Luuuucy...

...we're home!

Yep.  2,000 miles.  Three and a half days on the road.   We are very glad we made the decision to drive instead of fly.  Our route took us through western Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and finally Washington…a part of the country that we would probably have never seen otherwise.  Granted, 90% of it was boring, flat, nothingness, but the 10% up in the mountains made it worthwhile.  Awesome.  Stopping to see some friends and family along the way didn’t hurt either. 

Stories (and photos) from the trip will have to wait.

Luckily, the apartment was available when we arrived, so we didn't have to stay another night in a hotel.  Unpacking and repacking just that one suitcase every day was starting to make me crazy.  

It's a beautiful apartment complex and neighborhood.  Very upscale.  Feels awkward, as if we're "living above our paygrade", but I think we'll survive.  Our apartment is very open and the provided furniture is really nice.  I'll put up pictures when we've finished unpacking and organizing and things look halfway decent.

I'm loving the weather!  This place looks like a rainforest, but surprisingly the humidity isn't noticeably different from [some days in] Kansas.  The weather forecast had me a little nervous - a solid week of rain following our arrival.  And it did keep up a drizzle for our entire first full day here (didn't keep us from getting out for a much-needed walk!), but since then we've seen the sun at least a few times a day.  It is wonderful.  High temps have been in the 60's, but when the sun comes out the air warms up just enough - not too hot.  And no wind.  No! wind!  We are going to get so spoiled.

Daniel is in his third day at the office.  So far they have just been working out the kinks in getting everyone's computers and stuff working, but next week I think they're really going to get started.  It sounds like a nice place - big windows with views of the Sound and Whidbey Island, and only about a mile from the apartment.  

Well, Hollie's been doing great.  Her sleep seems to finally be getting back to normal.  During the drive she got into a pattern of going to bed really late and waking up really early (only sleeping about six hours) and taking two long naps in the car...and continued that for our first two days here.  This morning however, after waking up at 5:45, she and I went and sat on the couch and she dozed off again...for another two hours!  A good step back toward normal.  

We're trying to get by without using any baby-proofing like gates or cabinet locks, so it has been about 80% clever organization on our part, and 20% reminding Hollie to please not to dig in the trash can.   

When we got here, she definitely had an instinctive feeling of being in someone else's house, which kept her from really getting into the exposed TV cords and unraveling the toilet paper rolls.  It gave me a nice grace period to get things, at a minimum, safe.  That feeling is slowly wearing off, but it has been a good learning experience for her - she can take everything out of the kitchen drawers and cabinets and I won't stop her (let's face it, I can't), but she needs to put everything away (with help, for now) before she moves on.  I know that it's only a matter of time before she starts to truly feel at home...then we're really going to have to keep an eye on that toilet paper.  

Happy Memorial Day weekend!  And congratulations to my little sister...graduated from high school yesterday.  I can't believe it.  Sorry I didn't call you...I will this weekend.  

First appointment with my new OB is next Tuesday!

Much more to write about...coming soon.             

Completely forgot...

Alternately titled: "She's going to hate me later for writing this"

We're using the potty!  By "we" I mean Hollie, obviously.  Daniel and I have been throwing the idea around for awhile, debating whether or not she was ready, and last Monday (like almost two weeks ago), I decided to just go for it.  I knew it was a bad idea, because Uncchris was arriving in a few days, and they say you're not supposed to start when you've any kind of additional circumstance (illness, remodeling the house, new baby, etc.)...but really, as in all things: if you wait for the "right time" it's never going to happen.  So I went for it.

Day one was a success!  When she woke up I gave her an hour or so to eat breakfast and wake up all the way, then took off her diaper, and didn't put another on another (which she didn't mind at all).  She enjoyed it for a while, but after about two hours she started doing "the dance" and going somewhat frantically from one activity to another.  I brought the potty out into the living room, and gently asked her occasionally if she wanted to sit down and use it.  For a few months now, we've been reading a book about using the potty, so she was already familiar with the "terminology" (haha).  She actually did sit down a few times, bringing a book or toy with her, but always got distracted and got up.  She asked for a diaper a few times, and so I would start to slowly get it ready, but each time she changed her mind and said "No! No diaper!"

Finally, around 12:30 in the afternoon, after roughly four hours sans diaper, she sat on the potty and used it.  Amazing.

I wanted to give you the story of the first day, but I'll spare you (and future Hollie) the rest of it - suffice it to say that our record after week #1 is 5 in the potty, 3 on the carpet.  Not too shabby.  Warning, I'm gonna brag a little -- At least two of those in the potty were unprompted, in other words: I heard tinkling, came running, and found her already on the potty!  Beyond impressed.

It kind of got put on hold for the most part while Chris was here, so I'm thinking we'll be starting from square one on Monday.  Our weekends are always pretty busy, so I think we're just going to be Monday-thru-Friday potty trainers around here.  If that makes the whole process end up taking longer as a result, I'm okay with it.  She seems to have gotten the idea, at least.

Another new belly picture is up!  Next week we start the third trimester.  Crap, we really need to deciding on some names...      

Uncchris!

This has been the broken record playing in our house the past week.  Daniel's brother Chris (Uncle Chris or Uncchris!) has come to see us for a little while before he starts a new job!  Hollie adores him.  She took a little while to warm up to him, especially since he arrived late (after bedtime) and when Hollie woke up in the morning she found him in the kitchen instead of her daddy, but ever since then she has been like a second shadow.

A few updates:

I'm feeling good.  Big, but good.  When I sit too long my legs start feeling super heavy (which I don't remember from last time), but getting out for walks and exercising as often as possible have been helping with that.  And my back huuuurts...but what else is new, right?  It's a brief, shooting pain...sometimes even when I put a foot wrong.  Youch!  I recently started feeling hungry all the time, which didn't happen until much later with Hollie (and when it did I put on weight fast), so I'm like, oh crap!  I'm trying to have healthy snacks, or see if I'm actually just thirsty, or even just wait to see if the hunger goes away in a minute or two (which it does sometimes!)(not starving myself, don't worry).  As far as I can tell, my weight gain has been right on track, so I'm thankful for that.

I guess the reason I haven't written at all lately is because my head has been somewhere else, and I can't write about our mundane family life when this kind of stuff is on my mind.  Wish I could tell you more, but we're waiting to find out something definitive.  All I want to do is sit by the phone and sweat bullets, but I have a toddler who pulls my attention away occasionally.  Daniel has a great opportunity at work.  If he doesn't get it (or decides not to take it) it's no big deal, so don't worry - we're not stressing over anything potentially bad.  If it does happen and I get to tell you about it, then it will make sense why I'm going crazy over it.

Speaking of toddler, we've got a full-fledged one around here lately.  Some days (becoming most days), man, Hollie will fight tooth and nail about something...anything...and then later, fight about the opposite.  Like she really really really wants juice.  And then she really really really wants water.  Or NOOOO I don't want a shirt on!!!   And then later NOOOO don't you DARE take my shirt off!!!  Unfortunately, Daniel and I appear to be slow learners in this game.  We've found that by being patient, catching her in the right mood at the right moment (some pre-planning on our part helps), not fighting fire with fire, and the big one - choosing our battles, we've been able to avoid the meltdown...sometimes.  Still learning, yes, we are.  The not-fighting-fire-with-fire and the not-staying-mad-after-tantrum's-over parts have been the toughest for me, but I feel like I'm learning a little everyday and making improvements (to my own mindset) one step at a time.  I do have all the motivation in the world, after all.  She is sooo loving, when she wants to be!  She even pats your back when she gives a big hug...I love it!

Another big one - we've been making an effort to give her what she wants when she asks nicely (even if it's something that not ordinarily allowed)(but within reason).  I guess that falls under choosing your battles.  It's funny how we complain that her answer to everything is no-no-no! but sometimes we're just as bad.  Hoping this strategy has some long-term effect.  Also, we try to turn our no's into yes's: No, we're not going to have a bath now, but we're going to have one right after dinner.  And 9 times out of 10, she does remember...and reminds you!

Toddlerhood really is amazing, though.  She's become so demanding, but in a cute way!  She completely takes the lead: tells you where to sit, what toy to hold, what to do with it, etc.  She has a pretend blood pressure cuff and stethoscope, and one of her favorite things to do is have you lay down so she can put the cuff on you and "listen" to you everywhere!  It blows my mind sometimes.

Another funny thing:  when we're getting dinner ready, she sees all the food out and tells us she's hungry (hungee!), and we tell her don't worry, dinner will be ready soon!  Then she immediately climbs up in her chair, buckles herself in, and tells us about every 30 seconds that she ready to eat (ready eat!).

Her speech is growing in leaps and bounds.  Starting to string words together and everything!  However, she does tend to repeat things without really knowing what they mean, so it's tough to really gauge what she knows.  She also tends to use the same pronunciation for similar words, like monkey and blanket (mankie) and kitchen and chicken (just chicken, but ending with -on instead of -en: chick-ON!).  Her counting has taken two steps forward and one step back...she started repeating "one" and then weeks later added "two" (and she would sing "one-two-one-two-one-two!") and just recently added "three"...except that now sometimes it's "two-three-one"!  Uh-oh.  She knows and recognizes the music of Glee, one of our favorite TV shows (she calls is gee!).  The soundtrack for season one is the most requested CD in our collection!  Yeah, we might be kind of proud of that.  :)

If we're talking about more traditional kids' music, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider song (neebee spider) is her favorite, with the hand motions, of course.  Second favorite would be the Elmo song (youtube video here), rewritten to include Hollie's song, Mommy's song, Daddy's song, and lately Uncchris's song.  She will start singing that one all on her own!

Long update!  I will try to write more often.  I did add a new belly photo last week, and I'll have another one tomorrow (27 weeks!).

I've got it stuck in my head now: la-la la-la, la-la, la-la, Hollie's song...  

We've got parties set for life

This weekend during Hollie's birthday party, Daniel and I realized something awesome.  Hollie's birthday will always be fairly close to Mardi Gras, mine will be fairly close to Easter, Daniel's is four days after Christmas, and the new baby's will (probably) fall near the 4th of July.

Party themes...check!

So, we didn't really plan much for Hollie's big day...what do you plan for a two-year old anyway?  But with Daniel's parents in town from Lake Charles, and the family friends we invited having roots in Lafayette...it turned out to be a Cajun party all by itself.  

We played French music, had pasta-laya for dinner (that's jambalaya with pasta, instead of rice.  Not exactly Cajun, if we're being nit-picky.  More of a New Orleans thing, I think), and later enjoyed a king cake (carried carefully on the plane by the grandparents)(here's a link).  

The family we invited over had two kids- a three-year-old boy, and a one-year-old girl.  Despite the gaps in their ages, they had a blast together.  Hollie loves to be chased, and this boy, apparently, loves to chase, so there were many many laps around the living room and kitchen, with little sister trying her best to keep up.  It got pretty wild, but as long as they weren't hitting or pushing, we let them have fun.  They all had a hand in opening the gifts, and then the house really turned upside down!     

Trike from Abuelita and Pepere

Bowling set from Mommy and Daddy.  They could not even wait for all the pins to be stood up- they just dove into them!

So, it was a blast.  Everyone slept pretty well that night, I think.  Hollie's check-up with the doctor was yesterday, and she's doing great.  She's 26 pounds, and 33 and 1/4 inches tall.  

New picture up over there!  (Darn soap dispenser snuck in again.)  I know I skipped a week.  It might happen again- you've been warned.

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There are a few bits and pieces from the OB appointment two weeks that I forgot to share.

I've been starting to really feel the growing pains lately, sometimes an ache at the top of my belly but most often on the sides.  I remember that from before, but not this bad, so I asked and Dr. J confirmed that it is round ligament pain, and that it will probably get worse with each pregnancy.  Soooo, I think after this one we're gonna be a family of four permanently!  Just kidding, but maybe not.  We'll see.  :)

When he felt my belly to find the top of my uterus, he said, "Wow, you're already above the belly button!  Normally at 22 weeks we expect you to be just about even."  So, I think- cool, I'm measuring big!  Then he takes out the measuring tape to get an actual number, and says "Hmmm.  You're actually measuring small for 22 weeks.  Looks like your belly button is just really low."  We had a good laugh about that later...I guess you really do learn something new everyday!

How cruel of me

...to tell you we've been having fun, and there are even pictures...and then disappear for a week and a half.

There have been epic technical difficulties, which you have to ask Daniel about because I don't have a clue.  It only impacted me because we lost the use of our hard drive (got everything off first, don't worry) while we used an old laptop for internet usage in the meantime.  But we are, along with our new hard drive and half a dozen other computer bits which we apparently needed (yep, talk to Dan), back in business and I have my photos again (yay!).  

There's a new photo over there,

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and I don't even have a good excuse for why I took it four days late, either.

And now, Miss Chocolate-face...   

[still good]

Are you wondering if we have the world's tallest almost-two-year-old?  Nope.  Just an almost-two-year-old with a brand new stool...

New favorite hobby: rearranging (and closely examining) the silverware.

Other newfound skills include:

• Washing her hands.  At first she always wanted like a gallon of soap in each hand, but after I tried to show her that we only use this much, she decided she doesn't want to use any at all.  She loves looking in the mirror.  She plays a solo version of peekaboo by crouching down on the stool and jumping up, saying "kah-boo!"

• Turning on all the lights and fans in the house. 

• Using a fork to stab all the fruit in the bowl on the counter, repeatedly.  This has only happened twice, thankfully.  Both times she gave up and brought me the fruit, and told me she was "hungee".

I have more to write about: new words, bizarre habits of a certain toddler, baby kicks (big ones!), 22 week OB visit (which went great, so I guess I don't need to write about it), but I hear the silverware clattering, and I just bought bananas and a bunch of oranges, so I better go...

Schedule = sanity + getting up early

So, the new routine is going okay.  It has been a crazy ride, going from 100% flexible to 100% scheduled in such a short time, but I don't think there's any other way to do it successfully.  For six mornings in a row I have gotten out of bed at 7am to wake Hollie up.  She has been napping at reasonable times, which is wonderful, but the new problem is that she naps for like three hours (that's a looooong nap!)...and then stays up until 10 or 11 just like before.  Which makes me feel horrible for waking her up so early the next morning (on top of feeling horrible for being up that early myself).  So...do I wake her up from her nap after an hour or so??  Geez, that makes me feel manipulative/micro-manage-y, not letting her sleep as long as she wants ever.  But on the other hand, it will do wonders for our sanity (all three four of us) to guarantee that she A) gets a nap and B) goes to bed at a reasonable time.  And there's no question that she does get plenty of sleep (and she'll get a little more if we can pull that bedtime back to about 9 or so). 

I hate having to wake her up.*  But if it works, it works, and doing nothing was definitely not working.

Sigh.  I'm just glad we're figuring this out now and not, oh, 19 weeks from now.

That's right...21 weeks today!
<----  See new photo
(Maybe one of these weeks I'll remember to move that soap dispenser.  No guarantees.)
 
*To clarify, I'm the only one that hates it.  She hasn't minded it one bit so far!  She's pretty happy in the morning no matter what time it is.  Plus, she gets to see Daddy in the morning before he leaves.  :)

We have been having lots of funny fun around here, too.  Great stories with photos coming soon...

This week on extreme nap-time makeover...

Over the last couple of weeks, Hollie's sleep has been in a bit of a downward spiral.  It's hard to say how it started.  She started sleeping later in the mornings, sometimes as late as 9.  She used to normally take a nap around noon or 1:00, but when she sleeps late, that's pretty much impossible.  Then 3 or 4 rolls around and still no nap, and Daniel gets home from work which is by far the best part of our day, so napping is out of the question at that point.  One of two things happens after that:

1. She crashes right before (or during) dinner, sleeps for an hour until I wake her up, and then stays up until  11 or so, and sleeps until 9 the next morning.
2. She gets really tired and grouchy right around dinner time, but gets her wild-child second wind and sprints in circles around the house until about 11, and sleeps until 9 the next morning.

In my "current condition", I am loving staying in bed until 9am.  It's the staying up until 11pm that I can't do.  And neither can Daniel, with work in the morning.

In order to reset our sleep patterns, I'm going to try waking her up a little earlier in the morning.  I didn't like the idea at first, because you never really know what you're going to get when you wake up a toddler.  Sometimes she's furious, sometimes she's groggy and clingy, and sometimes she looks at you and bursts out laughing like you just told the funniest joke she's ever heard. 

We tried it yesterday.  I woke her up at about 7:45.  It was probably a bad idea to try this on the weekend, because spending the whole day with Daddy was just too much fun for a nap to be possible (this really is all Daniel's fault, isn't it?).  She ended up crashing at about 4, and was up until 10 or so.  Not much improvement.

This morning I woke her up at 7.  We'll see how it goes...

Also, we're (I'm) going to work on a nap-time routine that is similar to bed-time.  For some reason we've never done a nap-time routine before.  With our unpredictable schedules, she's just fallen asleep when ever, where ever...which is obviously not working anymore.  It's time.

Update: Went into the room to read some books a little before 2, and asleep by 2:20.  Win!

Quick story

In church earlier this week, while rummaging happily through my purse ("burse"), Hollie found chapstick.  I took off the cap, and showed her how it just goes just on your lips.  That translated to "lower half of the face" in toddler-ese.  I let her go, since she still had a bit of a runny nose, and her poor nose and lips were pretty chapped.  It was also adorable, and she was having fun with it - including putting some on my face, too.

Anyways, before this, she had been holding on to her Alvin the chipmunk doll, so he was still sitting out on the pew.  And he had some chapped lips, apparently.

Then things evolved from adorable to very cool...she would put chapstick on herself, then on Alvin, replace the cap, take it off again, and repeat the whole process...over and over and over.

I knew that this kind of repetition is normal for lots of toddlers, and I had seen Hollie do it a few times before, but never with this many steps, and never with a toy/object that she had never used before (the chapstick).

It was funny and fascinating and baffling at the same time. What in the world is going on inside her head?  Why did she have to take the cap on and off every single time?  Of course, we will never know.  I hope I see it again, because it was awesome.

Two heartbeats!

Heart attack?  Sorry, we're not having twins (I wish).

We got to hear the heartbeat twice!  Daniel ran late and showed up five minutes after the first time.  I would have asked the nurse to wait for him, but I was anxious!  164 bpm both times...perfect.

I am 12 weeks pregnant today!  We celebrated with a trip to Dr. J, the OB.

I have actually dropped a pound since my last appointment, which puts me three pounds below where I was when we found out about the pregnancy.  I was really surprised to hear that, because my appetite has been improving lately, food aversions are dying down, and I've been eating much better (i.e. more) than before.  I try to snack all day, but occasionally we have a really busy day and I sit down and realize I'm starving.  I'm going to make more of a conscious effort from now on.

Anyways, the doc's not worried about it, and neither am I.  I remember that with Hollie, during the last month or so, I was hungry literally 24/7.  Could not get enough.  Tried to eat healthy, but boy did I pack on the pounds in the last few weeks!  So yeah.  It'll happen.  :)

At my next appointment, in six weeks, we get an ultrasound!  Can't wait.             

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Hollie is so silly.  And SO smart. 

Yesterday, I was running around the house trying to get Christmas gifts together and wrapped...and leaving Hollie pretty much unsupervised.

I think toddlers have a sixth sense for when they're not being watched.

She's recently discovered this drawer in the kitchen that has various utensils in it, like the can opener and the corkscrew wine bottle opener and and the vegetable peeler and other things that aren't really dangerous but become dangerous in little hands.   

So rather than install another lock (our cabinets are going to look like Swiss cheese), we've just been trying to steer her back toward her own drawer, with the towels and oven mitts (which she loves to wear...it's adorable) and other boring stuff.

Of course, yesterday, while I was running around, I heard Hollie get into the drawer (because I think moms have a sixth sense for when their kids know that they aren't being watched).  I peeked into the kitchen to see her sitting on the floor playing with the harmless measuring cups.

I debated for about two seconds.  This would easily keep her for busy for the last few minutes of stuff I needed to do, but then there's the whole now-I've let-the-rule-be-broken-under-my-nose... which could come back to bite us...

...so I let her play, and got everything done that I needed to do.  Then it was time for a trip to the grocery store, so I asked Hollie, "Wanna got to the store?"  She knows what this means, and got all excited as we hunted up socks and shoes and jackets.

As we were heading for the door, she suddenly stopped like she had forgotten something, turned around, and ran back into the kitchen...
picked up the measuring cups...
opened up the drawer that isn't hers...
and put them back in.

I was somewhere between blown away by the sweetness and blown away by the fact that she remembered.

That's all for now!  I'd better go see what she's up to...

Vocabulary and other updates...

I haven't been in the mood for creative titles lately.  We have been going a mile-a-minute around here lately and my creativity is way past running on fumes.  I do want to update you on a few more words that Hollie is saying...

Water - Woggy (rhymes with froggy)

Fish - 'ish.  She only recognizes the fish that are still alive.  I get the blank stare when I try to tell her that it's also fish we're eating.

Go - Gogogogogo!

Up 

Aaaaaa-men! - This one needs explaining.  We have this little book with a short kid's prayer, and a button that will play a kid's voice reciting it, and at the end Hollie chimes in with the long, drawn-out aaaaaa-men!    

She's also fine-tuning (i.e. expanding) her use of no.  Hello, toddlerhood, we've arrived.

I love getting to record all these tiny details of what Hollie's doing and learning, and I have a great fear that I won't do the same for our future children because we'll have seen it all before.  I guess this has been weighing on my mind a little, and I've been convincing myself that I will record just as many of the the tiny details of our next child's life because I got one of these the other day...

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Tomorrow I will be 9 weeks, and due June 30th, 2011!

I promise my next post will have all the details.  :)

Post-publication edit (11/30/10): I have another equally great fear, which is that when the next baby is born I will stop updating you on Hollie.  Being a mother of two will certainly be the balancing act of all time!