Three

It’s here, and it’s almost over.

It’s her birthday. Big sister turned three today.

February, pre-3

The picture with the “3,” however, is from February, pre-3, pre-baby brother, from a visit to a local park. A grandmother was there to take pictures of her granddaughter for her upcoming third birthday and let us borrow their number three. Sure, my daughter was mostly interested in trying to figure out how to take it apart (Does the outside layer peel off? Could I pull off the ribbon?), but we had some fun with it, too – and did manage to return it unharmed to its creator.

Now the real deal is here. Today, the sun also shone, and the number three is here to stay, not to be taken away by someone else’s grandmother.

Happy 3rd birthday!

 

And the cake in the picture? She helped make it, even after a poor night’s sleep, because she’s three and has that kind of talent (although we’ll ignore the fact that she refused to pick up her messes today and other crankiness that resulted from the aforementioned poor night’s sleep. One of the times she woke up last night, thrashing and crying, she said, “I want a real puppy!” We, of course, hope this was largely in response to her daddy’s comment last night that, when she’d dropped a mushroom on the floor, our imaginary puppy would eat it for her. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we don’t need a dog right now. OK, I’m absolutely certain.).

She also picked up her baby brother today, all by herself. Almost gave me heart palpitations, and I haven’t crossed the few steps from the sink to the family room as quickly as I did this morning. I’m so glad she loves him…I just wish she loved him from a greater (and safer) distance.

But she’s three now, right? Who knows what changes this year will bring. I’m just glad that we – no longer three, but all four of us – will be on this adventure together. Happy 3rd birthday, baby girl.

Birthdays (birth daze?)

Baby boy became his own person on April 10th, one day after his due date. Baby girl will celebrate her 3rd birthday tomorrow, her Earth Day birthday.

I’m overwhelmed and shocked by all of it.

After waiting so long to meet baby boy (that is, in fact, what Baby Baby turned out to be), it’s still surprising to realize he’s here, warm and sleepy on my chest, squeaky like a little mouse when he first makes sounds, bleating like a lamb when he gets a little more upset. He’s here, and he’s our boy. Our sweet, sweet boy. Our girl is a big sister.

And she will be three. When she came with her Nene and Poppa to the hospital to meet her little brother, I could hardly believe the big girl who appeared in the door, this girl who had taken the place of my baby. When did it happen?

We’re still only eleven days out from his birthday, so I think I can still get away with blaming my overly emotional self on the fluctuating hormones, postpartum. Baby boy did his best to remind me to stop taking myself so seriously the other night, though, when I cried to Matthew: “It’s all going to go by so fast!” Cue baby pooping, loudly and undisputedly. Plllbbbbt. Chill, Mama, he told me.

Time goes by. It has, it does, it will. I should go snuggle my boy, peek in on my girl, and call it a night.

Babywatch 2013 continues

Babywatch continues. Ultrasound due date of April 2nd? Passed. Ultrasound due date of April 5th? Passed, too. Official due date of April 9th? Still to come.

Until then, we have the “Have you had your baby yet?” phone calls. We have the “My friends want to know if you’ve had your baby” comments. We have the “Oh, you still haven’t had your baby?” comments. No pressure, right? We didn’t get any of this last time; last time, our daughter came on her ultrasound due date of 4/22, well before her official due date of 5/3. Full term and glorious, even at 6 lbs. 2.4 oz, she was everything we could hope for. Baby Baby will be, too, whenever Baby Baby chooses to arrive. (And now Baby Baby and our girl are even: after being particularly still this morning, Baby Baby made me nervous; we went to the hospital, where the baby, of course, put on a good show – and that happened once last pregnancy, too. They’re competitive already!)

Until then, we’re enjoying the extra time with our daughter (lots of Play-Doh play, these days, and lots of running), and she’s enjoying the extra one-on-one time with her Nene and Papa (they’ve been here more than a week now – thank you!). I’m hoping the extra loving and attention will carry her through the transition of not being the only child in the house.

I’m sure that, once the baby arrives, we’ll forget that her/his inside stay was longer than we expected it to be. The cloth diapers are washed, the baby clothes are ready, our bags are packed – we’ve done what’s under our control. Now, we just wait for Baby Baby. We’re ready to meet you, baby, whenever you’re ready to meet us.

Time grows hazy

The spring has been a blur of burgeoning belly, bouncing weather patterns, and colds and various ailments, not to mention Matthew’s research-related travels and work. As we’re expecting Baby Baby to make an appearance sometime within the next week or two, I fear (know?) the blur will only become blurrier.

To recap: my lovely girl had a two week cold early on. She’s on her third cold since then. There was also the vomiting incident: the throwing up in the middle of the night after asking to sleep in her own bed, an anomaly that should have tipped us off. Between that night and that morning, she had at least two extra showers. The next morning, she managed to throw up orange Gatorade all over the bed, our pillows, herself, and me. This all made for a sad girl, and then she had diarrhea for days after that. Last Tuesday, the 19th, we had another sort of mishap. She’d put her Ikea fabric fruit into the glass bowl on the dining room table. (Do you already have a sense of where this is going?) When she wanted to play with it, I told her to get it – but to be careful. CRASH! She came into the room, crying. I went to clean it up, and still, she cried. I thought she’d scared herself. Turns out, a shard of glass cut a gash through her sock and her foot, about an inch long and a quarter of an inch deep. Three shots of Lydocaine, two stitches, and much crying and unhappiness later (“Stop! You’re hurting me!” and, even worse, “Ouchie! Ouchie! Can we go home now?” and clinging to her daddy, expecting us to save her from the pain and awfulness being inflicted on her), she was patched up. Our relief was mutual. The stitches came out too early, I fear, following the doctor’s directions, but nothing for it now.

It’s Easter, a good time for (re)birth and renewal, and tomorrow brings us to April. Babywatch continues…but can’t go on forever. For now, we’re trying to make the most of our time with our girl and wrap our heads around the fact that we’ll soon be a family of four. If we’re lucky, the only sniffles to come will be from the joy of a new baby and not another cold!

A nap!

What, you may ask, is your secret? How can you get your daughter to be asleep by 8:45 at night, even after taking an epic three and a half hour nap today?

Waking up at 4:30 in the morning.

Snotty sleep

Snotty sleep, night three:

From the start of nighttime preparations to sleeping took twenty minutes tonight (and included all of the usuals – toothbrushing, washing up, reading – even some saline spray for the nose!), probably a record for us. She was one tired girl. I’m hoping for better sleep. We had to buy extra soft lotion tissues today to try to be good to her nose, if that puts the extent of her snottiness into perspective. Her nose is chapped.

Snotty sleep, night two:

She was restless from two to three then fretfully awake and dozy from three to four, with a little nightmare-y screaming and kicking thrown in for fun, with congestion as the cherry on top. It was not a good sleeping night for either of us.

Snotty sleep, night one:

She woke up and asked where Daddy was (never mind how many times she’d asked before or that she knew the answer – at a conference, giving a talk, in Pittsburgh). She woke up screaming and kicking at least five times, although she wasn’t so congested yet; it got worse yesterday. In the morning, I asked her the adult question, “How did you sleep?” I wondered if she’d remembered her thrashing.

She looked at me as if I were daft and said, “With my eyes closed.”

Guess I should have known the answer to that one.

Four things to start our month

1. Daffodils from February!

2. This morning, snowflakes were falling, an all-too-infrequent occurrence here this winter. We watched out the window before sitting down on the couch to read books. Then, being the sometimes silly girl she is, she leaned off my lap to feign tumbling off. “I’m falling like a snowflake!” she said. Figurative language from such a small figure.

3. While Daddy played with her before dinner, she replayed a line from a favorite episode of World World (never mind that we haven’t watched it in months). “Snug as a bug in a what?”
“Snug as a bug in a rug. That’s what people say,” said Daddy.
“What people?”
“People.”
“People like us? We are people. We are not other people. We are just us.”

4. Again, and out of the blue, as she lay in her toddler bed, about to go to sleep:
“Why did Boo Boo die?”
“Sometimes people and animals get old or sick or both, and they die.”
“What does it mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“What does it mean?” (This followed on the heels of earlier questions, like “What does it mean to beg?” and “What does it mean to be upset?”, so I had a good idea of where this was going.)
“What does it mean to die?”
“Yes.”
It’s surprisingly difficult to manage a proper answer on the spot. “When you die, you can’t breathe or move or talk. Your heart stops beating.”
After exploring some of this herself – we are alive, our cats Pepper and Maria are alive, our hearts are beating – she followed up with, “I hope Boo Boo gets better.”
Death, according to my toddler, does not get the final word. Either that, or my explanations of death could use some work. You decide.

Everyone dies

Last night, we were reading Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy (charming and totally worth a read!), and Tacy’s little sister Bee dies. She shut the book then, and we called it a night. To be fair, it might also be because I got teary, and she doesn’t like to see that, but how could I not? Reading to my small child, and a small child dies? *sigh* So much for emotional control.

This morning, she asked, “Why did Boo Boo die?” (The Boo Boo interest was renewed when a stray cat recently wandered through the backyard, and she said, “Maybe it’s Boo Boo!” We had to remind her that Boo Boo died, and the stray cat did not appear to be her reincarnation.)

“Sometimes, people and animals get sick, and they die,” I told her. I feel like this is slippery territory for a not-quite-three year old: she recently had a cold and has another small one. I don’t want her to think she’s about to die every time she gets a sniffle. “But usually, people are old before they die. Children don’t usually die.”

“I won’t die,” she told me, with all the certainty of a two-year-old.

“Everyone dies sometime.”

“I’ll die and you’ll die and Daddy will die,” she then acknowledged, just as breezily.

Somehow, I don’t know which set of statements was worse. We should go eat breakfast now; too much truth on an empty stomach can make you sick.

The start of week 33: a blog post in two parts

DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT YESTERDAY

Yesterday, the last day of week 32, we had a doctor’s appointment. We’re down to every two weeks. How did that happen?

The riveting details of our visit: My weight: 169. My blood pressure: 118/64. The baby’s heartbeat: 123. Helpful responses to the question, “Do you know of local doulas?”: 0.

Ah, well. I’m working on getting other people’s answers to that one for when Baby Baby makes an appearance.

BABY BABY IS NEVER FAR FROM OUR MINDS

“You’re my favorite mama,” my sweet daughter told me tonight as she was heading towards sleep. “You’re my favorite girl and my favorite daughter,” I told her in response. “And Baby Baby is your favorite baby!” she added. “Yes,” I told her. “I love you both very much.”

“We all love Baby Baby very much,” she said.

Nickname

Our daughter has a perfectly lovely name, balancing family ties with a pretty sound. We opt for a nickname, though – a two part nickname, with one taken from her first name and one taken from her middle name. Sometimes, people ignore the second word, just calling her by her first name’s nickname, just as people often turn my husband, Matthew, into Matt.

But one of her little friends takes it a step further.

The world has to smile when a cherubic, towheaded child greets his friend with an enthusiastic grin and a wave and says, “Hi, Louie!” Even if it were nothing like her name, she’d have to smile and wave back. But it is, just enough.

And that’s how Johnny greeted her this morning at Itsy Bitsy Yoga. Ten months younger than her to the day, he is always there, as his mother teaches the class. In talking about him over dinner tonight, my daughter earnestly explained to her daddy, “He calls me Louie. It’s my knickknackname.” We’d talked about nicknames in the car, and how, by calling her that, he’s given her a nickname.

Or, better yet, a knickknackname. How could we correct her? She’s nicknamed the word “nickname”!

I think she’s got the concept down.