A month late - Abby's birthday interview

I've wanted to start this tradition for a year or two now, but am just now getting around to it.  I borrowed these questions from interviews my other December Mama friends used with their kids.  I hope to do a birthday interview every year...I think they're a lot of fun and make a great snapshot of what life is like right now - at 4 years old. 

What is your favorite color? Blue

What is your favorite toy? Trains. I like watching shows and riding Bucky (Abby and E pretend that our rocking/recliner is the pirate ship from Jake and the Neverland Pirates) and going to museums and to play tokens

What is your favorite fruit? Um...Yogurt! And Berries...blueberries

What is your favorite TV show? Gaspard & Lisa.  

What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  A sandwich. And PB&J sandwiches and Turkey sandwiches

What is your favorite outfit? I like dressing up as a sheep and a ballerina and I like my star clothes (shirts with stars on them)

What is your favorite game? The hardest game in the world. (what's that?) It's from Gaspard & Lisa.  And I like Car games - it's called the car game magic flying game. 

What is your favorite snack? green beans.  yogurt

What is your favorite animal? birds and giraffes and elephants

What is your favorite book? Dinosaurs (Oh My, Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!).  Unicorns.  And my chuggington book.  And the lullaby book.

 

What is your favorite song? (singing) twinkle twinkle little star....(sings whole song) 

Who is your best friend? Ava, cause I love to play bellyache (what they call playing doctor) with her.

What is your favorite cereal? cheerios

What is your favorite thing to do outside? feed the birds and hang ornaments on our house

What is your favorite drink? Juice and milk and water

What is your favorite holiday? Halloween because I LOVE eating candy

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? My dog snowball, and baby, and doggie and Lamby and Sunshine and Ferdinand

What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? oatmeal

What do you want for birthday dinner?  Oooh!  A special surprise!  cake and cupcakes and cookies.  some some special oatmeal and green beans and soup and marshmallows and round donuts

What do you want to be when you grow up? all kinds of things! Like a driver and a garbage man and to drive cars and to drive a train and to live at a farm and to go somewhere and to go to a restaurant and order by myself.

do-over Tuesday

It's important to have bad days.  Right?  That way you appreciate the good ones.  That's what I kept telling myself yesterday.

To start, I have a cold.  I don't know if pregnancy colds are worse than regular ones, but you can't take much more than Tylenol (which is a joke) to relieve your symptoms.  Yesterday was day 3 or 4 of said cold - and so my threshold for dealing with stuff was lowered.  Y'know - when your face hurts and your teeth hurt and you blow your nose every 3 seconds and your eyes are red and watery and you can't taste anything?  It really makes you less....patient.  In general.

So, I went to work and spent 2 hours working on the same document.  Sneezing once a minute.  Every time, both my interns would say "bless you"  and I started feeling guilty for making them bless me so much.  I had to drive to our central office that day, so I decided to go early so that I could get home a little earlier.  Packed up my stuff and headed out.

While walking down the hallway, I got stalled behind a group of high school boys.  They were chatting in Spanish, sauntering.  I thought "why aren't they in class?" but decided to leave it be as I was about 5 steps from the exit and I wanted to leave.  I cut through the group to get past them and as I did they broke out into a fist fight - with me - literally- caught in the middle.

I suppose if I spoke Spanish, maybe I would have had a heads up that they were not on friendly terms.  Who knows.  I half tried to break it up and half just yelled at them.  It wasn't too long before our friendly PO was there and handcuffing the boys and everyone was carted off for questioning.  Boys.  The whole thing made me angry.  If you're going to fight - don't do it at school.  Don't do it while some lady is walking past you.  I got shoved around and hit by flying arms and elbows but was totally fine.  Just angry.

So, I left.  Started to drive to the office.  I kept getting emails from a parent who is....high maintenance? I'm not going to get into specifics here, but let's just say that she wanted me to fix a problem that wasn't a problem...and that the whole thing was confusing and time consuming.

Eventually, I headed home.  I stopped at the grocery store.  I bought myself a pity-cup of ice cream.  One of the individual sizes.  I got to the car and opened my Rocky Road and realized I left my spoon in the store.  No worries, I have no shame, I started eating it ice cream cone style.  Just straight up licking it.  Problem is, I got to a point I couldn't reach.  No shame.  I'll use my finger.  So, here I am - my finger is throbbing in pain because it is so cold and I'm shoveling ice cream in my mouth in the store parking lot.  And here's the kicker...I couldn't even taste it.  Not one bit.  UGH.

I went and picked up the mail we had held over vacation and headed home.  Chatted with Jen, and started going through the mail.

ER visit bill.  Expected.  EZ Pass violation bill.  Expected (and we're appealing that).  Blood Work Bill.  Unexpected.  $800 freaking dollars of unexpected.  Here's what went down last month:

Ultrasound Doctor: There are some abnormalities in the unltrasound, do you want a harmony test?  It's non-invasive, very accurate, and new.
Me: Will it cost anything?
Doctor: No, no, no.  Insurance will cover it, we can put it in a certain way to make sure.
Me: Ok then, if it's free - sure.

It was not free. My insurance does NOT cover it.

I sobbed. (keep in mind my lowered threshold for stress in general).  I called around.  End result is - we wait 45 days for insurance to offically reject it and then I try to appeal it.  But man, I was LIVID.  How dare they tell me with such confidence that it was covered..and how dare I take their word for it.  Livid.

I left the house, tears still on my face, to take the girls to playgroup...and hour late.  Envelope on my doorstep.  Water bill.

Eventually, we went to pick up Kyle and came home.  Kyle made the girls dinner - I swallowed some tasteless chicken soup.  Decided to take a Benadryl to knock me out - and it did.

That day was kinda sucky.

But, I will tell you one moment of light I had.  I was in my room, just off the phone with my insurance company and trying to hide my blatant sobbing from Abby....which is of course impossible.  Toddlers pick up everything.  Abby came and hugged my leg and gave me a kiss and said "Mommy, I just love you."  My brain said "$800 is nothing compared to her.  Look at her.  Look at how blessed you are"

And my brain is right, of course.  This too shall pass.  And today was already a better one.

before I forget...

Kyle and I haven't decided if when we should open our secret envelope revealing baby's gender.  Kyle still wants to wait to be surprised, but I'm still hoping he'll come around and let me know before hand.

But, before I forget, I wanted to document an exchange that happened before Christmas.

I was helping Abby write her wish list to Santa.  She was telling me what she wanted, and I wrote it down.  When she was done with her part, I asked her "What do you think E wants?"

And you have to remember that we had not yet told her about the impending #3.

She says very simply "Maybe she'd like a boy"

I paused, and asked "What do you mean?  Like a boy doll?"

And Abby says, "Oooor, y'know, just like a real boy."

I was a little creeped out and decided to keep the conversation going in another direction - and Abby eventually decided E would like a ball for Christmas.

I suppose only time will tell if she was right.  I still don't have any idea what prompted her to say that - or what she thought she meant...but, I thought it was worth documenting.  Y'know, just in case Santa was listening.

#3

Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, I feel that I should document some of what the last 4+ months have entailed as far as this new baby is concerned.

I was pretty sure I was pregnant early in September, but had to wait a few weeks to make sure.  I spent that time coming to terms with what was sure to be.  This wasn't planned, exactly - but Kyle and I had both hoped to add a new one within the next year or so.  Our "plan" had been to wait another 6 months or so.  But, plans are made for changing.  And, as it turns out, this plan is better than the one I had wanted.

Once I got the positive test, I tried to think of a creative way to tell Kyle.  I couldn't think of anything.  I plopped down by him and said "So.  You've got till June to decide if you want a minivan or not"  He said "ok, why?"  And I added "cause that's when your third kid is due"  He was surprised - but not panicked at all.  We were happy.  We've always known a third was in our future.

This baby is due June 11th, officially.  This means I'll get to take the last few weeks of school off, and I'll have the summer at home.  In addition, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to take off of work through December -giving me a full 6 months of maternity leave.  Some of that is still up in the air, but I think it will work out.  This goes well with Abby, hopefully, starting pre-school in the fall.  In theory, I will be able to get up and take her to pre-school while Kyle stays home with the younger two.  Then I'll be home with just 2 while Abby is at school and Kyle at work.  Easy peasy, right? ;)  More importantly, taking 6 months off will allow us to save some pennies to help us scrape through the second half of the year where we will be paying for pre-school AND childcare for two.  That's gonna be rough, but it's just 6 months and then Abby will be in kindergarten the next fall (what? sigh.)

This pregnancy has been easy on me.  I had some nausea, but nothing that a snack or some sour candy couldn't fix.  I had some exhaustion, but it was manageable and relatively short lived (I mean, apart from the standard- always-tired-baseline I rock now ;)  I haven't had any real aversions, and no super strong cravings.  However, I have a preference for salty things and I've lost my gusto for sugar.  I'll eat it, sure - but if you offer me a cookie or chips and salsa?  I'm probably going to pick chips.  The only day I had a true crazy craving was the day that I could not stop thinking about green olives.  I craved that briny salty goodness.  I bought a new jar and made a batch of egg and olive salad.  I ate almost all of it in one sitting and finished off almost all of the olives too.  That made me pretty sick for a little bit...but at the time, it was exactly what I needed.

While this pregnancy has been easy in a lot of ways, it has not been without complications.

We had our first scare the day before Thankgiving.  We came home from dinner out with the girls and were ready to start bedtime and cleaning the house in prep for Brittany and Jason to join us the next day.  I started getting some cramps and discovered that I was bleeding fairly significantly.  I was pretty scared and decided to go into the ER to get checked.  I couldn't imagine going through thanksgiving day not knowing for sure if I'd lost the baby or not.  I was 11 weeks at the time.  So, off to the ER I went.  Karen came over to our house later and Kyle took the train to join me at the hospital.  After a lot of questioning and waiting, they did our first ultrasound and showed me a very strong heartbeat.  I cried and cried and could not stop crying.  I was so relieved.  I had an internal tear and was sent home with instructions to avoid heavy lifting and to "take it easy"  The tear is now all fixed and that's not been an ongoing issue.

Kyle was great - he did 99% of the cooking and cleaning and all of the lifting on Thanksgiving day.  He took really good care of me, and made sure I didn't overexert myself...even when I was sure I was fine.

So baby has continued to grow and develop.  During our 12-week ultrasound, the doctor flagged a few things she wanted to follow up on - a thick neck fold for one.  We went back at 14 weeks and the neck fold was normal, but the cord and the brain had some soft-signs for some other disorders that she wanted to follow up on.  Specifically spinabifida, heart defects, or cleft pallets...but at 14 weeks, things were too small to see.  So we went back today. The doctor said that the brain, spine, and heart all look good to her - but she wants to check again in a few weeks.  The only for sure abnormality now is that I have a 2-vessel umbilical cord instead of a typical 3-vessel cord.

This isn't completely uncommon.  It happens in about 1% of the population (which I guess is not uncommon in baby-land-speak)  Most of the time it doesn't mean anything, but I will get at least monthly ultrasounds to keep an eye on baby's growth etc.

In more exciting news - the tech said she could tell us the gender today.  We opted not to find out, but we had her write it down for us in a sealed envelope.  Which is sitting on our kitchen counter.  Kyle does not want to find out yet, but I do...so we are keeping the envelope closed until we come to an agreement. :)

So.  ALL of that to say - YAY! We're having a baby!  We're excited. I'm not worried about the ultrasound stuff as there is nothing yet to worry about.  We'll keep you posted.

If you're still reading this.... Hi mom.   :)

announcement

One of my resolutions this year is to blog more regularly/often.

We'll start with something simple - our exciting announcement for 2013.  :)