School Supply List? Huh?

We seem to have made some good progress with the mission to move Liliana to her big girl room.  She now immediately goes to that room when we ask her to go to her room for something.  And we're able to put her to bed at night in the crib-turned-toddler-bed with no more fuss than we faced in her old room.  Progress!  The funniest thing about her bed situation is that while she can climb in and out of the "crib" with no problem, she doesn't get out unless I tell her it's ok.  I wonder if she thinks she can't get out since she's not accustomed to being able to get out?  Weird.



Blueberry Face!
CHEESE!

I visited the daycare today that we're going to start Lily at on Monday.  It was a "surprise" visit which lots of people recommended I do.  Surprise, in that, they didn't know I was going to show up.  I met Lily's teacher and asked a bazillion questions and both the teacher and director were very nice and patient with me.  There will be 5 kids in Lily's class - she's the only girl.  I guess we are starting early in preparing her for a life as a female engineer!  Lily's teacher handed me a supply list.  I was expecting to see diapers, wipes, change of clothes, etc.  Nope.  It was a school supply list.  Really??  Glue, glue sticks, playdoh, markers, crayons, etc.  I thought I was like 4 years away from buying that stuff!  I guess this is one of those moments where your kid kind of grows up before your very eyes!

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday.  Everything looks fine and Peanut #2 still measuring on the big side.  I got into a bit of a discussion with the tech about whether I needed the Rhogam shot.  I said no. She said yes.  I was 99% sure I didn't have to get one with Lily and that Joel has A- blood (I'm O- and two negatives don't make a positive in this case).  But because I have had "pregnancy brain" so regularly lately, I called Joel just to make sure.  He couldn't remember his blood type.  Doh!  So the tech and nurse want me to have the shot.  Well Joel is not keen on me taking any medication or having any procedure or whatever that is not absolutely, 100% necessary (he's a hippy underneath those overalls - ha!).  So since he's a regular blood donor, he called the Red Cross and they confirmed A-.  He calls me back right away to make sure they haven't given me the shot yet and to make sure I don't get it since I don't need it.  Unwarranted medicinal intervention averted!  Peanut #2's heart rate was in the 160s - higher than the previous times but well within normal.  You could hear the heart rate getting faster as the nurse was trying to take it.  Peanut clearly does not like being messed with.  An interesting side note:  the nurse kept saying things like "she" doesn't like it (referring to Peanut).  "She" this and "she" that.  The nurse knows we don't know the sex but apparently she's decided Peanut's a she.  The doctor told us at the ultrasound that even he didn't find out the sex so it's not like it's in our file or something. 

Peanut #2
32 weeks 6 days

Mission: BGB - Phase 2

Last night we tried again with moving Lily to her new bedroom.  We moved the crib in from the nursery and to do that, Joel had to disassemble it.  So he suggested, when reassembling it, to leave one of the sides of the crib off so that it's more or less like a toddler bed and give that a whirl.  I was a bit apprehensive, but couldn't think of any good reason not to try it. 

When it was time for bed, we read a story like always and then Lily asked to "rock."  She's been asking for that a lot lately, which I find a little bit strange cause we never really "rocked her to sleep" but it's just so darn cute when she looks at me with these big blue eyes and says "ro-ock??" in her sing song voice.  I'm pretty sure she's totally conning me and this is just a stall tactic but I'm too weak to deny myself the opportunity to rock my little girl.  So I rock her, just for a minute or two and sing her a song.  She's pretty fond of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star ("twinkle star" as she calls it). 

Then I put her in her crib-turned-toddler-bed and she cries and hangs on to my neck for dear life.  So I just lay her down and I sit on the floor and lay my head on the side of the mattress and rub her back for a minute.  Then I take my hand off of her.  Then I sit up and take my head off the mattress.  Then I back up away from the bed about 6 inches.  This causes her to pop her head up to see if I'm still there.  So I wait a minute and back up another foot.  Up pops her head - still checking to see if I'm there.  So I wait and then move again and I keep doing this until I'm about 2 feet from the door - all the while she keeps checking to see if I'm still there.  After several minutes, she's still awake and stirring around a little but no longer popping her head up to see if I'm still there so I finally leave the room and shut the door (but not all the way).  I make it to the living room before she cries out. 

CRUD!

I fully expect her to come running, but I wait it out and within 5 minutes she stopped crying and there's silence coming from her room. 

SUCCESS!

So of course I worried that she'd get out of bed some time in the night and come find us.  But she didn't!  She slept all night in her new room, in her modified crib.  She woke up this morning about 6:50 and started whining.  When I went in, she was sitting in her bed.

But as soon as I turned on the light, she scrambled out of bed.  I'm thinking she was just a little bit disoriented and I give her one or two more nights before she realizes she can ESCAPE when she wakes up.  :)

Mission: Big Girl Bed (BGB)

Welp, consider the bullet bitten, tooth broken and bullet spit back out! 

The first attempt at the big girl bed did not go so well.  As in, before I even got out of the room, Lily was screaming her head off and scrambling out of the bed and running after me.  She was completely terrified.  Absolutely petrified.  So we calmed her down, read her another story and tried again.  But, as soon as we made a move to leave, she started screaming again.  Sigh. 
So we aborted Mission "Big Girl Bed" for the night and we put her to bed in her old room in the crib and she went to sleep immediately. We are weak!  Plus we don't want to start any habits where she needs us laying there with her to fall asleep.  We decided that maybe the new room and the new bed was just too much all at once.  New plan:  put the crib in the new room and try that out for a little bit to get her used to the new room first.  Then try the bed in a week or two.  I guess I was right....no one moves on a Tuesday!

Joel and I are so spoiled because Lily has adapted to every change in her life with little to no fanfare.  For example:

1. Taking away the bottle at 8-9 months and switching to sippy cups
2. Taking away the late evening nursing session at just over 9 months
3. Stopping nursing at 13 months
4. Taking away the pacifier at 13 months (which she used mostly at naps/night time - so at critical sleepy moments!)
5. Changing baby sitters at 16 months

Mission BGB will be successful!  Just maybe not as easy as all the previous changes.

Lily had her 18 month check up on Monday.  Her stats:

     28.2 lbs           90% percentile
     33.5 inches     90% percentile

Yep, as if there was any doubt, she's still a big girl!!  I mentioned Lily's picky eating habits and my concerns about whether she's getting all the nutrients she needs.  The doc looked at me like I was a little bit nuts given that Lily is clearly not malnourished.  :)  She assured me that Lily is actually eating pretty good for a child her age since she eats so much fruit and yogurt - just keep offering different foods she said.  She's on track developmentally and no concerns from the doctor.  Yay! 


She's so darn CUTE!



In other Lily news, we are showing little signs of improvement on the swimming lessons.  She loves the water but just wants to play around on the steps.  We are able to keep her away from the steps for about 10 minutes and then it's just a battle - one that Joel and I usually don't have the energy to fight at this point in the day.  So it is what it is and we'll keep taking her, but she's probably going to have to take this same class again next year. 

As for a pregnancy update, today I'm 32 weeks 4 days.  Everything is going pretty well and haven't been back to the doc since my last pregnancy update.  I still feel pretty good although the backaches are increasing and my body gets fatigued pretty easily even when I walk short distances.  Swelling in my hands and feet is on the rise.  I'm thinking pretty soon I may have to switch to house slippers as my foot attire of choice because my feet won't fit into my sandals!  Sleep is getting trickier, but still better than my first pregnancy so I'm happy!  Now, could someone PLEASE turn the heat down?!?!

As Lily's doctor left the exam room the other day, she said, "As long as Lily's healthy, the next time I see you will be in the hospital!  It's going to be a boy."  I smiled.  Everyone thinks "boy" this time (even me). Not to skew the poll results or anything....  And, nope, no name picked out yet.  We still have time, right?  Right?



Peanut #1

31 weeks 2 days

Peanut #2
31 weeks 5 days



I don't know about you, but the bump looks a little bit bigger to me on Peanut #2.  Hard to say and I didn't measure so my conclusion isn't based on very robust data.  (There's the engineer in me!  I thought she was lost forever!)





Bite the Bullet

After much debate back and forth about whether to create a new room for Lily or just update her current room and then create a new nursery, we finally decided to keep the nursery we have now and create a new room for Lily. 

Here are some pictures of her new room.  Joel and I worked pretty hard on it!  I painted those stencils myself (I ordered the stencil from Etsy) and it took a whole weekend to do.  But I love the result!  We found the furniture for a great price on Craig's list.  Then add a few pink accessories from Target and a cute little table and chairs from Meme and Papaw and ta-da! 

So we've had Lily's big girl room done for a couple weeks now but I just can't seem to bite the bullet to move her in there.  I'm nervous terrified of how things will go once she's out of the crib (Will she escape her room and come wake me up in the middle of the night?  Will she go to sleep when we put her to bed?  Will she "stam mup" on the table/chairs and fall and break her leg?  And so on....). 

I keep coming up with every excuse under the sun to delay the move. 

1. We don't have bumpers or rails on the bed so she'll fall out (which was immediately remedied and now an invalid excuse)
2. We haven't slept on the new mattress ourselves so we're not sure we want to keep it
3. The closet is full of stuff we don't want her to play with (an easy fix....)
4. We're going out of town this weekend (uh, what does that have to do with anything?)
5. Company is coming over and will need to sleep in her new bed (uh, so what? she's a kid, she can sleep on a pallet on the floor)
6. Today is Tuesday and no one "moves" on a Tuesday (you can see I'm grasping at straws here....)

I had a goal to have her in the big bed by mid-July to give her two months to adjust before the baby gets here.  Can it still be considered "mid-July" if it's July 20-something??

She looks so happy in her new bed! 
What do I have to be worried about?!

Pregnancy Don'ts

If you are pregnant enough to be wearing maternity pants (the kind that go all the way up to your boobs), then you are too pregnant for non-maternity shirts.  I keep seeing this woman running around work who appears to be about 6-7 months pregnant and all her shirts are regular shirts and you see about 5 inches of the ugly elastic part of her maternity pants.  Really?  Surely she could afford a couple maternity shirts?  If not, I will buy her one, cause seeing all that elastic is really disturbing.

18 Months of Joy!

It's completely nuts to me that Lily is already 18 months old.  I still look at her in awe and wonder and think to myself, "Is she really my little girl?"  I don't know if the amazement at becoming a parent ever wears off, but I definitely still feel shocked sometimes!

Milestones at 18 Months:

• Talks and talks and talks and talks.  Around the 14 month mark I counted up words she would say and it was over 100.  I haven't even attempted to count them since.  She says everything.  She is starting to string 3-4 words together at once which is so cool but she's sounding less and less like a baby all the time!  : (
• "Open it!"   - she uses this phrase even when it's not because she needs something "opened" but just when she needs help working something
• "Help you" - she means "help me"
• "Stam MUP!" - stand up
• "Daddy working" - she says this every morning first thing when I get her up
• "Thank-you-welcome!"  - like it's all one word
• "_____ right THERE!" - fill in the blank with whatever she sees (bird, bug, cycle, Bronco)
• "See it?"  - if she hears an airplane (planeplane) or a motorcycle (cycle), she asks to see it
• She is bilingual!  She understands everything said to her in Spanish and responds appropriately.  For some things, she uses the Spanish word almost exclusively (otherwise she mostly speaks English at home and Spanish with the babysitters, Ana and Maria):
• Leche = milk
• Mas = more
• Pan = bread
• Liquado (quado) = smoothie
• Mano = hand
• Agua = water
• Cuidado (dado) = be careful
• She is the pickiest eater EVER.  She loves yogurt and applesauce and fruit and of course all kinds of junk food.  Most of the time she'll eat peas and corn on the cob, but that's about the end of her veggie list of likes (unless you count french fries and ketch-mup (ketchup)).  She won't touch meat with a 10 foot pole (except an occasional hot dog if you can call that meat).  She does not eat mac and cheese.  She does not eat chicken nuggets. Maria told me recently that she's doing better and eating tortillas and quesadillas for her.  But she won't eat that stuff at home.
• She's smart.  If she asks for yogurt or crackers or something and it's not meal time or snack time, we don't let her have it.  But she knows if she asks for leche, we'll go to the fridge and give it to her almost any time unless it's too close to bed time.  So she asks for leche and when we open the fridge, she grabs a yogurt and makes a run for it!  I guess I should be grateful that it's yogurt and not cookies.
• She's obsessed with Dora.  And Elmo.  And cell phones.
• She still sleeps with Ellie the El-pha-nent (and poor Ellie STINKS - like 18 months of baby slobber but it has a music box inside it so I can't wash it)

Quilt Quota

I have a goal to make a blanket (more specifically, a quilt) for all my kids (and nephews/nieces if I can manage it....) and I have been really stressing out about getting one done for Peanut #2. 

I found this super cute baby fabric back in April at Joann's which I totally fell in love with.  It's four different coordinating patterns.  So cute, right?!

Then, I came up a layout which was simple enough to cut and piece together.  So off I go.  Very excited about my fabric choice and pattern.  And here's what I put together (note: this is only complete to the inner border):

 

Partially Finished Quilt Top
(you can see where I started to take it apart)

Not excited anymore.  Totally can't tell where one block ends and next one begins and I hate it.  :(  So then I spent 2 months avoiding looking at this thing and stressing out about how I have spent $40+ on fabric and two full days of cutting and sewing (and two full days are PRECIOUS to me) and I have this result that I don't love.  What to do (besides march on and give it away to the next expectant mother as Jenny suggested)? 

Close Up.  See how busy it is??

So I think, maybe I can applique something on there to help break it up.  But, do I know how to applique?  Nope.  Will it even make it look better?  Who knows?  And how much more time do I have to invest just to find out if it MIGHT make it look better?  And by the time I get all that done, will I even have time to actually QUILT the thing??  Gaaaaaahhh!!  You see why I was stressin'!

So one day, I'm starting to rip it apart because I feel huge guilt over wasting the fabric and time already invested and I decide I have to find a way to fix this.  Joel says, wouldn't it just be faster to start over?  YES!  Somehow, Joel suggesting that it was ok to waste put this quilt on the back burner made it ok.  So I did.

I completely changed techniques.  I saw this "rag quilt" on Pinterest and decided I could make a rag quilt much faster than a regular quilt and it still has the word "quilt" in the name so I feel ok about cheating and not hand quilting.  A rag quilt puts the seams to the outside of the quilt and then the edges fray and it looks old and neat.  And what little bit of quilting it does have, can easily be done on the machine.

So I spent an hour at Joann's browsing fabrics and planning out my design so that I didn't end up with another ugly quilt.  Then I took two days off of work to devote to it (while still taking Lily to the baby sitter).  It took me about half a day to cut all 300 squares:

And then I spent the next day and half piecing my little quilt block sandwiches (100 of them), quilting those 100 sandwiches and piecing them together in a blanket.  It was seriously the fastest quilt I have ever put together in my life.

Then it was time to "fray" the quilt.  You have to make little slits in all the exposed seams about 1/4 inch apart.  This took me several evenings to accomplish.  Then it was time to wash it.  I had read where it gives off so many threads that you don't really want to wash it in your own washing machine.  So off to the laudromat I go.  Did you know it costs $1.75 per load??  Holy crap! 

I've washed it 3 times at the laudromat and I think the worst of the threads are off.  I'll still have to wash it lots more times at home so there's no risk of loose threads with a little baby, but the worst is gone.  And here's the (almost) finished product!

Front of Quilt

Close up of the front

Back of quilt

I wish I were a better photographer cause it's hard to see the detail.  But there it is!  I'm pretty happy with it (mostly cause it's done!).

There's an app for that

Pregnancy Update!  I'm 30 weeks 5 days....which means 65 days to go.  Yep, there's an app for that on my phone just in case I need a reminder of how much longer I have to go!

In general, I feel pretty good this pregnancy.  Not that pregnancy with Lily was terrible but I did go through so many of the traditional "side effects."  I have to say that the BEST improvement of this pregnancy over the last one is that before, I had mad insomnia.  The whole time.  And especially during the last trimester, I would sleep 3 hours a night.  It didn't matter what time I went to bed, I would wake up 3 hours later.  End of story.  This time, as I'm getting good and settled into the 3rd trimester, I thankfully have not been invaded by the insomnia monster (knock on wood).  While I definitely wake up to pee anywhere from 1-4 times a night and wake up every time I need to roll over and wake up cause my arms are asleep from my armpit to my finger tips, I am typically able to go back to sleep within 5-10 minutes.  So I'm not complaining....I swear!

I had my 30 week check up today and everything is looking great!  Baby is measuring big (32.5 - 33 weeks vs being only 30.7 weeks pregnant).  This is about the same as with Lily and she was born at 9lbs 10 oz.  So my hope for VBAC decreases a little more each time I go to the doctor since they won't do it if they think the baby is >8.5 lbs, but as I've said from the beginning, I know I'm not in charge of this....Peanut 2 is.  So we wait and see!

My glucose test was two weeks ago and that came back normal so it's exciting to know that I don't have to change my eating habits.  It would be sheer torture to give up my pregnancy craving (Fazoli's breadsticks....YUM!).  And my other pregnancy craving - nightly, fresh baked (from a package) chocolate chip cookies with ice cold milk.  I'll add that this also happens to be Joel's pregnancy craving, so it works out well.  : )

Here's side by side pictures of my baby bump from week 29:  

Peanut #1
29 Weeks 3 days 

Peanut #2
29 Weeks 5 days



The bump looks about the same to me (maybe a tad bit lower) but kind of hard to tell given that my outfit in the first picture is a little busy.  My weight gain is almost exactly the same. (Nevermind the fact that I started out 14 pounds heavier the second time around....glass half full, that would say as a percentage, I've actually gained less!)

Sink or Swim

Yesterday was Lily's first swim lesson.  Boy was that fun!  Sort of....

I thought Lily would just have the best time ever since she loves the water so much.  It started out pretty good.  We tried blowing bubbles, but mostly it was sticking our open mouth into the water and letting a little bit slip in.

And we "bobbed."  The instructor, probably a high school student, was pretty good, but definitely not in tune with a toddler's vocabulary.  He told Lily, "You need to learn how to bob so if you get in water that is over your head you can bob back to the shallow end."  What he should have said, "Jump to your Mommy!"

What I didn't factor in to this extra curricular activity was the whole listening-to-directions part of swim lessons.  Lily is so well behaved and generally listens 90% of the time, that sometimes I forget that she's only 17 months old.  17 month olds don't really care too much about following detailed directions.

After 10 minutes, Lily was through with directions.  The remaining 20 minutes was spent with me chasing her around the pool, in and out of it and doing my best to try to get her back on track.  FAIL!  We'll try again on Wednesday. 

Also, terrible Mama that I am, I forgot to bring her a drink for after the lesson since we scrambled out of the house so fast.  The whole way home (15 minute drive) and I mean the WHOLE way home, Lily was whimpering "leche....leche.....leche.....leche" over and over in this horribly pitiful voice.  Sigh.  Next time, I'll be better!

Crazy Up In Here

I've decided to make a valiant attempt at keeping a blog of our growing Basham Family.  It's as much a journal as anything else and possibly a way to archive my bab(ies) lives since I seem to be failing miserably at keeping up with scrapbooking.  Why I think I can keep up with this is another story - but let's not be too concerned with that right now....

Life in our household is about to get nuttier in just 10.5 short weeks (or less!) when Peanut #2 arrives.  Here's a snapshot of Liliana last weekend that sums up my current emotions pretty nicely.

You know, laughing excitedly but a little concerned and anxious as evidenced by the crazy lady hair clearly created by the endless raking of hands through it!