Candy Land

We've started playing with another of Carter's Christmas presents: Candy Land. He and Jack actually attempted Chutes and Ladders, and Let's Go Fishing already, but with little luck. Candy Land is going much better, though. Since there are no numbers involved - just colors, pictures and counting to either one or two - it's a little easier for Carter to follow. Plus, he still likes to climb up slides, so we have some work to do before Chutes and Ladders goes well . . .

On our first family game afternoon, even Baby Lion (Simba) had a marker on the board.

Cupcake Fun

For my birthday, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law gave me some cupcake books with cool cupcake ideas. For Nana's birthday this week, I made some cherry pie cupcakes.

Word of the Week: Nesting

Yes, the time has come for us to accept the fact that a baby is probably making an appearance in our house soon. Contrary to how we prepared for Carter, we have taken our time accepting the reality of it this time. (And seriously, how quickly have the last eight months gone??) So in the last couple weeks, I finally pulled out, washed, sorted and hung all our clothes and blankets for Ellyson (through size 6M). We even realized that she might not be the 8-1/2 pounds her big brother was at birth, so we broke down and bought some newborn-sized clothes. (I think we have enough diapers to last 4-6 months. We may need to exchange sizes, but the quantity is there. In addition to what you see here, the brown box at the bottom is diapers, plus there are four or five packs on the changing table and under the crib. Yes, I had to forbid myself from buying any more diapers, about four months ago - no matter how good the deal.)

The pack-and-play has made its way back into our room (it had been serving as a makeshift gate at the top of the basement stairs), and Jack dug out the sheets for it. Hey, I didn't say it was ready - but all the components are in the same location, where they need to be.

I've pulled some hospital clothes for Ellyson (and myself) and have them in nice little stacks, ready to be packed.

So now, we could bring her home tomorrow if necessary, and it would only require an hour or two of last-minute assembly (and car seat installation).

Shavin' in the Tub

One of Carter's Christmas gifts from Santa was a Toy Story shaving kit for the tub. We broke it out this week, and he had a ball! It made me a little nervous, seeing him play with something that looks like a razor - but he had fun. He even took the time to shave his chest and upper back.

Wordless Wednesday

Update on Keepin' It Dry

For the sake of closure . . . Carter has made it four nights in a row now! Including last night, which was his first attempt at sleeping overnight without a Pull-Up. We are so proud of him! I will update again in a week or so with whether we are giving the all-clear, or whether we have some more work to do.

Things that go bump in the night

As promised, a funny story about nighttime potty training.

First I should preface that Carter has learned to open our doors, even with the door knob covers on them. We've bought a few sets of another type of door knob cover - but they are similar to what we have, and we think they'll buy us a couple weeks at best, before Carter figures out how to operate them also. So in the meantime, the new style is covering the outside of our bedroom door, the inside of his bedroom door, and one of the exterior doors. This means that when he's in bed, he can't get out his main door, into the hallway. However, if he really wants to, he can get into his bathroom, then through Ellyson's room, and into the hallway. Last night, he made that trek.

Just before midnight, I was in bed sleeping and Jack was in the office (a second room attached to the master, and only accessible through the master) working. He heard a knock on our bedroom door and was about to go for the baseball bat when I jumped out of bed. I didn't hear the knock, but I did hear the subsequent "Mommy!" on the other side of the door.

I opened our bedroom door and found Carter standing there, wearing nothing from the waist down. I could see that the guest room door was open, as was Ellyson's door. Apparently Carter had come through the bathroom he'll share with his sister, then through her bedroom, checked the guest room, and ended up knocking on our bedroom door. I walked into his room and found that he'd gotten out of bed, used his little potty (and apparently tried to do so while standing, in his half-awake state - making a bit of a mess), put his dry (but now sprinkled-on) Pull-up in the trash, and left his (also sprinkled-on) pajama pants on his bedroom floor.

Jack and I were in shock at what he'd done - and in a good way. We couldn't believe he'd gotten up and used the potty in the middle of the night. And when he ran into trouble, he needed help and came to get us.

It leaves me torn. He does need to have the ability to use the little potty. And if he runs into trouble, he will need help from us. But how do I give him access to help us, without allowing him to roam the house? For now, we'll just leave everything as it is. It's inconvenient for him to get out of his room, but he knows how to do it if he really needs to . . .

Big Night

Carter has "kept it dry" for three nights in a row now. Including a really funny story that I need to share in a separate post. So tonight is a big night for him: sleeping in underwear! He's been sick, so his sheets could stand to be washed anyway. And tomorrow is a bath morning anyway . . . so tonight we test his skills.

Word of the Week #2: Christina

I couldn't let this one pass. Carter has learned my name. During the snow week, I had to take several business calls at home while he was in the room. Unless I personally know the person calling my cell phone, my default pickup is "This is Christina." Well, Carter picked up on that. And this week, he started saying "Christina" randomly around the house. On Wednesday, he was actually saying "Jack. Christina." But he already knew the name Jack - because his grandfather is Papa Jack, and his great-grandfather is Daddy Jack. Well, during dinner Carter used his new vocabulary words in a conversation between Elmo and Simba. Jack asked him "Who's Christina?" Turns out Carter knows what it means - he answered "Mommy." And when asked who Jack is, Carter said "Daddy." So we've crossed that bridge. He finally knows our "real" names. But we did have a conversation with him about how we all have two names: Daddy and Jack; Mommy and Christina; Son and Carter; Sissy and Ellyson. So I hope we've crossed the bridge without the "now-I'm-going-to-call-my-parents-by-their-first-names" phase.

Word of the Week: Reese's

Carter gets peanut butter cups when he goes #2 on the potty. It started as an elevated reward when he went and did his business all by himself - but now that's how he does it almost every time. He almost never wants help until he's ready to wipe. Well, we upped the ante last week. It took all three of us, a couple days to eat half of this pack of Reese's. (The other half is still in the pantry.) Each cup is 1/2 pound.

Stress Release

Yesterday was a pretty stressful afternoon. Carter has learned to open doors even with our doorknob covers on, so our world has blown wide open. And yesterday he wouldn't nap, which meant I couldn't finish as much work as I wanted to, and it also meant he was cranky. But it was also my week for an in-office meeting with my boss (which we do every other week). So I had to load up a cranky toddler to go to Nana's house (and somehow, miraculously, he is no longer cranky once he hears where we're going). I had printer issues at home, so couldn't print some things, but was late leaving because I'd been trying to print. And as I'm trying to walk out the door, Jack calls from his business lunch, to let me know that the Alabama trip we'd anticipated for this week, is happening after all - and that he and his boss would be leaving that evening. Are you kidding me?? I was so stressed out that I actually had tears streaming down my face on the drive to the office.

But when I got home after my meeting, and after picking up Carter, Jack had a quart of buckeye ice cream from Bruster's, waiting for me. Bless that man. Buckeye ice cream is my favorite, but I'm lucky to come across it even twice a year. It's heaven. Chocolate ice cream with swirls of peanut butter and buckeye candies. Don't worry - I didn't eat the whole quart. :) A ramekin full of ice cream is about all I can handle.

However, I wanted one final push to relieve my stress. Something I hadn't been able to do in months. I wanted needed to run. Not on the treadmill. Not pushing a toddler, entertaining him and picking up dropped snack cups along the trail (because, Lord knows, I left those days behind me in the fall). I wanted to run. Just me, my feet and the crisp morning air. And after clearing my workload during the snow days last week (and sending a good bit of work to a contractor, who we are testing to fill in during my maternity leave), I had a pretty light work week. So after dropping Carter at preschool, I went to the park for a nice, stress-relieving run. I know it'll be the last one for a while (the last outdoors one, that is - I'm a slave to the treadmill right now). But it felt great. There were about a dozen walkers out on the trail also, but no other runners. So I didn't feel judged by my slower pace or by the fact that I could only make it 2.5 miles before I had to walk.

I did get a lot of big eyes, though. And long glances. And some double-takes. I guess people just aren't used to seeing a woman out running, six weeks before her baby is due.

Wordless Wednesday

Officer Carter

He works hard for the money . . .

Since we were snowed in for most of last week, everyone in our house was working from home. Oh wait - we do that every week anyway. Okay, so I learned the downside to working from home: no excuse for a snow day. However, since my office was officially closed for three days, all employees with remote access were requested to work from home. Except apparently our network couldn't handle the volume of remote logins. So by Tuesday morning, we were directed to log in only when we needed to access the network files, so as to leave the available bandwidth for our customer-facing groups. I am not customer-facing (I deal with other employees rather than customers), I did my duty and monitored Webmail but did not sign in to the network on Tuesday - at least not until after business hours. And Wednesday, I signed in and out sporadically, accessing files as needed.

Anyway, while we were all at home, Carter pulled up his laptop and sat beside me on the couch, so we could work together. He got the laptop for Christmas, from one of my sisters, and this is a scene that plays out a few times a week. Unfortunately, he can only stand to work for 2-3 minutes at a time.

Words of the Week: Fix It!

Carter is quite the handyman lately. He breaks out his tools and tries to fix things, the way Daddy and Papa Jack do. In fact, he's in a phase right now, where he believes his Papa Jack can fix anything.

More Snow?!

I couldn't believe the snowfall at our house Sunday night, into Monday morning. But it wasn't too terribly cold, and all three of us (not Marley) had fun playing in it when Carter got up on Monday morning.

We tried using a sled from Nana and Papa Jack, but it just sunk in the snow.



And then Carter slid off the back of it.

Carter attempted high-stepping through the shin-deep snow, but it didn't help.

Jack tried sledding down the driveway, where the snow wasn't as deep, but it still didn't work.

 So he settled on making a couple snow angels.

Wordless Wednesday: My Little Giraffe

Greenville

Jack and I got away to Greenville, SC, last weekend. It's kind of a funny story. We were scheduled to be in Las Vegas for a five-day weekend, for a conference with Jack's work. However, because he's transitioning to a new job with a new company, we opted not to attend the conference, or even to take the trip. (We had to purchase our own flights, so we debated still going, and just staying at a different hotel - but opted to get airfare credit for a future trip instead.) And thank goodness we made that decision. Had we been in Las Vegas last weekend, there's no way we could have flown into Atlanta on Monday as scheduled. So we would have been stuck there an extra night or two. It sounds silly to say we'd be "stuck" on vacation, but that's how it would have felt. We'd have been ready to get home, back to Carter (and Marley) . . . not to mention having to pay for a couple extra nights at a hotel.

So instead, we took it a bit easier and a little more in line with how a 32-weeks-pregnant mom wants to relax: we drove a little more than two hours up the road, and stayed in a hotel that was walking distance to pretty much whatever we wanted to do.

The hotel was on a river, and very scenic. We ate ice cream. We sat in Starbucks and enjoyed our morning mochas. We dressed up and ate at restaurants too fancy for Carter. We walked along Main Street. We worked out in the hotel gym together, because we didn't need someone to stay in the room with Carter. I got a prenatal massage. We walked around the hotel, the river, in and out of stores, and never had to chase a toddler! It was so nice to just get a short break from keeping up with an active two-and-a-half-year-old.

And after a 48-hour break, we were ready to get home to our boys.

32 Weeks

• Weeks: 32
• Weight change: +19
• Exercise: Big changes. My 8:34 pace dropped to a 10:00 pace. Not because I couldn't do it, but because Baby Girl was showing signs she didn't like it (see Notes below). So now my workouts are on a four-day rotation of: run (2.5 miles running + .5 miles walking); row machine; run; day off . . . repeat. Still respectable, I think. And the row machine is working my core, which is nice.
• Notes (that I can speak of!):
• Slow digestion. Sometimes heartburn, sometimes severe.
• Ran (literally - ran) into some issues the week before Christmas. My body finally showed me that I needed to slow down. Made a concerted effort to not lift Carter (or anything else heavy), and took a week off from running (still walked and did the row machine). It worked, and I was able to get back into running at a slower pace - without the side effects. Fatigue is beginning to catch me, too. I find myself falling asleep on the couch again, like I did at the beginning.
• Ellyson still sits very low. Unlike her brother, she has barely bothered my ribs at all. Instead, she lies on my bladder and tailbone. As of this weekend, I am peeing literally every 30-60 minutes (every 2-3 hours overnight). Sometimes I can barely walk because of the pain on my tail. But given the choice? I'll take this over the rib compression any day.

Wordless Wednesday

Anniversary

I completely forgot to post about an important anniversary at our house. I don't remember which date - it was either December 27, 28 or 29 - but it has officially been a whole year since Carter's last sick appointment with the doctor. We've seen the pediatrician three times since then - for makeup vaccines, a 2-year checkup and a flu shot . . . and he has been sick three times since then, but they were all mild, Dr.-Mom-knows-how-to-handle-them bugs. Woo-hoo! Here's to hoping 2011 passes as smoothly!

Christmas Day

Carter loved all his gifts. In fact, it took him two hours (and one break for breakfast - mostly for Mommy and Daddy) to get through them all. And even then, we had to help.

He wanted to watch the train over and over again.

He wanted to play and play and play with his grill.

Each time he opened a gift, he wanted it unpackaged and assembled so he could try it out. We were glad he liked everything, and glad our three hours of setup were somewhat justified, but it was tiring.