Totally amazed!!

Now that we know for sure that baby Jelly Bean is a girl, I got the itch to go through all the clothes we've had for Audree (I've kept everything) and organize them by size. I am totally amazed that someone so small and so young could have sooooo many clothes and I don't think Mich & I bought even 1/4 of them! We are very blessed. Most of them I remember, some I do not, maybe because there were some we recieved after she outgrew them ... but I can say that the new baby definitely doesn't need any clothes! :-)

Hocus Pocus....

Ok, so you could say that I'm a little more than excited about the thought that I found someone who most likely will be able to help our little girl overcome her allergies for good!!! Whether or not you believe in holistic doctors, I've seen proof that this treatment works, I've met several people that have done it or put their young children through it and had awesome results. I first heard about it when a friend purposely introduced her friend to me. This girl could not eat anything and was a skinny rail.. but she went through treatments and can now eat anything she wants. However, at that time I was not aware of any doctors, locally, that were trained in that area of expertise and not at all excited about driving to Spokane every few weeks for an appointment. I found out last week that there's a local doctor trained in NAET (http://www.naet.com/ - check it out for yourself...intersting stuff!).

Unfortuantely our insurance doesn't cover the cost of seeing a "hocus pocus" doctor, so we have to foot this bill on our own. I found the email address of the clinic in Richland and questioned them about costs since Mich and I already knew that we want to do this, but don't have it in the budget yet to do so. I was so happy to learn that costs of each treatment, after the initial appointment, are only $30 for her age!! Granted, there could be between 10 and 45 treatments depending on the allergies & severity, but it's all done on our timeline.

(picture - Audree wearing a dress my grandparents brought from Hawaii for me when I was little.)

Daddy's nervous....

IT'S A GIRL!!!

18 weeks or 17.2 weeks?

We had another prenatal appointment and now I'm confused.. I have two different due dates... 6 days apart, but I'm sticking with the one I've been going with all along Feb 21st. Audree got to hear Jelly Bean's heart beat again... she thought that was cool. It was also time for blood work....icky... and to schedule the ultrasound, which is this week... the nurse suggested I wait until my next appointment and do it all in the same day... 4 weeks from now.... but I told her NO WAY!! :-)

Audree is finally appearing to be over her cold & sinus infection...thank goodness I got her into the doctor or it could have gone on for several more weeks. She's been a busy girl and undoing some of the housework and organizing that mommy has done lately. It's fun though, she's trying so hard to help when she can and she loves to vacuum. (Pic on right- Audree trying to help organize the empty boxes)

I got back in touch with the company I was doing general transcription for and let them know I could start working again, but only about 1/2 of the amount of work I was doing before. I did some work already, but now they're back to bugging me about working more that I am able to. I have another possible option out there as an independent contractor doing Internet research that will give me the flexibility I want and need, we'll see how it pans out. I'm currently waiting for an invitation to take their tests.

ADA..

I'm a little slow at reading some of my emails, but saw that the ADA Amendment Act has been passed and is currently waiting for the president to sign into law. YAH! For those that don't know, the ADA protects Audree from harassment and discrimination due to her asthma & allergies.

Hopefully we'll not have to worry about putting her in public or private school, but this protects her in her schooling environment, that they must make it a safe place for her unless it causes undue burden. Even something as simple as us going out to eat, they cannot discriminate against her because she cannot eat the foods they prepare.

I never thought about the asthma & allergies being a disability, but by definition a disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, or is regarded as having such impairments. Breathing, eating, working and going to school are considered major life activities"

For a little more information... you can read the link below
http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=9&sub=19&cont=255

My Wishlist...

I have been putting together my wish list for baby... and as it comes down to it, because baby is coming and we are moving Audree into her own big girl room and having to completely remodel the room, we really need more for Audree than for baby. I have more work to do on the wish list, but if you wanna see it, let me know.

Busy.. busy... busy...

Sorry, some of my links and so on have disappeared from the blog lately. I was attempting to make some changes to personalize the blog a little more and in the midst of the changes, the program deleted my stuff. I'll get them all back eventually, but it takes time since this is the only place I had some of them saved and as you can tell, I don't get to spend much time updating the blog lately.


We've been keeping busy. Yesterday was Mich's 32nd birthday. We had a little family celebration at our house..though almost had to call the fire department there were so many candles on that little cake. :-) I was determined to find a completely Audree-friendly cake and thanks to a wonderful idea from my mom, not only was it Audree-friendly, but very yummy and looked good too!

We spent last weekend with Amy's parents & sister's family camping in boardman. Unfortunately this was only our 2nd and last camping trip this year..maybe we'll get to go a little more next year. We had a blast, but I think we might rethink camping in Boardman again. The campground is really nice, the stench of the nearby dairy farm was gross!!

We entertained quite a few neighbor campers with our glow-stick wars... we had probably 200 of those 8" glow stick bracelets going back and forth for about an hour after dark. I'm sure it was hilarious! It was guys against girls, though Audree wasn't sure what team she wanted to be on. We've already started discussing our glow-stick stock for next year.

Baby Jelly Bean is growing in leaps and bounds. I have been feeling movement for a couple of weeks now, it feels more like being tickled than kicked, which is nice. We have our 18 wk appointment next week and at that time I will schedule blood tests to make sure all is good with me and my big ultrasound to make sure all is good with baby.

Audree is also growing in leaps and bounds! Her vocabulary and ability to enunciate words is growing so fast, it's hard to keep up. It's fun to say words just to see how she'll repeat them. She has a couple of new favorite characters, since we got rid of our dish, she now watches PBS and loves watching Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Dog. We're also working on getting her adjusted to a few changes before baby comes... new bed, new room & potty training. For right now I've taken the crib rail off her bed & installed the toddler rail. She's loving her big girl bed and stays in bed until someone says she can get out...I'm waiting for that to change. We do have a bed on the way, but need sanded, painted and have to buy a new mattress first.

Our poor little girl has been sick for about two weeks now. I got her into see the pediatrician last week. He gave her some meds to calm down her asthma, which helped tremendously, and had her tested for RSV. Thankfully the RSV test came back negative. Due to our inability to control her asthma & the number of attacks she's had recently, I also made an appointment with the allergist, which we saw today. I was impressed by the Dr. and while there, he did a test and determined that she is allergic to dust mites (icky!!)

I also discussed the possibility of more allergy tests with the Dr. today to find out where we stand with the current allergies, test for airborne allergens and see if anything else has crept up on us that we are not aware of, since she eats almost everything that we do now. He agreed that might be a good idea, since her last test only consisted of those items that she tested positive for at 6 months and she is now almost 2 years. He recommended that we do those tests in November, which will be about 6 months from her last test.