Happy New Year!

I don't do resolutions...in fact, we don't even do New Year's Eve around here, as it's our goal every night to be asleep before midnight. ;o) This year I was awake (thanks, neighbors exploding things for three solid hours!) and watching Food Network, but fell asleep from approx. 11:45 to--I kid you not--12:01. Kind of lame to miss the new year by one minute, but oh well...I was more bummed about missing who became The Next Food Network Star, ha ha! Things are relatively calm here but will pick up quickly: my dad arrives in a few hours, in-laws and mom on Thursday, then it's a school work day, Ava's birthday on Saturday, and back to work for the dreaded 3rd quarter on Monday. UGH....I hate third quarter. Anyhow, enough whining....here's the rundown on kid stuff:

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 beast beauty before I completely wreck her bedtime!

Ava vs. Bedtime

For about the past three months, we've been having escalating sleep issues with Ava. I think it goes further back than that: she slept like a champ from about 7 weeks until she started getting ear infections at 9 months, and she had constant infections that meant a lot of sleepless nights for both of us until she finally got tubes at 13 months (and never had an ear issue after that). I seriously think those four horrible months ruined my good sleeper. Until recently though, she usually just cried out in her sleep, and most of the time we didn't have to go in there, she'd go back to sleep on her own. Three months ago, she stopped fearing the consequences of getting out of her crib and simultaneously became very needy at night, so we switched her to a big-girl bed, thinking as long as one of us had to go in there, we might as well have a bed to lay down in. This put us on a downward spiral with sleep issues and if I wasn't already pregnant with baby #2 when it had started, I definitely would've stopped trying! Here are the issues:

1.) Ava freaks out at bedtime and won't fall asleep unless someone (read: ME) sits with her. Oh believe me, we tried cry it out/tough love. But I have to admit now it doesn't work in every situation, as she had a complete meltdown, ripped things off of her wall, and slammed herself repeatedly against the door, screaming like a banshee. She peed on herself in the process...and I have to stop because she was acting like someone who was terrified, not angry. My desire to be tough kind of stops if it's traumatizing my kid, you know? So every night since late September/early October, I have sat in her room with her. Most of the time she falls asleep in 30-40 minutes, but not always...I sit in the corner and look at my iPad and refuse to interact with her.

2.) She wakes up during the night, usually between 12-2am, and comes into our bedroom to sleep on our chair-and-a-half. We let her because: 1. we both work full time and desperately need the sleep, especially me, being pregnant and half the time flying solo as a parent 2. one of us used to accompany her back to her room and sleep in there with her, but we felt that was worse 3. we've drawn the line at kids sleeping in our bed and the chair definitely feels like a lesser evil--half the time I don't even wake up when she comes in here.

3.)She cries out a lot in her sleep, talks, and sometimes gets up and runs around while having a total meltdown for no reason at all while saying things that don't make sense, so I think she has night terrors (or she's possessed).

4.) She's been taking Zyrtec for two years for allergies, and after my mom told me that certain cold medicines really messed with my sleep when I was a kid, I decided to take her off of it in case that was contributing to the problem. I think she's currently going through withdrawal, I'm not kidding.

Tonight, after sitting in there for over an hour without her falling asleep, I decided to have Tinkerbell help me out...about two months ago I bought her a Tinkerbell doll and told her she could have it if she stayed in her bed. She never got the stupid doll. So tonight, I took it into her room and told her that Mommy had to go take a shower and get ready for bed, so would it be okay if Tinkerbell stayed in there with her instead of Mommy? Ava was THRILLED. I reiterated several times that if she got out of bed, I'd take Tink away. I also left the door open, so she could hear us moving around, which I figured would be more comforting than feeling cut off from the world. After 10-15 min, she was still doing fine so I showered. Got out of the shower, she was still in her room.....SUCCESS!!!! Then a little while ago, Craig came walking out of her room...I had no idea he was in there. Apparently she cried when I was in the shower so instead of reinforcing the Tinkerbell thing, he sat in there and completely ruined everything. I could kill him right now....KILL HIM. I'm going to try again tomorrow but I think that's now been taken off the table, and it's back to having no earthly idea what to do.

Well, it only took five days...

...to get used to the idea of a boy. I'm good now, and the anomaly on the ultrasound (did I mention that? A weird "spot" they can't identify showed up on the ultrasound so I was sent to Duke Perinatal for a closer look) appears to be a something on his stomach. Or some kind of reflection. Nobody knows...going back for another u/s in 10 weeks to make sure everything still looks good, however, I'm going to request they stop photographing his genitals. Every ultrasound, they take a few pics and label it....poor little guy, there's just no dignity in there.

ROFL!

I've been trying to reinforce with Ava the fact that she's going to need to be gentle with the baby once he's born, and what we do in certain situations: if he cries, he can have a pacifier, if he's hungry he gets a bottle, etc. Tonight, Ava said we could feed the baby soup and "eatmeal" (oatmeal)...I told her no, babies are too little for food and they have to drink milk. She exclaimed, "Mommy! The baby is going to eat your boob!" Craig and I were crying with laughter....of course, this egged her on and she kept saying it, which only made us laugh more. Well...she's right, but I have NO IDEA where she got that from! We certainly haven't said anything, I've only mentioned drinking milk and bottles, figuring that the whole breastfeeding thing would come up when she saw me feeding the baby after he was born. Maybe she has a classmate at day care who's got a younger sibling and said something about the baby "eating boobs?" That's my best guess at this point.

Roller Coaster

This has been the most emotional week I have ever had as a pregnant person: that includes my first pregnancy, finding out I was pregnant both times, finding out Ava was a girl, giving birth, you name it. I did not see this coming...I knew it would be a big deal, but I didn't think finding out the gender of my second and final child would be such a big deal. I'm going to try to explain everything that's been going on: some people are very understanding, others...not so much.

--I wanted a second girl more than ANYTHING. My heart was absolutely set on it...I have two brothers, who I love dearly, but my mom would work night shift at the hospital and it would just be me, Dad, and the boys. We don't have a big extended family but we didn't see my two female cousins very often, one of them being about ten years older than me and out on her own, and the other we saw maybe once a year. The families we saw frequently each have one son. I feel like I've been alone in a sea of testosterone  my whole life. Now you are probably thinking that having one daughter should've cured that...no, I wanted Ava to have a sister. I wanted so badly for my kids to have a gender bond that I have never experienced. I know some people have same-gendered siblings they don't get along with, but just as many opposite-gendered siblings have that problem too....so why not wish for two girls? If Ava had been a boy, I probably wouldn't have cared THIS much about the second kid's gender, but it would have been nice to have another boy in that case.

--We have more girl stuff than I care to admit...Ava isn't turning three for another few weeks and yet I'm pretty sure we have at least four large tupperware bins of outgrown clothing of hers in the attic, with more in the closet that just hasn't been packed up yet. I was really, really looking forward to using it again: not just for saving money, but because the one thing that saved me from  melting down when I packed those things away was that I was CERTAIN we'd use them again. I really, really thought we'd have another girl. I didn't doubt it for a minute, although I have no idea why. And most boy clothes? I'm so NOT a fan. Everything is covered in dinosaurs, bugs, puppies, or trucks. ANNOYING.

--I didn't think we were having the gender revealed on Wednesday as much as we were going to just confirm what I already knew: girl. I also looked at FOUR of those Chinese birth chart things online (I know it's junk science but it was fun, and it worked with Ava) and they all said girl. I had girl names picked out. I had a girl nursery picked out. I was warning people not to buy my daughters matching clothes because that's one of my pet peeves. To say I was shocked to see on ultrasound what I thought was my daughter with a set of testicles is the understatement of the year. I laughed because I didn't believe it, then I cried. I've cried a lot since then...it's not that I'm sad I'm having a boy, I'm grieving over the knowledge that this is it: there are no more chances. I will never have girls, plural. There would've been some sadness if the baby had been a girl, because it would mean I'd never raise a boy...but Billy is nine years younger than me. I changed diapers, fed him, bathed him when he woke up with poop up to his neck...I feel like I got at least a little of the experience already.

--I've been offended, or at least annoyed, by some of the comments people have made, such as, "I was hoping you'd have a boy!" Oh really? Why, out of spite because you knew how badly I wanted a girl?! These are people who will have no relationship with the child, why on earth do they care???? My family members are the only people allowed to say that, since this is their son/grandson/nephew/etc and they will have a relationship with him for the rest of their lives. I know some people who are excited simply because THEY have boys and that I understand...being happy for me because you love your own son is different from wishing I'd have a specific gender (when I wanted the opposite) for no real reason. My favorite is, "One of each! Now you have a complete set!" Oh, because families with all girls or boys are somehow incomplete? Because I'm starting a collection?!?! What the heck is that all about? I've NEVER wanted one boy and one girl....there's just something so Dick and Jane about it, it annoys me. Not that it's bad, mind you, it just wasn't for me (well, I guess now it is, I have no choice ;o).  Probably the best situation is four kids--two boys and two girls--because then everyone has opposite-gendered siblings and a same-gendered sibling. But I'm so not going there! Here's a good one: "Now you have someone to carry on the name!" Oh, is this the middle ages? Are we royalty? WHO CARES! Craig wasn't close to his dad anyhow, and it's just a name. Big deal...if last names were that important to me, I'd never have given mine up in the first place.  Last but not least--and this isn't offensive but I just don't get it--"Boys love their moms!" Well, I'm sure that's true....but so do girls. I kind of expect that my child will love me regardless of gender... ;o) When my little girl grabs my hand and says, "You're my best friend!" or throws her arms around my neck and says, "Mommy, I'm so glad you're here! I love you so much!" I feel pretty loved...not sure how a boy will do that better.

--Before you start thinking I'm clearly the most horrible person in the world, I *am* starting to warm up a bit. There are definitely of pros to having a boy:

1. Ava is insane. When people at work are talking about things their sons do and putting a "boys will be boys" label on it, I have to point out that my daughter does the same things. She loves to dress like a princess but act like a pirate. If I'm honest, I have to admit that a boy will be more her equal than, say, a sweet little girly-girl. If we'd gotten a gentle, feminine little thing Ava would've destroyed her.

2. I understand boy behavior, having been around it my whole life. A boy who pretends a stick (or a bread crust, like my brother Mike) is a gun isn't violent, he's a boy. Boys turn EVERYTHING into weapons. They draw pictures of soldiers on dinosaurs blowing things up. I am okay with this.

3. Two girls would've been double the girl drama. I don't do girl drama. For the most part, the middle school boys are way easier to deal with than the girls.

4. Only one wedding to pay for! Okay, that was Craig's comment....I don't really care. But I guess it's true.

5. I found a pirate nursery online. I can live with that. It's a little bit cartoony, which I don't like, but it isn't bad and I don't have to use all of the pieces from the collection, just a few key ones that I can supplement with other things. Yeah, I still like the girl stuff better....but pirates are pretty awesome.  Ava loves it and is looking forward to helping me decorate.

6. Craig is THRILLED. Although I have to admit I only care about this a little bit, because he didn't care about the gender like I did. He isn't one of those guys who has to prove his manliness by producing a male child, so I thought, what better guy to have two girls? But, whatever.

It'll all be fine in the end...it's not like I will love my child less because it happens to have a different set of genitals than what I expected. I have actually talked to a couple of people who had a second child that was not the gender they were expecting or hoping for, and of course they love their kids but at least understand where I'm coming from. It's just taking some getting used to is all.

Oh boy...

...literally. Ava is getting a little brother!

T minus three days...

...until the anatomy scan. I'm losing my mind. Seriously--I'm like one of those nervous little dogs that shake and yip, the kind you just want to drop-kick because they can't hold still or calm down for one freaking second. AHHHHHHH!!!! I was this same way with Ava, I started losing my mind a few weeks before we found out her gender, and it got worse and worse until I was about to just throw up. I hate not knowing things...worse, I hate not knowing something when there's a definite date as to when the truth will be revealed. I was not this anxious before giving birth because although I knew it was coming, I didn't know WHEN. (I should have been nervous...I should have been terrified, in fact. If I'd learned anything at all from that experience, I never would've gotten pregnant again. But, here I sit, knocked up again and losing my mind again. Ahhhh well. ;o) I guess being half-crazy from curiosity is good because it keeps my mind off of the real reason for the scan, which is to make sure we've got a healthy baby. I'd rather be full of nervous excitement about the gender than anxiety about his/her health, you know? If there are any problems we will deal with it when the time comes.

That's about it for now. Craig is out of town (sometimes I really hate his job), so it's just Ava and me, which is not uncommon, just kind of lonely for us. We've had fun and I've actually accomplished quite a bit: Christmas cards are addressed and stamped, gifts are mostly purchased, birthday invites are sent (can't believe my little girl is turning THREE in less than a month!), and I've sort of kept up with the cleaning: I am not going to vacuum or wash the floors until Craig comes home and can help me. Better go make dinner now....