Another beautiful baby

Yesterday was a very exciting day! We had out ultrasound around 10am and the lady was great. She did everything I asked so that we wouldnt know the baby's gender untill the gender reveal party last night. I was so excited. Everyone was asked to wear a pink or blue shirt for their vote on the babies gender, 6 said a girl (myself included) and 2 a boy.  Turns out we are having another son! We are so excited! I was super surprised because I had been having dreams the past few weeks we were having a girl, even tho at the beginning I thought it was a boy. They say to go with your instincts lol! 

 our beautiful cake

 cutting the cake!

 you can see i was so suprised!

 our little man!

 our little man!

 I really love this one with him sucking his thumb!

another little prince to add to our family!!

my face! your face

Anyone that knows me can tell you since the time i was 11/12 I have struggled with acne. Its depressing to feel like i will be 90 one day and prolly still have acne. Its also a reason i feel like i have low self esteem. I really dont like going anywhere without makeup because of all the redness and scars and so on. I have more recently made it a point to go out with out make up on because I am trying to make myself more comfortable without make up. Although it doesnt help when ppl are like "gosh are your sick" or "whats wrong with your face?" I really hate those comments. What happened to if its not nice then dont say it? Anyways! Im writing this because as I have well established Im obsessed with pinterest. I found an amazing DIY face wash that I was actually really skeptical about at first. I mean come on did you read it? It told me to put MORE OIL on my face. I think its oily enough. Well I finally gave in and thought for a few bucks it cant hurt to try it, I mean I have tried everything. Ive tried no make up, mineral make up, organic make up, proactive, going to the dermatologist, bar soap, and pretty much every other the counter type facial cleaners there are. Nothing has ever worked. I will say depending on what makeups I use it may worsen the ance but its never really helped it go away. Well I am not on day 3 of trying the DIY face wash and I am loving it, my only hope is that it continues to work this well! I do still have acne that I had before I started using it, however when I wake up in the morning my face doesnt feel all oily and gross, it feels the same way as when i just washed it and got out of the shower. It was very strange the first time i did it i thought, boy im going to regret this but Im not. I just wanted to make a great recommendation.

Mmm purpley goodness :]

yesterday I made more progress in making my family eat healthier. I have recently been making freezer meals that are easy to make in the crock pot (inspired by pinterest of course lol) and what ill do is go get my groceries and then bring it home and chop up the veggies or fruits and put them along with the meat or spices into a gallon zip lock back and freeze it. that way when its time to cook all i do everyday is throw it in the crock pot! Prepping everything takes several hours but its well worth it on busy days and i always know there's something ready to make!

this is my freezer now

I will say something i have learned so far is that on the websites they tell you to lay them out flat, dont do it! it makes it harder to get the food out and then on top of that you have this big square that wont fit in your crock pot and its completely frozen. this freezer is to sessions of prep time. Most of the bottom half of the inside is for smoothies. Ive decided to try and lay off the coffee. For those of you who know me, you know this will be a huge challenge for me.i LOVE coffee. So to replace my coffee i bought some yummy herbal teas, and stuff for smoothies! This morning is my purple smoothie! Its pretty good, i dont really care for the seeds in it, i cant figure out if its from the blueberries or blackberries lol but its tasting more like banana. It has pomegranate juice, i cup each of strawberries, blackberries and blueberries, a half a banana and instead of ice like the recipe called for i used vanilla yogurt that i froze into little ice cube trays.All the recipes Ive been using i found thru pinterest so if you want to follow me there go ahead! 

it doesn't really look purple in this pic but my camera flash was really bright

Tzariel is enjoying himself one too!

On top of smoothies for breakfast we are also going to be trying to eat some whole grains, i got some bagels, oatmeal with flax seed and of course tzariel's favorite cheerios. He will prolly eat more of those then me lol. Then for lunch we are going to have salad with a little baked chicken with herbs and then dinners will of course be my crock pot meals. Ive also got to get a plan for exercising but i haven't figured it out yet. We are working on it one day at a time. I was excited because i think out of all the food i got yesterday just a few things were processed foods. I really think a change into a better diet will make a difference in us all. 

Also very exciting news is i found a doula! Her name is Nicole. she is very nice and I'm really excited to be working with her! Well Im sure I have a lot to do today so Im off for now!

what brought me here

I was only going to post once today. That was untill i read It's not your circum-decision today after seeing the post from Saving Our Sons on facebook. I wanted to share my feelings and thoughts and what brought me to my decision on not mutilating my sons genitals. I loved everything the author said on her post. I dont see how any parent can say its "their choice" to make for their children when its not their body. Circumcision is the only cosmetic surgery allowed to be performed on children without a medical necessity. I chose to keep my son intact, i believe it is his body to make that choice, when he is of legal consenting age. I remember when my mother had my brother, she didnt want to circumcised him. I was only 12 then. His father wanted it done (from what she told me anyways). She went ahead and sign the consent form. I remember in the days following his bloody diapers and scabs and crying almost every time he peed in his diaper and all the ointment she would have to put on him. Even then it broke my heart to see my newborn brother in pain. I truly believe this is what opened my eyes. When i got pregnant with Kari i was so thankful that she was a girl for this specific reason. Her father had alot of control over me then (thats another story) and I know now i prolly would have given in to his wishes to have it done had she been a boy. We had fought over it several times during my pregnancy prior to finding out her gender. I am so thankful for my husband now. B did want to have Tzariel circumcised. I never really had to fight him on it though. We did decide on the compromise of when he is old enough if he wants it done we will pay for it. I thought that was a good compromise. The only reason my husband wanted it done to my son was is that he isnt and he experiences phimosis, which is common is about 1-2% of men who are left intact, but can be treated without circumcision (we only recently found this out) and i have encouraged him to see a doctor about it if he isnt happy currently.I just knew i didnt want my son to go thru all that pain and then i watched a video on youtube of a circumcision. I cried so bad. It was horrible. So that made me start my research. I found out the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) doesnt even recommend it be done and that there is no medical reason for it to be done, and that your son could possible even DIE from the procedure (that was a big shock for me). This only affirmed me not wanting to have it done and Im so thankful i didnt. some people say its "cleaner" i sure dont see how. ive never had to apply any kid of medicine to my sons penis, i just clean it off just like you would his finger. Theres no reason for you to try and retract the foreskin it will do it on its own in time. I just hope others out there do the research and stand up for their sons. I know now I have to stand firm in my belief in keeping our children whole and we all as parents need to be responsible and stand up for all children. Boy or girl there is no reason for genital mutilation. Please parents consider what you are doing. There is so much more that I could go on about. I really recommend going to Peaceful Parenting there is so much on this site about circumcision and how its not necessary, and the function of foreskin (and yes it is there for many reasons it there) because really there is no decision to be made simply because its not yours to make.

my intact son Tzariel

still trying to catch up!

Ok so much has been going on! Ive always wanted to have a blog and now i have the time to do. lol i just have to make myself! its been a little over a week since i lost my job at tmobile. it was really just a blessing in disguise tho because the stress that job put on me had started to take a toll on my mind and body. Since i havent been working there i have felt so much better. I really thought i was just sick because of the pregnancy, however i now really feel like the majority of it was stress and with pregnancy intensifying it all just made it worse. I was really at the point i thought i might have a mental breakdown. I cant begin to even explain how much better i am doing now. Thankfully a week after i was fired, B got a call from a temp agency and was given a job. Its not much but at least its something! He is still going to keep looking for a better one tho, it has been hard adjusting to working 3rd shift for him. Im so proud of him tho hes really taking it very seriously. Ive also recently become OBSESSED, no seriously, obsessed with pinterest! Ive found so many ideas and recipes on there! So far only one thing ive tried on there has not worked, and it was a recipe me and amy did for homemade lip gloss. it was a big fail but we ended up making our own recipe very well! Im very excited because on 2/13/12 we get to find out what the baby is! We (and when i say we, this was mostly B) were inspired by Ashleys Green life blog to do a gender reveal party! We knew we wanted to do something different with finding out the baby's gender this time. So in case you haven't heard of a gender revel party ill clue you in! What you do is when you go to get your ultra sound you tell the tech not to tell you but to write it down and put in a sealed envelope and you take the envelope to your baker (in this cake my bff amy) and they will bake  a gender neutral cake on the outside and inside it will have either pink or blue for the gender. So we are going to invite my dad and donna, B's mom and larry and bobby and amy over for the little party that way we all find out together! Im so excited! Ill make sure and post some pics from the party. Well Im going to go for now ive got a mess to clean up from breakfast and a little man to put down for a nap- oh and before i forget Tzariel took his first steps last night! it was so exciting! he will only take a few at a time and then gets so excited he falls down lol!