Kind of a long week

Well, it has been kind of a long week here. Alex had to go Indiana again this week to learn his new job. Both he and I will be starting on June 9th. That left me at home with James, which up to this point has not been a problem. However, this week, when James came home from daycare on Tuesday, he was acting very, very lethargic. He was also very hot to the touch. I took this temperature, and it was 101.5. Now, James has had a fever before, but I had never seen him so taken down by it. His breathing was kind of labored, his eyes were just pouring water and he would not move. In short, it was freaking me out. I called Alex a few times, and then decided to take him to Urgent Care at 7:00 we got to Urgent Care. We left at 10:45. It was diagnosed as just a virus. However, his glands were swollen, so they had to do a "rapid" strep test. I wwould use the word "rapid" very lightly. James did however have a nasty looking ear which the doctor believed was going to be an ear infection without question, so we did get some amoxcilin. Luckily, James slept from 8:00 to 9:30, but I did not get a nap at Urgent Care. I did however get the popsicle that James would not eat. James went to bed at 11:00 on Tuesday night. I went to bed shortly thereafter after a shower. Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. James has not slept well all week due to the fever, which hung on until yesterday. He has night terrors every night. This generally requires me to wake him up to get him to calm down, which is sometimes not very easy. I also got sick with some throat thing along with some lovely sores on the roof of my mouth that made it diffucult to eat (I know gross!). I also ended up at the Walgreens clinic (it was quicker than the regular doctor.) I went to make sure I did not have strep throat, mine rapid test was also negative. Furthermore, the nurse practioner was also kind enough to rule out herpes as the problem in my mouth. (Gee thanks! I am not sure where she thought my mouth had been). In the end, I do not know who was happier to see Alex when he walked in the door last night- me or James because we are quite at our wits end with each other.

Even this morning after a fight over waffles that I am not quite sure was about except the fact that James does not like syrup, I, not my two year old yelled for Alex to come intervene. I felt I was tattling! Oh well. In the end I think nerves are running high this week since we leave for Indiana for good on Wednesday and the little guy obviously has picked up on mama's tension.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

I hope everyone is enjoying a nice memorial day weekend. The Porterfield family is currently hanging out at home, as it is raining outside. James and I are still in our pajamas and I'm quite content to stay that way for a while. The gray day is not so motivating. Plus, I have also decided that tomorrow I will start getting up with an alarm clock again. I have had a blissful four weeks without one (well if you don't count a "mama" alarm clock going off every morning around 6:50), but if I expect to be half way normal on my first day of work, that must come to an end.

We have had a nice weekend so far, on Saturday we went to the zoo! James absolutely loved it. His favorites were the lions and the gorilla. We even went for a camel ride! Here are some pictures from our zoo adventure.


Here is the camel ride.


This is about 3/4 around when James waved at his daddy and said "Hi Daddy, I ride a camel!"


James did enjoy the ride and thought it was pretty interesting.

Here are some of the animals we got to see.

An elephant enjoying a snack.


A gorilla eating a snack.



A lion eating leaves. Anyone see a theme here?


Finally, we finished up our trip to the zoo, by riding the carousel with Papa Larry. We of course rode the gorilla, because that was our favorite animal. This was actually James favorite animal last year as well.

After our successful trip to the zoo, we came home and all took a two hour nap. This rejuventated James, but Mommy and Daddy who had actually walked for almost 5 hours straight, were pretty much done for the day.

Yesterday brought errands and hanging out at home. It was actually 90 degrees outside, so we only played outside for a little bit, because James got so overheated so fast.

Again, I hope all of you are enjoying your long weekends.

Relief

Well, I went to the OB today and I am very obviously glad to say that we heard a heartbeat and everything appears to be fine. The doctor had no problem finding it and it was around 167 beats per minute (another boy?) which is a really good heart rate. I am now at 11 weeks so the doctor said that upon hearing the heartbeat, most of the "danger" has passed. That is percentage speaking, the likelihood of something happening is low. I actually cried when I heard the heartbeat. I had no idea how much I was really worried until I finally heard it and knew that it was ok. I am also doing ok, although I have not gained any weight, the doctor was not concerned but told me to expect a decent gain spurt here in about a month. I have defintitely "popped" and for those who know me, my acne is a sure fire indication that I am indeed pregnant. The acne is in fact worse then it was with James. I currently have more now than I did at five months with James (again, another boy?). We shall see. That is my news, I now most go do something from productive. People keep telling me I am moving in two weeks.

Daycare Drama, No House News

So, as some of you know the daycare situation with James has been a bit difficult. After being told James would have a spot at the DFAS daycare in June, when I spoke with the office manager last week she told me June was iffy, but to call back next week (i.e. today) and see if she had any more news. So, of course we panicked and made alot of phone calls and even sent Alice on a scouting mission to Abacus daycare in Carmel. The good news was that we did find a place for him to go. However, it looks like the plan has again changed this week. I called the DFAS daycare today, and as it turns out, we got a firm start date of June 30th. So, this is all how it breaks down.

DFAS has an older 2 room and a younger 2 room. James needs to go into the younger 2 room which is full. However, there is a little girl ready to go into the older 2's, but that is full. There are 2 little boys in the older 2's who need to be moved, but apparently are not doing well with their potty training, and course, you can set a start date when depending on a 3 year old to get potting trained. However, there is a third little boy, who, is not quite 3 but IS potty trained. This little boy can not move to the 3's until 2 weeks before his 3rd birthday, which is July 13th. So, this means can start daycare on June 30th, for sure, got all that?

So, the hiccup here is obviously that Alex and I both start our jobs on June 9th. So, we have called in some reinforcements. Mom has graciously agreed to watch James for 2 weeks. Jen will watch him the beginning of the 3rd week, but then she has to go to St. Louis to see Wally defend his thesis. So, Alex will hopefully be able to work home those last two days. Anyone else's head swimming?

If you are wondering, we decided on the DFAS daycare, because while it may not be that close to where we are looking to buy a home, it is $21 a week cheaper, and this amount of money adds up quickly. Not too mention, with me expecting the infant rate is probably going to be about a $40 week difference when we start the next one, so then you are looking at approximately $240 a month. Even if Alex has to go to DFAS to daycare occcasionally, I am pretty sure it is not going to be $100.00 in gas, but with gas prices, who can say?


In house news, there is no news. We had a second showing on Saturday, but have heard nothing. We had an open house on Sunday, with a whopping amount of 2 visitors. We have been told at least twice that we are people's short list (top 3 or top 2), but unfortunately have been nobody's #1. But, we continue to pray, but the emotional roller coaster is difficult to bear. With each showing, you don't want to get your hopes us, but yet during this process you must remain hopeful. So, we continue on.

FYI. I have an OB appointment tomorrow, am very nervous, I am now two weeks past when I lost the last one, but have not been back for 3 weeks. I will let you all know what I find out, for now, it is bubbles time for James!

Sunglasses

Yes, I know another post! These are from this week as well. James has recently discovered sunglasses!


Lookin' good.


He is so heartbroken in this picture. I believe it was because I would not let him take pictures with the digital camera.

Cupcakes

On Monday, James and I made cupcakes. James did quite well, here are the pictures.


First we poured the cupcakes into the cups. I only had one cupcake pan, so James got to do his on plates, because the first batch which mommy had done were already in the oven.


Overall he did really well pouring, but as you can see, one was a little big.



But, he was obviously having fun!


Here we are decorating the cupcakes, or which James thought of more as getting to lick all the cupcakes. Here he is licking the 2nd one.



In fact, James made sure to lick all three cupcakes he was "decorating", in this picture he is getting ready to move on to lick cupcake number 3.


Trust me, things got much messier from here. We ended up with icing to our elbows. Unfortunately, my camera's batter died, but you can imagine.

Mother's Day

I am little behind on my mother's day report, but here it is. I had a lovely mother's day. Alex, James and I went to brunch with Grandma Jo, Aunt Andi, Uncle Jason and Brannon. I took full advantage of the buffet. After brunch, Alex, James and I came home and all took a nap. That was very nice. I think I may be getting a mother's day gift still from my husband. When I asked him at approximately 5:00 p.m. on mother's day "So, I guess I did not get a mother's day present?" The response was "I didn't say that", but I have also heard nothing since, so I don't know. Regardless, it was a lovely day. Also, my parents sent a beautiful bouquet of 2 dozen roses. Here are the pictures of the flowers which are now sitting in my entry way, welcoming prospective buyers.

There is always something unexpected about pregnancy

So, as I have some time off right now, I am trying to get in all possible doctors appointments that I can. I have already been to the dermatologist and learned that my drastic sunburn from last May (from which I still have the tan lines) has not yet produced any scary melanoma spots. But, I digress.

Since I do have the spare time, I also decided to get my eyes checked out since, I have not been able to wear my contacts comfortably since getting pregnant. In fact, my contacts had become so bothersome, everytime I put them in, I could feel them and no matter what I did, the left eye just would not focus. I had pretty much stopped wearing them. The problem is, this means I can't wear sunglasses, which I dearly love to wear, so I went to the eye doctor yesterday. I ended up just doing a walk-in appointment. I swear to you the intake guy thought I was crazy when I told him that since getting pregnant that I could not wear my contacts. He admitted that he had heard of eyesight changing in pregnancy but that contacts should not be an issue. However, not discounting what I said, they agreed to do an brief eye exam. And although I just had my eyes checked in September, the results of the eye exam were quite shocking to me. Since wearing corrective lenses, I have had the prescription in each eye. That has changed. Also, since September, the prescription in both of my eyes has changed as well. I was wearing -1.75 in both my left and right eyes. After going to the eye doctor yesterday, I am now wearing -1.00 in the left eye and -1.50 in the right eye. So, my eye sight has actually improved, and no wonder that left contact was blurry, I was wearing -1.75 and my eye had changed to -1.00! The good thing is, I wore contacts comfortably today for the first time in almost 2 months! I did not deal with this particular eyesight issue in my pregnancy with James, so there is always something unexpected about pregnancy.

Painting is fun!

So, keeping a two year old busy for 8 hours is certainly not easy. Thankfully, there is nap time, but that leaves quite a bit time in between. Yesterday, after we went to Target and took a walk in the stroller (great exercise for me and James loves it), we still had an hour for a project before lunch time. I decided it was Art time, which James loves, and I discovered he truly loves painting. The paint he was using are just little hand held balls with paint already in it, just get the top a little wet and voila, instant painting, with no dipping a brush. I then gave James my large artist sketch pad and he went crazy for 40 minutes! Trust me, this is a long time to keep a 2 year old occupied. He does have his mother's love for the abstract. He also discovered that if banged the brush down that a big glob of paint comes out (my little Jackson Pollock). So, being the great mommy I am, I showed him how to spread it out with his hands. The end product was actually some really good paintings. However, the cuter picture was my little artist. I had him hold up his hands for this picture to get the full effect.



He also is really into the camera and wanted to take a picture of me and him, this was the end result of his photography talents.