Praise Report!!!

Hallelujah!!!

Sparkie was not-so-cooperative with the camera today.  So, she gave us a wave and politely asked us to step off and let her go back to sleep, thankyouverymuch.

There have been a lot of bended knees in our house and on our behalf.  There have been untold numbers of prayers offered for Sparkie and for her gestation.  I am so glad, so grateful, to be able to say that God has answered those prayers in a most magnificent and merciful way!!!

Had an OB checkup/sonogram today to check on the hematoma - and they could not find it.  It has been resolved.  The bleed has been absorbed into my body and is no longer a threat at this time!  Yes, there is a slim chance that it could reoccur.  But, that is rare.  Yes, there is always a possibility that the sonographer missed seeing something.  But, that is unlikely with all her experience.  I have been released from limited activity orders and life has just gotten miles easier!!!

Not only does this bring a physical freedom that we've been missing, but it also brings a much desired emotional freedom and release from worry.  I do still have to be reasonable about things and be mindful of the care that is necessary when growing a wee one.  But, I can take the kids swimming this summer now.  I can take them for walks in the neighborhood now.  I can take them to the park and on playdates and on school outings.  We can go to the grocery store to pick up milk and bananas anytime we need them.  We can run up to the bookstore or library to see if they have something that we just *have* to have.

GOD IS SO GOOD!!!

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who came and picked up the kids and got them out of the house when I couldn't do it.  Those times of release from house arrest for them was priceless.  Of course, we welcome all takers who want to get them out from here on also!  :-)  They love, love, love having the chance to go and do without Mommy or Daddy around.

My only hiccup of the day, if you can even call it that, is.....  get this....  I have to gain some weight.  lol....  wooohoooo!!!  It's the first, and I assure you will be the last, time those words will be uttered to me.  But, for some weird reason, I've only gained 10 lbs so far.  Who knows why.  I've got two young ones.  My food aversions and nausea lasted longer this time.  My day is physically active as opposed to being restful at a desk.  It's 2009.  Who knows.  Whatever!!!  Talk about having a non-problem, huh?  I better enjoy it now, because I have a LOT of weight to lose after Sparks gets here.  I, um, well.....  let's just say I didn't start this pregnancy at an ideal weight for my body type.  ::grin::

Anyway, Jmk and I can not utter enough appreciation to all who have prayed us through this time.  And who will continue to pray us through the rest of the pregnancy.  We are acutely aware of the absolute miracle of a baby being born healthy and alive, and we take nothing - not one single day of this - for granted.  Thank you so much for loving us enough to pray for us.  God has been merciful to us, and we are so grateful for his gracious blessings!

This was the only other picture from today.  She apparently spends so much time with her legs back over her head like some Cirque du Soleil artist, that it was hard to get a decent picture of her.  But that's one good looking spine, eh?

Some recent quotes that I liked

From Kat, who just simply has a way with words, described how she gets thru her day with 3 kids 6 and under and a special "challenge" on top of all that:

Every few minutes, I pray for grace to get through the next hour or so. God is faithful, just as he is to you, and he gives me just what I need to manage for the next little bit. None of this "Here, have enough grace to make it through the next few days." Oh, no, it's "Here, here's enough grace to make it through cooking lunch. Then come back and see me and we'll negotiate snacktime." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Rhonda, who I think got this from an email forward:

Whenever God closes one door, He always opens another - even though sometimes it's Hell in the hallway.

Product Recommendations

I don't usually do this, but I have gotten a couple of things lately that I have to compliment.

First, is a hair straightener (flat iron).  The Remington Wet 2 Straight .  This is a fantastic product!  I know that the Chi is sort of the gold standard for flat irons.  Because of the price of those, though, I never could talk myself into getting one, since I wasn't that great about "doing" my hair every day anyway.  Thus, I can't compare this product to the Chi.  BUT, the Remington works so great!  It's only about $25'ish at Wally World, it has a programmable heat function, you can use it on wet hair (I haven't tried this yet), AND it has a turn-off feature!  Very important for me, because I have some mental block about turning off flat irons half the time.  It is super effective - great product.

Second, is a vacuum cleaner.  The Dyson DC25 Animal .  I really do heart this vacuum cleaner.  We used a 20% discount coupon at Bed Bath and Beyond to get it, and so far, it is living up to all its claims.  Because of the wood flooring that we put down, we needed something that would go easily from hard surface flooring to rugs and then back again.  Because of the easy-to-get-to switch for turning off the rotating brushes, it does a great job on hard surface flooring.  Then, it quickly goes back to being able to handle carpet/rug areas.  The ball feature is fantastic.  It takes almost no effort to turn the machine, which is good for me right now.  (No, I promise I'm not vacuuming every day.  I'm being good!)  I haven't used the mini turbine head attachment (the only thing that makes this different from the regular DC25 model), so I can't yet say whether or not it's worth the extra cost.  The only con to this machine that I have encountered is that the cord is just too short.  It really ought to be another 3 or 4 feet longer than it is.  But, other than that, it is a good machine.  I really, really like being able to empty the canister after each use.  Getting dust and such out of the house is a necessity around here.
It IS very pricey.  Very pricey.  I have been wanting one for a long, long time, but wouldn't ever "let" Jmk go get it.  It just seemed like way too much money to spend on a vacuum cleaner.  But, when we got the new flooring and had sooooo many flooring transitions to deal with, the cost became a little less scary.  My sweet SIL told us it was the best money she ever spent.  So, we sort of lumped it into all the other home improvements costs.  Great vacuum!

That's all for the commercials.  Back to your regularly scheduled programs!  :-)

Earth Day at the Zoo

I will admit to not being a huge fan of the whole "Earth Day" thing.  I won't get into all the hypocrisy of all of it, because I just don't feel like it.  :-)
BUT, Poodle does do some Disney channel watching and some PBS watching during parts of the day/week.  Thus, she has picked up on some of the Earth Day terminology in spite of me.  She informed me a couple of days ago that "Earth Day" was this Saturday (I know it was Wednesday - that's part of what I found humorous about what she was taking from the info that she was getting) and that we had to turn off all of the faucets and the lights and clean up the house and the plants and then everyone would get candy and treats.

lol.....  WhatEver!!!

I'll explain the difference between responsible conservation and making an idol out of the Creator's creation after the hooplah has settled from the kids' shows.
Candy and treats anyone?  Apparently Saturday is the day!  ::grin::

Conversations with Poodle

Mommy, what does "main" mean?  As in "the main point I want to make is"...?

Well, main is the same as primary thing or the most important thing.  For example, the main sail on a boat is the biggest sail.  (Robert, forgive me if that was terribly off.  It made sense to her).  What do you think the main ingredient is in bread?

Ummm - flour.

Very good!  Okay, what is the main reason to go to church?

Ummm - to sing to Jesus!


:-)
I thought that was sweet.  I did tell her that she was correct and that we also went to worship Jesus, but I love hearing what children are really thinking.  So I didn't "fix" what she said right away.

Anyway!  Speaking of children, we've named Sparkie!  No, her real name isn't going to be Sparkie.  It's just what she's likely to get called around here.  :-)  If you'd like to see her real name, you'll need to go to our website and click on the Baby's Page link.  Following my brother's advice, I'm going to continue to not use the kids' names on the blog.  I realize that if someone was determined enough, they could figure out everything.  I'm just hopeful that no one that crazy is paying any attention to us.

If'n you don't remember the website address (which is okay, since it is rarely updated and thusly not very interesting to go see), it is our last name with an "s" on the end and a "the" at the beginning with a dot and a com.   :-)

Le Behbeh Update

Hmmm.  I guess, technically, that should be La Behbeh.  But since Behbeh isn't a word in any language anyway, at least spelled that way, it doesn't really matter.  And, I have to got to let go of the le's and la's and get comfortable with the el's and la's...  Poodle starts Spanish next year.  And I have taken nothing but French!

Sparkie in an "oy, vey!" pose.  Legs straight up in the air, hand placed oh so dramatically on her delicate forehead.  ;-)

ANYway (sorry for the mental derailment there), I had my sonogram checkup at the OB this morning.  Unfortunately, the bleed/clot/hematoma/hemorrhage has grown a bit.  It went up to 3.2 cm in length and a portion of it has gotten wider as well.  Something like 1.3 or 1.4 cm where it was below 1 last time.

But.  I haven't had any additional bleeding.  Sparkie is growing just as she should.  And she's extremely active with all the pieces parts seeming to be in place.  And the increase isn't huge.  So, while it's not great news that the blood clot has increased a little bit in size, I'm not too worried or even frustrated.  It's okay.  It really is.  If it is God's will for her to be born alive, she WILL be born alive.  There isn't a blood clot in the world that will stop that.  And, I have another 2 week pass from the OB before the next sonogram with the same orders of limited activity.  No bed rest.

There are a lot of summer plans that are on hold right now - all kinds of trips and reunions and church activities and I just found out about a family wedding the 2nd weekend in July.  Lots of things we want to do and may not be able to do.  And you know what - I'm not even stressed about it.  Usually, I'd be so worried about "what will people think if we aren't there or don't go" and "but it would mean so much to so and so for us to have the kids there" and "this only comes around every fill-in-the-blank years".  Now, I feel none of that.  Nothing is more important than doing what I have to do to help this baby gestate as long as she can without additional difficulties.  It's a good feeling, and it's the way I'm supposed to feel.  I have no idea if this is actually one of the lessons that God is teaching me through this challenge, but I'm grateful for it.  To lay down the worries of what everyone else wants and to focus on what's truly important.  I have always had problems with that.

Anyway, we are all doing fine and are positive and can feel the prayers for the peace that passeth understanding.  Thank you for those - for the entreaties that God is answering so abundantly.  We love y'all!

Easter morning pics

We took a few to share!  My favorite is this one of Jmk and the kids.  :-)

All three kids.  :-)  Mommy *had* to be in the pic for this one.

And a progress tummy shot.  20 weeks and 5'ish days.  We are over half way there!  She seems to be strongly growing which is encouraging.  I go back on Wednesday for another sonogram to check on the hematoma.  We're praying for it to be smaller.  The good news is that there has been no further bleeding.

Actually, she has gotten big enough that Jmk can press on my tummy and feel her kick, if she's riled up enough.  I don't remember his being able to do that this early with the other kids.  Of course, I can barely remember last week, so it's certainly possible that he could have.

Anyway, we are all "trapped" in the master bedroom today while the floor guys are here working.  We are SO excited to have finally made it to this week to get our new floors.  Jmk has done SO much work (all on his own, since I could do nothing at all to help) in demolition work to get ready for their arrival today.  And we're all sleeping on mattresses on the concrete floor right now.  But, by the end of this week, we'll have nice new floors and we are so grateful to be able to do this.  And I am so grateful for a husband who put in so much back-breaking work by himself to get us to this point.  (And to Tim who let us use one of the dumpsters at one of his job sites.  He saved us a ton of money in dump fees!)  And I won't brag too much more about how wonderful Jmk is, but he has never one time complained about all the work and never once said or did anything that made me feel bad (or, at least, any worse than I already did) about not being able to help him.  I love you honey!!!

Here are some demo pictures just for fun:

Up comes the kitchen flooring.  He rented a floor scraper for this job, and thank goodness for that!  It's not that this floor was of poor quality...  it really was a great floor.  But, it was green.  You know?  When we bought the house almost 5 years ago, it was one of the things that we said "we'll save up and replace these when we can".  They weren't awful green.  They were a pretty deep green.  I just didn't dig them.  Oh, and the red walls are going.  It was an experiment, and we liked them for awhile.  But red walls are tough to live with in a room that we spend SO much time in.  At least for us.  They're just so strong.

Tooter using the scraper to get up the mastic that was under the old wood flooring.  Before you go call DHS on us, this machine didn't move without being pushed, and that isn't a blade on the end.  It's like a shovel sort of thing that vibrates to help peel up well-stuck linoleum tiles.  The kids thought they were IT  getting to push the big floor machine thing.

There's nothing like high-powered big boy tools to make a girl feel like She-Ra.  Y'all remember She-Ra?  He-Man's sister or wife or girlfriend or something or other.  It was the 80's.  Cartoons.  You had to be there.  Obviously, I didn't pay extremely close attention.

From an email from SueSue

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

Easter Preview

To try to avoid stressing everyone out on Easter morning, I got the kids into their Easter duds yesterday and took them to the front of our neighborhood to take pictures.  Unfortunately, I couldn't really maneuver myself the way I needed to OR move them around like I wanted to.  But I got a few keepers here and there.  I don't think I got a true money shot of them together, but again, we had some limitations.  And I think I overdid things anyway.  No bleeding!!!  But, I just overdid it.  I know....  I know....  it was dumb.  I thought I was being so very careful.  I'm pretty much taking today completely off and will be resting on the couch.  Sparkie is still active and we used our home doppler thingy to check her heartbeat last night and everything seems to be fine.

Anyway, here are a few preview shots for Easter!

I'll get all the shots up on a site somewhere so the wonderful grandparents can see all of them.  :-)

Another FIRST!

It's hard to believe that she's old enough.  It's hard to believe that 5 1/2 years has passed since she was born.  It's hard to believe that she's about to have anything at ALL with the label of "adult" attached to it.

But all those things are true!  Poodle lost her first tooth today.  Barely an hour ago.  :-)

Just about 3 days ago, we were at the dentist for a checkup for her, and the doc said to not pull it quite yet, but that it was super close to coming out.  And, tonite - the Tooth Fairy Cometh!

Poodle, this past Friday, waiting for her dentist appointment to start.

Conversations with Poodle

Me:  Poodle, it's April Fool's Day.
Poodle:  Oooh!  So today is the day we get to play tricks on people?
Me:  Yep.
Poodle:  Play a trick on me now Mommy!
Me:  I will, but I can't until I know you're not expecting it.
Poodle:  Hmm.  Okay, I'll come back in a few minutes and tell you when I'm not expecting it.