Bottle Babies

I was totally flattered yesterday. Let me start by saying, I did not grow up on a farm. I grew up in a community that considered itself a farming community, but it was really a bedroom community for the nearby Mayo Clinic and IBM employees. The extent of my animal knowledge was learned from our pets. My first pet was a 3 legged turtle named Stumpy. He died when I was 5. I very clearly remember asking my dad why Stumpy had ants all over him. Needless to say, I probably didn't visit him daily. My oldest sister had a pet bird, Chirpy. We were very creative with names. We did have a cat and a dog also. The only experience I had with cattle was walking through the barns at the county fair. Somehow, I apparently became an expert.

Yesterday we had a customer appreciation dinner at our local animal health store. For those of you city folk, it's basically a drug store for farm animals. During the meal, grilled steak, beans, and chips, one of the vets came and sat next to me. Two of the 5 vets have kids about the same ages as Cole and Tate, this was one of them. We talked about kids and preschool for a little bit before she shyly said "I have a question for you." Ok. She proceeded to ask how much she could feed a bottle calf without upsetting his stomach. Legitimate question since if you overfeed a human baby they'll throw it back up on you. I was just flattered since, well, she's a vet! I'm the kid who had a pet turtle that died! She's a very good vet, but has way more experience with small animals and sheep. I guess feeding baby calves for 5 years does make me an expert.

Baby #3

No, we aren't expecting. Freaked you out there for a minute though, didn't I?

Anywho, I think Pat is suffering from baby fever. We know a lot of people who have recently had babies or who are expecting babies. Surprisingly, it's not me with the baby fever. Pat, who always claimed we would stop at 2 has been randomly throwing out baby names and saying things like, "when are we going to start trying for a girl?" I've been giving him an awful lot of the I don't know who you are kind of looks. As a matter of fact, he always claimed the only way he would possibly consider a third child was if we had one of each. Heaven forbid we end up with 3 boys or 3 girls. Yet every name he has thrown out has been a boy's name. It's just bizarre.

I'm not anti-baby #3, I'm just not ready yet. I have one more year of school and my last semester will be student-teaching full time. I don't want a newborn at home or to be expecting and have to make up the time I'd miss for having a baby. I'm also hoping a break between pregnancies will give me a better chance of having a full term baby. I'm also hoping that having a bigger gap between kids will be a little bit easier. It's nice to have the boys close in age now, but it wasn't fun a year and a half ago. I'm also afraid we'll end up with another Tate and I don't think my ears can handle that. The kid has one heck of an ear piercing scream.

I Guess I'm Not In High School Anymore

My sisters and I are running a team marathon in May. What does that have to do with high school? All 3 of us ran cross country in high school. Jenny, from here on out referred to as Fatty (she asked for it), worked her butt off and made it as an alternate to State (we had a really good team that year, I think they took first or second). Kristen just had fun. She was a middle of the pack runner (although I remember her trading last places with her friend J) and was proud of it. We all ran for different reasons and we all enjoyed it.

I ran my first season because my sisters had run and we didn't have soccer, which was my true passion at the time. Turns out, I ended up with the natural ability. I ran 4 seasons on varsity, never lost a JV race (my first season I ran about half the season on JV), and ran in the state meet twice with our team. I loved it, and I was good at it.

After that I spent my first 2 years on my college track team and was in the best physical condition of my life. I'm not 18 any more. It pains me to admit that. I'm knocking on 30. Good grief, I turn 30 this year! Aaack! Anywho, let's not dwell on that. Needless to say, I am not in the peak physical condition of my high school and early college years. I haven't run competitively since college. After my competition days were over I ran and worked out occasionally. Other than a brief stint (like a week last summer) I haven't run a step that hasn't involved chasing after my children. I know that I can run, and I enjoy running, but there are always more appealing options, like napping. So when Kristen brought up this team marathon, I jumped at it. I need some motivation to get me going. The problem is that the marathon is at the end of May and with all this snow on the ground our road won't be passable for cars, much less running, until July.

Kristen uses their local Y and works out a lot, which is ironic from her high school days. Fatty gets paid 3 hours a week to go work out at her job. She gets to take 3 hours out of her day and spend it at the gym, and get PAID for it. She doesn't use it and wants everyone to feel sorry for her. I don't. Our closest gym is about 20-30 minutes away and it just isn't feasible for me to take advantage of it. I'd love to, but it just puts too much strain on everyone else for it to be practical for me. So I don't know what I'm going to do. I used to be able to train like the week in advance, but I just can't do that anymore. I'm hoping to be able to take advantage of the equipment at the fire hall, since Pat is on the VFD. If not, I'll be the one panting and walking after a mile next May. Ok, I won't walk, but I'll be the one that pukes and passes out. I may not have the endurance I used to, but my competitive spirit is still as strong as ever!

New Year's Resolution

I normally don't do resolutions. This year I have decided to be nicer to my husband. Long before Pat and I started dating, we were typically our friends' entertainment. We ripped on each other constantly. After 2 years of dating and 5 years of marriage (today!) it's really starting to wear on our relationship. We've had our fair share of problems, so this year, I am going to make a conscious effort to be nicer to him. Right now that's been fairly easy since he threw his back out a few days ago and can't do anything. I've had the bed to myself the last 2 nights (and looking like again tonight) since he's been sleeping in the chair or couch, which is apparently more comfortable for him. I don't get it either. But anyway, back to the nice thing. It should be easy, but I am trying to be nice without criticizing. That's hard. I'm hoping that my being nicer will cause him to be nicer, and our kids to be nicer. I'm also trying to stop yelling, but I really struggle with yelling at Cole to stop yelling at his brother. Oops. Wish me luck!

Murhpy's Law

It's not going to snow. Why, you ask? They postponed our Christmas Eve children's program at church. All my calves are bedded in and the sick calf started drinking again today. I took the garbage out and the pail of kitchen scraps. I ran to town and got an extra gallon of milk. So it's not going to snow, at least not until we want to leave Friday afternoon.

On a more random side note, we had chili for dinner. I think it's going to become the latest in natural hair styling aids.

See?

Denialism

I've been reading this book, Denialism, by Michael Specter. I saw him on the Daily Show and thought it looked interesting. First off, the guy is a science and technology writer, so it's not an easy read. It is interesting though. I've read 3 chapters so far (a chapter is like 40-50 pages). We all know I'm not big on organics and I vaccinate my children. The book is basically about how fear of the unknown and irrational thinking is hindering critical progress.

I've finished the chapter on immunizations. I guess if I had an autistic child, it would be nice to have something tangible to blame, but in truth time and money would be better spent in promising research to find a treatment or cure than spent in lawsuits trying to find something to blame.

I've also finished the chapter on organics and natural foods. Since we all know how I feel about organics, I'll leave you with just two thought. It's impossible to guess how many doses of genetically engineered food Americans have eaten, but it is possible to know how many of those got sick from it: zero. Thousands of people die from taking aspirin and hundreds have drowned in their bathtubs, yet aspirin sales aren't suffering and people still bathe. People also have no problem with genetically engineered medical treatments, but when it comes to food that's a no no.

Since it isn't an easy read, I was going to skip the chapter called Era of Echinacea, but I think it has been the most interesting thus far. It's basically that there has been no evidence that vitamins, supplements, etc. do any good and are actually more likely to do harm. In a country where over-eating is killing us, it's not that we aren't getting nutrients in our diet. So basically there is no miracle cure-all and we're back to diet and exercise. Darn huh? It also mentioned the millions of dollars of research money that has been wasted to test these dead ends, knowing full well from the start that the research was likely to show nothing.

The chapter I've started now is on race, which is a topic nobody wants to touch. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'll leave you with this thought. I read this somewhere, but can't remember where. Shouldn't we teach our children to embrace and understand our differences rather than try to convince them that we are all the same?

We're Famous!

Check this out! Remember the camel picture? The one that's going to be in a book? Well, it made Rachel Ray today. Not just made Rachel Ray, but was the 1st picture in the interview! How crazy is that!?!

My New Job

I started subbing this week. I started Monday by teaching the last 2 hours of high school math. I'm also doing an internship in the same class a few hours a week. Monday went ok, but the kids didn't have enough to do so they got a little rowdy by the end of class. Today went better. The first 3 classes basically continued working on whatever they had been working on. The last 2 classes I introduced a new lesson. The school is using integrated math, real-life application type math. I haven't worked with it much, but I get the drift that the kids really don't like it that much and I honestly wonder how applicable it really is. Yes, the examples are nice, but it's a lot of examples and very little typical math. I remember a professor telling us that math is about learning the process. It's basically teaching students a different way to learn. I don't see them learning the process. If you give them a completely different example they can't process it. It certainly isn't making them ready for college level math. I obviously haven't worked with it enough to make complete and total judgement.

Anyway, I survived. I'm exhausted. My knees and back hurt but I've finally thawed out from my room in the arctic circle. It felt kind of nice to go out and earn a paycheck, but it would be a whole lot nicer if I didn't have homework tonight.

Going Organic

So the other day one of my FB "friends" posted this article by Time. For those of you who thought the article was well-written, you really need to get out of the city and come visit America's Heartland where your food really comes from. My biggest laugh was this quote "The crop is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington." Nitrogen?? Really?? Nitrogen is your big complaint? Did you not know that nitrogen makes up 78.1% of the earth's air? That's darn harmful if you ask me. And those subsidies from Washington? Don't even go there. America's farmers certainly aren't getting rich, Wallstreet bailouts.

Ok, let's think this through. Do you like to eat? Ok, then we need genetic engineering, fertilizer, and chemical weed killers in order to produce enough of that corn syrup in your coke, or the wheat in your bread. You want your chickens cage free and your cattle raised on grass, (which you really don't, but I'll get to that)? Where are you going to put them? We don't have enough land to graze our cattle and with land prices still at record highs, we certainly can't afford to buy more land. Oh, and that land means less corn, less soy, less wheat for you, and less alfalfa hay to feed those animals in the winter.

So you want your meat and dairy products organic still? Do you like your meat lean and tender? That doesn't happen to grass fed cattle. There are reasons cattle producers went to feed lots. That's where the tender, lean meat comes from. You want your meat free of antibiotics? Do you give your kids penicillin when they get an ear infection? Why should our animals be different? We have to raise animals in feedlots, and like our kids in school, being around lots of different beings of the same species means illness abounds. Why does organic cost so much? There is a lot of death loss to figure in to that equation. Do you vaccinate your kids? Why shouldn't we vaccinate our animals? We don't use BST on our cows. We feed them what they need so that they produce the most and stay healthy. If we have to treat a cow, that cow's milk gets dumped so you, the consumer, never get that antibiotic in your milk, cheese, or butter. That's what good farmers do. There are good organic farms out there, but even they can't produce enough for everyone, keep their fields weed free, or their animals perfectly healthy. Organic doesn't mean clean and healthy.

We work hard every day so the world can eat. Before you criticize the way we work come for a visit. We start at 4:30 AM and are usually done for the day around 9 PM. 7 days a week. 365 days a year.

Weekend Warriors

Since I didn't accomplish much this summer, I decided to pack it all in this weekend. I finally got Pat's bathroom painted, a nice clay brown color. Since I was in painting mode, I decided to get at the downstairs playroom. I've wanted to get at it for a while, but wanted some fun colors down there. It's a low ceiling (about 6 1/2') and not a terribly large room. It does have some windows, so there is a little natural light down there, which helps. Anyway, the local hardware store was doing a 2 for 1 on paint, so I figured it was time. Plus I had a gallon of blue paint that we bought for our bedroom in the old house and never opened. So this is what I came up with:
The boys used their hands for the border. The main color is orange with the one big wall blue.

Here is a closer view of Tate after he laid his mark on the room.

Just Like Riding a Bike

So yesterday the plan was that I would drop the kids of at Pat's grandma's (from now on known in bloggyland as GG), go to class, go home, feed calves, pick the kids up, and head to school for the open house. Things went mostly according to plan except that about a quarter mile from home Pat called to tell me I didn't have to feed calves. He had actually called earlier, but my phone didn't alert me to the new message, like one of the few jobs it is supposed to do. Anywho, so I turned myself around and headed to GG's to get the kids. It's only like 3 miles away, so it wasn't a terribly long detour. My new route took me up to the blacktopped county road. As I was turning on to said road I met a girl casually riding her bicycle down the middle of the lane of on-coming traffic. My lane, to be exact. Now, I spotted her, and like the perfect driver I am, I slowed down and kept an eye on her since if she had been older I would have suspected she was drunk due to her meandering course. Anywhoozle, she swerved into the other lane and rode past me. I watched her in my rear-view mirror trying to figure out who she was, where she was going, and what the hell she was doing. Only what I spotted was her turning around to give me the finger. What the #%$&?!? Gee, I'm so sorry I was driving down my side of the highway and paying attention to what was going on around me. I laughed, called Pat, who wasn't nearly as amused as I was, and went to pick up my boys. The direction she came from indicated the town she came from, which is one of those places where parents typically let their kids run wild. Now, I'm all about giving my kids freedom and teaching them responsibility, but I'm also about giving them limits and teaching them manners. She obviously knows neither. What I really wanted to do was slam on my brakes, throw the van in reverse and scare the leaving bejeebers out of her, but I didn't. Kids these days!!

The Sound of Silence

I'm down to just one child so I thought I'd hammer out a post for you all. Unfortunately the child I am down to is Tate, so this may be short lived. The gates are all up and the bathroom door is closed, so hopefully I'll have more than 2 minutes for an update.

Potty training is. We had 2 dry days, followed by a one accident day, followed by yesterday. Yesterday involved wet pants in the morning. We did fine through the afternoon, mostly because he was sleeping in a pull-up. In the evening, he pooped and of course he had boxers on which meant the poop went down his pants. A little while later he peed on the dining room floor, not just a little pee, a big pee. That was followed up with some more pee on my coffee table (his new game is jumping from the coffee table to the couch). It wasn't a good day. Today he's out in the tractor with Daddy, in a pull-up, so I don't have to worry about it. Maybe he's not ready, but he knows when he has to go. Our hardest part of the day is during chores. We run a pretty tight time schedule so I don't have a lot of time to stop and take him potty. He usually pees outside, but yesterday I knew he had to poop so I took him inside. He didn't poop and he threw of my chores so I sent him to play in the yard so I wouldn't have to drag around 2 kids. I guess I should have known better.

Tate is doing fine. He's cruising furniture now. His favorite game is the trust fall. I stand him up and he falls into me. He thinks it's hilarious. He's discovered the fun of going up stairs so I now have 3 gates up in my house on the main level. He loves unrolling toilet paper and playing in the potty. Right now he's busy with his brother's tractors since his brother isn't there to yell at him and take them away.

School is going ok for me. I have 2 classes. One is Differential Equations. Nuff said there. The other is an ed class. It's going to be a lot of busy work, but should be an ok class.

The farm is much the same. We have another nutritionist coming tomorrow to see if he has any advice for us. We've had three heifer calves, alive, which is an improvement although they aren't terribly smart. Typically heifers are smarter than bulls when it comes to pail breaking, but I've got a couple of dumb ones that don't like drinking from a pail. It's really annoying. Anyway, we are hoping to get some answers from this guy and hopefully we can get things turned around. It only takes a couple of months for things to go really bad and usually takes years to get it back where it was. Here's hoping!

It's Going to Be a Long One

Ok, so this was going to be a long newsy post, but blogger apparently doesn't want me to download pictures for it, so phooey. Frankly, what good is a post without pictures? So you'll just have to wait. In the mean time, I start school a week from today! Aaaack! I am so not ready. I'm also putting my name on the sub list at our local high school. I'm not ready for that either, but financially I really need to. As much as my kids drive me nuts most days, I'm not ready to give them up yet. It's going to be hard enough sending Cole to preschool, although it works out that he goes while I am in class. Thankfully he doesn't start for about another month.

Ok, so if I load the pictures one at a time, it will work. So anywho. My sister came out with her 3 kids about a week and a half ago. The weather wasn't great, but it worked out ok. The kids got to play on their bikes, ride the gator, and ride Cole's little 4-wheeler. We took them to the Y to do some swimming towards the end of the week. It was nice to have them around, but I was exhausted. Cole is a very quiet, cautious, laid back kid. Tate is not, but he's only 1, so the volume level of our house increased quite a bit while they were here. It was fun though. Cole loved having his cousins to play with and Tova loved having Tate to snuggle, although he didn't enjoy that so much.

Cole and Gavin on the Kettler bike.

Cole and Tova on the Gator.

On Saturday my sister headed home and the boys and I headed to Rochester for a wedding reception. Tate was not a happy camper and his revenge for being stuck in the car was to throw his nukkers and blankie on the floor. I guess it backfired so he turned to his toes instead.

My summer project was to do more painting. I finally got started this week. How daring am I to paint while my children are awake!?! Tate thought it was funny and Cole kept wanting to help. I spent my birthday putting the final coat of paint on the panelled hallway that separates our bedroom from the bathroom. My goal this week is to paint Pat's bathroom. He even picked out his own paint color, and it looks pretty nice, in the can anyway.

Thursday night we are heading up to Pat's grandparent's cabin for a night away from the farm. Next week I start school and it's also our community fair. This year I've managed to put myself in charge of our church youth group, which means fundraising. I'm actually really excited to be getting a group of kids to go to the National Youth Gathering but it's worse than pulling teeth to get some of these kids and parents to commit to anything. I'm super excited about it though. I have Pat convinced that we can chaperon. I think it will be really nice to go away without our kids and I think it will be a really good experience for Pat since he never attended one in high school. This will be a first for our church so I'm hoping that it goes smoothly.

Well, that about sums it up for me. I'd say I'll try to update more often, but there are no guarantees at the moment. Things haven't been going well on the farm. We've had some problems with our cows, which means lower production and with milk prices so low it's been pretty stressful around here. We're hopefully getting things turned around, but it's been tough. No matter how hard we work we can't raise the milk price and that's really been stressful. I'm off to finish baking my cookies and maybe type up another post for tomorrow! Wouldn't that be special, 2 posts in one week!

Goat Names

and the winner is Rachel, with Bonnie and Clyde. Feel free to brag it up to your friends, family, and co-workers, that you named some pygmy goats! Actually Pat had come up with it Thursday night, before I checked my blog and seeing how that seemed to be the favorite, that's what we went with. I do have to give creativity credit to Kristen for Peter Soil and Maggie Mess. That was my personal favorite. As for Bonnie and Clyde, they are doing well. Clyde has a little bit of a messy butt thing going on, but they seem to be adjusting well. Our chickens will magically disappear tomorrow, or I wish it was magical anyway. Then Bonnie and Clyde will be moved from the back yard to the goose pen until we can make them a little more people friendly. Clyde isn't too bad, but Bonnie is tough to catch. Juno has done fairly well with them the couple of times I've put her in the yard. (Un)fortunately, she is smart, so I know that as soon as I am out of sight she'll go for them. So far she's just chased them a little bit, but listens when you call her off. Once they are bigger we'll let them roam with the dog, and hopefully they can work out a truce.

I will try to update again soon as last week was crazy with VBS. Tomorrow Tate has his echo. Please pray that it is nothing and I can put my mind at ease. It's one of those things where someone says there might be something wrong and I start seeing all the signs, like maybe he naps more than he should and his lips are blue for no reason and on and on. I'm sure we won't know anything tomorrow as they have to send the reports back to Sioux Falls and we are staying in town to have this done. Also pray Tate cooperates. I'm worried we'll have to reschedule and sedate him which I really don't want to do, especially if it's nothing!

Name That Goat Contest

We got our new goats today. Yes, goatS. We decided to get two. This way if I kill off one, we've still got a backup. They may be able to defend each other better against the dog as well. Anywho, we need names. So get naming. The winner gets, umm, bragging rights. Yes, bragging rights! What better prize than that!

First up we have the male goat. He's mostly white with spots of black and tan.
Next up our female. She's mostly brown with a few white and tan spots.

Pat has suggested Johnny and June, and I've come up with Lucy and Linus, although I'm not sure if I should name anything ever again. With the exception of Tate and a handful of cows, everything I name dies.

Also, for those of you reading this on FB, I'm planning on stopping importing my blog to my notes. So if you would like to keep reading, just bookmark www.twopreemies.blogspot.com or add me to your google reader. I don't know if it's annoying to see my posts on FB all the time or not so I thought I'd just turn it off.

Thanks!

My New Do

I got my hair cut on Friday, complete with a new style. It's been probably 10 years since I've had a new style. At first I wasn't crazy about it, but after restyling it, I think I like it. Pat isn't crazy about it. It's too short for him, but frankly if he wanted a girl with long hair he shouldn't have married me. The last time I had long hair, I'm talking shoulder length, I was a freshman in high school. Not a good look for me. We also did family pics Friday evening, so I'm anxious to see how those turned out.

Almost Over

Only 3 hours remain until this horrid week is over. It started out ok, but has continually gotten worse. Tuesday I ended up with a migraine. Thursday I took Tate to the doctor, and if you read my previous post, you know that didn't go wonderfully. I also left my new migraine prescription in my shopping cart, luckily it was recovered and turned out to be the old prescription, not the new one. Anywho, I got home to find that Pat wasn't feeling well. Bad enough to go to the doctor the next day. Turns out he's probably dehydrated, something I've been telling him for a long time, that he needs to drink more water, less pop and beer. Friday went along without any major catastrophes, but today was the bottom. As the boys and I were finishing our chores this morning, we went to check on Benny and our birds and give Benny some more mineral oil to help him poop. Turned out the treatment was a day late and a dollar short. Poor Coley just doesn't understand and kept wanting to check on Benny "cuz he was sleeping". Try explaining to a 3 year old that his goat won't wake up. I was about in tears. It broke my heart trying to explain it to him. He loved chasing Benny around the goose pen. We are on the hunt for a new goat. I have one that I'm working on. Hopefully we can replace him soon. Talk about feeling like crappy mom of the year. I just killed my kids' birthday present! Ugh. Thank goodness this week is almost over!

Potty Training - Take III

Potty training was going very well. Last Thursday he was dry, all day! It went swiftly downhill after that. Apparently he does better on the road than at home. He does great if he has no bottoms on. He'll go by himself when he needs to. Put a pull-up on him, and he's wet in no time flat. I just hope he gets this figured out before fall or he's going to get very cold. We've only had one more poop mishap - on the playroom floor. Other than that, he's been doing better about going in the toilet. It's been very frustrating for me. I know he can do it so when he doesn't I just don't know what to do. I try to reward the good and ignore the bad, but at this point ignoring he wet diapers is getting much harder. We even tried the big bribe. He currently has a lego farm set on the dining room table that he can't touch until he stays dry in underwear all day. At this rate he'll be 12.

In other news, remember this picture? Oh who am I kidding. Everyone remembers the camel bite. Anywho, I submitted it to this website. I got an email back this morning saying they didn't want to use it on their website. They want to put it in their book! How funny is that? I haven't gotten any details yet, but I'll let you know if they accept it and use it. It still makes me laugh.

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I most certainly did not get car sick the morning of my sister's wedding on the way to the salon. I definitely didn't have to bolt from the chair to the bathroom before she finished my hair. Nope, not me. That, of course, didn't lead to me having to dart out of the ceremony into the church kitchen and then darting back in to walk back down the aisle. If I had, I would have been incredibly thankful for the conveniently located doors that made my bail out inconspicuous to most of the guests.

I also haven't been forcing my 3 year old to run around bottomless in attempts to potty train him. That most certainly didn't lead to a large poop on my dining room floor tonight. Nope, not here.

I also didn't go buy 3 bottles of wine to make sangria and then decide to have a glass when then motrin I gave my infant appeared to have no effect on his crying. I would never do such a thing.

I also didn't leave said infant crying in the living room so I could get my dairy computer work done for tomorrow. Nope, not me. My kids always come first.

I also didn't show my three year old how to use his new water syringe by unloading it on an unsuspecting cat because I didn't want to get wet. If I had, I would have chose an annoying barn cat, though.

Lastly, I, of course, washed out my infant's hair after he peed on himself this morning instead of wiping it on his jammies. I also didn't not give him a bath tonight because I was tired and figured we weren't going anywhere tomorrow anyway.

Thanks Dad!

I went to the doctor today. I've been having more frequent migraines and decided it was time I did something about it. Do you know how they prevent migraines? They put you on blood pressure meds. No problem right? Well, thanks to my wonderful genetics, I have low blood pressure. So if I appear dizzy, you'll know why. Looking forward to it! I guess we'll figure out the worse of 2 evils, migraines or dizziness!