Welcome Back Me!!!

welcome back me! I have been gone for quite a while, and I am not really too sure what exactly is the reason for my absence, it has not quite been a year, but almost... I guess between a daughter who has been not sleeping well (shortly after writing my last entry she started only taking one 15 minute nap a day... at 13 months! and sleeping maybe 10 hours at night...) so we were all lacking in the sleep department. After a lot of searching for an answer we went to a sleep specialist and did a horrible sleep study... she had so many wires glued to her body, and getting her to sleep was a nightmare! They did find out she has sleep apnea, and her tonsils are almost blocking her windpipe, so that might have something to do with it!! She was, I guess, having night terrors because of her lack of REM... and toddler fits are rampant, as I am sure you can imagine!

Meanwhile, I found out I was pregnant!!! I am due at the end of November. We, apparently, have bad genetics, because when my daughter was born they swore up and down that she had downs syndrome... which was false, she actually has a duplicate #7 chromosome, but so does my husband. He is (mostly) normal!  Hehe... no, I am kidding, anyway he is not normal it is because he is extraordinary, I love my husband so much! So in order to not go through a very trying time of talking with genetic counselors and specialists at the hospital we decided to do genetic testing this time around. While it wouldn't rule out the chance of downs, it would at least give the doctors some pause to say "hmmm... maybe there is another reason this baby has certain findings...." Unfortunately, it sent us tail-spinning into a mess of genetic issues again. They found a huge cyst on the back of the baby's neck, and after a few weeks of torture (because they told us that miscarriage and stillbirth are likely with some of these cases, and they didn't know what was causing the cyst) they found that his heart is not pumping correctly. It is called "hypoplastic left heart." His left heart is underdeveloped and not pumping any blood to his body. so without a miracle, his little heart can only pump blood to his heart, not to the rest of his body. This, amazingly, does not usually end in miscarriage or stillbirth, the umbilical chord usually acts to keep the baby alive. And it is fixable, and we live in a city with some amazing heart surgeons. I am still not thrilled, obviously, and am still hoping and praying for a miracle! I cannot imagine the birth experience having something like this in the mix. I don't think any person should have to enter the world under these circumstances... But what an amazing blessing that even though it is not good news, we could expect our baby to die immediately after birth if we were even 10-15 years in the past. We are in the right location, the right time, and we have a lot of hope that our sweet boy will have a future... so many parents get news to the contrary, and that breaks my heart. I would be a complete fool not to count myself insanely blessed, even with this hard news.

oh yeah, and did I mention our daughter was in the ER 2 times in one weekend? She was admitted with the first, she completely lost her ability to walk, stand or sit up on her own... It was super freaky, turned out to be a bad case of temporary displacement, which is related to vertigo as I understand... then after we were released the very next day she crammed a hanger in the back of her throat, and when i helped her to get it out she started bleeding everywhere and the doctor said we had to go back... sheesh... I was a mess!

Anyways, it has been a whirlwind since I posted my tut, and I am now just along for the ride! So I have slowly been getting back into doing the things I love, my random and ever changing interests... and here's what the nesting gene has allowed me to do in the past two weeks....

1. I have been sewing TONS!! I made a ton of little newborn soakers and longies with upcycled wool, and have gone garage saleing and to goodwill and salvation army store to get some really amazing wool sweaters! they are so cute, unfortunately (no...what  am I saying... fortunately!!!) my daughter is now potty trained, so I can't try any in her size... We started EC late with her, and she was still potty trained so quick that we are sold, I can't wait to start EC early with our boy! I also serged up some sweet flats to use as inserts and doublers, and some cloth wipes using some old sheets I had. They are so nice and soft! My daughter and I have been using fabric markers to color them for her little brother! She is so excited! And with toddler scribbles and mommy cartoons, I think he will love them!

2. I have also found out that we are poor! Who knew!? ;) I guess making my own kids diapers, EC and garage saleing, sharing 1 car...and all the other tricks we use to live frugally I hadn't felt super poor, but sure money gets tight. Anyways, we will qualify for about every government assistance program out there once we have our baby. We are on WIC now, which is super helpful! I get way too much milk, but being a bit of an oddball, I have found ways to use it. I made yogurt, Ice milk (just like ice cream without the cream!), Ice milk sandwiches with chocolate grahams... So I have been working a lot with making new foods and recipes! But seriously, Eliana got super constipated the week after we went on WIC... she never has so much dairy!!! We will be passing up on a lot of the milk, I have a feeling... I mean, what family of 3 really uses 9.5 gallons of milk in 4 weeks!?! crazy!!!

3. Then looking into some frugal recipes and frugal living tips, I have also re-ignited the green freak inside... I found so many cool recipes to make for cleaning up my house and cleaning up me! I am trying to slowly finish up products I had been buying and replacing them with things like baking soda, vinegar, borax, glycerin, essential oils... So far I have made a recipe that actually does kill my weeds (2 tbsp salt, 2 tbsp dish soap, 2 cups vinegar, spray it on weeds when it is sunny)! I also made homemade toothpaste which will take some getting used to, but I feel like my teeth get clean easier and stay feeling clean longer... I got the recipe here, and supposedly it will actually help  keep my teeth healthier than my Colgate! (who knew!) Another crazy thing I did was I made a laundry detergent, which is safe for cloth diapers... and with a very similar recipe made a gallon of hand soap with a bar of soap! (woah!!!)

4. I am giving this frugal "me cleaning" tip its own category because I am super thrilled about it. I am starting a new face regimen. This is always scary, but I was really apprehensive about this one... although everything I have read supports it. I am not purchasing a $12+ bottle of any dumb old face wash, instead I am using oil. YES! OIL!  the very reason why we wash our faces, and here I am slathering it on and massaging it in!!! SCARY!!! It is a recipe that calls for 2 different types of oil, castor oil and extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) in equal parts. You massage it into your face for a whole minute! I did it my first time last night, and all my acne commercials that were floating around in my head were screaming "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???"  But I figure now is a good time to break out if it goes awry, I can totally blame it on pregnancy hormones! ;-)  So then you put a wet (hot) washcloth on your face, and when it cools you use it to wipe off the oil. No soap, just wipe the oil off. After my first go, my skin did feel a bit oily, but soft. I felt a little like I had just used a night cream or something. Then when I woke up this morning, my goodness! My face felt super clean and smooth! Why would this even work??? Well, something the acne folks don't tell you, but your chemistry buddies would is that oil breaks up oil. So when we use soap or face wash we are harshly removing whatever oil we can, but then we are also training our faces to make more oil to replace what was lost. With the oil cleansing method (OCM) we are breaking up the bad and removing it, and leaving our faces with enough oil so that it will not try to replace it. The dirt is what causes pimples, not the oil. So having oil on our faces is a good thing. This is what I have read at least... I am kinda excited to blog about it on here so I have a record of my actual journey though, because it seems like once someone blogs about  things that are "green" they are usually already sold and think everyone should do it, but I may not have the same luck with whatever they swear by. I have no idea if this will work, but I was pretty thrilled when I woke up this morning. Anyways, more updates to come, maybe I can get some pictures too!  If this works, I might even try going "poo free"!