New Friend

Kate has made friends with the neighbor dog. She calls her "little puppy" and now as we pull up after school she tells me "I want to play with my Elly and little puppy."

More to come...

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happy Valentine's day

From my sick Valentine...

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A lesson about Death, and Tubes

First, death:

I come home from work one night and Kate starts telling me about her morning being taken care of by my mom. "Nana has two dogs!" she says emphatically, holding up two fingers.  "No, Kate, Nana doesn't have any dogs, sweetie."  I say to the misguiided toddler.  "Yes," she says, "Two dogs.  All gone, " she clarifies, waving  her arms back  and forth to make herself clear.  Ah, yes, two dead dogs.  Got it.  "One is Teddy," she tells me.

About ten minutes later, her dad asks her, "What should we name the baby?" She quickly answers, "Teddy."

Second story:  Tubes.

Saturday morning the kid's got an eye that's sealed itself shut in stickiness.  The grossness of parenting reveals itself to me.  As I'm pealing open her eye, we decide she's sick.  Pink eye, we declare, having been taught this by the trusty internet.  I leave a message for the doctor to clarify if we need to do anything, and then head out for a weekend retreat, leaving Daddy P to manage the sick toddler.  (The joys of having two parents in a house!)

I return hours later to find out that a) she doesn't have pink eye, b) sinuses can make your eyes weep, and c) she has an ear infection.  Daddy P argued with the doctor about antibiotics.  She's on this nasty one for the third time and it turns her stomach inside out.  The doctor was adamant though, and she is the doctor, so at some point you have to decide if you trust your parenting gut or the doctor more.  (She's on the antibiotic.)

The doctor then looked over her chart and broke the news:  since her first ear infection, she's had one roughly every 2-3 weeks.  (I LOVE daycare!)  And, so, the doctor then said the word we hear from all daycare parents:  tubes.  Apparently, her ears don't know how to drain and will continue to become infected for the rest of her life (or something?) if we don't do this.  More seriously, she'll be on more and more doses of antibiotics with continued infections, and then the doctor made the most compelling argument even though she didn't know it:  she hypothesized that Kate's 2 lb. weight gain in this past year is due to the fact she has been on these heavy duty drugs for the last six months of her life and has not ability to stomach food.  She said she saw a similar situation with another patient who "flourished" after ear tubes, having once been in the 50th percentile height and 3rd %ile weight.

So, ENT here we come... we shall see what this brings.

Pictures from our snow day in Austin:

Sleeping Beauty

Kate's been home for nap the past four days.  Friday was a snowday, then the weekend, and then most Mondays I am off and we have a "Kate and Mom Day."  In those four days, she has taken at least a 2.25 hour nap, and today we just passed that mark and are going for 3 hours.  She sleeps on 45 minute cycles, has since she was an infant, and after 1.5 hours wakes up, sits up, looks around for 4 minutes, and then crashes out again.  Not always, but this past weekend that's been the trend.  You could see how if she did that at school she's just be up.  But, since there's no one playing in her room when she wakes up I guess she gives in to the need to rest and goes back to sleep.

What the heck is she going to do this week when she goes to school and goes back to their 1.5 hour naptime?

Poor kid, no wonder she was so freaking cranky last week.  She was tired!

It's been kinda nice, too, because when your toddler wakes up from nap at 3:30pm or 4pm instead of 2pm you get more evening out of it.  She's been less tired in the evening, and going to bed a little later, which means more dad and mom time in the evening which I love.  Ah, the joys of the stay-at-home kid: sleep!!

20 Weeks

I am not sure exactly what it is. First time around I was trying to look pregnant. Wearing tighter tops, showing off the bump. This time around I am very aware of how huge I feel and stretched and cumbersome. I think some of it is that I miss my excercise routine. I ran for 6 minutes yesterday and that was all I could manage. I really hate treadmills, and swimming, and all those other things people suggest I do... so for now it is yoga and walking for me. Unfortunately, my back is so messed up right now even yoga can be rough, so I'm just trying to take it easy and be kind to body and baby. I've gained about 25 lbs. at this point which puts me at about the same weight I was at this time with Kate. It's a lot harder to find time to go for walks than it was the first time around though. I'd rather spend my evenings with Kate and Daddy P than working out, and I'd rather sleep in these last few precious months rather than get up and work out. I was getting up to do yoga in the morning pretty consistently before cedar fever hit. I'm hoping once it's over I can go back to it. In the meantime I hardly sleep so sleeping later is all I've got.

Also having a lot of nightmares this time around. I don't recall that with Kate. But once or twice a week Daddy P has to wake me up because I'm crying or yelling in my sleep. Many of my dreams are about miscarrying, but some of them are just general awfulness. I'm hoping they stop soon. I thought they'd stop after the 20 week ultrasound when all was okay, but they haven't.

Kate talks about the "baby in mommy's tummy" a lot. Sometimes she says she has a "horsey" in her tummy, other times she asks Daddy P if he has a baby in his tummy. She likes touching my belly and kissing it. I can't wait until she can feel the baby kick. I'm so curious to see what her response is.

I'm starting to realize that I need to slow down at work some soon. I think come March I'll stop taking new clients and start talking to my current clients to prepare them for my time off. I was off 9 months with Kate so wrapping my head around 6 weeks (and starting to see clients after 3 for the critical ones) is a little hard to get used to. Luckily, Daddy P is covered by New Jersey's paternity laws and gets 6 weeks half pay leave which will help hugely. We're planning on keeping Kate in daycare for her sake throughout the whole thing. She loves that place and the consistency will help her adjust I think.

Kicker

This kid moves.  Kate moved, too, but this is of a different quality.  Daddy P can clearly feel his kicks already, starting last week at 19 weeks.  I remember sitting with clients when I was pregnant with Kate and getting jarred back into my own body with each kick.  It felt like a tug-of-war of attention. 

Like the rest of the country we're having some chilly weather.  With windchill it was down to 5 degrees last night, 19 proper.  We did what we thought we should to prepare the house:  opening the laundry room door so it got some heat and the pipes didn't freak out, opening cabinets, putting up heavier curtains to help block our sole remaining crappy window, turn off the sprinklers.  Oh wait, we turned off the **timer** to the sprinkers.  Apparently, the timer had other ideas.

We woke up to drips of ice all over all the bushes, ice on all the walkways, and ice dripping off anything we'd left outside.  Our neighbor's homes were ice free.  Apparently we have a malfunctioning timer on our hands...

Rolling blackouts this morning they say to manage the energy load.  Schools in town are open and delayed in the suburbs.  Nothing like freezing weather to make the humid awful summer a little more tolerable.