She is still crazy

I forgot to mention earlier that we went to see the movie "Up" over the weekend and she cried 4 times.

She looks pregnant

We had some friends in from St. Louis this weekend to visit and Andrea kept up with only the occasional nap needed. We went to the zoo, Station Square and down to the Point for the Fireworks after the Pirate game on Saturday. I did notice for the first time at the zoo that she looked pregnant. The belly is starting. Nothing crazy, but I did notice it. She is feeling better, has only been sick sick every few days. More tired than anything. No other big news now, next Dr. apt. is next week. We are going to start clearing out the guest room for the babies so if anyone wants a queen size bed, dresser or night stand let me know. Free to good home.

Pickles, Ice Cream and then blame the dog

The storms that rolled through last week still plague Andrea. She has been very busy and is working 12 hour days today through Thursday. We then have some friends from Missouri coming to see us for the weekend. Andrea did have a pukin session last night but they have been fairly rare. She continues to take the nausea medicine on a daily basis. I thought the whole pickles and ice cream thing was an old wives tale but there I was the other night being sent to Giant Eagle for coffee ice cream, Clausen pickles and the modern day addition of "squeeze cheese". How disgusting! I could not watch her eat it but she actually did consume all three at the same sitting. What a surprise that the gas problem continues in the house. She often blames it on the dog but I know better. I have been pulling that scam for years. I am on to her tricks.

What would Paul do?

I am guessing fathers day will mean more to me next year than this year. This year my responsibilities for caring for the twins are fairly small. They include the occasional trip to the store for their mother for whatever craving has just struck and understanding that it is the raging hormones that makes her cry while watching a stupid reality show like "Brooke knows best" like she did last night. I am looking forward to the challenges of fatherhood and know that I will get through just fine. Awhile back I saw a bunch of people wearing these bracelets that said W.W.J.D. on them. It stood for "what would Jesus do". I guess if you were in a situation that you did not know what to do you would look at your wrist and ponder what Jesus would have done and there was your decision. I think that I will revise that a bit. Whenever presented with a dad question I think I will ask W.W.P.D. The "P" is for my dad Paul. He has been teaching me for 38 years how to be prepared for this. I know I am going to have a bunch of sleepless nights and long days ahead but I can't wait to be a dad. Happy Fathers Day.

Chasing Dominick

One of the downsides of your friends having kids and you not having any is that you never get to see them. We used to see our friends Russ and Darci all the time. Then Dominick joined the family. We do not get to see them much anymore but did last night. They were on a Cranberry Walmart run and stopped by the house. It was great to see them and even more to see Dominick and see how big he is getting. Even more important than seeing them though was the lessons I learned last night watching Dominick. They were in our basement for an hour. Out of that 60 minutes Russ chased Dominick for about 54 of those 60 minutes. First lesson learned is with 2 on the way we had better be ready to do alot of chasing. Darci started a blog a few months ago on this website called "chasingdominick". It is now clear why she named it what she did. The second lesson I learned is that a 22 month old MUST touch everything in the house that he can get to. Andrea and I quickly realised that our house is not childproof at all. Between Darci telling him "that's not yours" and Russ moving quicker than I thought he could Dominick made it out safe but we have alot of house clearing to do. I used to say that raising a kid could not be much harder than training a Labrador Retriever puppy. I may be rethinking that though. At no time did I see Russ using a shock collar, rolled up news paper or a crate.

She looks like a natural

A big congratulations to Jolene and Shawn Cernicky on the birth of Sophia on Tuesday. We went to see them at Magee when she was only about 10 hours out of the oven. All went well and mom and baby are good. Andrea got a little practise time in with the baby. She looks like she is a natural at it. I did try to hold the baby at one point and Andrea growled at me. The hormones are still raging. She has been feeling a little better but now is getting killed at work with all the storm claims this week and more to come. She got over 20 new claims yesterday and has appointments set for all day today. She may not be employed much longer because if I hear one more person yell at my wife on the phone because they don't have the correct insurance I am going to go off. I am fairly confident that her employer will not like when an employees husband threatens to kill one of their customers but I may not be able to control myself much longer.

CVS Sucks

Time for me to vent a bit. I got Andrea's new medicine filled last week at CVS. At the time it was only filled for 9 pills. I did not ask why at the time, just didn't catch it. You can take up to 3 pills per day. She has averaged only one though. I went to get the prescription refilled today and found out that the reason she only got 9 pills is that Blue Cross will only pay for 9 pills every 25 days. I asked how much they would be to buy without insurance and they were $166 for another 9 pills. This medicine is used for cancer patients on Chemotherapy and sick preggos. So let me start by saying shame on you Blue Cross for only paying for 9 pills for 25 days. That means that if someone were to take 3 pills a day it would cost them over $1,200 for 25 days. I told the pharmacist that I did not want the prescription filled yet. We would of course pay if we had to but I thought I should make a few calls first. I called Walmart to see how much they were there. Same prescription, 9 pills- $36. That is $130 less or over $14 less per pill. CVS is robbing cancer patients and pregnant women. Hey CVS, wanna go out to the dog park and kick puppies? Or maybe we could go to a Bingo game and trip old ladies. Oh, I know why not send pictures of food to starving children in Africa. I wonder if CVS stands for "Consistently Victimizing Shoppers"?

Puke Free Friday

We have now gone 4 days without a puke. She is feeling better since stopping the daily shots and has started taking the nausea medicine when needed. She is still feeling bad and sometimes emotional. The hormones are raging. Maybe we should just get this out in the open. I think she might be insane. I think I mentioned before that awhile back when Bea Arthur died she cried. Last week while flipping through the channels I stumbled across a Golden Girls episode. She started crying again. She never really liked Bea Arthur or the show so what is the deal? She watched some movie trailer on TV about some kid with cancer. That set her off, the commercial for the movie, not even the movie. Some commercial raising money for abused dogs, wow that was a good cry. Then just a couple days ago we went next door to see Maria because Andrea had bought some thing to extend her pants and she was having trouble with it. Andrea has lost 10 pounds since getting pregnant but her belly has started to grow. When she decided that she was using it correctly and that it just didn't work she started crying. That led to Maria telling a story of her and Adam being at a movie and they ran out of popcorn, and Maria cried. There has got to be some hormone released during pregnancy that causes you to lose your mind. All of this might make me go crazy also. My only hope is that whatever causes preggos to go nuts stops after childbirth. One of us needs to be ready to care for these kids and I may never recover.

Two days and counting!

Andrea has been puke free since Monday afternoon, not feeling good but a little better than before since stopping the shots and starting the nausea medicine. Tomorrow could be a bad day as she has a bunch of claims to go see and she gets sick when driving.

3 pukes and a thats what he said

We went to the Washington DC area this weekend and had a nice time. We did not get to do all we wanted to since Andrea continues to be sick. We went to Alexandria VA for a day, went to Richmond for a day to see our friend John and came back on Sunday. We had a graduation party in the neighborhood but Andrea did not make it. As soon as we got home she went straight to bed. Our neighbors Bob and Patty watched our dog for us and Bill even mowed our grass so I would not have to when I got home. It is great to have good neighbors. Today was back to work with the exception of a Dr appointment with our new baby doc. I met Andrea at the hospital at 11am. She had already vomited once on the way there. We went up to the office and as she was filling out the paperwork round 2 hit. She ran to the bathroom in the office and was loud enough for the whole office to hear. We then went in to meet with the doc. This was the first time I had met her. She seemed very nice and I felt comfortable with her. She did an exam on Andrea including us being able to hear heartbeats again, way cool. She then gloved up and lubed up and dove in. As she was wrist deep she said " your uterus feels great ". I thought my head was going to explode. It took everything I had to keep my mouth shut but I did. My wife however dropped a " thats what he said ". I could have not been more proud of her. The doc told us that she would be very happy if we made it to 36 weeks and would probably not go past 37 weeks. That probably puts birth at the end of November. She also told Andrea she wanted her to take some medicine for all the sickness. She has lost 10 pounds since gettin knocked up. She also told us we could stop the daily Progesterone shots. We are to go back in a month for another appointment and an ultrasound. As we were checking out at the desk round 3 hit and she was off to the bathroom again. Hopefully quitting the shots and the new medicine will help. As we were leaving the office I was trying to cheer her up after her 3rd puke of the day. I sarcastically was telling her I did not appreciate her throwing up so many times and embarrassing me and this attitude of hers had better stop soon. I then said "waaa, I have two people growing inside me". I think I may have said these things a little too loudly because as we rounded a bend in the hall a woman was sitting there on the bench looking at me like I was the devil himself. We were in a quiet hallway so I know she heard everything I said. Andrea went home and I picked up her new medicine after work. This evening she sent me off to Panera for French Onion soup and with it she wanted a pickle with cream cheese on it. I am baffled how an apple can make her puke but she craves a pickle with cream cheese and French Onion soup.

Thrifty or cheap?

Andrea is still in Myrtle Beach with her family and Leanne. My dad, Jason and Ron took a motorcycle ride to meet her for lunch from Charleston, SC yesterday. Otherwise she spent the day at the beach, pool and shopping. It was a puke free day. Today, not so much. She just called to tell me she had gone to Margaritaville for an early dinner and had quesadillas. It was not long before she was in the bathroom losing dinner. Was she upset that she got sick, no. Was she upset that she had to go into a crowded bathroom with an employee in there cleaning and throw up loudly, no. Was she mad that she had just wasted $8 on Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville quesadillas, yes. So I ask you, thrifty or cheap?