Tuesday, May 24, 2011

It starts!

Tonight, at dinner, when Quint said "All done" for the eighth time, I took a firm stand. I told him that he would get no cookies or crackers tonight unless he ate more of his supper. Hubby said he could enforce that. Hubby repeated and clarified. Small pause. "You funny," said Quint with an adorable smile. My mom immediately hid behind her drink and tried her best not to laugh. I looked down at my plate and thought, "oh crap". Hubby said, "did he really just say 'you funny'?" This does not bode well for the terrible twos.

Earlier today, I was trying to explain to Quint why he couldn't jerk blankets away from his brother when they were holding up his wobbly head. Then I was trying to explain why he couldn't put his 27 lbs self in the bouncy seat ever (those things should have a toddler understandable weight limit printed right on the back!) while he was laying his head pitifully in the seat of the bouncy. As he got up to inch around me, he clearly said several times, "mean Mama, mean Mama." Talk about rip your heart out! I tried to cuddle him and explain how the bouncy was Deuce's and not Quint's while Quint's special blanket is just his and will never be Deuce's. Nothing could fix it.

Thankfully, after a nap, a meal and a trip to the grocery where Quint was within 3 feet of me for 40 minutes while I loaded his favorite foods into the cart and fed him cookies, I could do no wrong. He would walk by and grin and pat me. He would laugh in my arms and do all the sweet things he does. I felt forgiven. For refusing to let him break his brother's bouncy seat.

Deuce is a very different baby than Quint. And so far that's nice. He sleeps for larger chunks in the night, sometimes up to 4.5 hours between feedings. He hardly ever really cries! He'll get fussy and work himself into a snit, let out 2 or 3 big "waaaa"s and then wait a full minute for me to react. If those cries didn't net any results, we get another dose. It's like a snooze button. The snooze isn't long enough to complete going to the bathroom, but two snoozes usually will do it.

Deuce also perpetually has a dirty diaper. No matter when you change it, he will make a new, tiny, stinky deposit within the next 3 minutes. And it doesn't work to let him have more time. And if you change that one, he will just make another deposit in another three minutes. But once he makes a small deposit, he will feel at home there - until you decide that it's been long enough and you change it again. Surprisingly, there has been no hint of diaper rash with this phenomenon. I've started hitting him with desetin on occasion anyway.

Deuce makes the most hysterical faces. And makes the weirdest noises. On occasion, he will whistle like a teapot, bleat like a sheep, meow, squek and lots of other noises.

Here his is on the day we came home.

Here's the cat trying to get a little lovin' while
Nannie is enamored with Deuce.
Quint admiring Deuce.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Yes, you can hate me now.

I am 33 years old. Last summer, I wore size 8 pants. I had a baby last Monday. This is Saturday, AND THEY COMFORTABLY FIT!!

Our first week of life as a family of four has included a toddler with pink eye, a cold with fever, while cutting a tooth, a grandmother with probably bronchitis, a new mother with some...digestive issues, and a new father having to work 15 hour days (which will likely end tonight). So forgive me if I haven't said more on my blog this week.

Our new addition is eating well, sleeping well, gaining weight and so far is very different than his brother at this tender "days old" age.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

New Baby!

My new son was born at 3:46pm, May 16, 2011. He weighed 7lbs, 11oz. He is 19 inches long. It was a fairly easy birth, he gave a strong cry, and has been showing all signs of a healthy boy.

Here he is at about 20 minutes old with his papa.
He was right at an hour old when he met his big brother.
(M~ I look so much like you in this side shot of me!)
Quint smiled, giggled and tried to give the baby
a high five several times.

Grandpa had a good photo from that first hour. I didn't
manage to get a good shot of Nannie during that first hour.

Quint looking at his new brother,
and giggling.
Proud mama with alert baby.

Showing off.


Holding Papa's hand.
My boys!

I haven't figured out what I'm going to call my new son on this blog. I try to keep us anonymous, so I probably won't use his name on here. We called him Rastus before we had his name figured out. But that was only because it was an ultra hick name that we knew we wouldn't use. I've thought of calling him Bruiser for how he would bruise me from the womb, but there's another blog I read who has a Bruiser. I've thought of Buster for the same reason, but I'm not sure I like Buster for my sweet infant.

I'll figure it out soon, I'm sure. And I'll post more pictures later, I'm sure.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Potty Training Expert - Papa!

Apparently, my husband's instincts about potty training are about a thousand times better than mine. My first indication was a couple months ago. I was shocked at this revelation, but I am fully willing to admit it after last night's success.

But first, a brief account of the the background story from Monday. Monday morning, I left a little early for work without looking in on Quint. His Papa has been taking him to daycare on Mondays and I felt a twinge of guilt for not looking in on him before I left. That twinge of guilt vanished when I got a call from Hubby at 8am. Apparently, Quint had removed his diaper, made a mess all over the crib, but at least looked sheepish when Hubby went in to wake him. So Hubby and Quint had a very "fun" morning dealing with that. I was SSSssoooooo glad I got to miss out on the fun.

Last night, I was tired and hurting and could not get my huge pregnant belly comfortable. It hurt to sit, it hurt differently to walk. I had a negative patience level for noise, dark rooms, and any request upon me. Yes, I was the typical freakin' ray of sunshine that I've been throughout most of this pregnancy. Quint was walking around and started taking off his diaper. My interpretation: NOT GOOD!

I told him sternly to stop and not do that and only do that when you're in the bathroom. I lead him back to where his Papa was sitting and basically told him to deal with his child. He started sweetly talking to his son. I mentioned that random diaper removal might should be a spank-able offense. Hubby, disagreed in an non-offensive way and continued talking to his son. I studiously occupied myself with "useful employment" as Jane Austen would say. He finally asked him directly, "do you need to use the potty?"

Emphatic "Uh-huh!" from Quint.

Hubby whisked the now naked boy off to the potty. He went #1! Much bragging, clapping, and whatnot. I even walked all the way in there to brag on him.

Hubby instructed him to stay sitting and trying for #2. Hubby left him alone in the bathroom for a minute. I sternly said that it could be a disaster to leave him in the bathroom by himself, naked, and with yucky ammo in the potty. That netted me a "whatever" kind of look. But Hubby wandered back in there. Quint done #2 as well!

Much ecstatic bragging, clapping, hand washing, and hugging!! Amazing success on the potty! And all because of how Papa handled it completely and totally correctly!

Yeah, and me? I wanted to spank the kid when he took off his diaper and then didn't trust him to be on the potty by himself. Yeah, I'm batting a thousand here.

Oh well, at least one of us is great at this!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Quint and Jr.

I have not had the baby yet.

Here's a picture of Quint at two weeks old. See how those fat cheeks make his lower lip bow in the middle.

And here's an ultrasound picture from 5/10/11. Looks like we've got more fat cheeks on the way. Wonderfully kissable fat cheeks!
.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Baby Boy

Here are the fantastic 3D pictures of our second little boy. They estimate that he's 7lbs 4oz.
And the big huge news is that she's willing to induce me on MONDAY!!! So Monday I get to be done being pregnant!!




Monday, May 9, 2011

Playing in the pool

Here's the latest video of the golden boy.



Sunday, May 8, 2011

36 weeks pregnant - now and then

OK, so here's a direct comparison between my two pregnancies. The red shirt was a few days ago and the green shirt was at 36 weeks when I was pregnant with Quint. Everyone, including me, thinks that I look smaller this time. But the beauty of me taking these staged photos with both pregnancies is that I can directly compare them! I've cropped them based on the position of the walls. The two different cameras were sitting at the same table at virtually the same height. My lower back and shoulders were against the wall in every shot. I can't think of how I could have done this to create a better comparison.
I think my belly in the green shirt (2009) is just a teeny, tiny bigger. I'm shocked that it's not significantly bigger.

I see the doctor Tuesday. Maybe she'll decide to admit me to the hospital for some reason! I'm sure I'm completely shooting myself in the foot by being really pretty darn prepared to go into labor this week. The only thing that would be inconveniently un-done at the moment is that the infant seat has not been installed in Hubby's car yet. I would like to have the photo album caught up, but I could order the photos from shutterfly tomorrow. The bills are caught up and I've sorted the mail. The freezer is pretty well stocked. There's only a couple things we need from the grocery store. My bag is packed. Quint's is half packed with the list of remaining things in the bag. Let's see, the bassinet part of the downstairs pack-n-play isn't put together yet, but it's within 10 feet. The laundry is in pretty good shape, though is not completely caught up. The entire downstairs is vacuumed. I have extra keys made for guests. Quint has a box full of toys clearly marked for entertainment after the birth.

We were talking about it at my temp job and one guy suggested that I completely unpack my hospital bag and throw away my list of things to go into it because the fact that the bag is packed will prevent me from going into labor. I can see that. But I can't unpack that bag.

OK, it's 10pm, so it's time to take my ambien and go to bed. My chores are all done, or as done as they're going to get today.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

36 weeks and water play

Here I am at 36 weeks pregnant. I swear that sucker poked out another 2 inches last night. My skin is still trying to stretch around it. Rastus has been less active today, but still very responsive to nudges from me. And by "less active" I mean he didn't make me holler in pain with repeated foot stabs.

And now for the really interesting pictures. Here's little Quint at playing with water, like we do nearly every day as soon as we get home.
As my mom would say, "we are vewy busy."
"Pool water is tasty!"


Typically, Quint gets gleefully soaking wet and we change his clothes before we have dinner.

New words for today: star, lotion, and "donk" for donkey.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Mood Changer

Lately, and it seems to consistently be on Tuesdays, I'm in a really bad funk. It's completely emotional and it affects how I feel physically, especially here now while I'm twenty months pregnant. I wonder what it is about Tuesdays. Maybe its because the week seems to be stretching ahead interminably. Sooooooo long until Friday, even if you have nothing planned for the weekend. And the last two weeks I have completely recognized that I needed some mood alterer.

Last week, on Wednesday, I finally figured out a really annoying problem at work. I wonder if I just really really wanted to have my mood changed and that's all I could find, but still, it worked.

Today, I was feeling icky and heavy and like the shuttle to work was the worst circle of hell. You know, basically wishing I drank, or smoked, or was addicted to prescription pain meds or something.

And then said some hysterical random $hit to my co-worker and she got tickled and I started laughing at her laughing and we couldn't stop laughing and it was wonderful! It was the high quality, non-nonsensical crap that normally happens at 3am on a camping trip. And I've laughed about it four times since I got home!

For the record it had to do with Michael Jackson, fake noses and other people's reactions to fake noses on women. See! Sounds like a riot.

With that huge giggle fest, a seriously delicious nearly hour long nap on the couch in my husband's office, and managing to catch the first evil shuttle just after my work shift (which got me home 20 minutes earlier), I felt great until 9:30 tonight. And even now, at 10:05, I'm still in a good mood and feel pretty good sitting down.

Listen to this list of accomplishments - and yes! for the first time in seemingly months, I actually HAVE a list of accomplishments!!

After I picked up Quint, I took him over to the train station and showed him a real choo-choo. Then we made a stop at Walgreens. Then we went to the library for the first time ever and checked out a dozen board books. Once home, we had supper, played in the balls, read some books, washed some laundry, got Quint in bed, put the infant carseat back together (a 30 minute strap-frustration fest), cleaned out my car, emptied and refilled the dishwasher, and cleaned up the kitchen.

I also have been silly with my husband several times today, which has not happened in quite a while. I've been a REAL ray of sunshine lately. But thankfully, he hasn't gone into the "be wary and afraid of the severe mood change" phase, but has just appreciated the mood, however fleeting it might be.

It also occurred to both of us seperately that this productivity fest has in the past, in other women, indicated that they will give birth in the next 24 hours.

Yes, that might be bunk. But, I have my fingers crossed. Despite only being 36 weeks pregnant.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The roaring frog.

Whenever my son sees a picture of a lion, he does this really cute little roar. Same for a tiger. These make sense.

But when he's eating limes, and we keep telling him things like "this is a lime" he roars because he thinks we said lion. This only made sense after much thought on our part (the slow parents). Since then, we try to emphasize the M in lime. No success yet on Quint's comprehension, but ehh, he'll get it.

Here he is roaring with his limes.

Whenever we're going through various animals and their sounds, he always roars with the frogs, no matter how many times he laughs at my "ribbit" and tongue poking. Well, this morning, I finally figured that one out! We have Aristocats to blame for the roaring frog. Start watching at 2:40 in this clip.



And of course bullfrogs roar. Ok, so it's called a croak, but it's pretty darn close. So my son was not just plain wrong - he just knew of a different type of noise for that animal that was correct!

The new words for yesterday were teacher and clock. No, he was not trying to talk about clocking the teacher with anything.

I saw the doctor today and baby and I are both doing swimmingly. Apparently, she normally hooks women up to a fetal monitor for a while at this stage. We did that, and she said the baby's heart rate and such were textbook normal. Next week, I get another ultrasound to at least guess at his weight. She had some other reasons as well, but they weren't alarming. So I'm still pregnant. Everyone's healthy. I'm mostly miserable and my belly hurts most of the time with non-alarming pain. I'm ready to be done, but at not quite 36 weeks, the bun is not done, so we'll bake a bit more. Two NICU nurse friends informed me this weekend that boys really do better if they go to 38 weeks. My goal was 37 so I wailed a bit at that news. So please pray for me!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

It's a horse/cow!

For a while now, Quint has been calling a horse a cow. He's been calling a cow a cow as well, and even saying "moo" for a cow, but just in the last 2 weeks, a horse has also become a cow. So I called my friend who has a pony in order to try to straighten Quint out.

We have been playing with his plastic farm animals with sound effects. For horse sounds, I've been neeaaaa-ing and doing the horse-raspberry thing, and climp-clomp noises. I was hoping on this trip that he could at least hear the first two and he did!

Another friendly horse neeaaa-ed at us several times which made Quint really laugh. My friend's pony raspberried several times, once while Quint was standing on the ground next to his head. He jumped back a foot and then really laughed hard. He got to pat the pony, sit on the pony, and I even tried to make sure he smelled the pony.
We never got to pet the ultra soft nose because the pony was intent on grazing, but we tried on another horse. Instead, we got to see his teeth because the horse he thought I had a snack for him. He was only trying to "lip" me. Quint was never really scared of the pony which I was very glad of, and got comfortable enough to wander around the pasture while we visited and let the pony graze.


At the end, we went into the barn where about six horses poked their heads out to say hello. Quint eagerly pointed to them all and said, "COWS!!!" (forehead smack) We had been calling the pony a horse the whole time and making horsey noises. Maybe he'll get it soon.

Here he is in the pasture where he would lovingly hand me half rotten hay and then scatter it out of my hand. He laughed and laughed and ran and played.

He was really starting to look sleepy when we left after an hour and a half. He didn't fall asleep on the way home, but once we were home, he napped for FOUR HOURS! And I slept for three and a half of those. And so did Papa. We were rather shocked when we woke up that it was 2pm. Hmm.... how about some lunch?

So a big, huge thank you to my wonderful friend "next-door" who has the pony!! We had a great time and I'm sure Quint will catch on to what a horse is very soon!