don't judge

We are likely going to cause some major life scaring to Connor, but I just have to say how delightful the last few nights have been.

First, let me back up a bit.

Several months ago we were having a horrible time with Connor getting out of his bed and appearing in our room in the middle of the night. Not cool when it wakes me up and I can't go back to sleep...up for hours and then a zombie the next day. We started a sticker system in which he got to select a sticker for his calendar when he stayed in his bed all night. This worked great...for a while.

Then Connor and I went to Georgia and he got used to me sleeping in the same bed with him. We were home for 1 week and his sleep was all out of whack again then we went to Ohio for 3 nights. Again, he was used to me being in bed with him. The next weekend was my trip with Jill to New York (yes, I need to add those pictures) and he slept in bed with Brian the 2 nights that I was away. It is not ME that he needs or wants to sleep with. He just doesn't want to sleep alone.

It doesn't help matters that since I've been pregnant, I wake up quite a bit on my own and rarely wake up where I went to sleep. Connor typically finds me in the morning on the couch, in the guest room, in the basement on the couch or in my office. Thank goodness the poor kid doesn't freak out. All of this to say that sometimes when he appears in our room, I am not even in the bed. He just crawls in with Brian.

Well, since I've gotten back from New York we have essentially traded beds. He likes to have a bed buddy (probably how we are scarring him) and I sleep SO WELL alone in his bed. I can sprawl out, twist, turn and if I need to get up, I'm not disturbing anyone. I have not waken up in the middle of the night for the last 3 nights...that has got to be some sort of record for me during pregnancy.

Additionally, when Connor is in his own bed, he wake up between 7:00 and 7:30 like clockwork. It is currently 8:25 and he is still sound asleep in our big bed.

Like the title of this post requests: don't judge. This is called survival and it is working great at the moment. I'm sure Connor will not be sleeping with Brian when he is 10, so for now I am just going to embrace the great sleep that I have gotten in the past few nights. I'm calling it a victory for me and the baby! And Brian admits that although the occasional foot in the rib is not so pleasant, he likes having Connor as a bed buddy too.

Those two have already grown closer over the past few weeks and I am going to need them to hang out quite a bit when the new baby arrives. So, I'm really glad that they are getting in the routine a little early.

Ok, back to work before the little man gets up and find me in the office....

priorities...

I'm hosting Bunco tomorrow night. Except we don't have enough people to play so we are just getting together and eating, etc. Fine by me!

Do I know what I am going to have to eat? No.
Have I cleaned the whole house so it is very presentable? No.
Is the laundry done? No.
Kitchen even clean? Partially...but not for guests.
Have I caught up on all my book covers? No.
How about stationery stuff? Nope.

So, what do I decide to do? Of course, I'll tile the coffee table. Nothing like a trip to Home Depot at 8:30 pm with Connor with me (he wanted to ride the car cart). I found some mosaic tile that should look good for $5 per 12" square. I also got colored grout.

I definitely have my priorities in order, don't I?!

I did clean my office today so it is presentable. However, the hall still has a few odds and ends that need to be put away...but where to put them?? As a part of the cleaning process I rearranged the furniture and assembled a new workstation that attaches to my current Ikea Expedit shelving unit. I'm pleased even if Connor walked in and said, "I don't like it." The kid is weird. Sometimes he likes change, other times...not so much.

I have GOT to finish some graduation announcement designs tonight and I need to do some business cards too. Today...or maybe even all week I've needed a few extra hours in each day.

However, happiness....I am 17 weeks today. My goal is to do the bump picture every two weeks. Today has come and gone so I will add it to the list of things to do tomorrow....man that list has grown quite lengthy. However.....back to my tile. :)

Here are some pictures of the table...in progress. Hopefully there will be a finished product picture tomorrow. At least there better be, I have until 7:00 tomorrow night to finish it....and all my other stuff too!

The train/coffee table without the top on.
I would organize, but it would never stay that way.

Positioning the tile. Mitsy was helping...can't you tell?

Tile all laid out and I jumped the gun with the grout a bit in the corner.
I'll do the rest tomorrow. It is a color called "earth".

Just imagine the top on the table in front of the couch. Ignore the mess...

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

I finished grouting the table at about 1:30 am. I wanted to go ahead and do it so it had time to dry and then I could wipe off the excess  grout. Sometimes things work out perfectly, and sometimes not. In my case, I am about 1/16 (or less) of tub short of grout. It is in the corner and unless I point it out, you'd likely never know. So, technically the table is still unfinished, but that corner will have to start driving me nuts before I spend another $10 to make it 100% complete. Here are pictures of the finished project.

Additionally, "Bunco" was a big success. Although I did not have time to flat iron my hair, I wasn't running around like a chicken with my head cut off at the last minute, so that was an added bonus!
 I had a ton of fruit and a fruit dip on the buffet in the basement as well as a small veggie tray with red pepper humus. Then for the main dinner, I had a setup of taco/burrito/fajita stuff. I found a super cool chafing dish/rotating buffet server with 4 openings at Aldi for $19.99 so I had taco chicken & beef in two then sauteed peppers & onions in another and cilantro lime rice in the last. I also set up our quesadilla maker for those that wanted a DIY quesadilla. On my Wilton chip/dip tray I had all the condiments: tomatoes. lettuce, 2 cheeses, cilantro & sour cream. Then I had a large bowl of chips with guacamole, salsa and cheese dip.

Eclairs and/or key lime pie for dessert. Everyone said it was good and I was happy to have a pretty healthy spread.

hiccups

I'm not exactly sure about the context, but here is a Connor "funny" for you (and for me to remember).

Brian witnessed this one and is still cracking up about it.

Last night while helping Brian take out the trash...

McKenzie (4.5 year old across the street): "Connor, you wanna come over to play?"
Connor: "Sorry, I can't. I have the hiccups. Maybe later, oh-k-aay?"

What in the world?! He claimed to have them earlier in the day, but I never actually heard him "hiccup" and since when did they prevent you from playing outside with a friend?!

Mitsy & Connor

Although not the greatest since it was 3:30 am when it happened, but Connor just came out into the living room (where I am on my computer working) and in a very normal, yet high pitched, excited voice said, "I'm so happy! Mitsy slept so still in my bed with me!"

This is a first. It makes me happy.

He went back to bed pretty easily and I went in with him and took a few pictures with my phone. I'm not sure how much it has to do with wanting to be with Connor or that she likes the new solar lantern that he is currently using as a [large] nightlight hanging from his fan...

Mitsy at the foot of the bed....safer there as Connor tends to go horizontal!

Not to be excluded, Toonces got in on the photo action too.

A dark picture of my Ikea find: weather-safe solar lantern

#1 Pet Peeve about living in Michigan

Another post....I know....

The Michigan Accent & Michiganders' Slang Words (click to read the whole article)
——excerpt from the above article——
Lookit! - This one is kind of tough to explain, but is definitely something a lot of people around here use (I actually don't do this anymore.) This is said when you find something cool or gross or something that's, otherwise, worth a look. You say, "Lookit." I think it's a combination of the words "Look at it" and is comparable to saying "check this out."
———
This drives me bananas. Brian and I do not say it, but Connor has still picked it up and I find myself correcting him on a regular basis. "Look!" or "Look at it." are perfectly acceptable. "Look-it" is NOT.

If you do read the rest of the article it is kinda funny. I'm familiar with almost all of them except I didn't know some of the words for tourists....but I know we are trolls. :)

Toys & Doctors

I know....the most blog entries in a short amount of time....some sort of record I'm sure.

Toys——

2 minutes ago:

Me: Connor, you need to put your toys away (trains all over the living room)
C: but I don't want to.
Me: and I don't want to step on trains
C: just go around them instead.

not much of a response for that one...just do it, kid.

He is picking them up now after he kicked the beachball into the glass of the fireplace (with the fire on) twice and had to deal with a little rant. The last thing we need is colored plastic melted to the glass of our fireplace!

Doctors——

I was just looking through the list of 41 people that "liked" our facebook picture announcement about Baby #2. As I was scrolling down, I got such a big kick out of the fact that my OBGYN "liked" the picture! I don't know why I find it so hilarious, but I do. He is one of Brian's surgeons for work and I was unaware that they were "friends" on facebook.

It is so nice that have a bit more than a doctor/patient relationship. Today he told me to feel free to abuse the fact that I have his cell phone number. (okay, Brian has it) And said even if it is the middle of the night, just to text him and he'll respond within 30 seconds and go right back to sleep. HA. I guess that is a skill you get when you are an OB. Anyway, Dr. Lown is fabulous and I am so happy that he will be delivering this baby!!

Easter 2012

My favorite Easter facebook status, by Ric White, the minister and friend that married us 8.5+ years ago.

That awkward moment when the guy you put to death gets up out of the tomb, very much alive, and turns out to be the Savior of the world.
Happy Resurrection Day, everybody.

I obviously have a lot of pictures, so I though the collages were the best way to go for these.

Connor had a blast dying eggs on Saturday afternoon after a full day of spreading mulch (very sore knees) and playing with friends. We only had one casualty out of a dozen eggs, so I thought that was great! (and it was my fault...it cracked when I dropped it into the pot to boil.)

Easter morning, Connor was up at 6:15, but I managed to get him to lay with me (in the guest bedroom) until about 6:45 when he just couldn't wait any longer and I told him to go see daddy. Brian asked him to go see if the Easter bunny had come, but Connor refused. We figured out he was concerned that the bunny might still be there! I'm not exactly sure what made him think this, but last week we saw the bunny very casually ordering pizza at Sbarro in the mall and then he walked through some double doors. Connor can tell you all about it, but I'm guessing this casual behavior led to his concern about the bunny drinking coffee and reading a paper in our living room?? The bunny got very creative this year...my favorite being the Elmo egg driving Connor's toy plane. There was also an Elmo egg operating the Keurig and getting a drink of water from the fridge. There were 77 eggs in all. Unless I miscounted on either end, Connor found 76 (we are positive all the hard-boiled ones were found!) He also got a basket with treats: a large egg filled with Reese's eggs, 3 Chuggington trains (Harrison, Eddie's Carriage House, & Speedy McAllister), as well as a stuffed chick and a package of 4 "Easter Speedster" Hotwheels cars. He was even more excited about all the candy inside the eggs, but was unable to open the rascals. The eggs with a vertical opening are tough!

Brian went for a run following the hunt in preparation for his "Tough Mudder" in Ohio next weekend. He ran 8 miles and then put his suit on and stood in the lake for 10 minutes. His version of an "ice bath". (yes, our neighbors could see and came out on the porch to ask about his sanity). Then we got all dressed up and ready to go. Although it was very blustery, we managed to get a few pictures outside. I love the one of Connor on the left...what a little poser. I look super fat (and not necessarily pregnant in the upper center picture) but oh well. You can only do so much with a timer. The blooms are the Purple Prince Crabapple tree in the front and our center bed with tulips and lavendar. The tulips near the house didn't do so hot. I think the crazy weather has somehow zapped them. By the way, it is snowing. Of course nothing is sticking, but still....craziest weather ever.

Happy Easter!!

"Facebook official"

The title of this post is super lame, but after getting to hear the beautiful heartbeat of our baby again this morning (with a doppler), I am finally confident enough to announce our news to hundreds of folks via good ol' facebook.

The baby's strong heartbeat was around 145 beats per minute this morning. (Dr. Lown said that anything between 120 and 160 is great.) I am feeling more baby activity, but it is still pretty random and not something that I will freak out about if I don't feel it every day. I will be 15 weeks on Thursday. :) I also felt better today after Lown told me that my chances of losing this baby now are as low as they are going to get for the rest of the pregnancy, so hopefully the paranoia will go down a little bit now.

Good day.

My next appointment will be an appointment/ultrasound combo. It was originally scheduled for the 15th, but B had a conflict, so yay for us....it was bumped up to May 11th! I will be 19 weeks and 1 day. We should find out the gender, but also the overall health of the baby. I remember this being a long appointment with Connor and although he cooperated to let us know he was a boy, some of the other measurements were hard to get. Prayers continue that this little one is healthy and doing great.

Connor seems to think the baby is a girl. I'm not going to lie and seem to be leaning that way myself, but I also thought Connor was a girl....so my mother's intuition is not so great. Connor calls the baby "she" and kisses my tummy on a daily...if not hourly basis. He says, "I want to kiss your baby." Yesterday, I reminded him that it is Daddy's baby too, and Brian chimed in to tell him that it is his baby as well. So, he can kiss "OUR baby". He liked that and told me on the way to school that "she" was his friend. Be still my heart, little buddy.

The picture at the top was taken in our backyard on Easter Sunday: 14 weeks, 3 days pregnant. I will do another post with more Easter pictures.

Our Sensitive Child

Although I have pretty thick skin in some situations, at other times, when I feel that someone is disappointed in me, I tend to melt into a pool of tears. Although probably NOT so extreme, I know Brian has the same kind of feelings.

Connor does too.

While we were in Georgia there were two instances where it could have been perceived that a stranger "got onto" him. The first was at gymnastics and a woman (who I'm confident thought Connor was probably 4.5 or 5) snapped at him because he passed her daughter on the steps leading to the balance beam. I was not standing right there, but saw her reaction and could read her lips that she was pointing and telling him he needed to apologize. Of course I went over there and she told me that "he startled" her child. God forbid. I agree that he needed to be more careful, but it is gymnastics and he is 3. There is no need to freak out. Her child was absolutely fine, meanwhile, my traumatized child was in tears for the next 10 minutes. At one point he told me he just wanted to go home. Thankfully, 2 uncles arriving at the gym to play helped distract him a bit.

The other situation is almost comical because I have almost been forbidden to mention "the gate". For some reason, he did NOT want Brian to know what happened. We were home for 2 days before I was allowed to tell Brian...and Connor wasn't even in trouble. He was just embarrassed and didn't want Brian to be disappointed in him I guess.

Several days before we left Georgia, my dad took Connor and Torin to the newly inhabited neighbor's backyard. They have a small pool that has a little "fountain", waterfall thingy that the boys wanted to see. No problem. The next day and our last day there, after all the cousins had gone home Connor was outside with my dad. While my dad was doing something else, Connor took it upon himself to enter the gate to the neighbor's yard. I'm not sure how far he got, but he was greeted by a small, black, "yippee" dog. Kailey, the wife and mother of the dog came out running with a broom to make sure the dog wasn't getting too aggressive with Connor. She did NOT yell at Connor or anything like that. I was inside and saw everything that transpired from the point of Kailey swatting the dog with the broom. Connor exited the yard with great speed. He ran 1/2 way around the house and then turned around. I came out the back and talked to my dad. He told me the first 1/2 of the story and I proceeded to look for Connor. He wasn't in the back, wasn't in the front, I went inside and heard sobbing. I found him on the couch, face down, in the pillow. "I was looking for you!" with tears streaming down his face. "You weren't here." I told him I'd come to find him!! I picked him up and he continued to cry into my shoulder. It didn't matter that I wasn't mad or that he wasn't in trouble (even though he did trespass). He knew what he did was wrong and he was devastated with himself.

See, not a big deal. The next day during our drive home, about 5 hours into the trip Connor told me out of the blue that I didn't have to worry. He wasn't going to go in the gate ever again. Within seconds of arriving home and seeing Brian after a week, "don't tell Daddy about the gate."

And now we have this morning.

Prior to our trip, we discovered that if Connor had the opportunity to earn stickers for sleeping my himself in his bed all night that it worked like a charm. Occasionally, he would appear in our room and basically tell us that he didn't need a sticker that day, but for the most part, it was working great. I think our trip threw things off a bit. He got very used to me sleeping in the same bed with him. He has earned a sticker since we've been back, but they seem to have lost a bit of their value in the middle of the night.

I spent the night on the couch in the basement last night (not too uncommon for me not to be in our bed). When Connor got up at 7:30 he came down to find me. The first words out of his mouth were "Can I pick a sticker?". Sure buddy!! We snuggled and watched a Jake & the Neverland Pirates and then went upstairs to get his milk and let him pick a sticker. He chose a John Deere tractor. Several minutes later, Brian came out of the bedroom and asked if Connor got a sticker. Not knowing any better, I said, "Yes! He chose a tractor!". Brian hugs Connor and says, "but last night you when you were crawling in bed with me, you said you didn't need a sticker." Uh oh. CAUGHT! I asked him if he went into mommy and daddy's bed. He looked at me and his lip started to quiver. We weren't mad. He wasn't in trouble. I just told him that he could always tell us the truth. I did not take the sticker off, I just told him that he needed to dress himself this morning so he could earn it another way.

Again, he buried his head in my shoulder and sobbed. Not too bad this time. Brian grabbed him too and told him the same thing....we weren't mad. We just have a sensitive child.

I remember being like that as a little kid too. I also remember refusing to ask adults for any favor because I didn't want to feel like a bother. This included asking for rides or even having to interview someone for  a school project. I just hope that Connor does not get scarred in the same way that I was.....whatever it was that happened to me!

So, if you are an adult and you are reading this....be careful with our little man. A little correction or discipline goes a long way.....especially if it isn't coming from me or B. :)

To Georgia and back.

I have LOTS of pictures to add, but right now let me just say that I am still tired.

Brian doesn't really believe me that I slept a ton there too, but I swear I have reverted back to feeling like I am about 8 weeks pregnant.....and I'll be 14 tomorrow. I'm not sure how much of it is recovering from the 14 hour drive (it is 12.5 drive time) and how much of it is hormonal, but the last 2 days have been rough. I have a ton of work to catch up on, but I can barely keep my eyes open and I've been nauseous on and off consistently. Top that off with an awesome headache right now that I can't/shouldn't medicate and you have a pretty pathetic looking pregnant lady.

Now that the venting is over...

Connor and I had a GREAT trip!