OH BABY!

We have scheduled our ultrasound for Monday May 11th! So brace yourselves for the new Petersen (boy or girl)! Here are some ramblings from my kiddo's at school after I told them that my husband and I are going to have a baby in Oct.

The remarks:

"If it's a girl, can my brother marry her cause ......he drives me crazy!!!"

"Are you going to name him after me!!"

Between two students..guess which one rooted for what... "I think it's a boy," said one "Well, it's a girl!" said the other.

A parent emailed me this, "I hear you are pregnant congrats! My kid talks non-stop about it! I asked him if you had a baby-bump and he said, 'No, cause she has to get married again and THEN she will have a baby-bump."

My other student asked me today while I was passing out papers; "Mrs. Petersen.. Do you remember that YOU'RE pregnant?" She looked concerned as she looked at the 5 papers and then back at me.

"Can I stay in 2nd grade next year so I can see the baby?"

I further explained that this is my last year here. The remark from a student who also goes to our church. "Are you going to QUIT church too?"

My all time favorite:

"Mrs. PETERSEN!! (jumping up and down with a huge smile) "You're REPRODUCING!!!!" (more jumping and smiling).

I'll add more, there seems to be something new almost every day! If you have a rambling from a kiddo, I'd love to hear it!


On a different but good note. I was sent an article today from a kind co-worker about morning sickness. It's 18 weeks and counting and still sick. So to all of the women out there who have lived through it and thought "is there any up side to being sick all the time?" here is the ANSWER you have waitied for!
Shortcut to:http://www.babycenter.com/204_morning-sickness-linked-to-smarter-babies_10312743.bc. I figure at this rate, our child will look something like the kid below! j/k

Pick your poison

So, apparently Diet Soda, and even regular soda is bad for your health. I wish someone close to me would have clued me into that before I spent the last 5-7 years pouring it down my throat at an unseemly rate. If only my loving wife or concerned mother or someone close to me would have let me know about the potential health risks perhaps I would have changed my ways sooner.

Well, no one truly responsible for the problem ever wants to take the blame, so I will have to be the martyr and say that perhaps my addition to soda is my own fault. There were some small tell-tale signs. The salivating at the Dr. Pepper commercials. The headaches when I hadn't had a huge soda by 11:00 in the morning. And the dreading of fast Sunday, not because I couldn't eat, but because I couldn't drink my soda.

In doing some reseach on health problems with diet soda I found that it causes most people to drink it to gain weight, not because calorie content, but because it messes up the PH balance of your body making you too acidic. I did a search on foods to balance me out to bring me back to being more alkaline and I found that lemons are the #1 alkaline food. (go figure since it's incredibly acidic when you eat it.) This search for balance lead me to find the Lemon Cleanse Diet. Or Master cleanse diet, or many other things.

So, to make a long story short I have decided to undergo this tortuous cleanse for 10 days as I break my caffeine addition. I'm doing this for 2 reasons.

1.) because if I'm going to make myself miserable by breaking away from caffeine I might as well go all the way and cleanse my body out at the same time.

2.) It will make for a great blog entry as I log in my experience every day.

The Master Cleanse

Day: 0

Tonight I will begin the master cleanse, so today is my last day of eating before-hand. I had fried fish and chips last night and sausage this morning. I'm not sure what I'll have for lunch, but it will be greasy. Here's what I have to do starting tonight.

1.) At night I have to drink an herbal tea laxative. Not fun, I've never had a laxitive in my life, and I don't know how I'm going to handle it, which is why I'm starting on a weekend.
2.) In the morning I do a Sea Salt water flush. 32oz of water and 2 tablespoons of Sea Salt.
3.) Drink lemonade and water all day for the next 10 days.

Lemonade Recipe:

2 Tbl spoons fresh squeezed lemon
2 Tbl spoons organic maple syrup: Grade B (the darker the better)
1/10 tea spoon of ground cayenne pepper
10-14 oz of water

4.) After the 10 days I spend my first day drinking orange juice to get my body acclaimate to other foods.
5.) the day after that I drink orange juice and soup broth
6.) the day after that I am fine to eat whatever I want

My thoughts going into my experience. Amy is excited about me giving up soda. She's supportive of a body cleanse. She is not too enthusiastic about this one since I don't eat anything for 10 days. She wants me to eat healthy at the same time, but that doesn't work with the cleanse. So, I'm not sure if I'll handle this well if Amy keeps asking me to eat something.

I think this is going to be miserable for at least the first couple of days while I have major head-aches and food cravings. Before when I went off soda I get a bad case of the munchies. Part of the reason I'm blogging this is so that I will have motivation to not give up with other people reading. So, we will now see what happens.



Update 6:00 - here I am enoying perhaps my last Diet Dr. Pepper. I may splurge and get another one tonight. I am dreading more and more the headache that I'm going to get tomorrow....oh well.


yum yum
















Day 1:

Day 1 started out fine. Actually, the idea of missing breakfast sounded great. I had eaten so much crap the day before. Chinese food, curry noodles, and late at night Amy and I decided to make a fast food run for some hamburgers and fries. However, once we got home I took my herbal tea, and that was the beginning.

The morning all passed just fine, it wasn't until about 1:00 when my caffeine withdrawls began. Those are the worst. By about 3:00 I couldn't even look at the TV without my head pounding. I went and laid down at about 4:00 and was completely out of it. At 6:30 we went over to Amelia's to babysit while they went to a movie, and neither Amy nor I were feeling too great. We were relieved to come home and go to bed.

So, my look back on day 1. The herbal tea is not bad. As far as hunger I would get flash cravings. I would crave hot wings, but then the craving would pass when I told myself I couldn't have them. Hamburger cravings also jumped in there a few times. However, nothing was as bad as the Salt Water Wash. Which I thought sounded pleasant enough, but apparently Salt Water Washes are also known as Salt Water Enimas. And they are the worst thing on earth.

First of all, it is disgusting drinking 32oz of salt water. Then I felt like gagging after I had drank it and I thought about anything salty, and then come the runs. It was pretty miserable.

Luckily the lemonade is very tasty. It's the saving grace of the cleanse. I had tons of that yesterday and it takes the hunger pains away and makes you feel pretty good.

Well, anyway, that's one day down. Amy still wants me to give up the cleanse and start eating, so that doesn't make it very easy, but we'll get through it, and only 9 more days.


Day 2:

Day 2 was surprisingly easy. I slept in until 8:30. Then came the dreaded Salt Water Enima. Those are horrible, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Day 1. In fact, once it was down the hatch it was smooth sailing. It's just horrible drinking 32oz of salt water.

By about 10:00 I crashed again. I think this was due to my caffeine withdrawls. The first 2 days are always the roughest.

Then I woke up around 11:30, went to church. I felt like I was fasting, but could drink water, and so it really wasn't too bad. When I came home Amy and I played some video games which started giving me a headache again.

I didn't have too many food cravings. Amy made chicken alfredo for dinner. And it smelled good, but the craving wasn't too bad.

Then we watched a movie and went to bed. My subconcious is starting to crave food more than anything. I had a dream that I was a deli store with different stands for the different products. I went to get some bread, but there was a huge line and I couldn't get through. Then I went to go look for the meat dept. On my way I found the cheese dept, but it was closed. And I kept looking at the workers to see if one of them would come over and open up the counter so I could buy something. When I woke up it was time for my lemonade. However, I did not do the salt water enima since there's no way I can do that and go to work.

Day 3

Well, day 3 was definatly the hardest so far. The lemonade does a good job at staving off hunger pains. In fact, I would say that I really don't have any hunger pains at all, but that doesn't mean I don't crave food. My body wants it.

Everytime I drive by a fast food place or think of something I can almost taste it in my mouth. Also, at about 9:00 in the morning I got a headache that lasted all day. I don't know if that is once again a caffeine withdrawl headache or a lack of food headache. Anyway, sitting at my desk starting at a computer screen was no fun.

Once I went home though everything was fine. I was put to the test when Amy got a Pizza Hut Pizza for dinner, and it smelled soooo good, but I resisted. I didn't take my tea at night because I forgot, and I'm not doing the saline washes until the weekend again. Anyway, Monday is over, and I am glad. Only 7 days left.

Day 4:

Day 4 was pretty easy. Hunger pains are still pretty much gone, as are the head-aches and fatigue. As soon as I woke up this morning I was ready to go, which was nice not feeling sluggish and bogged down.

Not really too much to report. I am still looking forward to being done with this cleanse and going back to eating regular foods, but it's nice to know my body is getting a good purging of all the crap that's been gunked up in there for who knows how long.

I looked up a bunch more stuff on the benefits to eating alkaline foods and trying to keep yourself less acidic. It's crazy to think that soda is one of the most acidic things you can put in your body, as is aspertame, which is in diet sodas. So, I was really doing a number on my body. Hopefully when this is over my body will feel like it has a fresh start. Only 6 more days.

Day 5:

Well, today I have decided to give up my 10 days cleanse. I had looked up a bunch of web-sites to see if this was a good idea and everything was pretty positive. It was a great way to cleanse my body and get off of diet soda. But I found this article that said most of the effects people talk up when talking about the cleanse are faulty. Also, doing it for 10 days is apparently worthless. Better to just take good care of yourself.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,214802,00.html

So, the headaches from caffeine withdrawl are gone. My body has been purified. My body PH has been (hopefully) restored to alkaline. I have felt pretty good, but the food cravings are a nightmare. Also, I've been having a hard time concentrating and focusing on things, which has been bad for work, especially this week when I have a new job I'm trying to get all together. All in all, a good experiment, but I'll be glad to be off of it.

BABY NAMES

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Please leave some of your favorite names in our comment box.

Tea Anyone?

So today is tax day...I had almost forgotten since we did our taxes a while ago, but I was reminded when our company decided to shut down for a few hours to go to one of the local tea parties that was being thrown in protest of all the wasteful spending done by our government.


This was my first protest rally, and it was definatly a different experience. Some speeches were given, there was a good deal of excitment and a crowd of about 1,000. Tonight is the big AZ rally which I will not be attending. Here are some pictures of the event.

















The kids are great for the emotional impact. These were my two favorite.









































Then there's this guy who's partying like it's 1773...apparently it was not a very fun party.






















I almost got a picture of the only two black guys that showed up, but by the time I got my camera ready they were gone. I thought it would be great to show some diversity....maybe next year.

It's a baby!!

Well, we haven't really made any big announcements about it, but we've been telling everyone we run into. However, there are still a lot of people out there who don't know. Amy is Pregnant!! We are a little over 3 months along and still don't know if it's a boy or a girl, but we figure it will look like one of the two babies below.

Spiderman to be

This is a follow-up to a past blog where we found a nasty looking brown spider in our house. We feared the worst. A brown recluse. However, maybe our fears were misguided. The other day there was a story about a man, paralized for 20 years was bitten by a brown recluse. Somehow the spider poison began to wake his sleeping nerves up.

Here's the story:

http://www.abc2news.com/mostpopular/story/Paralyzed-man-walks-after-spider-bite/H_aXWMNas0q1UpDmJCR4MA.cspx

So, was our small brown friend an unfortunate find, or was it destiny. I have strong reason to believe that my genetic make-up will have a positive reaction to brown recluse venum. So, now I am in search of finding another brown recluse spider to help me fulfil my destiny, and if not then this spider-man suit was a waste of money.