has a blast until an adult sees him, then cries when he is taken off and put back on the floor.
When I tell him to say "mama", he ALWAYS, without fail, says "dadadada". He says mama on his own, very rarely, but he does say it (usually when "Dada" is trying to put him to bed or isn't being nice, like when wiping his face, which I do too, but he just whines with me haha). All of the kids have become their dad's best buddy as soon as they hit a year old. A couple Sundays ago, I was wondering if it was something I was doing wrong, so Jonathan and I were chatting about it. Then Perrin crawled up, stood up next to Jonathan, and started play hitting him on the leg and screeching. Turns out, I'm just not the fun one. Go figure. At least my kids don't hate me haha.
We still have to have Perrin's cake smash. During his actual birthday, he was cutting 4 teeth (he gets 4 at once). At least 2 were molars, so bedtime was about 6pm those days...
We bought cloth diapers!!! I am so excited about that. We started using them on Tuesday morning, so this is the 4th full day of using them. I'm so excited to only use 1 disposable diaper a night for Perrin. It will help a lot in the long run. The new baby should be able to use the cloth diapers we bought when Perrin is old enough to lie still for a diaper change (without trying to roll over and get up....I'm guessing at about 18 months?). The new baby will have to be a certain size before they will fit into the diapers anyway, so that kind of all works out (the new baby should be about 3 months old, give or take, depending on if they're built like Benjamin or Emmalyn haha).

New Baby/pregnancy: 
I got tested for gestational diabetes as the usual, although they waited until 28 weeks this time. I failed it of course, but got a 148! That is my second lowest 1 hour test! I decided that I'd take the 3 hour this time. I guess they got rid of the carb load diet they put me on the week before the test (like I had with Joey).
The baby looks good. I've been measuring dead on at every single appointment, which is very surprising to me. I measured about 2 weeks ahead by this point with Benjamin. I'll be asking for an ultrasound to check fluid levels at my next OB appointment. I got back in with the OB's and am so much happier about that. Never going back to a family practitioner for pregnancy again (although, this could be the last pregnancy for us, so it might be moot anyway).


Jonathan and Christy:
I like purple too. Jonathan wouldn't care haha.

Jonathan is back in school. He's in the middle of his second set of classes. Each set of classes is 5 weeks long, so he gets a big work load each time. He has 2 classes at a time, and when he passes this second set (well, he has to pass 1 more class), SEL will start paying for his schooling again! I think the break he took was what he really needed. Oddly enough, Jonathan likes to start going back to college the second I find out we're expecting again. Funny how that works out. Should Jonathan stay on track this time, and not go down to one class at a time, he should graduate in August of this year! I am so excited about that! Perfect timing for a BBQ graduation party!

He's doing really well at work too. He got promoted to Assembler Specialist! That's a really big deal, because his supervisors had to go to great lengths to get him this promotion (going to their supervisors, asking almost everyone Jonathan works with for a review of if they like working with him, etc).

For me, well, this pregnancy hasn't been easy again. Last week, the doctors found I had a UTI. No big deal, just got me on antibiotics (I don't get the usual symptoms of burning while peeing when I have a UTI, I just asked them to do a UTI dip at my last appointment, because anytime I didn't pee every hour, I'd have contractions. No idea if the contractions were Braxton Hicks or the real thing, but they did do the UTI dip, which I guess isn't standard at all appointments, and they did find out that my UTI was pretty bad. I finished the antibiotics yesterday (woohoo! Those taste nasty, especially burping up to an hour or two after taking them).

While taking the antibiotics, I started having some very noticeable blood in my urine, which I thought was from 1 or 2 things: 1, that my pee was just changing color from the antibiotics, and/or 2, I was actually having blood in my urine and trying to pass a stone. Yesterday morning, at about 2am, I was rudely awakened by some excruciating kidney pain (my right kidney, the same one that had the 1 inch stone during Perrin's pregnancy). It was a dull, deep pain, and even after a bath, and 2 hours after taking Tylenol (and neither working), at about 4am I decided it was ER worthy (about an 8 on the pain scale). After a kidney ultrasound, urine and blood work, and a bag of fluid, turns out that everything looked really good. I do have hydronephrosis (a mild to moderate case I guess), which is just a buildup of fluid in my kidney. My ureters, bladder, and kidney are all working as they should (I have bilateral uretal jets, meaning both of my ureters are open and draining well). Basically, it just sounds like I have a stone that is taking a while to make it's exit....I see the urologist today at 4 (thank goodness that time was open. That was a huge blessing in disguise). I am hoping he'll have a solution for me.

Urologist update: The urologist said there was very likely a stone. He gave me a prescription for Hydrocodone, and I was optimistic that I wouldn't need any. Sadly, I was very wrong. On Friday morning, in the early early morning, I had the excruciating pain again. The urologist had told me to take a hydrocodone at the first sign of pain. He also said that if the pain got out of hand, that he'd do a CT scan, and go from there. Friday morning, I was in the ER again, sobbing and incoherent from the pain, and hydrocodone wasn't touching the pain at all. The ER was trying to figure out why I was in so much pain. I told them I was just in the ER on Tuesday for back pain, and they suspected a kidney stone then.
They said they were going to call the urologist, but it took them hours. During the hours before they called the urologist, they gave me TONS of pain meds, and anti-nausea meds, and fluids. They also tried to cath me TWICE and both times it was so excruciating, and they said there was some kind of blockage. It sounded like the nurse had no idea what she was doing. She also told me I didn't need to do a clean catch, so I didn't (before the cath). The reason why they needed to cath me was because it needed to be a clean catch of urine.....*crickets* I offered to try to get a clean catch of urine after the 2 attempts, and succeeded. I think they may have damaged my urethra, but we'll see....
I ended up having a CT scan at about noon. I had been in the ER for HOURS. The CT scan picked up the stone right away (it was a 2mm x 4mm x 6mm, in my right ureter, and I guess there was a little bit of a hump for it to get over to get out of the ureter and it just wasn't going to do so. I almost passed it on my own! So close!). The CT scan also picked up another 9mm stone in my left kidney. I'll be having surgery on that one after baby is born.
I had surgery Friday evening on my right ureter. Because the stone was at the very bottom of the ureter, I was able to have a spinal block, and didn't need to be put under general anesthesia! That was pretty interesting. No pain, just weird and itchy. They got all of it, and my recovery is going SOO much better than when I was put under a year and a half ago.
I was admitted to the labor and delivery ward of the hospital for overnight observation. They did lots of vitals, and a couple NSTs, and both baby and I are fine. My blood pressure did drop during surgery, but came back up enough with the medicine they give for that. My blood pressure has been pretty low since surgery, but I have an OB appointment today, so we will see how everything is going.

OB update: Everything looks good. My blood pressure has come back up to normal, and we are measuring right on track still.

I was supposed to have my 3 hour gestational diabetes test this week. I have a lot of appointments now. I will try to get it done next week I guess. Or maybe next week...kidney pain and emergency surgery takes priority lol. I'm hoping I pass. I'd actually like to get a fluid check (just an ultrasound), to make sure my fluid isn't actually low and baby isn't super big, to equal out measuring perfectly. Or the opposite I guess; too much fluid and baby is small.

I also need to make a dental appointment for me, the sooner the better. I have a really bad tooth that I'm just going to have them pull. It broke a week or so ago, and it is just not worth trying to root canal (the dentist who looked at it said it would give me maybe 10 years with it, but the prognosis wasn't good). Thankfully, Jonathan knew how much work I would need done on my teeth for 2019, and last December, did the buy up dental plan. We will probably do the buy up plan again for 2020, but we are so blessed that he works with such a wonderful company that takes such good care of our health financially, that it won't make much of a difference in his paychecks. I have the extraction needed (which will also need 2 different grafts done as well, which is another expense on top of the extraction), and at least 2 cavities filled (1 of those cavities is bad enough that it should probably be done at the same time as the extraction. If we wait too long it'll be a root canal. The other cavity just feels like it has a huge hole in the side of my back molar...if I wait too long for that one, it would likely be an extraction as well, if it goes into the gum line, like the one I'm already having taken out has). May 8th is the extraction date. I'm so nervous. Hopefully, the other issues are easy to take care of.

Dental update: Another tooth (actually, the same tooth as the one I'm having extracted, just on the other side), broke! There was no indication of it breaking, so I'm pretty distraught over it. I think I'm going to have it pulled as well. I tried to call the dentist today, but they're only in the office every other Friday, according to a recording. Sounds like they weren't in today, as I called them twice. I'm at a loss of what to do now. I'm going to put off the original extraction, and hopefully they'll be able to just change my appointment to a full consultation and full mouth x ray to see what I really need done first. Sadly, we aren't financially able to get the recommended grafts and extractions. I want implants, but I don't know if I'll be able to. That's why I'd like a full consult. I don't want to lose all of my teeth. I already have 2 broken molars, and another back molar that is really needing work done. I'd be okay with having those 3 pulled and then replaced with implants, but we will see. I could really use prayers for this.


Basically, I can't wait until June! I'm so done with this pregnancy. Pregnancy makes taking care of your own body more difficult because you can't take certain medications, you can't do certain procedures, and there's a lot more pain involved with any issues.


The house: 
We got our brand new refrigerator!! It was a whirlwind time to get it here on time too. Jonathan took the whole day off since we had no idea what time they'd deliver it. We were able to see how many people were before us for delivery the day of though. At the beginning of the day it said 7 (holy cow), then an hour or two later it said 2, then 1, then "you're next"! Well, in between the time of "1" and "you're next", we got a call from Home Depot's office. Apparently, the delivery truck broke down. I was really mad because that was a full day off work for Jonathan for absolutely nothing, and we had already sold our dinky little fridge and it was gone. We had food outside in a cooler. They said they'd be back to deliver on Saturday (2 days later), but they had already wasted one of Jonathan's days off AND us having to stay home the entire day. I begged Jonathan to call Home Depot back and ask if we were able to just go get the fridge. The delivery truck had broken down in Pullman! That was really lucky! They said they'd meet Jonathan at Walmart. We got the fridge and it was a doozy for Jonathan to get it into the house all by himself. I was so worried he'd have a stroke or something. He actually did really well considering he only had me to lift a tiny bit of the edge of the fridge. No one broke or pulled or strained any muscles or anything, so I call it a win haha.

We plan to hopefully replace one appliance each year. Next year should be the oven and stove. Glass top induction! I'd also like to get a regular sized washer and dryer. Maybe find a set that's more user friendly. Then maybe a dishwasher that doesn't break right after the warranty is up....Oh well. I'm just thankful to have our home instead of renting.

Jonathan also wants to put duct work in the house before finishing the downstairs. It's hard to wait, but it is probably best to do the duct work first.