toddler trouble

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.