Right Wing Mom

First of all - for Shannon: GBS is Group B Strep. You have to have IV antibiotics during labor so the baby does not contract it. I am hoping I am negative this time around as, like I said before, I really dont want to be tied down to an IV. Blah!

OK, Baby names. This Baby is giving us some grief in the names dept. We have been flip-flopping and changing our minds so much. But… I think we have it narrowed down to two names. 1) Erin Kathleen and 2) Emma Kathleen

Obviously Kathleen will be the middle name. We chose that name to honor my Aunt Kathy, my Dads youngest sister. She had such an instumental part of my life growing up especailly during those really funky tean years. She will always be so near and dear to my heart, so… Kathleen it is!

We had settled on Erin for awhile, but then I got to thinking. I really like the kids being able to have a nickname and a formal name. Kaitlin/Kaitie, Amanda/Mandy, Jacob/Jake, but you just can’t do anything with Erin. I love the name, but… I dont know, I just think Emma has won out. To me, Emma is such a beautiful feminine name, very classy. Although its becoming so popular, but then again we have a Kaitlin and a Jacob (both the number 1 names that year lol.) Plus we can go with Emmy, or just Emm as a nickname.

Marc has said we will name her Erin if she has redhair or Emma if she comes out looking the same way my other 3 children have looked which just happen to be little clones of my husband. My husbands genes really kick my genes butt!

So, if I were a betting woman, it looks like Emma Kathleen will be here soon (real, real soon I HOPE!)

You will have to forgive me, my mind is a little more scatterbrained than usual. I wanted to give an update, but seriously, for the life of me, I’m not sure what to update on! LOL! Imagine, me, not knowing what to say LOL!!!

So - I guess I will categorize a bit… first up - Kaitie and Mandy!

The just finished up their gymnastics season last week. We had our first “away” meet in Austin! It was alot of fun for the whole team staying in a hotel, but they acted like a bunch of crazy people! Like none of them had ever stayed in a hotel before. Sadly, this craziness carried over to the first event of the day - beam. Beam can be a very hard event to begin with and I think the whole team kid of bombed! But, they all came back on floor and made up for it. Overall the meet was ok and we did have fun which is what its all about, right? Kaitie’s high score for the season was a 9.4 on vault! Mandy’s was a 9.3 on vault, which she did twice! Very proud of them!!! Our next meet is not until Jan. It is our hosted bu our gym and is a huge deal! It will also let us know if they get to move up to the next level.

On the school front, we have been stuggling a bit to keep up with our “scheduled” school work, but what else is new! I am so happy that I fall more into a relaxed style of homeschooling and that I dont stress to much (anymore). We are doing what we can most days and thankfully they love to read! One thing that is helping us this year is Prep classes. These are classes given by a local homeschool group. They are awesome! We signed the girls up this year for Latin and Speech/Drama. Latin has been a bit of a struggle some days. I have never taken a day of Latin in my life (unitl now!) The girls started off not really liking it, but it has grown on them and they are really enjoying it now. Speech? Well, c’mon, they have my gift of gab, no doubt! The teacher (who I know quite well) loves them and says they are very gifted in the class. I am trying to figure out if that is code for “They love to talk!” LOL!!!

One thing we are struggling with is orginazation when it comes to homework. I got a note last week that said they had not turned in ANY of their homework. Ummm, they had homework? I felt really bad! Like somehow I failed. I thought it made me look like the worst parent. ( how many times have we all felt that!) Well, After talking to thier teacher the other day, I felt so much better. She told me they went through the same thing their first year! I guess it never dawned on my that because they had never been in school they wouldnt know that they should write assignments down and that there time limits and deadlines for assignments. Lessons learned all around!

Now for Jake. Oh, that little man runs me ragged! He is growing so big and so strong. He is as pigheaded as ever! Our lastest challenge with him is trying to teach him to control his anger. Some days it works, other days… not so much! He is enrolled in a sports class at a local little kids gym place. We have our good and bad weeks there too. He just gets a little too crazy sometimes and that craziness usually gets him into problems! OK, now I feel little guilty writing negative things about my baby boy! On a positive note, he has started learning how to read. CRAZY! I really wanted to wait longer and I guess I kind of knew it was coming soon, but I was putting it off. Well, On the way to Austin last weekend Marc mentioned that he thought Jake was ready. AGGHH! Well, we started last week and he is doing quite well. He already knew his letters, so now its just learning the sounds. He is doing quite well. One thing that cracks me up is that he doesnt want to stop his lessons. We only do a few minutes at a time and like “a good homeschool Mommy” we stop when I see any signs of hime getting bored. But, then he freaks out and gets mad when I tell him its time to stop. Oh well! Another battle I cant seem to win.

As far as the baby is concerned, all is well there too. I am 35 weeks along and at my last midwife appt everything was perfect! Yeah! I have another appt this Wednesday. Please say some prayers for me if you can. I get tested for GBS this appt. I had it with Jake and I really dont want to be tied down with an IV again this time. Especially beacuse I want to albor at home as long as I can and its a 30 minute drive to the hospital, so I would have to go alot earlier than planned right now. I do need to do some more planning and prepping. I have done just a little bit of shopping. I have a few onsies and blankets and jammies and thats it. Not sure if I even have enough to last a week! Oh and no diapers! LOL, man, I think I need to get a move on it. Hopefully this weekend I will be able to get out and get our carseat/stroller and the pack and play/ bassenet. I am not stressing though, I figure all I really need is some diapers and a boob and we will be good to go, right?

I will try and get some pics up later today so, check back!

Alicia

How funny is it that I have actually missed blogging? I never thought I would be interested in writing on a semi-regular basis, but man, I did miss it!

So - where have I been? Well, My blog is hosted on one of Marc’s servers. A week before we left for Disney (9/9 to be exact) we woke up to a crashed server. Very bad news! But, even worse news was yet to come. It seems that the backup server was never configured properly, so… there was nothing! Now while poor me was mourning the loss of my blog, I quickly realized why Marc was freaking out. He was due to launch a new website/business in just 8 short days and they just lost everything! YIKES! Well, between what he had on his hard drive both at home and work and what his programmers had, they were able to piece together quite a bit, but there was still alot of work to be done. We did count our blessing for the timing though! You see, if this would have happened just one week later, Marc, and therefore the rest of the family, would nothave been able to go Disney World. Also, the orginal plan was to launch the site earlier. If that would have happened, they not only would have lost the sites info, but all the customer info/ database as well. So, while I wish it wouldnt have crashed at all… the timing couldnt have been better!

I didnt want to keep bugging Marc to get my blog up and running. So, I would drop him a hint every few days or so, but not enough to nag. But… I started getting “harrassed” by my dear friends. So… I started asking a little more. And being the awesome Hubby that he is, he fixed it for me! Yeah!!!

So, as you can imagine I have a ton to write about! Just have patience and I will hopefully catch everyone up in the next day or so!

Alicia