It's been confirmed...

I must change my name to Fertile Myrtle.



Sabe and I decided to try for a baby and that same cycle we got the two lines. This is the first time we've actually tried for a baby and that "2 week wait" was pretty grueling!

I'm due around April 1. Not quite sure yet though since I've been ovulating every 2 weeks for the last few months and it threw off my cycle. I've not even called for a first Dr's appointment. I'm really not that worried about it right now. Just coasting through.

We were going to keep it a secret for a while but then I just decided I didn't care and posted something on FB without even telling anyone, lol! I called my mom like 20 times, left her a text and a voicemail and she just happened to check her facebook before her phone so even she found out on there, lol! I'm not really caring about people being upset that we didn't tell them before facebook as I don't really talk to anybody anyways. I told 3 close friends but only because I needed a few more pairs of eyes to see if the line I was seeing was imaginary or not. I figured anybody who cared would be on facebook except for my oldest brother who got a quick text and that was that.

I get huge fast an already have a small bump. It's kinda weird to me just how fast I get a belly when pregnant. I was very noticeably pregnant with Jamesen at 9 weeks and here I am about 4 weeks and have one.

The "morning" sickness is starting a bit. So far it really only shows it's ugly head if I let my stomach get too empty. It's hard not to. I don't really feel like eating anything and have to force food down my throat so I don't get sick to my stomach. I've been eating a lot of ramen lately, just because it's fast and is one of the only things that sounds good almost 100% of the time.

I'm getting some strong girl vibes. Even though I've only just started, this pregnancy is already starting out differently than the boys' did. Biggest thing is that I craved salad a few times. I've never in my life craved a salad. It was just meat (usually burgers) with the boys. The sweets cravings are through the roof too. I'm going through the boys' otter pops like there's no tomorrow!

Anyways, enough pregnancy rambling. I'll try to keep it at a minimum :)

My name is Adrienne

and I've become terrible at blogging.

I need to remember that my mother doesn't see my kids everyday anymore. One of her only connections to them is through my blog. I've been meaning to skype with her but keep forgetting. So mom, when you read this, if it's not too late my time, pick up the phone and call me and we'll get on skype.

A little update on Marcus. I think he might be dyslexic. He's got quite a few signs and we've got a slight history in our family as well as a history of ADHD which also contributes. I've gotten into contact with the school system here because we don't live on base and can't utilize any of their school programs. They say it's too early to test him for dyslexia, that we have to wait until 5 to do so, but I had a good long chat with the lady over stuff like this in the district and she set us up with an appointment to get his hearing and eyes checked. It was today and I totally spaced it. I'll have to fill you in when I'm able to get another appointment! Ack!

Anyways, Marcus has given me no indication whatsoever that he can't see or hear. He can hear me perfectly fine when I whisper to him. We whisper daily during Jamesen's nap and have full conversations in whispers. He usually speaks so quietly I can barely hear him. I'm sure he can hear himself so I'm not worried there at all. He'll be going into speech therapy though which I'm thankful for! As long as we show them a copy of our lease and a utility bill, they'll give it to us for free! How amazing is that? I'm so excited to be able to speak to Marcus and have him answer questions and have full conversations.

I've been avoiding calling the dr about Jamesen's bump because it's gone way down in the lasts few months. You can barely feel it and you can't see it unless you're looking for it. Before it was prominent enough that you could see it because of the bump in his hair but now you can't see it at all. If I can get away without having him have to go through surgery, you can bet your eyeballs I will! I'm worried that if I go see this other Dr., he'll be surgery happy and guilt me into it just so he can make money. The original guy we talked to said that it should go down by the time he hits two and if it hasn't he needs to be reevaluated. Seems to me like it's going away on it's own though.

Anyways, enough about that. We're having a lot more fun in Georgia than I was expecting we would. We've been mostly staying inside though. The boys are very much hating humidity so we only go out in the evening if we even make it out now days. It's just way too hot and humid for any of us! The fun we've been having is the toy room! it's really amazing to me how much mess that room contains. They take toys out sometimes, but usually they just play with them in there so I don't have a trail of toys throughout the entire house I need to clean up at the end of the day. There are a ton of toys in there, but I've got a good organizing system that makes clean up relatively fast. We spend most of our day in there. The boys are loving the train table and are constantly handing me trains and track pieces to put together. They're so cute with it!

Jamesen has started repeating movie lines. It's so funny to me. I wonder if he would have started that on his own if Marcus didn't do it so much. Jamesen just has to do anything Marcus does. But hey, if it gets him talking, I'm ALL for it! I think I'm doomed to make kids who are super busy yet slow in speech. But boy when those boys talk, I hang on their every word!

Marcus is such a smart little guy. He's doing so well in the homeschool preschool we've been doing together. We hit a snag recently though. We've started the "early reading" section and he's just not putting the words together. He'll sound it out and when it comes time to tell me the word, he says a random other word. Case in point: the word was bug. He would say buh. ug. guh. buh..... uh.... guh.... buh-uh-guh, buh-uh-guh, CAT! I think his speech is impeding his reading. Hopefully we can rectify this with speech therapy. I know he could do it if he just understood what the heck I was wanting of him. Once he catches on though, he'll be reading in no time. that's always how it is. It takes awhile for him to really understand what I'm trying to get him to do but once he does, he doesn't need any prompting me from whatsoever.

More on Marcus. He is officially 100% potty trained! We finally got him to click with the not wetting the bed at night thing. He's been in underwear and accident free for almost a week so far! So proud of my big guy! I desperately want to potty train Jamesen too, but he's proving difficult. I ask him many times during the day if he wants to go potty and he promptly replies with "No!" Oh well, I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later right??

So yeah, we're doing good. Just hanging out :) Thinking about getting a dog :)

Jamesen is 2!!

I don't even know where the time has gone. Jamesen turned two on the 7th and both Sabe and I were blown away. I swear it was just yesterday that I had Marcus, let alone Jamesen! It's so funny to me too because when Marcus was this age, I already had a 2 month old Jamesen. That would not have worked this time around, let me tell you! Jamesen is not ready to be a big brother. He gets jealous when Sabe takes any of my attention, let alone Marcus or heaven forbid a BABY take my attention away!! When we have another baby, we will have to really work at preparing him for it.

We're going to be starting potty training once we get the house all unpacked and I can devote all my efforts to it. We've started having him sit on the potty before bath time. He use to cry and scream if I even acted like I was putting him on there but now that I've pulled out the gumball machine, he's a lot happier to sit because he knows he gets rewards. I'm doing the same thing that I did for Marcus. He gets rewards just for sitting on the potty in the beginning. Once he gets use to sitting on the potty, I'll try to keep him on there for longer periods of time in hopes of him accidentally going where we'll make a huge deal out of it and he'll get huge rewards. Hopefully he'll catch on as fast as Marcus. Once I got the gumball machine, he was potty trained in 2 weeks flat. Minus over night...

I'm not buying anymore training pants though. I should have enough to get me through until the house unpacked and then it's underwear 100% of the time for Marcus man. I'm debating whether or not to just go underwear the entire time with Jamesen as well and see how that goes. We'll see. We hope to have both boys in underwear 100% of the time by the end of the year. I don't know if that's an unrealistic goal or not. I guess we'll see.

The boys are doing great. We've been making Marcus speak full sentences to us lately to encourage him to talk and it's really helping out a lot. He's been so late with talking it's made is really lax in making him talk. We're so happy he can actually communicate with us that we let the bare minimum slide. For example, he would say, "Drink?" for a drink, but I've been coaching him to say "Can I have a drink please?" I swear I would give that kid anything (within reason of course) if he properly asked me for it. Like today... He clear as day said, "Can I have some car cake please?" talking about Jamesen's Lightning McQueen birthday cake I made. I was so happy! I've also been trying to coach him to answer questions with something other than no or silence. He will now answer "Martus!" (we're working on it) when asked what his name is and "Fweem" when asked how old he is.

Before I forget, I have to rave about what a great husband I have. I wasn't feeling very well this morning. My allergies have really been acting up. I think I'm allergic to something in our carpets (like always it seems). Anyways, so I was in a really bad mood today and we got into a fight and I was just not feeling well and I was cranky, so I went to bed. I didn't even say a word, I just went to bed. He let me sleep for almost 4 hours this afternoon. He got the boys lunch, put Jamesen down for a nap, switched out the laundry, loaded the dishwasher and then went back to sorting through boxes. I woke up to a messy living room (he was going through a box of paper work) but I was well rested and MY chores had been done. Even after I got upset at him and was fighting with him he still went and did all of that. Sweet huh! :)

I need to take some pics of the toy room. The boys spend a lot of their time in there while unpacking goes on. I've sorted through it all and organized it so it's easier for me to think when I go in there. We've got a ton of toys so it would just be a huge mess if I let it go unorganized. They are LOVING the train table. Jamesen was like 10 months when it went into storage so it's nice that he's older now. He doesn't wreck the track like he use to. The move damaged the table though (and my washer too!!) I don't know how they'll compensate us for it as it's still usable, but I guess we'll see. At least it's the place they go to if we can't find them! It'll randomly go silent so I'll go searching thinking the worst and they'll be playing in there nicely, totally absorbed in what they're doing :)

Anyways, I'll keep you updated on the preschool and potty training front and once we get unpacked and decorated I'll take more pics of the house. Until then, the current album of pics on Facebook as that's faster to upload pics and everything.

Tidbits on jamesen...

Anybody who personally knows Jamesen knows that he's very stuck to me. He rarely goes to anybody else and all Hell breaks loose if I so much as leave the room!

I made it to my breaking point. I was so done. I had had it with the clinginess and the never going to Sabe and the always crying behind the bathroom door if I shut it, etc. I posted a giant rant online to some online friends of mine, but nobody had any suggestions but to wait it out. I was frustrated and over it so I went to bed.

That's when the miracle happened...

I swear it was over night like right when we got into the new house that he all the sudden didn't need me as much. Maybe it's Sabin coming home coupled with us moving into the house so we're STABLE, but he's changed. He's going to Sabe a lot more often and crying a lot less often. About a week and a half ago we were all walking through a parking lot towards the PX and Jamesen let go of my hand to grab onto Sabe's and didn't even look back at me.

The biggest thing though... and if you really know Jamesen you'll know how bit this is... is that he stays in nursery on Sunday by himself. He doesn't last the entire time, but the two Sundays we've been going to this new ward, he stayed in there for at least half the time without me or Sabe! Seriously that's amazing because I'm not use to being able to just leave him and not have a meltdown on my hands. We were in Vegas for 2 and a half months and the longest he lasted in nursery was 5 minutes. Literally. Once he realized I was gone, he would start the water works like the world was ending.

I don't know what happened, but I'm very happy about it. 2 years straight of barely being able to leave his side has really worn me down. I think I've paid my dues with clingy kids! Hopefully our next one is the most laid back lazy baby ever!

Long Winded update

I've been avoiding writing this update blog because of all the stuff that has happened, but the longer I avoid it, the more stuff goes on and the more I avoid. So... no plan, just gonna write and see what happens. I apologize in advance for any long windedness and what not.

The trip went well. It actually went really well. The boys did so awesome in the car. The only time we had to stop a ton was when Jamesen got sick and was running a really high fever on the last day. He did ok until about half way through and then he was burning up like crazy so we had to keep stopping. He had the fever for a few days, but no other symptoms and nobody else got what he had, so I have no idea what it was!

We made it to the extended stay hotel and it had a pool! At first, Marcus only wanted to be in his floaties and Jamesen didn't want to have anything to do with it, but by the end of the 11 days, they were both swimming! It was crazy the transformation in Marcus. He was so terrified of the water outside of his floaties and wouldn't put his face in the water at all. The last few days though, he was actually swimming short distances. It was so awesome!! I was so proud of him. We were too stoked about it to get a video though. I even promised my mom I would get one and we just didn't think about when it was time. Sabe has a couple 4 day weekends coming though, so I think we'll take the kids to the nearby pool and I'll try to remember to get a vid of it.

We opted out of base housing because it was taking too long to get into. They changed the way they do things (or Benning has always done it this way, I don't know)... anyways they changed the way they do things and it was going to cost us a lot of money to stay at the hotel and wait. We were in the house we found for about 2 weeks and they called us, saying they had a key for us. We wouldn't have had any money for the hotel had we waited for them. Our house is great! It's got huge windows for my photography. I love it! The boys love it too. They love all the room. There's a ton of room though because our household goods aren't here yet. There's tons of space without, lol! It comes in on Jamesen's birthday and I can't wait!! So ready for my bed!

The only problem is that I have to keep the boys inside. We can't go outside because of all the ants. We've got two huge fire ant mounds in our huge backyard and a big one in the front yard. I've been trying to kill them for a few days but nothing has been working. It kills some of them, but not the entire mound. We decided to go out and get some fire and killer tonight. The boys just want to be outside so bad. Hopefully it works soon. I'm so sick getting bitten! Luckily Sabe and I are the only ones that have gotten bitten by fire ants so far. The boys have been bitten by black ants. Their bites don't hurt as much or for as long as the black ant bites.

I'm in a new vehicle. We were (and still are... ugh) paying A LOT in car payments. It was suffocating us a bit, so we went to see what could be done. I'm now in a Maxima. It's a really fun car actually. I love it. It took a bit to get use to being in a car after being in an SUV for a few years, but I still love it. It's got a lot of trunk space and the boys have an easier time getting in and out of it. There's more leg room between the front seats and the back seat too, so they've got more room than in my Pathfinder.

All in all, things are going great. I hope my photography picks up as I've finally got a room for all my photog junk and great lighting in my house! I need to find a few locations for outdoor shoots, but that shouldn't be too hard. You can see pics of the house and recent pics of the boys in this album on facebook. It's easier than posting pics on blogger!

Anyways, thanks for reading my long windedness :) Until next time!

Day 4 of 4

I'm sitting in the extended stay hotel that we will be staying in until we find housing! So excited about that! We were able to bring Gary in as well as she's excited about that too! Poor thing has had a pretty crazy trip!

The morning started off late again. We (again) forgot to set out alarm. We packed up as quick as we could and set out. This was our worst day out of the four as we made SO many stops. First we had to stop because Marcus didn't tell us he had to pee until he was crying because he had to pee so bad. Then we stopped because we could have sworn Jamesen had pooped, but apparently he was just really gassy... Then we stopped to get gas and again for lunch and to let the boys play (in Tupelo, the birth place of Elvis Presley!) and again because Jamesen was being really really fussy.

I went to pull him out of the car and one touch alarmed me because he was burning up really bad. Sabe went and got him some meds since all of ours was packed and poor thing fell asleep on me inside a super cold mcdonalds. I slept for most of the rest of the way. When we woke up he was acting like he wasn't feeling well, but he wasn't fussy either, just looking around. Poor thing. I hate to see my babies sick.

Anyways, short post tonight as we're all really car lagged and tired from four days of driving. There's a pool here so we're going to hit that up tomorrow as well as go grocery shopping since our room has fridge and stove. We'll probably start looking at off post housing too, to see if we can find anything we like. We'll see I guess!

Day 3 of 4

We are in Jonesboro, Arkansas!

We all slept in this morning! It was nice to not have an alarm clock set and a crazy strict schedule to follow for the morning. We almost missed the lame breakfast the hotel offered because of how late we got up. Being ahead so many times zones makes me feel like the boys are sleeping in rather than getting me up at all crazy hours of the morning even though...really.... it's crazy hours in the morning in Las Vegas!

Anyways, so we went to the zoo today. It was a rather small zoo, but ended up being perfect. Jamesen fell asleep on the way to the zoo and woke up just before we went inside. His nap was maybe 10 minutes at best so he was super cranky through out the entire zoo and didn't want anything but for me to hold him. By the time I was so done and ready to leave, we had run out of zoo to look at and left. It was perfect timing!

After the zoo, we hopped back into the car and started our drive. I've fallen in love with Missouri. It's so green and alive! It's such a beautiful state (the part that I saw anyways) and is my favorite state so far. Kansas City was a bit hairy to drive through, but it was still a really beautiful state. When we got into Arkansas, we hit a crazy rain storm. there was one point where I couldn't see anything but rain on my windshield and two dip little specs of red that were Sabe's tail lights. I was so petrified of getting into an accident that we pulled over a few minutes and waited for it to stop. Well, it didn't stop, but it let up ever so slightly and we decided to push forward. The slowing was go (yes I really wrote that. it's called a spoonerism and they're funny enough for me to leave for you to laugh at) so we didn't make it to our third destination point, despite making great time and everything. The zoo, coupled with crazy storms, caused for a bit of a delay. We COULD have made it to Memphis today, but decided not to since it was still raining when we stopped for dinner and was getting dark by that time as well.

Nothing really crazy today except a couple of older kids beating up on Marcus a bit at the park at the zoo. We finally had to walk away because Sabe was about to punch some kid out, lol!

We should be in GA tomorrow. It's only 400 or something miles away. Can't wait to see you there!