Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Little Chub has been doing the cutest things recently! I first noticed with the mirror. We have a full length mirror in our hallway at the top of the stairs, which is a permanent fixture of the apartment. Every time Little Chub walks past this mirror, she HAS to stop and look at herself in it. She will stand in front of the mirror for long stretches if nobody makes her stop. The funniest part is that sometimes she'll stand in front of it and then turn sideways and look at her belly, exactly the same way I do when I'm trying to see what Pummelo looks like these days. I guess sometimes it takes a kid to make you realize the bad habits you have...

Some other things she's done that show me just how closely she's watching me are:

*Standing in the bathtub when it's time to get out of the shower and shaking the water off of her legs
*Nodding her head and saying "Mmmmm" when she eating
*Going to the scale in the corner of the bathroom and standing on it, looking down until a number pops up with her weight (which is never accurate because she's holding onto the wall)

These things crack me up, but it also feels really sweet that she is trying to do things exactly as I do them. Yesterday I taught her how to rock her baby doll (actually it's not hers...she stole it from the playground in our courtyard...oops!). She was so sweet! As she gets older, I'll try to explain to her about the baby in the tummy, but I'm not sure she'll really ever get it by September, since she'll only be 19 months old.

On top of all of that, she's finally started babbling the "mamamamama" sounds, so one of these days, she might actually call me mama! It only seems fair, since she's been calling Peter "dad" and "daddy" for over 4 months now...

Night Weaning

We've officially begun night weaning Little Chub, as of last night. This time, there is NO turning back (just because I say so). Peter was a pro last night and he put her to sleep by rubbing her back and singing to her while she cried for about 20 minutes before falling asleep. We put her to sleep on the guest bed for now, which was a last minute decision. I was originally going to sleep on the guest bed while Peter and Little Chub slept on our bed, and then we were going to try transitioning her to her own room in August or so, but he decided at the beginning that she needed to be away from the place where she associates nursing and sleeping. So, she woke up once, after about 3 or 4 hours, then a couple hours later she fell off the bed. Both times he went in to her (he was going to sleep with her, but decided to sleep in our room with his alarm clock so he could snooze it four or five times...) and rubbed her back and sang to her, and she was back to sleep within about 5 minutes both times. Little Chub woke up in a great mood, but Peter is tired because he's not used to getting interrupted sleep. All in all, last night was a great success, but I have NOT forgotten that the first night we tried the Ferber-ish cry-it-out method with her, she fell asleep after 15 minutes and slept well all night long... I'm hoping she is more ready this time around. I feel bad about it, but I am just not one of those moms that can keep nursing a kid during the night until they are 3 or 4 (or really, even 2). We think she's more ready right now because she actually slept through the night twice last week (!!!!), and then woke up only once the two nights after that, which is the best four nights of her entire life.

I was originally planning on still nursing her to sleep for her naps, but now I'm not sure if I want to do that because I really want her to not associate nursing with sleeping in any way anymore, and I'm afraid that would slow down our progress at night. I really am sad that she is pretty much not nursing anymore, especially with not nursing for sleep anymore. I wanted to breastfeed her for at least 18 months, but, as it is, she pretty much isn't getting any milk when she nurses anyway. So now I'm conflicted.

Wish us luck for tonight!

KT

...is a great mommy with a really good sense of humor and a good head on her shoulders. Few people are as balanced as she is (or at least appears to be [now you can't argue with me KT]). And I love the way she listens.

What is Your Secret Dream/Ambition?

Mine is to be a doula or a midwife. I think that being a midwife is something I will never do because it is a bit more of a responsibility than I really ever want to undertake, AND because it does not focus quite as much on the part of labor/birth that I love so much, which being a doula does. Anyway, someday...maybe I will certify to be a doula.

So Much For Dreams...

Little Chub is going to have a little sister! Maybe this means I'll also carry the baby to term instead of having her super early like in all of my dreams.

They scared us a little by making us come back in so the radiologist could do some double checking, but it turned out to be a color spot that showed up with one kind of transducer but not another. Whew!

We're excited. Of course, we'd be excited either way.

Now we don't have to buy any new clothes. :o)

What Are You Afraid Of?

Well, a lot of things really. I kind of let fear rule my life a little (okay, A LOT) too much. In no particular order, here are a few things I'm afraid of:

*My house being broken into while I'm home without Peter
*The dark
*Random boogey-men being anywhere and jumping out at me
*Having my feet uncovered by my blanket while I'm asleep
*Sleeping with my back to a window or a particularly scary edge of the bed
*Snakes, scorpions, stinging insects, bears, etc. (this one is particularly bad--I jump and run every time I hear rustling when I'm hiking or camping...yesterday I jumped into the car when I heard rustling behind the car, but it turned out to be Little Chub...)
*Being attacked
*Being near windows at night, especially when the curtains or blinds aren't closed, for the above reasons

So I guess my fears are pretty much due to an abundance of paranoia and an overactive imagination. But then I've got the other fears, which are social, such as:

*Calling people I know on the phone (I'm not afraid to call people I don't know)
*Talking to people I don't know
*Speaking, and particularly, praying, in public
*Any new situation
*Traveling to foreign countries, aside from Canada and the better known parts of Europe (we want to go to Peru next year and I'm freaking out about it!)

I guess that last one falls into both categories.

So yeah, nothing typical like heights, or spiders (although I always make Peter take care of spiders, but that's pretty normal I think), but these ones are enough to drive Peter crazy!

19w3d

Here's me at 19 weeks 3 days yesterday (though it could be a little less than that). Yeah, so when I look at myself, I wonder why nobody can tell yet that I'm pregnant, but looking at this picture... I've been trying to wear clothes that make it obvious, and my VT told me Monday that she'd just had a conversation with someone wondering if I was pregnant. They didn't know, but they were wondering. That's a maternity shirt, but those are my normal pants from before. They make Pummelo Chester kick me a lot, but they still fit. I don't wear my normal pants very often because of that, but it seems like most of the belly is up higher than the waistline of my lowriding pants. Anyway, maybe I'll force Peter to take a picture of me in a different outfit so you can see (if you care at all) a little better what my belly is like.

And tomorrow's the big day!! I had yet another dream a couple of nights ago that I had a baby boy, born at home without a midwife. This time instead of being born at 18 weeks, he was born at 25 weeks, but like last time, he was just fine (and so was I) but he was smaller than a normal baby. That makes 3 dreams that I'm having a boy. Tomorrow we'll find out if that means anything at all. (I hope so because I've grown attached to him...but I'll be happy either way.) If they can't tell tomorrow, we have no more chances.

My Turn

4 jobs I've had:

Lifeguard/water aerobics instructor/swim instructor at the YMCA
Research Assistant for an Organic Chemistry Professor
Photographer at The Picture People
Administrative Assistant/Manager at Peaceful Spirit Massage Center

4 movies I've watched over and over:
Beauty and the Beast
The Mask
Shanghai Noon
The RM

4 places I've lived:
Greenville, Texas
Tucson, Arizona (I've lived in more than four houses in Tucson...does that count?)
Stanford, California

4 TV shows I love to watch:
American Idol (I've seen about 1/3 of a season)
Nature (on PBS)
CSI anything (used to, before Peter came back from his mission)
Judging Amy (same as above)

4 food faves:
How can I list only 4???
PIZZA
ICE CREAM
Brie and baguette (mmmmmmmmmm!)
Fondue with yummy bread (esp. the recipe Issyl. and I found...)
Gee, do you think I like dairy at all?

4 people who I want to do this too:
Issylthesthlia (Thanks for not doing it yet so I could list someone...hehe)

Bad Blogger

I am a bad blogger. And it's funny, because I was actually going to say that before I read ktmama's blog. I decided to say it anyway. But right now, baby's sleeping and I'm awake, and even though I haven't cleaned up her mess from yesterday yet, I'm catching up on blogging. There have been tons of things I wanted to write on here, and of course, I don't remember any of them!

We had a great day yesterday. Peter finished a homework assignment unexpectedly early, so he ditched a class where the teacher just stands up there and reads from her notes in a monotone voice and we went to Big Basin Redwood State Park to do some mild hike/walking, followed by Montebello Open Space Preserve. Little Chub was sooooooo cute! We let her walk A LOT, and by the end, she was bone tired and could barely walk anymore, but she was having a blast! We haven't had a day like that in a VERY long time, and as a result, we've been missing Tucson like CRAZY!! All of our bright green ribbons of cottonwoods and sycamores and other pretty trees surrounding wide shallow creeks that we can walk in to keep us cool as we explore and look for birds and other wildlife... I miss this!! I miss being so close to family in Tucson, and everything I know. We have dreams of maybe being able to post-doc in Tucson, or get hired there permanently so we can call Tucson our home again. We love it here, but California is not home. And it is too populated. It is SO hard to find somewhere that you aren't going to see cars driving past, etc.

Now baby is awake, and I've barely scratched the surface!

Baby Stuff

Last night I dreamed that my baby was born. It was a boy! The dream was in the present, so when he was born, it was obvious that we had the dates all wrong, but since he was so small, we also decided that he was born early, too. The fact that he was a boy was very central to the dream. Add that to the fact that I had another (less vivid) dream that the baby is a boy a while back AND I keep slipping and saying 'he' instead of he/she or (ACK!) it, and you get a mommy that now very much wants a boy baby... I will be happy either way, of course, but that dream last night was so real seeming, and I fell in love with that baby! The baby, by the way, was born at home, very quickly, and after he was born we figured we should probably call the midwife to come help us take care of matters (like all the legal pooey), and I had almost no pain whatsoever. We just went about our business, but with 2 kids instead of one. He also learned to sit up in about a day.

In reality, our midwife really did tell us NOT to call 9-1-1 if we have the baby at home before she would be able to get there (if the baby is coming too fast, she WILL come here rather than us going to her, which I think is incredibly awesome!) because they then just rush you to the hospital and treat you like a drug mom.

Anyway, we get to find out the baby's gender (if baby cooperates) on April 26th! Less than two weeks! I was starting to reconsider finding out, but after that dream, now I NEED to know! I've pretty much decided not to find out with the next one though, but that's easy to say years in the future...

Oh yeah, and as long as we're talking pregnancy related stuff, for the due date they set for me, I'm 18 weeks 2 days today, and I've gained 5-7 pounds so far. (I hate watching those pounds go up and up!) That means that even if I gain 2 pounds a week for the rest of the pregnancy I'll gain less weight than I did last time. Yippee! Let's hope I can keep it up! The swimming is great, but I sunburned my back last week and now have a very tan circle on my back that doesn't so much match the rest of me. Oh well.

Miscellany

I suppose I should mention on here, for the record, that Little Chub is fully walking now. It's very cute! And she lost one of her Robeez shoes that our friends gave her for her birthday (expensive!!). It's sad. I hope we can find it! She loses everything! We just barely found Peter's phone in her toy drawer and his keys in her toybox, to go with the fact that she threw MY keys away, which means when we move, we have to pay for the apartment to be rekeyed, and we only have the valet key to our car.

Little Chub got to find Easter eggs for the first time (of course the first time...) on Sunday. Next year we'll probably do it on Saturday, but since it wasn't anything major this year, we just did it on Sunday. She was cute, going from one place to another collecting all of her colored eggs. We didn't get a chance to dye eggs though, but we definitely will next year! What do all of you do for Easter?

Last night, Little Chub woke me up multiple times per hour, and she does NOT know how to fall back asleep without nursing. So, since I can't nurse her and sleep at the same time because my body can't fully relax in that position, I feel like I was awake all night long. And I am grumpy! She woke up at her normal time saying "Dat?" with a big smile on her face, and I didn't smile at her out of the principle of the matter, and then I felt guilty. So yeah. She's making NO progress toward sleeping through the night, and we're having another in 5 months??? How exactly is THAT going to work? I have no idea what to do. Any suggestions?

On the bright side, I get to go swimming today! And tomorrow and the next day! Yay!

Birth Radio Special

There was an interesting special on the radio here that I only heard part of, called "Birth". The only place I've found that you can listen to it is http://www.prx.org/pieces/16661. I had to sign up for an account on that site to access it, but you can use mine if you like... The username is my email address before the @, and the password is "stupid". It's definitely worth listening to!

Swimming

I've started swimming! So far I've only gone once, but I'll be going at least three times a week, more often as Peter finds the time to watch Little Chub (not really very likely). When I went on Wednesday I swam a mile plus about 200 yards. Hopefully as I get more in shape I'll be able to do more laps in the same amount of time... But I'm excited! This is the only exercise that I actually look forward to doing. I LOVE swimming!

Sage Femme Midwifery

Well, we had our first appointment today! We got to hear the baby's heartbeat (in the 150's). I think we're just going with a due date of September 15, since we really have no way of knowing when I ovulated, and it's too late to pinpoint it precisely with ultrasound (the error margins are rather large this late in the pregnancy). I'm hoping this won't turn out to mean that I deliver in the hospital, BUT, the hospital they work with is staffed with MIDWIVES, and this midwife would come along as well, meaning that even if I was in the hospital, I could birth MY way. I just wouldn't get to feel like I was in a home-like environment, but being able to birth how I want to is the most important. If you'd like to see the birth center's webpage, it's www.sagefemme.net.

They discourage ultrasounds, but I'll be doing one because I'm a verified worry-wart. Someday, we've decided we won't do any ultrasounds. The problem is, we were discussing whether or not we would get one before we got to hear Pummelo-Chester's heartbeat, so I really was feeling concerned about if there really was a baby to speak of, and if all of his/her limbs were present. And of course, we want to know the gender (but that's not an okay reason for an ultrasound). After the appointment, I was thinking about it, and I decided that it would be really fun to be surprised. But not this time, since we're doing an ultrasound anyway.

Besides all that, I only had one mis-stick when they drew blood because they have a nurse there who used to be a phlebotomist, and after they missed my vein the first time, they called her in. She was a pro! (I have notoriously difficult veins to catch, and I'm "used" to it, but I've always feared having blood drawn, and I hate it and I can't relax and it makes me really really heeby-jeebied.)

Anyway, we're excited! It actually feels like reality rather than theoretical knowledge! Yay Pummelo-Chester!

We're Baaaa-aaack!

Well, we're back! We came home to a house that is messier than it ever gets because we can't seem to pack our bags in an orderly fashion, EVER. Erg. It also smelled pretty strongly of fish because I forgot to put the crab leg I found at the beach outside. Oops. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We had lots of fun at Peter's mission reunion and playing with cousins and just hanging out. And I ate WAY too much food from the time my sister came to visit us here, to the time we got home last night. I gained like 4 pounds in two weeks. Sick! We made lots of yummy food for my sister, then I had lots of fast food on the way to Utah and before we got to Real's house, then more fast food on the way home (and candy while playing conference bingo--I should have controlled myself, but I ate most of my baggie during the first session on Sunday--that's what happens when you don't ever eat candy...). Anyway, now I feel so gross. I think I want to eat just rice, veggies and plain chicken breast for the rest of my life! And now I need to clean the house or I'll feel gross for even longer. Blechhhhhh. I will write about orientation at the birth center soon. My first appointment is Thursday at 2!