Power Up!

I am so excited about this iron supplement the midwife gave me, and think you should all try it! I didn't know that iron is a big energy mineral. When you're anemic it means you have an iron deficiency. I thought my exhaustion was due to pregnancy, but apparently it wasn't because now I feel so much better. I was even already taking extra iron in my prenatal vitamins, but this iron supplement is more effective because it's in liquid form.

It is called Spatone, and it comes in these little packets. It's just spring water with a lot of iron in it. You put it in your orange juice and it's tasteless. To me, anyway.

42% of women and children are deficient in iron. Iron deficiencies can cause fatigue, dark under eye circles, paleness, migraines, shortness of breath, etc. But a lot of people can't take iron pills because they're so big or they cause many side effects, especially in the stomach. But this spatone stuff doesn't really have those side effects.

Get it here: http://www.hbees.com/spatoneiron.html

I wouldn't recommend it if it wasn't working wonders for me!

The Birth Center

I had an appointment with the midwife today and found out that I am anemic. This isn't really a bad or surprising thing because a lot of pregnant women become anemic. So now I have to not only continue taking iron supplements, but this other liquid stuff for faster absorption. I have to mix it with orange juice. I'm sure it tastes super yummy.

John also just found out that he is anemic, which is common in distance runners. So that's kind of interesting. Neither of us has ever been anemic before.

The best news is that Maryn is developing just fine. We are taking a childbirth education class at the Birth Center. It's going pretty well. Last night they showed us a video that is kind of trying to reshape our idea of childbirth. Because of TV drama, we're accustomed to the panicking, rushing to the hospital, cussing at the father, etc. But some things from the video are kind of weird. So this Mexican lady on the video had a homebirth and gave birth in the tub, which is OK by me. The weird part was that her husband and her two sons, approximately 6 and 4 years old, jumped right on in there with her. All naked. Weird.

I thought you guys might like to see some pictures of the birth center, where Maryn will be born. We're going to try to video tape some of the birth (not the actual birth because I'm just a tad too conservative for that), and maybe we can encourage more women to give birth with a midwife.






The first three pictures show the bedroom where I'll actually have the baby, maybe in the tub, maybe not. The last picture is the kitchen where I'll be free to EAT, DRINK, and walk around. Some of you may not know this, but they keep women in labor from eating or drinking in a hospital just in case she has to have a C-section, which is crazy to me. How can I do ANYTHING for 12+ hours without eating or drinking?

OK, that's all I will go into for now.

Music and Little Miracles

OK, so no one cares about Avon. Whatever. I do have some slightly good news that means I won't have to depend on my Avon earnings for much. I just may have a babysitting job starting next week, watching an 8, a 6, and a 4 year old every weekday from 7:30-5:30. It's a long day, but I've discovered that I actually feel a lot better when I am busy. Plus, school starts August 18th, which means I'll still have almost a month of vacation until little Maryn comes along. It'll be just a little extra money to help carry us through my months of not making anything.

Maryn is developing a little personality in utero. She moves a lot unless John has his hand on my belly. Either she's stubborn or John has a calming effect on her. She also loves music and moves any time she hears it, especially drums and our favorite shows' theme songs. I heard about a study done on "fetuses" and music. I don't like calling my baby a fetus. Anyway, the study said that babies don't respond more to one music type than another, but they do respond to the theme songs of their parents' favorite shows. They think it has to do with the positive feelings the mother emits as she sits down to watch the show and familiarity of the songs.

Needless to say, Maryn's favorite show is So You Think You Can Dance! I love it, too!

Woohoo!

I received my Avon stuff and have been doing my makeup every day first thing even though I am not going anywhere because I LOVE it so much. I am normally an exclusive Revlon/Maybelline/Loreal girl, and was not expecting to be impressed with Avon, but I seriously am. And it's cheaper than the other products, so I am quite proud of myself to have stumbled upon something that will hopefully save us some money.

Some of my favorites (which is everything I got):

Jillian Dempsey Professional Mascara: If it was taller, and I was single, I would marry it. I was using some M.A.C. mascara someone got me for Christmas. And this stuff is better. Much better.

Glimmersticks Waterproof Eyeliner: If my eyes could pop any more, I would be a bush baby. This stuff is great and I can finally put eyeliner on my bottom eyelid and I don't look like a vampire (and there's a sale right now where you can get this eyeliner and the mascara, or two eyeliners, whatever, buy one get one for 1.99).

Skin So Soft Facial Hair Remover: Don't be shy. You know you need some, too. This stuff is THICK so I can walk around without it sliding off, and it works. Any time I can avoid waxing is good.

Footworks Athlete's Foot Cream: It's a pregnancy thing. Apparently with pregnancy comes itchy feet. They're not itchy anymore!

Avon Solutions Hydra-Radiance Lotion (SPF 30): I wish I could drink this stuff. I only got samples of this, and it's to die for. I have such dry skin, and couldn't stop touching my face all day.

Planet Spa products: People keep staring at me because I can't stop smelling myself. I also only got samples of this stuff, but my skin stayed soft all day, with a very light scent. Heavenly.


So what I am trying to say is, if you don't look at my website and get some of this stuff, you're crazy. Or call me. www.youravon.com/aerdman

I made it!

Two 14 hour bus rides to and from North Carolina,

4 days of playing with 50 kids between the ages of 5 and 12,

1 day of shopping,

6 nights of sleeping between five and seven hours per night,

5 days of two-a-day amazing preaching and worship services,

6 days of being surrounded by teenagers,

Lots of ice cream, fried food, and crackers...

And I made it through! I'm pretty proud of myself. No real issues, just sore legs and feet, a cold, and quite tired.

During the day, we left the conference center in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, to play with kids in Rec. Centers in Asheville. Here are some highlights in pictures, where you'll see me 28 weeks and 3 days pregnant, some of my favorite little kids (including the little girl who had to be touching my belly for most of one day), and a great chocolate box that two of the high schoolers bought me.

Long trips and salesmanship

I have been selling Avon for a week now. It's actually been pretty fun, and I'm surprised how much I want to buy the stuff myself. It's way cheaper than the makeup I already buy and probably of equal quality. I will let you know how that goes. There's also a branch of Avon called mark that is a little more stylish, hip, young, whatever. I like it a lot, too.

If you want to order Avon, you can go to my very own online store at www.youravon.com/aerdman. If you type in the code REPFS at the check out, you will get free shipping. OR you can call me with your order, but that would involve you giving your credit card number over the phone and all that.

If you want to order Mark, you can go to www.meetmark.com and type in my phone number at the check out (239) 682-2544. Also remember the free shipping code.


John and I are leaving for the Lightforce trip tonight at midnight. Lightforce is our church's student choir, made up of 62 students grades 7-12. The place we are going seems kind of like our youth conference when I was in high school, but for this camp we are going off-site every day to do some ministry in inner-city Asheville, North Carolina rec. centers. This should be great for our Naples students, as they kind of live in a fairy tale land down here. Plus, it seems the most bonding happens on trips that provide some type of challenge, and I'd really like to see our youth group bond a bit more, across the cliques.

I'm a little bit concerned because I've been feeling rather nauseated, uncomfortable and restless lately, especially in the car (I'll be on a charter bus for 14 hours). And the baby wakes me up every few hours, and I have to pee every few sleeping hours, and it is very difficult to find a comfortable position that lasts long enough to fall asleep. Other pregnancy symptoms include sore feet, boiling blood in the heat, weird brown spots all over my face, yummy spider veins popping up everywhere, sore muscles...It's quite unpleasant. But I don't have any stretch marks yet! Wee!

Thank goodness I have only three months to go. Oy.

I am at the seven months mark though, and I knew it would start to get rough.

I have been sleeping 9 or 10 hours every night because I am so tired. I feel kind of lazy, but I figure there's no harm done. I might as well sleep now before the little terror REALLY wakes me up all night. :)

We will be back late Saturday night. I'll update you then. Keep me and all those going on the trip in your prayers.

The new furniture

Here's Rosa on top of her favorite sleeping spot,

which we moved out last week.

She did NOT want to let it go, especially since we had it on its side

like this. She loves high places. She thinks she's Mufasa.

Just like Jordan and Sara used to do, Rosa will get into

any cabinet or closet she can.

Here's our view, sort of from the kitchen area.

Notice baby's new little bouncy seat. Cute!

And here is the new furniture. No more coffee table!

It's always been my goal in life not to have a coffee table,

as pretty much all I remember about my childhood

is Drew constantly bashing his head on them. But now we have

this leather ottoman that is soft with trays on top. So it serves as

a coffee table and an ottoman. And it doesn't seem as disgusting

putting your feet on it as it does with a coffee table. I am LOVING this idea.

Sorry about the fuzzy pictures. Our camera is horrible. Or maybe it's just me.

The Mysterious Creature

This is the mysterious creature I've been seeing in our backyard. See? I'm not crazy. Now that I've had a better look at it, it just kind of looks like a giant squirrel with funny coloring. I guess I'll have to look up different squirrel species. It stands about a foot tall. The picture below kind of gives you a better idea of how big it is. And it does run and stand like a squirrel. So, I guess I'm going with giant squirrel. What do you think?

Modern Fairy Tales

I watched Shrek 3 last week and was rather disappointed. I'm not sure why everyone likes Shrek movies so much. They're funny, but they sure aren't the whimsical, dreamy fairy tales I loved as a kid. I decided that I actually despise Shrek 3 when it came to a part that was obviously making fun of Sleeping Beauty, my all time favorite movie. Really, what's wrong with a beautiful princess singing to bluebirds and deer? What's wrong with a prince rescuing her from a tower guarded by an evil sorceress that turns into a dragon? Little girls like that stuff. I remember quite a few little boys liking it, too.

Beauty and the Beast was a perfect fairy tale because the beast saves Belle, but Belle saves him, too. She saved him without being crude or acting like a man. In Shrek, it appears the only way to be a female hero is to act manly, with some ninja moves to top it off. And you see this is so many movies. It's getting boring and predictable. If to be a hero, a woman has to be manly, I am doomed!

Disney is working on their next princess fairy tale, the Frog Princess or something like that. I hope they consider giving the princess a stereotypical female role and the prince a stereotypical male role. I think most little girls understand that they can be heroes, too. But what most little girls dream of is a heroic prince, and to me, there's just nothing wrong with that. Many of these movies are robbing boys of their desire to be the hero. What kind of fairy tale has a princess with the attitude of, "If I want something done, I have to do it myself?" If the sleeping princess waiting to be rescued is teaching girls to be helpless and wait for a rescuer, what is this new attitude teaching them? "Honey, if you want to be a hero, you need be loud, obnoxious, and kick down some doors! Plus, be paper-thin with enormous eyes and gorgeous hair." It's all screwed up.

Just don't write fairy tales if you majored in Women's Studies. The end.

Desperate Housewife

I've been a "housewife" for a week now and it's a bit boring and depressing. I know that having a baby at home all day won't be very boring, and I hope that it's not too depressing. I either need to find a job or volunteer somewhere, because this is just getting ridiculous.

I'm not a very good housewife. The cleaning isn't bad and I'm all right with that, but buying groceries by myself with no input is pretty a much a disaster. I spend way too much money when left to shop on my own. This was no surprise to either of us.

John is also too helpful. Since he's working all day and I'm at home, not even with any kids, you would think I'd be in charge of dinner most nights. But it's been him in front of the grill or stove 3 of the 5 nights this week. Yes. I suck. Must learn grilling and stir frying techniques.

The positives of being at home are that I've gotten a lot done around the house that needed to be done, and there are still some things I need to do. I've also been exercising every morning and do get up at a pretty early hour.

I could go places but that costs gas money. I could get some books at the library but I owe them $100 in late fees. Seriously. $100.

Mysterious Visitor

I was collecting laundry today and something interesting caught my eye outside. It was an animal that partly walked on two legs, but mostly walked on all fours, coming out of the woods. It sniffed around and ate some things, very jumpy, like a squirrel. It had mostly brown fur with a huge bushy tail and stood about two feet tall. It looked like it had a masked face.

Since it had a masked face, I thought maybe it was a species of badger, but I looked that up and found nothing that resembled this animal, and badgers apparently don't live around here. It was not a racoon.

Any ideas?

I'm trying to get him to come back so I can take a picture.

Sad, sad days

Today is Monday and I have no job. The one lady I was supposed to babysit for has backed out. So I'm spending the day cleaning. And tomorrow I guess I'll clean some more.

It hasn't been a totally unsuccessful day. I woke up at 7, ate a very healthy breakfast (I had time to make eggs!), and did some running in the pool for half an hour. Then I laid out for about 15 minutes, came home, showered, did a bible study, and started cleaning. And cleaning is good because our new house has not yet been completely clean all at the same time yet. We have more bedrooms but for some reason can't find places to put all of our stuff. With baby stuff and stuff from my classroom, we're a little bit overloaded right now. We need to invest in a desk with a lot of storage space and a dresser (or two!) for our little one.

I am eternally hot and I still feel nauseous all the time. I thought this nauseous feeling was over at 3 months, but it's come back to haunt me.

SO, I guess I'm having an OK time just staying home. Getting ready for the stay-at-home mom stuff I guess. I've inquired about plenty of other jobs and no response yet. I just kind of feel worthless right now.

Well, back to work!