Pictures!!

We deleted some old Battlestar Galacticas from the HD and got some space, so I was finally able to transfer the photos from the camera to the computer this morning. I have to back up to Mother's Day....

Two Pregnant Mommas. Heather is due June 2, and I'm due June 16th. Here we are at her baby shower!

My belly at 35 weeks. I'll be full term tomorrow, Praise God Dexter decided not to be a preemie!

We had a nice brunch with the Ashe and Murry families at Atwood's. There was some live music (a fiddle and a guitar), which was great because it muffled the sounds of our noisy children.



Elizabeth helps Frankie and Hannah with their dance moves.


Matthew Polk also stayed with us for a week in mid-May. After moving all their belongings to Texas, he needed to come back to Cambridge and wrap up a few things to complete his PhD in Ancient History from Harvard. Congratulations, Dr. Polk!

Kristen, I missed you greatly - there were a few distinctly "college-boy apartment" moments during his stay. The breakfast conversation about when and how robots were going to take over the world, the staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, and my favorite: the "jam" sessions. The boys figured out how to use Chris's laptop to connect the guitar to the stereo speakers, turning it into an amp.


Groupie Frankie

Matthew slept on the couch while he was here, and I'm afraid there wasn't much sleeping in for him. Frankie would walk over to the couch and just stare at him. Some mornings for 10 minutes at a time. Matthew said he woke up several times with her face about 6 inches from his, just breathing on him. Very different, apparently, from the way Nathanael greets his daddy in the morning - jumping on him and squealing until he is awake.

Animalia

We went to the zoo today with Sarah and Hannah and had a great time! Other than the packs of wild school children that arrived in three separate buses, we enjoyed getting to see the animals. Frankie particularly liked the Flamingos and the Jaguar. She wore her jagular shirt, her khaki 'safari' pants, and her Red Sox cap. Needless to say, she was mistaken for a boy all day.

In other animal news, we have adopted Manny (Ramirez, of course) from the Polks as they were not able to transport him to Texas when they moved. Manny is a beautiful blue Beta fish (man, I wish I could post pictures!). Frankie likes to wave at Manny. He's right next to her high chair, and she often requests to be turned towards Manny while she eats so she can watch him. We don't touch Manny or his bowl though, just wave.

I've decided that Manny is my favorite pet in the house and often drop comments to Maisy such as "Manny doesn't pace for his food and knock Frankie over...", "Manny doesn't run down the driveway like a naughty dog...", "Manny doesn't tear up tissues from the trash and leave them all over my clean floor...", "Manny doesn't scratch at the door and whine to be let out...". Poor Maisy, she really is a good dog. It's just hard to compete with a fish when it comes to being quite, out of the way, and low maintenance.

A list of fun

We have had a few small wins in the last two days, for which I am quite thankful. Frankie is responding quickly to the change in my response to her whining, and the whining has drastically reduced to a manageable level, and I think I've only been screamed at once or twice today. We are both in much better spirits as a result.

She also ate some avocado that I hid in her grilled cheese today! I made her grilled cheese with cream cheese, which she loves, and the avocado must have been sufficiently smothered in cheese because she even picked up pieces of avocado that had fallen out of the sandwich and ate them. It took considerable will power to follow Melanie's advice and not race around the kitchen table with my arms up for a victory lap. I tried to act very nonchalant. Cool as a cucumber.

All this has helped me feel much more charitable towards myself as a mother, and towards my daughter and I realized as we played today that I should share with you some of the fun things she's been up to recently.

• She understands a great deal of what we say, and follows simple directions readily. When she finds objects on the floor that I help verify as trash, we walk to the kitchen trash can to throw them out together. She can point to her nose, hair, eyes, shoes, teeth and head when asked, as well as other people's. She will point to people she knows when you ask her where they are. She even identified Hannah today in a picture that had several other children in it.
  
• The words are coming fast and furious these days, although most of them make fleeting appearances. I tell myself that she's just storing these words up for when she's ready to use them. Just now she came in and said "night-night" and then "bye". She can say "ball", and "car", "baa", "moo", "woof-woof", "doggie", "maisy", "keys", "fishy", "hug", "vroom-vroom", "daddy", "mama" (yes! she's started saying it, although it's only been a handful of times - each of which I treasure).
• She gives hugs and kisses. The kisses are quite funny - open mouth, and she always makes a bee-line for our mouths. Which is funny because we don't kiss her on her mouth. We're trying to encourage her to give more socially-appropriate pecks on the cheek.
• She has been working on her dance moves. She can stomp her foot, twirl, "bow" (this is hilarious - it's from Sandra Boynton's Barnyard Dance book where they bow to the sheep, bow to the cow - she nods her head and closes her eyes very deliberately). She took a dance break today at Costco to do some deep squats to the "Baby don't hurt me" snippet that was playing from a CD display.
• She still loves her necklaces and accessories. Pawpaw just sent her a Red Sox hat that she wears proudly. She loves to pull my orange bikini from the bottom drawer of my closet and put the pieces around her neck and wear them for as long as I'll let her. Today she managed to get them around Maisy's head, and our poor sweet dog just sat there with a look on her face that said "is it over yet?". Oh Maisy, I think it has just begun.
  

Whining and Crying? Oh yes.

I'm sorry for the long absence, which I must first explain to be that I have been waiting post until I'm able to upload some great pictures I've taken over the last 10 days from my camera to the computer, but our hard drive is full. Just before the HD filled up, we finally decided on a backup solution (Elephant Drive from Amazon if anyone is interested) that would allow us to do backups off site, and use our current external HD for media storage (which we've been using as our backup drive). The inital backup takes weeks, since it's over the network, and we're waiting for it to finish transferring our pictures before trusting to remove one of the copies from our external or primary HD. Okay, so I'm pretty sure by now I've bored everyone but Jeff, so I'll keep moving. In summary, there will be picture-free posts until the backup finishes, which hopefully will be before baby boy comes.

Frankie had her 15-month well visit this week, and she's a whoping 20 lbs, 13 ounces. That puts her in the 20th percentile for weight, and our pediatrician said we don't need to start worrying, yet. Note the yet. That means momma has started to worry. How to fatten up a picky eater who subsists on pears, peas, chicken nuggets, nutri-grain bars, and oatmeal? She's even dropped off a lot of her cheese eating. Heather and I tried to brainstorm foods that would fatten her up, and I've tried most of them, but she refuses to eat any of them. I know I need to keep trying with her, but it is painful to watch avocado go to waste. Sarah suggested sneaking it in to her grilled cheese, which she does often eat, and we will try this tomorrow. The pediatrician did reassure me that we're doing all the right things to set good eating habits (regularly-timed meals, family dinner where she's served what we're eating, the offering of healthy choices). Sigh. Why do I have a feeling that she'll go through a phase in the future of wanting to eat nothing but grapes, or orange foods, or hot dogs, and that we'll have to put her on those Carnation instant breakfast protein shakes?

One of the other questions the pediatrician had for me was whether or not there was a lot of whining, crying, and tantrums throughout the day. Yes, yes, and yes. It got decidedly worse this week, which has me particularly concerned considering that baby boy should be here in less than 4 weeks, at which point I'll have even less time to try and decipher if she's growling at me and growing red in the face because she wants more to eat or wants me to read her another story, or just wants me to pay attention to her. In the last two days it's gotten so bad she's started screaming at me.

I feel that I have tried patiently to communicate with her and respond in a gentle, respectful tone that I wish her to emulate, but it's clearly not working. Starting today I have chosen to completely ignore any noise that sounds like a growl, scream, grunt, or whine, and I wait for her to use her words. For a while I was encouraging her to use her words while she whined at me (which just means if she makes any noise other than a horrible one I pay attention and try and figure out what she wants), but now I am ignoring her until she makes one of the alternate noises.

Sarah has also been helping me teach her signs, which we have made some progress with. We're starting with "more". I had a training session with her today and a bowl of ice cream (killing two birds with one stone, fattening the kid up and working on her communication), and by the end she was making some progress, and even signed "more" a few times at dinner.

I'll let you know how it goes. It's requiring a lot of patience and strength of will that most days this 36.5-week pregnant momma does not seem to have.

Cramps, Ligament Pain, Labor, or Braxton Hicks?

The pain I was having yesterday could have been any of these my OB told me today. I had some pretty intense localized pain yesterday on my left side, which did subside as I rested, but did not go away completely. I became particularly concerned when it started radiating to my back and become less localized. I was still feeling some pain this morning, so was glad I had a scheduled appointment with my OB already. We're still over 5 weeks out, and I want to do everything I can to make sure this baby is born as close to his due date as possible. My OB told me that even if I decided to just lay down for the next three weeks and not lift a finger, he was still going to come when he wanted to come at this point. After feeling my belly she wasn't particularly concerned, and told me to go about my business as usual, but to rest and try not to lift heavy things (like my 15-month old) unless it was necessary.

So we ran errands after my appointment, and I'm actually feeling better now than I was last night, which is a good sign. I panicked a bit last night when I realized that I really wasn't ready to bring a baby home quite yet. I feel ready now. We have newborn diapers, size one diapers, new bottles (Chris got to reading about the BPA stuff, and got worried, so new bottles were in order), a box of those uber-convenient 4oz. formula packets, and just in case Dexter likes them and therefore sleeps longer, a new pack of pacifiers.

With all we've had going on with the house purchase, the upcoming move, and the fact that I've been feeling great this pregnancy, I had been haughtily (foolishly?) assuming he would just arrive on or around his due date. The past 24 hours have been a good reminder that I am not in charge!

And now for a Frankie Photo moment: she decided to wear some painter's tape like an anklet all morning last week. Heather and I thought it looked a lot like a shackle.

Pawpaw visits

My dad was here for a brief visit this week while he attended some training in the Boston area. It was such nice timing; he got to see the new house yesterday during the inspection, which went really well, by the way. Frankie loves her Pawpaw!


We are sick again, Frankie and I, with colds. We both took naps this morning, and she's on her way down for her second nap. I think Momma will too. We'd been healthy for three whole weeks - I guess we were due, right?

Oh, and I've been meaning to blog about this since the first time I saw it happen, but when we were just out for a walk to the post office, we passed the Al Hoda Meat Market as usual. They were unloading some skinned lambs (maybe goats? hard to tell - do people eat goat meat?) to the market, which is always a little disturbing to see. I know where meat comes from and all that, but I feel that in America it's easy to forget. This particular market doesn't have a back loading area, so they bring the meat in the front door off the street. The most disturbing part about all of this? The fact that both times I've witnessed it, the meat is being pulled from a rented Budget truck. Man, I'd hate to be the next person who rented that truck! And no, we have never purchased meat from this particular market, although I'm sure it's probably fine.