34 weeks and great news

I had another visit to the midwife today.  A friend of mine brought her son over to play with my girls so I could go without the kids, just in case my blood pressure was acting up so I wouldn't have to deal with that on top of it all.  Anyway, I came home to a clean house (minor miracle, she actually got my kids to listen and help out) AND I had a good appointment too.

I gained 3 1/2lbs since my appointment last week, which isn't so great in my eyes, but hey I'm in the final weeks so I'm not surprised.  My blood pressure was completely normal for the first time in several weeks, AND I wasn't spilling protein when they did the dip.  I do have to repeat all the blood tests and the 24 hour collection again since my 24 hour results last week are higher than the week before, but today was a VERY good day for me with her.  She had a smile on her face when she came in, its been a while since I've seen her smile when she opens the door.

I decided to ask for information about permanent birth control options, as the first step in our decision about what to do after this baby comes.  We have no plans to make any decisions like that until he is at least 6 months old, however.  I'm too unstable emotionally to trust my own judgement at this point, and I don't want to have any regrets later if we choose to do something right now.  The only thing I do know is what we'll do while we wait to make a decision when I'm mentally stable again (yes, I've turned into a nutcase this time around, as usual, and I do anticipate that I'll end up on antidepressants after birth again as well).

So I go back next week for the routine tests and checkup that happens at 35 weeks *yuck* and I also get an ultrasound to check on our little boy's growth, placental function, fluid levels, and such.  With the issues I've had with my blood pressure, there is some concern that it may have affected his growth, blood flow, or placental function so they are going to take a look to double check that everything is good.  While we're looking, I'm going to ask if we can take another peek between his legs to be sure he's still a boy.  Yes, I'm still having a little trouble believing that he's a boy after having the 4 girls.  That is a surprise I do NOT want to have on delivery day.

Downside to next week?  My appointment is at 7am.  I'm NOT a morning person, getting up before 8am is really pushing it for me.  But I can do it, especially since Scott is pulling strings to get covered at work for a couple hours so he can go in late that day and watch the girls for me.  Yes, daddy will be the one dealing with breakfast that day, my poor kids.  I just hope that all goes well again next week, now that I'm in crunch time to baby.

FINALLY a homeschool update lol

Yes, I know I've not done much of that the last couple months, but we've also not done much for lessons lately either.  I will explain that one in my pregnancy update here in a minute.

So I was having a good day today with my blood pressure and symptoms, and decided to take advantage instead of taking it easy and trying to not overdo it.  I did a history lesson and a tie-in art lesson with the girls.  Now, I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but we have streamlined our history from doing a full Sonlight world history core to just reading "A Child's History Of The World" and doing whatever strikes our fancy to go with it as I feel up to it to finish this school year.  Simplified history here, so we could work with my limitations of the pregnancy and also be able to not miss much with a new baby and getting settled and adjusted to 5 kids.

Today's chapter was about Egyptian writing, also known as hieroglyphics.  Now, a couple years ago I went over this material with Missa when she was in 1st grade with OHVA, so it was review for her and new for her sisters.  I read the chapter, and we discussed the stuff that we read (lots more than JUST writing in there, it was also a good bit about Egyptian culture and gods/goddesses they worshipped, I'm going to do some searching later today for coloring pages and simple things to do tomorrow and the next day when I crash physically so they can continue with the culture and such with minimal work from me directly and I won't have to read to them too much hopefully).  I then remembered that we had some stuff hanging around from Missa's time in OHVA so I went to dig a minute.

I got out 3 pages that show the American English alphabet and the hieroglyph translations, and made a couple copies for the kids to use as a reference.  The project was simple.  Draw a simple self-portrait and write their first name (or nickname, in the case of the little girls) in hieroglyphs.  I paired them up so that the little girls each had a big girl to help, and then spent 45 minutes listening to Liddy throw a conniption fit because she couldn't draw her name out perfectly enough.  *sigh*  Yes, she is my motor delayed child, mostly we're caught up but she still has some issues there at times, but she is also a MAJOR perfectionist and drawing is the enemy with her most times.  She spent time cooling off and working out her fit in her room while Missa helped both little girls with theirs (this girl has a talent for hieroglyph drawing, she does rather well for an 8 year old I think).  Liddy and I came to an agreement that she would draw her picture and point out which hieroglyphs she needed for her name, and I would draw her name out for her.

Missa did better than I did at drawing names out.  But that is ok, hopefully Liddy will see that it is ok to not be perfect at everything and sometimes someone else is better than you at something.  We hung their portraits on the wall over the fireplace, and a copy of the pages for the "translation key" as a display of our work today.  I'll take pictures later and might share, if I feel up to it.

But 3 of the 4 girls thought it was an awesome fun project, and I found it really simple to come up with in a pinch.  I just wanted something to fill a little time after reading the history chapter just in case I needed to lay down because of my blood pressure.

snow day!

We got our first REAL snowfall last night overnight.  All of yesterday it rained, then it turned to snow around 8pm here.  Roads are covered in ice and snow, and they were shutting down portions of freeways in the area last night until the salt trucks could hit them to try and get rid of some of that ice on the roads.  As a result, many public and private schools in our area are on either a 2 hour delay, or closed completely.  Our district is one that decided to close for students.  So, technically it is a snow day here for the kids in my area.  For us, however, it is just another day.  We are sort of on a break from schoolwork until the baby comes, just doing a bit of work here and there as I feel able to stay up without my blood pressure acting up too much.

So now I get to decide, are we doing any lessons at all today or just enjoying the pretty snow from the window?  I think its just a little too cold right now to go play in it, and Kimi has a cough that sounds strangely like her coming down with a cold so I have to be extra careful right now for her sake.  Last thing I need on top of everything else is her to get seriously ill with bronchitis or something that could put her in the hospital while I'm at the tail end of my pregnancy.

pre-eclampsia

Yup, it sucks.  I am still doing the testing, but the OB that I saw yesterday for my appointment (yes, instead of the midwife, but that's ok I like this doctor, she's really nice and willing to talk to me about stuff openly and frankly) said chances are that is exactly what is going on.  So, there we have it.  I've danced with the vampire for a 4th time yesterday, and have more testing still to do. *sigh*  And here I was expecting a nice uneventful pregnancy for a 5th time.  Oh well, God knows what He is doing and everything will turn out as it is supposed to.

Now I just need to decide if I feel motivated enough to use the patterns I found over the weekend to make our little boy some footy pj's and such to wear.  Sewing calms me, but I'm not sure if it is going to be something I can do without my blood pressure going up too much.  Maybe I should go to a yarn store and get some yummy yarn to knit a blanket instead, that may be safer.  But then again, I really would like to make him a couple fleece overalls, some cute shirts, and some pjs with matching blankets.  The patterns I have are rather cute if I can just work up the motivation to dig through all my fabric.

Horray for 32 weeks

I've hit that last 8 weeks, and now I remember what it is I hate most about pregnancy.  These final weeks are not very fun, with the leaking from parts of my body that normally don't leak and the rib kicks, reflux so bad that we have decided the benefits outweigh the risks and I'm on Prevacid to control things, and now adding hypertension.  Yes, I was at the hospital last week again for my blood pressure, after a scary incident involving me blacking out while driving with the kids to go to the dentist, but we got it stabilized in the normal range again so I got tagged with pregnancy-induced hypertension and put on bedrest until my next appointment (tomorrow morning).

So obviously, I've had a rough go physically with this one compared to the girls.  But I still am really looking forward to meeting our little boy soon.  We decided to toss his name and revisit some other options for his name, and will decide when he is born what his name will be for sure.  He may still be Isaiah Preston, or something totally different.  This is the first time we've decided to just pick a few different first and middle names and pick the official name when baby is born, we always had a name chosen by this stage.  The kids are adjusting to calling him Booger again until he's born, and are excited to find out what his name will be.  I think Missa is again hoping that we'll consider her suggestion that we name him Moses.

We also finally got the crib set up in our room, after having it for ummmmm a few weeks or so.  Scott also got the recliner set by the crib with my filing cabinet by it for a temporary table, so I have a place for Booger to sleep and me to breastfeed and rock him comfortably with a place to put my drink at.  I'm hoping that this weekend one of us can get to the thrift store to find him a dresser, and that we can start buying him some clothes that he'll need.  We'll finish decorating his area of our room when we get the tax refund sometime in the next few months.

Yup, that about sums up my pregnancy and all I know right now.  I'll have more details and information about how I'm physically doing with it after I see the midwife at 11am tomorrow.  Scott is sick and we've discussed him taking tomorrow off to be sick in bed, so if he does then I'll be able to go alone and spend some serious time discussing what's going on and what our options are and a bunch of other things that I am concerned about.

New year, new plans

Well, its the start of a new year.  This is the time I usually look at what we've done so far during the school year and re-evaluate my goals to see what we need to do so that we can accomplish them for the school year.  Well, this year is no different for us, although I'm doing things a lot differently.

Math has gone really well for us.  My goal was to move at their paces and let things go how they do, with hopes to at least have Missa in Beta and then Liddy and Kimi working well through their books.  Well, goal met and all is going well, so no changes will be made there.

Handwriting is going well too.  In fact, better than anticipated.  Missa decided to start cursive in November, my plan was to have her start by February so she's ahead there.  Liddy is about to start her next book, which is also a bit ahead of schedule.  Kimi finished her book, which totally threw me off so I had to scramble to find something to fill in with until we can order the next book for her, and Jojo is going to finish up her book here probably by the end of this month.  So that is all going well.

Reading..... well Missa finished her first chapter book recently, so now we're waiting for the baby to be born so that we can take her to lunch and a movie like promised.  Liddy started one, and the little two are working nicely at it as well.  No complaints in this area at all, everyone is making forward progress in reading.

History..... yeah that.  I ended up dropping my Sonlight core completely for the most part, now we are just reading through "A Child's History of the World" a chapter 3 days a week minimum until we finish.  I don't have the ability now to do anything extra really, but that's ok because the girls, especially Missa, have been pulling the other history books off our shelf to look through in their free time and Scott is reading the read alouds from the core to them at night and on  weekends.  So its still working here, just not as written at ALL.

Science has been mostly abandoned.  We watch stuff on tv and talk about it.  That's about all we're going to do the rest of this school year I think in this area, unless Scott takes over this subject as well.

*****CONTINUED*****

Sorry, I had to take a break in mid-post because I started getting dizzy.  That happens a lot to me lately when I'm up more than just a few minutes at a time.

Anyway, my mid-year evaluation showed that we are doing pretty good in general here with lessons, even if we've not met a few goals in a couple subjects.  So, the plan for the rest of this school year is for me to take it easy and continue with the changes that we were forced to make and just keep up the pace we've set for now with things.  Then in August I will send in our notification for the new school year with the plan of moving on to US history.  That plan I'll talk about later on, after Isaiah is born next month.  But I do have a plan for it, and surprisingly it does not involve Sonlight at this point.  I am taking a different approach for a bit, after seeing the troubles we had this school year with the pregnancy and how I had to drop so much.  So stay tuned, and I'll share more later with you.