Ho hum

Being a parent is extra tough work sometimes. The last couple of days G1 has really been testing his limits (tho this seems to be a stage he's going thru, at least I hope it's a phase). He tries to get out of doing things simply because he doesn't want to do them. He tries to do jolly well what he pleases and gets really upset when I call him on it and make him behave or when I put him in the corner or make him sit in a chair. He's quite unmanageable at times, and then as sweet as syrup other times. Told me today that I'm a good mommy and he loves me and he loves to give me hugs and loves me to hug him, yada yada. I've decided that I'm going to try a reward system to see if that does anything for him. We sat down tonight and made a list of things he'd like to do/eat/get... and a list of ways to earn points to be able to do those things, and another list of things that will take points away. Now I need to come up with a visual reference for him so he can comprehend how many points he has and what his negative behaviour is doing to his points. Oh, I hope it works, but I'm not holding my breath. I am praying tho. My mom got me a book called Good Behavior which I'll read and hopefully glean some helpful things from. It was recommended to her by a mom of 2 boys. We'll see.

Update 2/6/08: I finally remembered that I had purchased on clearance some really bright, plastic coins from Oriental Trading Company awhile back. I got a see-thru plastic container for both kids, one with a pink lid, the other blue. Whenever they do things on their chore chart or do something especially nice (I catch them being good), I let them put 1 or 2 (depending on the thing they did, sometimes even 3) coins into their cup. When they get enough (1-2 gets them time on the computer, 2 for the park, 2 for watching the Sound of Music DVD...), they can do fun things. I'm not sure G2 understands the concept of spending them just yet, she just likes to get them. She's even potty trained almost completely because of the coins. She keeps her pants dry at night to get 2, get's 1 every time she pees, 2 when she does the other... She's also liking the idea of wearing "big girl pants" and only has a rare (no more than 1 a day) accident. So things are looking up there. Oh yeah, when either of them does something really bad, they get coins taken away from their bank cups. I think it's working nicely, tho G1s cup is not very full, it keeps getting coins taken away, and he does understand the concept of spending them better than G2 so he spend more of his.

Movement?

I'm trying to remember how much G1 and Gigi were moving at 24 weeks and I really can't, but I can't help but think that this baby is a rather laid back baby. S/he moves several times a day but seems to have long periods of sleep. Also, no hiccups yet and I haven't gotten any Braxton Hicks contractions which I thought I remembered getting much earlier when preggo with Gigi. Oh well, I could be remembering things all wrong.

Gigi kept her pants dry again all morning and in fact she woke up with dry pull-ups which is always nice. She seems to be more and more keen on wearing "Pooh bear pants" or "Princess pants" or "Dora pants." I find that I do a better job of staying on track with her too when I know that she doesn't have a safety net.

"I want my precious-y"

G1 has started feeling the need for privacy, doesn't want his sister to watch him get dressed/undressed, doesn't want Mom or Dad in the bathroom with him when he's going potty... He'll say "I want my preshusee." Makes us chuckle.

I have started reading "A Little Princess" to the kids at night to help them get tired. I've hotsynced it to my Palm Pilot so I can read it in the dark while they lie in their beds and hopefully get sleepy. I know the language is mostly over their heads which I hope will aid in the sleepy factor. It has seemed to work the two times I've done it, tho both times were on a day they didn't get naps and the time was rather late, so the story may be highly coincidental, lol.

G2 is doing better with her potty training, I have implimented something similar to the chart at familytools.com and the first day or two she really seemed motivated to be able to turn her potty circle over, but lately, she's just been going without the circle turning. She kept "big girl pants" dry all day today, and the one accident did have to be the whole shebang in her pants... gross. It's bad enough when she poops in pull-ups, but underwear is just not nice at all!! I did keep asking her this afternoon if she needed to go and she kept saying no. I should have just marched her in there a few times whether she needed to or not. Grrr, well, maybe this will teach me to be more vigilant, ... at least for the next few days till I forget, lol.

We went to the pregnancy place today which had the baby models and we got to see model babies from 6 weeks up to about 30 weeks. It was pretty cool. They let us hold the 26 week baby as I'm 24 1/2 and measured 26 cm fundal height at my last checkup so it is probably pretty close to the right size. The kids had fun holding it and Galena wanted to take off with the new baby doll. The 30 week baby was so tiny, a friend of mine had a baby at 29 1/2 weeks so he was probably close to that size when he was born. Yikes, seems mighty small! One of the gals who worked there told of a friend of hers who had a baby at 23 weeks...and the baby survived! and is a healthy 4 year old now. It's amazing what they can do with premies nowadays.

Mommy becomes Mamma

Not sure why, but G2, who's always called me Mommy or sometimes just Mom has taken to call me Mamma. She must have heard it somewhere and so now I'm a very deliberately said "Mamma." I think it's rather cute and funny.

I'm 24 1/2 weeks with Baby 3, just checked my pregnancy calendar and it says that s/he is now considered viable. Just over a pound and about a foot long. There's a place in town that has models of fetus' of every size and I want to take my kids to see them so we can see just how big this little one is getting. That should be kinda fun. My last midwives' checkup revealed that I was spilling quite a lot of glucose in my urine so this month I'm laying off of most of the sugar that I was innocently consuming till now (jelly in pb&j, honey on hot cereal, juice with meals, hazelnut chocolates that DH gave me for Christmas, chocolate covered cherries, also leftover from Christmas, cinnamon sugar on toast, ...). I admit it, I have a bit of a sweet tooth. Since I've cut back (none of the stuff from the previous list except for the tiniest bit of honey on hot cereal), the cravings have been very intense. Nothing seems to be able to quench my desire for a big glass of juice. But, I'm going to try to be good so that hopefully next month, my readings will be normal again. I wouldn't want to do anything that might jeopardize my chances for the homebirth I'm so set on. I've been really tired lately, probably going to bed too late, but I'm having a hard time changing my schedule to a more sane bedtime since DH gets home from work so late (usually 11 pm or later). Sometimes I wish he had a more normal work schedule, but what's a guy to do when the commute is almost 2 hours one way?

How Gigi impresses me

Her grasp of language is really amazing (well, at least to me, her never to be biased mama [ha!]). Today in the car I mentioned to G1 that he was a very astute young man. Gigi piped up, "Mommy, what's a stute young man?" She knows many of the lyrics to I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. She does a great job of dressing herself and often picks great color combinations too. She learned that E is for Elephant after I told her just once (well, maybe twice).

How G1 impresses me

We were coming out of the road that goes to Grandma and Grandpa's house on our way home today and he piped up that "that's the way to the Fall Festival" (that we go to every year). He was right! Then before we got to their church on our way home, he said "there's Grandma and Papa's church." One day on the way to the mall he asked if we were going to Chuck E. Cheeses because that was indeed the way we had gone the one time we went (for someone's birthday). He has an amazing sense of direction for a little guy (4 3/4).

He has virtually taught himself to play (on his little battery operated keyboard) the melodies of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Frere Jaques, The First Noel, and a song that his dad taught him. The other day he played one of the songs in a different key, accidentals and all.

Lady song

Today on our way up to Grandma and Grandpa's, G1 wanted us to sing the Lady song from the Maria DVD (Sound of Music). At first we were scratching our head, but it finally dawned on me that he was probably referring to the yodeling song so we had to try to limp our way thru "High on a hill was a lonely goatherd, lady-odle-lady-odle-lay-hee-hoo... Sad to say, even tho I've probably seen it 10 times since Christmas day, I wasn't able to get more than 1/2 a verse out. Sorry G1.

Ah, Kids

Last evening I was doing something in the living room or kitchen (don't remember), and I heard G2 scream a scream of pain and fear. I ran into the kids' room and found her holding her right eye. This is the same eye the G1 managed to hit hard enough (he said he hit her with his finger [?]) a few days before Christmas to give her a black eye. I pried her hands away and saw ... something whitish or beige-ish ... ? Huh? It had an odd smell that I couldn't place right away. My gaze then fell on my makeup bag that G1 had snuck into their room. So I rushed her to the bathroom and wet some TP and tried to wipe it off her eye. Some of it came off, but it was being very stubborn. So DH and I got her into the tub and kept rinsing her eye with warm water (she wasn't too happy!). I went back to investigate the scene of the crime and found most of my makeup (lipstick mostly) destroyed. I then found a bottle of fingernail polish (clear) with the lid off. I finally realized what the smell was...fingernail polish! When I did find the brush, it was covered in concealer (what he'd been trying to paint on her eye). I asked G1 why he did that and he said he was trying to cover up her black eye. He had seen me put a little cover-up on it a couple times (just trying to see if it would help her not look so pitiful) and I guess he was just trying to help. But, oh the mess. He had smeared my lipstick all over G2's back (got all over the inside of her shirt), on his bed sheets, in the bathroom sink (not sure how it got there), on one of our entry-way stairs (???), concealer was all over the headboard of his bed. What gets into kids I wonder? Her eye is fine, she actually calmed down shortly after getting in the bath. I'm sure the crying helped by creating tears to keep the bad stuff flowing out. Poor girl tho. I felt rather sorry for her.

Homebirth info

Since I'm so bloomin' passionate about educated choices and the empowerment of women, I'm going to post a whole slew of links to sites that have info that I have been gleaning from various places, probably mostly the Internet, that helped me make the decisions I've made in the past regarding birth, breastfeeding, and parenting. Hopefully they will help someone along the way. Please read and educate yourself, don't blindly take everything that the medical and/or mainstream community gives you.

My Birth Diatribe

Dangers of Epidurals

Birth Kit Essentials

Midwive Interview Questions

Personal Birth Affirmations

Morning Sickness Remedies

Is Labor Necessary?

Nutrition for Pregnancy

Natural Ways to Stimulate Labor

Dangers of Ultrasounds

Interview with Author Peggy O'Mara

Birth Story Links, Etc.

Homebirth is Safe

Homebirth Q&A

Birth Kit

I'm going to need to start thinking about where to get my birth kit in the next month or two so I'll keep track of places I'm researching here:

These are the one's I researched for G2's birth and the prices for the kits at the time:

• In His Hands – http://www.inhishands.com (my kit to cost compare was approx. $28.65)

• Yalad – www.yalad.com (~$29.52)

• Midwife Supplies – www.midwifesupplies.com (~$31.35)

• Birth With Love – www.birthwithlove.com (~$41.40)

Here's the birth kit as required by my midwives for baby #3:

Now we're truckin'

It seems that my first four months of this pregnancy went by soooooo slowly, but now, suddenly, I'm at 5 months. How did that happen? I guess time flies when you're "having fun." While I wouldn't always categorize my dayly existence as fun, at least I'm feeling much much better now, and I'm feeling the baby move which is so fun and uber-cool. I'm still not at the "big as a whale" stage yet, but I am dealing with a stiff lower back just about every morning when I wake up. I can't lounge in bed anymore. Oh well, got things to do anyway, right? Since I haven't posted anything in a very long time, (at first it was due to just not feeling well at all! and then it was the rapid slide into Christmas that I got caught in) I'm going to try to piece together the things that I didn't post about this baby. I had m/s till around week 16 tho I still had some queeziness in the evenings till around 18 weeks. Sure glad that's over! I think I felt the first little kicks around 16 weeks, but then didn't feel much again (just a flutter or two), till around 18 weeks which really is more normal for me. It wasn't probably till around 19 or 20 weeks that I felt baby moving every day. An interesting note about the movement at 18 weeks is that with the last two, I just felt the flutters at 18 weeks, but with this one, I felt actual kicks. I can feel the baby kicking from the outside now and G1 has been able to feel it move, not sure about G2. That's been going on for a few weeks now. Pretty cool. Baby's already almost the length of my kids' Pooh Bears tho not nearly as chubby or as tubby. The kids are really getting into the idea of having a baby in Mommy's belly. They hug it and kiss it and talk and sing to it. They even fight over who gets to kiss (etc) the baby which isn't terribly nice.

Pride and ... well, pride

Saturday was the last Sabbath of the quarter (from Oct to Dec) and these are always special Sabbaths with special programs put on by the children's classes. My son (G1) is in Kindergarten (ages 4-7) and they all have to say their memory verses from the whole last 3 months (one per week). His was Acts 10:34, "God does not show favoritism." Well, we practiced and practiced until he could say it perfectly, but I wasn't expecting anything because for the last 2 or 3 quarter-end Sabbaths, he's just stood there looking cute, but refusing to say anything. Well, this time, when it was his time, he belted out "God does not...." and I thought he might stop there, but he continued "show favoritism. Acts 10:34" The whole church laughed and applauded. I was afraid that all that attention might have frightened him back into his shell, but I think it had a positive effect on him, he seemed to be ok with it. Lots of people came up and told him how well he did and I'm hoping that from now on, we won't have anymore problems. To say I was proud is putting it mildly ?

A few of my favorite ... sayings

Here are some things that my kids say (or have said) that I don't want to forget so I'm going to write them down here.

G1: Spagarus (asparagus)

G1: DVDD (DVD, "Daddy, that's my favorite DVDD, can I watch that DVDD?")

G2: Bless-you (pronounced bweshoo, what she sometimes calls tissues, "Mommy, I got a bwessoo for my nose")

G1: Used to call a friend of ours named Nichole, "Miss Canole"

G1: "It's really raining out there, Mom, there's little tiny sprinklers in the sky."

G1: He has fallen in love with "The Sound of Music." Would watch it every day, multiple times, if we'd let him. He's memorizing lines too. Yesterday he said "Oh yes you are, Captain" (when the Captain is telling Maria that she is quite finished and that's she's to leave and he gets flustered and calls her Captain). Yesterday, for variety, we put in Mary Poppins and when Mary showed up he said, "hey, that's Maria, is that Maria?" And I had to try to explain actors and actresses to him. I told him that in this movie she was pretending to be Mary Poppins, but in the other movie she pretends to be Maria, but her real name is Julie. I'm sure that must have been a bit confusing!

G2: Flop-flops (for flip-flops)

G1: Last week (2/11/06) he came to me rubbing the bridge between his top lip and his nose and said "Mommy, my lipstache hurts."