Baby on the Move!

I've been feeling the baby move now for at least a month, and Mark felt him/her for the first time a couple of weeks ago. My favorite part of pregnancy is the second/early third trimester, when I feel great and can feel the baby move around. It was especially exciting just this afternoon, when I felt several strong kicks in one spot. I called Irene over, and pressed her hand into my side, where the kicking had been, and sure enough, within 20 seconds, she'd felt the baby for the first time! I loved watching how her face lit up and she wanted to feel over and over! Helen wanted to try, too, but wouldn't keep her hand there long enough to feel anything. I was 20 weeks yesterday, and the craziest thing is that I didn't even feel my first baby (Irene) until at least 20 weeks!

We had our ultrasound a week and a half ago, and everything looked good. It's always fun to be able to see a baby moving around in there! I think it was the best ultrasound experience I've had yet, since the tech runs exactly on schedule because of the full bladder thing. With Irene, I had to wait for at least half an hour past my appointment time, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it. Helen's was better, but I still had to wait five or so minutes past my appointment time. Side note: we like to leave some mystery until the birthdays of our babies, so we don't find out the sex.

Potty Training, Round Two

We've had a fairly good couple of months since my last entry. No huge parenting challenges, except for potty training. A week or so before her 2nd birthday, Helen decided that it was time for her to start using the potty. She would take her diaper off, and if I left it off, she went in her little potty when she had to go. I can not believe how much easier this is than with Irene! It's been a month and a half now, and she has had a total of three accidents as long as she has a bare bum. She's been wearing dresses lately because she wants her bum to be covered and training pants still haven't conveyed the idea that she needs to still use the potty when she wears them.

She is starting to talk more and more. The word of the week is "akshey" or actually. Yesterday, she was feeding her daddy play ice cream and after he "ate" it, he asked for more. She went and picked up a plastic egg, and he asked if that was more ice cream. She said, "no, egg, akshey".

Irene has been a joy these past few weeks. She's gotten to spend a lot of time with both parents, and that is very important to her. She is starting to be able to reach things on the countertop, so I can ask her to run little errands for me. She is usually glad to do it, but sometimes she is in the middle of something else and doesn't want to stop. I can certainly understand that! We're working on conveying things like that respectfully, rather than whining about them. Whining doesn't get her out of anything, but respectfully giving me her reasons may make me decide that I can do it myself after all.

In other news, baby #3 is on the way!!! I'm about 11 weeks along, with an expected due date of August 16. The past month and a half, I've had morning sickness. Yes, potty training started around the time morning sickness started; *I* didn't choose the timing! It actually has worked out pretty well, because I can handle emptying poop from a little potty MUCH more easily than changing a poopy diaper. Nausea seems to be on its way out, and I'm getting interested, even excited about cooking again. The sink is starting to look like a sink again, rather than a dirty dish receptacle, and the dishwasher is starting to get loaded more regularly again rather than run only when we run out of bowls.

Both girls have been sick, too. Helen got sick the day before we planned to leave to visit Mark's family right after Christmas, and Irene got sick two days before we planned to leave for the substitute visit in mid-January! They appeared to be sick with the same thing, as the symptoms were the same and the illness lasted for the same length of time. Irene had been well for one day when Helen woke up in the middle of the night with croup. I took her immediately to the bathroom and ran the shower on hot for a few minutes, but I quickly realized that once wasn't going to be enough. We both slept on the bathroom floor for much of the night, well she slept and I tossed and turned. We had pillows, and even thin foam pads to cushion a bit, but it was still extremely uncomfortable. She had a nasty cold, but the croup was the first symptom! We battled it with a humidifier in her room, starting the second night, and she only had the croupy symptoms that one night. The cold is still around, but it appears to be in the final stages by now. I'm praying that they are both well by this weekend when we try yet again to visit Mark's family!

Good and Bad

Oh, my, so much has happened since my last entry, good and bad. I'll start with the bad. On Nov. 3, Irene cut Helen's hair. It had never been cut, and I could put the hair on top of her head into a cute little ponytail. No longer. It can still be pulled back into a barrette, but if left down, it looks awful. She also cut her own hair for the second time. The SAME day, Irene got hold of a Sharpie, and drew on everything she could find, including the kitchen floor, the bathroom counter and cabinet, and various walls. Thankfully, rubbing alcohol takes that off of most surfaces. Wait, was that all the bad? There HAS to be more, but I think all the rest was not newsworthy.

Ah, the good! Just one week ago, our family room remodel was finished! We did all the painting ourselves, starting on election day (yes, the day after the haircuts and Sharpie). We got a couple of girls from church to come and watch them, and when they got here, they understood why we needed them. Basically, the last four weeks have been very busy with finishing up the painting, choosing carpet, cleaning the house, moving back into the room, setting the other rooms to rights...

Then yesterday we hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner! It turned out quite well, all in all. We had six adults and 11 children here, and there was enough food for twice that many. Except for the dressing. I actually made more dressing today because everyone liked it so much, and what I made today was nearly cleaned out as well. Not all of my in-laws were able to come, but we still had a very good time together. Some of them are still here, others are just coming for the rest of the weekend. We still have a full house, and we are all getting along except for little kid squabbles here and there. Have I mentioned that I have the greatest in-laws ever? Perhaps my husband's are equally as good, but I'm too biased to say.

Bad Day or Good Day?

Apparently I can't count. Nor can I do simple arithmetic. Anyway, I'm wondering why some days are just BAD. Today started out GREAT. I felt good, I made waffles for breakfast, I cleaned up the kitchen, I went online. Maybe that was my mistake? But that wasn't quite the end of greatness. I found out some exciting news from a good friend, and we chatted for a little while. Then, from the living room, CRASH. UH-OH. I called out for the kidlets to stop in their tracks because I had no idea how close they were to the mess (and knowing that they had caused the crash). They had knocked over a torchiere lamp that was no longer working. But it had a bulb in it, and the bulb was very broken all over my slate entryway. I swept up the broken glass, then went over the area with damp paper towels. I went over it four times before I no longer saw shards on the towel.

Meanwhile, the kidlets were put in their bedroom because how much can they do in their bedroom? Well, they had a pen and a checkbook. Helen drew all over her body with the pen, and Irene had drawn all over the checkbook. Thankfully, she had missed the unused checks. By this time, I was ready to give up as a mother. I was obviously a failure.

Things did get better, though. I made the lasagne I've been meaning to make for two weeks now, and it is happily sitting in the fridge waiting for dinner tonight. I gave the kidlets a snack and they are currently coloring at the table with [washable] crayons. So I guess it wasn't a bad DAY, just a bad HOUR. That is nothing new. I have those all the time. When I was in the midst of it, though, it sure felt like the whole day was bad. I'm back to feeling great, actually! Irene and Helen are happy, and I love them. I am not a failure after all. I love being their mom!

Alphabet?

*gasp* Three days??? So yeah. I'm posting again. I just recently realized that Helen is getting into puzzles. We have one of those puzzles with the individual pieces that fit into holes. She can do that puzzle very well, and I wasn't even aware of her doing it. She's actually playing with it at this moment. Anyway, I realized this last week, and on Saturday, at a friend's house, she found an alphabet puzzle. All the pieces were out and she was working on putting it back together. I watched her pick up a B, look at it, scan the puzzle board, and plop the B into the B spot. She had to fiddle with it a bit to get it to fit, though. Same process, different letter, again and again. She did mix up the C and the G, and the V and the Y, but they DO look fairly similar. Remember that Helen is 21 months old. No, she doesn't know her letters yet, she was doing it solely on shape. A four-year-old friend of Irene's wanted to help Helen because she didn't think Helen could do it. I told her to watch for a minute, as Helen picked up a Q, looked at it, scanned the board, and plopped in the Q spot. Irene's friend looked at me and said "She found it! But *I* knew where it was supposed to go already!" She was convinced, however, that Helen didn't need her help.

Remodeling and Other Updates

*gasp* Nearly two months! Sorry! We have big changes happening around here, with a house remodeling project going on right now. It seemed to take forever to get started. Mark took out the chimney, fireplace, inside brick wall and all paneling and drywall in our family room in March. The contractor we chose started work the middle of August, and it looks like he might be done by the middle of October, the way things are going! It will be a warm room when we're done, as we are replacing the traditional fireplace with a gas fireplace, fiberglass insulation with foam insulation and the slab floor with a crawlspace and wood-framed floor.

We've also had the floor raised to the same level as the rest of the house so that the dining room, which will be completely open to the family room, can be expanded if we need it. The kitchen countertop also extends over the cabinets along the length of the family room, so we will also be able to put stools there if we want to. I'm very excited about having the room back, too, because I would like the toys to be confined to one room, and right now that isn't really feasible. They have taken over my house! I'm sure that there will be a fairly steep learning curve once toys have to stay in one room, but hopefully, the kidlets will learn eventually.

Speaking of the kidlets, they are both growing up so fast. Irene is excited to have learned how to write her name and is also learning how to write other letters. No reading yet, as far as I can tell, but she doesn't really seem to want to yet. She IS only four. Why read when Mommy will read to you? She also loves to sing songs of her own making and put her hair in a ponytail. Helen's hair is now long enough for a little ponytail on the top of her head, and Irene has tried her hand at putting Helen's hair up as well. Swimming is a popular activity with both kidlets, and Irene is now willing to "go under", while Helen wants to feel solid ground beneath her feet when in the water.

Helen's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, but she still doesn't speak in sentences. Her first (and only sentence to date) is "Hep me!" (Help me!) She can string foam beads onto a shoelace without much difficulty, but she was stringing them on then immediately pulling them off when she looked at me and said "Hep me!" for the first time. Her favorite toy by far is any baby doll. She pushes them around in strollers, rocks them, bounces them, shhhhhh's them, feeds them, kisses them, and in general mothers them. She, too, loves to sing, but she doesn't sing on her own; she wants me to sing with her, and she especially loves songs with hand motions. She copies the motions, but she doesn't sing many of the words yet.

In other news, I have a beautiful new niece! I spent all of last week helping out my sister and brother-in-law and bonding with Brooklyn. It was strange to be without my children for that long, and I missed them about as much as they missed me. There were no theatrics when I came back, thankfully, just pure joy at seeing Mommy again. I got lots of hugs and snuggles, and they haven't even been overly disobedient this week. I was expecting to be challenged constantly, but that hasn't happened! Of course there have been challenges, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

Conferences and Carriers

This past week, we had a huge victory! I thought it was a victory, anyway. We went to a church conference and Irene went to her class without a fuss every day but the last, and the last wasn't a big fuss, she was just ready to be done. She is four years old, and this was her fifth conference. Always in the past, I have tried to leave her in her class, but she would cry. It wasn't just any cry, and she wouldn't calm down at all. This year, even the last day, she never shed a tear, just said that she didn't want to go to class. I explained to her that she wouldn't have to go tomorrow, and that she wouldn't be able to finish her craft if she didn't go to class. That was enough to convince her! Wow. Not having to chase a 2-3 year old around was refreshing...except that I still had a 1 1/2 year old to chase. I chose to keep Helen out of the nursery because she had been exposed to a very contagious-but-not-serious disease and I didn't want it to have to shut down for disinfecting a second time if Helen came down with it.

My mei tai really came in handy! I hadn't used it much in almost a year because Helen started liking the stroller and I didn't need to wear it all the time for long walks. My shoulders weren't terribly happy with it because I wasn't used to it anymore, but I had discovered how to tie it on the hip just last week. That was much easier on my shoulders and I was able to carry her in it a lot more than I would have been able to carry her in my arms. She was ok with it at first, but she really started liking it by then end of the week, so much so that she would get excited and say "Yeah!" if I showed it to her!