I just finished reading a really interesting book about a girl named Farah Ahmedi.  She grew up in Afghanistan, and when she was only 7 years old, she stepped on a land mine and was almost killed.  She was one of the wounded children chosen to get medical care in Germany, so she had good medical care for 2 years, but it came with the price of loneliness because her family had to stay behind in Afghanistan, she didn’t speak German, and no one at the hospital spoke her language.  Her leg was amputated, and her other leg was rebuilt without a knee, leaving her unable to bend it.  When she returned to Afghanistan as a 9-year-old, the Taliban was starting to take over, and a rocket hit her house, killing her father and two sisters.  Her brothers were forced to try to flee to Pakistan in fear of being drafted or executed by the Taliban, and she hasn’t heard from them since.  Since she and her mother were the only members of her family left, they were forced to flee the Taliban also – we’ve all heard about how the Taliban don’t treat women very well, and women couldn’t even go out in public without men.  This was difficult for Farah and her mother since they didn’t have any men left in their family.  They spent 4 years as refugees in Pakistan until they were finally granted approval into the World Relief’s American Refugee program.  After the long process of applying and finally getting approved, they were waiting to leave for America when September 11, 2001 happened, and their trip was cancelled as no foreigners were being allowed into the country.  Within 6 months however, the program was reinstated, and they came to America.

The book chronicles all the adventures, trials, and tribulations it took for Farah to become the sucessful American citizen she is today.  It was a VERY interesting read; from the details of life in Afghanistan under the Taliban to the struggles of an Afgan widow and her daughter getting used to the American way of life.  In fact, they had been through so much, that when they got to America, they were certain that their American hosts were actually slave owners who were trying to imprison them.  It’s a wonderful story about the triumph of the human spirit, and I recommend the book to anyone who likes learning about different parts of the world, other cultures, or just likes reading a good non-fiction life story.  In fact, her book was published when she entered a Good Morning America contest and became a finalist.  I heard about it because Farah attended the rival high school to the one where I went, so for me, it was interesting to read about the area I grew up in as seen through the eyes of someone who had been through as much as Farah and was seeing the area for the first time as an immigrant.  Check it out!

CONGRATULATIONS to my sister in Illinois, who gave birth to a healthy 8 lb. 15 oz. baby boy today!!!  I can’t wait to see pictures of the little darling, and I will post them when I get them (HINT HINT – no, just kidding, I know you have much more important things to do right now then to worry about sending pictures)  I just wish I could hold him!  And Congratulations to Austin on becoming a big brother – it’s an important job buddy; I know you’ll be a great one!  Welcome, Ryan Timothy!

Other baby news – our kids’ babysitter’s cat had kittens the other day.  Look how unbelievably cute they are:

See if you can count ’em – makes a good picture puzzle, doesn’t it?  There are 6 – the little orange one kinda blends in with the towel – he’s unique!

My daughter’s teacher had her baby, and my two cousins also had their babies, which means 3 of my grandmother’s 4 expected great-grandchildren for this year are here already!  I am the last one standing 🙁

Seriously, I feel left out, being the only one left pregnant out of all the women I knew who were expecting.  I am ecstatic that all the babies are healthy and thriving though – that is truly something to be thankful for!  For the most part, I love being pregnant, though I have to say this one is the most difficult pregnancy yet in some ways.  Also the easiest in some ways too, so it’s not all bad…  But my feet are killing me constantly…  I feel like I can’t stand for more than 10-15 minutes at a time, and with a toddler and 2 other little kids to care for, that is a tough feeling to have.  Plus I’m exhausted much of the time, and have terrible heartburn a lot…  all this and 3 months to go, not to mention the fact that the weather is only getting nicer, then it will get really hot and then I’ll just be miserable.  I hate not having the energy or the desire to go outside to enjoy these nice days…  it makes me feel guilty, especially because it means my toddler can’t enjoy them with me.  Is it mean for her to be couped up in the house with me on gorgeous days like today?  She doesn’t seem to mind though, and we do play together lots while I’m sitting down, so it can’t be all bad…  I just tell myself that in August I will have much more energy and time to enjoy the weather.  It’s hard to imagine now, but some of the fatigue and aches and pains will lift, I HOPE!

For our date night tonight, we decided to attend the much hyped cooking show sponsered by our local newspaper.  Maybe that explains why it was so hyped right there – being sponsered by the newspaper = lots of free advertising, and since I read the paper every day, maybe it was drilled into my head that this thing would be fun.  Was I ever wrong.

It began when we arrived only 10 minutes before the show started, and every seat was full.  It was held in the high school gym, which means we now had to find seats in the bleachers and squeeze past everyone else – pregnancy bump and all.  I was so close to turning around and leaving right then and there; the fact that I didn’t was my second mistake after buying the tickets to attend the thing in the first place.  Apparently our local high school has no air conditioning, because the 1500 or so people who were crammed into the gym were all fanning themselves with their free cookbooks.  Which brings me to another reason why I thought this thing would be such great fun.  The tickets were $10 / person, then there were coupons in the paper for $3 off, which brings each ticket to $7.  They advertised a “bag full of samples, goodies, and free cookbooks” to every attendee, along with a chance to win lots of pretty cool door prizes.  The sample bag was alright – no complaints there.  The “choosing which wine with dinner” wheel made a great fan to combat the heat, I must say, and I’m not the only one who thought so – most of the 1500 sardines in attendence were using it as such.  But on the way into the show, apparently that’s when they handed out the doorprize entry blank and the free can of chili sauce, and somehow (maybe it was my panic when I saw the crowd we’d have to conquer to find a seat) I missed getting either handout.  So, here we were, sitting on the bleachers packed in like sardines in 100°+ heat, and I’ve just found a way to cut our chances of winning a doorprize in half.  Even though we were a little on the late side, that actually turned out to be a good thing because by the time we bumped and stumbled into our seats (ie, the square foot of space each person was allowed for their person, legs, knees, pregnancy bumps etc.), the “show” was ready to begin, thank goodness.  Except it became clear that once the show began, it was not going to pick up pace.  It was a woman on a stage making recipes (she was there to do 8 of them she said!) so far away that you couldn’t see anything she was doing.  Her “jokes” were lame, and she barely had a personality.  So now, this was hot, boring, uncomfortable for my aching body, and my chances of winning a cool grill are like 1 in 1500 instead of 2 in 1500?  Forget being polite or wasting money.  Our time is so much more important; especially with 3.5 kids.  We bumped and stumbled our way out of there, same way we got in, mumbled our apologies for stepping on people, and didn’t look back.  We fled the cooking show.

So that brings me to the Batman reference in the title of this post.  When we went to pick up the kids at the babysitter’s after the cooking show debacle, we went in her laundry room to check out the 2-day-old kittens…  all of a sudden, screams erupted.  I’m normally not a screamer, really more of a gasper when I get startled, but the babysitter and her daughter and my daughters were ahead of me in the laundry room and saw a bat.  Their screams made me scream – I’m not afraid of a little Ohio brown bat, I swear, but apparently screaming is contagious.  So both of our husbands come running, and hers goes for a broom.  Mine respects how sensitive I am about animals, so he asked for a bowl and was going to capture it.  So they open the door, only to find the mommy cat had beaten the babysitter’s husband to the murder of the bat.  She devoured it whole, and there was really nothing left for me to be sad about, so I pretended it didn’t happen, took pictures of the really cute kittens, and left.  What a night!

I am a current events junkie, so of course I’ve been following the recent story of the earthquake in southern Illinois.  This earthquake was pretty strong; so strong, that tremors were felt as far away as large cities like Chicago, Indianapolis, and even Atlanta, Georgia.

Another recent headline in the news lately is the rash of gun violence in the city of Chicago.  Seems the previous weekend saw 36 people shot in the city, 9 of them fatally.  Click here for that story.  Since they’re saying that the midwest basically has not stopped shaking since the the earthquake last Friday, let me offer up a possible explanation for this phenomena:  Shaken Gang Syndrome.

Sure, the gangs in Los Angeles can handle earthquakes without batting an eye, but it’s not something that people in the midwest have had to adjust to.  Maybe the instability of the earth’s crust contributes to people feeling emotionally unstable, and this is illustrated with rising violence and civil unrest.

All jokes aside, let’s hope this weekend’s skyrocketing violent crime rate was an isolated incident in Chicago.  The Chicago PD would like you to note that for the month of March, the violent crime rate was down by a whopping 1% compared to March 2007, so that is promising news!

Finally the snow has stopped (quick, where is some wood for knocking?!?  Our snowblower has been put away, which is enough of a jinx, but add a comment like the above, and I’m asking for trouble!), and the weather is finally being cooperative enough for some outdoor fun.  So this weekend had us taking in the first mini-golf game of the season with friends.  Unless, of course, you count the mini-golfing we did in Florida in January, but I don’t count that since in Florida the mini-golf is more like a distraction to the lizards hopping around the course and the captive alligators you can feed at our favorite mini-golf place in Orlando.

I did not do very well this weekend.  Of the four of us actually playing (the kids futzed about the course), I came in last.  I will blame it on my pregnancy bump – it’s getting quite large lately and is throwing off my balance, not to mention my stamina.  I was distracted by looking for a bench to sit on after every hole.  Yeah, that’s it, I can’t mini-golf while pregnant.  Nevermind all the practice I got on my computer this winter (see previous mini-golf posts of mine where I have links to (mostly) cool computer versions of mini-golf), I just can’t mini-golf while pregnant.  Oh, just kidding, I’ve done it before, it’s no big deal and not that much different, just gotta swing around the bump.  I just lost because I was rusty, and I didn’t take my time putting.  Besides that, my husband did extra well this time, and he usually comes in last, so last place had to go to someone.  I don’t really care if I win or lose, for me, it’s just about learning what the ball does in various situations, gaining that experience, and most importantly, having fun!  I did win the mini-bowling we played afterwards though…  I really want to get one of those for my basement.  I’ve always liked bowling, and here is a way the physically impaired (as I am for a few months here) can still enjoy participating in the sport.  Pipe dreams, of course…  if I had that kind of money or space in my basement, I could think of a dozen better things to put down there…  mostly animals…

But anyway, I looked for cool mini-golf shots on youtube, and I actually didn’t see any…  just a lot more people worse at mini-golf than I am who don’t even realize it.  But I did come across this pretty cool contraption at a mini-golf course in Colorado, check it out:

We stayed up late watching the Oscar winning movie, “No Country for Old Men” last night, so when the phone rang at 6 am this morning, my husband was overjoyed about the fog delay.  I did not hear the phone at 6, nor did I hear the follow-up call at 8 saying school was cancelled for the day.  I was up by 8:30, since that is the time we have our alarm set and my biological clock won’t let me sleep past then for fear the alarm won’t work and we’ll be late for school.  My husband was shutting off the alarm when I said, “We can’t sleep too long cuz Disney has a doctor appointment at 9:30.  Look at all those delays on the tv for Toledo.  Wonder how we got spared?”  Turns out, we did not, I just didn’t hear the phone ringing and Hubby was wondering why I was taking it so well that we couldn’t sleep in after all.  I don’t understand why it is that every time we have a doctor appointment scheduled for the morning, we have either a school delay or cancellation, meaning we can’t sleep in even if we wanted to.  And of course on these days, the kids always sleep in, whereas on the weekends, they’re up at their usual 7am wake-up-for-school time.  So now, they have yet ANOTHER day they have to make up in the summer, which brings them to July by now?  Dunno, I’ve lost track.

And today’s fog cancellation means we had to drag the entire family into the doctor’s office for our 18 month-old’s checkup – which did not go well.  Remember how I said the kids were going to sleep in today?  That means our 3-year-old, who is a stinker anyway, was not ready to get up, so she screamed from the time she was dragged out of bed until we got called into the doctor’s office.  So of course, the chain reaction was set into motion.  Seeing big sis so upset made Disney upset, and now she was screaming about everything the poor nurse and doctor were doing to her.  All painless stuff too that normally would not have been a problem – SCREAM, measure her head (46.7 cm), SCREAM, measure her length (32.5 in. – tall for her age), SCREAM, weigh her (22 lbs. 14 oz. – normal for her age, but a little on the skinny side because she is long), SCREAM, look into her ears, SCREAM, have her walk across the room to Mom and Dad…  well, actually, walk to big sis Taylor since she was upset with Mom and Dad for being accomplices to all the other horrors in the doctor’s office.  When it was finally over, she was better, and in the end, she didn’t want to leave because she was really happy with a toy they had in the waiting room she was playing with while I was making her next torture date, err appointment.  The good news is that Disney is exhaused from being so upset all morning, so I should get my nap today while she takes one…  hopefully.

Also, staying up late last night to watch the Oscar winning movie was regrettable.  I just didn’t get it.  I think I understood the movie, but not why it won 4 academy awards and got nominated for a bunch more.  I liked other Coen Brothers movies too – Fargo is really good, but this one was not very good in my opinion, and my husband agreed.  Just a story about a man who stumbles upon a crime scene and finds a ton of money, then he spends the rest of the movie trying to outrun the psychopath who is chasing him down for the money.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Tommy Lee Jones in this movie, because I didn’t know he was going to  be in it and I always enjoy his work – from Two-Face in the 3rd Batman movie, Batman Forever to Men in Black, to Volcano and The Fugitive, he’s a pretty good actor and always fun to watch – even in this movie, which I would officially classify as a waste of time.  Sure, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the other stinkers I’ve seen lately, like the Night Listener or Doomsday, the standard bad movies that I judge all bad movies by, but that’s only because it wasn’t as boring as the former and not as gory as the latter.  Academy award winning movies are always a hit-or-miss as far as I’m concerned.  I used to write them off, but when I started giving them a chance, I’ve actually enjoyed some, such as the aforementioned Fargo and As Good as it Gets, to name a few.  Now that I think of it, Coen brothers’ movies are kind of hit and miss also.  Ladykillers was just ok, Fargo was very good, Big Lebowski was average, I didn’t care much for O Brother Where Art Thou, and I’ll have to see Raising Arizona again since it’s been awhile, and I didn’t realize it was a Coen brothers movie.

I think I will skip the other Oscar winners from 2007 – seemed like a slow year.  I might be more open to nominees from other years past though…  a friend borrowed us Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic.  I’m not a huge Reese Witherspoon fan, but I do like Johnny Cash.  Been trying to get Hubby to watch it with me, though I’m as yet unsuccessful even though he admitted we should have watched it last night instead of No Country for Old Men.  Oh, well, now we have some Oscar-winning-film watching experience under our belt for future reference.  YES – the baby is down for a nap, think I’ll join her…  and a side effect of the fog day, actually a GOOD one – no need to wake from my nap by 3:30 to pick up kids!  Now if only the older 2 can settle down for an hour or more to give me peace and quiet…

Yesterday I did something I’ve never done before – I passed a 3 hour glucose challenge!  I haven’t had a gestational diabetes-free pregnancy since my first-born 8 ½ years ago!  It feels really good to know that I can eat whatever I want for the next few months without having to worry about pairing proteins with carbs and cutting out desserts; I can hardly believe it.  I don’t have to go and speak with the endocrinologist or the dietician, and I won’t be taking non-stress tests at the hospital.  Most importantly, I won’t have to inject my body with insulin – something with which my husband and I were not very comfortable anyway.  And since gestational diabetes often leads to large babies, I am curious to see what this one will weigh.  The previous 2 babies were both 8 lbs. 12 oz, and my first baby (no diabetes) was only 7 lbs. 2 oz.  Of course, she was a little bit early and is still pretty small for her age to this day.  But, I just wanted to share the news because I’m very excited that I have a few less things to worry about, and I know I had people waiting to hear the results of my test.

Took my 3-hour glucose “challenge” today, and since it was SO fun for me (sarcasm adundant), I thought I would spread some of the ‘cheer’ by giving you a run-down of what this medical test entails.

First, why do they call it a glucose challenge?  To provide extra motivation, maybe?  Whatever the reason, I think they should change the name because glucose challenge makes it sound like I was there to run a relay or something.  But the glucose challenge is quite the opposite.  It requires that you sit at the medical office for 3 hours and do nothing.  Literally.  Sure, you can read or sew or Sudoku, but you are not supposed to get out of your chair with the exception of donating a vial of blood every hour.  The test is given to pregnant women to determine whether or not they have gestational diabetes, which is when the pregnancy hormones block the body’s production of insulin, which will make blood sugar skyrocket and potentially lead to a large baby.  Since I’ve had the condition for 2 of my previous pregnancies, I just might be a glucose challenge expert by now.  My husband wanted to know why couldn’t I just skip the one hour test and go right for the 3 hour test since we both knew that I would fail it since I am craving sweets and I’ve failed my last two 1-hour tests.  (MAJOR chocolate malt craving the other night, by the way.  If I do have the diabetes, it will stink to have to fend off one of those cravings with sugar-free chocolate…  somehow it’s just not the same.)  The Dr. wasn’t down with skipping right to the 3 hour test though, so lucky me, I’ve had to do them both.

Sure enough, I failed my 1 hour, which is why I got to spend my whole day at the doctor’s office waiting to get poked with a needle today.  And that’s not even the funnest part.  They make you fast from 10pm the night before until whenever your test is over, which for me wasn’t until 1:30 this afternoon!  They were a little late on my last blood draw, and I was on the verge of wreaking havoc in the office when they finally called me in.  Luckily, my daughter had gone to school with the nurse’s daughter a few years ago, so she recognized me and noticed the desperate look in my eyes, otherwise I think they might have forgotten about me.  One more minute, and I was going to carry out my plan to go to my car and scavenge for crumbs my kids left behind on the road trip to Illinois.  Luckily, it didn’t come to that, but asking a pregnant lady to go without food for over 12 hours is a pretty brave thing to do!

I forgot to mention that for 3 days prior to the test, they put you on a special diet.  I was like, oh great, here we go, but when I got the diet paper home and looked at it, the diet actually turned out to be the best part!  For 3 days, I was under doctor’s orders to load up on carbs, eat anything I wanted, and to make sure that I ate dessert with both lunch and dinner.  No problem, mission accomplished!

And a final note, before I take a nap, since they literally drained the energy from my body today in 3 separate installments…  they have a new flavor of the glucose drink you have to drink.  It used to be just orange, which tasted like orange pop, but today I was offered a cola flavored one also.  So I chose the new one because, what the heck, you only live once, and I’ve had the orange one more than a few times by now.  Which brings me to a question I have:  if there is 50g of dextrose in these little drinks, why don’t they taste better?  It’s not like they taste bad (the orange ones anyway), but shouldn’t something that is basically liquid sugar taste a little better?  I can think of probably about 50 things that would taste much better and have lots of sugar in them.  Why don’t they let me binge on candy and desserts before the glucose test instead of downing that drink?  And if I do have gestational diabetes, is it really the best thing for my body to be ingesting all this sugar just for them to test me?  And what do they need a whole vial of blood for every hour?  I am beginning to feel like someone’s science project!  I guess doctors know best, even though sometimes it’s hard (downright impossible for people like my husband!) to put your trust in them.  But back to my point…  if you ever have to take this test, I would stay away from the cola flavored glucose drink.  It’s not very good, and every time I think about drinking it, I feel nauseous!  It reminds me of the ‘flat cola’ remedy my mom recommended one time when I was sick as a kid.  I felt like I was going to throw up, even though I hadn’t, so she had heard somewhere that I should drink flat cola.  We just happened to have some in the house, so I tried it, promptly vomited everything up, and couldn’t look at cola for months.  And I still remember it.  Sorry Mom…  that one just didn’t work 😉 

Came across a few really cute animal-themed emails lately, so I thought I’d share.  The first one is for people who don’t have a dog or just have a very disobedient one.  Enter a command in the text box and the cute doggie will do it.  Try ‘kiss’.

 [swf]https://www.idodogtricks.com/site_template_v10.swf[/swf]

Then there’s this video, which features the winning combo of a baby and a dog, awww…  Click here to see “Childproof Drawer”.

Finally, I got these really cute pictures in an email a few weeks ago…  Seems a mommy tiger lost her cubs and “adopted” these piglets to take care of.  See the ‘pork chops’:

I didn’t blog all weekend because we made a few-hundred-miles trek to the Chicago suburbs for my nephew’s 5th birthday party.  We stuffed ourselves silly over there because as much as we love where we live, the restaurant choice can grow kind of boring.  So, being in a different area had us stopping for food every chance we got, but by the end of the weekend, we were a wee bit regretful…  I think that midnight case of White Castles are what did us in.  Since there aren’t any White Castles near us, we had to stock up and buy a whole case since they reheat pretty well.  We stopped there on the way out of the area, and then we had to smell them all the way home – yuck.  They taste good but don’t smell so great, especially when it’s time for bed…  So, as you can see, we did fit in a bit of culture on our trip.  For those who aren’t familiar with White Castle, it’s a fast food chain found in the midwest that specializes in mini-hamburgers, also known as “sliders”.  They aren’t just mini-hamburgers, though, they’re steam-grilled, and they have a very unique taste…  not to mention an, ahem, interesting side effect when you feed them to pets and small children.  I will not elaborate; let’s just say that my kids really like them, but the next day our noses were paying for it.

We also found time to stop at an ethnic grocery store for something my husband has been looking for called Halva, which is a Middle Eastern dessert.  I had never tried it before, and I really like to try ethnic foods, so we picked some up.  It is pretty good!  The halva we got was actually from Macedonia, and though it tastes nothing like it, I would best describe its texture as that of the ‘astronaut’ ice cream.  You know, the freeze dried ice cream that they sell at space museums?

And to round out our cultural experience, my nephew had a pinata at his birthday party.  Pardon my spelling it wrong, I can’t find the special n with the tilday over it they use in the spanish alphabet.  So in my blog, it will be known as a pinata.  Just in case you are not familiar with what a pinata entails, check out Wikipedia’s explanation:  

A succession of blindfolded, stick-wielding children try to break the piñata in order to collect the sweets (traditionally fruit, such as sugarcane) and/or toys inside of it. It has been used for hundreds of years to celebrate special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas and Easter.

Seems that Wikipedia figured out how to do the tilday…  but anyway, yes you read that right – blindfolded, stick-wielding children!  Actually, it’s customary to use a baseball bat instead of a stick, yet oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever been part of a pinata party where a parent didn’t have to step in and break it open themselves – this one being no exception.  It went pretty well, though we did almost have a casualty – my nephew took his first whack at the pinata, and his dad had not cleared the area, so CRACK went the bat against the cell phone he was wearing…  but I guess all was well, especially since someone had talked them out of their original plan: giving a bunch of 5-year-olds an aluminum bat with which to whack at the pinata.  Thank goodness for the insight!  If you get a chance, you should check out the pinata scene in the movie Parenthood, it’s hilarious…  the kids at the party lose interest after not being able to get it open, so the scene cuts to Steve Martin beating the heck out of the thing as it lays on the floor.  Nothing like that at my nephew’s party, in fact, his pinata opened rather easily.  And when it did break open, there wasn’t the usual melee either…  the kids were actually quite orderly in picking up the pinata “guts”.  I was a little worried because the last time I was at a birthday party with a pinata, the kids all piled in a heap on top of each other, and the kid at the bottom ended up with a bloody lip.

So, overall, great weekend, even if it lacked sleep – lots of driving and we didn’t get home until 3:30 in the morning!  And I have a few weeks to decide whether or not we will be brave enough to attempt a pinata at my daughter’s 4th birthday party…  maybe that will be enough time for her to forget that her cousin had one…

One thing is for sure, if we have a pinata, we will not have an aluminum bat on the premises!