Ch-ch-ch-changes

So many changes in such a short little time for my little nugget.

Anna’s completely moved into her new room – with toys and clothes and books and everything (it’s not just a bed anymore). She’s starting daycare full days next week – 2 days a week. She’s getting used to Mama not being around as much. And before you know it, the new baby will be here.

I even thought (for a nanosecond) of testing out potty training with her. The reason being… when I’m in the washroom she comes in (there is no such thing as privacy in the loo anymore), grabs some toilet paper and “wipes” herself. She’s showing signs of knowing what to do. And yesterday morning, she trotted out of her bedroom when she woke up, marched straight to the change table in the nursery, pointed to her bum and went “ooooo….” with a squinty face. She had pooped and wanted me to change her promptly.

Such a smart little kid, she is.

Anywho. With all the new things going on, I think potty training can wait. Not to mention, she’s still teething off and on, which is extremely unpleasant for her and everyone else involved.

I guess these are all just more signs of my little Anna growing up. (Sniff, sniff.)

Every once in a while I think, “My goodness, she’s so grown up.” It happens when I watch her run around – so quick and nimble on her little legs. Or when she walks hand-in-hand down the street with me, pointing and waving at people and cars and dogs she sees. Or when she sleeps in her big bed.

But then again, she’s still got very little hair and doesn’t say much. And she still likes Mommy to lie next to her when she can’t get back to sleep. She still wants Mommy to hug her and cuddle her when she’s upset.

And it reminds me that she’s not so grown up just yet. I’ve still got time. She’s still my little baby.

And an amazing little baby, she is.

Answers to your questions

Hey Mamas. How y'all doing today? Me? I'm fine, thanks for asking.

So a LONG time ago when I was actually blogging regularly, I asked all of you lovely readers to let me know what topics you'd like me to tackle. And now - a good 5 months later - I will respond to your questions. How lovely and prompt of me, no?

Question/Topic #1:

"How about post baby birth control? I'm curious to know what other women are doing. I've tried to avoid going back on the pill, but my hormones are crazy now that I'm moving up in my 30's."

Ah, post-baby birth control. This is something I'm obviously very good at. (This is a joke, you see... because I done got knocked up again and all). But this is an interesting topic to me. Once I spit out baby #2, I don't plan on going back on the pill. It's just not for me anymore. And since hubby and I have discovered that we're VERY fertile (I won't go into detail) I'll have to be quite concerned/aware of this afterwards.

So... since I'm not well-versed on this topic, do any of you other Mamas want to offer up your suggestions? What do you do?

My first (and, admittedly ONLY) thought has been to make the hubster get the snip. If I have to carry the kids and give birth to them - he can deal with a little snip here and a little snip there, no? Is that wrong? That's really my only thought on this topic so far. I'm kind of stuck on it. Lucky hubster.

Question/Topic #2:

"I know you're not there yet Hez, but can you ask your Moms about second pregnancies? How is it different from the first - showing sooner? Morning sickness that is actually worse the second time around?"

As you can see, I'm so incredibly late in replying to these comments, that I'm actually 26 weeks pregnant now. So I actually AM there. I'm 26 weeks there, yo.

My second pregnancy has been VERY different from the first. I was sick as a dog for the first 2 and a half months. I puked. And when I puked, I would pee my pants. (Gee - the snip solution is sounding better and better, no? My husband's never had a giant head pushing on his bladder day in and day out. He doesn't have to feel the fear of God every time his nose gets a tickle in it and he's out in public.) I had horrible skin. I was EXHAUSTED and had very low energy. My hair was falling out instead of becoming thick and glorious like it did the first time around.

Things have been much better in my second trimester, but I'm still pretty damn tired. I still pee every time I sneeze (this certainly didn't happen THIS early last time). My skin still kind of erupts every now and again. But all in all, I can't complain too much right now.

Oh - but another difference? I did prenatal yoga and walked throughout my entire first pregnancy. I even jogged up until 23 weeks or so. This time? Not a lick of exercise. Nada. Nothing. Unless you count lifting chocolate covered almonds from the bowl to my mouth. I like to do lots of reps and sets of those.

Question/Topic #3:

"I would be interested to know more about what people are feeding their little ones. Olivia is 10.5 months now and I struggle to come up with new food ideas for her. She can eat some of what we eat, but not quite everything yet."

Another topic that I may not be the best one to answer. The reason being - Anna's been teething off and on for a while, and for the last 2-3 weeks, she barely eats anything.

She's literally living on Cheerios and milk, toast and cream cheese, apples, applesauce, yogurt and bread sticks. Nice and well-balanced eh? Last night we actually managed to get her to eat some pasta which had a veggie or two in the sauce, but when I ask her if she wants to eat her squash, for example, she scrunches her face up and yells "Noooooooooooooooooooo!" at me.

So - yeah. I may need my experienced Mama friends to answer this one for me as well.

Phew. It feels good to get caught up! (In a slightly half-assed way).

Look for instalment two - coming soon. I promise I'll answer the next set of questions before I birth this baby in another 14 weeks.

Honest.

Question of the day

Does your child have any sort of predictable wake-up time?

Anna doesn't seem to.

A few days ago, she got up at 5:30 and would NOT go back to sleep no matter what. The next day? She slept until 7:30. Today it was 6:15am. That's a big window each morning.

I feel like I need to go to bed at 9pm every night, just to ensure I get enough sleep. You know, since I never know when I'll be up.

Anywho. So there's not much for me to blog about today. Just wondering if any Mamas are still reading (with all my gaps in posting, I really don't blame you for not reading). If you actually are still reading, weigh in on the Mom o' the Day Question, would ya?

I'm curious.

Big girl

A few nights ago I had my very first real and true parenting moment.

It happened after Anna went to bed.

I walked by her room. Looked at her empty crib. And tried really hard not to cry. (The one, lone toy and her two baby blankets laying inside made this extremely difficult, however.)

My baby was sleeping in a big girl bed.

Sniff, sniff... She's so not a baby anymore.

Up until now, I understood when other Moms talked about sobbing as they put away the little clothes their baby no longer fit into. I just didn't have my own experience. I got it - but I didn't relate 100%.

Now I get it.

It's very exciting that Anna's getting bigger and reaching new milestones and becoming more and more like a little kid instead of a baby. It's fascinating to see her develop and to discover how much she understands and comprehends. But at the same time - it's sad to think that she's growing out of the baby phase. It's sad to think about how quickly that time goes.

The other night, when I lay with her in her bed as she drifted off to sleep, I had a fleeting moment where I thought "Maybe I shouldn't lay here until she falls asleep. She'll need it every night. It'll start a bad habit that we might not be able to break for a long time."

Then I looked at her cute little chubby hand, opening and closing over her soother (she plays with it to get to sleep) and I reached out and stroked her soft skin on that delicate hand. I ran my finger over her eyebrow in a soothing motion, watching her be lulled to sleep by my presence. And I thought to myself, "How long?"

How long do I have before she won't need me (or want me) around, touching her and hugging her and kissing her? How long will it be before we're too big to fit into bed together and she'd rather sleep by herself? How long until she's an honest-to-goodness big girl, asserting her independence and no longer in *need* of Mommy?

Yes, she's only 19 months (almost), so I may be getting ahead of myself here. But man, those 19 months went fast. Now I find myself wishing for time to slow down. I want to savour every moment.

So, baby experts be damned. I'll take our bad habits for as long as I can get them.

Because there's nothing like laying in bed with my little girl, cuddling her close and watching her eyes close as she drifts off into a happy, secure sleep.

That, I've discovered, is what this life thing is all about, isn't it?

Our gift

"I really am your gift. I am not just a little person who needs to be "raised" and taught, and taken to activities....I came to the people in my life to bring a message: slow down. Feel. Be. Over and over again. When you do, you will notice immediately, that I am not an obstacle to your work, or inconvenience to your daily life. Instead, you will come to appreciate my honesty, humor, presence and love."-- Bruce Scott

I read this quote this morning on Facebook and my eyes started welling up.

What a beautiful, beautiful reminder, no?

When I'm feeling tired and at my wit's end and not sure what to do about Anna's moods or her teething or the fact that it's so hard to take care of a toddler while pregnant and working from home... I must remember this.

I must remember that Anna is a gift.

My goodness, Andrew and I are so lucky to have her in our lives. She constantly amazes us with the things she learns. She gives back to us every single day through her smiles and her laughs and her hugs. When she wants me to hold her, I feel nothing but unconditional love. When she leans in to give me a kiss, I feel pure happiness.

She is a gift.

Andrew and I were given her to bring us closer together, to make us better people, to learn to love and be patient and kinder to everyone around us. To take joy in the simple things. To find happiness in everything we do. To just feel... so lucky.

Our cup runneth over.

Thank you, Anna. Our little gift. All wrapped up in an incredibly cute package.

Indoor play. Ideas, anyone?

Hello there. Remember me?

I’m the person who started this blog and told everyone to read it and asked you to “like” it on Facebook and then I disappeared off the face of the planet.

Sorry bout that. But… there you go. Life happens. And now I’m back!

As most of you know, I’ve been pregnant and exhausted and taking care of Hurricane Anna and working and trying to find endless things to do to keep Anna occupied and happy and all that.

So I’ve been a wee bit busy. Such is the way of the world when you have a toddler though, right?

What’s new with all of you?

Anna’s cutting new teeth. She now has 9 teeth. Only 23 more to go! (Is that right? That seems like a lot.) Oh, teething. The bane of my existence.

The good news is – we were on vacation while she was teething so the kids and the sun and the beach and the lake and the ice cream provided a very nice distraction for Anna.

The less good news is – vacation is over. Which means – back to trying to find things for Anna to do to keep her occupied and having fun.

Honestly – the kid is bored with her toys. She wants to go outside the minute she’s done breakfast and gets really mad if we don’t let her. What about rainy days? What about when it’s too hot or too cold? I can’t reason with her – so I end up having to listen to her whine and screech at me most of the time.

Good times… Good times.

So here’s where I ask the seasoned Mamas for some tips. What’s a non-crafty Mom to do with her kid inside?

(I say “non-crafty” because I “liked” Play at Home Mom on Facebook to give me some ideas for indoor play with an 18 month old. Yeah. The tips and ideas on that site are for people that are WAY more crafty and resourceful than I am. They make everything from scratch – like glue and paint and sensory boards – and have these HUGE, really well organized play areas for their kids, so it doesn’t matter if they get rice and sand and coloured yogurt everywhere. One of the Moms built a giant bubble out of some kind of see through paper in their backyard for their kid to run around in, for pete’s sake.)

I digress.

So – other than colouring (Anna likes it for about 5 minutes) or play-doh (which she intensely dislikes for some bizarre reason), what can we do inside?

Baby #2

I'm feeling maternal guilt for poor little unborn baby #2.

At this point in my pregnancy with Anna, I had blogged pretty much every day about every little detail. How big she was (baby is now the size of a peach!), how big I was, what sort of things we had done to get ready for baby, what I was thinking, how I felt, etc. etc. I think I'd even written a few of those "Dear baby" posts. (Such a cute first time Mama thing to do, no?)

This time around, I haven't done much other than take my vitamins every day and sleep with the snoogle each night. Other than my big ol' belly (that's popping MUCH earlier), I honestly keep forgetting that I'm pregnant. Even though I'm 20 weeks now. Half way there!

So I think it's about time to make sure the second child doesn't consistently feel the "second child syndrome".

My 20 Week Pregnancy Update:

How far along: 20 weeks. (Or 19 weeks, 6 days depending on which due date I go by: The 19th of December or the 20th.)

Symptoms: Feeling pretty good! Last time around, I had some annoyingly consistent acid reflux... but this time it hasn't been too bad. Woo! Other than being totally exhausted, I can't complain much. My skin has finally cleared up. I'm not nauseous anymore. It's going okay so far.

Weight gain: About 10 or 11 lbs. I'll find out for sure tomorrow at my midwife appointment. I think I was close to 15 or 16 lbs. last time around. Running after Hurricane Anna must be helping!

Movement: I've just started feeling the baby move around over the past week or so. I have a theory that this baby is pretty chilled out. Not much gets the little thing all riled up. Good thing this is my second pregnancy. If it was my first baby, I would have been totally freaking out that I couldn't feel the baby move every second of every day.

That's about it for now. Hurricane Anna needs my attention. Sorry, baby #2. I promise that I'll be totally and completely fair with my time when you arrive.

Love,

Your tired Mama.