new pictures of aidan connor

well, we are doing good. i was back into my regular jeans four days after pushing him out (yeah!!) and sunday night he slept a whole 6 hours straight, and last night he slept a stretch of 5 hours. (yeah!!) i'm still trying to adjust to not getting consecutive hours of sleep, but i try to remedy that by sleeping when he sleeps, so my schedule is still completely whacked out. but today was a really productive day, i did 3 loads of laundry, cleaned my bathroom, reorganized my medicine cabinet, and cleaned my bedroom -- which if you've ever been to my house, my bedroom was completely crazy -- so it sounds like a small task, but it's not. i still need to do a load of dishes, but i think i'm going to put it off until tomorrow. and tomorrow my goal is to attack the clutter in my living room and mop my kitchen and bathrooms. and possibly take back all the baby gifts that need to go back.

the story of jocole

check out the story of jocole over at the jocole blog
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http://jocole.blogspot.com/2007/02/story-of-jocole.html

Introducing ...

well i woke up tuesday morning (february 13th) at 7:00 a.m. and had to go to the bathroom. when i crawled back in bed 10 minutes later i noticed a tightening in my stomach. i then started having contractions and they were 10 minutes apart.

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we checked into the hospital at 2:00 p.m. at 6:00 p.m. they broke my water. at 7:00 p.m. i got the epidural (ahhh, happiness ... i have a new best friend). i started pushing at 11:45 p.m. at 12:53 a.m. we added a beautiful baby boy to our family. 7 pounds, 2 ounces, 20 inches long. the perfect valentine's day present. he's the most perfect thing i've ever seen in my entire life. he has my eyes and he has the cutest dimples (from his daddy) and as soon as i can get a good picture of them i'll post it. he's perfect.

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so without further ado (thanx jayne) i'd like to introduce our son

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... aidan connor...

STILL no baby

just a quick update. STILL no baby. here is a picture of me not having a baby on february 1st. don't i look happy? and hubby looks very bored. yes, baby is still perfectly content being in my belly and kicking me constantly. thank you for all of your kind thoughts and prayers. we're okay with him still being in there too, i guess he'll come out when he wants to come out. we're not in a hurry (my doctor's gonna be out of town all week anyways). carry on, when it happens i promise to post pictures of my and the little guy. hopefully i'll look happier in those pictures.

still no baby

well, we tried to induce me into labor wednesday night.

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we were supposed to check in at the hospital at 6. we were running a little late and just as we were getting ready to head out the door, my cell phone rang. it was the hospital and they were crazy busy and didn't have a bed for me, and they told me to call back at 8 and see how things were. so we sat around and waited and called at 8, the nurse then told me they were STILL crazy busy and to call back at 10. so i called at 10 and they said things had finally died down and to come on in. so we packed up all of our stuff and headed over.

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we were checked in and everything by 10:30 pm. they started me on "cervadil" (spelling?) at about 11:30 pm, which i was on for 12 hours. we tried to get some rest for the long day of having the baby the next day.

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after a long night of not getting much sleep they then started the "pitocin" around noon. pitocin is what really get the contractions going (if the cervadil didn't) and is supposed to get the baby out. well they kept upping the dosage every half hour and i was having contractions about every 2 minutes. but they never really started hurting. they were uncomfortable, but no real pain. at 6 pm they checked me to see how far along i was, i was still only dilated to 1 cm. (you have to be 10 cm to push the baby out, so basically i wasn't anywhere).

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i was on the maximum amount of pitocin and they wouldn't be able to give me anymore. so i had two choices. they could break my water which *could* bring on labor, but if it didn't then we would HAVE to do a c-section. or i could go home and just let nature take its course.

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we decided to stop the pitocin and go home. i didn't want to force what wasn't happening. and i definately didn't want it to come to a c-section. i wanted to hold my son in my arms, but not at the risk of pushing myself to a c-section. so we came home.

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leaving the hospital after all of that without a baby was really hard.

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getting in my car this morning and seeing the car seat was REALLY hard.

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so, still no baby. the waiting continues.

end of being pregnant

here is a picture of my pregnancy bump for all to see. soon it will be deflated. on wednesday january 31, 2007, i am checking into the hospital to be induced. it all came about yesterday when i went to my doctor's appointment, and she informed me that she was going to be out of town next week from monday through friday. as i was driving home i was thinking about "what if i go into labor while she's gone? then i just get some random on call doctor!" so i started freaking out a little bit. when i got home i called my doctor and asked her about inducing me. she talked with the hospital, and ... here we are ... they are going to induce me on wednesday night at 6pm. so by thursday i should have a little bundle of joy!! yeah! we are both really excited/scared/etc. so needless to say i probably wont be posting for a little bit. but i promise to get some pictures of him on here soon.

flylady.net

i don't know if any of you have heard about flylady.net, but i recently discovered her website and i signed up. my house is always a mess, and i figured that it couldn't hurt to try out her system. i've also decided that i need to try to get a routine down, or some sort of system in the works before this baby arrives and throws a new curve ball at me. the whole flylady system is based off of what she calls "baby-steps" and "routines" etc. and you get about 10 e-mails a day.

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so far i like her system. i don't follow it EXACTLY though. when she tells me to dress to my "lace-up shoes", i figure if i have flip-flops or heels on: i'm good. when she tells me to "shine your sink", i figured as long as my sink doesn't have dirty dishes in it: i'm good. i figure that anything is better than nothing, right?

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but i like using her principles and adapting them to fit my lifestyle and schedule. no my house isn't miraculously clean all the time. but it's better than it was. hey i had family over the other day and my apartment was actually pretty presentable.

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the e-mails can get kind of annoying sometimes. having to read through people "testimonials" about how wonderful her duster is, or how great the CD is (which i mostly view as marketing, "buy flylady merchandise -- but hey she offers her programs for free, can't blame a girl for trying). and i just delete the reminder e-mails when i do them or if i already did it for the day. some of the tesitmonials are great reminders, and some are just "my life was sooo bad until i met flylady, and now my life is wonderful." GAG ME -- delete!

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here's *some* of my routines:

• get up, make bed (haha), shower, get dressed, fix hair and face, start a load of laundry (wouldn't that be nice if i could get myself to wake up a little earlier to fit that in -- then i could switch it out when i get home from work -- maybe someday)
• swish and swipe (as in your toilet and counters, its amazing how doing this everyday for like 5 seconds makes it so it doesn't take 15 minutes when you never do it)
• 15 minute de-clutter (seriously, set a timer and just do it, when the timer dings stop. this is wonderful -- although i do it when i get home from work)
• check calendar and "to-do" lists. (i've become much more organized with my planner now, and i always know what's going on, and what needs to be done)

she also has a thing called "home blessing hour" which means you bless your home and family by cleaning, and it only takes ONE hour. that's my kind of cleaning, this usually gets done on saturday, or i break it down over the week. she also has a basic weekly plan which breaks down what needs to be done over the course of a week, weekly checklists, and a different "zone" for each week. (week 1: entrance, dining room, front porch, week 2: kitchen etc.)

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anyways, i would recomend trying it out if you have any trouble with housework, or you just like looking for new systems. i love her routines (morning and night) and i love how she breaks the housework down into mangable "zones". i've thought about setting up my own system so that i don't have to get a million e-mails that are sob-stories -- i know those probably help some people, just not me. i want just one e-mail a day. we'll see, if anyone else, want to work on trying to keep our houses clean together, let's do it.