#6 is on the way....

Alright, for those who don't know yet....the Crowe Family is happy to announce that a new little Crowe is on the way! We are due February 21st, though if this baby is anything like the rest of our children than he/she will probably arrive before that!

Below is my recent ultrasound pictures (taken yesterday).


The ultrasound technician said we had a busy little tyke who was moving around so much that his pictures kept coming up blurry when he was trying to measure things! I said that sounded like one of our kids alright! Anyways, though the baby is looking good, growing right on tract and weighs approx. 4oz right now. I am 14 weeks and 5 days along right now.

Our only big concern is the fact that one of my blood tests came back saying that I have antibody E. Now, lets see if I can explain this to everyone without totally confusing anyone! Everyone's blood cells have antigens attached to it (there's a huge long list of them). We are dealing with the E antigen. The doctor said I am two little e's (ee) and they are assuming that Doug has atleast one big E. So Doug and I both got to go in and get some more blood work done yesterday afternoon. They wanted to get a titer on me and they wanted to see what antigen combo Doug had (Ee or EE).

Now let me jump around a little bit more, since they do this blood test (to check for antigens) at every pregnancy and it never showed up with any of my other ones. Than they are assuming that it sometime during my delivery of CJ some of his blood crossed out of the "protective" zone and into my body and my body threw up the "intruder alert" and made antibodies up against it.

Alright back to Doug's and my blood...if Doug comes back as Ee than there is a 50% chance that he gave the baby the little e and since I'm ee I would of given the baby a little e as well and if that's the case than we should be just fine. Now if he is EE than he would of given the baby a big E and we are going to have to watch things alot closer (as well as if he gives the baby the big E if he is Ee). If the baby has the big E my blood cells could go across the placenta and attack the babies blood cells and could cause the baby to become anemic and very worst case scenario even die (the doctor says that is highly unlikely though). If the baby ends up becoming anemic they can give the baby a transfusion to help fix that problem. They also might do a amnio on me (depending on how our results come back) to see how much antigen E the baby has.

Have I totally confused everyone yet? I'm still trying to get a grasp on everything (so I could of said something wrong or mixed a few things up). The doctor did seem pretty impressed that Doug and I had understood things so well, he said most people don't have quite as well as an understanding when they tell them. I probably have Doug to thank for that since the questions he asked the doctor helped me to understand things better. But SSshhhhh...don't tell him I said that!

Anyways, though they have an excellent success rate for this kind of thing and we should have a happy and healthy baby in around 6 months or so! My pregnancy will just be alot more closely monitored (feels weird to be considered in the "high risk" group). I will see the specialist for this but will continue to see my regular OB as well for my regular appointments. Feel free to ask any questions and Doug and I will try to answer them the best we can. We will keep everyone posted! :)

Some pics from this morning

Catching Up!

Sorry it's taken me so long to post something. Life has been busy over here! Doogie turned 9 a couple weeks ago (August 9th). We went and celebrated it over at Red Robin's (this is where Doogie wanted to go!) He had a good birthday and I still can't believe he is 9! It's been so much fun watching him grow and learn and turn into the great young man that he is. We are all very proud of you Doogie!

Last weekend we went camping again at La Wis Wis (pictures to follow). We had a great time, the weather started off a bit cool but by the last day it had warmed up quite a bit. Jayde got to see an old friend of hers from Jason Lee, the were Kindergarten classmates. Her mom and I went to highschool together so we all chatted a bit and let the girls play for a while. The only downside of the camping trip was that we were worrying about Doug's grandfather who had taken a fall and hit his head. He lost quite a bit of blood and we are so grateful that he is doing better and now home from the hospital. We are planning to get over there and visit very soon.

On the last day of our camping trip we decided to take one last hike around before we headed home. We ended up going over to one of the creeks. We had noticed on previous camping trips that there were little fish swimming around in them so Doug and the kids decided to try and catch some. The actually caught quite a few (mostly with a cup and trapping them), Jayde however caught four fish with just her bare hands! Maybe she has a fishing career ahead of her! They definitely aren't squeamish about touching and catching fish either! We decided to try and take them home and see how they did there. I was surprised that all but one fish survived the ride home. I went to the store and bought a fish tank and what not, but unfortunately the fish only lasted another day or so. There was just too many enviromental changes and what not. So we are planning on getting the kids some goldfish instead!

Collage

CJ

Just thought I would let you know that if you want to see more of CJ's two year photo shoot from yesterday to go and check out my photography blog. You can find the link for it on the side of the page or go ahead and click here.

CJ's 2 Year Photo Shoot

Take 1! He actually did pretty good for our first attempt. I'll be working on getting some more pics of him later (especially since our really high temps will be finally coming down some this week so we can get outside more!) I still can't believe he's two already! Next I'll be working on getting some pictures of Doogie for his 9 year (can't believe he'll be 9!)

My Daughter...

the shoplifter! Yes, my 5 year old daughter is starting her life in crime a bit early. In her defense though, I don't think she fully realized the extent of what she was doing. Yes, she knew she shouldn't take it...but I think she thought she would get in trouble for not asking first, not that she stole it. But let me tell you the whole story.

It has been so darn hot over here and for so long that I think we were all going a bit stir crazy being cooped up in the house. So since we can't go swimming until later in the afternoons I decided to brave an outing to the store with all 5 kids. I knew we needed to get out of the house and going somewhere outside wasn't really much of an option with the heat and all and I needed to buy the kids school supplies before everything was picked over. So we headed to the store...and let me just say, I'm never taking 5 kids back to school supply shopping by myself ever again! It wasn't that they were being bad, they did a pretty good job staying with the cart and keeping up with me. It's just really wearing trying to keep an eye on everyone and find the things you need to find! Not to mention the "can I have this?" and "can we pick out a toy?" comments.

Anyways, though after we found most of the school supplies in the school section I let them pick out new backpacks. They found the ones they wanted and then they wanted to just wear them around the store while we finished finding the last few things we needed. I had Jaxon and CJ in the cart and the other three were following along behind me, I would glance back occasionally to make sure that they were all still folowing along. Now in some time after we got the backpacks and were walking towards the back of the store and in between the times that I glanced back at them Ryann grabbed a birthday card and a pink, sparkly, lego frame and stuck them in her backpack.

We finally finished up the shopping and headed to the check out stand. I put all the items up to be checked (and I didn't even notice that there was something in one of the backpacks...and neither did the checker!) So I paid for our purchases and we headed out to the car got the bags loaded and then we headed to DQ to grab some lunch to take home.

Now while I was sorting through all of our purchases was labeling, cutting off tags, taking things out of their packaging and putting them in the correct piles so I knew who's was who's. It was then that I was picking up the backpacks and making sure all the tags were off and getting the filler paper out of them that I noticed something in the bottom of Ryann's backpack. I opened her bag up and reached in and you can imagine my surprise when I pulled out those two items. I called Ryann from upstairs and asked her about them. I asked her if she knew why it was wrong that she took these and she replied "because I didn't ask you first." I replied "that is true as well, but the more important reason is that we took them and didn't pay for them and that is stealing. Stealing is very bad and you can get in alot of trouble for that." I then called Doug and informed him that our 5 year old daughter is now a shoplifter. So when he got home from work he took Ryann (and the two things that she took) back to the store. When they got there they went to the return station and he told Ryann that she needed to tell them what she had done. In a quiet voice she said "I stole these." The lady behind the counter was really nice and told her that she shouldn't do that, that she was way to pretty to take things. So Doug then explained to Ryann that now we are returning the things that she stole. He asked the lady behind the counter "are we good?" and she replied that they were.

So we are hoping that this will be a good lesson for Ryann and that she will realize that she just can't take things. We also hope the other kids will learn from Ryann's lesson as well.