Milk is amazing stuff

We just got on WIC, and they give us about twice as much milk as we can possibly drink, so I have started making yogurt.  It is very easy, and I don't understand why more people don't do it, as it is much tastier than the store kind, and you could even make it with powdered milk if you wanted, and then it would be REALLY cheap.  But anyway, this last batch I ran out of room in the cooler, so wrapped a tupperware full in towels and put it on the stove to keep warm... and then promptly forgot about it and used the oven to make dinner.  Needless to say, it did not set (note to self: find bigger cooler).  No problem, I thought.  I will cook some lentils in it for lunch.  Lentils, a little mushrooms, yogurt, what could go wrong?  Well, it turns out that yogurt (or even liquid yogurt) CURDLES when you heat it.  So now my lentils are cooking in very, VERY runny cottage cheese.  We will see how it is, I suppose.  Never know what milk will do next.

Sometimes, paranoia pays.

We spent Sunday night in the emergency room!  Extreme back pain and a fever, no fun at all.  But you know, we have good coverage for me right now, so the midwife said "go if you want, can't hurt anything and might be a good idea if it hurts that bad... definitely go if it gets ANY worse!"  So off went the paranoid pregnant lady!  Good thing too because it turns out I have a RAGING bladder infection.  Had?  Been on antibiotics since then, and am doing much better, but I do not feel well yet.  I slept all day yesterday though and that helped.  And the morphine they gave me wore off all the way, and the pain didn't come back.  And we got to have another ultrasound!  He was so active in there, even the tech was impressed -- "look at that baby go!" he says.  "Quit pushing on my head, that's what that baby's saying."  We got some great pictures, he's got all his limbs, and a cute little nose and a round little tummy, it was absolutely fantastic, and ALMOST worth spending a night in the emergency room.

So, yeah, paranoia really does pay off sometimes.  =)

Mice!

Or at least mouse.  In our house.  I've seen a mouse on two seperate occasions now, the first of which could have been a hallucination ("it was brown and oblong and moving fast and I think it looked like a mouse!"), but now I'm SURE.  I mean, there I was, minding my own business, and it just wanders out into the MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR, looks at me, then wanders back.  YUCK.

Guess what?

Guess what?
Originally uploaded by Driggs family

Third time this year. But, I have a really good feeling about this one. I am optimistic and everything. And hey, the chances of having three losses in a row are one in a thousand, so I think I deserve a little optimism!

Never Run With Grain

This absolutly cracked me up. Hehe, goats.

Look what I found!

Eggs on the glass
Originally uploaded by Driggs family

Snail eggs! I am very excited, I've never had brigs eggs before. I'm reasonably certain that the parents were a striped yellow and an ivory, too, so I may get some red and whites, and more purples. I'm incubating them in one of those Gerber bottle liners with paper towels, using badflash's plastic bag method, for anyone who cares to know.

More pictures

Found an ax!
Originally uploaded by Driggs family

Not very many, but some, new on Flickr.

I think we're having a turf war

With our neighbor Rodney, over gardening space.  There's this long strip by the driveway that the landlord says we can dig up and plant whatever we want, since it is just weeds.  We were starting in on prep on a new patch for spring (I like to get as much work as possible done late summer/fall), and the next day Rodney had staked out the area right next to it.  Which made me mad, so I prepped all the way up to his line, though I had originally planned to stop about a foot short of there.  I bought some gooseberry bushes to plant at the line (on our side, of course) so he can't decide to take over more space again.  Really, he has the lion's share.  It is quite irritating, especially as his idea of a nice garden involves great stretches of bare dirt between his plants and mass amounts of chemicles to control weeds and bugs.  I plant as close together as possible so my plants shade out the weeds, and will be including catsnip and lemon balm to control bugs (besides, they smell pretty and make nice flowers and soothing teas).

Which leads to where I got all these plants, the nursery we found in southwest Provo.  They regularly have boysenberries, too, which I think I would like to plant along our fence in the spring.  Can't do it now because the zucchini is in the way, although I am getting pretty sick of those zucchini plants.  It would be wasteful to pull them up now though, as they are still producing like crazy, and I'm not one to waste even potential food.

I love my garden.  >^_^<

Lots of pictures

Snoozin'
Originally uploaded by Driggs family

I spent some time uploading today. Check it out!

The shrimp are HATCHING!

I found four teensy, tinsy little clear shrimp on the aquarium glass today, and it is SO exciting.  I don't know if mama shrimp has hatched them all yet, or if these are just the early birds, as she wouldn't turn so I could see her belly, but still, FOUR.  If I'm finding four there are probably more!  So, I will have to put the snails on a diet and increase my water changes to keep the tank clean for them, but stop vaccuuming the bottom to make sure I don't suck them up.  BABIES!  My cherry shrimp tank isn't doomed to failure after all.  :D

Snails

Got some aquarium snails in the mail on Friday, and they are eating/laying eggs like mad crazy.  They are cute little striped things, but really, too many is too many.  So I now have my morning rounds with the turkey baster removing extra eggs.  I am hatching some for Byron and some to try and trade in at the fish store, but we shall see, and really, I don't need THAT many snails.  I'm removing like three or four clutches EVERY DAY.  That would be lots of babies!

Elspeth loves the snails, she always wants to hold them which worries me as they are fairly small (size of a nickel), and I'm afraid she might mush one even with strict supervision.  So, we are thinking of getting her a haustrom, they sell them at one of the local fish stores.  These puppies get the size of a tennis ball, so there's no way she could hurt them.  They are plant eaters though, so it would need it's own tank.  I am thinking a 20 long (we could put it on the Abomination aquarium stand, it's not so bad now that it's in Elspeth's room), with just a filter.  Also a rainbow shark for Mark (he REALLY wants one) and maybe some brigs for me, just to fill it up.  So, if anybody wants to contribute to the coolest birthday present for Elspeth ever, let me know.  ~_^

Announcements = sent

They are all in the mail.  Apparently quite a few have already arrived, which is nice.  If you still want one, and have not given me your address, there are still quite a few more, so send me a mailing address!

In other news, Elspeth rolled in the dirt at the playground today.  Then she poured ketchup all over herself (and Mark's laundry, groan).  Then she found jelly beans and chewed them and spit them all over the house.  She was one sticky baby, and I am one frustrated mommy.  Gave her a bath though, so at least she's clean.  I am still finding jelly beans.  >.<

Addresses

I am sending out the first wave of Emersen's birth announcements.  Anyone who wants one, who HASN'T sent me their address within the last month or so, please send me your address now.

Busy day

First of all, the plants got here, so I spent about two hours stuffing them into the 20H.  It was SO MUCH FUN.  They sent me so many extra plants, and they were all perfect, even after getting stuck in the post office over the weekend.  Elspeth was my little helper, she did a good job with the string and small rocks.  Unfortunately though I kind of forgot about lunch, Elspeth was ok because I always have crackers and cheese and raisins out for her (some days, it's the only way she eats), but I was kinda woozy by the time I was done.  Low blood sugar is NOT fun.  I am hoping the crypts grow in quickly, when they do this tank is going to look AWESOME.  There will be pictures.

Today is also the first day of the Freedom Festival on Center Street, we went to that after quick dinner at Guru's (mmm, tasty noodles and rice), and we got to hear Moosebutter.  Elspeth loved it, which made Mark proud, I think.  Also, Elspeth saw an enormous tortoise, and was a little scared of it.  If it was far away, she wanted to look, but she did NOT want to get close!  She was very cute.

Kamikaze fish and shrimp eggs

Francis the betta jumped out of his bowl yesterday while we were out.  I forgot to put the lid back on when I changed his water.  Mark found him and thought he was dead.  Fortunately he landed ON his lid, which made him easy to pick up.  I flipped him back in and now he's swimming around like nothing happened.  Bettas are tough.  One of our shrimp has eggs, too, so hopefully by this time next month I'll have a bazillion tiny baby cherry shrimps swimming around in there.  We have completely given up on the red claw shrimp though, and have put our smaller gourami male in the old ten gallon, so that Talbot will leave him alone so he'll color up.  Got one more female too, so we have four females and two males.  The plants were supposed to come today but didn't.  They sent me a bunch of extras to make up for not shipping them sooner though, and they will get here for sure on Monday, so it's ok.  Disappointed though, I had been counting on spending my evening planting plants, not sitting around doing nothing.

In news that people other than me (and apparently Byron) care about, we went to the pool today and had lots of fun.  Got a little sunburned dispite the frequent slathering of sunscreen though.  At least Elspeth seems to be burn free.  Me and Mark though are definitely lightly toasted.  Apparently I look ok in my swimsuit though (a relief, I don't think I've lost much of the weight from Emersen yet).  Also, Mark got called as the move in specialist in our church.  Which is funny, because our other calling is as cochairs of the new member committee, so the two sort of go hand in hand.

Ninja shrimp

Well, I can't find mama redclaw shrimp ANYWHERE.  It's only a 10 gallon tank too, either she climbed out (unlikely, I would have found her) or she's a freaking ninja.  Not finding any babies in there either.  I'm considering just getting a bunch of red claw juveniles from a dude I know in Payson, and growing them out myself, as I went back to Animal Ark and they appear to only have females... that also makes it possible that mama shrimp's eggs weren't fertile in the first place, so boo.  I did find a baby cherry shrimp in the other tank though, so at least one made it, maybe more.  I have a huge hair algae infested ball of java moss in there, if they climbed in there I'd never find them.

In non-shrimp news, Elspeth now says "yokai" when I tell her to do things... whether she does them or not.  Silly baby.  But she is learning Japanese, which I had been starting to wonder about.

Stressed out

We have been having a hard time.  We went to visit my family in Colorado for a few days (my mom got a 56 gallon tank, and didn't know what to do with it, which was more than enough to lure me out).  Ended up staying a bit longer than planned because Mark got sick, high fever and headache.  Setting up the tank was lots of fun, but we were sleeping on the fold out in the basement, and Elspeth decided she was afraid of the basement, so not much rest was to be had.  When we got home on Monday Elspeth's schedule was all off.  She was mostly on by Wednesday, but then she had diarrhia and diaper rash.  That's about when I discovered that she had cut two more molars too, explaining why she'd been so dang cranky.  Then on Friday Mark decided we HAD to have a better stand for the shrimp tank (the one we made is an Abomination), and so he got one that would hold the 10 gal for the shrimp plus and additional 20H... yay!  But just when we had the shrimp tank settled in place, Elspeth wonked her head on it and cracked the glass from top to bottom.  It's ironic that the tank took so much damage as Elsepth doesn't even have a bruise, but if I had to choose I would indeed pick the broken tank.  So we were at Petsmart as soon as they opened to get a new tank, which I spent the rest of the morning moving my shrimp into.  The worst part is I'd just had a hatch in there, and I don't think any of the milimeters long babies made it into the new tank.  I TRIED, I really did, but they are just too tiny to find!  It looks like we'll have more eggs within the week though, so everybody pray for my shrimp tank... we don't have many shrimp left, and I don't think I can handle anything else dying on me right now.

In good news, while we were at the LFS in Orem looking for plants, we discovered that they currently have red claw shrimp... and one was pregnant!  I totally had to buy her, so I moved all the fish into the new 20 gal so she gets our original 10 all to herself.  She's gorgeous too, a good three inches long with very nice markings, and very active.  So, hopefully I will have baby macros soon too!  But in the mean time I'm changing water like crazy, because the nitrate levels in that tank are much too high for babies!  Maybe I'm being paranoid, but it's giving me something to do, and at this phase in my life, that's a very good thing.

Pictures!

All clean!
Originally uploaded by Driggs family.

I uploaded like a bazillion pictures today... pretty much every picture we've taken since just before Christmas. I told you pregnancy is distracting. >^.^<

Blogger has gone all screwy

It's not wrapping the lines correctly.  I've done my best to make it legible, and Mark is working on fixing it, so sorry if it looks funny and please be patient.

Back from the doctor

I've been pronounced healthy and sound again, and all the blood tests came back normal, so at least I have the comfort of knowing that my body didn't somehow kill my baby.  The pathologist's report was fairly useless, as it could find no probable cause of death other than probable chromisomal abnormalities, and possible cord accident.  We did learn however that it wasn't a boy, it was a girl.  I think I've come to terms with that, though... if you can name a girl Madisen, you can name a girl Emersen.  She'll just have to be Emersen Pauline, I suppose.  The best news though is that this will have no forseeable effect on any future pregnancies, as it was just bad luck - I had been having irrational terror of being
 labeled "high risk" for the rest of my reproductive career, and am feeling quite relieved.

I have, unfortunately, developed an irrational terror of my obstetrician's waiting 
room and the hospital, but with luck I should be able to work through that... in 
addition, I can go back to the midwife for the next one, hopefully deliver at 
home, and if nothing else, I'm sure I can find another backup doctor.  It's not that 
Dr. Broadbent is bad, he is a wonderful doctor and I'd recomend him to anyone, it's just a little hard to warm up to the guy who told 
you your baby is dead.

So, we have some closure, and I'm feeling much better, and trying to get back to work.  Wish me luck and sanity, folks, 'cause I'm going to need it.

Sad news...

Well, for anyone who hasn't heard already, we lost the baby.  We found out he was gone last Monday at the ultrasound, we saw the o.b. on Tuesday, he induced me and the baby was stillborn in the wee small hours of Wednesday, April 25.  It was a boy, and we named him Emersen Paul.

We're slowly pulling back together, but having a rather rough time, as can be expected.  I'm doing well, health-wise.  We will going back to the doctor on Wednesday for our follow up appointment, at which we'll get the pathologist's report, and maybe find out what happened.  As things stand, they're saying cord accident (the cord was around his neck) and probable chromisomal abnormalities.  The doctor doesn't think that having the cord around his neck just once like it was would have caused any harm (a third of the babies he delivers have the cord around their neck, and no problems) unless there were underlaying problems that would have killed him anyway.  So what it boils down to is, there's nothing anyone could have done.  We'll also be getting the last of the blood tests in -- they are testing for abnormal clotting factors in me, which could have cut off blood to the placenta, but the tests are normal so far so that is unlikely.  If it was clotting factors, they can give me medicine next time to keep it from happening again though, so we have to make certain that wasn't the case.  Wait and see, I suppose.

You know, I had forgotten I had a blog...

Yeah, that's about the size of it.  I find being pregnant to be incredibly distracting, there are days I'm surprised I don't forget more.  We're doing the finals thing just now as well, and I'm learning about what it's like to be a single parent, as Mark is at school from early morning until late at night.  It REALLY sucks.  Oddly enough though, I seem to be getting more done than usual... I'm calling it "early nesting," as the key manifestation has been an overwhelming urge to vacuum.  Of course, we do also have a nifty new vacuum... and you know, you have to pick up before you can vacuum.  Elspeth probably thinks I've gone nuts.

For those who have asked, we don't know if it's a boy or girl yet... we were supposed to get the ultrasound this last Monday, but the ultrasound guy got sick or something, so we've been rescheduled to THIS Monday.  Hopefully the little guy cooperates, she hasn't cooperated for anything else this pregnancy.  The midwife looking for her heartbeat takes for freaking forever, we think my placenta is on the front so the baby is hiding behind it, but we shall see.  So, expect emails regarding the gender of our new one in the next couple of days, either way.

SURPRISE!

We're having another baby! We're due August 28, and are very excited. And nautious. Well, actually I'm the only nautious one, but I'm not nearly as bad as I was at this point with Elspeth. Big relief, that. Elspeth is still breastfeeding, so I'm HUNGRY, ALL THE TIME, but it's not such a big sacrifice to eat more. I like food, and while I'm getting sick of having to find more every two hours or so, I have an excuse to eat more of my favorite nourishing comfort foods. Like baked potatoes. Mmm, potatoes...

In less exciting news, the cherry shrimp I ordered arrived today, and seem to be doing well. They are swimming a lot, which worries me (usually they only swim when they're stressed out, or looking for some action), but it's probably just because they're in a new tank. More than half are hiding, too, so enough should survive to start a nice breeding colony.