The mimic

For a while I have been meaning to post about the funny things that Gwen does, but the time I get to the computer, I forget everything...well, the important funny things. Sometimes the funny things don't really translate unless you have a picture. Yesterday Eric snapped this picture of the little mimic. I sometimes get a little bored during diner, I am done pretty quickly and then I have to wait on Gwen to finish, sometimes I can't handle it and just rest my head on my hand while I wait for Gwen to finish. She often mimics me.
When Gwen gets hungry she lets me know, by taking me by the hand walking me into the kitchen and then climbing up on her high chair. Crazy!
Last night we had spaghetti sauce, peas and apple crisp. Gwen still won't touch the peas, tried the spaghetti sauce, ate up the apple crisp and after Daddy came home we ate some of the wagon wheels. Our first attempt at pasta, we are going to have spaghetti again tonight, what the heck! This has made my life much easier and even though Gwen might still sign for cereal and even say it, I don't care, now I just figure out what to try next. I don't think Gwen is really into caseroles, or any foods that are combined at this point.

Eating day2

Last night we had teriyaki chicken, ok just chicken that had marinated in teriyaki sauce and put on the George Foreman with sweet potatoes and broccoli. Gwen ate 1/2 of the sweet potato and chicken no broccoli last night. Unfortunately, Gwen didn't fall asleep until 3:30 for her nap so I had to wake her at about 5:30. UGH! Tonight we are going to try spaghetti, Gwen isn't fond of pasta, but she seems to like tomato sauce, so we will see how that goes, we all know how much she likes the Parmesan cheese!

Water babies wk3!

YAY! Today we had a break through, we participated in class. Is anyone as excited as I am? We got to class about 15 minutes early, which I am not sure, but might have made the difference, or maybe it was because it was the 3rd class. Before class Gwen started to reach out and touch the ropes (the ones that divide the lap lanes for the swimmers). She really enjoyed that and I even got her to turn around a first for class! She actually smiled and laughed and put her face in the water. Something Grandma doesn't even like to do!
Last night's eating wasn't terrible either. Gwen actually ate broccoli, something she hasn't done in months, but I guess based on what else was on her plate it was truly her best option. I do have to admit that since I didn't have time to marinate the chicken it was gross, very dry. She appears to not like potatoes in their baked form. Tonight we are having terriyaki marinated chicken and sweet potatoes with broccoli. Well see how that goes.

Nagging

For weeks, maybe months, Eric has been bugging me to put Gwen's hair in a pony tail. I don't know why! Thursday I realized it was long enough, so I put it in a pony tail. I don't put Gwen in pigtails or in the ponytail very often because being winter, I think her hair should be mostly down so she won't get cold! Something my bald husband wouldn't understand!

Here is Gwen eating cheese off pizza!
Gwen is starting to try more foods, so I have decided to finally stop coddling her and not make her special meals anymore. I guess it will be a couple days of hardship and starving around here, but truly this is the only time I have to do it.

Eric is in DC this week, so that means he will probably be home just in time for the bath and putting to bed. And he will fully admit, as he did today when I mentioned it to him that he would cave. Does anyone else see a theme, Eric out of town, Melanie work on Gwen's issues? I have been going back and forth on the starvation plan, mostly because I wasn't sure I was ready, but truly, I need to not be making 2 meals when the next child arrives, so no better time than the present, right? I guess "meals" is stretching what Gwen actually eats, I wouldn't actually call them meals, snippets of food. So, we will see how it goes, this week we are going to start small, chicken, baked potatoes and broccoli. Since Gwen does like cereal for breakfast, I don't actually fear that she will starve, the Nurse Practitioner did say she will start eating with us when she is hungry. But, will I have the patience to listen to her whine and cry and be cranky...I guess we will see!

Yogurt?

Look at me pictures from today! I know you are like what, two posts in one day...awesome! I had to document this...Gwen eating yogurt. She actually saw it in the refrigerator and asked for it. Is anyone else excited?


At first she didn't seem interested in the yogurt, but when she finished the food on her table and noticed I had finished my lunch and started on the yogurt she "begged" for the spoon and ate it as best she could.

She also kept pointing at the camera wanting me to take more pictures, so I obliged, I mean that is what Mom's do.



We have another thing of yogurt in the fridge, I wonder if she will like blueberry as much as she liked strawberry. Maybe we will be running to the store to get more yogurt, but I don't want get over excited. I don't want this to be like the peanut butter incident...now she won't eat peanut butter. Gwen's still napping so I guess it time for me to get up and get some more stuff started, I am making calzones tonight and I need to get the dough started. YUM!

PHONE!

Pictures from yesterday! Look at me I am posting photographs less than 24 hours after they were taken! I took this picture last night because I realized it had been a while since I took a picture of the small fry and I thought I would document her drinking chocolate milk, you know because it is something she never did previously.
Then Grandma called and someone decided they would talk on the phone and that in order to talk on the phone she must hold the phone. Yes these pictures were snapped during the conversation!



She has now made up her own sign for phone, I have realized, I don't know how long she has been doing the sign, because Mommy is a little slow. She really didn't have much to say, but she enjoyed giggling!

Pictures!

I have been meaning to post a picture of our 90% completed fireplace, I know the Moms would like to see the picture being as the husband has been talking about this project since we purchased the house. You will have to excuse the mess we are cleaning out the cave and trying to get my scrapbooking stuff in one place...like in an album! Plus, if I didn't take a picture and post it now you might never see it...but I know Eric is proud of himself, so I should be a nice wife and post what the hubby is excited about (it sucks to be married to a cranky pregnant woman).

PS every project in our house is at the 90% completed state, we are hoping that soon we will actually start having stuff 100% done, but until you try to sell a house do you every get a project 100% completed?

This picture right here shows why we, namely me haven't been able to get pictures of Gwen lately. Every time she sees the camera she runs at me so by the time I get the camera turned on and a picture snapped, this is what we end up with! In your face Mommy!
This weekend as I mentioned, we visited Edie. We don't get up to see Edie as often as we probably should, but with Gwen it is often amazing that we attempt to get in the car and drive anywhere that takes 2 hours, it used to be so daunting because she would scream! But this time she was great in the car, unfortunately I didn't bring her enough books, I had toys, but only 4 books. She was very shy with Edie. Last Monday was Edie's 82nd birthday so we were planning on going up and visiting for her birthday and I was going to bring cupcakes, have I mentioned that I got a cookbook for Christmas that has 500 muffin/cupcake recipes. So I made orange chocolate cupcakes and we went up to visit Edie. We went to lunch and chatted for a while.
This is the closest Gwen would get to Edie, but as you can see she really enjoyed the cupcake! Edie suggested we get pictures of the chocolate face!
Soon after these pictures we realized it was time to go. Gwen started to act crazy, her I am starting to get tired, fall on the floor randomly and cry when Mommy walked 2 steps out of the kitchen and made me stay in the kitchen with Edie and Grandma. We had a nice visit with Edie, on the way home we realized that if we don't get up to Edie's again in the next few months we won't get up there until after June sometime when we will have to contend with traveling with 2 babies! AH!

Water babies wk2!

So we are in out second week of water babies, today there was a little more crying, unfortunately, but it was mostly because I am a mean Mommy that tried to get her to participate in class. The instructor asked me today what I wanted to get out of the class, I am not really sure I hadn't thought about what we should get out of it. I guess I really want Gwen to get used to going places she is not comfortable with, but I certainly don't want her to be afraid of the water. I can't tell from her reaction if she is afraid of the water, or just not used to her surroundings yet. I don't think it is a fear of water, because when it is just the 2 of us interacting I can get her to get her head off my shoulder and reach for the ball (to work on reaching) I guess I thought this was a class for learning to be comfortable with the water, but she also works on swimming strokes and more importantly we, the Moms are learning how to safely get kids in and out of the water and water safety...like always having them look at the wall and touch it and whatnot. Now I have to say that Gwen's crying was not like all out screaming, but it was the fussy what are you doing to me kind of cry out. I feel like we made some progress, but let me tell you the water was COLD! We are not sure if it was that it was cold because the heat wasn't as high today or because we are morons that signed up for water babies in the middle of winter and it is hardly above freezing today. DUH!
We don't get the paper, and I don't keep up the news as I should, but I do keep up with some comic strips, you know we all have to have priorities! Last week I could really relate to For Better or For Worse. This comic strip from Friday I think really sums up some of the days of a SAHM. Of course Thursday's wasn't so bad either.
Got some work done last night and usual these things usually spur me on to get some work done, so we are going to try to start a monthly scrapbooking group, I need that so I can get all these pictures of Gwen into a hard copy format. I would really like to have Gwen's pictures in a hard copy so we can look through them together and so when Grandmas come to visit or we go to visit people we can refresh her memory that she knows these people, I hope that will go a long way to help Gwen and her shyness. One of the women last night said it is fun to see Gwen come out of her shell and to light up when she sees people she knows and 'talk' to them. All right, Gwen is finally up after a 4 hour nap. Our poor girl I guess is pretty tired. Oh, have I mentioned that she has started to drink chocolate milk! How exciting is that! Now if we could get her to eat something besides hot dogs and carbs we would have real progress!

Animals

Gwen is getting better at her animal sounds, since we made this video last week, she has actually added some new sounds. The lion/tiger and the elephant. I don't know if you will actually be able to hear the sounds, she read the book with Eric the first time and then I got the camera, so she is not so animated.

We were busy this weekend, It is pretty cold here, hasn't gotten above freezing in a couple days. I hope to upload pictures sometime, but tonight I am going over to a girlfriend's house to scrapbook. Gotta get some work done before the next baby comes. Hopefully I will actually get some work done!

SNOW!

This is what we woke up with this morning, but I guess since we went to sleep with it looking like that we weren't really surprised.

Yesterday we walked to the grocery store, Gwen was in the stroller, but we let her out and she had a good time.
Then we let her play outside. Of course, by then she wanted dinner and wasn't into playing outside.



We made her make a snow angel, can you see it?
In other monumental news, Gwen tried the egg this afternoon. We even had the same meal for lunch...ok not totally the same meal, but she ate the chicken from my leftovers and we split a pear...that's progress isn't it? Ok, so maybe after I took a bite of the pear she took it from me and wouldn't give it back. I even tried to slice her off a piece, but she would rather eat from the fruit itself, so I had to settle for the slice. So tempramental! Well, she is up from her nap now, time to get a move on!

Dr. appt

Today we had Gwen's 18 month well-baby visit. Things went very well, except or super shy baby curled up into me and wouldn't let go, if anyone else was in the room with us. Poor kid! I am not super surprised by this, because she seems to be completely channeling my personality. Let's up the new baby is not a Mini Me also! Although, then again, do I really want a child that is not shy and just walks up to strangers, not really! But, as usual I digress. This Dr's appt was very helpful to me, I have had a tough week as a Mommy, I think Gwen's illness (that we didn't realize she had until we came down with it!) started a week of doubt for me as a Mom, but hearing from the Dr that she is right on schedule and that I need to keep doing what I am doing. The only bad thing is that my egg experiment will have to continue! For the last 2 weeks everyday I make us a scrabbled egg and give Gwen maybe a tablespoon and eat the rest, in front of her, Gwen still is not eating it, but the CRNP said that I am going to have to keep doing that, because she will take a bite when she is ready and really hungry. The only problem with this is Gwen knows that she will be getting something else after this and she doesn't have to eat it. But to be encouraged everyday with lunch I also drink milk and today she had some of my milk! Of course I have drinking milk in front of her for probably a year now and do I really have the patience to eat an egg everyday for a year or 2! I am not sure, Eric says I am a patient person, but I don't know where he gets that from, he says I must be a good faker then! Anyhoo, her vital statistics:
Weight: 23 lbs 3 oz 30%
Height: 31.25 in 30%
She gained 1lb, 30z and 0.5 in.
The CRNP said that she is still on her growth curve so she is growing well and she has more than 3 words, which is what the expect for 18 months. So, I guess it is all good. I told her that Gwen has 10-15 words, I am going to do a count at the end of this post for posterity and for whenever I get around to scrapbooking this age!
Today it is snowing and people are being sent home from work (Eric included!) they are expecting the snow to turn to rain later which would make the evening commute fun, so I am glad for once that Eric was allowed to come home. We probably have about 4in and still snowing. Gwen is taking a nap currently! I was so excited I started to vacuum the whole house. I was told to quit when the husband had to make a conference call from the basement, so I guess after I finish this post I will finish the last room of the house! Go me! Maybe I can get some of this crap out of here/organized that has ventured out of the cave...now that I have finished my puzzle and feeling better about my house time to clean!
Gwen's words:

1. dog (sometimes it is doooooooooog, you know when we are really excited!)
2. Da-da/Daddy-whatever we feel like calling DadDY at the moment
3. bubbles
4. purple
5. Oh-no
6. shoes
7. hi
8. Elmo-finally no more Melmo!
9. Belbow=elbow
10. E=Erin, one of her little friends, I can't quite get what she is saying, but Erin's Mom and I think it is like E.
11. O=open, out, on, this word is very contextual.
12. noz=nose always accompanied by touching either her nose or someone else's.
13. dri=drink this word is always accompanied with the sign for drink
14. cereal-she doesn't exactly say cereal, but she does say something almost intelligible accompanied with the sign for cereal.
15. Tatie-I think, for her little friend Katie
16. Momma-she only seems to say this in the crib!
17. hot dog
18. up

Huh-so it appears that I didn't lie at the Dr's office...go me! She is starting to repeat more, so I can often say can you say and she will repeat it. Now I am going to list her signs.

• bye
• open
• out
• eat
• drink
• more
• sleep
• light
• blanket
• banana
• apple
• milk
• quiet
• toothbrush
• stars
• book

I think that is all the signs, we have a bedtime and a mealtime sign book and she knows all the signs from those 2 books!
Eric has the laptop, so I won't be able to post any pictures...if I get to it, until later.

New hat...and dress

So this last week Eric was sickly and staying at home, so I went shopping! We have some gift card money left so I went and got Gwen this dress and hat! Less then $6, tax included! It is fun to shop for kids clothes, they are so cheap, comparatively. I only bought this outfit because of the hat. I mean the outfit wouldn't be the same without the hat with the bow.

Tomorrow Gwen has her 18month appointment, we will see how that goes. I have some stuff to talk to her about. I don't really have much to talk about today, I thought I did, but my child, who has not napped now in 3 days, must be causing my head to lose all thoughts.

Water babies

Today was our half hour "swim" lesson. You know how when you go somewhere like a group function, there is always the kid in the class who is doing everything you want and more, doesn't even look back at Mom, just runs off, and then there is the kid clinging to their Mom's leg and won't let go. Which do you think Gwen was? Yes, she was the clingy child curled up in my arm and wouldn't look up unless she saw Sophia, who was the other kid in the class who would do anything in the pool and cried when we left! (BTW-her grandparents who live within walking distance have a pool) Sophia is her friend from exercise group. I was excited because by the end of class I did get her to reach out for the purple ball the kids were given to throw and practice reaching out for it. Hopefully she will warm up to the idea of being in the pool. Hopefully soon enough, she will realize Mommy is not going to drop her or leave her or anything else terrible. Hopefully soon enough she will become comfortable in her surroundings and participate in the class. My poor girl!

Update and other things

I realize that I have been terrible about uploading pictures, I am not sure that you can rely on that this week. We are super busy with appointments. Today we had the ultrasound, I will write more about that later in the post. Here are some pictures of Gwen and Eric from Friday. Eric wasn't feeling well and wanted to sleep, but as you can sleep, Gwen wanted nothing to do with that! She kept going to get books and climbing onto the couch so he could read to her. I thought she was going to let me read some to her, but she faked me out, as usual.

We had the ultrasound this morning. As many of you might know, I am not the most patient person in the world and almost walked out! I really feel like, if you are going to be 1/2 hour behind you should definitely let the pregnant person know, especially when you are supposed to have a full bladder (and apparently have to sustain that for an hour!), and you have a 1.5yr old (who pooped in the waiting room and we had to change her in the waiting room, b/c they don't have changing tables!) Eric walked up there before I was getting ready to leave and asked when we were going back and they were like oh, we are done now. I mean seriously, what is it about Dr's offices that believe that their time is more valuable than mine! What this translates to, is that we didn't get home until 12:30 (the appt was for 11 and we don't live more than 15 minutes away!) Shouldn't they have some kind of system like restaurants to manage your expectation of waiting times. You know when you come into the office, they say I am sorry the Dr is running behind today and give you estimate of your wait. I mean if they just told you up front, you could be much less irritated! Now, if you yourself are late for the appt (which we weren't) then I can understand having to wait. IRRITATION HIGH! I thought we were supposed to keep pregnant women calm! The reason this is important is because Gwen didn't get lunch until 1p, which is when she is usually already in bed, which means as I type this she is still not down for her nap, because she was sleepy in the car on the ride home, maybe I should have just put her straight down when we got home, but I thought she might be hungry (she wasn't). So now, 2 hours later, still no nap and I have to go to the grocery store and I didn't get my vacuuming done...this throws off my whole week people! Just when we are getting our schedule under control. Tomorrow is water babies, TH is Gwen's Dr's appointment! AH!

But, I guess you are probably still reading this waiting for news on the new baby. We did not find out the sex of the baby. We find out that this baby is pretty normal measurements...the head seems to be measuring normal (I asked since Gwen's head was larger than normal). The Dr. even gave us some 3D views of the baby. He gave us a nice picture of the foot, so cute! No telling whether or not this baby will have my nose (we could tell that with Gwen). So everything appears to be good with the baby, heart rate good, and all vital organs checked out as they should. Yeah baby! Oh and they are estimating 120z.

Alright, I guess it is time to go get Gwen, she has had 2 hours of 'quiet time' and although she is not screaming, I don't know if I want her to fall asleep now, it is 3:30 and that will throw off bed time. UGH! Dang Dr's office!

Videos

So, I finally got this video to post! This is Gwen and her craziness in the evening. The top one is from about 2 weeks ago, this bottom one is from this weekend. ENJOY!

The end of the Christmas pictures

I was supposed to post these pictures for Eric. He is pretty proud of his work. The only problem with these pictures is that you can't really see that Eric put the lights over our door frame.

These pictures are from last weekend, one of my girlfriends sent me some maternity clothes. Along with it, besides lovely pictures from the girls was a little present for Gwen. It is called a 'pet store' pet, a little dog, with a big head and a little carrier for said dog. She does like to carry around the dog and put other stuff in the carrier.

I'll have more pictures/videos to upload, I am hoping this week. We'll see!

18 months

So, today Gwen is 18 months old. When people ask how old Gwen is I can officially say 1.5 yrs. We have been battling sicknesses and food strikes for the last couple of days which has made life not so fun in the last couple of weeks. We had some of the kids over from SS yesterday, everyone seemed to have a good time. Gwen was remarkably well behaved since everyone was touching her stuff! She didn't get mad or pick fights...I was so proud! She did start to lose it toward the end, she was starting to get hungry and kept leading me into the kitchen and trying to get in her high chair. I gave her a banana to tide her over and that worked well. I think she also wanted to be in the kitchen because no one else was in there but us, and that was just fine for her. It is a little overwhelming to have 11 kids running around, ok so 4 of them are not mobile, but Gwen is not used to having that many guests over.

So, what is new with Gwen these days, she is becoming very charming, she likes to wave at people and she will "talk" to people she knows. She is very good with the baby signs and is using more intelligible words, which is nice. We are still working on context though. She knows that when we go up the stairs she says up, but lately she has been saying up also for going down the stairs. I don't know if that is because she associates stairs with up, because she crawls up those by herself (without any help) and often gets distracted, when it is cold outside and I have stuff in my hands I work hard to keep her on task by saying up up up.

She definitely has likes and dislikes and doesn't mind telling you what she wants or needs. Her baby signs are improving everyday. She is so cute when she does the signs and is so expressive. One of these days when she starts talking we are going to be sorry.

The food strike appears to be over, for a little while. I still need to figure out how to get her to try new things, which she so politely hands new foods back to me. I am trying a new experiment with the eating, I will let you know how it goes at the end. We have a Dr's appt next week so we will see how she is doing based on other babies her age. I think she will only have 1 shot this visit, so we are looking forward to that!

Next week we are also starting swim lessons. That should be super exciting! Ok, so I have no idea how she will react to the water and I am not looking forward to being in a bathing suit at any stage of the pregnancy nor do I have a bathing suit that will likely fit and class starts Tues. AH! One of my friends also scheduled for the class said I should wear a 2 piece. Not likely! I have only worn a 2 piece once in public, and that was on my honeymoon.

No pictures or videos with this post. I have been trying to post a video for over an hour and it hasn't worked out, maybe I will post some pictures later, like in the next couple of days, but it seems that I will never get that video posted. Sorry!

So, it has been one of those weeks...I mean the week just started, I am not sure that I can classify that this week is terrible since the today is only Tues, but the last 24 hours have been particularly difficult. It started yesterday afternoon when I collected Gwen from her nap, she had pooped through her diaper, this does not usually happen to us. Gwen for the last several days has refused to eat most of the foods that she usually eats and her stools have become more watery than usual. I am hoping that this because she is drinking a lot of water and not eating a whole lot of other stuff. She woke up this morning and Eric had to give her a bath! Sadly, we are having the play group at our house tomorrow, so I am hoping that is all it is. I have already imagined a rash on her. UGH, the pressure of having other people's kids over to your house. I guess I am not really feeling pressure about that, I just hate thinking/feeling like your kid could make someone else's kid sick. Of course, I am also highly annoyed because Gwen's Dr's appt is next week and if she is not eating anything, she won't be gaining and then I might have other problems. I just wish that meal times were easier, but hopefully, soon enough this too shall pass. Back to our bad 24 hours. I wanted to go to the grocery store with Gwen on the way to pop her in the stroller I lost the list, after 30 minutes, I finally found the list, it had fallen in the garage. We then went to the grocery store and they had no chicken breasts, not a 1, not a pack, NONE. I could use chicken thighs, or drumsticks...seriously, how do you run out of all of your chicken breasts. Then I was making dinner and dropped and entire bottle of crushed pepper on the floor. We bought a new computer last week and hooked it up to the TV, for a couple of days we had a 'loss of signal' for the cable every once in a while. So, last night while we were watching the football game we lost the cable and got the "blue screen of death". Eric called up the Tech Support and they told us the hard drive was most likely bad and we would have to pay to get recovery disks and that it would take 10 days to get the disks! UM, I don't think so! Here is a picture of Gwen from last week, I tried to upload the matching video, but it didn't work out. Maybe latter. The princess is awake and since we have already had to change out her clothes more than once today, I better go check on her, no listening to her on the monitor!

Guilty pleasure

So, I am guilty of something I am going to admit on here. I love to listen to Gwen through the monitor after she wakes up from her nap. It cracks me up, she is in there talking and squealing and whatever else, but it is too cute and funny, and sometimes I think I leave her in there too long. I use the excuse of she is practicing her language skills, because we all no Gwen's personality by now, she won't practice in 'public'.

For a while now Gwen has been interested in putting on clothes and shoes that are not necessarily hers. Sometimes something catches her eye and she becomes obsessed; a couple weeks ago one of my Aunt's sent Gwen a snow suit and me the red 'dress' pictured here. Gwen as we might remember loves red and has been known to wear this around, she is very good at putting it on by herself. This outfit she assembled, with Daddy's help includes 2 of my pairs of underwear (we were folding laundry and she tried to put them on, Eric helped) and one of his shirts.

Of course, she 'tackled' Daddy.

Gwen also enjoys laying on the floor, mostly on her belly while kicking her feet, but first she had to roll off Eric and lay there and smile at us until she was ready to get up.
I can't believe I just posted these pictures, but, I guess it gives an idea of a day in the life!