Cord Blood

So I've been meaning to do a post about CORD BLOOD for a while now, but I haven't wanted to put the effort into it so this will just be really short.

You know what cord blood is? It is your babies raw genetic material, plain and simple. Stem Cells are a big issue of debate, but they shouldnt be. There are so many stem cells thrown out every time someone has a baby. Most people don't know you can save/donate your cord blood stem cells because it is illegal for doctors/staff to broach the topic to you, which again is stupid! There is nothing unethical about cord blood stem cells! If anything, it is good because it saves that much from going to wherever genetic waste goes! If you don't save it or donate it then it goes into the waste bin. Personally, I think that is ridiculous. I have saved it from both of my children. Here is a good site to get more info on what can be done with Cord Blood and what they are trying to do with it: blog.cordblood.com

I got a call from CBR-Cord Blood Registry, where we saved our kids' cord blood-about our collection for Alice. Turns out you need at least 100 million stem cells to creat a viable collection. Average collections run about 250 million, which means Russell's collection was just about average at 290 million. Alice has a count of 1,502,000,000 cells. That's over a billion! That's 15 times the minimum! Isn't that great? I am so happy.

Wish List Meme

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme
TodaysMama and Provo Craft are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What 5 items are on your holiday wish list this year? 

  1. Spinning wheel (or at least a pretty drop spindle from http://www.etsy.com/shop/zebisisdesigns)
  2. Some pretty rovings to go with said drop spindle (from my favorite etsy yarn shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/knit)
  3. A full night's sleep
  4. A yard
  5. A place to store all of my crafty stuff.
2. What is your favorite handmade gift you have received? 
  I can't really think of any at all.
3. What handmade gift have you always wanted to tackle? 
  Resin.
4. What was the best Christmas gift you received as a child?
   My alarm clock. I asked for it in 3rd grade and I still have it and use it 16 years later. Shyeah, I'm a nerd.
5. What items are on your kids' wish lists this year? 
  Russ wants the Handy Manny Play Set they have on display at Target. I think Mimi and Grandpy are getting it for him. Alice wants her real food supply to stop running out every few days. That Silimac stuff doesn't make her happy, and it doesn't make her poop happy either!
6. What is your favorite holiday food? 
  Ham. I love ham.
7. What will you be hand-crafting for the holidays? 
  I learned how to etch glass and one of my sisters is getting a set of glasses. And I'm crocheting a bunch too. Some of our neices are getting some crocheted finger puppets. They are so great RUss wants a set for his stocking.
8. What is your favorite holiday movie? 
  Nightmare Before Christmas - I always thought of it more for Christmas than Halloween
  The Muppet Christmas Carol - Hello! Muppets! Christmas! Can it get any better?
9. Favorite holiday song? 
  TSO has some great music, but the latest Mighty Mighty Bosstones CD has a great song on it about being together. Love it! Totally recommend that album for everyone. It is very happy compared to their old stuff.
10. Favorite holiday pastime?
  I like to to do the tree. Fun stuff! Last year I made a bunch of ornaments that weren't really fragile and wouldn't hurt Russ if he ate them, which he did, and that was a lot of fun. I think I need to do that again but he can help this year!

Halloween was almost cancelled

but I'm glad I got feeling better because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten this shot!

Alice

Here she is! Sorry this has taken so long, my computer is over heating.

Alice Lynn Hansen

 Born October 9, 2009 2:06 am

8 lbs 6 1/2 ozs; 20 1/2 inches long

Lots of brown hair (?) and looks just like her daddy's baby pictures. 

Birthed without real drugs, btw. That's right: I'm a real woman 

Cricut Meme and room

This is contest entry for those crazy folks at TodaysMama and Cricut. Be sure to check out Cricut's cool new cartridges and the chance at $30,000 in travel for you and your friends at the Great Gypsy Escape site! http://bit.ly/FWcud

Great Escape Meme
1. If you could escape to anywhere in the world where would it be? 
Somewhere new, Oregon maybe. Always wanted to go to Oregon. I think it's the hippy in me trying to escape.
2. What song do you play when you are by yourself in the car? 
Cindy Lauper and Madonna (What can I say? I'm a girl. shh... don't tell)
3. If you had a night to yourself, and money was no object, what would you do? 
Currently I would say SLEEP but I know that's not what the question is asking so...
I am assuming they also mean I would NOT BE PREGNANT so again...
Go to a concert (Toadies, Chili Peppers, I wouldn't be too picky), hang out in the mosh pit the whole time, and if I had the energy afterwards, lots and lots of sex. They want honesty, right?
4. What is your guilty pleasure? 
Creating for no reason. Oh, I already have a bag full of bags that I don't use? Heck, let's make another one!
5. What is the farthest place you have traveled away from your home? 
In recollection, Philadelphia last September. I thought being in the middle of downtown would really not be cool, but it was. We walked EVERYwhere.
6. Last book that you couldn't put down? 
Terry Gross' "All I Did Was Ask" 
7. When you want to escape into another time, what movie do you watch? 
Well this is a gay question. At our louse, we like to escape into the future: the post-apocalyptic future! We are now making sure Russ in bed before we watch them, but we like stuff like the "Resident Evil" movies and vampire movies. Woo!
8. What is your favorite local escape? 
The internet. Roswell doesn't have anywhere to escape to.
My favorite NEAR local escape, however, would be Ruidoso which is about an hour away. Casinos, put put golf, a nice strip to walk up and down window shopping... All things Roswell doesn't offer.
9. How do you escape on a budget? 
Dessert. Dessert is always a nice escape. Throw out what we know and go for the Mile High Ice Cream Pie, heck yeah. If there is ice cream involved, I have escaped, especially if there is peanut butter involved.
Best food you've ever had while on vacation.
Chinese food at a mall in Cancun. Amazing! Five course meal, peppermint tea, shark fin soup... Like I said, it was amazing




And since I should have had this on my last post and don't want to overpost myself, here is the finished room for our Alice. Man, we sure are hoping this is going to be a little girl. G would be so upset if we did all that work with the fairy wall paper and it turned out to be a boy...

News and fun things

Russ has been saying some awefully funny things here lately...

-He refers to himself as "Shull," as in he's speaking in the 3rd person. While this would bother me with anyone else, this is my kid and he's not even 3 yet so...

-One thing he does say that bother the heck out of me: He calls me Jessie now, or "Sheshie" in his terms. AH! I almost want to scream at him, almost. He gets corrected every time he does it, though sometimes I make the mistake of answering to it before I correct him. 

-He has added the word "so" to his vocabulary as "So tired, mama" or "So sorry Daddy! So sorry!" 

-Last night while we were playing Rock Band (for the first time in months) he took the mic from me and shoved in the cats face and said "Sing, Eddie! Sing!" She was unamused, but I had to laugh. 

Oh, and he already holds his pens/pencils like his dad does.  

     As far as the pregnancy goes, I saw my midwife yesterday and she said this little girl is going to be probably 1 to 1 1/2 pounds lighter than Russ. Everyone has been telling me how little my tummy is and it's really bugging me. I hate it when everyone repeats the same thing. I am not too little! Bugger off, people. (Hee hee, I recently found out what the term "bugger" really means.. hee hee!)

Also, my friend Leah and her sister came over the other day and dolled me up and we took prenatal pictures, similar to the ones I did when I was large with Russ, but with a short black wig and pink fake eyelashes. Sweet! Preview for you, but that's all you get unless you are a sister of mine:

 Doesn't really look like me but whatever. 

Leah is also helping with my baby shower and we were making jokes about having some of these photos up at the little shin-dig! HA! I can just see her mom's face. Hell, Sariah's face would be enough for me.

     On the crafty front, I finished G's rug. Did I mention that before? He got new shirts for work relatively recently and while I was planning on ripping the old ones up for rags, I decided to rip them into strips and crochet a rug instead. Oh yeah, I think was complaining about the hooks breaking. Well, I went and bough some large metal hooks and this one turned out MUCH better than the one I have in "Alice's" room. Very uniform, very comfy. Eleven shirts made a rug about 30" x 42". I am please with myself. My right hand was swolen Monday because of it, but it was totally worth it.

     Also, I am signed up for my first swap on Craftster.com. Already got my partner! AH! I am so nervous! I made sure to sign up for one that the birth of my child will not interrupt my participation in too much: the send out date isn't until November 20th so whenever this kid comes I should still have time to work on my goodies for her. It is a Christmas stocking swap, and I was thinking of doing one of my "burlesque" stockings but her favotire colors are orange and lime-green so we'll see what I come up with. Ah! So intimidated!

     And G is going to have to go back to working every other Saturday which means the work we do around the house will be almost coming to a halt again. *sigh* Two weeks until that starts again, but each of these weekends there is an aution in the AM so we probably won't get much done. Poop and stuff!

     And I have a house I have been putting off cleaning so that's all I've to say for now.

No More Plastic!

Crochet hooks, that is. But they don't make metal hooks in the larger sizes! AHH! G got new shirts for work, but since they all have the company logo on them Unifirst won't take back the old ones. So we get them. I was thinking of just cutting them up and using them for rags, and then I decided it would be a better idea to cut them into strips and make a rug for the garage out of them for when G gets the work bench in there. And I have started it and it is looking fabulous but... I have broken 2 hooks on it so far. The first one wasn't that far into it, so I just started again with a bigger hook, but a shirt and half later SNAP! No good. Superglue and duct tape didn't work to fix it, so I've been using just a half sized hook for now... Which will not work for long because it is hard and hurts my hands more and takes longer. *sigh*

But we've moved most of the stuff out of the spare room and we are going to paint it this weekend. *SQUEE!* (that was a happy noise). We got the border Tuesday and went for the paint that night. I am so excited! Sure, the pink/blue cow exploded on the walls was interesting but now I have a purpose for painting the room and it's going to be so happy! We've decided to convert Russell's toddler bed back into the crib and give him the twin sized bed from the other room. HE loves it so much! Tuesday night we still had his "new" bed (which he happened to have been made on, a little TMI for you) in the spare room and I lay down on it and he brought me a blanket and thought we were going to sleep on it that night, so the next night when we moved it into his room he was so excited! Now he spends have the day sitting on his bed "reading" books! I still need to move some things around in there, but we are going to get all of his toys and books moved in there with some shelves etc and then I doubt if he will want to come out of there ever for at least a couple days. I think if we moved a TV in there with his DVDs that might solidify his dependence in there, but we won't do that. One movie a day still...

I just got the first shower I have had since... Saturday? Sunday maybe? I feel clean. I can comb my fingers through my hair again...