My Girl

Though I was initially sad to send Jayce off to school all day long, I have loved having concentrated time to spend alone with my girl.  I love the age gap that we have between Jayce and Hannah, just over 3 years, because I got to spend a lot of time with just him, and now I am getting that time with her as well.

One of the things that I love about this time is how, when I'm not juggling both of their needs and demands, I have more time to notice the little things that she is picking up on and doing.  She has so many funny nuances right now and her language and comprehension are really starting to show.  Like when she wants something, she'll hold out her arm and say, "Ay go!" because we say, "There you go!" when we hand her things.  It's like she's egging us on, "Come on, give it to me and say 'there you go'."  Or how she'll pull down my glasses down from my eyes and say, "Pee boo," with a sly smile.

And on days when she's sick and only wants to be held, like she has been these past few days, I can keep her snuggled in my lap and let everything else go.  Plus it's still technically my birthday week, so I can still get away with that for a few days now.

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10 Months

Hannah, happy 10 months.

It has been a crazy month, perhaps obvious since this is the first time I have posted on the blog in almost 3 weeks, which is the longest stretch I have ever gone without posting something new since I started this blog 3 1/2 years ago.  Yes, it's been crazy around here.

You've been sick.  Sick, then started to get better, then got sick again, then got worse and worse.

You were sick for so long that I kind of forgot what you looked like without those sad sick eyes.  Half closed, red rimmed, glassy and breaking our hearts.  The first day when it was apparent that you were feeling well again I just stared at your face all day, trying to figure out why it looked so different.  Had you lost weight and your face thinned out?  Was it the prominence of your (now) 4 teeth?  But it was that your eyes just seemed so round and bright compared to how they had been looking for so long.

You got your very own nebulizer this month, and twice daily treatments for about a week.

It's a cute nebulizer, as far as those things go, a little pink panda, but you're not a fan.  I've tried a variety of things to distract you while you breathe in the steam, but you spend most of the time trying to squirm away.  Occasionally you try to huff on the little medicine holder, but not for long.

We've had some visitors this month.  Grandma was in town for a little over a week and Chelsea was in town Easter weekend.

Chelsea was here for the worst of it.  She kept saying, "Oh, she looks so sad!"  You did.

A double ear infection, a tooth coming in, a fever, thick congestion, a horrible congested cough that made your body shutter as you were trying to clear your lungs.

We spent a lot of time snuggling these past few weeks.  On the worst days you wouldn't sleep lying down and only wanted me.  You could only fall asleep on my shoulder, while I was standing and swaying us back and forth.  You woke if I put you in the crib, or if I turned you to lay sideways across my arms.  So I stood and held you, or we took you for a drive in the car to get you to sleep.  Until 12:30 am on Easter evening.  And again from 3-4 am.  And then I was up at 5 holding you to sleep again.

You didn't really "participate" for Easter this year.  You had a basket and a pretty dress, but instead you and Dad stayed home and he held you in the rocker for almost 2 hours so that you could get some rest.

By Monday you seemed to have pulled out of it a bit.  You slept a little longer at night and napped well during the day.  Then you seemed to start making up for lost time.

Since then, you want to be standing while holding onto something.  At the beginning of the week you were about 40% standing and 60% leaning, but a week later it is about 80% standing and 20% holding onto something.  Also your little bald spot on the back of your head is almost gone. :)

You and Jayce are starting to "play" together more and more.  This often happens while we're in the car and you are starting to get fussy.  He'll make some silly noise or face at you, then you laugh, then he laughs, then you imitate him and you both laugh.  I LOVE this.  It's amazing.  I always have the immediate urge to call your dad and say, "They like each other!  We made them, and they like each other, and they're playing and laughing without any intervening on my part!"  It's totally amazing, every time.

You are pushing up on your knees now, and starting to pull up on the furniture.  If we're on the hard wood floor or the kitchen, you will get on your belly and push yourself backwards around the room.  I imagine that the next time that I write this monthly update you will be crawling.  That is, so long as we can keep these balance-impeding ear infections at bay.  Here's hoping for a mostly well April and May, for all of us.

Happy 10 months baby!

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Miscellaneous: Sick, Birchbox, and Valentines

1.) My last few weeks have been filled with poor sick kids. I actually called the doctor's office 6 times in 7 days, and one of those days I called twice. It's been an uphill battle to get these kids healthy, but we finally did it!! I am pretending like it is a coincidence that things started to get much better once the weather took a turn for the worse. Please tell me I'm not the only parent whose kids get super sick when it turns unseasonably warm in February?

I went to get my camera to take a picture of the "half pike" that Jayce had constructed from our ottoman. Once Jayce realized that I wasn't sitting behind him, he immediately got up to come lay across my lap. It was that kind of week, LOTS of snuggling.

It took 3 different antibiotics to get Jayce healthy. The second one tasted so bad that he literally threw up when he put it in his mouth. I wanted to comfort him, but it was one of those medications that you take forever, so I was thinking, but did not say aloud, "Don't worry buddy. You only have to take that one 19 more times!" This was also the first time that he has ever vomited, so as we were cleaning him up and reassuring him that it was okay, he was like, "Mom, what is that stuff?!" Poor guy, I think the vomit freaked him out more than anything else. Luckily 3 days later we switched to a new, less nasty medicine, and it did the trick. Or maybe it was the temperature plunge down to the teens. Either way, he's better.

2.) I asked for and received a 3 month subscription to Birchbox for Christmas. And let me tell you, it's amazing.

Basically, if you're a girl, you'll want it. For $10 per month, you get a half a dozen "delux samples" of beauty products: makeup, skincare, hair care, etc, with the option to buy the full sized version. Some of the things I could afford, some I could not, and I like the mix. I don't want to buy $50 hand cream, but I would like a month's supply of it, with 4 other little goodies, for $10!

And it is marketed perfectly. These people really know their audience. Last month when I opened my UPS box to find this perfect little cardboard box, with a pretty pink wrap, I was like,

Birchbox, I think I love you.

But I wanna know for sure.

Inside, the goodies were individually wrapped in tissue paper and ribbons. Seriously?! I felt like it was my birthday!

I did not take a picture of the products because I immediately started using them. I painted my thumbnail with the nail color, put on some hand cream, and then went to the bathroom to try the lipgloss. I love it. I just received my second one on Friday, this time full of skin care and hair products. Check it out here if interested. I'm going to stop now, because I feel like I sound like a salesman. :) But let me know if you get it and we can talk about how awesome it is, and I'll stop harassing my sister about it.

3.) I attempted to take "Valentine" pictures of the kids to send to family for the holiday, as I normally do. I haven't gotten around to printing the pictures yet, (sorry family!) because of the craziness of the past few weeks. But I didn't get a perfect picture anyway. I'm wondering if uncooperative Valentine pictures are as endearing as uncooperative Santa's lap pictures? What do you think? Which of these says, "I'm over it mom." better? Hmm...

Linking to Carissa at Miscellaneous Mondays.

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Sick and Pretend

On Sunday afternoon we realized that Jayce had been acting a little bit off all day.  He was being more clingy, snuggly, whiny, and weepy than normal, and as the day went on he started coughing.  By the next morning his cough was horrible.  A quick trip to the doctor confirmed what we had suspected, bronchitis.

On Sunday, Jayce just wanted to lay around and watch movies all day long, which is pretty uncharacteristic of him.  Even when one of his shows is on, he's typically racing his cars around, running the "Wipeout Course" on the couch, or in the middle of some other game.  On Monday he sounded horrible by was acting normal, almost bouncing off of the walls.  The doctor told me that he could go to school the next day so long as he didn't have a fever, but on Tuesday his cough seemed even worse, so I kept him home.

Today is Thursday, which is pretty much the 5th day of us being housebound.

Jayce normally plays really well by himself.  Even at play dates when the other kids grow bored and emerge to see what the moms are up to, Jayce will often keep playing busily with whatever toys are available to him.  But this week we've had to get creative since we'd been exhausting all of the normal activities.

Yesterday we played, Jayce Has A Birthday Party.  (Do anyone else's kids name their activities?  It's almost like in his mind these are episodes of the Jayce television show.  Most of his pretending has a title to it, which he will announce at the beginning. "Mom, me and dad are going to play Basketball Players/Push Jayce on the Bed/Dark Rescue/etc (Dark Rescue is firemen who use flashlights to rescue people who have fallen in the dark.  Yes, there are special Firemen for this very specific task.)  Anyway, today's episode was Jayce Has A Birthday Party.

I pulled out some scraps of Christmas paper, and we wrapped a whole basket of Jayce's toys.  Luckily, they were almost all tiny toys so it was no big deal to wrap them all, and about halfway through Jayce was really getting the hang of wrapping them.  He could wrap several toys using only 1 piece of tape, which I appreciated.  I cut some extra long strips of paper and let him cut them into smaller pieces with his scissors.

Then we headed to the kitchen to cook some bean soup for the party.

I love activities like this.  Jayce played with these beans, bowls and measuring cups for about 40 minutes the day before.  He cooked them, mixed them, poured them, served them up and then started over.

I love stuff like this because it doesn't make much of a mess, but even if a few beans go astray, it's nothing that I can fix with a broom and 15 seconds of my time.  I used to let him do this with Rice Krispies because it was what I had on hand, but I wouldn't recommend it.  It seemed like I could never get them all, and Chris and I stepped on a Rice Krispies for days, which is super annoying as you might imagine.  Another time a gallon of water in the pantry had leaked all over the floor, which I didn't realize until I was cleaning up soggy Rice Krispies.  Not as easy to clean up as beans.

After the bean soup was made and served, we went back for the birthday party.

Jayce opened all of the presents.  Since there were so many, had forgotten what several of them were and was genuinely excited to open them.  He'd say, "Mom this is my favorite one!" or "Mom I liked this one for a long time!"  At one point he looked at me and declared, "Mom, we're having a great time!"  So cute.

Hannah even got in on the birthday party, since she woke up from her nap right before Jayce opened his presents.  Actually, she got in on paper ripping, waving and chewing, which was exactly what she wanted.

Then Jayce and I each sat on one side of the ripped paper pile and let his car drive through it over and over.  Obviously, this was really cool.

This all went on for an hour.  As we were growing bored with racing the car through the paper, I glanced at the clock and noticed that Jayce's favorite TV show was about to start.  I informed him of this right after he said, "Mom, let's wrap all of these toys again!"  I'm all for keeping busy, but I'm no saint.

I fixed myself some coffee, played with Hannah and the paper scraps, and had two very tired kiddos by nap time.  A successful morning by my standards.

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32 Weeks Along

(Me, in the window, in the nursery, at 30 Weeks.)

I wore this dress to church last week and ended up keeping it on all day. It was SO comfy and cute, and was perfect for the breezy but 80+ degree weather that day. However, the "cinched at the top of the bump" look is one that I have just started partaking in, and I had this conversation with literally everyone that I talked to at church that day.

Them, looking at my belly: So when are you due again?

Me: June.

Them, eyes wide and chuckling: Oh...ha ha...I don't think you're going to make it that far.

Me, smile gradually decreasing with each new person: Yeah, I don't really either.

For what it's worth, I don't actually think I'll make it all the way to my due date. This is mostly based on nothing, since no one can really be sure about any of those sorts of things. I do think that everything has happened so much earlier with this baby that it does make me think delivery might be early too. That said, I don't think I'll be going anytime too soon, since I am still 6 weeks from the safe stage, so those people making comments that speculate that it could be 'any day now' kind of annoyed me. Especially since I don't look that big.

To further convince myself of my point, I took this picture at 31 weeks. Yes, I definitely look like a big pregnant lady, but I don't look like a 9 months pregnant lady, right?! (This is the part where you say, "No, those people are crazy! Only 8 1/2 months, tops!")

According to Babycenter.com, the baby is this big this week, the size of a jicama, whatever that is. I think they might just invent vegetables sometimes when there isn't one that corresponds with the size of your unborn child, because this just looks like a potato to me, and I find that insulting. While I don't think I have the "ready to pop" look, surely there is more going on in there than a large potato. And at 16 inches and almost 4 lbs, that would be one serious potato.

We had some sunny weather last week and were able to get out for a few days before we had to run back inside for coats. Along with the constant changes in weather, Jayce and I have been sick again these last few weeks: sinus infections, crazy coughing, etc. The scary thing about my being sick this time, is that when I'd have a big coughing fit, I would start having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions. The doctor told me if I have 5 or more in an hour than I need to call them, because I could start going into premature labor, and multiple times a day I was having 4 within 30 minutes. So I tried to take it easier this weekend: sitting more, trying to rest more, not trying to squeeze in 10 minutes on a project here or there. It seems to have worked for now, but we were all just a little concerned at the time. 32 weeks is too early, so if I can stop it from happening by taking it easier, I will.

I've had my first official cravings this past month, where I just feel like I need to have something that I normally wouldn't- and it's root beer. We were at Cracker-barrel a few weeks ago and when I walked past that tub of ice and drinks at the check in spot, I thought to myself, "I have to have a root beer, right now." This is odd because I never drank root beer before, but now I actually think about it during the day. It's kind of like the way that you crave coffee (if you're a coffee drinker), by which I mean, it sounds good at every time of the day, not necessarily with a meal, just by itself, and I kind of feel a heightened sense of enjoying my beverage when I have some. Strange, huh? I only allow myself a maximum of 1 per day, because I know how pop can dehydrate you, and especially with the Braxton Hicks issue I am always drinking water.

The other craving coincided perfectly with the seasonal re-opening of our Dairy Queen, and their introduction of the mini-Blizzard. Though I can't really blame pregnancy for this one.

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Crazy Allergies: Sick, Take 100

Well, being healthy was a very short-lived victory that only lasted a few days around here. At my last report, the worst was behind us and we were all on the mend, but in the 2 weeks since that post, Jayce has picked up a sinus infection, and some other infection. Basically, he's healthy for about a week, and then it's downhill from there.

At our 5th doctor's visit, we determined that allergies are probably at the root of the problem. Jayce wasn't sick in any form from April 2010 to February 2011, which was when all hell broke loose around here (sickness wise). Since February, the weather has continued to flip flop back and forth anywhere from low 80s to low 30s, changing completely about every 4-5 days. We discovered last year (in that April visit that I just mentioned), that Jayce has spring allergies. The doctor recommended a medicine and nasal spray for him, and all was well. But these medicines did nothing for him this year.

The doctor thinks that Jayce's allergies aren't under control. So his already aggravated system gets an infection, he takes anti-biotics which kills the infection but obviously doesn't help the allergies, which just flare up and cause another infection, we get more antibiotics, and around and around we go.

We scheduled a consultation with an allergist a few weeks ago, which is this week. However, you cannot take any allergy medicine for 5 days leading up to your appointment because they could affect the outcome of any test results. So we have been off of allergy medicine for 4 days now. And Jayce is worse than ever, and I can't do anything about it.

His nose is running constantly, which is annoying but not the worst part. What is worse is that his lungs are really congested, and about once per day (at least) he has a horrible coughing fit where he just cannot catch his breath. Today it was during his nap. He was trying to cough the congestion out of his lungs, but when he tried to draw in a breath he just pulled back into his lungs what he was trying to cough out, and started choking. It was horrible. His whole body was shuddering, he was crying and I just held him upright and tried to calm him down. At one point in between coughs he wailed, "Mom I go see doctor so my chest not hurt!!" It was bad. This is also on a day when Chris is out of town so I have no backup. It's probably better because I don't have the option of freaking out, and I have to hold it all together. So I'll wait until he gets home to cry.

I called the doctor Friday, we went to the doctor Saturday, and I called again today. There are new antibiotics at the pharmacy for us now.

All of this sickness has meant that Jayce has wanted extra snuggles throughout the day, and only wants me. Though sometimes it's inconvenient, particularly on my poor bladder, I don't mind obliging to this. So I shouldn't be surprised that I now have a sinus infection as well.

I'm hoping for the best on Thursday. In an ideal world, the doctor would suggest a new course of treatment, which works, and we can avoid that skin scratch test that I (stupidly) googled and saw pictures of. I'm hoping not to cry that day as well.

Does anyone else have young kids with allergies? What medicines are they on? I'm looking for all the help I can get. And if you could say a quick prayer for us on Thursday, I'd really appreciate it.

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