Through the Picture Window

pinterest, twitter, teeth, two-month olds

2012-02-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

Just some random stuff today...

1. Since I'm such a cool person, you can now follow me on Twitter and Pinterest :D. I finally decided to really give Twitter a go, but I need some friends there! Pinterest? Don't even get me started. It's a time sucking monster. There's a Twitter link to the right, and my Pinterest name is Sarah@Picture Window.

2. I've accepted that our living room is not going to look nice for several years. Things started off so well there, but the furniture has become a playground for Celia and scratching posts for the cats. Luckily this was the set we got used and really, really cheap so it's not completely the end of the world. I will look forward to replacing it with something that's actually useable and nice to look at and sit on, once the cats are gone and the kids are older.

On a typical day.

3. Yesterday felt more like early April than February 1st. I even took Henry for a walk outside! I don't miss the freezing temperatures and snow, but is anyone else a little freaked out by this warm winter? It doesn't seem right...

4. I have to go to the dentist today to go over the x-rays I had taken last week. Having to go back again makes me suspicious. Why would I need a special appointment to go over x-rays unless something was seriously wrong with my teeth?

5. Slowly, slowly, I'm still making a little progress on the post-partum bod. The scale is stuck about ten pounds higher than normal and I have a serious jelly belly, but to the average onlooker I'm doing pretty well :). If I ever have time to start running again, I'm sure I'll be back to normal pretty quickly. I remember that after Celia was born, I stayed at a higher weight for a while and then dropped the rest pretty quickly. So, at 9 weeks here I am:

Whoa. Blurry picture. I'm bad at self portraits.

6. Celia went to sleep without her binky last night, no problem! She still woke up earlier than usual this morning, though. Hoping she will adjust and go back to getting up at 7:00 each morning.

7. I currently have Henry down for a nap in the Pack n Play. I really want to get him sleeping on a flat surface, and I'm thinking about moving the Pack n Play to the bedroom for nighttime sleep. The thing is, he sleeps for 6 or 7 hours in a row in the swing, and I'm scared I'll lose sleep if I change things!

8. I need to be brave and change things anyway. The sooner he can sleep in the Pack n Play or crib, the better for his sleep habits. It's silly of me to be scared of a little baby, right? I remember when Celia was a colicky newborn and I was miserably sleep-deprived, I once told Chris "I live in fear of her." Ha! But I really did...

9. Henry is still looking a lot like Celia did when she was a baby. The only difference is that he's so much bigger.

Henry at 2 months:

Celia at 2 months:

10. I'm going to try to finish up meal planning for February today. Although I still have two weeks left to plan... I've had my planner sitting on the counter for days and just haven't had any time. It's so worth it, though, because life is much easier when you already have dinner planned and sometimes even prepped or in the freezer for each day. I highly recommend planning if you don't already!

bye bye binky (for real this time)

2012-02-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

Celia has still been using her binky when she falls asleep, and sometimes would go get it out of her room when she needed some comfort. I've talked about getting rid of the binky before, but decided it was not a good time to take the binky away when we were going through so many other changes. It really did serve a purpose in giving Pita comfort, and it wasn't as if she was going places with it and keeping it in her mouth all the time. So, now that Henry's born and we're more settled in, and now that Celia has turned three I decided it was time. Around her birthday I started telling her that she didn't need the binky anymore and that it wasn't good for her mouth now that she's getting big. She started getting used to that idea, and I knew she had her first dentist appointment coming up and the dentist would reinforce that.

The dental hygienist told Pita that the Tooth Fairy took binkies as well as teeth, and that Celia could leave her binky for the Tooth Fairy and get a present. Pita and I talked about that a little after her appointment, and she didn't like the idea of her binkies just disappearing. She even started to cry a little, not in a tantrum-y whiny way, but truly sad. So I thought of an alternative, and asked her if she'd like to make a special binky teddy bear and put her binkies inside it. That way she could keep her binkies forever, but they would be part of the bear and she wouldn't put them in her mouth anymore. She liked that idea a lot and immediately said she wanted a blue bear. Since I'd gotten us both psyched up, I figured we should do it right away before either of us lost our nerve! I asked Chris if he could get home from work in time for us to go out after dinner, and he could. So off we went to the mall and the Build-a-Bear store.

First of all, the mall itself was an event. We go so rarely that Celia wouldn't have remembered ever being there. It was new and exciting to her. As for Chris and me, it kind of felt like we were in a foreign country. Ha! We were walking through JC Penney, kind of dazed by the lights and bright colors, all that stuff, and all of it looking so foreign to us, and we realized how out of touch we are with current pop culture and fashion.

The elevator and escalator were exciting for Pita, too.

Anyway, we went into the store and they did indeed have a blue teddy bear, so Celia took one and we went through the process of putting it together. Pita put her binkies inside the bear without hesitation.

He got fluffed up, sewn up, and Celia gave him a bath. His name is Bink, of course.

And just like that, the deed was done!

We went home and had the usual evening and bedtime routine. Pita went to bed with no problems, but she did end up crying a little and calling for us a few times. She really did try to fall asleep on her own, poor thing, but she had a little trouble. I finally lay down with her until she fell asleep, and I gave her some suggestions for how to relax and fall asleep since she didn't have a binky. She was really tired, so she fell asleep before long. I thought she might call for us in the night, but she didn't at all! She did get up a half hour earlier than usual. It went pretty well! Hopefully each night will get easier.

the dentist

2012-01-31T15:16:00.000-05:00

Celia had her very first dentist appointment today!

I'm pretty sure I have a picture of her in the same hat and coat from last winter. The little peanut just doesn't grow!

I knew she would do okay, but she ended up having a real cleaning and I was impressed at how well she did. She saw the same dental hygienist that I see, who is so great with kids. Celia was immediately comfortable with her, and she had really great ways of explaining everything she did and making it all seem fun. Celia sat for a real cleaning, which I wasn't expecting, but she did great. Even when I could tell something was uncomfortable for her, she never complained. She would get kind of a worried look on her face, but then I or the hygienist would say something and she'd be all smiles again.

She rode up and down in the chair. I mean, the "rocket ship".

She opened her mouth wide. I mean, "roared like a lion".

She had the "little bugs" cleaned off her teeth, and got her teeth "tickled".

When her cleaning was over, Maisy got to have her teeth brushed and Celia got a toothbrush and a little prize.

Then the dentist had to come in and rain on our parade. She was obviously not into kids :(. Our hygienist is great, but too bad I don't know of any dental practices that specialize in kids. She said Celia had a sticky spot on one of her front teeth- which basically could eventually turn into a cavity. I was surprised at that because decay on front teeth is usually from too much time with a bottle, or from having too many sugary drinks. Celia wasn't using a bottle by the time her teeth came in, has pretty limited amounts of juice, and never drinks juice from a sippy cup. The dentist kept talking like it must have been from juice or something but I know it's not. And I always make sure I brush those front teeth. Gah! It makes me feel like a bad mother. Why does being a mother have to involve so much guilt? Anyway, hopefully it will not turn into anything worse because I can't imagine having to put Celia through getting a filling or something.

Of course, since Pita did so well at the dentist she had to have tantrums once we got home. Three-year-olds are so delightful. It's almost like because she holds herself together and is an angel in public, she has to let loose and act like a terror at home. Once the tantrums were out of her system we had a good lunch, I read her some stories with Henry on my lap, got Celia down for a nap, and got Henry to sleep too. That's a rare thing these days, but the timing worked out. Now time for them both to get up and we'll get on with our day...

2 months

2012-01-29T09:12:00.000-05:00

Henry turned 2 months old yesterday. Things have slowed down a bit and time isn't flying by as it did in his first six weeks.

Stats: Our 2-month appointment isn't until Henry's almost three months, so he won't be weighed any time soon. At six weeks he weighed 10 pounds 5 ounces, so he's probably around 11 pounds now. Size 1 diapers and size small cloth diapers are getting too small, and he's already moving on to 3-6 month clothes. He's so much bigger than Celia was at this point! I think she was only seven or eight pounds at two months. Apparently his diet of vegan breast milk is giving him quite an edge :D.

Schedule: This is about the same as it was at one month. Henry is ready for bed and a six hour stretch of sleep around 8:30-9:00 at night. He usually sleeps until 2:30 or 3:00, and starts making noise. I try to get him up to eat without waking him fully, and he usually eats and goes right back to sleep. He usually sleeps for another 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, eats again, and sleeps a little longer until 7 or 8:00 in the morning.

Our daytime schedule can vary, depending on what we're doing that day. Henry is ready for his morning nap around 9:00, but the length of that nap really varies. If we go out on errands, he sleeps for a long nap- it can be up to 3 hours! That's because he sleeps best in his carseat. If we're at home, it's difficult to get him to have a good nap. Afternoons are especially tricky, because he won't sleep for long but is cranky because he's tired. Last evening he was cranky and tired after dinner and wouldn't take a nap, so I decided to try doing his bedtime routine early to see if an earlier bedtime would work. He went to bed at 7:00, but woke up at 8:00 and then a few times during the night. So that didn't work. Eventually we'll get him to an earlier bedtime. I don't want to rush things, but I'm really looking forward to getting Henry on a consistent nap schedule, and getting him to sleep in the crib.

Development: Henry does a lot of smiling, has started to laugh a little, and does lots of cooing and early babbling. He makes different vowel sounds, CV (consonant vowel, like "ma") and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant, like "agoo") syllable sounds. He is very responsive and starts talking when I talk or sing to him. It's so much fun to interact with him and see him smiling and babbling away. He likes to be carried facing out so he can look around. He likes looking at toys and seeing new things. When we take him out, he stays very calm and quiet and just looks around at everything. Henry's motor movements are becoming a little more controlled and some of his reflexes have lessened. He now startles to sudden noises. We're working on doing more tummy time, but he really doesn't like it so I put him on his stomach for very short periods of time. He can lift his head and shoulders up a bit, but he's not very happy about it. He does have good head control when we hold him upright and when he's sitting.

Other than his fussy times when he's tired and won't nap, Henry is still a very easy baby to take care of. He's generally happy, and very social. He's easy to take places because he does well in the car and likes the stroller as long as we keep him moving. The only thing I worry about is getting him into the crib to sleep, and getting him on a good schedule and able to fall asleep on his own. We will eventually sleep train if we need to. I know I'm just anxious about it because Celia was such a terrible sleeper as an infant. Now that we've gone through it once we will know what to do when the time comes.

our week

2012-01-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

After being pretty busy over the last couple weeks, I was looking forward to a normal, quiet week. At least, as normal and quiet as it can get with a new baby and a 3-year-old. Yesterday it was just me and the little ones all day. Celia has her moments, but overall she has adjusted well to Henry being part of the family at this point. I do have to make sure I give her as much attention as I can. Yesterday morning we went to the post office to buy stamps and mail thank you notes from Celia's party. Celia was funny during the thank you note process, because she didn't quite understand the concept of the thank you notes. She has trouble understanding the difference between receiving mail and sending mail to other people. It's kind of abstract and confusing for her. So I don't think she understood that we were writing notes to the people from her party, but I explained it to her and she wrote her name on each note. She does, however, really like the concept of mail and is fascinated with the post office and mail carriers. She was so excited to put the envelopes through the letter slot!

After that I had been planning to go to the bookstore just so Celia could play there, but I had noticed that her favorite pair of shoes might be getting too small. Her other pairs have gotten really worn out and gross looking too, so we went to the shoe store. We got three new pairs of shoes. I started with two, but there was a third pair on clearance that was a great deal and the shoes were really cute. Celia had a great time at the shoe store. The woman helping us said she had never seen a kid have so much fun with shoe shopping- ha!

After that Celia wanted to go home, so we went home and played, and had lunch. It was a warm and sunny day and Pita said she wanted to have a picnic. It wasn't that warm, but I told her we could have a picnic inside. She had lunch while Henry watched, and then I found her lounging with my cell phone.

Kids these days...

Celia had a good nap while I played with Henry, and he had a short nap too. Then it was still nice out, so we went for a walk! I can't wait for spring when we can do this all the time. Henry was pretty fussy in the late afternoon and before dinner. I think it's because I couldn't get him to have a good nap. It's getting harder to get him to sleep well for naps, for some reason. I was happy when Chris finally got home and could help a little.

This morning Henry and I took Celia to daycare, along with some cupcakes for her birthday. I have never seen those kids so excited. Apparently cupcakes are a big deal! Since then, Henry and I have been hanging out all day. During his naps I've been making and freezing a big batch of vegan bolognese sauce (which, by the way, made the house smell amazing- any sauce with red wine in it has me at first sniff) and doing laundry. I'm trying to get Henry to nap in his crib, but can't get more than 30 or 40 minutes. Today I thought he was still sleeping, and I looked on the monitor and saw him wide awake looking at the animals on his wall. The only times I can get long naps out of him are when we go somewhere in the car. He's so much happier when he has good, long naps. At least nights are still going pretty well.

Wide awake, looking at the animals on his wall. Maybe I need to make his room less interesting?? The kid's too gosh darn interested in everything! Already too smart for his britches.

Henry is having longer awake periods and is starting to like new things. I've started reading to him and he loves looking at simple colorful picture books. He studies the pages and smiles. He is tolerating tummy time a little more, but doesn't last long. He can lift his head and shoulders up. And today he was sitting in his chair kicking his feet and watching a hanging toy move when he kicked it. I'm sure he wasn't kicking it on purpose, but he liked seeing it move whenever he did.

Henry is sleeping now, and then we'll go get cat food at the vet and pick up Celia. And... I hear Henry fussing. Another short nap! Gotta go.

monday miscellany

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002-05:00

1) Henry is 8 weeks old today. He's quite a happy guy. I even got some real laughs out of him yesterday. Wish I'd gotten them on video.

2) Chris and I got stuck in a revolving door on Thursday. We're pretty cool people. See, we thought we could fit together, with Henry's stroller, in one section of the revolving door into Children's Hospital. By the time we got ourselves all the way inside, it was apparent that the door was not, in fact, meant to fit two adults and a baby in a stroller within one of its sections. We were wedged in there so tight that we couldn't really move at all. We had to inch our feet forward in tiny little shuffling steps in order to move, and as we shuffled I entered a state of laughing hysteria. It was the funniest thing I'd experienced in a long time. So, imagine sitting in the lobby of a busy hospital building and seeing two people and a stroller wedged in the revolving door, shuffling inch by inch, while the lady is doubled over in hysterics. And then I kept laughing pretty much all the way through the lobby. And I kept laughing when we left after our appointment, drawing some stares in the parking lot. Chris didn't find it funny at all, so now picture a man pushing a stroller through a parking lot, stone-faced, with a lady trailing behind him laughing hysterically. Yep. We're cool.

3) The nicest woman carried a package into the post office for me the other day, when she saw me with Celia, Henry in the stroller, and a big box. I was trying to figure out how I'd get us and the box inside! She offered to help me, and on our way inside she said "I have three kids. It does get better." Haha! I was feeling pretty good that day, but I probably looked totally frazzled anyway. It was nice of her to encourage me. Kind of made my day.

4) We had Celia's birthday party on Saturday. She had the best time. We had some people cancel because it snowed and the roads were bad, but we ended up having just the right number of people anyway. More might have been too much. Celia was so cute and enjoyed seeing her friends who came. She also got some great presents. Highlights were a nice easel (she loves drawing and painting), a sit n spin, remote control car, and a tent with a tunnel.

5) Pita says the cutest things these days. Yesterday we had soup for dinner, and it had celery in it. Celia said, "I don't like celery. Three-year-olds don't eat celery." Then since yesterday was her real birthday, I gave her a cupcake with a candle for dessert. Chris said that I had made the cupcakes all by myself and Celia said "Mommy you must be very tired!" We went upstairs for her bath and Celia was talking about all the people she loves. Then she said, "And everyone loves me, of course". Ha! Then after her bath, Pita was talking about wearing her pull-up overnight and she said "I'm gonna surprise you and show you how dry I am!" She's so funny. I never get tired of hearing what she comes up with.

6) Speaking of that soup, I made up my own vegetable soup yesterday because we had lots of leftover cut vegetables from Celia's party. My mom thought of making a soup with them, so I did. I just heated a whole lot of broth, added garlic and some leftover tomato paste I had in the fridge, a whole lot of leftover vegetables, seasonings, odds and ends of beans, pasta, barley, and lentils from the pantry, and we had ourselves a really tasty soup. Even Celia liked it. Except for the celery. We had enough for dinner with leftovers, and about four or five more meals worth to freeze.

Altogether I got six meals worth of soup out of things I already had languishing in the fridge and pantry. What a great way to use up things that otherwise might not get eaten.

7) I saw this in the local newspaper the other day. How ironic.

8) We stopped at a grocery store I don't usually shop at before music class on Friday morning. Usually, I can't fit Henry's car seat in a grocery cart and still have room to open up the little seat for Celia to sit in. That means either Celia has to walk, or we have to find a tractor-trailer sized cart with a little car in front for her to ride in. But, I discovered that the Shaws shopping carts can fit both Celia and Henry in a regular-sized cart! It made shopping so much easier, so I guess I'll be going there more when I have both kids with me.

9) Chris and I need to figure out some sort of schedule that allows us both to get things done around the house on weekends. We also need to start scheduling times when we each have alone time with Celia and Henry. I have Henry to myself quite a bit, but Chris doesn't. And I would really like to spend time alone with Celia, maybe go out together while Chris watches Henry.

10) Speaking of getting things done, there is so much I want to get done this week. You'd think I'd have plenty of time to get things done now that I'm home all week, but infants sure are good at sucking up time!

Here's to a productive (but not chaotic) week!

three years old

2012-01-22T13:18:00.001-05:00

Celia turns three today. It took all week for me to write this. She's grown into such a complex little person that I don't think I can do her justice with this post. There aren't words to describe what a wonderful little girl she is, and how much we love her. Three seems like such a milestone. Celia is balancing on the line between baby and little girl. She is changing every day and becoming so independent and mature, but is still in many ways a toddler.

She has been looking forward to her birthday for months now! For the last couple weeks she's been asking almost every day if it's her birthday yet. We started crossing off days on the calendar so she could see how many days were left.

Stats: Celia weighs 25 1/2 pounds. She's stayed at that weight for a long time now. I looked back at her 2 1/2 year post, and she was 25 1/2 pounds then too. She is still quite small for her age, but she's been growing taller and leaner, looking more like a (tiny) little girl than a toddler. She wears size 2T clothes and size 7 or 7 1/2 shoes. 2T things are starting to get too short for her, but 3T is mostly still too big.

Schedule: Pita is still on a great schedule. She goes to bed at 8:00 each night, and gets up around 7 in the morning. When she wakes up in the morning, she just lies quietly in bed until someone comes to get her. She still takes a long nap most afternoons too, and she needs that nap because she gets tired and cranky without it. We're lucky she's such a great sleeper.

Speech and Language: Pita often talks very much like an adult. She says things that are so surprising to hear coming from a three-year-old. Her vocabulary and grammar are amazing. She is doing so much with language that I'm not even sure what to say about it. I did write down one thing she said the other day because it was so cute, and the way she phrased it was definitely not typical for an almost three-year-old. Celia wanted Chris to play trains with her, and she came up to me and said: "I was just sitting there and I thought to myself I was lonely because Daddy wasn't pushing the train." She is so funny sometimes, but I have to keep a straight face because to her she's just talking normally. She doesn't know it isn't normal for a tiny little kid to say things like "I thought to myself". She was also asking the other day if her friend Jack was coming to her party, and then she said "What do you think he'll wear? Maybe a dress or a suit!"

Cognitive/Play: Cognitively, Celia is developing a better sense of time, knows the four seasons, understands the days of the week and knows what we do on different days, and I have started to introduce the calendar to her. She knows her birthday and our address. She knows all upper and lowercase letters, words that start with some of them, and some of the sounds the letters make. She counts very well and is getting better at identifying numbers 1-10. She spends a lot of time asking "why". She has a great sense of humor and is always making up silly songs and funny words. We have a couple of family jokes that she really "gets", and she'll use them sometimes. Celia spends most of her play time coloring or doing art projects, or pretending. She hardly ever uses toys for what they were meant because she's busy coming up with new ways to use them or pretending they're other things. She likes playing school, hospital, shopping, and likes pretending to be the mommy and leaving me or Chris at daycare. When we're playing, she will say "I'm the Mommy and you're the Honey". She also really likes to build with her big bricks and Legos, and likes playing with her train set. She loves being read to, and we still spend about an hour a day reading to her- before her nap, and at bedtime. Celia also loves watching tv, and would definitely watch too much if we didn't limit it. The shows she watches are very limited though- only PBS shows that are appropriate for her. She loves Super Why and Caillou. She really enjoys fairy tales, and I think that this year we will slowly start introducing some Disney movies to her. I'm not crazy about her spending long periods of time in front of the tv, so I will watch them with her and we'll talk about them. Recently I let her watch her first movie, Mary Poppins. We made an event out of it, making popcorn and hot chocolate. She needed me to sit and explain parts of the movie to her, which was good because then she wasn't mindlessly watching television but really was understanding the story.

Social/Emotional/Behavioral: Celia does well playing with other children. She is very social and really enjoys her little friends. She's generally very easy going and plays well with friends, but there are times at daycare when I've seen her get frustrated with younger kids or kids her age who try to take toys or can't really play or communicate on Celia's level. There are younger kids who are bigger than she is, and she doesn't always understand that although they're bigger they're not quite at her level yet. I've noticed that she likes playing with older kids a lot. They're more responsive and social. Celia has also had her very first heartbreak, I think. She talks a lot about her friend Jack, who used to be her best friend at daycare, and how much she misses him because he doesn't come anymore.

Pita is still a very well-adjusted little girl. She takes almost everything in stride. I haven't written about it yet, but she had to go to the emergency room, rode in an ambulance, and spent the night in the hospital recently and she just accepted it all like it was no big deal! She was the same with her birthday party yesterday. It was her first "real" party with non-family members and there were quite a few people, but she wasn't overwhelmed at all. She had the best time. She is still having a hard time with me, misbehaving and getting wild when I have to take care of Henry and can't give her enough attention. I think she has a bit of a love/hate relationship with me right now. She gives me a really hard time, but only because she loves me and wants me to herself. At least that's what I tell myself... There have been rough days when I've said to Chris "She hates me!" Otherwise, she's very well behaved. She's very easy to take places because she always behaves well in public. Even on a difficult day at home, I know I can just take her out for a while and her behavior will improve.

Motor Skills: Celia can use scissors correctly with a little help. She loves coloring and drawing. She can write some letters. She is good at jumping and climbing. Pita likes to do "tricks"that involve climbing on furniture, jumping, balancing, etcetera. The climbing is getting a little out of control because Celia also likes to do things by herself and has taken to moving chairs and other objects around to climb on so she can reach things. I've started removing sharp objects, medications, and the like from places she can now climb to and reach.

Self Help: Celia can dress and undress herself, needing a little help with her shirts and socks. Each night she likes to pick out her clothes for the next day. She can use the bathroom and wash her hands independently, but I like to help her because getting on and off the big toilet is tricky even with her potty seat on top. She still wears a pull-up at night time. I think I'll probably have to just put her in underwear and expect some accidents in order to get her out of them. I have a feeling she goes in the pull-up just because she can, and that if we took them away she might be able to stay dry all night. For now we'll keep things as they are, until Henry is in his crib and sleeping through the night. I don't need more than one child up at night right now!

I can't believe I have a three-year-old! It's so much fun to watch her grow and change, but also bittersweet. I wish she could always be my baby, but the next three years will be just as fun as the last and I can't wait to see what kind of girl she grows into.

answers, part two

2012-01-19T16:08:00.000-05:00

Here are answers to the rest of your questions!

How many children do you want? I think we might be done at two, but I guess it's possible we'll change our minds. We always wanted more than two kids, and if we had met and married younger we'd probably be more likely to have more. As it is, we may have another but we may just concentrate on Celia and Henry. I think we're both kind of looking forward to moving to the next stage of having older kids, doing new things with them, seeing them play together, being able to get out more and take trips, etc. On a more practical level, we would also have more financial wiggle room with fewer kids, and Chris and I are both looking forward to getting back to our own hobbies and interests one day.

What is your biggest fear? Something happening to Chris or one of the kids.

If you had a free vacation anywhere where would you go? That's a tough one. I would probably want to take a long trip and see several cities in both Eastern and Western Europe. On the other hand, going somewhere with warm, beautiful weather would be nice too.

How did you meet your hubs? I wrote about it in this post, quite a while back. It's a good story and I'm a lucky girl :)

What do you wear on a stay at home day - presentable clothes or comfy stuff? Both. I don't like wearing ratty old things all day because that makes me feel like a slob. I usually wear jeans or other casual pants, and a basic shirt. Nice enough that I could go out in them, but stuff I can move and get dirty in. At home I usually wear an old fleece on top to keep warm, so I might change out of that and wear a sweater if I go out. Sometimes I change into my pajamas really early in the evening, like around dinner time, to get really comfortable. I like to be already in my pajamas when the kids go to bed, so I can immediately sit and relax :)

What kind of car do you drive? Aha! Another reason not to have more kids- I've run out of space in my car! I've had a Honda CR-V for about seven years. It's been a great car. It's comfortable, reliable, and a good size. Big enough that I don't feel dwarfed by the enormous SUVs on the road, small enough that it handles and parks like a regular old sedan. It also has plenty of room in the back for storage. I don't really want a bigger car, but there are times when it would be nice. We could, for example, fit our family plus a set of grandparents or a friend in one car if I had something bigger.

Any vacations planned for the summer? No. I'm sure we'll take some weekend trips to visit family, and I guess it's possible Chris and I might be able to get away for a night if Henry's sleeping well by then.

Will you return back to work or become a sahm? The million dollar question. I have no idea. Ideally, I would go back to work part time at the preschool job I loved and was transferred away from in the fall. I will try for that, but have no idea if they will put me back there. If that doesn't work out, I'm not sure what I'll do. It's hard to accept that I might have to find a new job, because the one I had was the one I loved and I thought I'd spend my whole career there. I loved the part time schedule because it was something I enjoyed, and allowed us to have a good chunk of income from me while still giving me plenty of time at home with the kids. If I'm not able to return to the preschool I will either stay home, start a business from home, or look for part time work elsewhere. I guess we'll have to figure it out as it happens.

Do you want to run another marathon? Do I ever! I cannot wait to get back into running. Between winter weather, having a newborn and 3-year-old who require all of my attention, and a foot injury that's either a pinched nerve or a cyst (have to get in to see Dr. Dreamboat soon...) I haven't been running at all. I don't know when I'll get back to marathoning, but when our kids are older and when they're grown I see myself running marathons on a regular basis and it would be really fun to run races all over so Chris and I could get in some travel along with my races.

Do you have a signature fragrance? No. I used to love a BCBGirls perfume and wore it all the time, but it was discontinued. I never found another one I liked as much. On the other hand, perfumes are full of bad chemicals- carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, etc. So I haven't looked too hard for anything. If I wore perfume it would only be for special occasions since I don't want my kids or myself exposed to those chemicals. I do love good smelling things, though.

Thanks for playing along, friends! I always love when people do these posts. It was fun to answer your questions.

what do vegans eat all week?

2012-01-16T21:08:00.000-05:00

In trying to answer the question about my favorite vegan meal, I really couldn't come up with a single meal. I thought I'd do one of my "what do vegans eat all day?" posts with a twist. I'll show a full day, and then a week's worth of dinners too.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with a couple tablespoons of raisins, a tablespoon of chopped walnuts, a teaspoon of maple syrup, and some spices.

Lunch: A leftover cabbage roll stuffed with bulgur and grain sausage; brown rice; a few green beans.

I also made a smoothie to get more fruits and vegetables in. This one is my favorite to make: about 3 C kale lightly steamed, about a cup of frozen raspberries, a small banana, ice, and some flax milk for liquid.

Sometimes I add a scoop of ground flax seed or wheat bran, but not today. You do have to watch how much you're putting in your smoothies because the calories can add up. On the other hand, it's a great way to pack in a daily dose of dark leafy greens and other good stuff.

Afternoon Snack: A handful of crunchy dried green bean thingies, a few strawberries, and a few squares of dark chocolate.

Dinner: Spaghetti and homemade meatless balls.

And these are the six dinners I have planned for the week:

1. Cheezy Broccoli Soup (this recipe) and Garlic Bread

2. Cabbage Rolls (filled with bulgur, vegetables, and Field Roast sausage), Brown Rice, Green Beans

3. Spaghetti and Meatless Balls (the meatless balls are made with textured vegetable protein along with all the other typical ingredients you'd put in regular meatballs)

4. Hearty Stew with tempeh, potatoes, and carrots

5. Shells and "Cheese" with broccoli (the cheesy sauce is tofu-based and has nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavor. I also really like cashew-based cheesy sauces.)

6. Pizza and Salad

This is a pretty typical representation of what we have for dinners. We don't usually have pasta more than once a week, but I wanted to try the mac and cheese recipe. We usually have pizza or something else that's really easy one night a week. We also have bean-based things sometimes- chickpea teriyaki is a favorite. Two of my nutrition goals are to have dark leafy greens every day (smoothies are a very easy way to do this) and to eat more beans.

One thing about being vegan is that, in order to eat well and to have really yummy homemade meals, you do need to make almost everything from scratch. There are plenty of quick recipes, but some of our favorites take some time. I do a lot of cooking ahead, either freezing things or getting them made or prepped a day or two in advance. If I have time during naps, I often get dinner ready ahead of time during the day. On days when Celia's at daycare I can usually get a meal or two done while Henry's doing this:

There you have it!

miscellany monday, and answers part one

2012-01-16T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's Miscellany Monday! Apparently it's also wacky formatting day on Blogger. I cannot get my font and formatting right on this post no matter what I do...

I don't feel like today's a holiday because first, all days are the same for me now that I'm not at work, and secondly because Chris doesn't have the day off. I don't know what I'll do with the little ones today. Probably spend most of the day at home. Maybe a trip to Trader Joe's?

Plans are finally well under way for Celia's birthday party, and not a moment too soon. It's this Saturday. I haven't had any time to plan things and didn't even get to sending out all the invitations we wanted to. We ended up just emailing some people we meant to invite. It will all turn out well, though. All we really need is enough food and a couple fun things for the kids to do. I'm sure they will pretty much entertain themselves anyway :)

I have to start pumping and saving milk regularly. It would be nice to get out every so often without having to worry about feedings, just so I feel like I have a little freedom and don't have to have Henry with me all the time. We also should really have milk available in case of emergency or if a situation comes up when I have to be away unexpectedly.

Speaking of not being with Henry 24/7, Chris told me we have a date scheduled in May for a baseball game. And I was really excited about it. I was excited that we have a date in MAY, you guys. That's still months away and I thought it was the best thing ever. I think we need to start getting out more...

Celia is into playing pirate. She likes using empty paper towel rolls as telescopes for her pirate ship. Let me tell you, nothing is cuter than a little girl who can't say "r" pretending to be a pirate.

Henry is 7 weeks old today. I can't believe he's already almost two months. He's such a good little guy. He's almost always happy, smiling, cooing, and has started almost laughing a little. Why here's the handsome little devil now:

I didn't even pose his arm like that. It's just the way he hangs out.

I know, I know. You get the idea. But I can't help putting up just one more picture ;)

I also thought I'd start answering some of your questions. This was really fun! I'll answer some today, and finish the rest in another post.

1) When are you going to update your family photo on your blog to include Henry (ha ha I know you are trying to get a good one of everyone together)? Haha, I'll get to that eventually! I want to make a new header with more than one picture, and haven't found the time. Can't imagine why...

2) Do you have any siblings? I have a younger brother, Colin, who I call Wally because I'm a weirdo. He's three years younger than I am. For some reason I don't write a lot about family on the blog. I guess to maintain some sense of privacy I keep it mainly to Chris, myself, and our children.

3) Coffee or tea? Always coffee in the morning. I love coffee. I drink herbal tea during the day and sometimes before bed, though.

4) What kind of music do you like most? I've almost forgotten that music exists outside of Celia's kids' cds. In the olden days before children, I listened to what I guess you'd call "classic rock". Blech, that makes me sound old. But I always listened to classics like the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, etc. I am also a classically trained singer and play the piano (again, in my former before-kids life) so I love classical music, especially choral music. I've always listened to jazz and blues, too. I could write a whole post about my musical life. Someday I'll get back to it, I hope.

5) Favorite movie of all time? This may be a cop-out, but I don't have one. I have never been into watching movies. I'd rather do other things. But, when I was little I loved Beauty and the Beast, so maybe that's my favorite. These days I like watching the occasional documentary.

6) Religion? We are not religious. Though I'm not religious I have an interest in biblical history and study. I like to read about that stuff and find bible study really interesting. Is that weird for someone who's not a religious person? I actually know more about religion and the bible than Chris does, and he was raised Catholic :)

7) When did you become a vegan? What led to that decision? It took a while for me to fully transition to a vegan diet. Sometime around winter of 2008, I listened to the audio book version of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver narrates the audio version herself and it is done beautifully. It was not only a great story, but a great introduction to the concept of eating locally and in-season, and also to the concept of knowing where your food comes from and how it's produced- especially animal products. After that I cut back on our meat consumption and started buying local and humanely raised meat, eggs, and dairy products. I started reading more and more about diet, agribusiness, and factory farming, and began thinking about switching to a vegan diet. At some point I stopped eating meat all together, and eventually around spring 2010 I got serious about becoming vegan. I did a lot of research on nutrition, and by that summer while training for my first marathon I went fully vegan. I am vegan for a few reasons. It started with my concerns about factory farming- the treatment of the animals, the disastrous effects on the environment, health and safety issues, and the fact that so much grain is spent fattening animals when it could be used to feed hungry people. Then I began to research diet-related health issues, and that convinced me beyond a doubt that I'm doing the right thing for myself and for my family. I highly recommend reading The China Study, Becoming Vegan, and Whitewashed: The Disturbing Truth about Cow's Milk and Your Health. None of them are light reading, but you'll learn a lot. There are also several decent documentaries out now about plant-based diets. We just watched "Forks over Knives" and that one was pretty good.

8) Does your family eat that way? What did your family think? When I first talked about going vegan and made the switch, people pretty much thought I was nuts. We spend our lives being told that we need meat and dairy products to be healthy, and it's not easy to accept that it may be just the opposite. A vegan diet can seem very extreme. Nowadays, it's really not a big deal. If the family is having a non-vegan meal, I just have something else available that I can eat. I have also introduced people to new foods that they've enjoyed!

At home, I don't cook with meat or dairy. When my family has dinner or eats anything I've prepared, we're all eating vegan. Chris and Celia sometimes have meat or fish if he buys some as a treat. Celia likes cheese and sometimes has that for snack or lunch. She doesn't like cow's milk, but does drink almond milk. I would like to reduce the amount of dairy she consumes, though she doesn't have a lot anyway. I'd also like to keep Henry vegan, or as close to it as possible, when he starts eating food. The most difficult thing as our children get older will be figuring out how to explain to them that what they hear about meat and dairy outside the house is wrong. Everyone else will be telling them they need milk for strong bones. I am absolutely convinced that's wrong and that dairy is actually bad for our health, and I have lots of scientific data on my side, but how do I explain that to my kids?

9) What is your favorite vegan meal? That's a hard question! I can't really think of one thing that's my favorite. We have a lot of vegan meals that we like. Even my meat eating husband is perfectly happy eating vegan dinners every night :). Maybe sometime I'll come up with a list of the kinds of things we eat.

10) What's your go-to dinner when you're running low on time? Lately I've been doing pizza for dinner when I need something really easy. I get a relatively healthy pizza with spinach that Chris and Celia like, and Trader Joe's makes a roasted vegetable pizza with no dairy that's really good.

There are still more questions and I'll answer them in another post!

who has a question?

2012-01-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

I always like when people do question and answer posts, and I want to do one. Only problem is, I don't know if you guys will have any interest! But let's try it. You can ask me about anything- parenting, running, veganism, even small and silly things like what's in my handbag or what I eat for breakfast. And please, please everyone ask a question because I will feel like a big stinky loser if you don't... I give you permission to be as nosy as you want. In fact I'll even open anonymous comments for it, but keep it classy, mkay?

Moving on, other random things happening here...

- Henry has started going to sleep for the night around the same time every night. It makes our nights feel almost normal because I can put him to sleep upstairs, and actually have a little time to myself and read for a few minutes before I go to bed.

- Yesterday morning I took both Henry and Celia to music class for the first time. It took us forever to get out of the house, between Henry needing extra changes and Celia not cooperating. But once we got going it went really well. I was worried Henry wouldn't be happy because I had to interrupt his nap, but he stayed awake and looked around for most of the class and when he got tired and fussy at the end I just nursed him. The ultimate pacifier! Celia did very well too. She's always such a good girl when we're out, and despite the difficulties we sometimes have I'm so thankful for her when I see other kids acting like wild animals in public. And yes, we saw some of those yesterday...

I can never get her to smile normally for pictures. Always get these weird faces!

- Celia didn't nap yesterday. It was a long day. Mid-afternoon, we headed out of the house for a while and had a nice time. We looked in vain for some things for Celia's birthday party and then went to Panera for a snack. Henry slept in his stroller, and Pita and I had a nice little time sitting and eating together. I love going out with her like that.

- Pita is completely independent with using the bathroom now! She's been trained for a while, but we often had to talk her into going because she would put it off when she was busy playing and wouldn't want to go. All of a sudden, in the last couple weeks she has gotten so independent. We put potty seats on the big toilets and she can go to the bathroom and wash her hands without us even there now. The only thing remaining is that she still wears pull-ups at night, but she wants to wear underpants all the time so I think she's motivated and will get rid of pull-ups soon.

- I never had a great diaper bag with Celia- just a nice bag I could throw everything into. But now with things being more hectic and having to carry things for me, Henry, and Celia I've been wanting a real diaper bag with lots of pockets. My old bag is a messy jumble and it's just not working. I put another bag I've barely used on Ebay to make the money for a new one. Smart, right? I'll probably even have extra money from that sale. Now I've gotten rid of an old bag I didn't need, it will be reused and won't be wasted, and I have a new one that's exactly what I've been looking for. I did some research and had my eye on this one for a few months.

Don't forget to leave me a question! Ask anything you want.

monday miscellany, and 6 weeks

2012-01-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

1) I don't have much in the way of pictures this week. The last several days have been a bit of a train wreck. On top of Chris's back injury which pretty much puts him out of commission around the house and helping with the baby, I had a stomach bug Thursday and Friday. Luckily it didn't last long, especially because I'm nursing and would hate to have my milk supply damaged by something like getting sick. Very luckily, my parents could come to help me so I only had to make it until 3:00 Thursday by myself, and then I got some extra rest while they watched the littles. I've also had a cough and sore throat, and this morning Celia's voice was hoarse so I'm afraid she's got that now!

2) One good thing came out of the stomach bug. I lost a little weight and haven't gained much of an appetite back, so I'm taking advantage and hoping I can keep losing a little more.

3) Celia is getting excited about her third birthday, which is now less than two weeks away! She keeps asking when it is, so last night I helped her start crossing off the days on the calendar so she can see when her birthday will be. I think she's most excited about having cake :)

4) Speaking of the birthday, between being very busy and getting sick I've done nothing to prepare for Celia's party. We're inviting her daycare friends and no one's responded yet, so I don't even know how many people will come. I must start finding decorations and figure out the cake and everything this week!

5) Henry is 6 weeks old today! I'll do a bigger update at two months, but he's doing really well. He is still sticking to a loose schedule similar to what he was doing at one month. He usually has one long morning and one good afternoon nap, and needs another nap in the evening before his actual bedtime. His last feeding is around 8:30. I dress and swaddle him for bed, feed him, and put him down in his swing to sleep with white noise on. He usually sleeps for a nice long stretch of 6-7 hours, is a little restless between four and six am, and then sleeps well until between 7-8:00 when I get him up for the day. Right now Henry sleeps in the swing in our bedroom. He's doing so well sleeping there that I don't want to change anything right now. I also like being near him during the night, and it's just easier for feeding and checking on him. I'll start trying naps in the crib soon.

Henry continues to be an easy going baby. He loves to be held and walked around so he can look at everything. He loves being talked to, sung to, and smiled at. In the last week he has started cooing in response to being talked to. He smiles and coos, and will have little conversations with us that way. He has also started to enjoy having baths. He continues to get stronger, holding his head up more easily and for longer periods of time. He's still such a good little guy, and since we're already at six weeks it's safe to say that he will not be a colicky baby. The only hurdle on the horizon at this point is getting him to sleep in the crib at some point.

6) Have you or a family member had a herniated disk? That's what Chris has. He goes to PT and I help him stretch at home, but we haven't seen much improvement yet. I wonder how long it will be before he's recovered.

Have a good week!

keeping it real

2012-01-04T13:22:00.000-05:00

Henry and I are having a quiet day today, as Celia's back at daycare for the first day in nearly two weeks. It's in the single digits outside- good wool sock wearing, hot tea drinking, fold the laundry in front of the fire weather.

Speaking of fire, last night around 9:00 we realized our furnace wasn't working. With the temperature dropping to around seven degrees, this was a big problem. Chris got the wood stove cranking and called the oil company's emergency line. Celia was already asleep in her room, so I piled blankets over her and kept Henry near the wood stove for the night. Late at night someone did come to fix the heat, so we were okay. Chris and I were both up too late, and he was up half the night keeping the wood stove burning and worrying about whether the heat was working.

It will be nice getting back to our normal schedule. I'll miss Celia when she's not home, but it's good to have time alone with Henry so I can give him my undivided attention. When Celia's home I have to give her as much attention as possible, and can't always do everything I'd like to with Henry.

Henry has been in a great mood today. He's been so smiley that I've been able to catch some smiles on camera.

After he woke up and ate this morning we talked and played, I folded laundry, and we did Henry's bath. He was even happy in the bath, and seemed pleased to try cloth diapers for the first time. I'm going to phase them in now that he's big enough.

Bad phone pics, but you get the idea. Henry fell asleep in his seat after the bath, so I took a shower and got dinner ready for the oven while he was sleeping. Then he woke up, ate, socialized for a while, and we went for a drive just to get out and so I could get a fancy coffee drink. I have errands to run, but it's so cold outside that I don't really want to be carting him around from place to place.

One more thing. You know those people who show post-partum pictures of themselves, looking like they'd never been pregnant just two weeks after having a baby? And you want to clobber them because they make you feel like a fat slob and wonder why you didn't lose that kind of weight? I'm typically a thin person, and even I don't bounce back like that. I want to have my old body back and fit in all my clothes yesterday, but I have to be patient. I did fit into my fat jeans this morning, though, which was a small victory. So in honor of that, and to keep things real and show you all that I don't live in some la-la land where I magically drop all the weight and have no belly left at all, here I am at five weeks post partum:

And I know it's not like I look horrible, but clearly I still have a belly. And if you didn't know me you'd think I wouldn't have much to lose, but I'm still much bigger all over than my normal self and have around 15 pounds to lose. My big goal for the months to come! I'm ready to start exercising again. May try to do something tomorrow...

Anyway, that's our day. Finally a quiet one.

Are you someone who bounced right back? Or did it take some time?

2011 through the rearview

2011-12-31T08:29:00.000-05:00

While 2010 was all about settling more comfortably into life as a family of three, 2011 has been so much different and so full of change.

In January, Celia turned two and decided she was too old to take naps for a while. She has changed so much in just a year. She looks like just a baby to me in the pictures. We had a lot of snow: More than three feet in the month of January.

In February, it snowed even more. Celia accused me of serving poop for dinner. I also wrote what ended up being my two most high-traffic posts of the year, and two of my favorites. In Oprah's Big Vegan Flop I railed against the show Oprah aired on veganism. In Swimming Against a Sparkly Pink Tide: Princess Culture and Our Daughters, I railed against the princess culture that has overtaken our girls' childhoods. If a girl is into princess stuff all on her own, fine. I do not appreciate it being rammed down my daughter's throat, and I won't appreciate sports being rammed down Henry's either. My kids will like what they like, without us forcing anything on them.

In March we had some great weekends, like this one. Reading back through my posts, I can't wait until Henry's old enough for us to get out and do fun things whenever we get the urge. We had so many good times as a little family of three. I chronicled some of my favorite google hits. I enjoyed running in warmer weather.

On April 1st, it snowed. No fooling. Luckily we also had some nice spring weather. We decided we might try to buy a house and started looking.

May was a big, big month for us. It marked 8 years that Chris and I have been together. We had a roller coaster ride of a time looking for a house. Our offer was accepted on our new house, I announced my pregnancy, and Chris graduated with his MBA! I also shared the April Fool's prank I played on Chris.

June was another big month. It started off with a night of tornadoes. We packed, I painted furniture, and Pita took baths in the sink. We got great entertainment out of watching people take the free stuff we left out in the driveway before moving. We had an ultrasound and found out the baby was a boy! And the day after that we closed on the house.

In July we settled into the new house, and Celia and I settled into having a wonderful summer at home together. This was one of our summer days. We went to the beach, the library, music class, and played outside. Pita got really good at riding her tricycle. I passed the halfway point of pregnancy, and Pita moved into her big kid bed. Celia hit the 2 1/2 year mark, and we potty trained her. I had a case of nerves about being the boss' wife, and Celia dressed down as Agador Spartacus.

In August, we took Celia to Storyland for the first time, and she talked about it for weeks afterward. In another year or two she will love it even more! We went to the beach some more, worked on the house more, and Chris posed in the front yard as a "special husband". I engaged in some mild husband bashing, Celia fell in love with the story of Cinderella, and Hurricane Irene passed through.

In September my third trimester was underway. I was transferred to a new school at work, from the job I loved to a new one that I didn't like at all. We welcomed fall while enjoying the last of summer. Celia and I went away to New Hampshire for the weekend, and I found out that I could stretch my maternity leave and take the rest of the year off! I wrote my first Friday Favorites post. I don't do them every week, but they've ended up being some of my favorite posts.

In October, I realized we were getting old. We went to a fair. Celia was a Friday Favorite, I shared our natural birth plan, Celia dressed as Thumbelina for Halloween, and we had a big October snow storm that left us without power for a few days.

In November Chris and I had a date night and finished up with baby preparations. I tried to adjust to the idea that we were about to have two children. I flew the coop at work, and started maternity leave a little early. I enjoyed my last days with Celia as my only child. I decorated for Christmas. We waited, and waited, and waited for Henry to arrive. We had a nice last weekend as a family of three, putting up the Christmas tree. Finally, at 41 weeks Henry was born on November 28th.

In December, we started to adjust to being a family of four. Celia had some trouble adjusting to the new baby, but started to come around by the end of the month. She and Henry sat on Santa's lap. I told the story of Henry's birth. We all had breakdowns when I tried to organize a trip to see Christmas lights. Henry turned one month old. Chris re-injured his back with a herniated disk, and could not help me take care of the kids. Despite my fatigue, I saw a bright future for our family.

What a year it's been!

uplifted

2011-12-30T07:50:00.000-05:00

We have a newborn. Chris's back is injured and he can't do much to help me take care of Henry and Celia. I'm pretty much on my own.

This afternoon, I was tired. Celia didn't take her nap, and Henry didn't take one either. I wasn't resting. I wasn't starting dinner, folding laundry, dusting the house, or planning our second Christmas meal as I had thought I would. I was just trying to keep a tired toddler and fussy baby happy.

I set Celia up with an art project. I tried to get Henry down for a nap, but he was wide awake. He was fussing a little more, so I put his seat near Celia so he could watch her, and went to turn on the vacuum hoping the white noise would calm him.

I wearily opened the closet, lugged the vacuum to the center of the hall, and plugged in the cord. I heard a small voice: "Mommy, I'll try to make Henry happy." Celia was kneeling next to his chair, talking to him. "It's okay, Henry Boy." (That's what I call him. She's always listening, even when I don't know it.) I started the vacuum. "Mommy, Henry's not crying anymore. He's happy now!"

She busied herself around him, jabbering away as she showed him toys, adorned his chair with her things, and surrounded him with pieces of her art project. She pretended he was Peter Rabbit and "made" him radishes and chamomile tea. He was transfixed.

He listened intently and watched her every move, examining each item she produced for him.

I could see for the first time how wonderful it will be for them to be brother and sister.

And as I pulled the vacuum down the hall, my eyes welled up and relief washed over me. I was still exhausted. Dark half moons still rimmed my eyes when I passed the mirror. I still longed for a nice shower and a long, deep sleep. But this sweet girl is back in my corner.

I couldn't possibly love her more.

And knowing, once again, that she loves me back- and seeing the good in what we've done giving Celia and Henry to each other- made my fatigue, the dark circles, the new wrinkles, those fifteen extra pounds, so, so worth it.

one month

2011-12-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

Henry is one month old today! It sure has flown by and he's already changed.

Stats: I don't know how much Henry weighs, but I'd guess somewhere between 8-9 pounds. We don't have another doctor's appointment for him until six weeks. I just put away the newborn clothes and took out 0-3 things. They are still a little loose, but fit him the best. We'll move into size one diapers soon, and will start cloth prefolds too.

Schedule: Henry has fallen into a loose schedule that I try to encourage when possible. He tends to wake up for the day around 7:00. He has a feeding and might or might not sleep a little more. He has a morning awake period, and is usually ready for a good nap around 9:00. I have to wake him up from his nap for a feeding because he usually has a long nap at this time. He's awake for a while and then has another long afternoon nap, which is nice because he and Celia have good naps at the same time. Henry is usually awake more in the late afternoon, and sometimes gets fussy then. When I'm lucky I can get him to nap while we have dinner. Sometimes Henry has more of a fussy time in the evening, but if he's had a good nap he sometimes has nice long awake times after Celia goes to bed, when he's calm, alert and very social.

Henry doesn't really have a bedtime or set night schedule. He's usually ready for his last feeding between 8 and 9:00. When he was 2-3 weeks, we were getting some six hour stretches between feedings at night, but I think those days are over for now. Since we moved him to the crib I'm lucky to get a 4 hour stretch, which means I'm sleeping for 1-3 hours at a time. I'm more tired now than when he was a newborn. It's definitely related to gas and digestion, and he was sleeping much better in the swing than he does now in the crib. Every night I'm tempted to just put him in the swing, but I know it's good to get him used to the crib. Henry doesn't do a lot of nighttime crying, which I'm very thankful for, but it's hard to settle him down into a deep sleep after his feedings. I hope his system will mature more soon, because I think he'd sleep longer and more deeply if he wasn't bothered by spitting up or gas during the night.

Development: The little dude is already doing some pretty great things. He loves to watch people and makes great eye contact, just looking and looking at us. Henry will glue his eyes to yours and won't look away. Last night I kept trying to kiss him on the cheek, but whenever I moved my head down to the side to kiss him he would turn his head so he could watch what I was doing and I could never get to his cheek! He is very social. He likes being talked and sung to, and likes seeing us make different facial expressions. Just last night I heard a few little coos from him when we were talking. He makes little smiles when we're talking, but nothing big yet. He's also starting to show an interest in Celia and likes when she talks to him and shows him toys.

Speaking of Celia, in the last week we've seen a great improvement in her behavior. I hope I'm not jinxing us by saying this! Pita seems back to her normal self, which is so nice. She's much happier, more focused, more compliant, and just generally back to the sweet little girl she normally is. I think that having a couple weeks off daycare and having a lot of time at home with me has helped her. Our relationship seems back to normal and Celia has been having the cutest little interactions with Henry.

It is a challenge to juggle Henry and Celia's schedules and get everything done that we need to in a day, but we are starting to get into a routine after a month. It helps that Henry is a good baby and Celia is now adjusting. I already wonder what things will be like at two months.

christmas randoms

2011-12-21T08:31:00.000-05:00

I have a thing for Christmas mugs.

Pita and I decorated a gingerbread house last week. She directed most of the decorating and it came out pretty well, considering.

I found an easy and healthy recipe for cinnamon buns in my Happy Herbivore cookbook. Fat free, whole wheat cinnamon buns that don't have a lot of sugar. I made them, sprinkled them with Christmas-y sprinkles because I'm a big dork, and froze them so they can be easily heated up on Christmas morning.

Henry blows milk bubbles in his sleep sometimes. Oops, that's not Christmas-y is it? Unless, by "Christmas-y", I actually meant super cute :D

Henry has been rocking his Christmas outfits this week. Gotta get some good use out of them!

I wanted to take this picture and Henry was all "No way Mom, no more pictures", but then I got him milk drunk and he was willing to do pretty much anything after that. Good story, huh?

Celia's little daycare is closed for most of the week, and will be closed for Christmas vacation all of next week. We had been planning on having a normal schedule this week, so when I found out on Sunday night that I'd be on my own with both kids, without help for the first time? I may have panicked a little. Okay, actually I cried. Ha!

No, really. I did... But I'm okay now.

The other day I had an ingenius idea. Evenings are tricky times because they're when Celia needs to eat dinner, be played with and read to, and put to bed all while Henry is having his fussy screaming time. Around this time, Celia also starts crying, constantly misbehaving, and having constant meltdowns. Evenings have gotten real fun around here. Anyway, I was thinking if I could find something fun to do in the late afternoon/early evening it would be perfect for us. Henry sleeps in the car, and Celia would have something fun and special to do. And what better thing to do this week than look at Christmas lights? Genius, I tell you! Turns out there's a pretty famous Christmas display not far from us. I pictured our happy little family snuggled up in the car in our pajamas, happily going for a drive and happily looking at the amazing lights while listening to jolly Christmas music. I thought this could become a yearly family tradition. Yeahhhhh.....

I'll bet ya wanna know what happened. In one word: Disaster. In two words: Utter disaster. In forty-four words: I wanted to jump out of the moving car while on the highway, scutter away into the underbrush, and disappear from the face of the earth because I could not be more of a failure as a mother and planner of fun family activities. But the baby was hungry so I had to stick around until we got home. Darn breastfeeding.

What happened was that the fun and delicious dinner (pizza) I made for Celia never got touched because she started acting up as soon a it was time to eat. Then she proceeded to earn herself several timeouts in quick succession, all while I was trying to feed Henry so we could get out of the house and have fun. Chris arrived home from work amid the chaos. Celia was in full meltdown and nothing I could do was going to bring her back. I can hug her all day long, and that's what she wants, but Henry's mere presence seems to ruin it. Chris took her to her room and finally calmed her down. I calmed Henry down (because when Celia's screaming and crying it makes him cry too). Finally we got in the car. We drove for a long time. The line of cars waiting to go through the crazy fancy Christmas light display place was over a mile long. We staying in the line for a while. Henry was crying and hungry again, because it had taken us so long to get out of the house. Celia was yelling at Henry because he was crying, which made him cry more. I was crying because I obviously completely suck in general, and specifically because I have clearly psychologically damaged my daughter by introducing a new sibling and my son by exposing him to a household where someone is constantly yelling and crying. We turned around and went home.

I thought the pizza would be fun. It wasn't. I thought wearing those blasted reindeer pajamas in the car would be fun. It wasn't. I thought the car would be quiet and peaceful as the baby slept and we had a nice time talking with our toddler. It wasn't and we didn't. I thought the Christmas lights would be lots of fun to see. They probably would have been...

Nothing I do, no matter what I try, seems to make Celia happy for longer than a few minutes. Sigh and humbug.

I still have to try. She's happy when it's just me and her, no Henry in sight. So this morning I went to her room, climbed in bed with her, and we talked and snuggled and were silly together for a while. I just wish she was herself all the time. I only see little glimpses of her between meltdowns.

Despite this latest debacle, I am still super duper excited for Christmas eve and Christmas morning with Celia this year. And if things don't go well, you can find me cowering in the underbrush next to the highway.

monday miscellany

2011-12-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

1) Henry is 3 weeks old today. I have a feeling that time will fly by with him. In the last week he has become more social and alert. I also got some smiles the other day that seemed like real, intentional social smiles! It seems early for that, but he is a very social guy already and I think they were real smiles. Two to three weeks is when babies typically start having fussy periods at the end of the day, and unfortunately Henry's fussing has begun. It really isn't too bad, but there are times when he's inconsolable in the late evening unless he's either nursing or riding in the car. So, you can guess which two activities we'll be doing a lot of... What really makes it tricky is that Henry's fussy time is when we're also trying to have a normal dinner and evening routine with Celia, and it's hard to do that with a screaming baby nearby! It's also the time of day when Chris and I are already exhausted, which makes the crying harder to handle. Luckily (so far), once he is settled down and sleeping soundly Henry is still doing pretty well through the night. He still will usually have one longer stretch of sleep followed by two shorter stretches. We've kind of given up on having him in the crib for now because he seems to spit up a lot more when lying flat in the crib, and that disturbs his sleep. For now he spends most of his sleeping time in the swing, which lets him be upright a little. Hopefully this period of fussy nights won't last too long. We just have to remind ourselves that this too shall pass.

2) Wegman's recently opened a store near us. I think it's the first Wegman's in New England. Anyway, I didn't immediately fall for all the hype because it is, after all, just a grocery store. But Chris and I went to check it out the other day and we were impressed. Their natural foods section is so good that I could do all my shopping there and wouldn't have to make extra trips to Whole Foods for special vegan stuff.

3) On the way to drop Celia at daycare today I asked if she had to poop because I knew she did. She kind of skirted around the subject and then told me she doesn't poop at daycare. I told her it was okay, and that she should if she had to, and then she told me she doesn't want daycare to smell her poop! Oh my gosh, it was the cutest thing for her to say but the poor kid! I don't know how she would have gotten self conscious about that, but I can't blame her. I only like to poo at home too :D.

4) The past two mornings, our thermometer has read ten degrees. We're going to love the wood stove this winter.

5) Since there's never a dull moment around here lately, this morning I took Pita to the doctor because she has a rash on her scalp that I was afraid was ringworm or some other bacterial thing. Luckily it isn't anything horrible and I just have to pick up some prescription cream to put on it. Celia was so good at the doctor's office. She walked in all by herself, took her shoes off and stood on the scale to get weighed by herself (and she's still a little peanut!), and just got a little nervous when the doctor came in.

6) We tried taking family pictures last weekend. We never did get a great one because Celia stopped cooperating pretty quickly, but there were a couple that were okay. I'm also trying not be vain about them because I still have at least fifteen pounds to lose from the pregnancy, and I'm not crazy about how I look in the pictures...

Henry's facial expressions are so funny here. My little gremlin :D

i've got the power

2011-12-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Henry is, for sure, Mommy's boy. With me, he doesn't cry or carry on much. I'm the one who can always calm him down and get him to sleep. And since I'm nursing, I also have what's known around these parts as the power of the boob.

Below is a real live text conversation between Chris and me one morning. I was feeding Henry upstairs while he was getting Celia ready for the day.

Hopefully that text never ends up in the wrong hands... Behold, the power of the boob!

henry's birth

2011-12-14T11:57:00.000-05:00

I always wish I'd had this blog to document Celia's birth, so I have been looking forward to writing Henry's birth story. Here it is.

Henry's birth was fast and furious. My labor didn't really even affect me until I suddenly hit transition at seven centimeters. I attribute this partly to luck. My body seems to be pretty efficient at having babies. But mostly, I attribute it to my mental state and preparedness. I wasn't expecting labor to be a horrible experience, so it wasn't. In fact, I was so relaxed and laid back that I wasn't even bothered by my contractions until forty minutes before Henry was born. I trust my body completely to birth my babies. It's what women are made to do. I work with my body and use relaxation and visualization to move labor along quickly. These things work. It sounds a bit hokey to talk about a mind-body connection, but it really exists and it's a powerful thing. There's nothing superhuman or physically tough about women who have natural births. We are mentally tough and in tune with our bodies. We trust that our bodies will do what they were made to do, and we approach childbirth without fear. When you understand labor, have trust, and are free from fear, it's likely you'll succeed.

As I approached 41 weeks of pregnancy, I started to worry that I'd have to be induced. When you want a natural birth, induction is not your friend. Depending on how your body reacts to induction and what methods are used, you can end up with all kind of interventions and end up completely out of control of your labor. I do best when I'm left alone to labor without interventions. Of course there are times when it gets really intense and I doubt my abilities, but the really scary times are when my power is taken from me and things are being done to me by others.

On the day I turned 41 weeks, I was scheduled for a non-stress test for the baby. I went to the hospital that morning for the test. It took much longer than normal because the nurse kept saying they wanted more information, and I really knew something was up when different people kept coming to check the paper and ask how I was doing. I wasn't surprised when they wanted to send me for an ultrasound right away. It turned out that the amniotic fluid levels were low, and since I was already past my due date the safest thing was to deliver the baby right away. Chris had met me at the hospital when I realized something wasn't quite right, so we both drove home to get ready. We got Celia from daycare, got her settled and playing with Chris's mom, and then took off for the hospital.

We checked in and were settled in the antenatal unit by 7:00. My midwife, Colleen, came in and we talked about our plan for the induction. Although I needed to be induced, we still wanted as little intervention as possible. This is why I love my midwives. We felt secure knowing we could completely trust Colleen and that she would make sure we had as little intervention as possible while keeping Henry and me healthy. We decided to go with an induction method that is actually controversial in the natural birth world, but we used it with Celia and I've had long and thorough discussions with the midwives about it. Using misoprostol actually lessens the need for other interventions because it's very effective for me. With Celia, misoprostol was used to start my labor and I needed no other drugs, IV, or interventions.

I got the misoprostol placed at 7:12 pm. We were prepared for the induction process to go slowly because it didn't have a very strong immediate effect, and we assumed we'd be spending the night in that room and having the baby in the morning. I actually spent the first hour of labor doing some online shopping! I laughed at myself the whole time, but it was Cyber Monday and there were deals to be had on Christmas gifts! Colleen then suggested that we take a walk to see if my contractions would get stronger. We walked for a while, went back to our room for a little bit, and then walked around some more. While walking, I could tell I was having contractions but the movement prevented me from feeling them very acutely. Whenever I stopped moving around I could feel that they were getting stronger. They were still easy enough to get through and weren't really bothering me. At 10:30 we decided to lie down and get some rest before labor really got going. My contractions were a little stronger, but we were still thinking I'd need another round of misoprostol to really get going. At 11:15 my nurse came in to put the monitor on for a while. She had trouble finding Henry's heartbeat and it was very slow. She had me roll from side to side but that didn't help, and all of sudden she was a little panicked and calling for help. Colleen and two other nurses rushed into the room, and suddenly I had an oxygen mask shoved on my face and a nurse was getting an IV line in. Henry had just had a brief deceleration, but it was a scare since I hadn't been on the monitor all along. Meanwhile, Henry's heart rate came right back up and I suddenly started having much stronger contractions. This is when I started getting scared. It wasn't because of the deceleration, but because I was having trouble managing my contractions with people crawling all over me doing things to me. The oxygen mask made me feel hot, nauseas, and claustrophobic. The nurses' messing around with the heart monitor and getting the IV in were a big distraction and made it very hard to relax through the suddenly powerful contractions. Luckily Colleen was there to reassure me that it was okay to have the IV, and that they'd just give me extra fluids for a little while and then remove it. She could also tell, without me saying a word, that something had changed in my labor. I think she knew then that I'd be having a baby soon.

When the nurses were done and the room cleared, Colleen stayed with us. My contractions were getting intense and I lay on my side, rocking my hips back and forth through them. I asked Chris for my stress ball because I like to squeeze it during strong contractions. This was what got me through labor with Celia too. I was starting to feel out of control during my contractions because they had gotten so strong so suddenly. I thought I had a lot more time left to labor, because I had only been at 2 centimeters the last time I was checked. Labor was so intense that it felt like I was already in transition, and I didn't know if I could manage it for several more hours. At this point I wasn't talking much- just trying to relax my body, breathe and move rhythmically during contractions, and then rest between them. Chris recognized that I was entering the intense stage of labor in which I needed to retreat into myself. He put on the music I use to relax during labor, and he started giving me pressure for pain relief at a pressure point on my hand. Colleen did this amazing thing with placing her hands on my shoulder, hip and leg with gentle pressure that made my body relax during contractions. Those things helped a lot.

My version of an epidural: the beloved stress ball.

My contractions were now 2-4 minutes apart and Colleen wanted to check me. She did, and my jaw dropped when she said I was seven centimeters! I was so relieved to be that far along. I said to her, "No wonder I feel so awful!" Ha! I told her I had started worrying that I couldn't handle contractions that strong for much longer, and she said I wouldn't have to. She was right. At that point it was probably around 11:30 and my contractions got much stronger. I needed to vocalize through them, and my vocalizations got louder and louder. I vocalized on an "O" sound and worked on keeping them at a low pitch to help me relax and help bring the baby down. I visualized my cervix opening the rest of the way, and Henry moving down. It was not easy, but at least I knew I was in control now and that things were moving fast. I'm sure if you'd heard me moaning from the hallway, you would not have thought I was in control at all! But I was, I just had to be really loud. Colleen asked if I felt the need to push, and I said "Not yet". Sure enough, I did want to push starting with the next contraction.

There was suddenly a rush to get me from antenatal to a labor and delivery room. They hadn't been prepared for things to go that fast. I had to get in a wheelchair between contractions. I was told not to push (I ignored that and pushed anyway). Then the nurse literally sprinted down the hall with me to labor and delivery, with Colleen and Chris running behind us. I had dreaded having contractions in the wheelchair, but the vibration and fast movement actually helped me and I asked if we could do it again because it felt good. Everyone laughed, but sadly I did not get another ride. They were all in a big hurry because Henry was on his way out.

When I had Celia, the pushing stage was the easiest. I had nice long pauses between contractions, and was able to rest and relax during those breaks. I was in a sort of dreamlike state and Chris said it was like I was in a trance. This time was much different. I was almost constantly contracting with no break. Because I was always in a contraction, it was hard to catch my breath and get deep breaths in for pushing. Since I couldn't get a good inhalation, I didn't have the breath and the energy for strong, long pushes. It was very frustrating and I really had to concentrate to breathe deeply while contracting so I could push. The good thing was that, compared to my labor with Celia I was much more alert and in the moment. I was able to visualize where Henry was and concentrate on pushing effectively. I was also highly motivated to get him out quickly because the constant contractions made it so unpleasant. It was really hard work, but I guess I did okay because I couldn't have been pushing for very long. It was probably 15-20 minutes at the longest, because Henry was born at 11:56 pm. It had been less than five hours since labor began. Colleen says I'm made to have babies :).

Henry, just born.

When Celia was born, everything was a little foggy. I had been in that trace-like state that served me so well during labor, but was also hard to snap out of. Then Celia was taken away to the NICU and I didn't really get the chance to bond and fall in love with her right away. Her difficulties with feeding made it even harder for us to bond. We made up for it eventually, of course. But with Henry, I fell instantly in love. I knew what to expect. Everything was familiar. Because I knew how much I loved Celia, I knew ahead of time how much I'd love Henry too. I grinned, laughed, then cried as he landed on my chest. I knew how to hold him, how to nurse him. I knew right away how much I loved him. He was healthy and perfect, and there was nothing to prevent me from enjoying everything about him from the very start, and every single moment since.

henry at two weeks

2011-12-12T16:00:00.001-05:00

Today Henry is two weeks old. I took him for a weight check today, and he is back to his birth weight of 7 lbs 10 oz.

We are so, so lucky to have Henry here. He has been such a good, easy baby and he fits perfectly into our family. When Chris was leaving for work this morning I told him that even though I was tired, it was really no problem because Henry is such an easy baby and such a sweet little guy. He is a joy.

Henry is starting to have longer awake periods. He likes to watch his rainforest toy or anything with lights, movement, bright colors, music, etc. He enjoys good conversation and socializing too :). He really likes it when I sing to him, and "You are my Sunshine" is his favorite song.

Henry has his fussy times, usually starting in the late evening. Otherwise, when he's upset we can usually tell why. He's either hungry, wet, or needs to get some gas out.

In the last week, Henry has started to fall into a routine that's fairly consistent each day. He usually wakes up for his first morning feeding around 7:00. After his feeding, he either goes back to sleep for a while or will stay awake and alert before having a nap. He naps on and off in the morning and early afternoon. Late mornings are a good time to run errands because he'll sleep in his car seat the whole time. Starting in the mid to late afternoon, Henry is awake more and has begun to have longer awake periods. I usually try to feed him before we eat dinner, and sometimes he naps while we eat which is nice. Most nights I've gotten dinner made up ahead of time so I don't have to cook while trying to entertain Celia and keep Henry fed. Henry has one or two feedings after Celia goes to bed, and also tends to have a long awake period in the evening. Then I head to bed, and Chris stays up with Henry and wakes me up if he needs another feeding. We both end up getting pretty good sleep this way. After Chris goes to bed, I'm generally in charge for the rest of the night since I do feedings. Henry usually ends up eating sometime around midnight and is then ready for a longer stretch of sleep. However, last night he did even better and slept from 8:00 until 6:30 with me getting him up for dream feeds at 2:00 and 5:30! I actually had to pump because he was sleeping and didn't want to eat much. I hope these long periods of sleep become a pattern!

These two weeks have flown by. We're enjoying our snuggly little guy to the fullest while these newborn days last.

miscellany monday

2011-12-12T09:30:00.000-05:00

1) Henry is two weeks old today. I think I'll do separate posts for his updates because they may get lengthy. His two week post will probably be up sometime this afternoon.

2) This is the first day that I'm alone with Henry all day. So far we've been eating, talking a little, and he took a short nap in his crib while I put away laundry and dusted upstairs. We're going out soon to finish Christmas shopping, get a few groceries, and get Henry's weight checked.

3) Speaking of going places, you know those people who spend an inappropriate and borderline awkward amount of time ogling your baby in Target, and you can't really escape? Yeah...

3) And the people who, instead of simply holding the door for you, stand there looking annoyed and impatient when you're struggling to get your stroller through a door? Yeah...

4) Yesterday our neighbors came over, met Henry, and Celia had a great time with them too. She played a little with their 5-month-old, Oliver. Some day our kids will all play together, so we took a couple pictures of the boys together, and of all three kids so someday they can see they were friends when they were just babies.

5) Last night we went to a Christmas party at Celia's music school. Santa was there too, and Celia wanted to see him and have her picture taken right away! She was so cute, with a big grin on her face as soon as she saw Santa.

6) Chris has an interesting way of hanging our swaddles to dry. That is the kitchen light fixture. Our home looks very attractive this way.

7) Speaking of Blub, he is back to work today. That means this is my first week of being on my own with Henry and Celia (though we do have our parents to help out a couple days a week). When I'm alone with Henry on daycare days, I'm sure our days will be pretty easy. He's such a good baby. The hardest part of the day will be late afternoon/early evening when I have both kids, have to get dinner ready, and the potential exists for both kids to be cranky. I will definitely be cooking dinner ahead of time a lot of days to make it easier.

8) Celia is definitely adjusting to Henry being here. Things are getting better and better. We just have to make sure we give her plenty of attention and keep her busy with fun activities. She has even started playing independently again, whereas before she was constantly trying to get attention, bother Henry, or misbehave somehow. She also loves holding Henry and helping with him now, so we try to let her hold him whenever she wants to. We're not having as many problems with jealousy as we did at first.

9) I'm not sure how many people put "steak" on their Christmas lists, but my husband does. He is quite steak-deprived, having a vegan for a wife.

10) And I'm getting excited to make a vegan feast (with meat too for the omnivores) for Christmas. I wasn't sure what kind of shape we'd be in for Christmas with a newborn, but things are going well so I think some cooking is in order!

random things

2011-12-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

Thing One-
Henry is looking super cute, as usual.

Thing Two-
So is Pita.

We took her out for a short time yesterday (I'm limited by Henry's feeding schedule) while Chris's mom watched Henry. Celia got a ski/sledding helmet that will last her at least a few years. She looks like a little bobble head.

Pita and I also decorated cookies yesterday. She loved that.

Thing Three-
It's only been a week and we may have difficult patches ahead, but man is Henry a good sleeper at night! He is already going 4-5 hours between feedings once each night, and sometimes has another 4 hour stretch. Since he has been pretty consistent we decided to try putting him in the crib last night. We all slept so well! Henry slept in the crib from 11:45 pm to 3:45 am, had a feeding, and then slept from 4:30 to 7:00. I hope he continues to do well. He already seems to be falling into a schedule naturally.

Thing Four-
I started noticing that when I'm feeding or holding Henry, that's when Celia acts up the most. She really wants time alone with Mommy, so I've been trying to give her that as much as possible. I've also started quietly "disappearing" with Henry and doing his feedings in his room when possible, so she doesn't see me feeding him. She will be busy playing with Chris, and I'm just gone upstairs for a while. So far this seems to be helping her.

Thing Five-
This probably should have been thing one because it's so freaking funny. On Monday Chris and I stopped at a different grocery store than our usual ones, and there were some interesting characters working there. Our cashier, to put it charitably, was clearly not the brightest bulb in the box. And then this interaction occurred:

Cashier: "How old is the baby?"
Me: "One week."
Cashier: "Oh wow... And you're already expecting another one."
Me: Silence......

Seriously? How can someone not know that a) your belly doesn't instantly disappear when you have a baby, and b) that it's completely impossible to get pregnant again AND be showing a week after you've given birth? It was so funny and such a stupid thing to say that I couldn't even be offended by it.

Thing Six-
Okay, okay. I admit I did get out the scale that night to start weighing myself and see how much I have to lose :D.

Thing Seven-
Celia calls Henry "My baby", which is pretty cute. She told Debi at daycare that her baby wears teeny tiny diapers and cries a lot. Ha!

She loves to hold him. Several times a day she asks "Can I hold my baby?"

monday miscellany: a new weekly count

2011-12-05T07:00:00.003-05:00

1) Luckily I am not 42 weeks pregnant today, but Henry is one week old! I think we are doing pretty well. Henry seems to have a good disposition. He has fussy periods that are either related to hunger (easy to fix), gas, or needing to go to sleep. I hate when he's fussy though. My babies' cries are like torture to me. He lost quite a lot of weight, but now that my milk is in I'm sure he'll catch up quickly. Henry nurses well. His latch was very painful for me initially, but it's started to improve. I hate to say anything and jinx ourselves, but he also seems to be sleeping pretty well. I've found a routine that seems to work well for getting him to sleep. On Saturday night I nursed him at midnight and got him in the swing, woke up at 5:00 and he was still asleep! I had to wake him to nurse because that was really too long to go. He ate and I got him back down and he slept until 6:40 which is when I get up anyway. Henry has also started having longer awake periods. He's very alert and interested in music, sounds, and lights. He was fascinated by the lights on the Christmas tree the other night, and he likes the mobile and music on his swing. He makes all kinds of facial expressions and has smiled and laughed a little in his sleep. When he looks at you, his eyes get wide and his mouth opens into a little o while he studies your face. He's a sweet, sweet little guy.

2) This girl?

(She's in her fort under the kitchen table, not behind jail bars- although behind bars might have been appropriate since she had just pooped in the tent Chris set up for her to play in...This was before she peed all over the family room floor too. Think we're having a regression with the new baby being around?)

...Hasn't always been so sweet lately. Poor thing. She's probably doing just fine and I know it's normal for siblings to have trouble adjusting to a new baby. I think having this past weekend to ourselves and getting into a normal weekly routine will help. She's okay most of the time, but isn't as affectionate as usual and seems sort of distant when I'm with Henry. Even if I'm giving her my attention while I'm feeding him, it's not enough. We do have completely normal moments, I make sure to spend as much time alone with her as I can, and luckily Chris has been spending lots of time playing with her and taking her places.

3) Celia drew an elephant the other day and I thought it was pretty good.

The brown line is a mustache.

4) White noise is magic for babies. Really. Henry is napping away in his swing as I type.

5) I've almost forgotten about Christmas stuff this week, what with a new tiny human to sustain and all. But we did start our advent house with Celia and she likes opening a new door for each day.

I'm planning to decorate cookies with Pita sometime this week, too. Oh, and Christmas specials! She is old enough to watch some of them this year. She loves the Curious George Christmas special, and I think we have Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman on tv soon. I'm excited for her to see them because I loved them so much myself when I was a kid.

6) Has anyone done the Moms on Call online seminars? Are they worth doing? I want to get Henry on a good schedule fairly early on.

7) And...just kidding. Henry's awake again. Time to go feed him.

family of four

2011-12-03T16:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Henry had his first visit to the pediatrician, and he has lost quite a bit of weight. He was down almost a pound to 6 lbs 11 oz. Yesterday, at day four, my milk still hadn't come in and I was getting anxious about it because Henry had hit a point where you really don't want them to lose any more weight. He was also very fussy, and the doctor said he was probably just getting really hungry and that it was common for babies on their third or fourth day. Basically, I took that to mean he was starving and wasting away. Why it is that humans have evolved so much, yet never evolved enough to actually be able to feed our newborn babies, is beyond me. Anyway, luckily my milk came in last night and Henry is definitely happier now.

Today we're having our first full day at home, on our own, as a family of four. It's good to get back in our normal routine and have things seem fairly normal for Celia, but it's also completely exhausting! We had a good morning, and Chris and I kind of just keep switching off between Henry and Celia. We did our typical morning/breakfast thing and Celia helped me make pancakes, and then Celia played with one of us while the other had Henry. I tried Henry in my new sling and I guess it looked to Celia like he had disappeared in there. She asked me why I was putting Henry back in my belly! Around mid morning we got brave and decided to take our first little trip out as a family of four. We went to Target- very exciting ;). There wasn't really a ton we could do with a newborn and I needed a couple things, so that's what we did. I wanted to get a good picture of the little ones on our first trip out, but that didn't work out too well.

We had an epic nap time battle with Celia this afternoon. My tactic of staying outside her door and just repeatedly having her stay in her room and telling her to get in bed? She apparently has now made it into a game. So she got great entertainment out of trying to run past me out of her room over and over again, alternating that with a little crying and complaining. Basically, the kid excels at behaving horribly and making me feel like a terrible mother all while having a grand old time herself. So we may need to change our tactics again so she isn't getting satisfaction and entertainment out of the nap time thing anymore. What have you all done with your kids when they refused to nap but still really needed to? I don't think we're at a point where we can just let it go, because she is exhausted and we're all miserable when she doesn't nap. On the other hand, I can't battle with her for an hour every day when I also have a newborn to feed. I've thought of starting a "room time", where the expectation is just that she plays quietly in her room for a while every afternoon- but that would mean we'd no longer expect a nap and she'd never sleep. I guess at least I would get a break...

Chris took Celia out for a while this afternoon, so I sat with Henry having some glorious quiet time. He had the longest awake time he's had so far, and he was so alert. I had him on my lap and was talking to him, and then I started singing and his eyes opened so wide and he just looked and looked at me, so fascinated. Then Chris and Pita got home and she has been like Jekyll and Hyde ever since. One minute we're playing a game and having such a good time, and the next thing we know she's giving us a hard time over the simplest thing.

Hope you're all having a great weekend. Please pray that Chris and I will survive until Monday! Ha!

how we're doing

2011-12-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

It's 9 am, I've gotten Celia off to daycare after some drama, and am finally sitting to have breakfast and take a few minutes to write. Henry's sleeping in his swing, swimming around in his newborn suit. I have so much to write about Henry's birth and adjusting to this new life as a family of four, but for now just an update of how things are going.

(Just for fun, the picture below is of Celia when she was first home from the hospital. Don't they look so alike? It's amazing!)

We came home from the hospital yesterday around lunchtime. Celia was at daycare, which was perfect because we had a few hours to get settled at home before picking her up. It's already funny how much more laid back we are with a newborn this second time around. With Celia we were so tense getting her home from the hospital. Yesterday we went out of our way to stop and pick up lunch! Right now we're trying to keep a normal schedule for Celia and just keep things as typical as possible. I think that will help all of us.

Henry
There are such big differences in how things are going with Henry compared to when Celia was born. Pita was a low birth weight baby, which made everything a little harder than usual. She also had a tongue tie that made feeding very stressful for both of us for the first few months. Henry is a healthy size and a good eater. He doesn't seem to have any of the feeding problems Celia had, and it's such a relief to know I don't have to worry about that. I'm thrilled to have the experience of nursing a baby from the very first day, and to be able to just enjoy it. So far, Henry has been such a good newborn. He doesn't cry much and when he does, he usually just needs to burp, spit up a little, or poop. A good swaddle and a binky always help too. I was hoping our first night at home wouldn't be too bad, and it really wasn't! Henry stayed downstairs in the swing all night, and Chris and I took turns sleeping down there with him. Henry slept most of the night, except for feedings and when he needed to burp or have a diaper change. I'm tired today but it could be so much worse. We really did get some decent sleep. That could change at any time, so I will enjoy every good night we have for now!

Henry is still sleeping a lot during the day, and again we're taking advantage. He does seem to have several brief periods each day when he is awake and alert. He is already proving to be very aware of sounds around him, and looks around to localize to sounds. He also responds to my voice when he hears it, and we can tell he really likes hearing his daddy's voice talking to him. If he's nursing and hears a noise, he will stop and look around for where it came from. Although his vision wouldn't be developed enough to see very far away yet, he still likes to look around and is interested in things like looking out a window when light is coming through. When he's looking around he gets an expression of intense concentration on his face. I can already tell he's a smart little guy.

Celia
I think Celia is having a hard time right now. One minute she's very interested in Henry and wants to hold him, play with him, and show him things. She doesn't understand that he can't play or interact with her yet. The next minute, she will be throwing a fit. She gave me a hard time putting her to bed last night, and again getting ready and out the door this morning. She will refuse to cooperate with things that are normal parts of her routine, and does a lot of crying during those times. I think she's genuinely upset and can't necessarily control how she's reacting. Maybe she just doesn't know how to deal with this change. Hopefully things will be better soon. We're trying to keep her on her routine and give her individual attention, but it's actually hard to get her interested in playing with us because she's fixated on Henry.

Mommy and Daddy
I think the combination of having done this before, along with Henry being a healthy weight and a good eater, has made this experience so much easier this time around. We are so much more relaxed. I'm sure there are still sleepless nights ahead when it won't be so easy, but so far things are good and we're working as a team to take care of Henry and try to keep Celia happy. It will definitely be more challenging when Chris goes back to work.

I'm recovering really well. One benefit of having a drug-free birth is that you recover pretty easily afterward. For the first two days I had a lot of sore muscles in my back and abs, but today that's much better. I've been moving around pretty easily, although I'm a little slow. I'm bigger than I was after I had Celia and kind of anxious about how long it will take to fit into real clothes again. Mentally, I feel more present than I was when Celia was born. We were so much more stressed and sleep-deprived the first time around that I was kind of in a fog. This time things are easier and we already knew what to expect. I find that I'm enjoying Henry more completely, and that because I knew what to expect I was able to fall in love with him right away.

That's all for now. Time to get a few things done before we pick up Celia.

henry is here!

2011-11-29T18:52:00.000-05:00

Henry Warren was born last night, November 28th, at 11:56 pm. He weighed 7 pounds, 10 oz and is 19 inches long. He's perfect in every way, he smells delicious, and he has the softest yellow duckling fuzz hair just like his sister did.

I have so much more to record. Hopefully will find some time tomorrow to write about his birth :)

miscellany monday

2011-11-28T07:02:00.000-05:00

1) Yup. 41 weeks. This kid is happy as a clam in there. Meanwhile, I'm just worrying about how big he's getting! He's going to be so much bigger than Celia was. I'm still feeling pretty good, but my belly is getting so big and itchy, and I'm disappointed that I have so many stretch marks because I never got any with Celia. The other night we were looking at pictures from our wedding and from when Celia was a baby, and I couldn't believe how skinny I was. I can't wait to get back to my old self again. I'm tired of being so big. And of my face being fat (and yes, I know it isn't really fat, it just is compared to normal- look at my bio pic and header!). And of wearing literally the same two pairs of pants every single day.

I tried taking a bigger dose of castor oil the other day. It did have an effect and I had some contractions and even lost my mucus plug. But eventually they stopped, no real labor. Every time I have a contraction, I hope it's labor beginning. Every time I get up to use the bathroom in the night, I hope my water will break! Alas, in summary: 41 weeks, 40 pounds, and an entire bottle of castor oil later I'm still pregnant. Today and tomorrow I have to go for post-due date testing. I'm starting to get concerned that I'll need an induction.

2) I gave Pita a new haircut the other day and it turned out pretty cute. My mom suggested cutting the back on a bias instead of straight across, now that her hair has gotten longer. It definitely helps it look less scraggly, but I'm still no professional.

3) I didn't get a chance to make vegan Thanksgiving stuff, not knowing if the baby would arrive. Now I'm in the mood to plan for Christmas though!

4) Celia was playing with White Kitty the other day. She put some beads around the kitty and said, "I married her. Look. She's married now." So I said, "Oh! Who is she married to?" Pita said, "To me. I'm her wife." Hahaha! Cutest thing ever.

5) We were going to go out to a pancake place for lunch yesterday, but it was way too crowded. In the same parking lot there was a fast food place that shall remain unnamed, and we really had to get lunch quickly because it was getting late. So, in we went. In case you don't know me or haven't read the blog for long? A fast food place is pretty much my worst nightmare, for so many reasons. When I ordered Celia's lunch, the choices for her drink were juice or soda. Seriously? Not even milk? Not that I like her drinking much milk either... So I asked if there was water and the lady said no! Not even water! Literally, a choice between two sugary drinks. So we got juice (which they had to dig around for under the counter, so everyone else must get their small children soda?!) and when we were sitting at our table I noticed this:

That's right. Her juice contained zero percent juice. I spent the rest of our lunch trying not to cringe every time little Pita took a bite. Luckily she didn't really eat or drink all that much, and for once I was more than happy about it. Smart kid- she knows what's real food and what isn't.

If y'all wanna send some labor-get-going thoughts my way this week, I'd be much obliged ;)

toddler trouble

2011-11-27T14:41:00.000-05:00

I feel like I have nothing to say because we're just waiting, and waiting, and waiting for this baby to arrive. I'm starting to worry a little that I'll have to be induced. And what's really crazy is that since I had Celia at 38 weeks, I've now been pregnant for almost 3 weeks longer with this baby than I was with Celia. And it could even be a full month. Hope he comes soon!

We had a great Thanksgiving. Easiest holiday I've ever been involved in. We planned for Chris's family to come to our house and bring food, since we didn't know if the baby would be born yet. We all had kind of planned on the new guy being around for Thanksgiving and there was no way we'd be cooking or traveling in that case. So they came for the afternoon/evening, Pita played a lot with her cousins which was really cute, and that was that. At one point the kids were all playing with Legos together and it was so cute.

On Saturday morning we went to cut a Christmas tree. There's a tree farm right on our road. We were also lucky that it was in the 60s, so a rare warm and beautiful day for cutting a Christmas tree. I put the lights on during Pita's nap, and then we decorated it today. Chris got out our Christmas train to go around the tree, and Celia spent all morning watching it and incorporating it into her pretend play with her dollhouse and little people.

You can see Pita's ornaments all clustered in one spot at the bottom of the tree :)

Just as we're expecting the new guy to arrive, I've started having some problems with Celia. Of course. One downside of the fact that she's a bright kid is that she knows full well what's happening and that she is not interested in sharing attention with a new sibling. She has started having trouble at nap time, coming out of her room over and over, and is generally disobedient and yells, hits, etc. mostly with me. She isn't like this all the time, but it's noticeably more than it used to be. She thinks time outs are a big old joke too, and will run out of the time out spot repeatedly expecting me to chase her. So, we're working on these things. The most important thing is for me to have a plan of action so I don't lose my temper. If I don't respond consistently and calmly to her, we won't make any progress. On Friday I sat outside her bedroom door at nap time and when she kept trying to come out I would just calmly tell her to get in bed and go to sleep, and close the door again. When she couldn't actually escape her room, Celia got tired of the "game" pretty quickly. She cried and complained for what seemed like forever, but it was probably less than a few minutes total, and she was asleep about 20 minutes after we first went up for nap time. Not bad. I also made her a little "Nap Book" that outlines her nap routine and what she needs to do at nap time. We read it after her nap, and she was asking me questions about why I wouldn't let her out of her room. And then she said, "I cried, Mommy." It was so cute. Poor little thing. Little did she know I was on the other side of her door crying too... So I told her I didn't want to make her cry, but that I needed to help her take a nap and next time she could just stay in her bed and fall asleep without crying. She seemed to think that was a good idea :). Yesterday she took a nap with only a little complaining on the way to her room, and today she is napping after trying to come out a few times with me sitting outside her door. So far, so good. We've actually had a great weekend without too much toddler drama. Celia is at her best when she gets to spend a lot of time with her daddy, and she was Chris's little shadow all weekend.

We're continuing to get things done around the house since we seem to have endless time before the baby's born. This afternoon I'll go grocery shopping and we'll get ready to have a normal week- hopefully with a hospital visit thrown in.

the nursery

2011-11-22T14:16:00.000-05:00

Welp, isn't it just my luck that the castor oil did pretty much nothing? I read so many horror stories about the side effects, and felt so brave taking it, and then nothing even happened!

Anyway, while we're waiting around for the new guy to be born I thought I'd show his room now that it's finished. There isn't much to show, really, because the room is very small. It was hard to get good pictures without a wide angle lens. Apparently there was also some major glare from the sun that I didn't notice when taking the pictures.

We didn't buy any new furniture. H will be using Celia's old crib, and the glider is one we already had too. The mirror and shelves used to be in Celia's old room. The red table came from my parents, and we repainted it to go with the room. The rug used to be my grandmother's. I collected the fabric baskets from around the house. The only new things are the crib skirt and curtains, which my mom made, and the alphabet cards on the walls. It makes a big difference to be able to pick out your own fabrics. My idea was to have classic antique-looking colors: white and cream, muted blue-green, rosy antique red accents. This could really be either a boy or girl's room, and the colors aren't too babyish.

Off to the midwife again this afternoon!

monday miscellany- 40 weeks!

2011-11-21T10:06:00.000-05:00

1) Today I'm 40 weeks pregnant.

I no longer worry about things like whether my pants and tops match, or that my pregnant butt is big and saggy. These are literally the only pants I own that still fit and feel comfortable, so that's how I'll roll. Roll... No pun intended there.

2) Speaking of rolls, have I mentioned my weight and how much I've gained? Actually, never mind...

3) Something tells me the new guy is perfectly happy where he is, but I'd sure like to meet him in the next week. All those contractions I had last week were such a tease. Over the weekend I was pretty active, went for a brisk walk, and even tried a little castor oil to no avail. I just took another dose of castor oil this morning, so we'll see if anything happens with that. By the way, castor oil has a reputation for tasting awful and being hard to get down. I didn't find it that way at all. It doesn't have a strong taste, but it is very oily and thick. I mixed it with soynog (eggnog, basically) and since they're both thick liquids they mixed well and it wasn't too bad at all. Anyway, today would be a good day to meet our little Thanksgiving turkey but I don't have high hopes...

4) We just finished a really nice weekend, so I'm kind of glad the baby didn't arrive then. We had two full days of just our little family and since Chris and I have both finished our before-baby projects around the house, we were able to give Celia lots of attention. She spent lots of time playing with the bricks Nana got her, and quite a bit of time playing with Daddy. We've also discovered that Celia loves salmon and marinated steak tips, which is kind of funny coming from a vegan mother. Chris gets them sometimes and she gobbles them up. Yesterday she asked what we were having for lunch and I said I didn't know, and Pita said "Maybe Daddy can cook up some steak." Haha! (And he did.)

She LOVES having time with Daddy. She's always telling me she misses him when he's at work :)

Pita was so good and so happy all weekend, and I think it will be good to keep things as normal as possible and not make a big deal out of the baby in front of her. It will be tough once he's actually here, but I'm kinda hoping we and our families can keep things sort of calm and toned down for Celia. I'm mainly just hoping I'll get enough sleep to function somewhat normally to take care of her and keep our schedule consistent.

5) I'm also still really excited about Christmas time this year. I think it will be really fun to have Christmas in our new house, decorate the tree with Pita, and have the first Christmas that she'll really understand and remember. She's already talking about it, and she does remember some things from last year like Santa Claus, the decorations, etc. Plus, I think having a new baby around the holidays will be fun, and will help combat any baby blues I may end up with. It's such a fun time of year and we'll be busy.

My tummy is rumbling in strange ways right now after taking that castor oil. If I'm lucky, maybe by next Monday I'll have baby pictures...

it's beginning to look a bit like...

2011-11-16T15:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's right.

The nesting is out of control.

Not only did I vacuum the house, scrub floors, clean bathrooms, and do two loads of laundry today...

I also did more Christmas decorating.

The in-laws might be confused as to which holiday it is, if they come over for Thanksgiving.

If the baby isn't born soon, I'll have decorated for Easter and the Fourth of July too...

So please, little H (yes, that's his first initial!), come very very soon!

Love, your Mama.

my new gig

2011-11-15T20:34:00.000-05:00

No, the new gig does not involve the new guy yet, though I did think I was going into labor on Sunday night. It was a false alarm, but something was definitely going on. I had all the signs that I was in early labor, but maybe my body was just getting ready for it and then stopped. The baby has now dropped noticeably lower, though. It also gave us a good practice run for when labor does happen. When Chris saw that I was cueing up some Hypnobirthing tracks to listen to, he got a deer-in-the-headlights kind of expression on his face and started packing a hospital bag for himself- ha! Anyway, I started to feel better before bedtime and then overnight things slowed down and I wasn't in labor after all. I was glad we didn't call our families to come all the way for nothing.

On Monday morning I still wasn't feeling too hot when I got to work. I decided to spend the afternoon getting all my paperwork done, just in case I didn't end up coming back. When I received an email midday that reminded me why I never wanted to return to that job, I thought: You know what? I only have a day and a half left before maternity leave was scheduled to begin anyway. Screw this. I'm out. So last night I sent a few emails arranging for my leave to begin right away, rather than finishing out the week. And so begins my new gig as a stay-at-home mom! Yikes. What am I getting myself into?

I'll tell you what I'm getting into. Apparently somebody thinks my new job allows for lots of time to empty sinks full of dishes in the mornings.

This morning it was really warm and nice outside. Celia and I ran an errand and stopped at a park to play a little, and then we met Chris for lunch. It was time for her nap when we got home, and she must have been really tired after our busy morning because after reading just one book she said she wanted to go upstairs. Note to self: Keep the kid busy in the mornings!

I decided to start decorating for Christmas today. I'm nesting and literally can. not. stop cleaning the house, picking up clutter, and cooking things for the freezer. Because clearly I cannot bring a baby into the world when my kitchen cabinets haven't been wiped down five times. With Thanksgiving drawing nearer and the baby not born, I figured I might as well go for it with the Christmas stuff. I don't think I'll feel like decorating much in the days after the baby is born. During Pita's nap I got some decorations out and put them up. Also, when you're putting out new decorations and moving things around you end up wiping things down and dusting too- it's a crazy pregnant lady's dream, really.

And finally, Celia forgot her white stuffed kitty when she slept over at Chris's parents house. She was without it for a couple days and definitely missed it because she's pretty attached. We told her White Kitty was having a little vacation and she was okay with that, but she kept asking when the kitty would be back. Today we had a special FedEx delivery, and here was Pita's reaction when she opened the package.

monday miscellany- 39 weeks

2011-11-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

1) Today I'm 39 weeks pregnant with the new guy. The new guy now has a name, by the way! I think we will keep it under wraps on the old internets, though. You all will just have to be surprised. I still feel pretty good, but I'm looking forward to packing up the maternity clothes and getting back to my old self soon. I'm still experiencing that end-of-pregnancy energy surge and making good use of it, and have been trying to wrap my head around the idea of impending childbirth and of having two children.

2) When I got in bed the other night, I was thinking about Celia and how we're now in our last days with her as our only child. It made me a little sad. Of course we will be happy to welcome the new guy, we want more than one child, and we want Celia to have siblings. But at the same time, this is a bittersweet time because I feel like my special days with Celia are numbered. I told Chris I was sad that I didn't have much time left with Celia alone, and he thought I was nuts. Boys... They just don't understand.

The next day Pita and I went out for a fun morning together. We looked at Christmas decorations (boy did she love that), went for a snack at Panera, and walked around a little.

She decided to try out her brother's car seat.

3) I couldn't help myself, and got coordinating Christmas pajamas for Celia and the new guy. This is the back view of his:

How could I resist the reindeer butt? Celia's are reindeer pajamas too, but solid red.

4) This is my last week of work!

5) I'm really getting curious about when the new guy will be born. I kind of wish I knew. I wonder if it will be right near Thanksgiving.

6) If you blog, do you ever go back and read old posts? I love going back in time that way. Every so often I'll pick a month or two and read through all the posts. It's fun to remember what we were doing, see how much Celia has changed, and I often remember the days I wrote about.

7) Pita played in the leaves last week, and we have a lot more leaves to rake now. She's going to have fun.

date night

2011-11-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

We have only been without Celia overnight a couple of times out of necessity, and each time she stayed with a set of grandparents. Now that Pita is getting a little older and also happens to be obsessed with the concepts of sleepovers, we thought we could try sending her overnight before the baby is born. Chris and I had been thinking about going out for dinner one night anyway. So yesterday Chris's parents picked Celia up after her nap and took her to their house to spend the night. She was very excited. Chris and I were, of course, much more stressed out about it than she was :). It was strange having her gone, but it was really nice to have rare and unlimited time to ourselves. We have both felt so relaxed! And having a day or night with no kids will not happen for us again for a long time!

Last night we went out for dinner at a Greek restaurant we really like, got fancy drinks at Starbucks, went home and immediately changed into comfortable, ratty looking clothes, and read books and watched tv before going to bed early. Best night ever. We really know how to go crazy :D. Oh, and we also had the following conversation before bed:

Me: Do you think it would be weird if I slept in Pita's bed tonight?

Chris (giving me the hairy eyeball): Yes. That would be weird.

Me: But her bed smells like her.

No response from Chris.

Me: Okay, I'll try not to sleep in her bed.

No response from Chris. I have a little bit of an attachment problem.

This morning we got the baby monitor and a safety gate installed upstairs (both projects that took two people and way too long to complete). Turns out that Celia slept well last night and was still happy as a clam and busy playing with one of her cousins this morning, so we decided to let her stay with Chris's parents until the afternoon. Chris and I got grocery shopping done and got a few final Christmas presents for Celia, and now we are home. Probably have a little more time to rest, prep dinner, and get a little yard word done before Celia gets home. I can't wait to see her, but it was definitely a nice break we had this weekend!

monday miscellany- 38 weeks

2011-11-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

1) I'm 38 weeks pregnant today. We sure are getting close, although it could still be another month... I've actually started feeling better in the last couple weeks than I did before. I think it's because my weight gain has stopped and my belly isn't really growing any bigger. I've gained about 30 pounds, which is also what I gained with Celia and then just stopped gaining. Everywhere I go, strangers stare and appear horrified at the size of my belly. No joke. It's getting old. I have more energy and am less uncomfortable than I was. This makes me fear that the new guy isn't coming out any time soon!

2) I love having good neighbors. I love that we have people nearby who are friendly and always willing to help each other out. I've now kept my next door neighbor's breast milk in my freezer during the power outage, and she's given me some of her big absorbant pads to keep in the car in case my water breaks on the way to the hospital. It's safe to say we've reached a whole new level in our relationship- Ha!

3) Chris, Celia and I all ended up sleeping late over the weekend. Pita and I are usually up around the same time every morning, so it was unusual. Anyway, Chris and I were both thinking on Saturday morning that we have it so good right now. Celia usually sleeps well, which means we can too, and in general things are just so much easier now with an almost-3-year-old than with an infant or toddler. Now we're about to return to square one with a new baby, so we are really enjoying our sleep now while we can!

4) Speaking of sleep, some days Celia still has a really good nap and on other days she no longer naps at all. She really does still need something, because she gets so cranky without a nap. Anyway, even when she doesn't sleep she had never left her room- or even her bed- during nap time. She would just talk and play in her bed until I came to get her. Well, the other day she went for her nap, was quiet for a while, and then I heard her bedroom door open. I went to the stairs and saw her coming down. "What's going on, Pita?" I said. "I didn't feel like taking a nap" she replied, "I just want to play." And with that, she got on her tricycle and rode out of the room, leaving me quite shocked. Hopefully she'll continue to nap most days- especially with the new baby coming soon.

5) We did some serious nesting yesterday. Chris and I both got a lot done around the house in the morning. We gave the family room a good cleaning, put away and reorganized toys, and rearranged the furniture a little.

6) Outfit of the Week:
This week I covered a big box with contact paper and let Celia decorate it, and it became her dress-up box. She had a great time dressing up yesterday.

this friday is a favorite

2011-11-04T18:16:00.000-04:00

Pita and I had a nice day today. I'd say the entire day can be considered my Friday Favorite. It's not every day that we have a relaxed, easy and fun day. Celia was in a great mood all day and so well-behaved. She slept a little later than usual this morning and also had a long nap, so maybe she was just extra well-rested. We got all ready and went to music class, and stopped for a few things at the grocery store on the way home. When we got home, Pita asked to use some glue. She is really getting into arts and crafts lately, and the simplest little projects keep her occupied for a long time. Today I also took out a little pair of scissors and she practiced cutting a strip of paper, then glueing the pieces we cut onto a large piece of paper. We also tore up pieces of a catalog and she glued them to paper. Celia had a great nap, did even more glueing, and then wanted to watch one of her shows and have a snack. While she was doing that, Chris came home early to take her out to dinner! Blub and Pita haven't been able to spend as much time together as they used to, with him being busy with his new job. So, he decided to take her out on a little dinner date :).

Someone was excited for a special dinner with Daddy.

Meanwhile, I stayed home and had a big plate of salad and homemade vegan mac and cheese while watching the news. It was so nice. Also? This mac and cheese is so good- you would never know it didn't have dairy in it. I'm pretty sure I could fool anyone with this recipe.

And just when you think a Friday couldn't get any better? I made vegan pumpkin pie cinnamon rolls today. These certainly aren't health food, but I really like to make and freeze them to have around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm glad I found the time to do it today, before the new guy is born.

Oh, yummy! Pregnant girls are allowed unlimited cinnamon buns, right?

Better get some of these in the freezer before they've all been eaten...

Tonight Chris and I are going over labor/childbirth related stuff after Celia goes to bed. Looking forward to getting everything finalized and really feeling ready for the new guy to arrive!

october snow

2011-11-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

We are used to pretty much any type of crazy weather in New England, but were completely unprepared for a snow storm in October. We spent last Saturday getting ready for the storm, and spent the next three days without power or water. Saturday morning I took Celia with me to get our grocery shopping done, and then Chris went out to get a snow blower because we hadn't gotten one since moving. He barely got one before they sold out. Then as the storm began, the poor guy spent the afternoon in the freezing rain getting firewood ready and clearing our outdoor stuff from the yard. Never would have thought this would be necessary so early in the season. Our lights started flickering in the late afternoon so I decided to make dinner early before we lost power. Sure enough, we were just finishing dinner when the power went out. We got the generator, candles, lanterns, and everything else set up, and the next three days were spent just keeping the wood stove going so the house wouldn't get too cold and keeping the generator running so we wouldn't lose all of our food. The most difficult part of losing power is not having any running water. We'll be keeping a large stash of water in the basement for the winter, along with lots of extra batteries.

So, Saturday afternoon we had this:

For some reason this immediately made me think of the lamp post from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And on Sunday morning, we woke to very heavy, wet snow with a lot of damage to trees. Our yard is still a mess, with many trees snapped in half with the top halves fallen from the weight of the snow on the leafy branches. Chris spent the whole day clearing snow, cutting and clearing trees with neighbors, and keeping the generator gassed up (which involved driving 2 towns over to find an open gas station, with the chainsaw in the back of the car so he could stop and help clear branches on the way- New England living at its finest). Meanwhile, we kept Pita busy. It wasn't safe to play outside because of all the heavy snow falling from trees and branches still coming down. Plus, we hadn't even gotten her any snow clothes yet.

She loved "cooking" with snow in her kitchen,

Playing with flashlights,

And making a jack-o-lantern. The best part was playing with the gooky insides of the pumpkin.

Making a jack-o-lantern with snow outside was a bit odd. We also still took Pita trick-or-treating on Monday night. We went to our old neighborhood to trick-or-treat because there was power there, and there are so many places to go that are close together. I didn't get any pictures, but she loved trick-or-treating and she was the cutest thing to watch.

Now that the power's back on we've just been getting back to our normal routine, and I'll spend this afternoon getting things put away and doing some cleaning. We also have a renewed appreciation for electricity, heat, and running water. What a luxury it is to have them.

out of commission

2011-10-31T09:26:00.000-04:00

Hi friends! We had a snow storm with lots of damage on Saturday and may be without power for a long time. So... I'll be back when I can. Blogging on my phone isn't too convenient!

childhood magic

2011-10-28T13:50:00.000-04:00

Just a few Friday Favorites today... When one is two and a half, every season brings new and exciting things. So often these days, I have the pleasure of watching Celia's little face light up with joy as she sees or does something different. Life is a magical thing.

Snow
The first snow was last night. It's just a dusting and us grown-ups aren't so excited about it, but somebody was. A little girl stood at the window last night, marveling at the falling snow. She ran back there this morning to check. "It's still snowy!" She ran to find her rain boots, since we haven't gotten snow clothes yet.

I've never seen anyone so excited about a dusting of snow.

Little Girls in Costumes
We have a busy day with two Halloween parties today. This is the first year Celia really understands and enjoys Halloween-related things, and she loves to play dress-up.

The Fabulousness of the Birthday Suit
Celia and I often take showers together. Every time we get her clothes all off she stands in the middle of the bathroom, holds her arms up, and gleefully exclaims "I'm naked!" If I looked that cute in my birthday suit, I'd probably be pretty happy about it too :)

our birth plan

2011-10-27T21:26:00.001-04:00

I finished packing my hospital bag today, so other than some last-minute things I'm ready to leave whenever labor happens! I don't expect to go into labor for a while yet, but I'll be full term on Monday and one can dream. All this preparation and just wait, I'll still be pregnant at Thanksgiving...

I thought I'd share our birth plan, which is almost exactly the same as what we did with Celia. We have done a lot of research, completely over-educated ourselves about childbirth, and I take time to practice Hypnobirthing meditation. But when it comes to the actual birth, things are very simple. The birth plan could essentially be summed up as: Just leave us be. No drugs, no IV, no monitoring necessary. I'm just gonna have my baby. (Mind you, if any of those things became medically necessary we'd accept. But, most of the time they are not necessary, and interventions snowball into each other leading to unbelievably high cesarean rates.) Anyway, this is our birth plan:

We prefer a non-medicated childbirth with as little medical intervention as possible. Please discuss any necessary medical interventions with us before they take place. We will use Hypnobirthing and other natural techniques throughout labor.

During Labor and Delivery, we would like:

Access to a labor tub.
A quiet, calm environment.
Not to be offered pain medication or to be questioned on pain level. We are aware of pain medication options, and will request medication if we wish.
Not to have an IV unless it becomes medically necessary.
For mom’s water to break naturally.
To have as few internal exams as possible.
Uncoached pushing.
To be free of time limits on pushing, as long as baby is healthy and progress is being made.
To avoid episiotomy.
For perineal support/compresses to be used as needed.
For baby to be placed on mom’s chest immediately after birth.
For baby to be given to dad if mom is unable to take her.

For the Baby, we would like:

To delay cutting the umbilical cord until it has stopped pulsing.
For the baby to remain with mom and dad and begin breastfeeding after birth.
For Chris to cut the umbilical cord.
To decline erythromycin eye ointment.
Breast feeding only- no formula please.

With Celia's birth, this is pretty much how it happened. I never got to use the labor tub because I was ready to push when we arrived at the hospital. If we're there earlier this time, I really want to try the tub. I had no IV, no drugs, felt great and recovered fast after delivery. Chris helped deliver Celia, and the room was calm and quiet (silent much of the time) while I pushed. The only thing that had to happen that we didn't want was that Celia had to have a bottle of formula soon after birth. She was hypoglycemic, which can quickly become very dangerous and cause brain damage in newborns. So, obviously we allowed for that.

There's no way of knowing what the new guy's birth day will bring. For now this is our plan, and we hope it will work out well as it did for Celia!

monday miscellany- 36 weeks

2011-10-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

1) Today I'm 36 weeks pregnant with the new guy. I've kind of dreaded this last month of pregnancy because I thought I'd just get more and more exhausted. But, in the last week I actually started feeling a little more energetic. Maybe that nesting instinct is kicking in? At the same time, I still wouldn't mind going into labor any day now because my belly is getting so big. I'm measuring right where I should be, but I'm still a relatively small person otherwise. People always think I'm due any day because the belly looks so big compared to the rest of me. I still have some reflux, and some sciatic nerve pain that's new. But overall I feel pretty good!

2) Celia really loves drawing and writing. I need to start saving samples of her work, so I'm keeping a few things she made yesterday. She did these by herself, so I think they're pretty good for a 2 1/2 year old!

She said this one was a person (on the left) and a funny costume (the pink).


This is her name. She's really good at making the C, L, and I, but isn't as sure about the E and A.

3) The November Cooking Light arrived last week, and I'm looking forward to trying and veganizing a few recipes. Having a new baby around Thanksgiving may prevent much Thanksgiving cooking though...

4) Speaking of Thanksgiving cooking, I've been making this Pumpkin Gingerbread Smoothie lately. Sometimes I don't have an appetite for lunch these days, and this is really good and very nutritious.

5) We had a birthday party for one of Celia's friends over the weekend and they had a bouncy house. Pita had the best time! She was the youngest at the party, but she had no fear jumping around with the bigger kids. It was Halloween themed, and she loved wearing her costume all day.

6) Speaking of birthday parties, we have to start planning something for Celia's. The only problem with a January birthday is that we can't predict the weather at all and can't plan on doing something outside. I'm not sure what kinds of indoor activities we could plan. Maybe a couple winter crafts? Winter themed snacks, and maybe set up some climbing toys or get a ball pit? Just put out toys and let the kids play? A sledding party would be fun, but we can't guarantee there will be good snow. Celia keeps asking about inviting friends for her birthday party, so we have to do something with friends this year I think!

7) I have big plans for baby-related posts coming up soon! Since I didn't start this blog until Celia was almost a year old, I never wrote about her birth or how we plan for birth, or any little baby things. I definitely want to document those things this time around.

8) Sometimes the house gets very quiet, and usually it means Celia and Chris are hiding in their living room fort, telling each other stories. The other day I infiltrated the area and got a picture.

9) And finally, we haven't had many leaves in our yard until recently so Celia hasn't really played in piles of leaves yet. On Friday we played outside and started raking some piles. Pita had the best time playing in them. She was really cute because she would ask me for permission every time she wanted to go in a pile. I think she was worried to mess up the work I did. This week I'll try to get the rest of the yard raked up so she has even better piles to jump in.

i love her

2011-10-21T15:22:00.000-04:00

My hair is frizzy. My clothes are ill-fitting and I feel unattractive. I have a dried up smear of canned pumpkin on my shirt. The mascara I put on this morning (to feel more put together) is smudged under my eye. Every time I look at the kitchen floor, new crumbs have sprung up to replace the ones I just removed. This day will be long and I will spend it all with a 2-year-old. My husband won't be home until nearly her bedtime. There were times this morning that were strenuous exercises in patience and self control. Moments when I had to stay calm, refrain from raising my voice too loud, set an example, and follow through on discipline. We had good moments too: raking leaves and playing in them, having a great time together in music class, making green eggs and ham for her lunch... But my, we are in a trying season right now. Celia does everything she can to push my buttons. I'm prepared that it may get worse before it gets better, with a new sibling on the way.

This is not a glamorous way to live. It's no Desperate Housewives episode. With school age kids, I'll bet this gets easier. But with young kids? Being a stay-at-home mom isn't an easy job. And that's the job I've signed up for, full time for the first time, from November until at least next September. And I'm ready. Despite the challenges of this stage of toddlerhood, I've been a mother for almost three years and finally feel competent and confident enough that I know I can stay home with my kids and do a darn good job of it. I know that every stage is just a stage. None of them last long. And with the challenges come wonderful things at all of those stages. And if I can be the one at home with them, guiding them through, watching them grow and learn about the world? And if they turn out to be happy, well-behaved, smart, well-adjusted kids because of how I've loved and guided them? For me, at this time in my life, there could be no greater accomplishment. If I were working outside the home, our kids would still turn out wonderfully. But this year something has changed, and my job outside of home is not, other than the paycheck, one worth working. There's a very good reason why staying home for ten months is the best decision I could have made. It's been tugging at my heart (and sometimes at my pant leg) every morning as I leave for another job that isn't fulfilling in the least. The reason is in the pictures I had to remove from my office desk, because seeing them just made me sad.

It's because despite the difficult stage we're in and how frequently she tests me, this little person is still the cutest, sweetest, smartest, most fantastic little person in the whole world.

There is nothing better than teaching her, cooking with her, playing games with her, taking her to new places, having a conversation with her. There is nothing better than climbing into her bed and snuggling with her, seeing her eyes light up with excitement when we read stories together, being the person she wants to be with above all others. Feeling her arms wrap around my neck, and hearing her little voice: Mommy, I love you.

No difficult stage could ever make me forget how wonderful it is to be her mother. I have never experienced anything as overwhelming as my love is for her. Now? I get to do this again, for a second time with a second baby. I'm about to be doubly overwhelmed.

I don't plan to be a martyr. There will be long days when I haven't slept, the baby is fussy and crying, Celia wants all my attention, and I want to pull my hair out. There will be days when I long for a break, drop them off at daycare, and breathe a sigh of relief as I arrive home to a quiet house. Hopefully on those days, I'll remember to look back at posts like this one, and I'll regain some perspective. In fact, maybe one of you could send me a quick reminder tonight around dinner time, when I'm exhausted and my husband still isn't home from work and somebody's refusing dinner and throwing food on the floor ;)

So this week, my Friday Favorite is her. The most beautiful, smart, funny, exhausting, exasperating, wonderful little girl I've ever met.

fall colors, furniture, and feisty little girls

2011-10-20T20:16:00.000-04:00

I haven't been writing much at all lately. I'm backed up with reports to get done at work before maternity leave, busy at home, and too tired to write when I finally have time at the end of the day. I do have lots of ideas for posts, and a lot going on with baby preparations, so hopefully I'll find the time to write some things down soon.

Rainy weather dried up this morning, and when I left work at midday it was a beautiful warm and sunny day. I opened all the windows when I got home. It was so nice to have the house filled with fresh air. Our leaves are finally turning but a lot of trees have already lost their leaves. It's still pretty, though.

I wore myself out doing some housework this afternoon, made a quick trip to the grocery store and pharmacy, and stopped to unload everything at home before getting Celia from daycare. Oh, and when I say I wore myself out? All that took was sweeping the first floor, picking up some clutter, wiping down the laundry room floor, and putting a load of laundry in the washer. I can't wait to have my normal energy and stamina back! I'm also dying to start taking walks and runs again. You would think I could still go for walks, but pretty much anything gets my contractions going.

I also snapped a couple pictures of the dining room, which finally has a table.


Looking from the kitchen into the front hall and dining room.

I'm hoping to find more chairs at yard sales or flea markets eventually. I kind of like the slightly mismatched thing. I threw a runner and pumpkin I already had onto the table, and they help tone down the serious blue wallpaper problem we have going on in there :). We won't get around to taking that wallpaper down for a while, but the room will look decent if I can get the light fixture and oak colored buffet painted dark colors, and decorate with accessories in colors that will distract from the blue.

That's about all for tonight. Guess this was a pretty random post. I am completely beat right now. Celia wore me out from the moment I picked her up at daycare today. She is in a phase of just giving me a hard time, a lot of the time. I don't know if it's because I'm her mother and spend the most time with her, because she knows the baby is coming soon, or just that she's going through a difficult stage. Some days she's a perfect angel, and other days she is constantly arguing, refusing, yelling, and whining. I don't know where she gets it from, because according to our parents Chris and I were both well-behaved, easy going little kids. Celia has had her own (very strong) personality from the start. Even when she was a preemie-sized little peanut as a newborn, all the nurses in the hospital called her feisty. At least she's very sweet and well behaved outside of home and with other adults and kids. We must be doing something right...

miscellany monday- 35 weeks

2011-10-17T06:00:00.001-04:00

1) I'm at 35 weeks today. Last Thursday I had a midwife appointment. I had only gained a pound in three weeks, so luckily the weight gain has slowed down. I'm running out of clothes that fit. I also asked about the contractions I've been having, since I sometimes have several in a stretch and they're pretty crampy. I'm supposed to call if I have six in an hour now...which has since happened a couple times but I didn't call. I'm a bad patient. I just don't think I'm actually going into labor, and driving 45 minutes to have them monitor me when I already know what's happening seems like a waste. So now I'm under orders from my husband to call the midwife this morning and confess, and see what she says... Work is definitely the culprit more than anything, because the contractions are the worst on work days.

2) Part of our road is being repaved this week, and I told Celia we would get to see some construction trucks. She's very excited and keeps asking me when the "buhstruction" is starting.

3) Celia is a little obsessed with going to school. She found out that preschool starts at age 3, and now she's pretty set on going. She talks about it every day.

4) The cabinet doors and hardware in our master bathroom look like an owl to me. Every time I sit on the toilet, I have that owl for company. See those owl eyes?

5) We're making progress in the new guy's room. It's not completely done yet, but getting there.

6) This weekend I also made a final list of baby-related things to get done. They're just the final things now, like packing a hospital bag and getting out the car seat and other gear.

7) Outfit of the Week:

triker babe

2011-10-12T08:00:00.002-04:00

miscellany monday- 34 weeks!

2011-10-10T06:00:00.001-04:00

1) Wowzers. I feel like 34 weeks is pretty far into this baby growing thing, and that's where I am today. I have been letting housework and cooking slide a little to give myself a little more rest. Chris has started helping with some things like laundry, and sometimes after dinner I need to just rest and have him take over with Celia.

I have been feeling about the same as last week. Getting more rest definitely helps with everything... except for one thing. I've been debating whether to bring this up, but what the heck? Most of my readers are women and mothers, and even the men are probably well aware of common pregnancy-related problems. So, let's talk about hemorrhoids, shall we girls? Gah! I'm sure it's just that I'm bigger than last time, but I have some really scary ones. As in, I'm scared to push a baby out because how much worse is that going to make them? I've tried all the usual remedies and some help with discomfort temporarily, but they're pretty bad. Has anyone else had a bad case during pregnancy and survived it all without serious issues after delivery? Or a bad case you were able to correct or recover from before having the baby? Can you comment and I will email you??

2) Chris is starting his new job this week. He's away for a couple days for orientation, and luckily my parents are coming to stay and help out. Chris and Pita spent part of the evening before he left building forts and telling stories under a blanket.

3) The leaves on our trees, while lovely, are still green. We got too much rain and haven't had enough sunshine and cool temperatures for them to change yet. I hope we get some good fall weather before it's too late for nice foliage.

4) I started Christmas shopping over the weekend, all online. With the baby coming, I'll feel much more prepared with that done. Got some things for Celia, and doubled up on the cutest little thing for our new niece and our new guy (that will probably be the only present we get him- he'll only be a month old and there's really no need to get him anything at all).

5) That reminds me, I think we have an Elf on the Shelf that we were given last year and saved. Celia will really like that this year. Christmas time is going to be even more fun with her than it was last year.

6) Yes, I am aware that Halloween hasn't even passed. I'm a bit ahead of things. That's what having a Thanksgiving baby will do to you, I think.

7) Speaking of that, Pita's costume is almost complete. Nothing fancy, but she will make a cute little Thumbelina. We have at least 2 events besides trick-or-treating where she'll get to wear her costume this year.

8) The other night Celia told us she learned an apple song at daycare, and started singing it for us. So cute.

9) Also, we now have an expert tricycle rider. She rides all over the place now without any help. It's a great outdoor activity for her, and we have enough space that she can bring it inside too. Turns out she's quite a speed demon inside. We've had some close calls. Yesterday we were trying to explain that she had to slow down a little and she just kept saying "No, I have to go fast!" She finally took a spill last night, so I think it will have to stay outside for a while.

10) We went apple picking yesterday. I thought there would still be plenty of apples this weekend, but the orchard was closed for picking already. They still let us go, but warned us that it would be hard to find apples and it was! I made apple crisp for a special breakfast for Celia and I this morning. It's actually a nice healthy breakfast- kept the sugar to a minimum and made topping with oats, whole wheat flour, and pecans.

the fair

2011-10-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

We took little Pita to a country fair yesterday. I told her on Friday that we were going and had to explain what a fair was, and she was so excited that she kept asking if it was time to go. It was just a small town country fair, so I hoped her expectations would be met! We had so much fun. Well, Celia had fun and Chris and I had fun watching her have fun. It made me so happy to see how much she enjoyed everything. She's getting to be such a big girl. It was also nice to get a little glimpse of the community in the area we live in. Very small town, very friendly. Almost everything we did with Celia was free- just community groups and businesses giving out services or looking for donations.

Arriving at the fair and looking around:

With Mommy,

Oh my, I look rotund...Gah! I know I don't really look like a fatty, but my face is so fat compared to normal!

...and with Daddy. I could not get her to look at the camera because she was so busy looking at everything around us. When she finally smiled and at least turned toward me, of course she had her finger in her nose.

It was actually a perfect event for Celia because it had everything she'd be interested in, but was still very small and easy to walk around. It didn't take long to cover everything and get home again in time for lunch- and for Mommy to use the bathroom and avoid the port-o-potties :D.

Celia got a balloon, which was a real treat. She spent all day playing with it.

There was a petting zoo area with cows, goats, and pony rides. We weren't sure if Celia would like a pony ride, but she got to pat the pony first and seemed interested in a ride so we went for it. She did so well and really liked it. She didn't say much about it, but at dinner last night she said it was bumpy :).

Pita saw a little boy with his face painted and was interested, so we got hers done. She sat so still and was so good!

They also gave her a lollipop. She'd never had a lollipop before, partly because we don't give her candy and partly because I worry about choking. But, she's big enough now and there are worse treats. She wasn't quite sure what to do with it at first, but it was a hit. By the time she finally finished it on the way home, she was talking about what color she wants to pick next time.

There was a fire safety house for kids. Celia got taken into a pretend house, got some (very simple, I assume) instruction about fire safety, and then they had fake smoke and a smoke alarm go off to have her practice getting out of the house and down a ladder.

Finally we went on a hayride. I have to say, they sound like such fun but they're usually just crowded, noisy, bumpy and uncomfortable. Celia liked it anyway, and it was the one thing she really wanted to do. It was funny that it was such a neat thing to her, while it bothered Chris's hurt back and made me have crampy contractions. I can't say I recommend hayrides for women who are 8 months pregnant!

Pita is really starting to get over her extreme shyness with new people. She is appropriately shy, but when someone speaks to her or when we prompt her to say thank you or goodbye, she does respond now. I was so impressed that she wanted to try everything she could, and seemed comfortable with other adults helping her and didn't need to cling to Chris or me when she was trying new things. Sometimes it seems funny to see her doing so many big kid things so competently, because she's such a little peanut. It really was a fun morning for us, and it brought me joy to see her so happy and so engaged with everything. She's at such a great age now for fun activities and events like this!

marathon anniversary

2011-10-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

Hey guys! I almost forgot about this, but guess what I was doing on this day last year? Running a marathon!

It made me a little sad to read this post and know that I haven't run for such a long time, and that I'll be starting from square one with my running after having the baby. But of course having a new little baby to take care of will be pretty great, and he will be more than worth the time off from running. I'll have many years to marathon to my heart's content someday.

getting old

2011-10-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

I was looking at this picture the other day. It's always been on my desk at work. I was thinking about how it was taken so long ago- 8 years ago this weekend, I think- and how much our lives have changed since then. In this picture we weren't married, no kids, no mortgage to pay, lived in the city. I was in grad school. If we wanted to go out one night or go away for a weekend, we could.

Then, I was thinking that I was so skinny back then, and that I'm so not right now. And then I thought, "Gee, we both look so young in this picture. I'm getting old. My skin shows signs of age. I'm getting creased and wrinkled and tired looking." So after that I decided I should start trying some anti-aging/skin repair products to try to stop looking so gosh darn old.

The next day, I saw a new jar of skin cream on the bathroom counter. It was a men's product. It said something about wrinkle smoothing. I grinned and chuckled a bit to myself, because I would never have pegged Chris as a man who would be worried about his skin or his looks. And then I thought it was kind of sweet that we both must have been thinking about all this at the same time. So I went downstairs and mentioned to Chris that I'd been noticing my skin looked older and was thinking about doing something about it, and that I noticed his skin cream and how we must have both been thinking the same thing. He replied, "Oh. Well I was just looking for face lotion and when I got home I noticed it said something about anti-aging."

Guess it was just me after all...

a doable day

2011-10-06T20:23:00.000-04:00

Last night I decided that today would be a sick day. My work days really wear me out, to the point where I'm pretty much miserable by the end and feel like a night's sleep isn't enough to recover. So I decided to give myself a 6 day weekend. With Monday as a holiday, I don't go back to work until next Wednesday! Anyway, it was a good decision. I only used a half day of sick time and got to have a day that was both restful and productive. After Chris and Celia left for daycare I was noticing all the housework to be done, but forced myself to just sit for a while and rest. After that I did do some cleaning, and of course started having contractions but it was time to stop cleaning anyway. I made a trip to target, had to stop by my old school building to pick up some things, and then had a dentist appointment.

By the time I got home it was almost 3:00 and I thought I'd just work on some laundry until it was time to get Pita, but Chris ended up calling. He was out of work early on his last day of his job, and wanted to celebrate. So we went out for a drink and a snack, and then picked up Celia. She made herself very busy playing when we got home. She played by herself for a long time with her Little People. I still love listening to her play because she comes up with all kinds of stories and says the funniest things. I tried to get a picture of her, but she would not look at me. At one point I was just walking by and she told me to leave her alone! Haha. I half love those times, because it means I can do my own thing, and half hate that she doesn't want me.

I was still exhausted by the time I got Celia in bed tonight, but today was so much better than when I have work. Normally I would have sore feet, back and hips and have contractions in addition to the exhaustion. Going to try getting to bed a little early tonight, too. Only six more weeks or so to get through. If I need to use up a little more sick time before my leave, and that makes the end of the pregnancy more bearable, I definitely will!

33 weeks and random stuff

2011-10-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday marked 33 weeks.

Slowly but surely getting there. There isn't much that's new this week. My reflux has gotten worse and I've been taking a lot of Tums. The thing is, if I don't eat too much the reflux seems to be better. I don't have a huge appetite these days anyway. However, I seem to get lightheaded lately and I wonder if it's from not enough food. So then I try to eat more, but don't feel like eating and that isn't much fun. Other than that I'm feeling about the same. I still have quite a few Braxton Hicks contractions and they're not always comfortable. With Celia, they were always just painless tightening of my belly. This time around they tend to be crampy and feel like actual labor contractions. Sometimes I kind of wish they would get to be too many so I could stop working early. On days when I work a full day, I kind of barely make it to the end of the day.

Yep, still hate my job :D. It's not a good feeling to dread going to work in the morning and spend your time there just wanting to go home. I'm going to start bringing things home in preparation for my leave, just in case I did go out early. There's no way I'm going back there for anything once I'm out!

I have a bad cough. I just had a contraction, coughed really hard and peed my pants a little. Good times.

Last week at Pita's music class we played big drums. The teacher always has the kids play the drums in different ways, and one way was to play with just the pointer of each hand. It was a bit of a coordination challenge for Celia and took a while for her to figure out how to isolate just one finger. Later that day we were reading a book and Celia was moving her fingers around, looking at them. I thought maybe she had something stuck on her hands, so I put my hands over hers to wipe them. She looked at me and said in a very quiet voice, "Wait. I'm learning." I realized she was trying to practice isolating her fingers like at music class. The way she said she was "learning"? It was so gosh darn cute.

Another cute thing is that we got The Kissing Hand from the library the other day and Celia loved it. She sometimes has trouble with me leaving for work in the morning, and wants me to stay home with her. I know that she loves her daycare and is always happy there, even if mornings are a little rough. It still makes me feel terrible when she doesn't want me to leave, especially when I'm leaving for a job I can't stand and would much rather stay home anyway. So I thought the concept of the kissing hand would be good for her. Sure enough, she loved the book and when she didn't want me to leave on Monday morning I asked if she wanted me to give her a kissing hand. She smiled and nodded, and was perfectly happy to say goodbye to me after that. Later when I picked her up she showed me how she could put the kiss up to her cheek, and when I asked her what that meant she said with a big smile "Mommy loves me! Mommy loves me!" Cute, cute, cute.

friday favorites again!

2011-09-30T13:44:00.000-04:00

Just this week I've started feeling...not so great. I'm tired, big, swollen, my feet hurt, back and hip joints hurt, and my pelvic floor might just fall out at any moment. I've started to wonder how I can make it for seven or eight more weeks like this. I'm glad we still have some time to get more prepared, but it's a little rough right now.

Despite not feeling my best, there are of course good things too. This week I'm glad...

...that even though they don't fit on my swollen fingers, I'll have these waiting for me when they'll finally fit again.

...that there was no school yesterday, so I got a much needed day off from work.

...that while I didn't get the rest I probably should have, I did get more freezer meals made yesterday.

...that I've wanted to revamp the bedrooms before the baby arrives, and got some new bedding for our room yesterday. Our old quilt, which is still perfectly nice, is a nice match for the guest room so I moved it in there. Big improvement from the one I had there before, that I never liked.

...that when I went to the guest room to take a picture of that bed, I found this:

...that next will be hiding the beat up master bedroom windows with some curtains, if I can find some inexpensive ones. We have four windows in there- that means a lot of panels and hardware to buy, just for one room.

...that our neighbors are coming for dinner on Sunday... and that not only have we gotten to move into this beat-up house we always loved so much, we have lovely people to befriend right next door.

...that after battling to get Celia out of the house this morning (terrible twos at their finest), I ended up with some awfully cute pictures of her on the front steps. She wanted to pretend she was going to school.

I planned to wait until she was four to start preschool, but we may have to start at three instead!

sleep training

2011-09-27T06:58:00.000-04:00

Last night went something like this:
10:30 Go to bed
11:00 Stomach growling. Can't sleep. Have to go downstairs for a snack.
12:08 Up for a bathroom trip.
2:14 Celia's looking for her binky and I get up to find it for her. (This hardly ever happens anymore- usually I don't hear a peep from her from bedtime until morning.)
2:05 Bathroom
4:00 Bathroom. And I'm hungry. Able to ignore the hunger and go back to sleep.
6:11 I wake up to very loud cat vomiting sounds. Izzy throws up in three places in the bedroom. I don't want it to ruin the carpet so I have to clean it up right away.
6:20 At this point, might as well just stay up for the day.

Training for having a newborn in the house two months from now...

In other news, I'm wearing a maternity shirt that looks like a muumuu today. Not in a flattering, muumuus-are-pretty-flowy-dresses kind of way. In a tent-for-my-ginormous-belly kind of way. I'm both well-rested and well-dressed. It looks to be a winning day.

miscellany and 32 weeks

2011-09-26T06:00:00.001-04:00

1) 32 weeks today. I'm starting to wish the next couple months would pass a bit more quickly. I'm a big, heavy, slow moving hulk compared to my normal self. It's been warm and humid for a few days and the humidity that didn't bother me in the summer is really bothering me now that I'm further along. I'm much more tired and swollen on hot, humid days, and I just can't cool off. But, it's a good thing we still have some time left because we have to finish getting the room ready, getting baby things, and preparing for the birth. That's something I haven't even mentioned yet! I also want to start Christmas shopping and do a few more things with the house, because we won't have any extra time after the baby's born.

2) Speaking of doing things to the house, I got out my colored pencils yesterday and started a plan to revamp our boring bedroom.

3) I have gotten started on Celia's Halloween costume. She's really into pretending to be Thumbelina right now. Almost every day she comes up with a new idea for a Halloween costume, but I finally talked her into being Thumbelina and ordered a little leotard and skirt to be the base for the costume. It was hard to come up with something I could put together easily enough. Celia kept thinking of costumes that I have no idea how to make. For a while she wanted to be an alligator. Good thing we got off of that one because my craft skills are not up to that level!

4) I got some fabrics for the baby's room over the weekend. It's going to be such a fun, colorful room!

Annoying that this is out of focus... Don't know how I missed that.

5) I'm tired of people telling me how big I am. I'm not overly big. My belly measures right where it should be, and I'm still a small person. I think because I'm all belly on a small body, the belly looks huge when it's really not. Anyway, it's annoying. Why do people have to constantly comment on pregnant women's bodies? Next time I should get up the courage to make a comment about the other person's body too. "Yep, I'm getting bigger. Now how about you? Have you always been overweight?" "Oh, thank you! You look especially saggy and dumpy today!" "You know, it's crazy, I probably still weigh less than you do!"

6) The joys of home ownership in the country never cease. For a couple days I thought I smelled a dead animal near our front door, but every time I looked around I couldn't find anything. On Saturday night Chris finally discovered the mostly eaten, maggot-covered remains of a mouse near the front steps (probably brought as a present by China and moved onto the walkway when we didn't end up finding it). So our fun Saturday night activity was cleaning up that mess (which was possibly the most disgusting thing either of us had ever seen or smelled).

7) Celia's very favorite thing is having us tell her stories. The other night Chris started telling her a story about a new character: a witch. It started off nicely enough and Pita was so happy to be hearing a story.

But soon the story took a turn for the worse, as the witch was a mean, evil witch. Celia was horrified! The look on her face was hilarious. I think she was just surprised to hear a scary story.

Now she makes sure to specify that she wants a "friendly witch" story every time :)

friday favorites

2011-09-23T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is the first time I've linked up with Rachel's Friday Favorites. I always enjoy those posts, so why not join in? Here are some of the little things I stopped to appreciate this week.

That Chris received a strong offer and accepted a new job! He has wanted to leave his job for a long time but he was patient and waited for the right moment, and he's now moving on to a better position with a large and successful company.

How sweet Celia is first thing in the morning. When I go in her room to get her up, she's often wide awake, "hiding" under the covers waiting for me. Yesterday I leaned down into her bed, and she put her hand on my cheek and just left it there, gazing into my eyes and smiling. Best moment of the day.

Then she wanted to "be cozy" with her blanket while she watched Caillou in her pajamas :)

The beginnings of a freezer stash of homemade food for after the baby's born, and having a chest freezer in which to store it all.

That I'm home with Celia today, and that we have her music class to go to. The fall semester has started and it's a nice activity for us, especially on rainy days like this one.

This sign by the scale at the midwife's office.

That the baby's room is painted, and I've started washing things and putting them in their places.

my little nudist

2011-09-22T13:42:00.000-04:00

Whether it's playing house,

Driving cars,

Preparing a meal,

Or having a snack,

Clearly, most things are better when done in the nude.

monday miscellany- 31 weeks

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

1) We're really getting into the home stretch now, at 31 weeks. I have a lot to do, including reading a couple of new baby books, getting out all the baby things and setting up his room, getting going on my hypnobirthing practice, and making and freezing food for after the new guy is born. In the last week, third trimester stuff has definitely hit. Maybe I won't elaborate- ha! Those of you who've been pregnant know what those things might be. But I'm also just feeling slower and more worn out, and things like bending over to pick something off the floor (a common task with a 2-year-old in the house) are getting to be difficult. I'm also pretty sure I waddled yesterday. I've started having a lot of Braxton Hicks in the past week, too. They're more uncomfortable than I remember them being with Celia.

I'm starting to long for my normal thinner body, and made the mistake of looking back at my earlier pregnancy pictures. The difference between 4 weeks and 31 is a big one!

I don't know how that's even possible. What's scarier is that I still have nine more weeks to get even bigger.

2) I could tell Pita was happy to be home after two nights away on Saturday night. She spent a long time patting China and then got reacquainted with all her toys. She was also very happy to see Chris. It's funny how she's a little homebody like I am.

3) It's suddenly feeling like fall around here. Saturday night we had a roaring fire in the fireplace and it was almost too hot. Awfully pretty and nice, though.

4) What are your kids being for Halloween? I need to come up with something for Celia soon.

5) The new guy's room is painted! The color looks great. Yesterday we moved the furniture back in the room, I got the dresser drawers lined, and now we can start getting smaller things out and ready. The room is very small so it's hard to get a good picture, but maybe this will show the wall color a little. It's a muted blue that looks greenish in some light, and greyish at other times.

6) I sent my maternity leave notice to four administrators on Friday. Never heard anything back. I wonder if they figured out maybe I was a little unhappy with the way I've been treated this year. Chances are, they didn't make that connection...

7) Speaking of work, I met a bunch of girlfriends from my old building for dinner last night. Fantastic. I can't believe things changed so suddenly and I don't get to work with them anymore. But- I normally have a lot of contractions that I swear are stress-related the day/night before a workday, and last night I didn't have any. Having those girls to laugh with about everything just may keep me from delivering early :D

8) Outfit of the Week:

She found a bag she liked in my closet and asked if she could use it. The girl loves bags. She also apparently still loves her binky. She's so sneaky now because she'll disappear upstairs and come back with it, and if I ask her what she's doing she won't tell me because she knows she isn't supposed to have it! I'll ask what she's doing and she'll say "Nothing", or "I'll be right back", or "I just have to get something". She never admits she's going to get the binky. What a character.

our weekend

2011-09-17T14:14:00.000-04:00

Celia and I drove up to NH on Thursday afternoon. We went out to eat with my friend Abby who lives in Japan and has been home for a short time. She brought her little girl too, and she and Celia were really cute together. I tried to get a good picture of them, but it's nearly impossible to get a one and a two-year-old to take a good picture together! Celia has been very busy playing here for a couple days, and we'll head home this afternoon. I fully expect that Chris has finished painting the baby's room in our absence ;).

The best part of the weekend was when I met with HR on Thursday to plan my maternity leave. It turns out that because I'm part time and maternity leaves are technically calculated by number of days rather than weeks off, I can easily take off the whole rest of the school year from Thanksgiving on. It's crazy! So, needless to say I'm taking advantage of that. I sent an email yesterday announcing that I would not be returning for the rest of the year once my leave started. Didn't get any responses... I'm sure administrators were thrilled. That's what they get for involuntarily transferring a pregnant lady into a miserable new job :D. So, the next two months may not be much fun at work but at least I know I'm done after that. It will also give us plenty of time to figure out what I'll do for the next school year.

Time to get the car packed up for the drive home.

monday miscellany- 30 weeks

2011-09-12T16:59:00.000-04:00

1) I'm 30 weeks pregnant today. Big number! There isn't much to report this week. I feel fine; just feeling bigger of course. There are some things that I avoid a little more than before, just because I'm bigger and heavier. Getting up and down from the floor when playing with Celia isn't the easiest or most comfortable thing anymore.

2) Celia is doing so well with using the potty. She does have occasional accidents, but for the most part we can trust her to know when she needs to go and get to the potty on time. She is still pretty dependent on getting rewards, but we're going to phase that out. I've already mentioned to her that soon the treats will be gone and then she'll use the potty when she needs to like a grown-up, without any rewards. She does like getting verbal praise, so hopefully that will be enough and we can phase it all out.

3) I thought I was feeling okay about making it through November at work, but after the weekend the reality that my new job is still awful has come flooding back.

4) We had our first good fire in the wood stove on Saturday night. The last time we tried it didn't end up working out. We had a room full of smoke instead. We just need to make sure we have really dry wood. It was really nice to have a fire and I'm looking forward to using the stove all winter.

5) I came upon the best fort Celia's had so far the other day.

Good thing I never wanted a "formal" living room, because this is how it ends up most days.

6) Pita found a set of play dishes with some toys I brought home from work, and she has played with them non-stop for a week now. She does all kinds of things with them. Lately she's been putting two bowls together on top of one another to make a "lunch box", and she puts things inside :)

7) Oh, and that silly binky. She now goes upstairs and gets it herself without me knowing. Or sometimes she'll say "I'll be right back. I just have to get something." And of course it's her binky, but she doesn't want to tell me that because she knows she isn't supposed to have it. She is pretty good about putting it away when I tell her to, though.

8) Celia really like school buses and always talks about when she'll get to ride one someday. She likes to pretend she's wearing a backpack too, and yesterday she said she was going to school. So I went with it and we played "school" for a while. We did a number puzzle because I've been trying to get her to recognize arabic numerals. She knows all the letters of the alphabet, I think because they have more meaning, but she still doesn't know numbers very well. Anyway, she liked "school" so maybe I'll come up with some more school-like activities.

9) I finally have an idea for colors and what to do with the new guy's room. Just have to finish the walls so I can get going!

10) We were outside on Saturday and it was such a beautiful day, and Pita was looking so cute, that I took some pictures. It sure is hard to get good ones of her these days. She's always on the move.

two little monsters

2011-09-09T15:26:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning surprised that I had slept much better than usual. I went downstairs and heard a meowing from behind the basement door. Turns out this little varmint was shut in the basement all night.

No wonder I slept well. I never realized how much he disturbs my sleep, but now I know. He spends the first part of the night pouncing on my feet whenever I move under the covers. He spends the wee morning hours meowing, crying, and walking all over me trying to get me to wake up. And why can't I just shut the bedroom door, you ask? Because if I do that, he spends the night scratching at the door and carpet to be let in. He is a terror. I think it's time to install a high gate at the stairs so he can't come up. Then he'll spend the night peeing on things in the dining room instead. Yep, that's another of his more charming habits. At least it won't hurt my sleep.

Pita and I had nothing special to do today. We had a slow morning at home. I asked if she wanted to go out anywhere and she said she wanted to stay home. For some reason she has been resisting going places lately. I don't know if something scares her or what... She did say she didn't want to go in the street, so I told her if we did I would carry her. I don't know if that's what's bothering her? Or maybe she just likes playing and being at home these days. She is always busy with something, so she might just really like being home. Anyway, we played all morning. Celia had a bath and played in the water for a long time, and I vacuumed upstairs and started some laundry. Then the Fedex man came by with a package of speech therapy things I ordered. There were big sheets of paper used as packaging material in the box, so I saved them all and taped a couple to the floor for Pita to color on. She drew a road for her cars, and it actually kind of looked like a road.

Then we played one of the new games I had ordered a couple times, and got ready for lunch. That's when Pita decided she was extremely tired and cranky, and she spent the next hour complaining, whining, and yelling about anything she could think of (except for a brief period of respite while we were making cookies). During these times she really likes taking things she shouldn't have and throwing them on the floor. It's lots of fun. The best part was when she took off her underpants, threw them dramatically to the floor, yelled "NO UNDERPANTS!", and stomped off. She really showed me with that one :). What a drama queen. She has been a feisty little thing since the day she was born, and I don't think it's ever going to change. I'm hoping Number Two is a bit more laid back.

Anyway, I got her settled down and we read one of her books, and I could tell she was really tired so she went to sleep pretty quickly for her nap. I did more laundry and cleaning, and tried airing out the family room and putting out a bowl of boiling vinegar to get rid of the smoky smell from a failed wood stove lighting the other night. I think it's helping. And, after a few rainy days the sun has come out! Pita and I will definitely get outside or go to the park later.

Time to go get the little monster; I hear her waking up. Have a good weekend, everyone.

29 week appointment and more

2011-09-07T20:25:00.000-04:00

I saw my midwife yesterday and everything was good. I still measure a week behind, which is still normal. I gained three pounds in the last two weeks, which I wasn't so excited about. I really hope it doesn't continue at that rate or I'll end up gaining a lot! We heard the little guy's heartbeat and he kicked the midwife a couple times, as usual.

On my way home I stopped and got some decorative things for my office. I've decided that unless my new job gets even worse, which I'm not sure it can, I will stick it out until maternity leave. All I can do is try my best, do what I'm able to do given basically no resources, and leave the stress at work when I leave. However, remaining in a bad situation for the long term is not something I'm willing to do... Hopefully it will improve, and I think it will once I can get past the scheduling and caseload nightmares and actually start seeing kids and getting into a routine. The only long term problem would be that the new school's hours don't work for our family schedule.

On a completely unrelated note Celia "decorated" herself with stickers last night, then decorated me, and then we had to play doctor :)

Also unrelated, we had our wood stove installed in the fireplace yesterday! In fact, it's cold and rainy tonight so we're going to try it out. I can't wait to sit in the chair in front of the fire all winter. I also put Celia in fleecy kitty pajamas tonight- first time this season in warm pajamas. They are pretty darn cute.

Off to finish figuring out my third alternate schedule for work, and then to bed...

monday miscellany- 29 weeks

2011-09-05T08:02:00.000-04:00

Trying to get back into the swing with the blog, here...

1) I'm 29 weeks pregnant today. The baby's room is still unpainted and we can't agree on a name for him, but I need to do something so I sorted through some newborn clothes, burp cloths, blankets, and swaddlers over the weekend. I'm feeling pretty good physically. Definitely lacking energy a bit, and just starting to feel big and slow. I was never swollen when pregnant with Celia, but my feet and fingers are definitely swelling this time around. I still need to find shoes I can wear to work. Last week I found out that my iron is a little low- totally normal for anyone during late pregnancy. The rest of my blood work was normal. I am a little worried about my stress level with the job situation. Work is just a toxic environment for me right now and I can't let this level of stress continue for the rest of my pregnancy. Something's gotta give. Tomorrow I will update again because I have a midwife appointment.

Good Lord I'm big. And tired and just woken up with a very fake smile.

2) Speaking of iron, I admit I've been slacking a bit in the nutrition department lately. Knowing I need more iron gave me the kick in the pants I needed, so I stocked up on good things for this week. For iron, lots of greens and also breakfasts of high iron pumpkin pie oatmeal with blackstrap molasses, pumpkin puree, raisins, and spices.

3) Ooh, ooh! And speaking of pumpkin, I found a shelf full of Pumpkin Spice coffee at the grocery store yesterday. I've been waiting for this! It's soooooo good.

4) Sticking with the fall theme, our local farm stand has early Macs and Ginger Gold apples. We breached the summer/fall divide Saturday evening by stopping for fresh apples and then going for ice cream. At the ice cream place, Celia was (as usual) making very loud comments and questions about every single person she saw. Lucky she's so freaking cute. Pretty much everyone there was laughing at some point because of the things she said.

At one point Pita was trying to get ice cream out of the cone and got it all over her nose, and said "I'm like a wild animal!" Haha!

5) Celia didn't nap yesterday, which meant for a long, cranky and tiring afternoon. But when I put her to bed and was leaving her room last night she said "Mommy, I love you" :)

6) Which is especially nice since she spent half the afternoon entertaining herself by hitting me and making time outs into a game by running away from the time out bench. Fun, fun... Obviously time outs don't work anymore because she thinks they're a joke. I think I have to try telling her no and trying to redirect her, and then just ignore any further misbehavior so she doesn't get any attention from me when she misbehaves. She only does it with me, of course. She spends a lot of time trying to get a rise out of Mommy.

7) Celia can have full conversations on the phone now and just talk to people all by herself. It's pretty cute. And yes, I've thought and worried about that cell phone radiation next to her little head... We've only actually given her the phone a couple times.

8) Pita still loves hearing stories about our made-up characters Chester and Zucchini. Now she's extended things so that Chester and Zucchini are her imaginary friends. She's always pretending they're playing with her. When she plays on her swing she's been making Chris push the swing next to her because Chester is sitting in it :)

9) Chris's sister and her husband have been waiting to adopt a baby, and the baby was born on Saturday! A little girl. So exciting, and what a whirlwind for them because as soon as they heard the birth mom was in labor they had to scramble to find a flight and fly to where the baby was being born. Adoptions can be so tricky and things can go wrong at any time, so it's very exciting that it all worked out well. We won't be able to meet her until Christmas and we can't wait! By then there will be two little babies in the family. She will be 3 months old, and our new baby will be 1 month.

10) Anyone else kind of excited for fall tv to begin? What do you like to watch?

stuff (my brain is fried- this is the best title i've got...)

2011-09-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

I've really been absent from the blog lately, haven't I? The school year hasn't started off well. I've been transferred to a new school, have had to fight for basic resources I need to do my job, and have a workload that's more than double what I've had in the past. It's literally impossible for me to cover all the cases I've been given. I can't even come close. Some of the people I have to deal with are rude and manipulative, and I'm starting to see a lot of bad things about the politics of where I work. And on top of all that, I was transferred involuntarily and without warning so I'm mourning the loss of a job that I really, really loved. I thought I would spend my entire career there...

It's at a point where I hate my job and the stress could be unhealthy, being 7 1/2 months pregnant. I started reading articles about stress and pregnancy, and let's just say that made me even more stressed... It's really unhealthy and can have lasting effects on the baby.

We are considering having me leave my job, stay at home with the kids, and start my own practice. Which would be a very new and scary thing, but it might be the best option.

Anyway, today I was ready for a long weekend break to begin. Celia and I had a very nice, relaxing day. I was able to mostly stay away from work-related things, but did spend her nap time on work. This morning we went to the doctor and Pita had her flu vaccine. Other than that, we stayed home and played all day.

I brought home a big box of things from work that I won't need anymore. Pita has been having a lot of fun playing with toys and games she hasn't seen before. It really is nice for her to have new things every so often. She's kept herself busy for a few days playing with everything.

After the doctor this morning, she played with her trains and Little People and pretended they were going to the doctor.

She also pretended she was Little Pink Riding Hood.

And speaking of that, from the time she woke up this morning Celia kept telling me she wanted to make some goodies for her sick grandmother. Haha! Late this afternoon we were going to play outside but she brought it up again, so we stayed in and made pumpkin pie brownies for dessert. It was the first time she really helped me and participated in everything without just making it more difficult. She's so cute because she wants to taste every ingredient when I'm cooking. Some things don't taste so good (baking powder? yuck!), but I let her try anything she wants. It's a good experience for her and the last thing I want to do is discourage her from trying new things. Today she liked coconut oil and pumpkin puree :). Lots of fun.

As challenging as staying at home would be, I have to ask myself why on earth I would choose to spend my time doing something that makes me miserable when I have this little person (soon to be two little people) I could spend time with instead...

Looking forward to a long, long weekend for sure!

miscellany tuesday

2011-08-30T21:06:00.000-04:00

Welp, the miscellany is a little late this week thanks to Hurricane Irene. Our power, internet, phone, everything went out early Sunday morning and we just got it back! Boy did it feel good to take a shower for the first time in four days. Nice to be back to normal.

1) I'm 28 weeks pregnant! This is getting serious. There's actually someone in there for sure. On Friday night my belly was jumping all over the place and Celia thought it was hilarious. Sometimes she asks me if her brother's awake and if I say yes she'll come put her hand on my belly :). It has occurred to me that the third trimester is not the best time to be returning to work. At least it means I'll only be back for a few months at the most. In my dreams, I go out for maternity leave and never return. More on that another time...

2) Speaking of all that, Monday was my first day back at work. I will be in a new building, in an office that's empty, with no phone or computer, with no teaching materials because I wasn't given funding to buy any, and no clue how to work with this new caseload or how I'll even be able to see that many kids. Doing my job should be nothing but pure joy this year. Again, more on that another time...

3) Fall is my favorite season of the year, so at least I have going for me. I may have already started burning my autumn candle and considered decorating the mantle for fall.

4) The threat of a hurricane isn't nearly as exciting when you have a house and land to take care of. If we had still been in our condo? No big deal. But now we have trees that could come down, wetland that could be flooded, windows that could break and a house that could be damaged. Kinda takes the fun out of it.

5) On Friday and Saturday we had to get ready for Irene. Nothing too crazy, but we had to get all our outdoor stuff inside, prepare for the electricity to go out, gas up the cars, get extra water... But everyone else was doing the same thing and it was kind of crazy trying to find what we needed and get all ready.

6) Celia is really into making "houses" now. She loves doing this with the couch cushions in the living room.

7) I was upstairs and Celia came up with her outdoor chalk. Sometimes she says something so funny that I immediately write it all down. Here is the actual transcription of what happened.

"These are my powers. They look like chalk, huh? But they're not. They're powers. I'll show you how I light them. I line them up like this. I'll be right back, okay? Don't touch them while I'm gone. They're dangerous. They're very difficult and you could get a boo boo. So don't touch them okay? I'll be right back."

Um, okay Pita...

8) That was an eventful day. I was in the kitchen and thought she was just in the living room playing, but I heard strange noises so I went to check on her. She had moved all her Childcraft books onto the stairs, and was climbing over slippery piles of them, on the stairs! I almost had a heart attack. She thought it was the best idea she'd ever had and pretty much had a fit when I told her it wasn't a good idea.

That's about all. I'll be working on somehow getting back into the idea of working outside of home again this week...

27 weeks

2011-08-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I turned 27 weeks pregnant, entering the third trimester!

I'm starting to feel a bit encumbered by the belly and tend to get side stitches by the end of the evening. Regular things like vacuuming the house can wear me out or are just a little awkward with the belly, but everything's still doable. Of course, "regular things" for me means things like shoveling sand, carting 50 pound bags of it around the yard, and moving Celia's sandbox. Perhaps not the most normal third trimester activity... Unfortunately my foot is still bothering me, so I think I have to shop for work shoes that will fit comfortably with the pinched nerve. I went to the midwife today and also had the one hour glucose test. The little guy is already head down- smart kid! His little bum and legs are around the upper right side of my belly, which explains why I feel so much movement there. My belly measured at 26 weeks, which was normal. And I found out that I weigh exactly the same as I did at 27 weeks with Celia- interesting! I'm starting to wonder how big this baby will be, because Celia stopped growing and was a very small baby. It's my theory that because I'm a small person, my body isn't meant to grow very big babies. I would like him to be close to 6 pounds, at least. Celia was under 5 pounds when we brought her home from the hospital. It would be nice to avoid some of the small baby issues we had. She was so tiny.

This is a busy week. It's the last week of vacation, and filled with appointments and some things I need to do to get ready for work starting next week.

the meal planner

2011-08-20T13:00:00.001-04:00

So... it will always be going through changes, but my meal planning binder is done. I'm always interested when people come up with new organizational tools and I'm fascinated by housekeeping binder-type things, but I always want to know more about exactly how people make them and use them on a daily basis. So, I'll show you exactly what's inside my binder and how I use it.

I used to love cooking. I still do. At least I think I do, but at this stage in life I don't have time to plan or cook elaborate meals. It will probably be this way for several more years, so I need an easy and consistent system for planning meals, controlling the grocery budget, and keeping cooking relatively simple without getting bored of the same recipes all the time. Enter my creation, the meal planner! I could have gotten fancy and spent money on a pretty looking binder, but this was sitting in the basement with our office supplies and the whole point is to save, not spend, money- so, here she is and she looks just fine.

Her tabs are pretty.

Inside, there are tabs for categories of recipes. I combined all the recipes I use most often in the binder, so there will be no more searching cookbooks, recipe cards, or my computer to find things. I either printed out, typed up and printed, or photocopied the recipes. They're in page protectors so they won't get too worn or ruined by splatters. This is the best part of the binder, because it makes it so easy to find and reference recipes. It's no longer a hassle to see what I can make. Also, all the recipes are vegan so I'm not searching through things trying to think of what is or isn't vegan and what Chris and Celia would like.

In the very front of the binder before the recipe tabs, I put monthly menu plans. I decided to try planning a month at a time because it will save time over sitting down every week. I may even start doing two months at a time. This way I'm also not reinventing the wheel every week, because I can see the big picture and plan patterns and repeat meals into the schedule. For example, there are a couple of staple things we'll have every week and a short list of other meals I can pull from. When I want to try something new I still can- I'll just plan it into the schedule ahead of time. I circle special events or do-ahead tasks (like making something to freeze for the future) with a colored pen so they stand out. I also plan to keep old monthly menus to reference for ideas. In the front of the binder are sticky notes with shopping lists I'm putting together for the following week.

To make the meal plan easy to reference, I write a week at a time on a magnetic notepad that stays on the refrigerator. Each day I just check that to see what I'm making. I've already planned and shopped for whatever it is, and if prior preparation was involved I've already planned that in somewhere and it's done.

It was quite a project to put this together, but it's already proven itself worth the effort. It makes planning meals, grocery lists, and referencing recipes so much easier. When I'm ready to plan, I'll sit with one of my calendar pages and plan out the month. Then I can start shopping lists, quickly referencing the recipes in the binder for the ingredients needed. Everything's organized and in one place, and seeing a month in advance helps me plan occasional grocery trips to places I don't normally shop at, like Whole Foods. I can go once a month or so and stock up on everything I'll need for the upcoming weeks.

I hope this crazy over-organized system of mine will be easy enough that I'll stick with it and won't get stressed or spend too much time with planning or cooking once the new guy arrives!

fun friday

2011-08-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

Just trying to enjoy the last of summer vacation around here...

This morning I had some errands to do, so Celia and I got ready and headed out. I had a gift card to use at a consignment place, so we went and found a few fall clothes for her. I can find the best stuff, and if I'm picky I usually come away with either brand new (tags still on) or barely used clothes. I've gotten her several Gymboree, Oshkosh and J Crew things that I never would buy full price. The store had a little play house for sale and Celia played in it while I looked around. She would love a play house in our yard- I'm hoping Chris could build one next spring. After that, we stopped at CVS and then we were going to do grocery shopping but I had forgotten my list at home. I didn't want to forget half the things I needed and come home with things we didn't need at all, so we just skipped the store and went home.

On the way home Celia decided to pretend she was Cinderella. It's her newest thing. Today she was Cinderella, our car was her coach (that would suddenly turn back into a pumpkin at random times), and I had to be the fairy godmother. I think I have a Halloween costume idea for her now... The only problem is that we're not into princess stuff at our house, and Celia really doesn't associate with the whole princess thing. She just likes the story, the magic parts of it, and the characters. So, I would have to be a little creative about the costume to make it more about the story and less about fancy clothes. Maybe the costume could be Cinderella's raggedy dress, and she could carry a little pumpkin and have the second glass slipper in her pocket? Hmm...

Love this one, but wish it was in better focus. Hard to shoot a moving target!

"Cinderella" wanted to play on her swings, so we did that for quite a while and then went in for lunch. She played with play dough while I cooked, and really kept busy all by herself.

After lunch I allowed myself a Diet Coke as a treat (and for caffeine...) and Celia went to play by herself while I picked up in the kitchen. Celia came to get me because she wanted to show me how she had lined up all her Little People. She told me "They're in line to get doughnuts!" She pointed to all the people and told me what kind of doughnuts they were all going to have (chocolate for all the kids, and jelly for the grown ups). Then the Little People airplane arrived and they all got on the plane ("with their doughnuts") and went on "a special trip" to Storyland. She comes up with the best story lines. Then we read stories for a while and I took her up for a nap.

Hoping the thunderstorms will hold off later today so we can play outside some more.

getting back on track

2011-08-17T07:43:00.000-04:00

This summer, more than in the past, I've let my schedule get off track compared to our school year schedule. It's been nice to have the flexibility to sleep later in the morning because it means that Celia has finally started to sleep later! I've enjoyed it thoroughly, mindful of the fact that after Thanksgiving we won't be sleeping in (or even getting a full night's sleep) for a long time again. However, vacation's almost over and it's time to get back on track. Here's what we're (okay, what I'm- who am I kidding?) working on.

First of all comes our morning routine. I only work part time, but on the mornings I work I usually need to be out of the house by 7:15 at the latest. I like to have Celia dressed by the time I leave. The most difficult part of the morning is getting Chris out of bed. No matter what I try or what approach I take, he won't get up unless I nag him- sometimes multiple times. It's extremely frustrating and my day inevitably gets off to a bad start. He doesn't understand why this would be at all stressful for me. He claims that he can't get up because he doesn't sleep well, and I know from my own experience that that is a load of p-o-o-p. I don't always sleep well. Especially being pregnant, I'm either awake or out of bed multiple times during the night. It's not an excuse. I'm an adult and I get up when I need to, whether I feel tired or not. I've tried to approach this nicely- coming up with a plan together for our morning schedule, asking and begging him to tell me what I can do to help him get up in the morning without having to nag him. Nothing works. Last night we agreed we'd both start getting up at 6:00 to start our fall routine. Right now? It's 7 and he's still sleeping. I am at wit's end, and I try to be patient but to be honest I just feel like this behavior is lazy and childish and shows lack of self discipline. And when I try to wake him up? He doesn't open his eyes and respond to me; he rolls over so he can turn away from me and continue sleeping. What is he, a 14-year-old? Unfortunately it's not just about him. If it only affected him I wouldn't care, but I have to get out of the house and Celia needs to be cared for and needs attention. I end up leaving the house late almost every morning because of it, angry and annoyed with my heart pounding and not-nice things muttered under my breath. So, BAM! There you have it. Early morning husband bashing. He's a wonderful husband and father, but this is just one little annoying habit (or lack of habit) that ends up causing big problems.

All this, and what I meant to say was simply that one of my goals is to get us all on a morning routine that works well before school starts!

Another goal is to finish my new meal planning/recipe binder and get at least the month of September planned. It's almost done and I'll post all about it soon because it's been quite a process but is already really helpful and making life easier.

The next thing is to use my new planner (and I think I found a good deal on a new one- I'll share that too if I get it) to plan like crazy and make sure I have enough time to make freezer meals and get everything else done to prepare for the baby's arrival. Since he'll be born during the holidays I also want to schedule and do other things ahead, like Christmas shopping for Celia. Celia will really enjoy Christmastime this year, and I want to be able to enjoy it with her without having to worry about getting anything done.

I'm still feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of returning to work and having less than three months before the new guy makes his arrival. Also, you never know, he could arrive early.

Thinking about all this stuff and not actually doing anything will not help. This is why I have a nice, new stack of post-it notes on which to make lists. Lists organize my thoughts. They tell me what to do. They make me feel accomplished when I cross things off of them. They ensure that things actually get done.

I'm a little crazy.

miscellany monday- 26 weeks

2011-08-15T07:06:00.000-04:00

1) I'm 26 weeks pregnant today. Everything seems to be going fine. I have plenty of energy and feel good, other than the issue with my foot. That's really holding me back. I did see a doctor for it, and I can't get a cortizone shot during pregnancy so for now I'm wrapping it, icing, and hoping it improves. Back to the doctor in two weeks. The baby still doesn't have a name, much to my frustration. I keep hoping I can talk Chris into deciding on a name, but no luck so far. The little guy is still moving all around and wakes me up at night when he's awake.

The belly and me, shiny with sunscreen and ready for the beach:

Celia wanted her picture taken too.

2) Now that the potty training is old hat for Celia, it's become just another bone of contention when she wants to be an obstinate 2-year-old. She sometimes tells me she has to go but then refuses to, and there's nothing I can do but see if I can eventually get her to use the potty before she has an accident. I think the best thing we can do is just praise and reward her a lot whenever she does use the potty without a fuss. At least half the time, she does go all by herself. She has been staying mostly dry at night and dry during naps for a while now, though!

3) Double decker kitties:

4) There was an article in the paper about bubble babies- apparently it's a bit of a trend for kids to be severely overprotected by their parents. Turns out there are actually foam helmets marketed for babies and toddlers, just to keep them from bumping their heads during daily life. I think I've seen them, but I assumed the kids had seizure disorders or some medical reason for wearing helmets. The last thing I want is to see Celia get hurt and sometimes I do hover to prevent it, but this is ridiculous. Kids need to experience getting bumps and scrapes and need to have enough independence to figure things out for themselves.

5) We're really in the home stretch of summer vacation now. Time to rush through the last of the summer house projects and do as much as we can. We especially need to get the baby's room painted and set up! I'm dying to wash baby clothes and diapers, and get baby gear out and ready.

6) Celia's Little People have developed an interesting family structure. We ended up with more than one Mommy, and now Celia's favorite little person Sonya has one daddy and two mommies. Celia calls her "other Mommy" or "purple Mommy" because she has purple shoes. All three parents seem to have an equal role. I'm sure that in a 2-year-old's mind there's nothing better than having not one but two mommies :)

Watching tv with Sonya, Other Mommy, Mommy, and Daddy

7) What is the origin of blue raspberry? Because blue raspberry flavor is gross. Raspberries are never blue. Who thought of this?

8) Let's be honest. We're mostly women here, right? During pregnancy, stool softeners are amazing. That's as far as I'll go with that one :D

9) My mind is always working. Now that I'm not always sleeping through the night my brain is apparently making good use of the awake time. Last night at 4 am? I was lying awake while the baby kicked, thinking that I should try making ravioli for Celia's lunch for a change. I come up with the most random, yet useful, thoughts.

10) Outfit of the Week! Chris took Celia out for a doughnut yesterday morning while I was grocery shopping. When they got home, this is what I saw when Pita walked in the door:

Completely dressed, hair bow and all, with one key clothing item missing. She told me her shirt was "bothering" her, so they took it off. She proceeded to spend half the day shirtless.

weekend in review

2011-08-14T14:42:00.000-04:00

We've been having a great weekend here. Yesterday was a day of hard work for both Chris and me, and today we're having a relaxing Sunday. Yesterday, Chris had to finish chopping and stacking wood. It was a big job. His parents came over so his dad could help. Celia and I went to the beach in the morning. I thought we could spend the whole morning there and have a fun activity while Chris was busy. When we got to the beach, it was covered in poop. Yep. Goose poop. Apparently the beach is an overnight bathroom for a large number of geese. It smelled disgusting and you couldn't even walk on the beach or go in the water without risking touching it. I used one of Pita's beach shovels to flick several turds away and give us a path to the water, but it was just so gross. We stayed for a little while, Celia had a snack, and we went home a little earlier than planned. We will not take morning trips to the beach in the future :(

You can see some of the poop on the sand in the background. Gross!

Saturday afternoon, Chris finished chopping wood and I pulled weeds in the yard while Celia had her nap. I have cleared a huge patch of crab grass to prevent it from spreading even more next year. I'm really hoping we can get some actual grass growing in the side yard for next summer. Right now we have a small area of grass and a large bare area where I pulled the weeds. I also cleaned a hand-me-down rug we got and we put it in the front hall yesterday. It looks great there, and it's already had some wear and tear so it's okay if it gets a little dirty sometimes. The hall is starting to look pretty spiffy.

Chris and I were both very tired and sore last night after all our work!

I don't know what we did to deserve it, but Celia has been a model child today. First of all, she slept late until 7:30 this morning! It was so nice. I got up at 7 and read the paper before she woke up. Then we hung out downstairs and let Chris sleep until 8:30. I had to do grocery shopping and was going to take Celia with me, but she refused to use the potty before we left so I left her at home with Chris. That turned out to be great for everyone because Chris and Pita got rare alone time together and my trip to the store was like a vacation. Our grocery store even has a Starbucks so I got to shop with a fancy coffee drink. I think I need to make solo Sunday morning shopping a more regular activity.

When I got home, Chris and Celia had gone out so I unloaded most of the groceries before they returned. Then Celia was apparently in a very happy, independent mood because she played by herself for a LONG time- like from 11:00 until a late lunch at 12:30! This never happens, but maybe she will start playing by herself more often now that she's getting a little older. I was able to give the kitchen a thorough cleaning, light a nice candle, and steam clean the floors.

So nice and clean! I love having a really clean house and clear counters.

Chris also had time to start prepping the baby's room to paint. In order to do this he had to get on a ladder outside to get a screen in the window, so we can have it open. I went to help him and found him wearing a ski helmet for the climb up the ladder. Oh my, it was so funny. I had trouble not laughing while I held the ladder. He was not happy that I wanted to take a picture.

The best part was that while we were out there several cars went by while Chris was walking around the driveway with his helmet on. He said "Great, now all the neighbors think [our address] has a 'special' husband." HAHAHAhahahaha! So funny. I told him people probably thought it was nice that I'm willing to have babies with "that special man". I'm still laughing out loud thinking about it. And yes, I'm aware that we are quite politically incorrect. I'm a special educator, which makes it even better.

After that we had lunch and Celia fell asleep at nap time without a fuss. She is having such a good day today. The house is clean and smells nice, most of my weekend chore list is checked off, and I should have time to just play with Celia for the rest of the day. Which is good, because it sounds like she just woke early from her nap...

what we're up to

2011-08-12T15:42:00.000-04:00

Let's see if I can write a quick post before nap time is over.

We've had a busy few days. It rained every afternoon at the beginning of the week, but the last two days have been beautiful. Temperatures only in the 70s, sunny, and dry! I've been doing a lot of yard work, aka waging war on weeds. We've gotten outside quite a bit and I'm planning to take Celia to the park after her nap today. The only problem with the weather is that I've been wanting to go to the beach but now it's not quite hot enough. Hopefully tomorrow I can take her, because Chris will be busy all day chopping wood.

Anyway, other than playing outside we've been doing all sorts of other things. Playing doctor,

Scrabble (she loves playing with Scrabble tiles. And yes, she has her binky in these pictures. She snuck it down after a nap, claiming it was her "special mask". The kid's smart. Binkies aren't allowed, but there's nothing wrong with a "special mask", now is there?),

Snacking with little people (she has to take at least some of her figures and Little People with her at all times. She's so into playing with them),

And playing in the little kitchen that I just relocated to our kitchen so Pita can play with it more when I'm busy cooking. (Pantless of course. Obviously that's how we roll around here. None of us wear pants. That's why I rarely post pictures of myself.)

I have the dining room completely cleared of the boxes and random items we've been storing there. I wish we could tear down the wallpaper and paint, but that will be a project for the future. For now I'm looking forward to at least getting a table in there and making it look like an actual dining room.

Celia came with me to my podiatrist appointment (a new guy- not Dr. Dreamboat this time :(...) this morning, and it provided a good reminder of why I typically do not bring my toddler to appointments with me. She was fine, but there are only so many responses I can come up with when we're sitting in the waiting room and she has to ask questions (LOUDLY) about every single person there. "What that lady doing Mommy?" "Mommy, what that man doing here?" "Mommy, where she going?" Don't even get me started on the "why"s. I hope the "why" stage doesn't last too long because it has to be the most aggravating ever.

Pita has really been testing me for the last couple of days, and I don't know why. She seems to go through periods where testing her boundaries with Mommy is her primary activity. So I've been giving more warnings, giving time outs and following through on consequences, and she is responding. Sometimes she just goes through these phases and if I step up the structure and discipline along with her behavior it doesn't last long. It simply makes me want to kill myself for a little while :).

And on that note, it's past time to wake the little monster up from her nap. Hopefully I can get her out of the house and to the park to play with little resistance!