Photos…Because I’ve Been Holding Out.

Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Love, Maddi, photos | Leave a Comment

I haven’t treated you guys to any photos in a while. So, here’s some to get your fix.

The Terror of Pregnancy

Filed Under Contemplative, Danny, Health, Jacey, Love, Maddi | 2 Comments

When I was in Anchorage with Bre several months back, getting Maddi’s social security number, I picked up a couple pregnancy journals. The first one, I did it for Maddi all about my pregnancy with her. Ironically, I worked on most of hers during my pregnancy with Danny. Today, I started working on Danny’s.

It’s kind of funny how I found out I was pregnant. Bre and I had been living in an apartment together in Kenai. It was this really trippy, bomb-shelter, underground apartment. Tiny, studio apartment.

I had some pregnancy tests leftover from when I lost Jacey. And I don’t even know why we decided to take them, but we did. Probably because they had the droppers to put the pee on the test so it was kind of like a science experiment. I remember Bre saying something like to that effect.

We took the tests and left them in the bathroom. I don’t really remember what we did after that, but we got distracted. We ended up going on a walk down to paradisos and getting chicken wings, and later that evening, Bre went in the bathroom and next thing I know she calls out to the living room, “Umm… Sam? You know you’re pregnant, right?” I went in there and sure enough, my test was positive. I asked her “You sure that ones not yours?” and she just laughed at me and said “I’m sure.”

I don’t remember what went through my head. Shock? Maybe it was because I didn’t really think I was pregnant. I had logical reasons to suspect, but after what happened with Jacey, I was for sure there was something horribly wrong with me and that every little sign and symptom was just my imagination working overtime. After all, you can’t get pregnant so soon after losing a baby… can you?

I was filling out the journal, and the prompt was “When I found out I was pregnant, my first feeling was:” and I just stopped for a moment.

My first thought wasn’t even a thought. It was a swirling cloud of eighty thoughts hitting me all at once. I couldn’t even logically separate the thoughts or isolate them and figure out what I was feeling. All I was feeling was the emotion and feelings behind the thoughts. I couldn’t put words to them. I couldn’t say happy, sad, scared, excited. I was just feeling the intensity of it all instantaneously and simultaneously. It was all very confusing, and very frightening.

I feel guilty for that. Shouldn’t a mother-to-be’s first thoughts be something more special, or hell, even slightly less plural and a great deal less contradicting of each other? I felt guilty knowing that my first thought wasn’t something the typical response from elated new mothers. I felt guilty for not jumping for glee and exclaiming for everyone to hear “Oh my gosh! I’m going to be a mommy!”

I felt guilty because if I had to pick, my first thought was:

“What if this baby dies too?”

I never really thought of it like this. Not until today. Not until I started filling out my pregnancy book for Danny. I never made the connection before. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to, or maybe I just avoid thinking about it and so the obvious didn’t jump out at me like it could have? It’s hard to see something if you spend your life pretending its not there. The allegory of the cave.

When I filled out Maddi’s book, my answers were pretty simplistic. Happy, excited, typical expectant mother dribble. The only thing less than “a baby story” typical in Maddi’s book was that she wasn’t planned. But everything else was.

“We were so happy!” “I couldn’t wait to find out if you were a girl or a boy.” “Daddy and I wondered what you’d look like.” “I gained a lot of weight.” “Everyone was so happy.” “I fell in love with you when I saw you at the first ultrasound.” “I couldn’t wait to meet you face to face.”

As I continued filling out sections of Danny’s book, I kept seeing how vastly different my entries for him were compared to my entries in Maddi’s book. Maddi’s book was full of what I call, “sunshine and rainbow” statements. And with Danny’s… I may not have wrote them, but I realized that every positive feeling I had about the pregnancy, was shrouded in fear.

I wasn’t picking out names. I wasn’t ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all of the cute baby clothes. I wasn’t having planning special ways to share the joyous news. I wasn’t excitedly awaiting my first doctor’s appointment so I could catch my first precious glimpse of my baby on the ultrasound.

I was wondering if my baby would even get a legal name. I was wondering if I’d ever get a chance to put my baby in clothes. I was wondering how long I needed to hide my pregnancy until it was “safe” so I wouldn’t have to endure the heart-wrenching pain of explaining that my child died everytime someone unsuspectingly asked how the pregnancy was going. I was terrified of my first ultrasound because I was afraid they would tell my my baby was dead.

Everything I did terrified me. For even the simplest actions I took, I would rationalize and debate every possible consequence or reprecussion there could be. Making even the simplest decision was enough to throw me into tears because no matter what choice I made with anything, I was, in my mind, convinced that something horrible would happen. And no matter how healthily I lived, somehow, somethng would go wrong, and the end result would be the same.

I would have another dead baby.

It didn’t matter to me that I had Maddi, not for argument’s sake. The fact I had a healthy child and pregnancy in the past meant nothing. It wasn’t credible evidence in my arguments with myself. It was a fluke. Somehow something happened and I got lucky with her, but never again. The mindset I was in, was that I had only a one in a trillion chance of having a healthy baby. I hit it once with Maddi, and there was no way I could beat those odds a second time. I was doomed.

Only now, after filling out some of the sections of that book, do I realize how much I took for granted when I was pregnant with Maddi. I was “depressed” that they couldn’t tell me if she was a girl or boy at only 12 weeks. I was pouting about looking pudgy instead of pregnant. I don’t think that the thought that anythng could possibly go wrong with my baby or pregnancy even crossed my mind. The potential for something terrible happening wasn’t even on my radar. How naive and stupid I must have sounded. How naive and stupid I was. If only I had been aware of the terror pregnancy can truly bring.

Even now, I worry. I’m not pregnant, nor do I intend to become so for a while, but whenever I even entertain the thought of having another baby in the future, or daydream about it, I’m filled with fear. I want more children, more than anything in the world, but even if Dan were to tell me tonight, “Let’s try for another baby.” I don’t think I could. Even with as much as I bug him and whine and pout to him about how I want another baby… I don’t think I could go through with it. I’m so terrified of something going wrong, something happening to my baby, that I don’t know if I could put myself through that again, and if we hadn’t gotten pregnant with Danny immediately after I lost Jacey, I can’t say that I would have tried to have another baby. It’s one thing for me to say I want another baby, and to genuinely want another, which I do, but it’s completely different to jump from talking and wanting, to actually doing. I really want more babies, more than anything in the world… But I’m terrified. Even just thinking about it now. It terrifies me. To the point I just want to cry. I’m so scared of it happening again and I don’t know if I could handle it. I really don’t.

What being a teenage mother has taught me.

Filed Under Breastfeeding, Contemplative, Danny, Family, Health, Love, Maddi, pregnancy | 6 Comments

What amazes me, is how often I see girls, only fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years old who want to have babies. I’m not talking want, in a one-day-in-the-future-tense, but want as in now, and soon. And just as often, I see girls the same age, who are already pregnant and they may think they know enough about babies through babysitting, or helping with siblings, but really, they have no idea what its like.

Everyone says that pregnancy is the easy part, having the baby is the tough part, but it’s not. Pregnancy is just as difficult. I see pregnant girls, even ones in their 20′s and 30′s, slamming red bull like it’s water, and eating tuna and deli meat like it’s going out of style! Not to mention poping ibuprofin everytime they get an ache or pain. All of which can be detrimental towards the baby’s health.

These girls don’t know that having an epidural can affect your baby’s ability to breathe, or even to breastfeed after birth. They don’t know that having an epidural increases your chance of a cesarean section. They don’t know that getting induced nearly doubles your chances of a cesarean section. They think that its “safe” for the baby to be born at 37 weeks, and by golly, they want that baby out ASAP! They don’t know that even at 37 weeks, that poor little baby could be born with premature lungs and suffer immensely because they didn’t get those last few weeks in utero to help their brain and lung development. They don’t know that, in the majority of cases, it’s best to let the baby decide when it’s ready to meet the world.

I then see these same women and girls, a few months after having had their babies, popping a bottle of formula into the poor baby’s mouth, claiming they “couldn’t” breastfeed. When in reality, only 2% of women cannot physically breastfeed. So, why are almost all of these girls bottlefeeding? My only attempt at a guess is that they were misinformed. Uneducated about the subject. Sure, you see breastfeeding PSA’s on television, and the WIC office tries to encourage breastfeeding, but we need to provide more in depth education on breastfeeding. So many babies end up suffering because of this. Babies were meant to drink human milk! So, why are mothers so surprised when their babies have reactions to formula? I’ve had women look at me shocked when I tell them my son hardly ever spits up. I can count on one hand how many times he’s spit up on me in his six months of life. And it’s no wonder, because breastfed babies spit up less.

I see these girls, who before or during the pregnancy had a boyfriend or fiancee around, but as soon as that baby entered the picture, the father of that child flew the coop. Or even worse, they ditched the girl as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Often times, these same guys refuse to pay child suport, and in most of the cases I’ve seen, don’t even spend time with their child. Let alone, help care for its daily needs. The girl thought she was in love. She thought it was forever, but sadly, in most cases of teenage pregnancy, forever really means “until I get tired of it.”

I got lucky. I really did. And the funny part is, I wasn’t expecting to get lucky. I thought I’d be raising my baby alone. The pregnancy was unintended, as 80% of teenage pregnancies are. I never for a second thought he would actually marry me. After all, 8 out of 10 fathers of teenage girl’s babies DON’T marry them. When he proposed, I was hesitant. And even though we got married, it wasn’t easy. We almost didn’t make it through our first year of marriage. But, he loved our baby and was incredibly devoted to her. Again, something that isn’t very common among the men involved in teenage pregnancies. I graduated high school a few months after she was born. That’s something only 1 in 4 teenage mothers actually do. I’m in college, and by the end of summer, I should have an associate’s degree. That’s something that only 1.5% of teenage mothers accomplish by age 30.  And, like 80% of teenage mothers, I had a second baby within two years of the birth of my first baby. But, unlike 80% of teen mothers, I have never been on welfare.

Hows that for statistics?

I got lucky in a lot of areas. I have a lot more support than most teenage mothers do. My husband works and provides for us, so I don’t have to. I can spend my time with my children instead of paying a daycare to raise them. I might not be a good story to scare girls away from getting pregnant, but even with all of my “lucky” things, it’s still hard. There are days I don’t want to do anything, but I have to.

When I’m sick, and puking, I still have to manage to comfort my kids who, most likely, are sick and puking too.

When I’m tired, and have been operating on only 3 or 4 hours of sleep, I still have to do my homework. And anytime I consider just saying “forget it all.” and taking an F, I get these intense pangs of guilt. What kind of mother am I if I don’t do everything possible to take care of my kids and give them the best? That includes educating myself, so that by the time they’re old enough to remember, they’ll never know we struggled.

When I have money, I can’t spend it on myself. Especially when there’s food to buy, clothes to buy, bills to pay.

I have to watch my diet, and avoid any and all dairy or my son will stay up all night with horrible gas, and I won’t get any sleep at all.

I can’t let the laundry go a day, because we use cloth diapers. If you would have asked me two years ago, I would have never even considered using cloth diapers, but when you’re forking out $250 dollars a month (that you need for food) just on diapers and wipes, it starts to be worth it…Regardless of how gross it is. Not to mention, my son dosen’t get hardly any rashes when we use cloth vs. disposable diapers.

I have to care for my children, even when I’m in pain. I had my apendix out, and the day after I got home from the hospital, I had to forego the pain meds I really needed, in order to take care of my children and make sure they were well cared for.

I had to have two medically necessary cesarean sections. The first one, because it would have killed both of us if I went into labor with her, the second because my son’s heartrate was erratic. Because of that cesarean, my ability to have many more kids in the future, is limited, unless I can successfully have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) with my next child.

And these are just the physical tolls having children takes on you. The emotional tolls are even greater… but usually only on mothers who care.

It’s hard not being able to give your child everything. When you have your baby, you feel this overwhelming sense of love. Sure, before you have them, you know you love them, you know they’re important, but I don’t think it really hits you until they take their first breath and you realize this perfect little person is completely reliant on you. You are everything to them. It breaks my heart when I know there’s things I can’t give my kids, or things I wish I could.

I may not be perfect, but I do my best. And for now, that’s all that counts.

Resolve to a Difficult Day

Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family, Love, Maddi, friends, sewing | 4 Comments

So, yesterday was terrible. Like, on-the-verge-of-tears-and-tempted-to-go-hide-under-a-rock-forget-my-name-and-never-come-out kind of terrible.

I don’t really know what started it. I just remember, I started getting stressed right before Dan left for work. I was cleaning up the kitchen, and Maddi kept getting under my feet, even though I kept telling her to go to the living room. After trying to hold a conversation with Dan, and repeatedly telling Maddi to go to the living room because she was making me trip all over her, I got really mad and I yelled at her. I felt really bad afterward, because she cried and looks down like she was scared and upset.

The house was really messy. I get really depressed and down in the dumps anytime the house is too messy or disorganized or sloppy looking. I don’t know why. I just know that if it’s too messy, it’s a one-way ticket to a crappy day for me. So, I spent most of my day cleaning.

I wanted to work on schoolwork, but when I went to log on to the system, it was down and it said it wouldn’t be back up until Wednesday morning.

I put Maddi down for her nap, and as usual, she started crying and pitching a fit. I forgot to give her the herbal stuff we use (Tranquil Child by Oregon Harvest) to help her calm down and mellow out before bed. The effects are similar to sleepy-time tea… It’s not drugs or anything, just some stuff to help her mellow out, peppermint and chamomile. Anyways, I forgot to give it to her.

Anyways, while Maddi was in bed, Danny was crying and fussing like crazy. I think he’s starting to teethe. I’m not sure, but he’s had a lot of fits recently, where nothing makes him happy. He just screams. Cuddles don’t work. Boobs don’t work. Baths don’t work. Chewing on a spoon that we put in the freezer ahead of time seemed to help for a little bit, but that was short lived. I gave him some ice cold water in a bottle. He seems to enjoy the cold water, but again, only short lived relief. So, he was SCREAMING for almost four hours. Not just crying. Not just fussing, but screaming.

There’s two things I hate about when he cries like that. The first, is that it breaks my heart to hear him scream like he’s in pain and hurting. I usually end up with watery eyes and about to cry when I hear him like that and I can’t fix it. I hate it when my baby is in pain. I love him too much to see him hurting like that. The second, is that it makes me feel like crap. It makes me feel like I’m a failure of a mom. My baby is miserable and unhappy, and I can’t fix it. It makes me feel like it’s all my fault which is depressing. I hate feeling like that.

I want to be a good mom. I really do. But I feel like lately, no matter what I do, nothing is right and I’m not a good mom. I want to be, and I’m willing to learn, but where am I supposed to learn from? I never really had any kind of stable or consistent parenting growing up. Everything I do with my kids comes from here and there, and this and that. It’s all a guessing game. I don’t like making my kids into guinea pigs. I don’t like having to test out different disciplines on them, and feel like I still have no clue what I’m doing.

I really want to get this parenting program called “Love & Logic.” It’s supposed to be really good. I’ve read a lot of good reviews on it and I’ve heard a lot of my own friends and family rave about it. I really want to get it. It’s just a matter of saving up the money for it. It’s not too terribly expensive ($70) but I don’t have $70, you know? So… It is a lot when you don’t have it. I just know I’m not happy with how discipline is in our house, and I don’t like how she reacts to our disciplinary measures. I feel like it’s going nowhere, and there has to be a better way… I just haven’t found it yet.

Anyways, back to the story. Danny was still screaming, and I just put him back in his rocker because I was about ready to start crying myself. Sometimes, you just get to a point you feel like you can’t handle it, and that’s when you just put them down somewhere safe and let them cry. Nothing I was doing was working or even helping, and you can only do so much before it starts to wear on you. So, I put him down and went to get Maddi up from her nap.

I step into the bedroom and before I even look at her, I can smell it. Her diaper is on the floor (surprisingly, clean, nothing in it.) and there’s poop smeared from one end of the crib to the other. Globs and streaks of nasty, stinky, raunchy poop. I know this sounds bad, but given a choice between the two, I’d choose Danny poop any day because Maddi’s is just disgusting and horrible. I started crying. This is the third time she’s done this since we moved into the house. It’s a pain to clean, and having to lean over the crib to clean it after having abdominal surgery isn’t an easy task.

I picked her up out of the crib, took her straight to the bathroom and gave her a cold shower. It wasn’t really cold. More like slightly under lukewarm. She hates showers as it is, and I figured, if it’s not comfortable for her, she might learn from it. She CANNOT keep doing this and I CANNOT handle the continuation of her doing this. Thankfully this time, most of the poop was spread all over the mat that comes out of the bottom of the crib. I made her help clean it. Of course, I had to go over it after, but I made sure she got to lean over, scrub it and smell it while she cleaned. She cried the whole time, but she has to learn she can’t do things like that! Poop is NOT the same thing as paint and I’m sorry, I know it’s my job as Mom, but I do NOT want to keep cleaning up her shit!!! LITERALLY!

Throught this whole shower, scrubbing and crying thing… Danny is still screaming. Maddi then refused to eat, and I just said forget it, and put her right back in bed. If she couldn’t behave, I wasn’t about to deal with it when I was so stressed and upset.

I finally got Danny to calm down enough to nurse. Which was good, because it seemed to really relax him. He went to sleep. I tried to put him back in his rocker, but anytime I moved him away from my boob, he started to whimper, so I just let him snuggle with me.

Dan came home. He brought some of those yummy Van der Kamp fish filets and a bunch of madrin oranges. Kind of cheered me up. I cooked the fish, and some peas, and got Maddi up out of bed so she could see Daddy. I felt bad for just putting her in bed, but I needed a breather.

We all ate dinner together. It was nice, and relaxing. It felt good. She even ate all her vegetables with very little coaxing. We had to help a little, but she did it! She even babbled at us during dinner, talked a little, and we let her have some of Dan’s chocolate soy milk and a mini 3 musketeers candy bar after dinner. We put Maddi back in bed, and she didn’t put up too much of a fight (after all, it was really late).

Dan had brought home a movie. “The Ugly Truth.” I liked it. We watched it together. Had a sweet night. Cuddled up together afterwards. Then, Danny woke up, and I laid down and fed him. He snuggled up on me, and just nursed and cuddled almost the entire night. Normally, he dosen’t just snuggle up. He’ll try to play or move around a ton, but not this time. He passed out on my boob.

That’s one thing I love. When he falls asleep on me like that. It just makes everything okay. No matter how bad my day is, when he snuggles up on me and just lays there with me, quiet and close, it makes everything feel to much better.

It was a hard day. I won’t lie. I cried a lot. It sounds stupid, especially since all the things that went so wrong might seem trivial, but it was a really rough day.

Then, this morning, I got to sleep in. Courtesy of my amazing husband. And then, instead of getting up in a bad mood, I decided today would be a good day.

I tried logging onto the school’s system but their outage was extended until Friday. At first it kind of upset me, but I decided, it’d just have to be okay. I went in the kitchen and made waffles for my little girl and my husband. We had brunch together as a family and just hung out together until Dan had to go to work.

I spent the day with my kids. I cleaned up the house. I got some laundry done. I picked up Chelsea from school and she came over and spent some time with us. We mad dinner. Salmon, cheesy mashed potatoes, corn and brownies. Chelsea and I made some of the mocha frappuccinos for Dan. We watched Ice Age 3. Then, we took Chelsea home, and when we got back, I sewed a few sets of nursing pads and experimented with some designs and different ways of sewing them, and I finally settled on one.

I took some photos and even added the listings to my online boutique. Speaking of which, I have been working on setting it up. For anyone who wants to take a peek at what the boutique page looks like, click here. I’ve been working on it. It’s not done, but it’s getting closer to being ready.

I think… What I’ve gathered from this… is that sometimes, it’s really easy to get worked up and wrapped up in the unimportant things that don’t really matter. Sometimes the people causing you stress and upsetting you so much, are the same people who can make you feel better and melt that stress away. And sometimes, you just have to decide you’re going to have a good day, or at least a better day, and hold yourself to it.

Yesterday, was complete and utter hell… But it got better towards the end. And today might not have been perfect, but it was better. I found some positivity in it, and that’s something special. Something to be proud of. Yesterday, there was no light at the end of the tunnel… But last night, I realized there was… I was just going down a hill, and for a moment, couldn’t see the light. But it’s still there. And I’m going to be okay.

Maddi’s Special “Trick-or-Treating”

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So, we didn’t get to go trick-or-treating because of the aforementioned sickness/swine flu. We were all kind of sick (and still am) so we let Maddi dress up in a costume her Grandma Skyla sent down and put our own special trick-or-treat on for her! I hid behind the bedroom door while Dan helped Maddi knock on the door to get her candy!

We took some cute photos of her too!

In Summary

Filed Under Contemplative, Danny, Love, Maddi, School | 4 Comments

Ok. A lot has happened recently, so let’s sum it up.

• I went to my workshop in Anchorage to be a birth doula. I finished it, had a blast and now have an official title. I am now Samantha Van Vleet LSP.
• We fixed AJ’s memorial cross on the way back from Anchorage because it had fallen down. We added some more flowers, re-enforced it with nails through the center (instead of just twine) and restacked the rocks. Hopefully next time I can bring som caulking and make the rocks stick together.
• I’m catching back up with school. Still doing decently.
• I discovered the starbucks bottled mocha frappuccino recipe (it’s on the blog post before this one.)
• Maddi is talking a lot more.
• Danny sits up for a second or two by himself.
• My computer got some kind of crazy malware on it and it crashed. Thankfully I had enough time to move my files and pictures to my husbands computer and then did a factory restore on my computer.
• It’s getting colder and I hate it.
• I ordered the materials to make my cloth diapers and I’m excited for those to arrive.
• I finished two more baby carriers, and just need to take pictures and list them on the shop.
• I cut out all the peices for seven more baby carriers. Just need to order the straps.
• I’m trying to motivate my husband to get our freezer up and running so my grandpa dosen’t set all my frozen breastmilk on the porch to melt when he gets back from Wisconsin. Dan dosen’t seem to get that my grandpa WOULD do that, and then I would NEVER speak to him again.

So that’s what’s going on in a nutshell.

Other than that I’m just really depressed lately. I feel like nothings going right. I feel like a complete failure and I keep feeling really tempted to just drop out and say to hell with it. I can’t do everything. I clean. I cook. I take care of kids. I do my homework. Sewing is my hobby and I didn’t even get to do that at all for almost a month except for two nights ago. Dan seems to think doign a tiny bit of tidying up counts as cleaning, but he leaves all the intensive stuff for me. I fold laundry. Because his idea of folding laundry is sorting it into piles on the couch and leaving them there for Maddi to spread all over the house. He actually emptied out the dishwasher yesterday, but I get the feeling he only did it because I was mad and I told him to do it while I was picking up Maddi.

I just don’t see a point to much of anything anymore because no matter what I do, it’s never enough and no one cares. Dan dosen’t care. He just want HIS time free so he can “relax” all the god damn time. And by relax, I mean play his video games and watch TV. He acts like he never gets to and he’s soooo deprived, but he does it everyday.

I don’t get that. And no one cares if I do or not.

Starbucks Bottled Mocha Frappuccinos. RECIPE!!

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Okay. So anyone who knows my husband, or at least knows him well, knows that he goes on what I call “drink binges.” He goes through a phase where he drinks one specific drink, several times a day for weeks on end. Since we’ve been together, he’s gone through… Mountain dew, sobe energy drinks, mountain dew again, amp, monster, wild cherry pepsi, dr pepper, wild cherry pepsi, and now those bottled starbucks mocha frappuccinos.

Let me begin this with: I HATE STARBUCKS. I have worked in two coffee shops. And starbucks is by far the epitome of corporate greed. They jip their customers. Overcharge. And are just overall a bad company with a mediocre product.

That, and I don’t really like coffee.

That being said, Dan still does. And money’s tight and those drinks are almost $7 for a four-pack! We can’t afford to be paying that much for him to go through two, three or four a day! Forget it! And there is no offbrand for them either!

So, I tried to find a few recipes for the bottled insanity, and I found two that seemed good. A recipe by The Kurths and a recipe by Christopher. Both recipes were good ones, but I altered them a bit, and kind of combined them.

First and foremost, if you come across a recipe that requires pectin, DO NOT USE IT! It was gross! It thickened the drink up, but it made it taste like chunks of solidified lemonade was in it! EWWW. And also, I do NOT recommend using hot cocoa mixes, or chocolate powders and syrups. I tried those first, and it just made the whole thing taste off.

Bottled Insanity
1 1/2 cups brewed coffee*
6 cups 2% milk
1/2 cup of sugar
5 tsp of unsweetened cocoa

Brew your coffee and then pour into a medium to large size pot. Add sugar and cocoa. Stir until dissolved. Add milk and stir until well blended. Funnel into intended  storage containers and refridgerate.

Yield: This recipe will fill around 5 of the starbucks glass bottles.

*I recommend using 2 1/2 cups of water, and 1/3 cup of coffee grounds and running it through once. However, if you would like stronger coffee, use 3 1/4 cups of water, 1/3 a cup of coffee grounds, and when it’s brewed through the first time, pour the already-brewed-coffee into the back and let it brew through again using the same grounds.

That simple! Easy recipe, huh? It only takes about 5-10 minutes to make after the coffee is brewed. And when I calculated it out, it only cost me about $0.30-$0.45 cents per bottle of it! Much better than the $2-3 per bottle it normally is!

Anyways. I’m smart. And I feel accomplished.

It still hurts…

Filed Under Contemplative, Danny, Family, Love, pregnancy | 2 Comments

Today kind of sucks.

I’m trying not to let it get to me, but today is one year since I lost my baby. It’s really hard to not get upset. I know that I wasn’t that far along… But it still hurts. It makes me really sad and I have a hard time with it.

I’m trying to be positive and think about the things that happened positively… Like that I became even more resolved to fix things with my husband (at the time we were having problems) and I got pregnant with Danny shortly after… And if I hadn’t had the miscarriage, I wouldn’t have had him… I try to think of those things to keep me from being sad…

But it still hurts.

:’(

Freezing? Yes!

Filed Under Breastfeeding, Family, Love, School, house | 3 Comments

Guess who got a freezer? I DID! I was going to go buy one, and I saw an ad for one five times the size of the one I could buy brand new! So my uncle Joe and his friend who are visiting from Wisconsin, and my grandma and I went and picked it up today! It’s in good condition. Works just fine! Needs a good scrubbing, and need to buy screws to put the hinges back on… but for five times the freezer space?! Heck yes! I’m so freaking excited.

It is now my ambition to fill the entire thing up with milk!

Ha! Dan would kill me if I filled the entire thing with milk. That would be a LOT of milk. So I’ll probably just fill SOME of it up with milk. I have to finish filling up all of the medela bottles for Danny’s back up supply (I keep finding more floating around, just when i thought I had the last of them!)

Dan’s been working on a few things on the house. There’s some stuff that has to be taken care of before we can close on it and Dan agreed with the owners to help with those things. So, he spent his last day off working on that. He’s going to spend his next day or two off on it too. Hopefully it all goes good, and gets fixed up quickly!

Hopefully everything goes well. We’re 99% sure that the house is ours, but still… You never know what could happen. I just hope it all goes well and we DO get it. Otherwise we’re up the creek without a paddle!

School started. Kind of. School dosen’t really start until August 24th, but the Math course has already been posted so I started working ahead. It’s all stuff I went over and already did when I was trying to teach myself algebra… But unfortunately, I was a dumbass and threw the papers away. Ugh. I wish I would have saved them! Now I have to do them again. I’m trying to work ahead. That way I have less to stress about later!

Anyways… I’m exhausted. So I’m going to go to bed now! I want to get some more math done tomorrow before Rex comes over!

Things I’ve Learned About Love…

Filed Under Love | 1 Comment

• Illness is humbling, but you know you’re loved when your partner is up all night taking care of the children so you can rest, holding your hair while you puke, or helping you walk for the first time after surgery, even if you walk slower than a grandma.
• Don’t take the things your partner does for you for granted, no matter how small or trivial it may seem. It dosen’t take much to show appreciation; a kind word, a smile, a kiss.
• Tease each other, playfully of course. Find humor in every day life, even if you’re the one being teased. Don’t take things so seriously, or you may never find anything to smile about.
• Looks don’t last forever. Everyone loses their youth and loses their beauty, however, love can last forever, if you let it.
• Never hold back “I love you,” even when you’re angry, because no matter how mad you get, being upset should never change how you feel about each other. And sometimes, saying “I love you” is all it takes to mend hurt feelings.
• Romance dosen’t have to be fireworks and flowers. Romance can be found in the little things.
• Happiness isn’t something you find; it’s something you create for yourself from your situation.

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