Thursday, September 29, 2016

Am I Being a Baby?!

I don't know if I'm just worse at handling things than most people or what.

My morning sickness is out of control.  I don't even know how I'm expected to function.  The whole first week and a half after I found out I was pregnant, I felt so good! Just super tired, which I expected, but not sick at all. Then suddenly, it hit me SO HARD and wont stop.

 This morning I woke up at quarter after five feeling like an absolute bag of dirt.  I took some over the counter approved pregnancy nausea stuff that does NOT help me. (It's sooo weak that literally a two year old can take it) and made myself some dry toast. Because I'm nauseous and starving. and they say that if you have an empty stomach, nausea gets worse.

I've had exactly three bites of my toast and I can already feel it rising in my throat. The thought of taking another bite makes me sick.

My friend, who is trying to get pregnant said she thinks she feels nauseous because after a big meal she didn't feel good. "It sounds like we have the same symptoms!" she said.  NO! It doesn't sound like we have the same symptoms! I feel like I'm dying all the time! You ate too much! There's a difference!

I just want this to go away! It's my birthday in a few days and Stuart and I were going to go to Red Lobster for endless shrimp (previously my fantasy) and now, all I wanna do is curl up and sleep.

Wah.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

High's, Low's, and Corn in the Nose (September 28,2016)

           I've been having this annoying pregnancy insomnia for the past week or so. It's not enough to keep me up all night, but without fail, I wake up between 2-4 and have a super hard time falling back asleep, and then I wake up, almost like clockwork, at 6 am.  I'm trying to view it as a positive because it is nice to have this small slice of morning to myself before the craziness begins. But, I've found that how I feel about the early wake-up depends on what I choose to do with the time.  If I look through my phone the whole time, I'm completely annoyed, but if I sit out on the patio with coffee and read a real paper book, it's like the best feeling in the whole world.

Yesterday was a gong show.  It was 100 degrees here (literally) and with no AC, at the best of times, our apartment is next to intolerable in this kind of heat.  Add pregnancy sickness and 2 kids to the mix and it equals: "we have to get the heck out of this house!".  BUT, it's not as simple as getting out of the house.

Morning rituals:

Our mornings are the same every. single. day.  The time that each thing takes has altered because it takes me about 20 minutes to force myself to do anything where I have to stand now because I'm so nauseated. BUT! here's our morning:

I go into the bedroom and give Frankie back pink bunny and soothener (that's what we call soothers because Joey used to call them that before he could say it right) and then go to Joey.

I sit on the ground and Joey gives me a 'spider hug' which is a hug where he puts his legs around my waist and his hands around my neck.  His head sits on my shoulder and I rub his back and tell him all the reasons that I love him and why he's such an important part of our family and then I pray for him. IT IS THE MOST MAGICAL PART OF THE MORNING.

Then I get crazy Frankie out of her crib while Joey runs out the door and put her up on the change table and tickle her a hundred times while I'm changing her diaper.  Then she demands pink bunny and soothener again (both of which she's dropped while I was tickling her) and we go into the living room.

The kids and I play together, usually trains or lego, for a few minutes, then I go turn on some music (Raffi) and tell them I'm going to get their fruit ready.  I always like to feed them fruit before breakfast to make sure that they get enough fruit.

We all sit on the couch together playing cars while I shove a big bowl of pineapple/strawberry/grapes in their mouth.  When that's done, I go make myself some coffee and tell them breakfast will be soon.

Joey and I USED to make a funky monkey smoothie for him every day, but lately, it's Honey Nut Cheerio's all the way.

Joey always begs me for breakfast on the couch, which is something we never ever do, and I allllways tell him no.

Then we sit together and Frankie frantically points to the IPod as if I'm going to forget that we listen to "monkey music" at breakfast time (Jack Johnson's Curious George Soundtrack) and Joey waits patiently while I turn it on. Then we pray and breakfast ensues!

Joey will still sit in his high chair which is uh-mazing, while Frankie eats two bites of whatever I've put on her tray and flails like a drowning person until I bring her out of hers.



Anyway - that's our morning routine!

Since I wrote so much about breakfast and so little about our day and it's already getting long, I'll just say a few memorable things from yesterday.

Joey peed his pants at the YMCA while he was in kids club, which is something he never does.  Apparently it went all over the floor. I was sooo embarrassed, but they didn't make me feel bad because it happens all the time. and because it was the first time Joey had done it.

By some miracle, Frankie was wearing Joeys pants and I had stuck some of Frankie's smelly milk soaked pants from the time she figured out how to open her bottle and spilled all over herself, into the lost and found.  I was DESPERATE for some solace, and only 1/2 hour into my slow, steady walk on the treadmill. (The dr told me it would help with the nausea to do some light exercise) So, I took Joey's pants off of Keeks and tried to put them on Joey, who was now buck naked from the waist down in front of kids club (he's a LITTTTLE old to be bearing his wiener) and tried to put them on.

That's when he decided it would be a perfect time to have a totally unexplained meltdown about his sock being weird (he ALWAYS says his sock is 'weird' and I have to pretend adjust it.  I couldn't get him to calm down and he was naked and it was so awkward and mortifying because I just wanted to get the freaking pants on! After five exhausting minutes and lots of tears, the pants were on, Frankie's unbelievably smelly pants were on, and I was high tailing it out of there.

As I got back on the treadmill, I was so nauseous and exhausted that it took everything in my power not to burst into tears as I watched Kim try to convince Rob not to go to New York to win back his Disney star girlfriend.

When I picked the kids up, we sat on a couch by the reception desk and I fed them their lunches and talked to Andrew (a three year old little boy with an only Spanish speaking nanny).  That's when I realized how mean some moms are! My friends had always said that it seemed like Andrew has some social problem and that he might have a mental disability (this was COMPLETE hearsay, no one had told them anything) because he didn't usually talk.  Welllll, when you have a Spanish speaking nanny who is mostly on her phone, or talking to other Spanish speaking moms, obviously you're going to be a quiet kid! He talked sooo much to me and was so sweet and then I was so annoyed at  all the weird judgy people.

----

The drive

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Joey always, ALWAYS kicks Frankie's car seat when she falls asleep in the car and it's soooo maddening.  I try to tell him that if he keeps his feet forward and reads whatever he has in his hands, he won't be tempted. Buttttt of course he's tempted.
I told him if he so much as touched her car seat one more time, we weren't going to read a bed time story before nap. I HATE this punishment as much as Joey does, because reading a bedtime story is my favorite.  Of course, he grazed her car seat ever so lightly with his foot and I had to tell him it was game over.
He kept saying over and over, "We ARE going to read a book." and I kept telling him we weren't and reminding him why.  THEN, I'm sure his little mind thought, "huh! what do i have to lose at this point?" and he kicked her car seat!
I told him the worst punishment of all: that I wasn't going to sing him the US anthem as I tucked him in (also a tradition) and he was devastated.  Here's hoping it doesn't happen again.

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After a short nap (which I was actually thankful for because the only thing worse than being sick in a hot house is being sick in a hot house with no distractions and having to be quiet as a mouse) I told the kids we needed to leave right away (mainly because I wanted to rip my hair out) and we went back to the YMCA for Tumbling. (Kind of gymnastics-y).  Joey was SO CUTE at tumbling and was so independent, but kept coming over to me to make sure I was watching.  I loveeeeeeee him in these kind of environments.  He's growing so fast.

Then we stayed for family yoga, which before Joey had NO interest in, but yesterday he sat on a mat and followed the directions for about 10 minutes and it was SO CUTE AND AMAZING AND I LOVED IT SO MUCH! But, Frankie had sat in a granola bar and was crying and freaking out, so we had to go and ended up sitting outside for over an hour, me feeling nauseous, Joey scootering around, and Frankie trying to open a storage door with my car keys.

When we got home, I plunked the kids in front of the TV to watch their "music show" which is this adorable counting/animal/colors show that turns them into COMPLETE zombies. I always give them a bowl full of carrots and cucumbers when I let them watch because they mindlessly eat all of them and it's amazing.

While they watched that for 15 minutes, I cooked two dinners, one for Stuart (spicy chicken and peppers) and one for the kids (bland chicken and carrots) with rice and some corn on the cob.  If I wasn't hot and nauseous before, I definitely was after that.

Stuart came home and we all sat together and had a nice/chaotic dinner with Joey wanting to eat ONLY daddy's corn with daddy holding it for him, and Frankie holding two corn cobs and going at them like a voracious animal.

After that was bath time. I don't know how, but somehow over the past few weeks, or maybe months, we've started putting cups that we drink out of into the bathtub. There used to be two, then four, and now I swear there are like 8 of them in there at every bathtub event.  The kids are crazy about them.

Frankie started doing a new thing last night where she bends her whole top half of her body over from sitting position and dunks her entire face in the water.  She comes up bright eyed and invigorated and thinks it's the most exciting thing to have ever happened to her. IT'S SO CUTE.

After we finally got the kids out of the tub and diapered/underweared, I said that I really needed to lay down in the bedroom, which I did for the most blissful 10 minutes of my life, while Stuart cleaned up the toys with Joey and Frankie and read the bible.  Then, I came out for our new tradition of five minutes of Bob the Builder before bed.

The couch goes (left to right): Blue doggy, tucked under Joey's arm. Joey, tucked into Stuart, Frankie kind of being nuts, and me beside Frankie trying to keep her from spilling her bottle everywhere.

And then, it's brush teeth and plunk in the crib and peace out for me, while Stuart talks to Joey in his bed and picks up pink bunny and soothener for Frankie, which she's inevitably dropped.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Joe, Keek, and baby 3!

Joey (as of September 27/2016)

Lately, Joey has had a great imagination with his lego. He builds robots, speed trains, smoke stacks, airports, airplanes, fire halls, hospitals, car repair shops, etc. He's really interested in 'hitches'. He's always trying to hitch things up to each other, either just to chug together, or to tow.

He's also (just in the past week) started to get into drawing.  This is a really good independent activity for him.  He's very careful about how he does things, too. I always look over and see him concentrating so hard. It's sooo cute.  His favorite thing to draw is circles, because he's perfected that.  He never tells me that something he's drawn is any object other than it is. I think he's too logical for that.  For instance, he will have color marks all over his paper, and I'll ask him what he drew. "oh! Is that a cloud?" "No, mommy. That's a circle. This is a circle. This is a line. Over here is blue and red and green." And just yesterday he's started to ask me to draw shapes on his paper and he colors them in.  A great thing about Joey is that he'll color on a page until the page is absolutely full instead of drawing a few things, turning the page, and starting a new one.

He's been doing this hilarious thing lately where he takes my yoga mat out and lays it flat, lays down on one side and holds on and wraps up his body like a burrito and starts meowing at the top of his lungs.  He saw a cat on our computer screen that was wrapped up in a piece of paper or something and now he does it like 10 times a day.  It's sooo funny.

Something else that he's started doing endlessly is asking me how to spell things.  It's pretty cool.  We've been sounding out lots of words lately and he's really interested in knowing how sounds of letters work together to create words.  OH! and he likes to randomly count to twenty, but he ALWAYS misses thirteen.

He's less interested in reading books lately, which is disappointing because I always love to do that with him.  It's a nice, quiet interactive activity where I don't have to be creative. He always wants to play pretend or trucks, or lego with me lately, and sometimes I don't feel like making up a story or want to pretend I'm a truck, or a fireman, or anything for that matter. Buuuut, that's what I do. A lot. And he loves it, so I GUESS that's okay!

He's also getting really good on his scooter. He's super fast and coordinated and I'm so proud of him! He can lift up one of his legs after he's pushed off and stay steady and he's great at turning. He's also learned to 'stop, look, and listen' before driveways.  He's getting really good at following rules.

Frankie (as of September 27, 2016)

Frankie is at SUCH a cute age.  She's at that age where when I come into her bedroom she's standing holding her bunny in one arm, soother in her mouth, fuzzy hair on her head all staticy, and starts bouncing up and down and laughing the minute she sees me, then collapses into her crib on her tummy and waits for me to rub her back.  If i could freeze her at this age for another year, I would.

She loves to take things out of containers and put them in other containers. And she LOVES to take allllll the recycling out of the brown paper bag in the kitchen and explore it. And take apart my purse, and drawers of clothes, and basically anything. She doesn't play with toys much at ALL. She's always just exploring things around the house.  Opening and closing the screen door is one of her favorite past times.

One thing I WISH she liked doing is reading books. Joey at her age, would sit ENDLESSLY and look through books either by himself, or with me.  Frankie can't sit and look at a book for more than 2 seconds before she's off to another activity! She's never been able to sit to listen to a book. Ever.

Frankie is OBSESSED with animals. Anytime she sees any animal, she looses it. Laughing, yelling, pointing, chasing.  It's so cute and makes me wish that we had a cat or something! Joey is the total opposite! He either couldn't care less about an animal, or freaks out over them (in a bad way).

Frankie's age comes with challenges, too.  She won't sit in her high chair for more than a couple of minutes before getting really whiney and wanting to come out, but when she does come out, she just stands at my legs begging to be fed even though there was food on her high chair.

Frankie also is suuuper needy lately and always wants to be held and yells and cries at my feet until I pick her up.  It makes it challenging to get anything done around the house and she's sooo heavy!


My pregnancy so far:

I'm seven weeks pregnant (obviously with our third) and I had my first ultrasound yesterday. Everything is looking good! I'm so sick though and I honestly don't know how I'm going to make it through this first trimester! I completely forgot about this sea sick, everything is disgusting but I'm starving kind of a feeling that plagues the body during the first 12 or so weeks.
My doctor started me on a diet of carb-y plain foods (no liquids) to try for the next two weeks that I started yesterday.  Here's hoping it helps.