Saturday, April 30, 2011

Molars

We think Meg might be getting her two-year molars. They’re a BITCH. This is a family blog, but I had to say it. She’s such a sweet girl and tries to stay in a good mood, but the second something doesn’t go exactly as she wants it to she melts down. In a spectacular way.  When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she screams and screams.  I know she's in pain.  (And we're not sleeping.)

Wednesday night she woke up at 12:45. She had a fever of 101 and when I gave her medicine she threw it up. Catching puke in your bare hands is great! Getting our carpet cleaned has now moved way up the list of things we need to do. I thought the cat puke was bad, but orange medicine is pretty much impossible to get out of cream colored carpet. At least it wasn’t red, right?

The next morning she woke up with no fever and ate a bunch of cheerios. Could the molars really have caused her to throw up? I’m kind of confused because she’s sort of acting sick (not eating or drinking much), but she doesn’t act like she’s sick. I’m going to blame the molars.  At least until Thomas and I start puking, too.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Almost two

I wrote a “Meg’s favorite things at almost-two” post almost a month ago, but I wanted to take pictures of each thing and include them, so I keep waiting to post it. I’ve actually been working on it so long it’s going to have to be split into at least two posts. I’m excited about it, because I think it will be really fun to look back at it in the years to come. It morphed from just her favorite things to what she’s like right now, so I’m going to post that half now. Hopefully now that I’ve told you about the favorite things I’ll actually take the pictures.


1. She refers to socks as ‘sockies,’ with an ‘s’ at the beginning. I prefer it to ‘socks,’ because for some reason she puts a ‘c’ at the beginning of that, which makes it sound like an entirely different word. However Thomas hates it when ie/y is added to the end of anything (it all comes from his hatred of being called Tommy) so he insists on socks even though it sounds like a dirty word. The worst was one morning when she wanted to put on her socks from the day before and I told her they were dirty. She walked around saying dirty…you know what.

2. When she wakes up in the middle of the night she doesn’t want to get out of her crib. She just wants mommy to come in and reassure her she’s not alone in the house. I restart her music, sit in the rocking chair, and she immediately stops crying and goes back to sleep. If I actually make her get up (daycare days) she’s pretty grumpy.

3. She doesn’t seem confused by the fact she has two grandmas (although the one she sees the most is just Ga-ma and the other is Ga-ma Suh (Sarah).

4. I can’t tell her Ga-ma is coming to pick her up, because she gets really, really excited and if Ga-ma doesn’t immediately show up, she starts screaming at me. GA-MA! GA-MA! SA-BA!

5. Sa-ba is Santa Bear. My mom put this bear out for Christmas and Meg fell in love with him. He HAS to be out when she gets to Ga-ma’s house. Sometimes she doesn’t even bring Kitty (which has been her lovey since she was around six months old) to Ga-ma’s, because all she wants is Sa-ba. Last night I asked if she loved daddy and she said “Love Daddy. Love Sa-ba.” I’m pretty sure mom got him out right after Thanksgiving, so she’s been in love with Santa Bear for almost six months now.

6. Once when my dad went on a business trip, mom told her Bumpa went on an airplane. Later that day they were outside and heard an airplane. She pointed at the sky and said “Bumpa?” She still often asks if Bumpa is on the plane every time we see/hear one.

7. She is ALWAYS hungry. Often by the time I get home she’s already eaten dinner, but she always demands food off my plate. She usually eats more than I do. When she wants my food, she says “help?” which means “can I help you?”

8. My favorite thing she says is “are you?” which means “where are you?” If she can’t find one of her toys, she wanders around the house saying “are you? are you?”

9. It’s also kind of morphed into “how are you?” Last night she walked into the kitchen and said “Hi ih-vee, are you?” all nonchalant. (ih-vee is our cat, Olivia, whom we call Livie)

10. One of her favorite things to say is “free, four, five, SIX!” She can count to ten, but isn’t a big fan of one or two. She almost always starts at three.

11. She also wanders around saying “a, b, c, d, f, g.” She can pretty much say the entire alphabet, but sometimes skips letters (often e).

12. Before she learned letters and numbers, she learned colors and she is really good at them now. “Boo! Ed (red)! Back at!” (Livie is a black cat).

13. She loves “daddy’s book” (his Nook) and “ga-ma’s book” (her iPad). She can turn them on, unlock them, and find her books/games. She’s probably better at the iPad than I am. I’ve been careful to never let her do anything on my iPad, so she hasn’t yet figured out it’s the same thing grandma has. Grandma downloaded a ton of toddler games/books and I haven’t downloaded any.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Kick counts

Every once in awhile, Thomas will ask "So did my baby boy kick a lot today?" I usually go "uhhh..." because I honestly have no idea. Then I think wow, I'm a terrible mother, I can't remember the last time I checked to see if my kid is ALIVE. Huh, I really hope he IS alive. For some reason, I feel like Meg kicked a lot more than this boy does. I'm guessing that's not true, though, and maybe I'm just thinking of when I was further along with Meg, the point where the baby can't make the tiniest movement without you feeling it because there is NO ROOM. Also, last time I thought of pretty much nothing but OMG, I'M PREGNANT the entire nine months. If Meg kicked, I'd think WOW, my baby just kicked. There is a baby INSIDE ME, how weird is that? I'm having a baby! OMG, she just kicked again. I think I'll go re-read my "your baby this week" email. Why do those emails only come once a week? I want a new one like EVERY DAY.

This time around, I regularly forget I'm pregnant and don't even get the emails. I count this pregnancy in weeks (sometimes months) instead of days. I'm shocked I'm in the third trimester, since it feels like I've been pregnant for a couple weeks at the most. Despite the "neglect," though, the baby is doing just fine. Every night when I go to bed, he does a little dance, just to keep mama awake. (Actually, it's because every night I take my prenatal vitamin with a big glass of water, then get in bed.)

Speaking of that, I can still drink a big glass of water right before bed, then sleep through the night without getting up to pee (or, more likely, just getting up once), because this kid is positioned so high he practically lives in my lungs. He'd move into them if he could, I'm sure. I spend most of my days trying to breathe. Sitting down is the worst position, especially in my office chair, which may be why I never notice the baby kicking during the day - because I'm too busy worrying about whether I'm going to get enough air to avoid passing out.

I don't really have a way to end this, except to say: Hi baby boy! Don't worry, even though I don't think about you as much, I love you a lot and DO make sure you're moving every night before I go to sleep, because I really, really don't want anything to happen to you. See you in 10 weeks!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

It's like the first trimester all over again

I’ve never been a morning person and it always takes me a while to get going at work.  I don’t know why they pay me for the first hour I’m there, because I accomplish nothing.  So a couple weeks ago when the first hour started getting even worse and the get-nothing-done period started stretching to two or three hours I thought it was just my body getting worn out/stressed out due to pregnancy.  Then I realized I’d been getting rather lax about taking Unisom at night.  My body had become almost immune to the sleeping pill effect, but apparently it only took a day off here and there to bring it back (I never missed two in a row).  So Monday night I figured no problem, I’m 29 weeks along and haven’t been nauseous in ages, I don’t really need it anymore.  Tuesday morning I felt awesome.  All morning I thought “So this is what it feels like to be AWAKE!  I can’t believe I’ve been trying to work under the influence of a sleeping pill for months!”  I got so much done.  I was a teensy bit nauseous, but food took care of that.

This morning I threw up.  I ate breakfast and still felt extremely nauseous.  I’m almost THIRTY WEEKS, people.  It’s not FAIR.  Why must the only effective non-prescription medicine for morning sickness be a sleeping pill?  WHY? The nausea has gotten worse as the day goes on and by the time I got home from work, just walking in the door and smelling dinner made me come thisclose to puking.

P.S.  Is there any chance this is just Unisom withdrawl?  I know that’s not supposed to happen, but I wasn’t sick at 30 weeks with Meg.  If I stay off Unisom, do you think the nausea will go away?  Or should I start taking it again?

Thursday, April 14, 2011

This post seemed a lot more interesting as I mentally wrote it in the car. I guess you had to be there.

So the business meeting. I was a little nervous for the meeting, since the person I usually work with up and quit, forcing me to meet with her boss, who is the vice-president of the whole dang company (and its not a small company). This was a meeting I was NOT going to be late for. Despite my husband's doubts, I do if fact know its quite rude and/or unprofessional to show up to certain things late. Even five minutes late. (I do NOT however agree that its rude to show up to anything at all late. Who the heck cares if the previews have already started when you get to the movie theater?)

The office building I was going to for the meeting is only a couple minutes from my house, so I knew exactly how long it would take to get there from my office (15 minutes). Since I did not want to be late, I figured I'd leave at 4:10 for the 4:30 meeting. I'll be 5 minutes early! Perfect! It didn't even cross my mind until I was actually shutting my computer down that it takes time to walk to my car. At least 5 minutes. Which just proves that (again, despite my husband's doubts) I'm not perpetually late on purpose. I swear, it just HAPPENS. I don't know why I can't figure in the time it takes me to walk to my car. Or, if we're at home, the time it takes me to find the right pair of shoes or where the heck my purse got to. That these things will take time just never occurs to me.

So, as I'm walking out of my building, I realize that not only do I have no time cushion, but I'm also not exactly sure where I'm going. I've only been to this building once, a year ago. I knew how to get almost all the way there, but that wasn't really going to do me much good, right? So I plug the address into the navigation on my phone. It says it will take 13 minutes to get there. I turn on my car. The clock says 4:17. Crap. Everything has to go perfectly (including finding the correct suite in the building once I get there).

At 4:23, I'm on the interstate and traffic starts to slow down. &^*% *&^%. I don't have TIME for slow traffic. I look at my phone to see if it will tell me how much longer the drive will take, hoping I'm still on schedule. I can't find a "minutes to destination," but I do notice the phone says 4:27 and immediately go into full-on panic mode. My car's clock is apparently WRONG. I've just lost four whole minutes!

(Which, side note, makes me think of The One Where No One's Ready on Friends when Ross' watch stops. "It's 7:33, I have seven minutes. I have seven minutes!")

Luckily, traffic picked up again and I went back to cursing anyone who got in my way while desperately trying to get time to stand still. As I approach my destination, I realize my freaking smartphone isn't smart enough to tell me which side of the street the building's on so I know what lane to get in. I pick a lane, get stopped at a stoplight, and recognize the building up ahead. As I sit there, the clock turns to 4:30. I have never wanted to be one of those annoying early people so much as when I sat there in the car, looking at the office I was supposed to be in right that minute, yet wasn't.

The ending is pretty anti-climactic. The light turned green, I remembered the way to the suite once in the building, the elevator was waiting for me, and I walked into the office at 4:31. I don't want to do that again, though. I am totally adopting a 15-minutes-early rule for all business meetings.

(Oh, and to add to my anxiousness, I totally forgot this meeting when I got dressed before work, so while I had luckily done my hair and makeup quite nicely, I was rather casually dressed for the suit-and-tie business meeting.)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I truly think this is a genetic condition

You know how some people are obsessively punctual? Or ALWAYS early (my husband)? Or...always late? I'm the late kind. I know it drives you always-early people CRAZY (especially because I'm married to one), but I swear there is nothing I can do about it. It's just the way my brain works. If I have to be at work at 7, I think: It takes me 13-15 minutes to drive to work, so I'll leave at 6:45. Of course, that's just the driving time. I also have to lock the door to the house, open the garage door, back out of the garage, then go back and shut the garage door. 13-15 minutes later I get to the parking lot, which is two blocks from my office. It takes 3-4 minutes to get to the building, another 2-3 to get to take the elevator to my floor and walk to my desk. Then I have to start up my computer, which takes FOREVER because the annoying security people have installed every security software known to man, making my computer slower than slow. THEN I log into the network. The time I log in is recorded and technically is my actual "got to work" time. Needless to say, its never sooner than 7:15. By my husband's logic, I should just leave the house at 6:30, but my brain just doesn't work like that. I can't make it compute. 6:30 just doesn't make SENSE, because it only takes 15 minutes to get there, right? SIX-FORTY-FIVE is ingrained in me and if I happen to leave at, say, 6:40, I think: Hey! I'm early! I should stop at McDonalds for some breakfast on my way there!

But, luckily, most people in my office are not sticklers about punctuality. At least half the office arrives closer to 7:15 than to 7. To my husband's endless annoyance, though, I'm this way about everything. Church starts at 9:30. We only live a few minutes away, so there's really no reason to leave before 9:25, right? (He has slowly but surely beat this out of me and we now leave the house by 9:15 SHARP every Sunday) (That was probably a bad choice of words. My husband doesn't beat me.)

Where this gets me into trouble is things you reeeeealy shouldn't be late for. Like business meetings....

To be continued, because this post has gotten pretty long already.

(Don't worry, I wasn't 15 minutes late to a business meeting.)

Friday, April 8, 2011

Seven Quick Takes

1. It’s getting harder and harder to get up off the couch. Last night after I struggled to get up because, obviously, I had to pee, I thought about how this whole thing is a downward spiral. It’ll just keep getting harder to get up, but I’ll have to do it more often. Ugggggh.

2. MY IPAD CAME YESTERDAY!! It was delivered to my husband’s office (because it had to be signed for) and he said the FedEx guy walked in and said “It’s here!” Apparently delivering iPads has been a big part of his job lately.

3. Margaret has been showing a lot of signs of being ready to potty train, but just thinking about it makes me tired. She’s been waking up dry every morning and often tells us before she dirties a diaper.

4. The post I wrote Wednesday could probably be titled “3rd trimester,” because in both pregnancies I’ve spent most of the 3rd trimester freaked out about what I’m giving up. Having a baby is just so all-encompassing, especially at first, that I get in this mindset where I feel like I’ll never have a “normal” life again.  My life, as I know it, is OVER.  Which, while true, is rather dramatic.

5. I’ve started buying boy clothes and I find it really annoying. I have eight bins of girl clothes in the basement, with more on the way this weekend, and it just seems ridiculous to have to buy MORE clothes. We’re running out of bin space – I don’t even know where I’m going to put the boy clothes. Why do clothes have to be so gender-specific??

6. Not to mention MY NEW IPAD too much, but I just have to say I’m unbelievably excited to have Netflix and Hulu plus on it. And they run so fast! I’m kind of regretting I didn’t get the 3G, so I could watch that stuff other places than at home. But, really, there won’t be too many situations where I want to do that.

7. I cleaned out the fridge this morning and WOW.  It's a good thing I no longer have morning sickness, because I definitely would have thrown up.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Things to do before you have kids

I just saw an article listing a bunch of things you should do before you have kids – like sleep in every weekend, go to wine tastings, and take awesome trips. Reading an article like that makes me feel since I had kids young I didn’t get to do much before they came along. I mean, it’s not like I sat around doing nothing, but still, you can only do so much before you’re 24, right? As soon as I finished college, I started a working full-time and taking masters classes at night. I took my final semester of night classes while dealing with morning sickness and Meg was born 6 months later.

We purposefully didn’t put off kids to do fun stuff, like take awesome vacations, because we decided to enjoy kids when we were young and all that other stuff when we’re middle-aged. My parents and my MIL do all sorts of awesome stuff and it’s better than if they’d done it in their 20s, because they have money now. My parents went to Japan last year and they’re going to China in June and Israel in December. Granted, Japan and China were for my dad’s work, but if they had kids at home I doubt mom would be able to go with him. Actually, if they still had kids at home, my dad wouldn’t even HAVE this job. He waited to pursue it until my youngest sister was a senior in high school because it involves a LOT of traveling (he’s gone most evenings) and he wanted to be around for us. My MIL has gotten involved in bike riding and by “involved” I mean she’s traveled to Colorado to do Ride the Rockies. Finding the time to even train for that would be really hard if you had kids around, let alone the time and money to go.

Plus, being/having young-ish grandparents is great! All of our parents are in their late 40s/early 50s and they have lots of energy to play with grandchildren. My mom takes care of Meg 2 ½ days a week and loves it. I don’t at all regret our decision to have kids young. My parents/in-laws and even grandparents and great-grandparents all enjoyed having kids young and still being pretty young when the kids left the house. I guess I really don’t know any different. Obviously, it all depends on when you meet the person you want to marry, but having got married young I/we just didn’t see any reason to put off having kids.

Still, a co-worker of mine, who is my age and has been married for about the same amount of time, is leaving soon to travel Europe with her husband for THREE WEEKS. I’m a little jealous. But the simple stuff makes me even MORE jealous. Like a lazy Saturday: sleep in, go to brunch, maybe catch a movie, then eat dinner out. Aside from a once, maybe twice a year weekend when the kids go to Grandma’s or something, we’re not going to have that for a looooooong time. All that stuff to look forward to “when the kids are out of the house” is over 20 years away. And since I don’t even WANT the time to pass quickly – I don’t want my kids to grow up and leave! – it might as well be never. Which makes me wish I’d done a little more of it before kids…

Again, I don’t wish we’d waited longer, I guess I’m just in a mood today. A mood that spontaneously going out to dinner without a toddler would cure. Since that’s not going to happen, I’m a little wistful.