Open Book Time

Sometimes, I wonder about those doctor people I go to...
But then I remember that my dad is a doctor and works hard to give information to help his patients and I realize that my doctors are probably just trying to do the same. At least, I hope they are.
That doesn't mean they are always going to be right, though.
Remember the saying, "Mother knows best"? We make decisions for our children based on their best interest and I think we do a darn good job of it. Two things I'd like to point out regarding this saying.
#1: If mothers know best, isn't it also true that we as adults should know what's best for ourselves and be capable of making decisions that will help our bodies? I had a dilemma at the doctor's office today where the obgyn I was seeing gave me almost opposite information than my other obgyn (Yes, I've been cheating and seeing two of them.). I was a bit confused. "What's that you say, doctor? Clomid has a chance of giving me ovarian cancer but I shouldn't worry about that and should take it for more than 6 months?" Hmm... I know my doctors are doing their best to help me get pregnant. I know they want to be able to tell me, "That urine sample this time came back positive for pregnancy!". I absolutely know that they both care about me as their patient. But what I don't know is which doctor is right. And what I've decided is that neither of them is right or wrong and that I am going to prayerfully decide what happens next for us. I'm almost positive I've made my decision already but that prayer aspect hasn't been attempted yet and I need some time to decide.
So that brings me to #2: If mothers know best and I think I know best for myself, wouldn't it be true that my Heavenly Father REALLY knows what's best for me? I think so! Even though it's hard not being pregnant and it's hard to not be done with school and it's hard to have some of the other trials that we've face, my Heavenly Father gives me those trials to make me stronger and as far as a baby goes, maybe it isn't what's best for me right now. And as far as living with that answer, I'm still alive, aren't I? And I'm still capable of being happy.

I'm also lucky that none of us have to do this alone. I have my husband, I have my two kids, my kids have each other, and my husband has all of us! Oh how glad I am that my kids have each other.

And that's how Suze sees it.

PS: I may or may not let you know what I decide, when I decide it. I know I'm pretty much an open book and I honestly don't mind that. Hope I'm not weirding anybody out with my "open-book-ness" (Yes, that is now a word.).

:)

My Organizing Vision

I had a vision this morning and decided to go for it. And no, not the spiritual kind of vision but an organizing vision. Wait, you don't have those? {I'm kinda weird.}

You see, that darn linen closet in my little house is stocked high with...well...linens. :) And we hardly touch some of them. So I went through and neatly folded everything, got rid of some things, and made almost an entire shelf clear. And since we don't have a pantry, I decided that would be a great place for our canned foods, pastas and some other boxed foods. And from there a rippling effect occured. I had a completely empy cabinet in my kitchen (Gasp!) and decided it was time for my "counter food" to go!This is what I call "counter food". A while ago (maybe 6 or 9 months ago), I had a great idea to put these baskets on my counter so they could hold certain snacks and foods that we didn't have space for anywhere else. Well, as you can see, that counter just sort of became piled with food and has been driving me nuts. So I reorganized the bins (salty snacks, candy/sweet snacks, drink mixes/popcorn, and nuts/oatmeal) and they fit perfectly into the cabinet. And because all of the food is in bins, I can easily grab one out when the kids want a certain kind of snack. And look at my kitchen!!!!!!!!!! CLEAN! I may actually cook in there once in a while now. :)

But this wasn't it for my awesome, organizing day. My sweet, sweet mother had called to ask if she could come take my kids to the park and when she arrived, the kids ran out back to play and she noticed I had a bazillion boxes that needed to be cut down and put in the recycle bin...so she and the kids had fun doing that for a while so I could finish up my inside organizing. Isn't she just awesome??? Then they left for the park and I got to finish up more cleaning. I even took a break and snuck outside to the trampoline so I could spy on them at the park. :) Do you see them under the ramada?How about now? :)

I am so thankful to have a mother who is always willing to help me out and I'm also thankful for the energy I had to get some projects done! I've been feeling sick and exhausted lately and I love days where I feel able to get off the couch and do something! :)

And that's how Suze organizes!

Potty Training with Fire

My son is one super awesome kid. Seriously. Not only can he potty train like a champ, he can save our house from burning down. How, you ask?Well, let me tell you!
Around 4pm today, I noticed my champion potty trainer had had a small accident in his underwear so I sent him to the bathroom and I went to grab him some underwear from the dryer.
Upon opening the dryer, I noticed FLAMES in the back so I yelled "Fire!" (so Boss would know to come running) and quickly got all of the clothes out of the dryer (Not a single piece of clothing was burned. Booyah!).
Boss quickly unhooked the dryer and we took it out back...you know, just in case it blew up or something. :)
The smell/smoke in the laundry room seemed to get worse and Boss was worried that the fire was somewhere in the walls but after much checking, a trip to the attic, and a couple of trips around the house, we concluded that there was no more fire. Phew! The smell ended up going away after a while so we definitely feel like we are in the clear for our house being safe.
Double phew!
After all of the excitement was over, I decided my little boy is a superstar. This kid that had 3 accidents the first day and then NONE the next 2 days (Yesterday was a fluke and he had 4 accidents.) decided to have an accident at 4pm when I needed to check that dryer. Otherwise, the whole thing could've blown up. And that's not me being sarcastic.
So do I still think my son is a pro potty trainer? YES!
And am I seriously so so so so SO glad that he peed his pants this afternoon? TRIPLE YES!

Thank you, super awesome son of mine. Feel free to have more accidents anytime you need to tell me there's a fire in the house. :)

And that's how Suze sees it.

Infertility

I'm not sure if you've noticed but I've tried to keep my infertility posts to a minimum these past couple of months. But once in a while, I need a break from that break because I need my blog for these things.
For some reason, I knew in my mind that this would be the month we would get pregnant. I wanted so badly to make it so that all of my sisters and I would have babies in 2012. I know I shouldn't compare and I actually feel like I do pretty well with that but for some reason, I was really set on this month.
So when the results from my ob came back negative, I was crushed. Worse than ever before. I cried a lot that afternoon and night and have been kind of a mess since then. The 'Why's" came rushing through my brain and I had periods of anger. It felt like the Month 1 fail all over again.
As I reread through that first months blog post of our failed attempt at fertility, I realized we are nearing the end of a road. I remember Boss telling me that if the fertility didn't work, we would need to make some hard decisions. And here it is, not working.
March was our 12th month. A whole year. A WHOLE YEAR. It's hard to grasp the fact that we have been trying to have a baby that long. I honestly just never thought we would get to this point. Because I was told by someone that it wasn't "infertility" until we hit the year mark. And here we are, big sign hanging over us that reads "INFERTILITY"!
I'm not sure how much longer we will decide to keep trying for Baby # 3. Honestly, I'm not sure how much more my heart can take right now. I have too many decisions to make and sometimes, I wish I could not be the adult for a day.
I want to rush to my daddy and snuggle up in his arms, knowing that everything is going to be ok. I want someone else to decide what road we take next. I want the peace I had 3 weeks ago.
I know I'll find it again but it hurts right now.
I told Boss the day we found out we were not expecting that I just have tunnel vision for a few days. Pretty soon, I'll be over it and be able to accept my challenge again but for a few days after hearing this sad news, my outlook is not as positive.
I promise I'll bounce back. I promise I am thankful. And I promise we will make the best decision that we know how for our family. I just wish I knew what that decision was right now.

Then again, I also wish I was cuddling a newborn baby right now.

PCOS is hard. Infertility is hard. But I can BEAT this. And someday, I'll see the bigger picture, smile, and realize that this really was all for the best.

But today...tunnel vision.

And that's how Suze sees it.

Proud Mommy Moment: Potty Training, Round 2

Remember when I swore I would not potty train my son until he had hit 3 years old?
Remember how I even tried it for a day two months ago and I gave up because want it or not, he was not ready?
Well, ladies and gents, he is ready now! And I'm in disbelief at how well he is doing.
For the past couple of months, my son has been using the potty once in a while just randomly to pee. Since he was so comfortable with the potty, this experience has been SO different from Petey's. The first day of her potty training, we had to teach her it wasn't scary to use the potty and how to feel when her body needed to go. But my little man already knows all of that!So two days ago, around 3 or 4pm, I bought that little boy some Thomas the Train underwear, told him to keep them dry, and we set off. He ended up having one accident that night before bed but used the potty three times!

Then came yesterday. It seemed like his sticker chart blew up with stickers! He went 14 times and had 3 accidents. Might I mention that his sister also had 3 accidents yesterday? "sigh"

The day we decided potty training was a GO, I researched tips online and the main thing I wanted to do differently was not to tell him when to go use the bathroom. When we potty trained Petey, we asked her to go about every half hour and I don't think she ever really learned how to listen to her body. So even though I was expecting MANY accidents from him, I decided to let him decide when he needed to go potty. And he ended up with less accidents than I expected!!!

Another thing I changed was not giving out candy for using the potty. Petey stopped using the potty as soon as we stopped giving her candy; hence the sticker chart with Spidey. :) Heck, I'll keep giving him stickers til he's 12 if that's what he wants but we are not giving out candy.

I am proud of my little man and the things he's accomplished. I am praying that the magic of potty training does not wear off with him like it did with Petey because I know it'll be tough if he's having as many accidents s she did that first YEAR. Here's to hoping!

And here's to proud mommy moments with Emmy, whom I'm linking up with today! :)

Carlsbad 2012: Part 2

I have put the rest of the pictures into this part2!!! I apologize for the length of the post but I just wanted to get this finished! On the same day as Legoland, we also went to the aquarium next door. When you first walk in, there is a little slide. Since most of the adults headed to the bathroom for a minute, my dad and I stayed with the kids and let them go down the slide probably 50 times. Then it was time to go see some sea animals! That is a crab in that picture!!!! I have never seen one that huge before and it was so creepy to me. Spidey got to touch a starfish with Boss...Petey refused to get her hands near the thing. :)We stayed by this wall for a while. There were sting rays, sharks, and all sorts of fish swimming in there and the kids loved looking at everything. The kids staring at some HUGE fish in one of the pools. Here is our family picture from the outside of the aquarium/Legoland. I wanted to document that we had, in fact, worn matching shirts! I was so happy when Boss agreed to my plan since we all own these Sun Devil shirts. :) After that, we had dinner at Olive Garden.While waiting for our seats, Grandpa was teaching the 2 year olds a lesson on sharing. :) They each wanted to hold the buzzer that would tell us it was our turn to be seated. That night, we walked to the beach to see another sunset. It was beautiful! I love that top picture of Jp and K Bear. It is so precious. The next morning, I got some silly pictures of my kids holding Baby Ellie. She is such a sweet little thing and my kids loved being around her.
It's so funny how different genders are, even at a young age. Both of my kids got to witness on this trip how Ellie is fed and their reactions were so different. Petey watched my sister feed Ellie and kept saying, "That's so sweet and so beautiful." but when Spidey walked in the room, he looked at my sister in curiosity and then said, "Go put a sweater on!" It was hilarious!!!!!! That morning, we all went to the beach together, with NO intentions of getting very wet. WAell, my little boy was adament and made sure to get himself soaked multiple times while the rest of us just put our feet in the water. Petey's bathing suit is seriously adorable and it would be much better if the bottoms weren't so darn low!!! Mix that with them not completely fitting yet and we saw a lot of crack that morning. :) After wer were done at the beach, both kids needed to wash the sand off in the cold outside shower. Well, since we hadn't planned on getting wet, we hadn't brought towels and it was windy. Both kids freaked out when we were showering them off and we found ways to get them rapped up for the walk back to the condo. You couldn't see either of their faces the whole walk back. :)I did a lot of snuggling this trip which was one of my favorite things. If I can't be the momma to a small baby right now, I sure as heck am going to make a great aunt to the small babies that are in our family right now. Spidey was such a little silly boy and enjoyed many rides like this one on various family member's legs. :)
Tuesday night, we drove Boss to the airport so he didn't miss too much school. His spring break is this week so we were glad he got to come for a couple of days with us. I was really sad to see him go but everyone helpd out so much with my kids. The next day, we went to the Flower Fields in Carlsbad. It was such a beautiful thing! We took a tractor ride all around the fields and got out to take some pictures with the fields of flowers. Then we stopped and had a picnic outside. My boy is a master at getting messy! At the Flower Fields, they had a playground with these old play places that my mom says were transported from another city. She said as a child she used to play on these same play sets! (My mom was raised in San Diego.)Thursday, we headed to Balboa Park in San Diego. While waiting for my mom to pick up my dad and brother from the train station (they traveled to San Diego that way because my brother loves the train so much and because it meant less cars had to drive to San Diego.), we played at this outside theater where my mom had her high school graduation. My adorable little Spidey proudly sang his ABC's on that stage for us and Petey danced around. It was really fun for the kids. :)Seriously, it seems impossible for me to keep my boy's face clean. He is such a cutie but that darn messy face!!! While in Balboa Park, we went to a naturaly history museum and saw a lot of cool things. The kids experienced their first 3D movie about sharks and Petey was hilarious and kept swatting at the screen because she thought the fish were right in front of her face. :)It was quite entertaing.
Friday, we headed to a local park in Carlsbad to let the kids play. Poor Spidey fell and got the wind knocked out of him but luckily, Grandma was there to cuddle him for a while. I was so surprised that Spidey made it to the top of the rock wall. Both of the kids loved that and the little blue toy that spun around in circles. I love going to new parks to see the new creative things people come up with. That night while I was out taking family pictures for my sister, Petey and Grandma made homemade pizzas. My girly put all of the toppings on herself and was so proud of her creations. And the pizzas were delicious!
On Saturday ar ound 1pm, we started the drive back to Arizona. Of course, it was pouring rain and I was by myself in a car with two kids. Lucky for me, my little brother decided to ride with me and he was such a huge help! The kids fell asleep pretty fast after we left which I was grateful for. I could hardly see the road between the fog and the rain and I sort of freaked out a lot during the ride home. My mom followed her gps and we ended up taking some crazy way that winded down a mountain with really shapr turns.
As you may or may not know, my poor little girly gets carseat easily. Luckily, we had packed towels and a trash bag just in case she got sick so I wrapped the towels around her body just in case. More luckily, she never did end up getting sick. But she cried a lot on the way home and kept saying she was going to throw up and didn't feel good. I felt so bad for her! A couple of hours into our trip, we came up to stopped traffic and after seeing a helicopter land a mile ahead of us, realized there had been a car accident. It was crazy and must've been blocking both lanes of traffic because we were literally stopped with our cars turned off and people were just walking around outside their cars. Petey slept through the whole thing but I took that opportunity to get Spidey out for a bit since he was getting tired of sitting. Here is our car stopped on the highway. Such a weird feeling! After about 40 minutes, we started to go again but that didn't end our bad driving experiences. It started to rain again PLUS it had gotten dark. Needless to say, I cried a little, got upset, and even called my mom to yell at her for not going slower. Dont worry, I've apologized for that. :) My windshield wipers were breaking and it was SO hard to see the road. I was REALLY glad when we finally made it home, 9 hours after leaving (It's supposed to be a 6 hour drive.).

We had such a great time and are so thankful to my parents for helping us make such wonderful memories as a family.

And that's how Suze sees it. c

Carlsbad 2012: Part 1

Last week, my awesome parents took us on a trip to Carlsbad for spring break. Since I took 253 pictures, I'll be splitting our vacation into a couple of posts (Remember our last trip to Carlsbad in July? It took 5 posts.). Because my parents left a few days before we did, we drove my 2 younger siblings up with us. We stopped at Burger King on the way and the kids had a lot of fun. I love the biggest picture int hat collage. Spidey really loves my little sister and seems to have a connection with her. It's really sweet. I also had to laugh because halfway there, Spidey asked if he could play with Petey's Ariel barbie and because we wanted him to stay happy, I let him. Such a funny boy.
The drive there was pretty eventless. Petey got restless and asked for her favorite song Dynamite (by Taoi Cruz) so I turned it on my iPod and put it on repeat. She literally listened to it for an hour. When we got there, Grandpa pulled the kids around on this cart thing after he got all the groceries inside.
Later that day, my sister and her cute family arrived. My kids were SO excited to see K Bear. And they all had on ASU jammies for bed time. Though we didn't plan that, we did plan a couple of matching outfits that week for our kiddos...because we are weird like that. :)
The next day was Sunday and we all went to church that morning. This was our biggest "planned matching" day. :) My sister couldn't resist buying Petey a matching dress with her daughter Ellie (early birthday present for my girly, she said. :) and the boys already had these matching shirts. So cute! Petey requested a picture with her Uncle Jp, hence the bottom left picture. :)Jp and Boss played eachother in Chess a couple of times, despite both having kids coming and going from their laps. :) Isn't she adorable??? I love my Ellie girl and am so glad I have another niece to spoil. Petey loves playing with Andrea's hair since it is longer than mine and Andrea loves it too. That night, we all walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was beautiful! The next morning, my parents surprised us and we all went to Legoland. Petey was beyond excited to ride rides and see the fishies (we also went to the aquarium...which you'll read about in the next post.).
Can I also just say how much I love my stroller? I know, random, but I really do! It os the lightest, easiest stroller I've ever had and is tiny for a double stroller. It's a Joovy sit'n'stand, if you were wondering. :) The first ride we enjoyed was a slow boat ride that had a bunch of characters (made out of legoes) from popular stories. This ride actually scared Petey the most since there were Ogres and things that popped out of the water. The next ride we went on was a pedaling ride that went over the water. We thought all of the kids would be able to go on it but after waiting in line (The handicap line, since we had my brother and sister with us:), Spidey was turned away for being too short. That little boy screamed and was so angry he couldn't get on. It made me so sad. But Petey and I had a fun time, even though I didn't realize how tricky it would be to pedal with a boot on. The kids had a fun time seeing all of the Legos everywhere. They played on this cars for a while. Spidey was hilarious. He wanted to build with the Legos and tried SO hard to break them. Here he is kicking the girl made out of Legos. :) He tried hard but she never broke. The next ride (and first ride for Bubs) was a cute helicopter ride that we controlled ourselves with levers to go up/down and left/right. Spidey waited a while in this line and I was so nervous that he wouldn't be tall enough again. Of course, his cousin who is younger had no problem getting on but Spidey didn't quite measure up. Luckily, the guy was really nice and told me to push Spidey's chin up so he'd be tall enough and he let us on the ride. :) Can you tell my boy was excited?
While we waited for the ride to start, he held his cheeks in his hands and looked so bored. It was adorable. Spidey's favorite ride was this little train that just went around in a circle two times. We went on it a couple of times because I wasn't sure how many more rides he'd be tall enough to go on. :)They also had a huge playground. Spidey loved playing and running aroundand all the kids loved building blocks with Uncle Jp. Petey had two favorite rides. This was the first one. :) I couldn't believe she was brave enough to do this by herself but she was adamant and though we lied about her age to get her on it (she's only 2 months away from being 4!), she loved it! The horse goes up and down a bit and it goes around this track. My little brother did it as well and they both loved it. The big kids (Boss, Jp, and Wilbur-Force) went on this crazy boat ride that went back and forth and spun around. The rest of us had a fun time watching them. :)I love my silly little family. Petey had fun taking silly pictures here and Spidey was chillin' in the stroller, with his feet up. The last two rides of the day for us were these ones. Petey and I had fun shooting lasers in the Indiana Jones ride and though they hd let Spidey on another ride that had this same height limit, this guy wasn't as nice and turned my little shorty away. :( Again, melt down ensued and my Spidey was left to sit in the stroller and eat popcorn. The last ride Petey and I went on is in the above collage and it was BY FAR, her favorite. She kept begging to go on it but I thought she would freak out because it goes up high and then drops you over and over again. But I was wrong! She giggled the entire time and wanted to get right back on it. Unfortunatly, we didn't have any time but I am glad she got to do it once.

So that was the first day and a half of our trip. Stay tuned for the other parts. :)