Weekly chat? April 4

[Burnindinner]

Is it a faux pas for me to post a weekly chat thread? I'm relegated to the couch for a while and would love to chat further with more mamas in the DDC.

Question of the day: what movie are you queuing up next? Or what book is on your list?

I'm currently watching Pillow Talk. Gotta love the old Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It's nice to watch a movie with little doubt about the outcome!

I'm also reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It is an interesting read, and my mother recommended it to me. I find this surprising, as she doesn't have a history of progressive examination of the history of race relations in our country. Her mother had a maid come in every day, and I am curious how and why the book resonated with her.

[*mama moose*]

I'm in! We need to be a more active DDC!
movies....hmmm...we got rid of Netflix to cut some costs so I don't have anything on my list so to speak. Anyone heard of anything good coming out soon??
books, I'm on book 6 of the Sookie Stackhouse series (what True Blood is based on). They're so trashy it's fun There's 9 books so I'll be at that for awhile I suppose.

What did everyone do for easter/passover/spring celebrations? My kids are currently chocolate filled We go to a UU church and they had an egg hunt after the service, so the kids were super excited about that, it was cute to see my almost 2 yo "get it" this year too. Though she did think her chocolate bunny was a "meow"

[monarch27]

Canceled netflix here too Trying to save money. Now I just watch what shows on t.v. or what I can pick up from red box. I tend to really love independent and historical films. I love love love the A & E Pride and Prejudice, I watch it at least once a year!

I do love reading! I started "The Gathering Storm" today, this is the first of the final three books to the Eye of the World series by Robert Jordan. These are amazing fantasy novels. I have to say my absolute favorite books in the world are the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Soooooooooooo good!! I highly recommend them.

[jdg]

I actually started a Blockbuster-by-mail subscription to save money. Got rid of all but the major network channels on my tv, started Blockbuster, had a net savings of $25/month. Currently sitting near my DVD player are Slumdog Millionaire, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and the first disc of the series Breaking Bad.

Lately, I've been watching less. I think it's because I usually don't turn on the tv until I'm "settling in" for the night and with DST pushing sundown so late, I don't think to settle in until it's too late to start a movie. It's 8:00 here, and just now getting to twilight - still have to make/eat dinner and do a couple of chores before I can settle in, and then have to go to bed early enough to get enough sleep before the alarm goes off in the morning.

[Burnindinner]

For a while we canceled cable and just used Netflix. Then we ended up just watching as much (or more) tv online, so it didn't really save me time. Then during college basketball season we just couldn't function without tv. OK, we probably could have lived, but decided to go back anyway. I still sometimes have some conflict about it.

DS is 16 months, and he had fun at a toddler Easter egg hunt! The eggs were all just out on the grass, but he had a great time collecting them. I'm not sure he would have been able to hunt them if they were hiding.

[azdaisy]

We have been watching Lost (season 4) on streaming Netflix. (Used to have Blockbuster, but with the streaming and 1-out-at-a-time DVD with Netflix, we cut our monthly movie costs in 1/2.)

I'm reading The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. I don't have much time to read, so I've been trying to work through a bunch of birth/VBAC books. I start a second, temporary part-time job this week (on top of being SAHM), so I will have no time to myself for reading for about a month probably.

We went to a candy hunt yesterday (thought it would be eggs, but there were so many kids I guess they just decided to throw out candy instead of eggs). DS had a good time and the weather was nice. We did a small egg hunt here in the house today, then went to SIL's for dinner. So good!!! Now, I'm winding down after a big dinner, and trying to prepare for a busy week. :-)

[Pinoikoi]

I rent dvds from the library. Today we picked up quite a few.. I know I have Voyager season 5 in there..

Mama moose- can you tell me all the Sookie books in order? I know I missed some somewhere..

[*mama moose*]

yep!
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World
Dead As A Doornail
Definitely Dead (the one I'm on! )
All Together Dead
From Dead To Worse
Dead and Gone

I SHOULD be reading my doula books but I think at this point I need to just step back, take off that hat, focus on my own pregnancy and birth and just have some relax time. I really wanted to fit it all in and get my cert done before this new baby came, but it just ain't gonna happen, so to speak!
So I'll read trashy vampire novels and crochet some longies instead

[Tulafina]

Originally Posted by *mama moose*

I SHOULD be reading my doula books but I think at this point I need to just step back, take off that hat, focus on my own pregnancy and birth and just have some relax time. I really wanted to fit it all in and get my cert done before this new baby came, but it just ain't gonna happen, so to speak!

ME TOO!! LOL!

The plan was to get all my certification before this baby comes but I honestly have zero drive to accomplish anything doula related right now. I feel like it takes such a huge amount of energy to sit down and work on my paperwork. I've finished all my certifying births(went to 13 last year) and have one more birth to attend in May. That's gonna be it for at least a year so I guess I'll just take my time this summer to get the rest completed. And funny thing is I, too, am crocheting some longies in my spare time....


Easter was pretty laid back here. Had an egg hunt at my mom's house and went out for breakfast.

I've been so busy lately I haven't had anytime to read anything but birth books. I'm working my way through Heart and Hands for the second time and just recently finished Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. I'm waiting patiently for my Hypnobabies study course and will be diving into that when I get it.

I'm pretty excited about this coming week. We are clearing out our house(decluttering etc) and having a big garage sale this weekend. I've been sewing lots of fun projects in the evening and right now I'm working on a fun messenger bag Should be done by the time I go the Philadelphia next Tues......for a Midwifery Today Conference!!! Yippee! Michel Odent, Ina May and Elizabeth Davis here I come!! I love my doula work but I know in my heart that being a midwife is really what I want to do.

Are there any gardeners here??? I'm getting so excited about getting my veggies going and I have some new perennials that I'm planting this year. I love digging in the dirt

Take Care!

[Burnindinner]

Wow, azdaisy, you are fixing to be busy! Is the temp job interesting? And how are you feeling about VBAC? I thought Thinking Woman's Guide was a great book. I loaned mine to someone and forgot where it went.

mama_moose, how much further do you have to go for certification? My good friend was our doula/assistant with DS, and now she is our mw for this one! She is a student, but very experienced and her proctor is amazing.

So debating going in to L&D today. I've been spotting since Saturday night. I already knew there was a placenta previa, so I didn't feel like it was necessary yesterday. It's been brown, and I've talked with both my mw and the CNM we do parallel care with. Both said brown is OK to keep an eye on, but any red go in. What concerns me is that it's still going. It's been about 36 hours. Last night it was super light, thought it was done, but it got a little heavier this morning.

My friends and family are being AWESOME and getting DS out of the house to run around and play and get out some energy, so I can just lie on the couch and check MDC and watch Gilmore Girls. If I'm going to the hospital, I'd rather do it during the day than going to the ER overnight, you know?

[*mama moose*]

Burnindinner, I'd go in. They're going to send you up to L&D instead of ER anyways so there won't be a huge wait, and it's better to be on the safe side. I had bleeding in my last pregnancy....guess where I was bleeding from? A severe UTI that I had NO clue I had! scary. I hope your cervix is just irritated or something non-worrisome like that

I have 3 books left to read, and I think 2 essays? I'm doing Birth Arts distance learning program so there is a lot more bookwork than other programs. I like it, but at this point I almost wish I had just done a weekend course program, I'd be done long long ago......oh well. I've been to 3 births, but don't have paperwork on any of them *hits forehead*, so I still have all 5 births to attend too, which won't happen for awhile with a new baby in the house. So I guess my new plan is to be done with bookwork by the time baby is 6 months, and then hopefully attend some births around a year PP?
TulaFina, I'm dying of envy that you're going to the conference! My heart is in midwifery as well. Especially after attending hospital births....I just know that's not where I want to be long term. My midwives are opening a birth center in our area in the near future, and my secret hope is that I'll work there someday. I can't believe you're attending a birth in May! I think I would fall over and die! You rock mama!

I'm a gardener too, sort of, in that, I plant a veggie garden I'm so lazy this year (hmmm, maybe because I'm 32 weeks pregnant... ) My grandpa is going to come over and till the ground for me I think this week or next week, and then I'm going to just get a few plants and go from there. I'm not bothering with seeds this year, and I think I'm just doing tomatoes, squash, and some beans, maybe cucumbers too. Easy to maintain stuff. Which my husband will end up maintaining for me

Any baseball fans out there?? Opening day today! (Except the games last night...confusing....) I think my DH is taking DD1 to a game tonight, I think my pelvis objects to stadium seating, plus my DD2 has a nut allergy which makes baseball not the safest sport to be in love with. We live in the Bay Area so we're A's fans, but really Red Sox fans at heart My friend showed me this today, I think this is on my "need" list
Red Sockies

Ok everyone, have a good day!! I'll be thinking of you Burnindinner!

[Burnindinner]

Argh now it's super light again. Lying down seems to really be helping.

mama moose, usually I like to have a small vegetable garden too. I'd like to have at least tomatoes, peppers and some herbs this year, but I know DH will end up having to tend it. Which means it won't really happen, so it might be nicer to the plants to not start.

[bananabee]

Burnindinner, I'm glad it's lightened up with lying down. Take good care and keep us posted.

Movies: I also canceled Netflix to save money. Now DH and I are working our way through The Office season 3, and watching new episodes of Lost whenever they come out online. I also keep up on Flashforward, Brothers & Sisters, Desp. Housewives, House, and a few others. I watch them on my laptop while I cook/clean, but now am having to slow down and put my feet up more due to swelling. My house is pretty much a wreck, though the dishes and bathroom are fairly clean.

Book: My MIL just gave me The Attachment Connection (I LOVE her!) and so far it is really interesting. I can tell DH has some rigid thinking when it comes to babies and children due to the way he was raised and he doesn't realize how his parents, esp his mom, learned the hard way that they were affecting their kids. Maybe he will take time to read the book since his mom gave it to us.

Can't believe June is coming so quickly! I'm dying to set up a birth plan w/my OB just to have it all down on paper. My OB is really great about that. She actually asks her patients what kind of birth they want to have. I will probably have to have a C-section, and a birth plan would be especially important in that case. I am dying to ask her if she'll allow me to go into labor before cutting me open, and I want to hold my baby and nurse right away.

Gardening - I love doing it, just HATE the bugs!! Mainly the stinging insects. So I signed up for my local CSA and get fresh natural organic produce the easy way starting in May. Can't wait!!

[Aka mommy]

Hey mama's! We had a whirlwind weekend! Drove down to the bay for one day (3 hours of driving in a 7 hour time frame) and then paid for it on sunday with my SPD! Still paying for it today, and i have an entire house to clean! I could barely roll out of bed, it's so bad. And i've been desperately trying NOT to complain. But im in misery and just want my crotch/pubic area to STOP hurting.

I just started Heart & Hands by Elizabeth Davis. I just finished Spiritual Midwifery as a refresher. Last night we watched 2012, not something i'd recommend for anyone who's having vivid dreams. Spent the night tossing and turning trying to figure out how to get my family safely through the destruction of the world. Which is ironic, since i don't ever give the end of the world a 2nd thought lol.

Spring Break is over, so it's time to get back on school. The girls were bored, sick and stuck inside with cold weather last week. So hopefully this week will be better. I can't believe we only have about 11 weeks left and i'll have survived a year of homeschooling! I'm really looking forward to summer, we had a lovely summer last year. I just love these ages (6 and 4) and my oldest is swimming now, so we're very excited to spend a lot of time at Grammy's house with the pool.

If anyone can send me any vibes/prayers we'd appreciate it. We should hear back tonight or tomorrow on a rental house. We NEED this. Currently we are in a 900 square foot apartment with 2 adults, 2 kids and a 95 lb dog. It's very suffocating for me, and i don't feel "safe" enough to birth here. We moved here originally while dh was gone with Army training for 7 months and it was a perfect fit, but once he came home with all his military gear and ACU's and whatnot. . . it got pretty cramped. So we found a house with double the square footage and only a $100 increase in what we are paying now for rent. Our credit is crap, the last year on army wages sucked us dry. So we are hoping that dh meeting with the landlord today was enough since we are awesome tenants. Hoping to move in by May 1st, so i'm plenty settled in and can finally start nesting.

Speaking of, what have you all been doing nesting-wise? I love hearing/seeing! Normally i get a huge nesting stage right at 20 weeks and everything is done and ready by then. But this time around, i knew we werent staying so i've been pushing it all down!!! Driving me crazy.

[azdaisy]

aka mommy-Hope all works out with the rental place! We are in a rental, so we don't have a lot of extra room. New DD will be in our room, but I want to get some of those decal things to put on at least a little area of the wall in our room, to make it her space. DH kind of thinks I'm crazy, as we both know DD won't know the difference, but with DS, we never got a nursery set up until he was about 1. (Not that he used it before then!) When pregnant with him, we were planning to sell our house and move. As his birth came closer and closer, we realized that we weren't going to sell the house. We started thinking nursery, but DS came almost two wks early, and we didn't get the decorating done. I'd love to at least do SOMETHING this time around. ;-)

burnindinner-Yep, super busy, but we really need the money. When I take time off around DD's birth, I won't have any income, which we normally count on to pay our rent. So, I'm trying to work as much as I can now, allowing me to take at least a few weeks off after birth, hopefully. I need to sit down and re-figure our finances to make sure we're going to have enough to cover all of our bills, rest of doula payment, hospital/midwife deductible, etc. Eek! (Hope your placenta issue resolves quickly!)

Tulafina-Also so hoping you have a wonderful time at the midwifery conference! That sounds awesome!!

[neldabean]

Hello mamas!

As for movies we just pick up whatever is at red box. We don't have cable so no tv for us. Some days I really wish we had it.

Books I am reading Super natural home, lots of birth/midwifery books an New moon.

I am hoping to get the rest of our garden in this week. I have garlic in from the fall and I planted onions in March. I am hoping that dh will work on building a chicken coop/tractor.
Ds1 has been saving up his money to buy some chicks. We had chickens at our last house and miss them, I miss there fresh eggs too.

I have been looking online for homeschooling crriculm for next year. We pretty much unschooled but I am feeling like I need to do more with ds1 he will be 9. He is also asking for more structured school work. Homeschooling mamas what do you use?

[lisko15]

Hi fellow June Mommas...

I'm glad to see a weekly thread pop up. We do seem to be a quieter DDC, which is okay... we must be a busy bunch... but as we get closer, we are going to want to know how all of us are doing!

Burnindinner - So scary about the previa and the bleeding. I hope that it continues to lighten. Keep us posted. And that is great that you have help with DS - it wouldn't be easy to keep up with him on bedrest!

azdaisy - I also will be out of income once baby-DS arrives, at least for a couple weeks, and then a much smaller income after that. I keep getting after DH to redo the budget! That way I can see how much work I need to find (I will be working at home as a medical transcriptionist) and how much we'll need to cut back!

Aka mommy - Fellow SPD sufferer here to sympathize with you. OUCH, to my poor groin and hip. At our childbirth class we learned an exercise that I thought was helping, but its such a funny problem - some days are so much worse than others! My current "read" is the book by Cecile Rost, about Pelvic Pain in Pregnancy.

bananabee - So glad to hear things are better with DH!

I recently signed up for Netflix - the cheapest plan they have. With Redbox I noticed DD would get attached to a movie and NEVER want us to return it. Now that gets really expensive! Otherwise we just get DVDs from our local library. I can put them on hold through the on-line catalog, they get sent to my library, and I pick them up. Its wonderful (and free)! No real cable here either, unless you count the $8 basic plan which just lets us watch the regular channels.

I still can't believe how close June is. I'm a late June-er... so I'll be around for longer than some of you... but it really is getting exciting!

We were possibly moving, but now most likely staying put, so I'm excited to really start nesting and setting up Caleb's room. Over the weekend I SUPER cleaned under and behind the stove and fridge (which didn't help my SPD), but with a dog and cat, we were "growing" an extra pet back there.

[Aka mommy]

azdaisy- I hope you're able to! We set up a nursery for our first, which we never used lol! It was so beautiful, funny how back then we had a bigger place than we have now!!! Our main issue is overcrowding. We have an olympic queen and a toddler bed in a room that is about 10' by 12'. We barely fit. We all sleep in the same bedroom, except dh due to his knee injury. So with the new place the master is big enough to fit the girls in a daybed, right next to our bed!!! I'm really having issues with moving the girls out of our room yet, anyone else have a family 'room'? DD#2 sleeps next to me, dd#1 sleeps in the toddler bed right up against our bed (we took it off the bedframe to relieve my spd pain) and dh would sleep with me and dd#2 but he can't handle the movement. I'm tired of hearing how it's time to move them out of our room and am curious how it will work out with a newborn and if it will bother them to be woken up by the babe?

neldabean- So envious of your greenthumb! I have a brown thumb. Only thing i am capable of 'growing' are babies and dogs lol. Though i did love digging in the dirt, such a release. As far as homeschooling, we used more mainstream curriculums since we went through a charter. They definately aren't my favorites, i really wanted to use Oak Meadow but it wasn't in our budget and our Charter didn't accept it as a vendor. So we used Sing, Spell, Read & Write which i heavily modify. Singapore for math. And then the normal Ca state stuff for science and history/social science. But it helps me to know i'm on the right time line and it gives me the structure i need to keep with it. Plus i will most likely have to return to work this fall which means putting the girls back in school, so this way i know they are up to state standards and wont have any issues intigrating back in. Probably none of the concerns you have since you followed an unschooling approach this year!

lisko15- Are you finding anything helpful in the Pelvic Pain book? I'm sorry you're miserable. I really wouldnt wish this pain on anyone! I keep trying to tell myself there is pleasure beneath the pain, but this doesnt fall into that catagory lol! I also tell myself a dozen times a day that my pelvis/crotch feel wonderful. It isn't helping either lol!

I totally hear you on the pet hair! It's why i must clean today. We have dog hair everywhere and it's driving me batty! Oh well!

[Burnindinner]

bananabee, I also signed up for a CSA! I think ours starts the last week in April? They also have a drop off point at our neighborhood library. I am in love.

azdaisy, my sister just had her baby 2 weeks early too. She had just hit a nesting patch and got all the crucial stuff done.

aka mommy, hope the new place works out!

lisko, have you ever gone to the chiropractor?

Spotting keeps getting lighter, woo hoo! I've spent the day signing up for various blog giveaways. My favorites are dirtydiaperlaundry.com and thebkeepsushonest.blogspot.com

Well, back to Gilmore Girls until my lovely sis comes home with DS.

[aslyn]

We are a busy bunch!

As for movies and books..no time to watch tv or read these days, I spend most of my downtime reading the threads here on mdc ;p

Kids are on spring break this week, of course DH and both boys are sick..I feel bad for DD since shes stuck in the house with a bunch of sick people and a mamma working 9 hours a day

Had an ultrasound on friday..found out we are having a girl! everyone is super excited..we have balance..2 boys and 2 girls so I told my DH I am sooo done otherwise we would be shooting for the brady bunch and I'm feeling to old this time around to do that.

No nesting yet, we live in a 2 bdrm condo..the boys have 1 room and DD the other which doubles as my office ( I telecommute). We have the living room (pull out couch) and the baby will be with us for awhile then into the office with DD..I am budgeted all the way out til 6/15 when we can FINALY buy stuff for this one..I am due 6/21 so lets hope she stays put long enough for me to hit the thrift store for some baby clothes.

I sure envy all you mammas out there with all the energy for gardening, and going and doing! All I want to do is sleep LOL