A little yoga relaxation

Kate and I did some yoga today and I taught her about savasana, my favorite part of yoga.   During savasana you calm your mind and body and prepare for meditation.  Her favorite part seemed to be the soft eye covers.  Her savasana didn't last my targeted three minutes, but hey...its a start.

Baby sex

Since so many of you are tuned into my pronoun use...baby sex cannot be determined until twenty weeks. (we are at 12 fyi). And yes, we will find out and share with you.

Country Wedding

 We drove out to the country to see Paul's best friend from college get married.  The day was beautiful.  We set up the tent...

 Kate tested it out for Paul.  (We slept at a hotel while Paul camped.  I decided back in October that the chances were good that it would be too cold for Kate if we all camped.)

 Kate then fell in LOVE with the moonbounce.  I thought she'd be scared of all the kids in close quarters bouncing but she loved it.  We couldn't get her to do anything else...

Except, see the cows and chickens.  Here she is eating a hamburger in front of the cow.  Yeah, it was weird.  The next morning she went with the groom's dad to get eggs from the chickens.  They freaked her out but she wouldn't stop talking about them, and she lets you know now where your eggs came from.  (Tried to explain the cow-burger connection too but that one didn't sink in.)

Overheard at Bedtime

No, Daddy.  Read in Spanish.

Lol.  and then -- it gets better -- he does!

Gringo spanish.  But it was all delightful.

Ultrasound

Well, Daddy P and I went for our 12 week ultrasound today.  This baby is a totally different person than Kate.  When we did the ultrasound with Kate I remember the tech pushing (HARD) on my lower abdomen to try to get her to budge.  This kid wouldn't hold still.  Not only was he flopping around all over the place, but he kept rolling over.  It was amazing.  Now I know I will have lots of sleepless nights to come with a rocking baby. 

A close-up

See the teeny feet on the left?

Showing us his back/butt as he rolls around

Xmas decorating

Kate got her first real taste of helping decorate. She really got into it and loved hanging up the ornaments.

Note our new, fake, allergy-free tree. To confirm that we needed to buy a fake tree we went to Home Depot, rubbed pine needles on her arms, and walked around looking at the fake trees. You can see how that turned out...

The final product:

Kate's New Favorite Man

Kate was around a lot of "new" people this weekend.  Family that she sees once or twice a year if we're lucky.  People who love her desperately, but because of her age and distance between us we don't keep up with as often as any of us would like.  She took it all in.  She warmed up to many of them, and kept a wary distance with others as she tends to.

What killed me was that she instantly warmed up to one person she had never met:  she would walk by him and say "hi" in a cute little peppy voice, and give him high fives.  That was when I knew it... she's the girl who falls for musicians.  Kate became buds with my sister-in-laws bestie, Chad.  He plays the guitar, is generally laid back and cool, and is probably one of the most easy going and friendly people I've met.  It might be that Kate picked up on the fact Mason (her cousin and favorite person in the whole world) adores Chad and so Kate automatically adores him, too.  Or, it could be that he plays guitar and sings.  Whatever it was, she liked him and it made me laugh.

Here's a quick video of Kate regaling us with her guitar playing and singing.  In case you need some help, she starts out singing the ABCs, moves on to Twinkle Twinkle, Wheels on the Bus ("people go Up and Down", "baby goes wah wah")...

You Want to What?

My daughter has special pooping requirements.  She needs privacy (physical distance) from others.  She also tends to have favorite pooping places.  One of her favorite places is retail stores.  Pick one, and it's good.  So of course, at Home Depot last night she had to poop.  She did.  Right next to the door display.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any more diapers.  Paul took this opportunity to teach her how to say "commando."

Today, we were negotiating with her about where to poop.  She didn't want to get into the car to go home from breakfast because she needed to poop.  We explained that we wanted to get in the car so we could go look at Christmas trees at Lowes (having already gone to Home Depot the day before to scope out our options).  She says, "Kate poop at Christmas trees."  Okay, we tell her.  You can go and poop at the Christmas trees.  She starts to get into the car specifying "Not Mommy Daddy poop Christmas trees.  Just Kate." 

We readily agreed to this.

Thanksgiving

Had a wonderful turkey day today. Started with a homecooked breakfast, walk on the beach and sand castle building. Then a break with the hubby while the baby napped. Then off to Carolyn's where Kate ate up all the attention and love.

Unfortunately we had a minor freak out. Kate began reacting wig a rash on her face around her mouth. Normally that's what we see when she accidentally eats something with egg in it. But this time it spread to her chest and ears and she got cranky and itchy.

Luckily I had my epipen and benedryl handy. Benedryl cleared it up in an hour

And the culprit? Our best guess? Pistachios...

Scary. Add "nut allergy" to the list...

Daddycentric

We are all relaxing and playing after dinner last night.  Kate and Daddy P were tickling up a storm and the girl was a little excited.  Finally they both collapsed on the ground and I went and snuggled in with Daddy P.  Kate sits up hurriedly and points at me and then at Daddy P's arm around me and says, "I need this arm! No mama.  I need this arm!"

Nothing pretty ensued.  Not the tantrum from Kate when Daddy P kept his arm around me, nor the tantrum from me when Daddy P gave in and scooped her up.

Little Miss

ss
 

 She instructs me now to how many ponytails she needs in the morning.  And has gotten very particular about what she wears (today getting her to wear anything on her lower half was a challenge).

Yesterday we were talking about the new baby (is in, "don't kick my stomach because it hurts me and the baby!!")... I bring it up here and there to see what she'll say.  Yesterday after talking about how there is a tiny baby in my stomach she pulled up my shirt and said, "kate see.  open!" and patted my stomach.  I then had to explain that she couldn't look inside and we'd have to wait for the baby to come out on it's own.

We've had similar discussions about food... I might have to start differentiating between these...

The Toddler Brain

I forget sometime I'm dealing with a person.

I started my prep work yesterday for Kate.  We leave Saturday to fly to Cali and are taking two separate planes (long story) and Paul is taking Kate.  Knowing my daughter, I know she needs a heads-up if the routine is drastically changing.

Well, she sure latched on to the warning, but being a toddler disregarded all time markers like "Saturday."  So, she got out her suitcase last night and started packing.  She packed up what she thought she needed (sunglasses, a stuffed dog, a book) and proclaimed she was leaving for the plane.  When we told her we weren't going on the plane yet and she'd be sleeping at home, she promptly stayed "Kate sleep Nana Papa's house."  Apparently the overnight the other weekend went exceedingly well and now she is ready to leave home.

This morning she stayed on her one track, proclaiming early, "see GG (her great grandma), see Nori (my sister's dog)."  And so we learn of a child's true priorities.

Forecast

Partial sun and windy

Halloween Recap

After learning that kids' Halloween costumes cost $50 a pop I went the home-made route.  One pair of black stockings, a headband and a belt later we had a cat.

Kate had her fall festival at her school on Thursday and then her first trick-or-treating on Halloween night.  Here she is at fall festival looking for treats in the hay and posing with dad...

On Halloween she got into the whole trick-or-treating thing really fast even though she had no idea what candy was until the very end when she got to eat a snicker's bar.  So cute...

This is when ya'll regret that I am designated blogger

I hate first trimester.  No fun clothes.  You aren't really showing and aren't really excited because it's so far away.  And you're sick as a freaking dog that ate all the Halloween candy.

All I want is to find food appealing again.  I used to watch those movies of those women having weird cravings and needing ice cream at a strange hour and think it was kinda strange their husbands would actually go buy it.  I mean, just eat something else.

But now, I get it.  You can't.  I can't eat anything.  Except, once in a while, I'm lucky enough to think about something I might be able to eat and get it down if I eat it RIGHT THEN. 

Yesterday was my first nausea free day (don't get to excited, cause today is back to normal).  So I have decided that I am going to eat every day what I ate yesterday:  milk in the morning, yogurt and oats, a slice of pizza, a blueberry muffin, a smoothie with protein, a carnation breakfast shake, and mashed potatoes.  Spread out carefully so my stomach was never empty nor full.  It was the BEST DAY EVER!

This is seriously so much worse than Kate.  But, I guess the flipside is that I am WAY less tired.  I call it:  adreneline.  When I finally do lie down to sleep I can't.  Then I wake up at a quarter to six when Paul leaves and can't fall back asleep.  It's absurd.  I am counting the days.  We better seriously like this kid.

Okay okay, so Kate...

No Celiac's!  Yay!  And... booo.... the doc is still concerned, so we go back to the GI specialist in December.  I really wanted her to say something like, "well, since it isn't Celiac's and she is doing okay, let's just forget all about this."  But it must have something to do with the fact she weighs only two pounds more than she did last year and is about a head taller... gives beanpole a new meaning if we continue at this rate...

Daddy P is doing his best to take care of his girls despite being swamped at work.  He's pretty overwhelmed, but still managing to do things to help me get food when I need it, make dinner since I can't fathom cooking meat, and watch Kate so I can nap.  We ended up (sadly) hiring a babysitter last night just so we both could work late.  Poor Kate.  I didn't plan work-pregnancy well.  When it was taking a while to get pregnant I decided to go ahead and take on a bunch of stuff and then (of course) baby!  And now I am just doing what I can until I can crawl in bed.

In an attempt to prepare for daylight savings time we have  been keeping Kate up 15 minutes later every two nights and setting her "alarm" later every morning.  Guess which one is working.  Yep, she's going to bed at 8:30, falling asleep around 9, and getting up at her normal 6:30am time.  Geesh.  There was one morning she lasted until 7:15am.  I am hoping that some miracle occurs so that she doesn't wake up at 5:30 on Monday morning...

So, thanks for indulging a hormone crazed pregnant woman in some good ole fashioned complaining...  Your reward:
:

Here's my sweetie carefully eating all the raisins out of her raisin toast

 

 

 

 

It's official!

We are doing it all again...

Heard the heartbeat today of my 1cm long baby. I am seven weeks of nausea down...way worse this time. Not a fun trick. My theory is that its worse because I get less rest (imagine that) because the one day I got a good nights sleep AND a nap I was nausea free.

We saw our little blueberries today and Baby Dos (as he/she has been dubbed) is totally unbaby like in appearance (being a centimeter and all). We didnt see Kate this early so it was a real trip.

So that's my excuse for dropping the blogging ball. pregnancy and toddler exhausted mamacita make.
It's amazing women do this more than twice.

Not I.

Apparently now big ovaries have made their contribution to society and I feel symmetrical enough to stop after Dos.

So yay! Baby 2 on the way!

Doctors, revisited

A comparison:

New Doctor: I'm a little worried because she isn't gaining weight, but she's getting taller, and meeting all of her milestones, so that's good.  Let's do a bloodtest though just to rule out Celiac's Disease.

Old Doctor:  She's fine

New Doctor:  She should be taking vitamins.  Just get those chewable ones and give her one a day so she's getting enough Vitamin D.
Old Doctor: (crickets)

New Doctor:  Have her walk across the room for me so I can watch her walk.
Old Doctor: (already left the room)

So yeah, we're really liking our new pediatrician.  Kate's grown vertically a ton but is only three pounds more than October of last year so we're still keeping an eye on her.  Daddy P's explanation is a "blame the diabetic fat kids for messing up the norms" explanation (okay that really shouldn't be in quotes), but we'll find out Monday if she's allergic to wheat or not.  Doc doesn't think it's that but she wants to be sure.

Apparently, Kate loves watching her blood getting drawn.  I was home recovering from a stomach bug so got to miss this fun event.

Yeah, we all lost a week to sickness.  Kate started throwing up last weekend and kept throwing up almost on the hour for twleve hours overnight.  Then I got it three days later.  Daddy P has survived unscathed, but everyone I know who has kids has either had it or seen it.  Yuck.  Her teacher had it the week before she got it so I guess it was a matter of time until she brought it home.

So I had to cancel clients for two days, and then Daddy P had to take time off work to cover the hours I usually watch Kate.  It was a really stressful yucky week and is making it so both he and I have to work this weekend to catch up.  But it is over and now we have stronger immune systems to show for it!  Yay!

More later... hope all are well...

An October Start

Probably my favorite picture ever! My daughter, the geek. I love it. In case you noticed, she stole Mr. Potato Head's glasses.

Some counting work at home. She was sitting at the kitchen table the other day, eating, and counted up to 19. I couldn't believe it. She's starting to get the idea of number and quantity and can count out items up to seven. So fun to watch!!

Doing some color sorting... Trying to prove to her dad she isn't color blind... although... the jury's out...

Sunday fun

Buying plants and visiting goats. Nothing beats it!

Who loves Half n Half?

The makings of the Big Girl Bed

Helping use the Allen Wrench

So proud!!

We had, what, four nights under our belt of good big girl bed sleeping?  The first night I woke up every hour to look at the monitor, fearful she'd slip through the gap between bed and bumper.  Then the second night I calmed down a little.  And the third night I slept!  Glorious sleep!

And then last night.  Last night I woke up at 4:30am to hear Paul sprinting from our room mumbling something.  I reach over to grab the monitor to see Paul lifting a sleeping Kate off the floor.  That's right.  She fell off the bed AND stayed asleep.  It wasn't until Paul went in and got her that she woke up and then freaked out because he wouldn't put her back in bed.  Meanwhile I had to get up at 6am anyway, and you can imagine that the house was a little chaotic after that.  Around 5:30 Paul decided to sleep with her in her twin bed and then slept until about 8 or so. 

Hoping to sleep past 4:30 tomorrow... without thuds...

Color Mixing!

We've transitioned to the big girl bed. Ever since my aunt left town we've had sleeping nightmares. A two hour fight everynight to get her to sleep, and waking throughout the night, crying, and needing help sleeping. We hypothesized it was one of three things: 1) her old digestive problem. We'd noticed she was having some tummy problems and requesting only milk as she did when she wasn't gaining weight so we started her on probiotic again. 2) the she didn't like the crib anymore. We bought a bed. 3) that she isn't sleeping enough at school and that's messing up the nighttime.

Well, poops are back to normal thanks to the probiotic, and around the time of the first normality she also slept through the night. So, maybe. She took to her new bed beautifully. She climbs in and out throughout the day, but waits patiently for me to get her out in the morning. And, even though she screams for twenty minutes at night because she doesn't want to go to bed, she doesn't get out, and when she's out, she's out. Saturday she napped for over 3 hours. So if we needed evidence that she doesn't sleep enough during the week we got it.

I don't know what's going on. From immediately after dinner on she starts fighting with us about everything in an attempt to delay bedtime. But you can tell she is just exhausted. My next move has been to buy a book written for professionals about sleep issues that was recommended by a friend and researcher. After that I plan on picking her up from school early one or two days to see if that makes any difference. Who knows. Bah.

Sleep. The ongoing struggle.

Playing with Cece

My aunt was in town last weekend and Kate quickly attached to her.  Yesterday was a little traumatic for all of us with her going home.  Luckily we'll see her in a month or so.  I got more "mom" time than I think I have all year.  It was truly awesome.  Yoga, massage, rest, time to read emails without having to say, "hold on, one sec, i hear ya"...

Kate's early bday present

This stroller is being pushed around everywhere.  We even had to take it in the car and put it in the trunk next to her stroller.  (Can you believe it collapses??)  So "Dolly" is getting a lot of time outside the house.

Ick

In the car today, driving Kate to day care, listening to NPR and the incessant talk about those tea partiers.  Suddenly I hear from the back seat, "tea party!  tea party!"  I cried a little on the way to day care today, and it wasn't from having to leave my girl there...

The day I wished had never come

Today was awful.  My daughter said the ugliest words I could imagine.

I almost cried.

She said (and this is verbatim), "No dancing, mama, no."

I quickly stopped my dancing to avoid further admonishments.

Secret Knock

If you're reading this, we decided we like you.  So, thumbs up to you.  Welcome to the very exclusive, very cool, private blog.  I no longer have to edit faces out of pictures, or hide our name.  Ah, the simple things in life...

More to come...

Update from school; And going Private!

My decision has to keep the blog, but make it private.  Your options:
1) Get a gmail account and log-in.  I will send you an invitation to the blog in a few days that will guide you through this process.
2) Send me a note asking to receive blog updates via email.

And now an update... got a note from the director of Kate's school tonight.  This woman is seriously the biggest gift to any parent.  I want to buy her a new car.  Or maybe a box of tea.  You get the idea.

Here is what she had to say:

You know, yesterday when were all in the Fellowship Hall, I had a chance to observe Kate and her teachers a little bit, and I thought that you might be curious as to how things pan out after you say goodbye.

 

It was interesting because you dropped Kate off, and Mara and Meghan both went over to say hi.  Meghan chatted a bit with Kate and offered her different areas to go play in. At one point she tried to guide Kate to an area, but Kate stood her ground.  She was not into moving. She just stood quietly. Meghan said something along the lines of, "Okay, just let me know if something looks like fun" and walked over to another area.  Kate stood and watched for about 5 minutes. She didn't look upset.  She was just observing.  She even ended up turning a 360 degree turn to check everything out.  Then, Mara sat down and announced that she was going to have a tea party.  And Kate just headed straight over with about 5 other friends.  She sat down, picked up a pot and cup and poured some tea.  After that, I did not observe Kate sitting quietly and taking things in again.  She was always moving around.  It really was just those first few minutes.

 

Kate definitely is still taking everything in.  When I see her through out the day, she is very engaged and happy (and she was crazy excited about music today and kept trying to leave snack early so she could go ahead and go!), so it was interesting to me to see her enter for the day, as it has been a while since I have seen that.  She was definitely a little tentative, but once she had observed the whole scene, she was ready to go.

 

First French

Braid.

Is Facebook the Answer?

So, making this blog private means that anyone who wants to read it has to a) get a google account, and b) sign in to see the blog. 

I'm not thrilled with that.  But, likewise, not so thrilled with the public domain.

I am considering using facebook as my means of info.  It's imperfect, and I don't love the idea, but it would be an update mechanism and I could easily control who reads what.  Thoughts?  Concerns?  Ideas?  Most of you all are on facebook, and those who aren't I will happily "friend" if you find me...

All dressed up and nowhere to go

Happy Labor Day!

Just another day of laboring in our house... but hopefully some of you are sleeping in and relaxing.

Conflicted

I know I gave this whole lecture on going private, and I am thinking about it seriously (or quitting) but I've noticed I'm too lazy to take the time to go to a separate feed to read people's private blogs since they don't show up in my reader list. And you know -- I do this for the VIEWERSHIP, so I wouldn't want my reader numbers to drop.

It's Saturday night, and I'm tired, so that's all you're getting for now. Okay, fine. Two more minutes. (I say this particular phrase so much my almost-2 year old says it to me all the time now...)

School continues to go well. She is now a) eating, b) talking to the teachers instead of running away from them when they talk to her or make eye contact, and c) playing with other kids. She is still not d) napping. Which shows up on Saturday when she naps for the combined time she's missed from the week... But other than that she's getting in the swing. I think it helps that most kids seem to go 7-3pm, so my 11-5:15 daughter has only one or two kids around in the afternoon so she gets lots of grown-up attention.

We have noticed, though, that in the two weeks she's been there she's more social overall. She warms up to people faster, and talks to them faster than ever before. So this whole exposure therapy thing for her social anxiety is definitely working. The only minor problem I am having is that if I warn her that it's time to go to school she stalls and complains about it. Once we're in the car we're usually okay, but I've had to plan trips and outings before school lately so I can get us out the door on time...

One Week Down

So, you heard about day #1...

Day #2: Pretty similar. Loosened up a little. Still not eating lunch or even playing near other kids.

Day #3: Screams and cries and clutches at drop off. As though she's realized "this is it, and it's happening every day..." I realized I wasn't giving her any good cue I was leaving since her drop off is on the playground. So, after talking to the teacher, we changed drop off to include walking into her room to leave horsey in her cubby and then a goodbye at the gate to the playground.

Day #4: Drop off at gate... went okay. Crying, but the teacher distracted her pretty fast. They waved goodbye and I could see by the time I was driving away her crying had stopped. She ate lunch today. But, except for the first day, she's been taking short little naps... She comes home a complete ball of social energy. As though all the shyness has only stored up all her need to play and socialize and so she explodes when at home in the evening. Today was better and calmer though, so we speculated this meant she got more socializing done at school.

Day #5: Drop-off was tear-free again. She ate lunch and took a tiny nap. Played "near" kids the teacher reported. Teacher, assistant and director all separately reported to us that today she was significantly more involved and engaged and less shy.

We'll see how coming off the weekend goes. Mondays she is home with me for mom-Kate time which I love. I work a hairdresser's schedule and while I miss the Saturday family time, I really totally love my Kate-mom time on Monday. Hopefully Tuesday will be okay and she'll pick up where she left off.

Other news...

Kate loves counting. Not necessarily counting accurately, but you'll hear her counting every few minutes. She also now points to words and says "AB Cs" and wants to know the sounds. She can pick out a "sssss" and knows that the "p" is for "papa." I think because she's such a bookworm she's just really interested in figuring the whole letter thing out.

We have noticed that she's learned to swing from the bar above the slide at school. I am waiting to see what else she brings home in her new bag of school-tricks.

This week she's starting to string together three words into phrases. For example, when she was talking to my dad she told him "Daddy boo boo boat" to let him know that we had some problems with getting the boat out today. Cracked me up. The other day we watched the metrorail go past us and I talked about how maybe sometime Kate and I can take the train. In response she specifies "Kate Mama Daddy train" so I don't forget Daddy P in the outing.

We are just soaking up her twos and loving all the words and personality and independence that she is flaunting. She's such a joy. Every day just gets better.

She dressed herself