POCKETS!

My regular clothes have been getting increasingly uncomfortable, so this weekend, I dragged out my maternity clothes and did the switch-over.

Monday morning, I took out a pair of maternity jeans and put them on. And then started laughing.

The belly panel hung limply around my hips. The waistband wasn't even touching my skin. There was extra material around my thighs. I didn't even turn around to check the back view.

I pulled the drawstring cord to tighten them as much as I could and they were ... better, but still too big.

(I had been worrying that I wasn't showing very much for as far along in my pregnancy as I am (17 weeks), because I seem to remember being bigger and showing earlier when I was pregnant with Emily. And then I remembered that I was 20 pounds heavier when I got pregnant with Emily (breastfeeding is my very best, lifelong friend). And then I wasn't so worried. )

I stopped at Target to see what they had in their maternity section that might help me get through this awkward stage where regular pants make me crazy but I'm too little for my original maternity jeans.

I came out with a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis and 4 shirts. (I also discovered that I only had 4 non-dressy long-sleeved maternity shirts. I was working when I was pregnant with Emily, so I needed more business-casual stuff. This time, jeans and shirts are my uniform.)

I stopped in the bathroom of Target to change into my new jeans.

And guess what I found?

My new jeans have pockets. In the front. Pockets!

When I was pregnant with Emily, I was very disheartened to discover that maternity pants didn't have pockets in the front. It just doesn't make sense to me. Why in the world wouldn't they include pockets in pants? At the very least, we need somewhere to hold change for the vending machines. And when I started receiving baby clothes, I was even more confused. For what purpose, exactly, do pockets serve on the pants of my 0-3 month old child? Especially in the face of the maternity pant pocket discrimination.

I have also been feeling little kicks and flutters from the other occupant of my body. I just love this part of being pregnant. This is when its fun. I'm not too big (I'm only just starting to show), I don't feel sick any more, and I can feel the baby moving around in there.

I have a check-up at the OB tomorrow morning. I think my ultrasound will be scheduled at this appointment, but I can't really remember. I'll post some kind of update later this week.

A little more than two bits

I took Emily to get her first haircut today. Her bangs really needed to be trimmed - they were hanging in her eyes. April (the stylist) suggested that we trim her hair all over so that it grows in more evenly.

I took Emily (with Grandma & Grandpa's help) to a place that specializes in haircuts for children. April popped in a Baby Einstein video and Emily was entranced. (I don't really have Emily watch TV. Well, not children's TV. I usually watch the Today show and Oprah, and she kind of looks at it, but it's not really a big focus. I will introduce her to more TV as she gets older, but I have never really been sure I think that she needs it at this age.)

You can see here how long her hair was getting. And I had no idea how to comb it so that it was out of her face yet she still looked like a girl. Hair stuff like that really isn't my thing.



All done! (That is a recent addition to our vocabulary - when she is finished eating, we have her tell us "All Done". The hands by the face was her add, but it is awfully cute.) Her mouth looks funny here because she is eating a cookie. I had several different sit-still bribes on hand, and doled out a couple cookies when she started to get kind of fussy.

Overall, she did pretty well. And that was in no small part due to how quickly April worked. We were in and out of there in less than 10 minutes. Total cost? $12. Plus tip.

Worth every penny.

Love/Hate

I am a city girl. I was born and have lived most of my life in a city or a large suburb.

You can imagine, then, the adjustments I have had to make to life in the country. Our house is located on a road where traffic travels in excess of 55 mph. We have a septic tank and a well. The town we live in does not have a downtown or a school system of its own. According to Wikipedia, the population in 2000 was 10,585 (for reference (and because I have found a page about each in Wikipedia), the average population of the 4 other cities I have lived in is 47,681).

One of the bigger adjustments I have had to make is to the means of heating our house. We have an oil furnace, but it is rarely used. Instead, we heat with wood in the fall and spring and coal during the winter months.

Prior to moving into this house (which is the house my husband grew up in, his parents built it (from a kit!) in 1978) my experience with fire was limited to camp fires while in Girl Scouts and I'm pretty sure I sat back and let someone else do the heavy lifting on that. Oh, and the time that I accidentally set a pot holder on fire in home ec. But that's a different story...

My husband has been teaching me how to start and maintain both a wood and a coal fire for almost two years now. I'd like to think that I am getting better at it, but I don't know.

In the past week, we have been experiencing our first real taste of winter. It is 17 degrees outside today. And nearly every day this week, I have had some kind of trial facing me with the fire.

Monday morning, when we woke up, it was 88 degrees in the living room. Mike had the sliding door open in the dining room to vent some of the excess heat.

Tuesday, I shook the fire down (to remove the ash from the coal so that it can get air so it will burn) and shook it too much. I nearly killed it. I managed to bring it back, but I couldn't tell you what I did (other than pray!).

Yesterday, I kept forgetting about the fire and its need for attention. (You know, I only have so many hands and there were other living things (like my kid and my dog) that were requiring my attention). I didn't do anything with it until 1:30. It was pretty far gone, but I managed to keep it limping along until Mike got home and made it all better.

And then there's today. I knew it was going to be cold out today. I knew that I would need to keep a very close eye on the fire so that we don't freeze to death in the house. I also knew that I had Waterbabies at 9, for which I had to leave the house at 8:30. So at 8, I shook the fire down, took out the ashes (they go into our garden (yet another adjustment) and make the soil in the garden good, I guess) and loaded it up with coal. It looked pretty good to me when I was taking care of it, and I decided to leave the bottom door on the stove open until I needed to leave, just to give it an extra chance to get going well.

At 8:05, the fan went out. The fan on our stove is run by thermostat, so if it stops, it means that the fire is dying. I am somewhat paranoid about the fan stopping, to the point that when I am at my in-laws house and their fan stops, my heart skips a beat. (Their stove is newer and fancier than ours is. Their stove is actually attached to the thermostat of their house, so they have greater control over the temperature of the fire. The fan on their stove stops and starts, much like a fan on a furnace does.)

I have been fighting this fire ever since. I opened the vents on the stove before I left for Waterbabies as far as they would go and prayed that the fire would still be going when I got back. When I came back in the house after Waterbabies, I listened for the fan.

Silence.

Crap.

I opened the bottom door again and have managed to get the fire going pretty well (it is glowing red across the whole thing and there are some happy blue flames in it), but the fan is still kicking on and off. Mike says I need to shake it some more and then give it some more coal. Emily is sleeping right now, so I am going to wait until she gets up to do that.

If this fire gives me problems tomorrow, I quit. I'm taking Emily and we're going to visit Jennifer. This winter stuff is for the birds.

The wonderful thing about Tiggers...

Is that I am one!



You're Tigger. Playful and fun-loving, you enjoy hanging out with friends even though you don't always have to be the center of attention. You're never pessimistic or sluggish. Your enthusiasm is at once endearing and over-the-top. You're the quintessential extrovert.


Take the quiz, like Jennifer and I did and see what famous kitty you are!

Hello, I'm ...

Irrational, apparently.

So far today I have:

• been irritated by Salma Hayek's accent while she was announcing the Oscar nominees.
  
• gotten mad at my mom for not loosening the straps of Emily's car seat when she took her out of the van last night so that it was more difficult for me to put her in the seat for a trip to the store this morning.
• gotten angry with a local radio station for playing (in my twisted mind) only the older Barenaked Ladies releases, like "The Old Apartment" instead of some of their newer stuff.
  
• yelled at the dog for getting in my way. On second thought, that's not that unusual.
  
• told Emily that she couldn't come back up in my lap because she was the one who got down.
  
• seriously considered asking someone to take care of Emily so I could take a nap. She's going to go down for a nap in the next half hour, so I'm not sure what my big hurry was.
  

I seem to be a little low on patience and rationality this morning. I'm planning to crash on the couch for a few minutes when Emily goes down for her nap. Hopefully that will restore at least my patience. The rationality I can live without (though Mike might not like it!) but I'm really missing the patience.

Casting call

Emily had an appointment with the podiatrist this morning.

I mentioned this a while ago, but Emily was born with a crooked toe on her left foot. Her pediatrician didn't think it was a big deal, but when I asked my podiatrist to take a look at it after one of my appointments, he said we should correct it while we could. Emily wore a little tape splint to bring that toe into alignment with the others for about 6 weeks.

Today's appointment was to follow-up 6 months after using the splint. Her toe (which the doctor is now saying was a Hammer Toe) looks great. So great, in fact, that I had to have the doctor confirm for me which foot it was.

While we were there, I asked the doctor to tell me if the pigeon-toed walking I have noticed on Emily was a big deal (her left foot turns in about 45 degrees or so when she's walking). I really should know better by now. I had noticed the pigeon-toed thing a couple of months ago, and actually said something to Emily's pediatrician about it and she assured me it was ok. However, he's a foot specialist and I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a second opinion.

He says that not only does her left foot turn in when she walks, her left leg turns in. And how do you fix that, you ask?

Well.

You put the child in a cast.

For a month.

And the cast? It will go high, probably up to her hip.

I guess I was kind of in a daze after he told me that, because I didn't manage to come up with any questions. Nor did I remember as I was scheduling the appointment that we just started 6 weeks of swimming lessons. I made the appointment for next Monday.

Well, now, THAT'S not going to work.

And as I went to the grocery store I started thinking more and more about this. Like, what are we going to clothe this child in? And her pajamas? Are almost all of the footie-zippered variety that won't accommodate a cast.

When I got home I called the doctor back and changed the casting appointment to AFTER Waterbabies is over (simple solution, Einstein) and asked that the nice doctor give me a call when he gets a second so I could ask the questions that flitted out of my head when I was actually in the office.

The doctor said that the window of opportunity for correcting this is large, as in years, but the sooner it gets done the better the outcome is likely to be. And the faster the correction goes. As in, if we wait a year or two, it might be 6 weeks in the cast instead of 4 ... etc. And if we don't do anything at all? It's likely that she will have foot problems later in life.

So, we're going to do it, but we're waiting until after Waterbabies is over. I've scheduled the appointment for March 19. It won't be warm here yet, so she won't be missing out on fun summer-time things (like swimming in a pool on the 4th of July, like some of us did when we were in a cast over the summer), and hopefully I won't be too big as far as my pregnancy goes, so I can still lug her around without killing myself.

I can't think of much else to say here, other than that winter has finally hit. It's snowing today, and has been cold and snowy for the past week or so. And I'm not complaining! It's nice to have a winter, finally. The past couple of winters have been pretty mild, which was nice, but I was also missing the cold and the snow. I'll be sick of it in March, but that's ok.

Waterbaby

Emily and I went to our first Waterbabies class this morning.

Well, the first one of this session. She went last year when she was 6 months old.

Anyways.

At first, she clung to me like a little monkey, but after I peeled her off me a couple of times to do stuff, she started to have a good time.

After we got out of the pool, I got Emily dried off and dressed and then began to work on getting dressed myself. I took the top of my swimsuit down and put on my bra and shirt and then took my swimsuit off the rest of the way, using my shirt to keep from exposing myself to the ladies in the locker room. (unlike the lady next to me who pretty much shoved her right breast in my face. um, thanks.) As I was taking my suit off, Emily slid down off the bench and ran away. One of the other ladies clearly understood my dilemma (half-naked, need to retrieve child... ) and said that she could see Emily, she was just around the corner from me. I decided to put my underwear on before going after Emily. In the 2.5 seconds it took me to step into my underwear, Emily took off.

I found her almost back to the pool in the showers. And when I called her name to get her to come back to me? She hid. Cute, kid. Want her? :)
*********

Mike and I are continuing to discuss what to name the second child. We like Lucy for a girl, but we have no idea what to name the kid if it's a boy.

However, Susie over at What Was I Thinking? was kind enough to put up a post of very helpful suggestions. You should go check it out.

Handbag

At work (though I don't go anywhere, so I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be "at") I have been working on a project that has required me to write the word "handbag" repeatedly.

After typing "handbag" for the hundredth time, it dawned on me that "handbag" sounds an awful lot like an insult to me.

Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it

We're having a bit of an ice storm here today. It started yesterday morning when Mike pointed out that it was raining, but the outside temperature was below freezing. And it slowly dawned on both of us that those are the perfect conditions for an ice storm.

Goody.

So far, it has been somewhat anticlimactic. The weather people have been forecasting all but the second coming with this storm and so far, the roads are wet, the trees coated in some ice, but ... nothing too major. For us at least. It is still raining and I swear the coating of ice on the nut tree out back is getting thicker, but we still have power. And that is a very good thing. Especially because the power company is reporting that the two towns around us are experiencing outages. I'm not quite sure how we missed that bullet.

When we lose power we don't have water. Our heat still works (because it is a coal fire). The power flashed off for a second while I was downstairs working on the laundry. And for that second, I panicked. Then it came back on and I relaxed. For now, at least.

6 months

My mom pointed out that 6 months from today, I'll be having baby #2.

...

I don't think I'm ready for this.

Or... Not

Jury duty turned out to be a bit of a bust.

The judge came in after we had sat through a (very dumb) movie about the history of jury duty (with Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer, which made me wonder the whole time just how much did NY pay for this thing?) and how great it is that it is 'our turn' to serve democracy and told us that the defendant came into the courthouse today, saw that a jury was going to be chosen and decided to plead guilty.

I was back home by 2:30. My mother-in-law was looking through recipes while Emily took her nap. Domino barked when I came home and woke Emily up, which actually worked out pretty well because the doctor's office had called and said that the urine sample that was taken yesterday grew a bunch of bacteria. The doctor wanted to have Emily come back in and get another sample via catheter to be 100% sure that the issue at hand really is a Urinary Tract Infection. (I don't think I said very much about how they took yesterday's sample. They used what the doc called a 'sticky bag'. It was a bag with a teeny-tiny adhesive coated toilet seat (except the toilet seat was upside down, like a horseshoe). The toilet seat part was attached to Emily's girl parts to catch her urine in the bag. This didn't really go over very well with Emily, as you can imagine, nor did she like me checking to see if she had peed yet.)

Anyways. We were given a prescription for Keflex, kind of as a precaution and sent on our merry way.

The doctor also took a second to explain why it is such a big deal if Emily does have a UTI. Basically, if she does have a UTI, there are 2 possible physical issues that would be causing it. One is that she has fluid on her kidney that is becoming infected or when she urinates, some of the urine is going back up her ureter (from kidneys to bladder is ureter, from bladder to diaper is urethra) into her kidneys and becoming infected.

I'm pretty certain that this 2nd sample is going to come back negative and we'll go back to the same pattern of thinking every extended fever/virus thing is a UTI, but you never know. Whatever. (I think I'm a little more blase about this tonight that I normally would be. I'm very tired. I got home from court and then had to load up to go to the doctor's, then had to run to the grocery store to get dinner (we had planned to eat with Mike's parents, except his dad has PT tonight, so they weren't going to be eating until 7-ish, which is just too late for us) and then had to go to Target to get the prescription filled. All that running tired me right out. And stressed me out. I'm just not used to that any more.)

Serving Time

Last fall, I was bringing in the mail and discovered that Mike had recieved a jury duty summons. For some reason, I thought this was hilarious. He went, served his time and that was that.

Until I received my summons a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Mike was very gracious and didn't laugh at me like I laughed at him.

My jury term began Monday, but I wasn't required to go in until today. I have to report to the local courthouse at 12:30.

I know that I could get out of serving because I am the primary caregiver of Emily, but I don't think I am going to play that card. I served on a jury when I was 19 or 20 and found the process very interesting. I don't mind serving again. My mom and mother-in-law are willing to take care of Emily for me, so hopefully it won't be too big a deal.

I hate Tuesdays

Most every Tuesday morning, Mike has a meeting at 7am. Which means he (and usually we) get up at 5:30 instead of 6:30 (or 6:45...). Ick.

This morning gave me even more reason to hate Tuesdays. Emily woke up at 4:45 and was laying in her crib alternately crying and talking to herself. I could just tell that she wasn't going to go back to sleep, especially not once we walked past her room to get in the shower. And I knew that if it weren't a Tuesday she would have gone back to sleep before we got out of bed.

Emily was still crying off and on when we got out of the shower and so I got her up at about 20 after 6. I changed her diaper sometime after 7, but before 7:30 and she had more diarrhea. And her temperature was still going up. That's when I decided to take her to the doctor.

She took a nap from 7:30-9:30 (I had to wake her up to take her to the doctor at 10:10) and I even got to sleep some, too! That put me in a much better mood. I was feeling pretty pissy about the whole awake since 5 thing.

Fortunately, the doctor didn't tell me that this was just a virus I was going to have to wait out. She took another urine sample (this time via a sticky bag that collected it instead of via catheter) and says if it isn't a UTI, it's gastroenteritis. Goody. I'm not sure what we do for that, since when I had it I didn't do anything except wait it out. So now that I think about it, it probably is a virus I just have to wait out... grrr.
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I haven't talked much about my pregnancy here. And that is mostly because it doesn't feel very real to me yet. I'm not showing (though lots of people think I am. No, that's just belly fat that didn't go away after baby #1), I can't feel the baby move (though I think I did today while I was laying down)... it just hasn't hit home for me yet.

I had my doctor's appointment last week and it went very well. We have tentatively decided on July 11 as the delivery date for the baby. Assuming that I am still pregnant then and that my doctor is on that day, that's the day. We'll nail it down more firmly as time goes on.

I heard the heart beat faintly and that was very cool. I had gone into the appointment pretty much convinced that I had lost the baby. Not because I was spotting or having any other miscarriage symptoms, but because I'm not showing and it isn't real for me. So then, of course, the doctor had a difficult time finding the heart beat. I confessed my fear that the baby was dead and she said that was totally normal for me to be feeling at this stage of the pregnancy. She found the heartbeat and all was well. The baby didn't seem to care for the doppler thingie invading its space. It kicked at the probe twice while we were listening to it. That was very cool. Baby's got an attitude already. :)

Like I said above, I think I felt the baby moving earlier today. I felt a couple of gentle taps, you know how it is, almost like a gas bubble, but repeated. I know that the early stuff is easy to miss, so I'm not that concerned if I don't feel it moving for a while yet.

The morning sickness is definitely subsiding (YAY!) and I am getting my appetite back (double YAY!). I have been craving stuff (specifically turkey sandwiches and pizza) and have been excited to discover that the objects of my cravings are DELICIOUS. Previously I would think I wanted something, only to discover that it didn't deliver taste-wise or be able to eat two bites and then be done.

Emily is awake from nap #2, so I need to wrap this up. That's probably the only good thing about this stupid illness. She's gone back to taking more than one nap per day. I am trying to enjoy it while it lasts.

De-lurking Week

Hi all! It's de-lurking week. Please, leave a comment and say hi. I love LOVE getting comments and I read every one of them. If I have your email address, I will even respond to you! :)

This post was going to be about what I did this weekend. It wasn't very exciting until Saturday evening. We put Emily to bed with a slight (101, I think) fever and then went to bed ourselves around 10:30. At 12:30 Emily woke up and started crying. I was kind of expecting that and so I decided to get up and give her some Tylenol to combat the fever. I walked into her room and discovered that while she had been crying, she threw up. YUCK!

Of course she managed to get it in her hair and all over her jammies. And poor Oscar was decorated in a very malodorous manner. I thought at first that it was just a little spit-up and so I thought I could handle it on my own. Until I picked her up. Not a one-person job. I put Mike in charge of cleaning the child while I worked on changing her sheets. I started a load of laundry right then, the stuff smelled so bad (when she was breastfed, I thought that spit-up smelled terrible. Then we started formula and I thought I understood the definition of bad-smelling. I'm pretty sure milk throw/spit-up tops them all. *shudder* Both Mike and I were gagging). When Emily got out of the tub, her temp was 103. YIKES!

I spent the rest of the night on high-alert. Every time Emily cried (frequently) I was afraid I would hear the gurgle of her throwing up again. When I took her temperature at 9 am, it was 104.7. I believe that is a new record for us (I don't really recall what it was when we were in MI over Labor Day, but I think it was less than 104.5). I did talk with the pediatrician and she wasn't terribly concerned. She told us to work on getting her temp down and then to bring her in today if she still had a fever.

She still had a slight fever this morning (102 at 8 am, 100 at 9:30) but was acting so much better that I decided not to bring her in. If she is still feverish tomorrow, I'll bring her to the doctor. She's been fever free since lunch-time, so I'm hoping that we're on the downhill side of this thing.

OMG.

My mom and I got together this afternoon at the mall to talk with the manager of the kid's department at Penney's and to look into replacing the shirts I lost.

The manager was great. She looked up the transaction and was able to tell me that no one had tried to return the shirts for a store credit (because if I, or Emily, don't get the benefit of my $11.52 {I looked it up on my credit card statement on line} no one else is going to be able to, either!), reassured me that no one was going to be able to steal my credit card number off the receipt and took my phone number in case someone did try to return the shirts. And she didn't even laugh at me too much. Or laugh when I asked her to take my phone number.

Mom and I found different, but similar shirts to replace the original ones and she bought them for me (Thanks, Mom!). Turns out they are on even deeper discount now, so she paid less than $10 for 3 shirts. Amazing.

Then I headed home and she and Emily hung out at the mall for a while longer. (Mom offered a couple weeks ago to start doing this for me. She's going to take Emily for a couple of hours one day a week so that I can do things all. by. myself. Heaven.)

Anyways, the phone rang a few minutes ago. It was mom. She found the shirts. They were in "Emily's room" at her house. The current theory is that my MI mom brought the bag into the house for us and put it upstairs in her room. We quickly cleared the bed off that night before Emily went to bed and must have grabbed the bag and tossed it in the corner on a chair.

So ends the saga of the lost shirts. I was really getting myself upset about losing those stupid shirts. I think a lot of the upset-ness wouldn't have happened if I wasn't pregnant. The darn hormones strike again. And now, I have 6 shirts!

This just isnt me

While my MI parents were in town, Mom, Mom K, Jen and I went to the local mall. We hit the JC Penney there and I bought 3 cute little shirts for Emily. They were something like $3.19 each. (Which? Holy cow, is that a deal!) I remember standing by the display of inexpensive shirts and searching through the piles to find some that were cute, but not so overly girly that they made me gag. I stood in line for 10 minutes to buy these stupid shirts. The total cost for 3 shirts? Just over $11. I remember that Mom and Jen had taken Emily in her stroller for a wander around the store while they waited for me to finish paying and I remember catching up to them in the store and putting the bag, with the shirts and the receipt (which I never never do - I always keep the receipt with me, not in the bag) in the basket under Emily"s stroller.

That was the last time I saw the bag.

I don"t lose things like that. I am, even with a 16-month old, a fairly organized person. I can keep track of my purse, Emily"s diaper bag, her sippy cup and Oscar without breaking a sweat.

So what was different this time? How did I manage to lose a stupid bag with 3 shirts in it?

I called my MI mom and had her search her car to make sure that they didn"t somehow journey home with them. No. I called the mall security office and have searched my van and my mom"s car. All without any luck.

Talking with my NY mom tonight, she said that we would go tomorrow to replace the shirts. It"s not so much the loss of the shirts that I am upset about (though they were cute and clothes for the child are {is? Julia? Jennifer?} a good thing). It"s more that I spent $11 (which in some ways is bad in and of itself. Very frustrating. I felt like I was splurging to buy the shirts in the first place) and have nothing to show for it. Along with the unsettling feeling that I lost something. I just don"t do that.

What am I going to lose next? Emily? My car?

PS: I apologize for the use of " instead of an apostrophe. Blogger wasn"t playing nicely this evening and I"m not in the mood to fight with it to figure out why every time I hit the apostrophe key my browser opens a Find window.

5 Weird Things About Me

I have seen this meme all over the place and have been having fun reading up on other's idiosyncracies. So I thought I would hop on the wagon and tell you mine. Hopefully I can come up with 5.

• I don't like it when the open end of the pillow case faces out to the edge of the bed. I have had some troubles in the past with my pillow (ok Mike, slowly) making its way out of the case. Mike mocks me about this one because I insist that his pillow also should have the opening of the pillow case facing into the center of the bed, so, as I once said "it doesn't squirt out of the pillow case." I think its the squirting part that gets me the most mocking. He turns his pillow so the open end faces the edge of the bed all the time, just to bug me. Fortunately, after nearly 5 years of marriage, and nearly 8 years of life together, I am learning to ignore him.
  
• I hate the song Roxanne by The Police. Hate it. Refuse to listen to it. If it comes on the radio I have to change the station. It gets in my head and will. not. come. out. *shudder*
• I can't sleep without something covering me. I have to at least have a sheet on me. If it is hot out, I will cover my torso with the sheet and hang my legs out, but I have to be mostly covered to be able to fall asleep. I also don't like to sleep in the nude. I think its the same must-be-covered thing.
  

Ok. Time out to call Mike and ask him what my other weird things are. I can't think of any more, but stopping at 3 is just lame.

• I chew ice cream. All ice cream, even if it doesn't have chunks in it. Though I don't very often eat ice cream with chunks. Because that's just too much chewing.
  
• I don't like the smell or taste of spearmint or cinnamon, especially in gum. I like cinnamon the spice ok, but the fake cinnamon and spearmint smells make me sick to my stomach.
  

And, for the record, Mike was no help. He came up with the fact that I don't have a gall bladder, and that I do everything fast. Neither of those are really weird. At least I don't think so. Lots of people don't have a gall bladder. And I have already discussed my speediness here, so you guys already know that.

Yippee!

I think I can pretty safely say that the morning sickness has left the building.

Sometime last week, Wednesday, I think, I decided to try not taking the Compazine. And... nothing. No nausea. No incredible fatigue. Appetite. Energy. Desire to hang out with my husband.

I was able to eat that day and even had a craving. I suddenly wanted broccoli and carrots in veggie dip. So I went to the store and bought them and they were the most delicious food I have eaten in quite a while. I weighed myself Thursday and I've lost 3 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.

The down side so far is that my stomach has shrunk after two plus weeks of eating only enough to keep me from passing out, so I can't eat very much. If I do, I get very nauseous and run the risk of tossing my cookies. Which? I also ate recently. And they were delicious. Clearly I am working on regaining the above 3 pounds.

I have an OB appointment tomorrow. I should be able to hear the heartbeat through the doppler dealy.

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Emily has pretty much outgrown her 18 month clothes. She was supposed to be in those until mid-February, but she must have hit a growth spurt because all of her pants were getting short and all of her shirts, especially the onesies, were pulled tight so they could be snapped at the crotch. So I bit the bullet last night and changed her over to the 24 month/2T stuff. Some of it is going to be a little big, but at least I won't be giving the poor kid a wedgie every time I try to snap her onesie. Which would be pretty uncomfortable with a diaper. It's bad enough with underwear. :)

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Our holidays were very nice, but I am glad they are over. My MI parents came in this weekend. It was great to see them, and they brought my favorite cousin with them. It was way cool to see her, too. She stayed at our house, so we got a bunch of time to just hang out and talk. Emily let us sleep until 8 every morning except the few that Jen was staying with us. Then she was up at 7:30 at the latest. Thanks, kid.

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I have been giving Emily time outs for the few times she doesn't listen to me or when she gets into my chair (which is in the living room next to my computer. She used to be allowed in my chair, but one time she somehow fell in between the table and the chair and with the crying that followed you would have though that a limb had been torn from her body. And so it was decreed: Emily is not allowed in Mommy's chair. It is a time-out-able {if that's a word. and if it wasn't, it is now} offense.). Anyways, this afternoon, I had to drag Emily out of my chair no less than 3 times. For a while the memory of her fall was still clear enough in her memory that she stayed far, far away from my chair. However, this has clearly faded, as memories do, and now I am stuck. How do I communicate to her that Mommy's chair is off-limits? Do I keep giving her time-outs when I find her in my chair? (And along with that, do I have to catch her in the act of getting into my chair, like I do with the dog - I have to actually catch him when he starts to misbehave or I can't really punish him for it, or can I punish her when I catch her, even if she's clearly been in the chair for a few minutes before I catch her?) Do I adopt some other age-appropriate punishment? Like ??? I have no idea. Help!!