When I head to bed at night I put my glasses within arm’s reach on a chair or the table next to my bed. I want to be able to roll over, reach out, and grab them at a moment’s notice.

This morning, when Fuller was banging on his door to be let out, I rolled over, reached out, and couldn’t put my hands on them. I kept groping around in the dark (mentally noting I need my bedside lamp back) but finally went to his room without the eyeglasses (freaking him out in the process). I quickly returned to my room to search, finding them on the chair, but slipped to the side, out of my reach.

It isn’t usually a good thing when I can’t find my glasses right away. I’ve stepped on them several times, if they have slide off the chair (or a dog knocked them off), and once broken the frames doing irreparable damage. And in today’s tight budget lifestyle, broken glasses are not a welcomed expense.

Fortunately, my friends have told me about Zenni Optical and their $8 eyeglasses. I checked them out and one the $8 page I saw glasses exactly like the plastic framed ones I already wear!

Zenni Optical has had some positive reviews and warnings from other users to make sure you have the exact prescription in order to get the right glasses. When the time comes for new glasses (which I hope won’t be for quite some time), I’ll definitely be checking them out.

Technorati Tags: eyeglasses, Zenni Optical, Clark Howard

Tomorrow is an exciting day for the family, since we will all troop into the doctor’s office together and see the ultrasound. We told Fuller we are going to see the baby on TV and his prompt reply was, “Is tomorrow February?” So glad he remembers what month the baby is expected.

He was a little upset we won’t have the baby to take home, but I explained the baby has to grow more before it can come home.

Fuller’s prediction (as of 9 a.m. today) is he will get a sister. Two days ago he was shouting “I don’t know!” when I asked him if he was going to have a brother or a sister*. I’m currently thinking it is a boy, based on recent dreams I have had. And Damon has predicted, reluctantly, we are having a girl.

Since the ebay auction will determine who gets to know for a month, I’m thinking we will have to wait until October to see who is right.

*While we plan on letting Fuller see the ultrasound, we don’t plan on letting him know if it is a boy or girl because we know he would probably tell. So, don’t go thinking you can bribe him later.

When I was pregnant with Fuller, I was unprepared for the questions many people would have about our choices as parents. The one that bugged me the most was “are you going to find out if it is a boy or girl?” It bugged me because at the time our answer was “I’m not sure.”

When the pregnancy began, Damon didn’t want to know and I did. I decided to let Damon decide. If he didn’t want to know, then we wouldn’t find out. And this really bothered many people, specifically some family members. Some family members even told us if we didn’t find out, then we should have the doctor write it down and seal it in an envelope to send to the family member. Then he/she would know, and we wouldn’t.

This angered me (or it could have been hormones), because really, it is only our business if we decide to find out the sex of our baby. Other people should just live with our decision. To me, it was up there with circumcision, breastfeeding, and diapering. We are the parents, we get to make the decisions.

On the day of the actual ultrasound, Damon decided he did want to find out. And Fuller, he decided to be uncooperative. We had several ultrasounds during the pregnancy and we were unsuccessful in determining the gender.

This led to frustration from others. We got accused of knowing and not telling several times. (Just because I wear a pink dress or blouse to my baby shower does not mean I know I’m having a girl!) Someone accused my doctor of not being very good.

When Fuller was born, it was such a surprise to me how nice of a surprise it was find out he was a boy seconds after he arrived. We all had to wait the almost 40 weeks and nothing awful happened. No one died because they didn’t know if our kid was a boy or girl before he arrived. It wasn’t horrible to have to return any gender specific stuff we had (which really wasn’t a lot).

Well, we are thrilled to be expecting our second child in February. I have been grinning and bearing it when people ask if we are going to find out the baby’s sex. And just like last time, I tell them “I don’t know.” Because this time, I don’t care and Damon does. It was a nice surprise last time and I thought maybe we could be surprised again. But, Damon really wants to know, even after I expressed my discomfort with with what I’m sure we’ll have to deal with (from family) on the day of the ultrasound.

And that is when my husband’s brilliance kicked in.

Next Tuesday, September 23rd, we will have the ultrasound and hopefully find out the sex of our baby. But, we are not going to tell anyone except the winner of this ebay auction.

If you win the auction, then you will be the first and only other person to know if we are having a boy or a girl. You can decide what you want to do with this information… because we will not tell another soul for a whole month. If you win the auction and decide to tell others, then it is your right. If you win the auction and decide to savor it for thirty days, then it is your right. We will keep our lips (and blogs) zipped!

Please note: this isn’t about the money. (it isn’t? - dword) Any money from this auction will be used to buy baby stuff and/ or start his/ her college fund. This auction is about our power (bwah-ha-ha!) and hoping people will understand we are the parents and this is our decision. Maybe I have some residual anger from my pregnancy with Fuller. But mainly we thought it would be fun. For us at least.

If no one bids, then we will still hold on to the information for one month. In the event that next Tuesday’s ultrasound is like the ones we had with Fuller, then the winner of the auction will be the first one we call after the baby is born. If we do find out the gender at a later date, the winner will be the first to know.

Groups of people are welcome to get together to bid… but we will only tell the winning ebay account the baby’s sex.

Serious bids only, please!

Technorati Tags: ebay, baby’s sex, pregnancy, family issues

Last September I spent a Saturday walking in the memory of my Grandfather. He died after several years with Alzheimer’s. It was a memorable experience and I hope to do it again someday. I’m not doing it this year because of travel and pregnancy. But, just because I’m not walking doesn’t mean I wouldn’t encourage you to do it too.

There were many, many people at the Chattanooga-area walk last year, several teams of people from various health organizations and churches, even one team of family members all walking for their grandma. I was in the minority because I walked by myself, not with a team, and I admit, I kind of felt lonely.

The teams in the walk were cheering each other on, some had chants. Others were dressed up in some face paint and feather boas, sending team spirit through the crowd. It looked like they were really having fun!

It isn’t hard to get started, just head over to the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk website and sign up. Start asking friends and family for donations (they even give you email forms and form letters) to support you in your efforts. You can create a team and get more people involved (recommended team size is about 10 people). The website is full of great resources on starting a team and fund raising, so make sure you give it a good look over.

The day of the walk is a lot of fun. UTC sends over a group of sorority girls who lead every one in a pep rally. Someone from Jazzercise was there to loosen us up, and then walking was super easy, over the walking bridge and back twice. This year the walk starts at AT&T field, so the walking might be a bit different. Still a mile, but up on that big hill! Should be a lot of fun.

If you are in the Chattanooga area and plan on joining people in moving to help end Alzheimer’s please let me know in the comment section!

Technorati Tags: Alzheimer’s Memory Walk, Chattanooga Memory Walk, Alzheimer’s Association

Secrets aren’t hard for me to keep. Unless it is something about me, myself, and I. I want to tell everyone every little detail. Maybe that is why blogging is such fun for me, because I just want to spill it all.

And then again, when I look over the archives of my blogs I see big spaces where details of our lives haven’t been splashed over the internet. Believe it or not, our family blog isn’t a true tell all because we simply don’t tell all.

Then when something happens we want to blog about but have to wait.. well, it makes it harder to write about because it seems like it happened so long ago. In fact we are six weeks passed when we found out and yet I have no real way of poetically announcing I am nine weeks pregnant.

Oh wait. I think I just did it.

It has been difficult to keep the secret, especially since we were surrounded by so much family on our vacation. But we prefer not to raise too many hopes and wait until we hear the heartbeat. And Tuesday morning we went to the doctor to check out the little one I carry.

It turned into a scary ultrasound because the doctor could not find the baby. He finally found it to the side and we all started thinking it was ectopic. We went to a hi-res ultrasound (thank you modern medicine) and learned I have tilting uterus and the baby (with very strong heartbeat) was in utero. Exactly where he/she should be!

I had to wait share the news here because really we prefer friends and family find out from us and not the blog. And today Damon shared the news with our church family (complete with football analogy and loud “Yahoo!”), so really how could I not blog about it now?

I have the journal entries from when I was pregnant with Fuller and I have been looking over them to remind myself of what I was thinking then…

We got our first glimpse of you on Monday afternoon and as your Daddy said, “It was historic.”

You are so cute with your little round shape that resembles the blob of Jello that fell on the counter top this morning. And your heartbeat was very… loud, I guess. It was 128 beats per minute. It has to get up to about 140, so start doing jumping jacks or something. That will get your heart rate up in no time.

Since we had a hi-res ultrasound, Baby Two looks more like a baby than a blob of jello. And it was nice to hear his/her heartbeat was perfect instead of making us jumpy like Fuller did. However, taking up shop on the side of my uterus and hiding wasn’t a great way to start the parent-child relationship, so I guess we have room to improve.

The countdown is on… February isn’t that far away.

Huggies sent us some of their Cleanteam products to use and review. When Fuller saw the shampoo, hand soap, and flushable wipes, he figured they were for him because of the illustrated characters on the packaging. And since he was claiming them as his own (holding the shampoo with a death grip) I took advantage of the situation and quickly talked him into taking a bath.

Cleanteam Extra Conditioning Shampoo

Fuller still gets a bath with us washing his hair and dumping water over his head for rinsing. We always use the shampoo to make bubbles in the bath water, since it seems to help entice Fuller to actually get into the bathtub.

This is where my first and only complaint of the Extra Condition Shampoo comes in: no where on the front of the bottle does it say “Tear-free.” If I had been shopping for shampoo for Fuller, I never would have picked up this shampoo.

We had a bad experience using real bubble bath and dumping water on Fuller’s head. The shampoo was tear-free but the bubble bath wasn’t. And Fuller was in a lot of pain.

A close look at the back of the bottle before dumping shampoo into the bathwater told me it was “tear-free.” It was in the middle of a paragraph and without a special graphic, but it made me feel safe.

Using the extra conditioning shampoo was pretty normal, except Fuller was into the spirit of getting clean and didn’t freak out and cry when washing his hair. It smelled great, left Fuller’s hair feeling soft, and rinsed out quickly. Maybe this stuff is magic!

Cleanteam Hand Soap

Fuller immediately knew something was special about this soap dispenser. And it wasn’t just that the pump looked like a dinosaur head. When you dispense the soap, the dino-head starts to flash for 20 seconds.

According to the side of the bottle, you pump the soap, rub your hands as long as the dino-head is flashing, and then rinse off the soap.

My son is three and the concept was immediately grasped. Once I explained it. Except he just wanted to watch the light flash instead of use the time wisely and actually rub the soap all over his hands. (And in case you are wondering, 20 seconds is the same amount of time it takes to sing “rub, rub, rub, rub, rubrub” to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”) But again, he is three. Flashing objects distract all three year olds.

We have been using Squid Soap to help Fuller learn how to properly wash his hands. When you press the pump, an ink pad on top will put a red dot on your hand. The idea is your hands are clean when the red dot disappears. Except the idea of making the red dot disappear is a bit much for him. He just likes putting the ink all over his hands. And chest. And arms. And sometimes his cheeks.

The Cleanteam Hand Soap is a winner over Squid Soap. No messy ink, flashing lights, and a valuable teaching tool in hygiene.

Cleanteam Flushable Moist Wipes

There will be no picture or video of my son using this product, I hope you don’t mind.

It’s hard to get descriptive with wipes. They are wet, they smell ok, and flush just fine. These wipes didn’t instantly make Fuller able to wipe himself. I’m still needed in that department. But maybe when Fuller is older and more coordinated, these wipes will help.

I can’t really compare these flushable wipes to any others because the others we have used were used as regular wipes, not in potty training. (They were gifts.)

Thanks to Huggies for sending these Cleanteam products. Fuller is cleaner for it (though he could use another bath) and I think we have reinforced the foundation for good personal hygiene.

Technorati Tags: Huggies, Cleanteam, shampoo, hand soap, flushable wipes, product review