Baby Boy:
*I'm now 21 weeks: more than halfway there! Woohoo! Aside from the awful first trimester and one pregnancy side effect that is persisting (which I will not discuss because it's TMI) and the fact that I'd love some wine but cannot have any, I'm having a great second trimester. I'm so much more relaxed than I was with Ava, when I feared disaster around every corner...baby boy is very active (heaven help us, I really need a calm baby this time!) and the constant kicks are reassuring, but even during periods of no kicking I'm not worried. Considering how much I'm not a fan of being knocked up, I really do enjoy this part, where I feel the baby move but am not horribly sick or uncomfortable. It's pretty awesome. :)
*I don't seem to be gaining much weight. Not worried...I just hope it means this will be a smaller baby, although there's still plenty of time for me to blow up. Apparently I should've gained 10-16 lbs. by now and I'm at about 7 lbs. Hmmmm.
*We're working on a name, and are almost there...but this is turning out to be more of a problem than it was with Ava. I had her first name picked out before conception, and then let Craig pick the middle name...we had it all settled about 48 hours after we found out she was a girl. Craig, however, is VERY opinionated this time around: first of all, he wants the baby to have the traditional Haynor boy initials of CJH. We don't like ANY of the same "C" or "J" names though. He then suggested naming the baby after himself, which is fine with me--but then he decided he doesn't want the kid to be a "junior" and wants a different middle name....which we cannot agree upon. There's one we're tossing around, I just don't think it goes very well with Craig. Ah well. Either way, the kid will be called "CJ" so we've got that settled...Baby CJ. We just don't know exactly what it stands for yet.... ;o)
Ava:
*She is so, so excited about her baby brother! She even asked if we could invite him to her birthday party, ha ha! Like he really has a choice.... ;o) I think she'll actually be pretty helpful once he arrives and am very grateful for their 3 1/2 year age difference: old enough that she knows what's going on and can help out, but not so old that she was accustomed to being an only child and will resent being "replaced." We're trying to include her as much as possible in the process so she feels like this is her baby too, which he is, instead of feeling like she's being pushed aside. I don't remember feeling any resentment when Michael was born, and he and I were the same distance apart as Ava and her brother.
*We have started to solve some of the sleep issues, woohoo! Taking her off of Zyrtec seems to have helped a bit with the restlessness and crying out at night, and I came up with a solution for bedtime: instead of one of us sitting in her room, her Tinkerbell doll sleeps in her bed with her. I leave the door open about six inches with the hall light on, and I promise to come back and check on Ava periodically. If she's particularly restless I'll check within 5 minutes so she knows I'm not lying, otherwise I wait 10-15 minutes and she's usually asleep. We also had to admit defeat with the afternoon naps...she's just over them. We had to fight to get her to go to sleep, she'd finally go down and then we'd have to wake her up, and then she was too awake to fall asleep at night. She's dropped them with almost no problem, except right now she's passed out cold on the couch. Fell asleep with a stick of string cheese in her hand and everything, ha ha! She had a restless night last night (I still think she has night terrors, she was crying out about bees) and then a busy morning with a play date, so she was worn out. I'm trying not to think about what this will do to her bedtime.
*My 3-year-old has become so articulate and easy to talk to, I almost cannot believe it...talking TO her instead of AT her, having conversations she really understands, etc. I know this is probably normal but to me, she seems like such a smart little thing (okay, not so little...she's almost in 5T clothes, yikes!)...good grief, what a "mom" thing to say.... ;o) Although she is still stubborn and tempermental and can throw down one heck of a tantrum when the mood strikes her, they seem to be dying out at least a little bit. I'm hoping the road to her fourth birthday will be some smoother every day! Technically she's not even three yet though, so I'm not getting my hopes up too much!
*I could start a blog simply based on the funny things she says...and actually a lot of people probably wish I would, rather than constantly posting them on Facebook...haha! I cannot help it...she's so wild and she just cracks us up!
Well, that's about it for now...I'm enjoying some tea and getting a few thank-yous and other letters mailed off, and am going to have to make another attempt to wake the sleeping
