It's a boy!

   At 22 weeks we went in to our regularly scheduled ultrasound in hopes of finding out if the baby was another girl or a baby boy. I waited until 22 weeks because my mom wanted to be there and it's fun for her to find out when we do. Most people go in between 18-20 weeks, but we wanted to wait.
   After discovering we're having a boy the doctor said there was a problem with his heart and a specialist would be in the room momentarily. Now, because we were at a children's hospital that is equipped to do just about everything, everything is right there. The specialist was in the room in 30 seconds trying to explain what the problem was. I was in shock and what he said wasn't making sense, he was using so many big words, just get to the bottom of it. The bottom of it was we caught this very early and it's very serious and we have to admit you in the hospital right now. Yikes. That's when my ears perked up, right now.
   I immediately thanked the good Lord for his perfect timing. If we would have had the ultrasound weeks earlier we might not have caught the problem. We had my mom there to take charge of the girls so that was something we didn't have to think about. We had a ultrasound tech that was in tuned enough to catch the rapid heart rate.
   Aparently the baby's heart rate was doubling normal heart rate and was being clocked at 310. Yikes, it's supposed to be half that. When the heart pumps so quickly the blood does not fill the chambers and fluid can back up in the body. Of course there can also be damage to the heart, even death. There were no problems, we caught this early enough. Praise God for our baby boy and praise God for His perfect timing. Five minutes later I was in the ER of Winnie Palmer Hospital, which is right down the hall from where the ultrasound occured. As Kevin and I sat there with the heart monitor on my belly we could hear the baby's heart rate race time and again. The machine couldn't register the heart rate it was going so fast. Scary.
   After being admitted to the hospital, upstairs actually, and after about 12 hours baby boy's heart rate converted. Yeah! God is so good and this story of his loving hands taking care of my family is a testimony to that. I asked the doctor what would have happened if we had had our ultrasound weeks earlier and the SVT had not presented itself at that time. He said I would have eventually noticed less or no movement from the baby and gone into the doctor. That would have been devastating.
   Thank you Lord for sparing us and taking care of my son, actually he's your son.

Sweet Potato

A garden experiment. Ok, not really, but at least for me. I don't know anyone who has done a potato. This gardening thing goes back generations too, but I still don't know of anyone growing potatoes. Maybe because it's of the cheaper varierty of things to buy at the grocery store so why bother growing them? I don't know. I've always wondered and I read that it's a great summer time veg to grow, which is hard to find in the hot humidity of Florida summers. I started mine late, what a suprise for those who know me. :) But, I won't make that mistake next year. Here is a blurb from Tom MacCubbin's site on the basics of starting the potato.

As you may recall the potatoes were started in May. This year I could not obtain starts at the garden center. The producer said a wet spring in Georgia cause a crop failure of starts. So my crop came from some saved potatoes from last year and a potato or two from the store. The potatoes were started in soil or a jar of water. The shoots that developed with roots were removed when about 6 inches long and grown on in containers until a foot or so long or stuck directly in the ground. They were kept moist and fertilized 2 to 3 times during the summer season. That is all it took to grow sweet potatoes.

 This is the month to harvest and I was ready to get the vine off the ground so I can make room for other veggies. Honestly I was just tired of moving the vine around since it kept creeping into the yard. Otherwise it's a no brainer thing. I started ripping it up and I found little sweet potatoes hanging off the roots.

Like I said before I started them late and their smaller then they should be, but just as delicious. Did you know you don't have to peel a sweet potato? One of our family's favorite dishes are the potatoes cut into bite sized pieces with a little olive oil in the pan. When they start to soften we add diced onions.Once it's all soft and yummy then I put in herbs-fresh or dried. Yum! Anyways, here is my harvest from two potato starts.

Tomato Time

It appears to be tomato time. According to leading experts (Tom MacCubbin and his wife) we should be planting our tomato seeds indoors now to give them a fair start before putting them in the ground August 1. I was just at Lowe's two nights ago and there were still seeds to be had at stores. Be careful though. They take all seeds off the shelves, per law, and replace with new seeds a few weeks later.