Poo Tornado and Sleepless Nights

i dunno if i've mentioned it before, but i had financial reasons (work benefits thing) for waiting to have baby deuce in 2014.

and we did it! good work, squirt. now you do whatcha gotta do. anytime is fine. i'm anxious to meet you & to get kicked on the outside for a change. however, i do appreciate how very quiet you are right now, while contained herein.

i am wondering how in the world we're going to manage with two. as it is, the house is a mess & the critters are running wild.

our old dog still kind of wanders the house all night, despite our efforts to crate her and keep her on a schedule.

and this is what 'putting our foot down on him sneaking into our bed at night' looks like. "cold turkey," i said. "we're done with this nighttime shenanigans," i said.  for real.

here's an example of what a smooth operation we're running. ahem.

last sunday, we were celebrating Christmas with robb's family here at our house. 10 minutes before we were scheduled to leave for brunch at this cool local place, henry was refusing to get dressed and negotiations weren't going well and i was bursting with the need to pee. so i put him down off the changing table to run to the bathroom quickly. i just asked for a 2 minute time-out. well, naturally he followed me to the bathroom, and as i was trying to gently close the door to keep him out and not to scandalize the entire house, i shut his hand in the door.

thank the Lord, he was just fine, but it was traumatic indeed. so much so that we skipped brunch and let the rest of the family go while i stayed home and in complete guilt, gave him whatever he asked for for breakfast and let him watch 40 episodes of 'curious george' in a row.

i became awful glad, though, that we weren't in public, when a short while later, while i was in the kitchen, i heard from his throne in the living room "eww. my hand is dirty." filled with dread, i went in there, and sure enough- there was fecal matter everywhere. i mean, i don't know how something that small contained that much poo.  it involved an immediate bath for him and change of clothes for me and a bleachy hose-down of much of my house.

and that's just one kid and one dog.

yipes.

Merry Christmas!

what a fantastic Christmas! we got to see all of our wonderful families and many good friends. it was delightful. henry had an absolute ball. he can't get enough of decorations and Christmas songs and, of course, presents. he really understood the present thing this year and it was tons of fun.

 

 

 

we've been telling henry since halloween that it goes halloween then thanksgiving then Christmas then (new year's) then baby!

it's feeling very imminent. this baby is crazy, busy active and getting big. i've been feeling more contraction-esque type feelings lately, but nothing substantive. we finally are almost ready with everything we need to meet the baby in the hospital and bring it home. 

nervous about the from here-to-then part, but very excited to actually meet the bean. 

more soon. we're finally having a quiet evening together after a lot of holiday crazy, so i'm off to snuggle and watch "clue."   :)

Deck the Halls with Something Something....

i'm both less and more nervous about having a baby than i was the first go-around and here's why:

1. i've been through labor and know it won't do me in...but also know it's not a barrel of laughs that i wish to repeat every day (i remember screaming something like "WHO'S PUSHING ON MY CLITORIS??! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? KNOCK IT OFFFFF" and the doctor calmly replying, "it's the baby's head. shut up, you're scaring all the other nice people.")

2. breast feeding was a real challenge the first time, filled with insecurities about how often/how much, and worries about how it would all work when i went back to work and had to pump, etc, etc. i anticipate that this time i'll be less anxious about the whole deal and just trust the process more. on the other hand, now i know what it's like to have my life parceled off into 3-4 hr segments for an entire year. and how pumping and saving milk at work is totally doable but is also totally time-consuming and difficult and i never totally feel like i'm a good enough cow-lady.

3. last time all we did was tend to the teenie one in his infancy and all our energies went there. it was really tiring and stressful, especially in those first few months when the baby doesn't smile or anything and more just sort of lies there like a loud bag of flour. but at least we got to doze now and then when he slept. NOW we have this crazy, zany, dynamic fun henry monkey to keep us entertained, but also to keep us from resting or catching up on anything while the baby sleeps. but to watch henry become a big brother is going to blow any minds i had left.

4. it took me around 9 full months to lose all the baby weight last time. i learned a thing or two about putting the cake down before i ate the whole damned thing, so i've gained a little less this time (gracias a dios)...but it's going to be the dead of winter and i'll be all laid up in the house instead of the middle of a pleasant summer where i could take the wee one on long walks. so i'm worried about both how i'm going to find a way to stay active and lose the weight and also about not getting into an uber mega winter funk being shut in when it's all cold and dark.

5. henry is in a super fun stage right now as he grows and builds layers to his knowledge and person every day, but it's also a frustrating stage as we butt heads over his desire for independence and our desire for him to wear pants. and we as a people have decided that the perfect span betwixt children is 2-3 years....so that they're eventually not too far apart in school, can play together, etc, etc. but it means that when you bring home an infant in one of the hardest phases of its lives, your toddler is, simultaneously, going through toddler-dom, in one of the hardest phases of ITS lives. and so you have two monstery-monsters going through huge changes at the same time!

sigh.

all this is to say that i have my worries about this impending time in our lives, but i am also a huge sucker for snuggles, so i'm also looking forward to all of it (even the chaos).

henry has been SO into Christmas-everything this year. it's been crazy fun. we're singing Christmas carols (i find i don't really know the right words to a lot of them), eating "candy cans" and he asks to go "Christmas shopping" every day. finally yesterday, i realized that every time i mentioned someone we needed to buy a present for, he dismissed me and talked about more presents for himself. so apparently that is what shopping and the season in general is all about.

him.

:)

But The First Joey Has Not Left the Pouch Yet!

we were at the zoo recently and the volunteer gentleman manning the kangaroo zone told me all about how kangaroo babies come out super undeveloped and somehow burrow their way up from the mom's baby hole to her pouch and live for months in there, suckling constantly on 1 of her 4 teets and how she can make a whole other baby (or two or three) in the time that the first one is still growing in her pouch and....something about her having two vaginas and making separate milk for each baby and...

i don't know. i stopped paying attention when the screaming in my head got too loud to focus properly.

but i was thinking this weekend, as i marched across a major city carrying my 35lb two year-old while 8 months pregnant, that in a lot of ways he has yet to leave my pouch. he's not still suckling on me, but he is still very much dependent and always reaching for me. i love it and i'm sure there could be some co-dependence discussed if i were open to discussing such a thing (shut up! you are!), but we need to start working toward a wee bit of detachment. not just for when the baby comes and he has to share me a whole lot, but now, while i'm hugely pregnant. while this may be totally groovy for a mama kangaroo, i'm a little worried that maybe part of the issues i'm having with my umbilical cord pressure being high is this hefty weight i'm lifting all the time.

and so, we introduced the concept of me not picking henry up anymore at about the WORST time we could have this weekend. a mile from our hotel in a large city.

neat.

we had a super fun, but also super exhausting and schedule-destroying weekend with my parents in the big city. we'd done it all! seen it all! eaten it all! and henry was sugar-loaded and under-slept and totally overwhelmed. we finished the shopping we were doing and then i had to pull him away from the blocks the store had conveniently provided to entertain tiny folks.

well.

he had the biggest hissy fit i've seen to date. and it lasted the whole mile down a busy sidewalk back to our hotel.

i thought for sure we were going to get stopped by a cop, or at least a concerned citizen, for kidnapping this little blond boy.

because, while WE knew that robb was trying to contain him in his stroller or carry him or walk with him holding his hand while i carried bags and herded him away from traffic and such, what it LOOKED like was robb carrying a screaming child against his will, hollering for his "MOOOOOOMMMMMMY" who was, clearly, not the lady hurrying along next to them or SURELY she would have just picked him up, RIGHT?!

to be honest, after a while it got so ridiculous and embarrassing that i stopped caring if he used the pregnant belly as a trampoline if it would mean he stopped crying. but even giving in and picking him up didn't help at that point. he just needed to get through it.

which he did, eventually. but hoooooo-doggy.

so....we're working on getting him out of my pouch. even if it means just by one toe at a time.

My Great-Grandmother Hatched 17 Kids. That Was Not a Typo. 17. Kids.

before there was reality TV, filming the insane life of a huge family with ...what is it? 19 kids now?...there was my great-grandmother, Alda, in the early 1900's. she had 17 children,(singleton births) and raised them in a 3 bedroom house in the city. on a pretty meager income, i understand.  i believe that 16 of the children survived into adulthood. i have no idea how many total pregnancies she had (i'm assuming there were some losses in there), but i think it's safe to say she was pregnant/nursing for over 20 years.

my grandpa is her youngest and is now 90 yrs old. he is the last remaining child, but stays close with many nieces and nephews who are close to his age (that's how it works when there's 20 years between kids). he remembers his mother adoringly, as tough but kind. and she was a red head. i'm amazed she didn't pull it all out, managing that many kids at once. i'm also amazed that no one has built a statue to her in a park or named a wing of a library after her or something. i know very little about her. but she certainly left a huge legacy of children, grand children, great and great great-grandchildren who have impacted the world in various ways. that's quite a badge of honor. and my sister has red hair. the first in generations. possibly in tribute? i like to think so.

i say all this, and i focus only on my great-grandmother and not my great-grandfather, because i am wanting to channel some of her hard core-ness. i am 7 months pregnant with only my 2nd child and i find myself whining. a lot.

pregnancy is just not that easy. have y'all seen "what to expect when you're expecting?"  elizabeth banks' part in that is memorable in that she waited foreeeeever and went through all sorts of miserable times trying to get pregnant and when she finally did, she found that it's not all roses. it's hard.

and i feel like an ingrate thinking anything remotely negative about the experience, because it's one that so many people would do anything to have themselves. and then there are the robo-tank moms who had zillions of pregnancies and, though i never knew my great-grandmother, in my head she weathered it like a war hero and never complained once.

but it's hard. exhausting and uncomfortable and nerve-racking. and life doesn't slow down for you. i'm still putting in 11, 12 hour days at work and having to man the henry man all night and take care of house affairs, etc, etc. i am fortunate that i have a very involved husband, but it's still a lot to juggle. i cannot imagine that my great-grandmother ever got a nap. i know she had the help of the other kids in tending for the younger ones, but still... and i'm going to wager that the more 'traditional sex roles' of the time meant she was in charge of most of the domestic responsibilities.

and i bet her floors never got as filthy as mine.  :)

so here's to you, Alda. i raise a glass (of juice) to toast you emphatically.

i bet she didn't drink juice. i bet she stuck with the good stuff. it was back when cigarettes gave you energy and beer helped bring in your breast milk, so.... maybe that's the answer.... :)

maybe i'm especially whiny right now because my pregnancy just got a lot more involved. my umbilical cord vessel pressures are still high and they're concerned, so they're having me come into the office twice a week starting next week for NST's and BPPs. it's stressing me out to have to miss work and i'm holding my breath more that things are ok and that they're not considering putting me on bed rest or worried i'll need to deliver early, etc. they don't seem to think the baby is currently in any danger, but they want to be aggressive in monitoring for any potential changes to that.

so, prayers and positive thoughts, please? meanwhile, it's almost thanksgiving and PIE. :) i understand Alda also made a mean pie crust.

Don't Read This- It's Too Gross

most of the time, i'm worried about how my parenting will, inadvertently, forever traumatize my child. i mean, clearly, i will miss something, and he'll end up in expensive therapy.

but tonight, it was we who were traumatized. (us? we? i'm sticking with 'we' because wee is part of this tale).

first- diarrhea at swim class. i mean SO much buttsplosion. gracias a dios none made it to the pool, but a new swimsuit was purchased stat. no one there will ever be the same. they'll remember where they were when...

then in the bath, even though he SAID he was "keeping my pee in my penis" i saw ribbons of proof that he was lying.

and then there was this whole twisted negotiation about a lollipop that started this pcp-like reaction and a 30 min hulk breakdown.

hoping the runs won't last & the monstering was exhaustion.

either way, henry is cozily sleeping now & robb & i are weeping into a pile of chocolate.

What? Who? Where am I?

sorry, it's been 10 years since i've caught up on here. things are going great! just super busy. home, work, traveling every weekend, busy, busy, busy.

henry is marvelous. funny and precocious and learning and sharing new things every day. he had a crazy fun halloween and now wants to dress up in his costume and get candy all of the time.



thankfully, his generic green 'peter pan' costume can now double as an elf costume as the Christmas season approaches.

he is so excited for snow and every morning asks for his boots and mittens and coat, thinking, i believe, that if he's dressed for it, the snow will arrive and will be properly ready to be made into many a snowmen.

the baby-in-the-belly is doing well. i keep going back for, more or less, weekly ultrasounds because there are just little things amiss. the growth was a concern, which seems better now. but then the umbilical cord pressures were kind of high, and most recently i was borderline anemic and then there was protein in my pee- which could be an early sign of preeclampsia. it's the only sign so far (my blood pressure is fine and i am not swelling anywhere) and could be nothing more than dehydration since i work in the operating room where i have to be 5-6 hrs without any beverages all the time. but still, they're watching me closely. which is fine. i'm 30 weeks now and feeling quite good, overall. and it's fun to have an excuse to see the little noggin growing in there.

we're all getting in the holiday mood around here. since we're trying to wrap our brains around the fact that in just a few short months, we're going to have a newborn AND a henry, we chant regularly that next comes thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the new baby. henry was too small to totally get Christmas last year, but this year he very much understands the presents and then decorations and the santa. the Jesus stuff will come in time, i guess. :)   and we're presenting the baby's arrival like a holiday to him, but we'll see how long he's enthused about that one.

i'm feeling very mellow about the arrival. have done absolutely nothing in buying stuff or moving stuff or reorganizing stuff. just waiting for the nesting thing to set in. so far, meh.

for now, we'll Christmas shop. so glad we're catalog people. :)