Wordless Wednesday: Painting Baby

Dear Princess, Ten Things I Love About You

1. The way you crinkle your nose when you smile.
2. The way you beg for your shoes every single time we walk past the basket or see them at a store or at a museum (as below). Oh my girl, we're gonna have so much in common.
   
3. The way you think you are a big kid and try to weasel your way into your brother's games and onto any dangerous surface.
   
4. The way you always know when someone has a sweet treat and demand your rightful share.
5. The way you are so very happy when you find your baby doll or your blankie.
6. The way you're standing up ready for us to lift you would of your crib, but, oh no! wait! First you need to scoop up as much stuff out of your crib as possible- blankie, (non-special) blankets, baby Annie, and all the suckies (pacifiers) you can reach.
7. That you love to blow kisses. And raspberries.
8. That you are adorably cute in whatever wacky outfit your mama put on you. You are SO much fun to dress in the morning.

9. The way you wiggle your little finger on my touchscreen phone, like you know what you're doing.
10. The way you make me feel complete. I didn't realize I was missing something, until there was you.  I love you baby girl, don't grow up too fast.

(Ten things about your brothers, coming soon.)

Happy Birthday, Princess Dorothy.

My sweet baby girl turned one this week. If you're wonder how that could have happened, so am I. We didn't want to go all out on a party, but she needed a little cake of her own, so we had a Wizard of Oz Princess party for her. I made her a little Dorothy dress and found her a pair Ruby slippers.

I was in love with all the multi-colored cakes on Pinterest, so I made a pink one for her. I frosted it in white, with pink sugar.

In lieu of giving her her own cake, we cut a big chunk out of the big cake.

As it turned out, she was not at all interested in smushing it with her hands and insisted on (trying to) use a spoon.

 I have no idea how a year has passed already, but I can tell you that I can't imagine life without her. She's my sweet, smart, funny, tiny (18 pounds, only 14th percentile!) girl.

She makes me happy, every single day. I can't imagine how I ever thought I had enough.

I love you, baby girl.

A princess at 9 months

Ya'll want a Princess update?

At almost 9 months she says (and knows she's saying)
DaDA!, uhoh, and mama (muhmuh).  She crawls with all speed and
determination and follows us around like a puppy. She chases her
brothers into their room and looks for small toys to choke on and
unsteady toys to pull up on. She pulls to standing on anything over 4
inches high and falls regularly. She signs "all done!" but I think she
thinks it means "pick me up" as she uses it when she's done with the
crib or the walker or hell, just done being on the floor. Or the grass,
the evil evil horrible nasty GRASS.

She has three teeth on bottom and at least one on top, but will not let me
look to see if there might be two. She is still largely breastfed,
through laziness on my part, but when she does eat food it's almost
always food she can put in her own mouth. I give her the occasional
baby cereal and think I might do yogurt soon, but no baby food (again,
laziness, not planned.) She eats banana, avocado, potatoes, noodles,
rice, beans, lentils (not so well), peas, cooked carrots, cheerios,
cheese, apple slivers (apples scare me for choking more than most
things, I'm not sure why), bits of various bread, the occasional french
fry, other stuff I can't think of. I'm starting to give her water or
very watered down juice in a sippy cup so she learns to use one. She
doesn't ever have bottles (laziness, again) and I'm not about to introduce
them on a regular basis just to wean her off again.

She is very much a mama's girl and really wants little to do with Mike
if I'm around. She and the Pirate are madly madly in love with each other
and I'd be heartbroken if it ever changed. She and the Bug have a love
hate relationship, as you might imagine.

She was just at the dr this week for pink eye(!) and weighs 18lbs 1 oz. She also had her first black eye last week, after falling (onto a baby toy, not even onto one of the million pointy superheroes or big kid toys that litter our house.)

I often want to freeze her in time so she doesn't get any bigger, it's going so fast. I can't believe how much I love that baby.

(sorry for the weird spacing, this was composed elsewhere and pasted in!)

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RF: Snow?? Are you KIDDING ME??

Random Thoughts:

• We woke up to snow.  I am ready for sandals.
• We moved two weeks ago. The house is mostly unpacked with one glaring exception- my sewing.
• I took some boring pictures of the apartment, I'll share them soon. Nothing is decorated, just unpacked.
• The Princess does not need sleep. She doesn't need naps and she doesn't need to sleep at night. 
• She is also learning to crawl. She's mastered rolling to where she wants to go and moving from lying to sitting. 

What I read since the move:

• Pants on Fire by Meg Cabot. I am returning it unread. The writing quality seems really simple after all the smart YA I've read lately.
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. Loved it all the way to almost the end. Then I kinda fell a bit out of love with St. Clair. I could explain why, if you've read it.  It was still very lovely and I really enjoyed the boarding school in Paris aspect.
• Faefever: The Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning. Picked this one back up and, unsurprisingly, am still enjoying it.
• My Reading Life by Pat Conroy. Am also returning this one unread. I suspected, and Jill confirmed, that he was about to spoiler all those books I planned to read one day.
• All I Ever Wanted (Hqn) by Kristan Higgins.  Cute, I'd read more by her.
• Liar by Justine Larbalestier. Just started this one yesterday in the school pickup line.

(Edited because apparently no one has noticed the GINORMOUS snot bubble in this picture!! So ladylike.)



I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copyright Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

I was gonna post today but...

I had plans to post something awesome today (no, don't know what, but something) but I am too tired to think straight. Miss Girl was crabby all evening yesterday, finally went to sleep about 10:45. Then she got up at 12:37, 2:30, 3:30, 4:40 and stayed up til 5:30. Of course she is sleeping NOW. I think I will join her!

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Her birth story

I know that not everyone is interested in birth stories, but I wanted to get it written down before I forgot the details. Baby girl is now 9 days old (!!) and we're finally settling in to a bit of a routine. Her bilirubin levels had gone back up to a 20 and she was admitted to the hospital overnight last Friday. We spent 24 hours there and then got to bring her home again. On Tuesday she had her last heel stick and is now home for good.

Here's the story of her birth, sorry for the formatting.

My water broke at work just before 2pm on Tuesday, August 31st. I had just been home for lunch with no signs that I should expect to have a baby that day. I had my first contraction a few
minutes after 2 and texted my back up friend to come get me at 2:09. I called Mike, who was about 45 minutes away from town. I told work I was leaving and pretty much left immediately. Brianna picked
me up at work, and I got to the hospital at 2:50. By the time we got there I was contracting pretty hard, but still maybe 3 minutes apart. Got checked in and back to the room, skipping
labor triage.  Immediately got changed and into bed, the nurse checked me and I was already at a 7. She said I wasn't going to have time to get an epidural and that I
shouldn't freak out but that things were likely to get really hectic
around there. Contractions got closer and closer together, with very little rest in between. Just minutes
later I was at a 9. She said I could have an iv drug if I wanted it
and I did, but in the end it didn't matter.

My dr got there about 3:30 and I was already wanting to push. Brianna
called Mike at 3:36 to ask where he was- in the parking lot! She told him
to hurry. (I have very little memory of any of this part. Brianna was a total rock star answering my phone and returning texts and all that.) He ran in after pushing started. I really freaked out a bit,
thought I wouldn't be able to do it, and instead of finding some kind
of wild strength like you read about just felt crazy and wild. In the
end it was maybe 10 minutes of pushing (uh, I think?), but I didn't find that "place" of calm and strength and all that, it just hurt like hell. She was born at 3:47, less than an hour after getting to the hospital and no more than two hours after it all started. Mike made it in the room by 6 minutes. It was crazy.

The Pirate's labor was about 12 hours long, induced after my water broke but contractions didn't happen.
The Bug's labor was about 5.5 hours long, following the same pattern as the Girl's- water broke, immediate contractions- but not quite so fast and hard, and I got to have an epidural.
Baby Girl- 2 hours start to finish, no epidural, fairly pointless iv drug (made me briefly loopy, but did not give any pain relief.)
If I needed another reason not to have a fourth child, it would be because I don't want to have a baby in the car! I'm really glad that I wasn't any farther from the hospital and that someone was able to take me in right away. I'd never have been able to drive myself and if I'd waited for Mike I'd never have made it in time.

Anyone else have experience with a super fast birth?  While I expected it to be quick, I really never considered the lack of drugs. I know that some people choose to go drug free, but that is so not for me, at least not on purpose!


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The wait is over!

More details later- like the fact that Mike made the birth by SIX minutes! For now, she's here and we couldn't be happier. We're home and trying to figure out this three kid thing.


August 31st, 3:47 pm.
6lbs 14 oz.

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Waiting for Baby, part 3: Hurry up and wait.

Now, we wait.

I'm at 37 weeks, 2 days today. This is as pregnant as I've ever been. With both boys being early we all, my doctor included, expected an early baby this time as well. Every day I expect to be THE day.  While I haven't gained a ton of weight, I am heavy and awkward and super uncomfortable. My shirts do not cover my belly, as you can tell in that picture since I am holding it down. I am READY.

Meanwhile, life goes on right? Thursday night we had meet the teacher night at The Pirate's kindergarten. Can you believe he starts school, REAL SCHOOL, on Monday? I can not. Last night we had meet the teacher/ open house at his new daycare.  Because kindergarten is only a half day here he had to change to a new place that will do pick up and drop off for us, as his old daycare couldn't do it. He'd been going to the same in-home place for almost 5 years. We were all a little sad about that ending. (The Bug and the Baby will continue to go to her house though, so we'll still see her!) I was nervous about not being able to attend one or the other of those events, but made it right past them with no issues.   School starts on Monday and now we wait to see if I'll make it for that as well.

While we wait, I have most of the clothes washed and ready. We have diapers and wipes. Her bed is waiting (in our room) and her blankets have been washed. Her brothers and her mother can not WAIT to meet her. (Her father is still a bit nervous.)  Every day I get messages about the baby and every time I call someone they expect to hear news. Wait wait wait.

Maybe we should think of a name for this child while we wait? (We thought we had one. One of us changed our mind. There's just such pressure to Get It Right!)

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Preparing for Baby, Part 2. At home.

The second of my three part ramblings. You can find part 1, at work, here.

Ok, so in addition to having your office ready to abandon it, you (if you're me) need to have your house in some semblance of order. First there's the whole "where are we gonna PUT this new person?" question to answer. In our case, the boys will stay in the room they are in (technically The Bug's room) and the toys will stay in the room they are in (The Pirate's room) and the Baby will live in our room. For a while. I expect that we'll keep her in there until Christmas or so, at which point we will hopefully have some bunkbeds for the boys.  I'm hoping that a gradual introduction will work better with the Bug, instead of just tossing him out of what he knows when this small loud person appears.

This still leaves the matter of all the baby STUFF. I've spent the past few weeks moving clothing from one dresser to another and moving dressers from one room to another. This gave us more dresser space for the boys and freed up the built-in closet (more or less) for the baby. Most of her clothes will be in there, along with the majority of the blankets and extra stuff. A small basket of clothes, her diapers and wipes, and a handful of receiving blankets will reside in our room.  I bought a new little folding cradle for our bedside (which obviously I have not yet tried, but it looks awesome) and I expect that we'll use our little cosleeper like we did with both boys. (The First Years Close and Secure Sleeper, Colors May Vary, it has a little light on it for middle of the night checks and everything. I *highly* recommend it, even with that ugly link.)  I'm not planning on buying bottles at this time, and we already have most of the other baby gear we need.  We will need to do something about the current car seat, maybe recover it, maybe replace it.  We have a good stock of diapers on hand. If the baby arrived tomorrow, WHICH SHE WON'T, we'll be ready enough.

The last part of getting the house ready is the hardest and most ongoing part. I don't want to bring my baby home to a messy house. Worse, I don't want to call someone (Grandpa!?) in the middle of the night to come stay in my messy house while I jaunt off to have a baby. Every day I'm cleaning a small section and trying (haha) to keep on top of the clutter. I figure another couple months and I'll have it under control. (Ignore the fact that I expect a baby in less than a month.)  I'd like to have the yard mowed before then, so Mike doesn't have to think about it. It would be nice to have the car all clean and shiny when we bring her home.  I need to buy some paper plates so I can avoid dishes for a few days. The list is never ending!

While I haven't quite succumbed to the traditional freak out of nesting (yet) I fully expect to go home one day soon and start scrubbing floors with a toothbrush.   With the Pirate, I had to clean out the garage the weekend before his birth. The weekend before the Bug was born I found myself disassembling the hood to the microwave because that grease HAD to go!

If you have kids, did you have a day of full out cleaning panic that signalled the baby's imminent arrival? What household changes did you make to make room for them? Were you prepared or did the baby catch you off guard, as the Bug did to us?


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Drumroll...

On the opinion of two different techs, both of whom seemed certain, and myself, who has not been trained in the art of ultrasound technology....

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An Explained Absence

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I've been a bit scarce around the blog world lately. There are several good reasons for it- I've been super busy, my laptop bit the dust, I haven't been feeling well, we went on vacation...

In fact, here's a picture from Kauai (Yes, one day I'll post more. See: Laptop bit the dust.)

 

Wanna know the REAL reason I've been gone?

Look at the picture again.

It's ok, you can ask.

I've been secretly growing a whole new PERSON. Amazing, isn't it?  I got to see the tiny little baby this morning, including it's tiny little heartbeat. I'm at 12 weeks, which means I have a REALLY LONG WAYS TO GO, and I fully expect another few weeks of misery before I feel like myself again, but I couldn't wait any longer to spill the beans.

We're really excited about it and the Pirate is over the moon. The Bug has no clue and I fully expect his world to fall apart come September.  It ought to be interesting!

One thing though, what do you do when the kids outnumber the parents??


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