Tot-i-tude!!

Baby girl has been getting out of control lately. The bad thing is that its just so damn funny! But you just can't laugh. She's found herself a serious case of tot-i-tude!! She's a little anger ball :) She will absolutely scream at little man when he takes a toy from her. And if I don't do something she wants or if I stop her from doing something she wants... she will just stand there and scream and shake her whole body!! She's such a bitty thing that it is so hilarious!! Her face will turn red and the whole bit.

She was out of sorts at my dr's apt the other day. She had fallen asleep in the car, so was a little on the sensitive/grouchy side. When I popped into the bathroom for the urine sample bit and left them in the stroller right outside the door (with the nurse) that just did it for her. She started crying and of course the nurse tried talking to her, which brought on louder wails... and then hysterics when other nurses/drs tried to talk to her... When we got into the room and I got them out of the stroller so they could play with the toys, everything was alright. Until the Dr walked in the room. Baby girl took one look at the dr, froze in her tracks and screamed at the top of her lungs; body shaking, face turning red and all. Where did my sweet baby girl go? I'm guessing since her dr's apt was just the previous week, she had those shots fresh in her mind and thought that's what was going on again.

The odd thing is that this new 'tude began right after she got her immunizations. Since then nap time and bedtime have been battles. The kind where I have to force her to lay in my lap amidst screams and hurling and flinging and back arching and leg kicking.

She's always been great at nap time, I can count on putting her in her playpen and her drifting off to sleep within 10 minutes or so. But the past week its been an hour later and she's not sleeping - she's getting all mad and stomping around. So I've had to give in and just put her to sleep.

I had been working on getting her to go to sleep on her own at night. I started laying her down in her playpen at bedtime, turning off the lights etc. Of course the first few nights she fussed and cried for a bit, but eventually went down. And it was to the point where we had it downpat and it was all working out good... then one night she started fussing just a little, I wasn't in the room so Tweenie picked her up! So there went 2-3 weeks of work. I realize that Tweenie probably didn't have a full understanding of what was going on. But in the weeks prior, every time the baby had stirred and Tweenie looked like she's was going to go get her, I told her not to, and explained that she needed to learn how to go to sleep on her own... Since then I just haven't had the energy to go through it all over again... it seems easier to just rock her to sleep. But then it's been such a battle for the past week that I'm thinking its time to start putting her down at night again.

She's been really awful at night. Once she sees that I'm ready to rock her to sleep she starts with the screaming. If she wont lay in my lap, I'll put her on my shoulder, but then she's pulling my hair and digging her toes into my thighs, I try to get her to lay down and she gets mad and starts flailing and flinging and kicking...

I know this would all be a lot easier had we not made the choice to co-sleep. Or would it have?? ;) It seems to be a pretty common issue (co-sleeping or not). I suppose things will get better once the weather gets warmer and we can use the kids' room again (its just too cold back there, and we've actually moved our bed into the second living room so we have one less room to heat).

Anyway, hopefully putting her down at night goes well... I just can't take much more of the nightly battles. It probably doesn't help that by 8pm I'm pretty much wiped myself! :)

Pregnant Brain

It's real folks.

I swear my vocabulary goes right out the window. Can't ever think of the word I need when I need it ;)

And being busy just does not help! I swear we have been all full up on appointments these days. Last week we had the ultrasound on Monday, an appointment on Wednesday, baby girl's 18mos check up Thursday... and this week I had my dr apt this morning...

But with the whole appointment thing... 2 weeks ago I posted about forgetting baby girl's 18mos check up and having to reschedule... well, yesterday I flipped the calender to March just to see what I have going on next month and there is a "1pm baby girl" written on March 25th. Obviously a dr's appointment because there's really nothing else it could be. So at my apt this morning I asked if I had her scheduled, sure enough I did! I must've called twice to schedule her 18mos apt! ???? Ugh. I'm totally losing my mind!

At my appointment this morning, we almost left little man's juice cup. The funny thing was that it was him who reminded me! Just as we were walking out the door he asked where his juice cup was. Glad someone was paying attention!

Last time I was pregnant my husband told me I needed to stop going places myself, he was afraid I would forget little man somewhere... the bad thing was that I think he was serious! ;)

Anyway, I noticed this morning, in my palm (when I was looking to make sure I didn't have anything else scheduled this week that I forgot to write on the calender!) I noticed that I had "due date" still in there. So today would have been my due date. I had forgotten. Just when my due date had been of course. I was just thinking about the miscarriage last night. Its never too far from my mind. The pain does lessen, but the memories don't fade quite as fast. I know it would be a different story if I wasn't pregnant now. I probably would have been obsessing over the due date, and today would have been much harder to swallow.

I know how blessed I am, pregnant brain and all! :)

And seriously, I think pregnant brain lasts until after you are done nursing... maybe not as bad, but still ;)

Well....

We had to leave yesterday at 6am to go to the unnamed "big city" to get my ultrasound done. We decided to leave the kids in their pjs and change them into clothes when we got there. Sadly, we arrived just at the time my appointment was scheduled, so didn't have the time to change them into clothes. So I'm sure I looked like the biggest slacker mom in the world ;) and to top it off baby girl was in an old pair of little man's dinosaur pjs. ;)



Even though we were about 10 minutes late by the time we checked in, we were in the waiting room for at least an hour!! Amazingly, we only had a couple of minor meltdowns. It was just starting to get a little hairy when we were finally called.



Everything with baby looked good! Measuring exactly on due date! :)



And... it is definately a boy!



When the ultrasound tech said "boy" baby sister let out a wail and started crying! Too funny.



Although I was pretty impartial, I didn't realize until we were getting ready in the morning that I might be a tad disappointed if it was a girl.



Funny thing is that with little man we had his name right away and were floundering with a girls name. With baby girl, we had her name right away and were back and forth on boys names. This time we had a boys name picked out and couldn't decide between a few girls names.... Funny how things work out that way.



Also, since we started telling little man about the new baby he's been saying that there's a new "little man" in mommy's belly. (using his own name of course).



Anyway, I'm just thrilled that everything looks good with the new little man! I always get all paranoid before an ultrasound. But then feel so much better after seeing that everything is going good :)

Glad the week is finally over...

So glad that its finally the weekend. The week started fine, but quickly got to be one of the most challenging weeks I've had lately.

Of course if you read my last post, you know how Wednesday went. And thank you all for your kind and supportive comments!! I'm so glad I have a place to vent and friends like you all!

The rest of the week just went downhill from there. The only good thing about Wednesday was that it was a simultaneous nap day. Love those. But of course sometimes they are pretty rare.

Thursday Little Man was a challenge from the time his feet hit the floor in the morning. I don't know what was up with him, but there was nothing I could do to get his behavior under control. He was in time outs all throughout the day. And then came nap time. Was not going down for anything. And all of a sudden he's completely freaked out by the lamp in the bedroom. Its just a plain old ordinary lamp. But the shade is pretty old and yellowed and is cracking in some places (its a hard plastic thing). On Thursday while he was laying down he started getting all hysterical telling me to stop the lamp. And you could tell he was totally freaked out by it. Everytime I would lay him down he would look at it and start crying. Guess maybe I will have to try getting a new lampshade... He's fine at night... probably because its so dark he can't really see the lamp.

And with all the carrying on he ended up waking up baby girl... by the time tweenie got home from school I just had to leave her to watch the two little ones before I completely blew up and lost my cool.

At least Little man went to bed pretty early and fell asleep in about 2 minutes...

Then on Friday, little man's behavior was great. But baby girl ended up having a day full of time outs.

I suppose having two parents with OCD tendencies pretty much predisposes the children to OCD tendencies...

Baby girl figured out how she could climb onto the rubbermaid storage thing with drawers that sits next to the tv/stereo... and she realized if she sat on it she could grab remotes and movies and turn up the volume on the stereo. Every single time I left the room she was up on that thing. I finally had to start giving her time outs and putting her in the playpen if I had to leave the room for a minute... she had time out after time out and still 2 days later will not stop climbing that thing. I would move it, but then if I just moved everything she climbed on we would have nothing left in the living room. She has to learn. And unfortunately she is very hard-headed.

And to top it all off I completely forgot about baby girl's 18-month well child check up on Friday! We were sitting at the table having lunch and my palm alarm started going off. I thought it was strange, thought maybe tweenie had an early out... but there was not a thing on my calendar. Looked at my palm and it said Dr's apt at 1pm!! It was 12:30, and my husband had taken the car to work. It would have taken him until 1 to get home. When I originally scheduled the appointment the Dr was booked for two months! When I called to reschedule they said she was booked until June!!! WTF??? I wish I would have written the damn appointment on the calendar! Now we have to see the Dr there that I don't like. Grrrr. At least she can go in next week and that won't put us behind schedule. I'm so mad at myself. I didn't even tell my husband about it. It would just end up as ammunition. I'm going to plead pregnant brain! ;)

Let's just hope that next week goes much better than this week! We have our ultrasound on Monday! So hopefully baby is turned right and we can tell if baby is a boy or girl! And then I can start crocheting cute little baby booties and hats ;)

If you're wondering, I'm pretty impartial about whether its a boy or girl. It would be nice to have a boy, otherwise poor little man will be horribly outnumbered! But if we have a girl we will be entirely set on clothes! And we have so many adorable girl clothes that were barely worn. We were pretty poor when we had little man, so we would probably have to buy some clothes (also there may be a seasonal difference--whereas we have plenty of every size and season for a girl with bought and hand me down clothes). And also, I've given birth to one of each. My step-daughter was 5 when my husband and I got together, and our adopted daughter was 6 when we started spending time with her during the adoption process (which all told lasted about a year!). So I didn't have them as babies.

Anyway... excited about Monday and looking forward to a new and better week!