Father's Day 2010

One of my Facebook “friends” suggested that there shouldn’t be Fathers Day and Mothers Day, but just one Parents day. Um, no. I want MY day to be indulged/spoiled and I don’t want to share it with Jeremy! On the flip side, it was fun to force Jeremy to make all the decision yesterday regarding what to do. You’d think he was being asked to decide which child to save from the hungry Ligar. Jeremy is so easy going and is usually up for anything that I end up making a lot of decisions (where to go to dinner, social plans, etc) and trust he’ll tell me if he doesn’t want to do something.

So with a little persuasion he decided he wanted to go the beach yesterday. It was a perfect day for it. Bella was excited to reenact one of her favorite books and we all got some much needed sun and relaxation. Then it was onto the always challenging “what do you want for lunch” decision. After 30 minutes of debate, we ended up at Culvers. No other real significance here other than the fact that it took him way too long to accept the fact that I wasn’t giving him my opinion or helping sway his decision on that one at all.

I swear Bella got the ‘Fathers Day’ concept yesterday as her and Jeremy were inseparable. Lately pendulum of needing Mama all.the.time is swinging back towards the middle and she’s been much more attached to Dada lately. But yesterday was Dada to the extreme. She wouldn’t leave his side and cuddled with him every chance she got. I loved it. And got a little jealous. But hey, it was his day.

Things that Bella does that I love right now -

She calls her toes ‘piggies’ no matter what. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard her say the word ‘toes’. And she’ll usually follow up a reference to her piggies with some adorable squealing to prove they really ARE pigs

She picked up “hey, hey!” from somewhere. Not the Monkee’s either. She’ll use it like this “Hey, Hey Mama – that’s my toy!” “Hey, Hey Lyly come here for a kiss”.

In the ECFE playtime classes we attended this winter the night always ended with the ‘good bye song’ (“Goooooodbye friends, goooodbye friends, goodbye friends – we’ll see you all sometime!”). She’ll now use it when saying goodbye to anyone – which is cute but also draws out the goodbye as it’s kind of a slow song. For example, if we are leaving Nana and Papa’s house it’s “Goooooodbye Nana, Papa, MoMo, Auntie Lissa, Mil-mil… (anyone and everyone who is there), goooodbye Nana, Papa, MoMo, Auntie Lissa, Mil-mil…”and so on until the song ends. Or until she screws up and has to start over. Y esterday Dada got this goodbye “Goooooodbye Dada, goooodbye Dada, godbye Dada – we’ll see sometime”. She does it all with a slow hand wave that makes it oh-so-adorable.

Everything is her “FAVORITE”. “Apples are my FAVORITE” “Peaches are my FAVORITE. I eat in a bowl and drink the juice ALLLLL UP”. Mostly it refers to food but at her last Dr’s appt she swore the Spiderman sticker she got was her favorite even though we’ve never talked about Spiderman ever. She thought he was a robot.

For a while she’s aked to do things “in a couple minutes” but now she starting to ask to do things for “just 1 minute”. The other day she wanted to watch The Wiggles after dinner. I told her no (because we never watch TV after dinner) and she came to me with a pleading look in her eyes “Watch Wiggles just 1 minute!” complete with holding 1 finger up (FYI, I didn’t cave in). It could also turn into “Just 1 more time” as in “Play with Leggos just 1 more time!” or “Go to Grandma’s just 1 more time!"

For her birthday, she got a bunch of rubber duckies to play with in the tub. Somehow (I blame Jeremy) she decided they need to be fed bread from Cub every time we are in the bath. So now the game we play is pretending to drive to cub, get a cart, find the bread, pay for the bread, go home and give it to Bella. Who then eats it for herself and then tells us we have to go back to get more for the ducks. This is just one example of her imagination. She’s been showing it off a lot lately and I love it.

Everything has to match. I didn’t do any research to figure out if this is a typical 2 year old thing, or if I’ll have an OCD kid on my hands, but god forbid the purple cup be dirty when we use the purple plate because she wants them to match! The real tragedy is that we lost our pink spoon, so she can have a pink plate and a pink cup but has to use a different color spoon. She also does this with her clothes sometimes. If she has pink on she needs a pink blanket and pink stuffed animals with her.

"Where are you…??” I actually like it when things get lost sometimes because she’ll call out in the cutest voice “Where are you red ball?” or if we get home and she wants to see Dada “Where are you Dada?”. Again something that I didn’t even realize we said but she picked up from somewhere!

She picked up on “See you later, Alligator!” and “In a while, Crocodile!” so not only do we get to hear this when we leave sometimes but every night as we put her to bed she’ll call out as we’re leaving the room “See you later, Alligator!”

Reading books by herself…kind of. Meaning she’ll sit and page through a book and tell the story as she sees it or remembers it. Usually she’s pretty accurate but sometimes she gets off track. She might be doing that on purpose though because her and I will often sit with one of my books and I’ll “Read” it to her (make up stories pretending like I’m reading the book)

She prefers Alvin and the Chipmonks in the car over the Wiggles now. Thank god.

That's enough for now.

Bloody nose #1

Today marked the day of Bella's first bloody nose. I'm sure there will be many to follow if she's anything like her dad. Bella was running around being goofy with Dada (which may or may not have included JT hopping around with bunny ears on), jumped up on the couch and promptly proceeded to smash her face into the arm of the couch. Poor thing!

After several minutes of holding a Kleenex to it and a few stories later (to keep her distracted while we held the Kleenex), it was all better and she was pretty excited that there was blood on her face and hand.

This, of course, was only about an hour after she knocked her forehead on a chair while playing 'all around the mulberry bush' around our dining room table. When did my calm little girl turn into this rambunctious toddler?!

How is it possible to have writers block when you are writing about your life?

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, yet I don’t even know what to blog about. Obviously stuff happens everyday, but maybe it’s lack of energy that is preventing me from actually documenting anything.

I’ll start with the pregnancy. I’ve been feeling better now that I’m in my second trimester (17 weeks as of today!), but still tired as all hell. Not sleepy tired, but just no-energy tired. I feel bad because mowing the lawn used to be my thing (and I really do enjoy it), but I just couldn’t bring myself to have the energy to do it this weekend. That means JT had to spend an hour mowing when he could have been inside working on our bathroom/the million other house things he has to do because I’m not capable of doing them. That sounds really negative, but there are so many home improvement or maintenance projects that have to get done and I feel like I can’t do any of them. So I clean, mow the lawn, etc since that’s what I can do. ANYWAY, the point is that my lack of energy means that there is even more on JT’s plate which makes me feel guilty. But, such is life and it’ll all get done….eventually….RIGHT?

The exciting news is that we have our ultrasound scheduled for June 16! I “get” to have it 2 weeks earlier than last time due to minor complications (really minor). Dr isn’t concerned about anything but said I should try to schedule the ultrasound closer to 18 weeks than 20 weeks. She didn’t have to tell me twice! I can’t wait to see baby and find out the sex. And yes, of course we’ll be sharing (just not the name again).

Bella has been as entertaining and challenging as usual. I say challenging only because she’s become much more vocal and independent. My newest favorite is when she tells us she’s “FINE”. As in “Bella, are you doing OK back there?” “Yes, I’m FINE!” or “Bella, do you need a new diaper on?” “No, my diaper is FINE!”. And she says it with that conviction, too. It’s a preview of the sassy teenage (or pre-teen) years.

It seems giving her choices still works well, though, thank goodness. Usually it’s asking her if she wants Mama or Dada to do something since it’s not her choice IF we do something (put on PJs, brush teeth, change diapers, etc). Or just flat out deception works too. For example, telling her that I’m putting a bow in her hair but really putting in a clip (which works much better).

We found a nest with eggs in a tree out front a few weeks ago, and when we checked this weekend the eggs had hatched! I think I might be more excited than Bella,but it’s cute to hear her tell people about how it happened that there were “eggs in nest, cracked, now baby birds!”.

Bella is still really snuggly which I love. She likes to hold hands (even when sitting and eating or reading books) and will just come up and hug my legs and coo. Cooing is the only way I can think to describe it, but when she’s being cuddly with either a person or a stuffed animal she’ll make a sound like “oooo” in a sweet little voice. The cutest is when she sees a stuffed animal and says “oh, come here baby bunny…little baby bunny…oooo”. I don’t know where she picked this up from, but we must have made sounds like that when talking about baby animals (and they are so cute, how can you not coo about them?! ).

As you may have noticed, she has started referring to herself as “I” or her things as “my” more. She still uses “You” but will mix it up. So she’ll say things like “I’m ready!” “I need my mama” “ I want that”. But if we ask who did something or who said something (and it was her), she’ll answer “you”. So she just can’t get the “I did” or “me!” concept yet, but we’re getting there!