Our Baby Is 2 Years Old!

It's late and I need to go to bed but I had to at least post something for her bday. I'll include details tomorrow. I can't believe she's already 2! Amazing... Thank you, God, for such a blessing.

Busy Bees

Things have been hectic this past week. Wednesday night, S woke up at 4:30am and was up until 6am, during which time she had a half-hour long temper tantrum. Thursday night she didn't go to sleep until 9pm, and was up between 3:30am and 5am. At least this time, she was calmer. Friday she didn't take a nap for my parents, though. I'm just praying that once we get moved, she'll get settled in and get back to a more frequent good sleeping schedule. I was SO grouchy Friday after two nights of limited sleep.

Saturday my friend from MN was in town, so S and I met her and some of our other friends at a park for lunch. We played washers, and S played on the swings and slides. It was really fun. That night we went to a friend from high school's house for a get together. After I read on a blog about a way to keep in touch with old friends by having a Party of the Month, we started it and have really enjoyed it. We take turns hostessing the POM, and boys and kids are allowed, and we just do a potluck. DH was nice enough to take S home to put her to bed so I could stay later and chat. One of the girls ended up leaving kind of early - her 6 month old wasn't feeling well and was really fussy. She's never fussy - she's the happiest baby I've ever seen. Poor thing. Saturday night, S slept through til morning - YES!

Sunday I took S to my parents' house to go swimming in their subdivision's pool. Then she took her nap, and we went to a friend's son's 2nd bday party. Unfortunately, she woke up from her nap in a bad mood and had a tantrum/cried for an hour - from the time she got up until we walked in the door to the party (half an hour late). Argh. DH hung out with the guys, and I got to chat with the girls while the kids all played which was nice. That night S had a hard time going down again - it was 9pm before she fell asleep. But she slept through til morning, so at least that worked ok.

Monday I dropped S off at her sitter's and she had gotten her a birthday present - I told her she didn't have to do that. She got a little cake, too. Very sweet of her. The bank called not long after I got to work, and we found out we're closing on Wednesday!!! SO excited. I've been slow at work which has been nice because I've had time to plan S's bday party and sketch out how I want to decorate her bedroom and where to put the furniture in the house when we move next week.

Last night I went over to a friend's and got to watch the 100th episode of So You Think You Can Dance. I missed it Thursday since S didn't go to bed til late, but luckily my friend hadn't erased it from the DVR yet. It was ok - they tried to cram too much into the hour - they should have made it a two-hour special. I wish they would have shown more of the old dances, but the new group numbers were really good. I was surprised with who was in the bottom. Only two weeks left - it will be interesting to see what happens.

Tonight I'm going to my friend's for a party with a lady who advises about the different baby slings that are available. I'm excited to hear her suggestions. I really want to get one for baby R since I know I'll need my hands free for S a lot, but I don't know much about them. DH is supposed to go to the T-Bones game, but it's raining, so not sure they'll be playing.

We haven't had a lot of rain, but it hasn't been that hot, either. This summer has been so mild - aside from the one sweltering week when we moved to my in-laws. Overall it's been beautiful - mostly low-80's. There have been terrible droughts south of us and cold, wet weather north of us, but we've lucked out and been in the nice zone this year. Hope I didn't just jinx us for August...

We're Not Homeless Anymore!

After two weeks of negotiations, we FINALLY will be homeowners again!! They agreed to pay for the chimney repairs in full (they had come back initially offering to pay half) as well as take care of the other things. We take possession on the 1st and plan to move on the 8th. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise that the first house didn't work out - this is the perfect house for us. We're so excited!

That was our happy news last night, but this morning we had kind of a rough start. S woke up at 5:30 (ugh!), and I felt that her bed was wet, so I changed her diaper (in the dark so it ended up being on backwards) and laid down with her and tried to get her back to sleep. She was squirmy and wanted to take her shirt off. Finally at 6am I was tired and frustrated and gave up. Pause for bad mommy moment - I turned the light on and my poor baby had a huge rash with blisters all over her back to halfway down her bottom, on a shoulder, on her forehead, on the back of her left thigh. Here I was irritated with her for not going to back to sleep when she was itchy and uncomfortable! I felt terrible and was a little worried since I didn't know what was wrong exactly. I've never had poison ivy or poison oak, and I was little when I had hives so I didn't know if that was it or not. DH thought it was hives, and we waited til his mom got up at 6:30am (she was a nurse), to ask her. She thought it was hives, too, and by the then it was clearing up quite a bit. So I called the dr. office and left a message for them to let me know if I should bring her in or if there was something I should give her, but by 7:30am it was almost all gone. So I took her to the sitter's and we tried to figure out if she'd eaten anything new. She hadn't, but she had had a few allergenic things - eggs, shrimp and strawberry jam - so we're going to keep those out of her diet for a week or so and then reintroduce them one at a time. My MIL and I were also wondering if it might be the laundry detergent since it was all over her. But we've been using it for 3 weeks, so I would think it would have showed up already. Maybe not. The dr. office said to give her some Benadryl if it was bothering her but not to worry as long as she didn't run a fever.

As for baby number two, I had a dr. appt. today, and R was kicking while I was waiting, but when it was time to listen with the heartbeat monitor, we couldn't find her. So the dr. moved me to a room with an ultrasound machine and we saw her then. Dr. N told me to tell R not to be such a pain in the ass next time. :) I told her I'd give her a little lecture before my next appt. :) I love my OB. She's very direct about everything and doesn't sugar coat it, but always tries to do everything possible to benefit the patient whether it's popular or not. When I had S, I was allowed to eat right away and do other things that are not usually done with C-section patients. The nurses gave us the impression that she's a bit of a renegade. She's had C-sections, too, so I think that helps that she knows what we're going through and can be a real advocate for us.

S Phrases

S is such a good communicator and just a little mimic when it comes to regurgitating words. I know it's normal at this age, but it always surprises me. One day my FIL was listening to a CD in the basement, and he had it cranked up. S wanted to go down to see him. I told her he was jamming out, and it was really loud, and she probably wouldn't like it. Now whenever he turns up his music, she says, "Papa jam out!"

She's also evolved her "Come on" repertoire from just "guys" to "dude" (thanks to me), and most recently, "people". To expand on that, when we were driving on Saturday, traffic was bad, so I told her we would have to go a different way. She said, "Come on, people! Pass 'em!" I about died laughing. She got that from DH when he gets frustrated driving.

She's also getting better with her manners. She's starting to understand the difference between "please" and "thank you". For a long time we would ask her what she was supposed to say and she would always answer "please", but now she will say "thank you" on her own sometimes. And the other day it was very cute because she wanted me to uncrumple a sticker for her, and I told her I wasn't sure I'd be able to because it was pretty much rolled into a ball. But I finally got it undone and she said, "Good job, Mama!" So sweet.

I'm also in awe of the big words she says pretty well - she can even say hippopotamus fairly well (which I can't even spell without looking up!).

One last thing, which isn't a vocabulary note, is that she loves floss right now. She isn't good at using it properly - she won't really let me show her how to do it - but she wants to floss every day. It's a good habit for her, but I have to really watch her because she basically lets it hang out of her mouth so she looks like a walrus and ends up chewing it up so it's almost all in her mouth. Such a fun kid!

New House/Old House

I've been waiting to post until we found out for sure about our new house, but that's still in limbo. The day of the inspection there were probably 50 things listed (of course), but only two fairly small things we planned to ask them to resolve - an electrical and a plumbing problem, maybe $500 at the most. But the inspector wanted someone with more expertise in chimneys to look at the fireplace, so we had to wait for that. Sunday we found out that the house failed the radon testing, so it needs to have a mitigator installed. That will be around $1,000. Then yesterday the chimney guy told us it would be about $2,500 to fix it. So we went back to the seller asking for the radon mitigator, chiminey repair and plumbing repair (we decided to take care of the electrical ourselves). Waiting to hear back. Hoping we can reach a middle ground.

Today I found out some sad news about an old house I lived in - the Theta house in Ft. Collins. Apparently it's going to be torn down. It wasn't that attractive a house really, more functional than frivolous, not as sorority-girlish. But that didn't bother me, because inside were all my friends. So many great memories of hanging out in the back PJ playing Life, sliding down the stairs on kitchen trays, watching NBC's Thursday night Must See TV (which was coined in that era - Friends, Seinfeld and ER) in the front PJ, laying out on the deck, formal Monday night dinners in the kitchen followed by meetings in the chapter room. I could go on and on. I'm sad I won't be able to take S and R there when they get older and show them where I experienced Greek life. It was such an integral part of my incredible college adventure.

Independence Day

Since the 4th of July landed on a Saturday this year, we were able to have Friday off which made for a nice long weekend. Friday, I took S to get her haircut. It was only her second time going so I took her back to Shear Madness since they are set up for little ones. The chairs are little cars that the kids can play in and each station has a tv so they can watch cartoons. She was fine when we got there, but then a little boy who was about 3 or 4 was screaming bloody murder and sitting on his mom's lap and she was pinning him down. I just don't have the desire to torture my child for 15 minutes. He can just have long hair. She was pretty nervous about how upset he was, so I told our stylist if she got too fussy, we'd just call it quits. But she was so good! I was very proud of her. She even let the stylist put her hair in pigtails. They only lasted about an hour, but it was too cute.

Saturday my mom, my mother-in-law, S and I all went to Lenexa's parade. S seemed to enjoy it. That night DH and I went with his best friend and his wife to the movies. We saw The Hangover which was a little vulgar, but hilarious. I didn't think they could keep the story from getting stale, but it never did. After it was over, I reminded DH that that was why he didn't get to have his bachelor party in Vegas and thanked his friend again for being such a trustworthy Best Man.

Sunday we stopped by our old neighbor's house. She had gone to Barcelona the week we moved so we wanted to see photos from her trip. We had left our trash cans for her to put out and needed to pick them up as well. It was a nostalgic trip. Poor S kept wanting to go next door and play in our old backyard, but I just had to keep telling her we didn't live there anymore. She didn't understand. I'll be glad when we're in a new home, and she will feel like she belongs there.

Speaking of which, I've been trying not to get excited about it, but we put a bid on a house last week and the inspection is tomorrow. It's only 5 blocks from the old one (different subdivision, different builder), so still close to my friend's house (bonus!) and only a couple of blocks from a girl at work which will be nice. It's actually a center hall floorplan which I love - one of the first homes we looked at had it but it was on a lot that had a steep front drive and front yard - too steep to play in. I had said to our realtor, if we could just find this house on a different lot. Found it! Through the negotiating, we are getting to keep the dining room table and chairs, china cabinet and the china! It was so funny because when I had looked at the house, I had mentioned to my mom that I really liked their taste and jokingly wondered if they'd leave it furnished. We don't have a formal dining room table or a china cabinet, so we needed to get them anyway. DH and I both liked the desk and bookcases in the den, too, but that wasn't part of the deal. :) Anyway, I'm praying it goes well, and we can start planning the move. That's a whole other story...

A few S notes: the other day she was eating (cantaloupe, I think?) and she it was "delicious". I was taken aback by such a big word being said by her. She amazes me daily. Yesterday she was eating some dry cereal and dropped a piece on the floor. I told her I'd get it and she said, "No, me get!" At this age, she has no fear of eating off the floor, so I told her she could get it but she had to put it in the trash. She said "Kiss it?" I was like, uh, ok. So she gave the little oatmeal square a hug and a kiss and threw it away. I was cracking up.

Sleeping started to get better - she slept well Friday night for the first time - 7:30pm - 7am without any interruption - hallelujah!!! Saturday I was worried we'd ruin it by going to the movie and leaving her with my in-laws, but they said she only fussed about 10 minutes, so we had another 11-11 1/2 hour night. Yes! Sunday night to Monday morning was going well until the neighbor let his German Shepherds out at 5:30am and let them bark for 10 minutes straight. I could hear them through the baby monitor it was so loud. So she was up at 6am, but still did pretty well. But last night, she fussed and called for me around 5, and I went in to console her. She wanted me to lay down with her, and I did, but after about 15 minutes she was asking for Daddy. So I got him to lay in the other twin bed, and laid back down with her. She was tossing and turning and talking and not settling down, so at 6am we all just got up. So tired....Something she started saying a little while ago, that just melts me is "Mama hold you". It's torture though when she's needing to go to sleep, and I leave the room and she starts screaming it. Breaks my heart. I can't imagine loving another baby as much as her, but I know my heart will grow when R gets here. Can't wait for both of our girls to be together!

How come they don't do PSAs anymore?

I guess they do, they're just more subtle. It used to be so obvious - the fried egg, "This is your brain on drugs", or "I learned it by watching you!" for example. And they were on after prime time shows with actors from those shows, like "21 Jump Street". Now the anti-drug commercials are less memorable. At least in my opinion.

Growing up in KS, one of the Public Service Announcements from the late 70s/early 80s that was on every spring and summer was about tree climbing. A boy in a tree says this:

I've been climbing trees all my life, but not trees near overhead lines. 'Cause if you touch one of those lines, or your weight makes a branch touch one of those lines, that electricity will come right to you. And that can hurt. It may even kill you. And climbing utility poles is really dumb. So, remember, always look up before climbing, and stay out of trees near overhead lines.

The best part was that at the beginning, it said at the bottom of the screen the kid's name (Billy something), and "Professional Tree Climber". Really? Professional? And how sad is it for today that back then that was the most serious issue that needed to be addressed. The world has certainly changed.

The funny thing is that almost everyone from around here still knows that commercial. Whenever someone says "That can hurt," instinctively I'll reply, "It may even kill you." Unfortunately, hardly anyone I work with is from here, so that line is lost on most of them. I've been searching the Internet for that commercial figuring it must be on You Tube or somewhere, but no luck. Today I saw that a guy mentioned it in his blog. He is from Oklahoma, so apparently it extended beyond Kansas and Missouri. Anyway, that's my random thought for the day.