Several billion pokes later...

I went in bright and way-too-early for my 3-hour glucose tolerance test this morning, having not eaten or drank anything but water since 6 the night before. I got there just before they opened the lab/clinic doors at 6 am and there was a long line already formed outside of old geezers who, like me, had been required to fast for one test or another. It took another half-hour for me to get called back for PokeFest 2005. During this time, I suggested repeatedly that we get the show on the road (Hel-LO! Starving tired pregnant woman here!), making the receptionist/phlebotomist decide I was too rambunctious and cranky for her liking. At one point she suggested that she "would be here all day, so I can make you wait another three hours if I like". GrrrRRR!

Eventually I did get called back by an elderly black gentleman who introduced himself as Rufus, "your cousin." Rufus's last name was also O'Neal, "of the black Irish O'Neals", he joked. I liked Rufus very much, but my veins did not. No finger-sticks for these professionals, nosirree. I had to undergo 4 full-on blood draws (one before my sugary beverage, then one each hour for three hours thereafter). Rufus took two unsuccessful stabs (literally) at the first draw before passing me on to Evil Receptionist/Phlebotomist (EPR), who got me on her first try. I drank my near-nauseating amount of sugar and then took it upon myself to pace in the waiting room for at least a half-hour, probably disturbing the geezers but certainly helping my metabolism. Who can sit still with 10,000 liquid Pixy Stix coursing through their veins anyway?

Rose, a talented lady, did my second draw on the first try. EPR did my third draw, and showed great determination to make her poke-hole gush, drawing the needle IN and OUT and IN and OUT of my left arm, which is now so bruised I can't bend my elbow. Rose did my last draw, and, after failing in her first poke, took after EPR in her repeated plunging to score with a deep vein in my right arm. Can you say OUCH WITH A SIDE OF FLYING BURRITOS?

But it is over now. Due to the tube-enclosed nature of the samples they took, however, I have no idea how I did. I should get the results from my prenatal office by the end of the week; please oh please let me pass this time.

Oh yeah, and the boys...Michael took care of Isaac all morning long while I was in my medieval torture session. I called once and asked how Dada was taking to his job of Isaac Breakfast Procurement (a task to which he is a stranger), and was informed that there would be PopTarts, and probably pickles involved. This is Dada-Speak for "leave me alone, woman, I know what I'm doing". Later on, when we met Dada for a pre-lunch payday Starbucks run, he revealed that he had seriously enjoyed his morning snuggle-time with the boy. And then he took off of work at 3:30 to help us grocery-shop. That Isaac, man. He's addictive.

How to get your toddler to eat his grilled cheese sandwich

Festive, don't you think? And highly effective.

U.B.'s appointment, 5.5 months; Confessions of a glucose flunkie

I went in for another routine prenatal checkup last Wednesday -- now that we are in the home stretch (can you say YIKES?!?!?) I go every two weeks. This particular visit was earmarked for my glucose tolerance screening, to test for gestational diabetes. After being weighed and before I went in to see my practitioner, a nurse's aide gave me what must surely be caffeine-free Mountain Dew to chug. More on that in a bit.

Once again, U.B. is so healthy he is boring. His house measured in at a within-normal 26 cm (with me at 27 w 1 d, though I can ASSURE you it has grown since then). His heart rate was around 145 bpm. I had gained two pounds in the two weeks since my last visit, which is exactly what I am supposed to be shooting for. If I keep it up, at this rate I will gain 35 pounds total, exactly what I gained with the Isaac-monster. And my blood pressure is nice and low, at around 90-something over 50.

While I have been happy overall with the practitioner I happen to get scheduled with each time (who, I should mention, is a NURSE practitioner and not an obstetrician. Not that there's anything wrong with that), there have been a couple little hiccups that have suggested to me that she may not be the shiniest apple on the tree. First, there was the whole "it's a girl!" fandango from my first interaction with her. This time, I mentioned that we are staying with the fam in Indy for a nice long time at Christmas. Her immediate reaction was to express concern and to recommend, out of the blue, that I run to Babies R Us and drop some mad cash for a personal fetal heart monitor. Um, because I'll be missing at least one appointment and apparently that is a near medical emergency. When I gathered myself from suppressed laughter and suggested to her instead that it would be easier (and free) for me to monitor the baby's movement, she conceded, "Yeah, that would work, too." You know, because babies that move may just have hearts that are functioning properly. And, my dear N.P., this is supposed to instill faith in me that you know what you're talking about?

The whole shebang, from glucose-chugging to exiting the exam room, lasted less than half an hour, so I was shown to the waiting room and told to sit my expanded butt in a chair for another 30 minutes to allow myself adequate time to metabolize the aforementioned tasty sugary beverage. After being annoyed by The View for far too long, I was called back, my finger pricked, and my blood glucose level revealed to be 148 mystery-units. This is 8 mystery-units above the highest allowable passing level for the screen. Because of this, on Wednesday, I have to go in to an independent lab for a 3-hour glucose tolerance test, during which I can't leave the premises. I don't think I need to alert anyone to the obvious problem with that situation -- if you think I'm taking my toddler along for THREE STINKIN' HOURS you clearly don't know him. Perhaps a less obvious problem is that I have to fast, consuming nothing but water, for twelve hours before the test, and then absolutely nothing for the 3 hours of the test. Did I mention I ate half a dozen Oreos while composing the first paragraph of this post? What really busts my buffers is that, when I was preggers with the Isaac, I took, and passed, not one but two of these here initial screening tests. At that hospital, they gave me the tasty beverage at the end of my visit and told me to come back in an hour. As I worked in the building, I wasted my hour by walking to my office, checking my email, and then walking back. It makes me think...if those numbskulls at my current prenatal practice had just let me walk around the hospital a bit (which is what I would have been doing at that minute anyway had I not been in their office), I probably wouldn't need this excruciating follow-up test. Grr. Wish me luck.

We're famous

You may recall some time ago that a freelance journalist commented on a post on this blog, saying I should get in contact with her as she's writing an article about mommy-blogs. I did, and she interviewed me over email. Later, a newspaper photographer came to our house to snap shots of me, the boy, and my laptop. And now here we are, spotlighted in her story about Delaware moms who blog, which was very recently published in Delaware Parent, a section of the News-Journal. You have to go check it out, at the very least to see the adorable picture of my boy, featured very prominently in the print version of the article.

Can't blog now...busy getting butt kicked by 3rd trimester

Apparently my third trimester officially started on Saturday or something. My body seems to have gotten the memo because I feel like I ran into a brick wall. I even went to bed before Isaac last night. Today the crock pot is being a big pal and making me and the elder O'Neal some beef stew. Hopefully I will soon get a chance to blog about our Thanksgiving weekend, spent squeezed into our house with 4 extra adult bodies ... it was actually quite lovely. It was so nasty-cold we didn't get to do much around town, and my son was, of course, being his usual sleepless self, so I don't know if our visitors had a good time. But I know Isaac certainly did, being the object of constant attention by either a grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, mom, or dad OR any combination thereof; and I know Dada and I did as well since we got to go on a double date with Uncle Chris and Aunt Jean to see the new Harry Potter movie. In the meantime, here are some family pictures from Grandma's camera to tide you over:

Me, Isaac, and Dada



Uncle Chris, 'Aunt' Jean, and Isaac



Grandma and Grandpa Ross and Isaac

U.B. makes waves

Lately U.B. has cranked up his own little in utero dance party to a whole new level. He is one seriously active dude. Laying down to take in a delicious new Gilmore Girls tonight brought on ripples from my tummy, visible through a layer of clothes and a blanket, but he doesn't need a whole hour to start his motor moving. Even if I sit down on the floor while playing with Isaac I can feel U.B. squirming around. I think this time, now, is my favorite part of being pregnant -- when the baby is big enough so anybody (especially me) could see or feel him moving, but I am still small enough to tie my own shoes.

I don't know why, but I somehow still have some crazy mommy vibe that U.B. is a girl. I don't care what those online Chinese Gender Charts or the radiologist says. Everybody's heard stories of radiologists who insisted the baby was one gender, but the end result was completely unexpected. Where this vibe comes from, I have no idea. Perhaps it has something to do with my being completely in love with our chosen girl name and still completely at a loss for a decent boy name. Seriously, folks, it is bad. Nothing sounds good to us. I never wanted to do this, but (just in case my mommy-senses are wrong) can I throw it open to the peanut gallery? Do YOU, dear readers, have any suggestions for us? We are pretty sure we want Dada's first name, Michael, as a middle name, and any first name of course must not sound terrible with our last name (O'Neal, as in no to "Noah" or "Neal").

What Isaac's doing now

*I hope you don't tire of hearing "what's that?", because that's all he has to say now. Even towards things one knows he knows the names of: "what's that?" I've read in books that one should direct the question back at him, and we try this, but it only results in a drawn-out game of "what's that?" ping-pong. For some reason, I am able to tolerate this, but I think poor Dada is going nuts.

*Late last week he gracefully stepped down the four steps from our porch to the walkway all by himself. Not that I will allow him to do this often, but it's a start.

*He can count to five by himself, and can sometimes even count 5 individual objects. He has also, on occasion, told us how many fingers we are holding up. More often than not, though, he gets caught up in the fascination of counting to three and tries to tell me I have three eyes or three feet. His counting prowess is entirely due to Dada, who teaches him new numbers in pairs each week and is currently working on six and seven. We think he got 1-2-3 down from walking around with us -- he knows that, if he is holding a hand from each of us and he counts to three, we'll swing him up in the air.

*He is fascinated with naming colors. We know he can distinguish blue, yellow, and purple in particular, but, in the vein of "what's that?" insists on calling all colors blue, probably because he knows we'll tell him what the color really is.

*His very favorite book now is Dig!, given to him by his friend Jen Horwath when he was one month old. It is in our repertoire now to read it every night. This is not a terribly short book, but he will sit through the whole thing because it has pictures of a backhoe on every page. The truck/tractor obsession grows.

An easy week in the SAHM biz

Gotta love the short weeks. Not only does Dada get off work Thursday and Friday (though, knowing him, he'll probably be working some anyway), but we are expecting a literal van-load of family around Wednesday lunchtime. Grandma and Grandpa Ross and Uncle Chris and "Aunt" Jean (who will soon be rid of those quotation marks) are driving here from Indianapolis to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. Where we are going to put all those warm bodies in our dinky house is completely beside the point, because it is all about non-stop entertainment for the Isaac-monster and luxurious naps for me. Yee-hah!

On top of that, Isaac's sitter came over this morning, so I got nearly 2.5 hours to myself, which I should have used to vacuum and dust and scrub and blah, but I instead used to lust over apple pie recipes like this one. This is the first Thanksgiving dinner we will have shared with family since 2000, when we moved to Seattle. Every year there we had the same conversation: "Should we fly home for Thanksgiving?" "Not when we're flying home for Christmas two weeks from then." This year will thus be quite a special occasion for us. So special, in fact, that I think it deserves both pumpkin AND apple pies, handmade with love by me in my temperamental rental-house oven.

And did I mention we got our 18-pound turkey for free from our local grocery store for being loyal and otherwise spendy customers?

We can't wait to see everybody. Please drive safe.

Bless you TiVo, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Insomnia

Isaac is still waking at night. But the past few nights have not been so bad. The night before last he awoke only because he fell out of bed, poor thing. Last night he awoke, came to find me, walked back to his bed and climbed under the covers, and then, with me right there, was out like a light in less than a minute. He sleeps through until sometime between 5 and 6; if he wakes closer to 5, I pull him into bed with me and we sleep some more. If he wakes closer to 6, he's up for good, and probably cranky for the rest of the day.

I suppose, over all, my main concern with his sleep disorder is what it will mean for the impending arrival of Sleep Disorder, Jr. in a few short months. Less than a hundred days, actually, according to the ticker on the blog. This seriously was nearly giving me panic attacks. "How do people do it?" I wondered. "How do people have two kids this close in age and survive?" Yes, millions and millions of parents before me (including my own) have had kids two years apart and lived to tell about it, but I am so locked in my own world as to think that I am the only one with this issue.

Last week after I posted my rant about Isaac and his crappy sleeping, I myself had a hard time falling asleep one night and turned on the tube to see if TiVo had anything worth watching. To my surprise and delight, TiVo had gone out and fetched me an episode of "A Baby Story" without being asked. As I watched this episode, I could feel the throbbing vein in my forehead slowly quieting. I heard the story of two parents expecting a boy, with a 2-year-old boy already running underfoot. Sound familiar? The mom and dad were calm and collected, and so ecstatically happy about the upcoming addition to their family. When their #2 did come along, #1 was such a good big brother, and they reported no incidences of jealousy or acting out or anything.

I realize things could go much less smoothly for others, but seeing these people and their success with two very young'uns made me feel much better about my own situation. It made me step back and realize that I am really not the kind of mom who is interested in forcing my child into situations he is not ready for. Clearly, Isaac is not ready to sleep through the night. Can I make him do that? Not likely. I can do my best to make sure he is well-fed, well-rested, warm, and comfy going into bed at night, but it is up to him, and only him, to figure out the rest. I won't let him sleep for three hours during the day anymore, but I will do my best to let him wake up on his own from naps to ensure he's getting the sleep he needs during the day. And if I have to be up for a little to help him get back to sleep at night, so be it. If he puts up a fight? I'll bring him in bed with me, because our (read: his AND mine) is so important right now. I realize people have different opinions about this kind of behavior, but I don't know how many people I have run into, and these are not hippies, who profess that their kids spent more time than not in bed with them before age 5. These things just happen. It's rough being a toddler, or even a little kid. When U.B. comes, we'll deal with it as needs be. Who knows? Maybe Isaac will learn how to sleep by then and we won't need to do anything.

The funny thing? Since I have made this realization and have been much calmer about our collective insomnia, Isaac has slept much better. Meaning he has been both easier to get to sleep at bedtime, and to get back to sleep upon night-waking. I think he can sense that I'm not stressed about it anymore, and that that is calming to him. I also feel more rested with the sleep that I get. So far, so good. Let's just hope I can keep this 'tude alive for awhile, because it is really helping things, in many aspects of life, a lot.

Operation: Bottle Bye-Bye

Why is it I run into all the talkies at Costco? You know, the ladies who obviously need to get out more, because they insist on telling their troubles to complete strangers. Like the lady with the scary mullet and teeth straight out of The Big Book of British Smiles who, seeing Isaac, decided to tell me all about her three-year-old charge's toilet training experience, sharing with me as a fellow insider her complete and utter disbelief in the necessity of Pull-Ups. And then there was the cashier who, upon seeing Isaac gleefully sucking away at his Nuby sippy cup, shared with me her complete disdain for how her granddaughter is still drinking from a bottle, the horror! Trying to make conversation with this latter lady, I ask how old her granddaughter is. "Eighteen months," she says. "No kid should still be drinking from a bottle at eighteen months."

Well, thank you for your sweeping pronouncement, complete stranger, and thank you for making me feel like a terrible parent. Because yes, my 19-month-old still drinks his "milky" from a bottle. For a time, he was excellent at drinking milk with meals from a big-boy (not even sippy) cup. But that time is gone, and now he will only take it from a bottle without a fuss. So sue me.

But we all know that eventually the bottle must exit stage left, so I figure now is probably a pretty good time to do it. This is mainly because 1) we have now accumulated an impressive collection of Nuby cups and 2) in planning our trip home for the holidays in a little over a month, the bottle collection would be a convenient thing to leave behind. Today was day one. Isaac asked for his milky in the morning and in the evening, and each time he barely noticed that it was served in a Nuby and not a bottle. Not that a Nuby is a large stretch from a bottle, but hey, it's a start.

Gloves, anyone?

Suddenly, rapidly, winter has come to Delaware. Isaac and the babysitter went outside yesterday morning to play (so I could clean in peace), and could only stay out for an hour before my son became a fussy Isaac-cicle, crusted snot around the nose and all. This morning there is a heaping mound of frost on the ground and the car, and the Weather Channel is forecasting snow for Thanksgiving Day. SNOW, people.

This poses a major problem for us because Isaac has no gloves that fit him. Last winter in Seattle (well, what could only loosely be called "winter" anyway, with no snow and all rain), Isaac's outside excursions were limited to hour-long walks in the stroller, during which he was forced to wear fleece mittens sewn for him by Grandma Ross. When I say "forced" I mean no disrespect to the mitten-crafter, but rather refer to super-bitty Isaac's inability to remove his own mittens, much to his extreme frustration. Clearly this limitation no longer applies to the boy who regularly removes hats, socks, and even coats at will. Additionally, I doubt he would stand for the encasing of his precious fingers in mittens, where he would be handicapped against his long-term project of picking up every single acorn from a meadow by the dorms to throw in a nearby creek.

To this end, I throw the question to the audience: how do YOU get YOUR toddler to wear gloves? Where did you get your gloves? Do you have any you would recommend?

Worst sleeper EVER

I used to think, from reading the Flinger Files, that lil' LB Flinger was probably the worst sleeper ever. And then I remembered that, when Isaac was LB's age, he was a terrible sleeper. And look at him now ... all growed up at 19 months old. And STILL THE CRAPPIEST SLEEPER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

The magic of the toddler bed still exists, though in a different and not-as-desirable form. Isaac dearly loves his bed, but he hasn't slept through the night in a week. It turns out that, like other sleep experiments we have tried, something "working" means he will sleep through the night for a few days, and then he is right back to square one. Two nights ago was the worst. He was up from 3 until 5 in the morning, not fussing, not asking for anything...just wide awake. He would get up from his bed and toddle around until I would catch him. All I had to do was tell him to get back in bed, and he would. I would cover him over with sheets, replace his doggy in an arm-crook, and Isaac would dutifully lay there, eyes wide open, until I left him to his own devices, at which point the entire process would repeat. Finally I refused to come back in his room, and, exhausted puppy that he was, he lay in his bed, screaming, for 15 minutes before he got up and walked to find me. When I pulled him into bed with Dada and I he slept until 9.

We tried cutting his naps back. He hasn't slept his usual luxurious 3-hour stints during the day since we got the bed. At first it appeared that rudely awakening him at the 1.5- or 2-hour mark was the key to a blissful night's sleep, but no more. Yesterday we even cut him down to a single painful hour (far too short for any sleep for his poor pregnant mommy), and he was up at midnight and 3 before getting up for good at 6.

In our cribby past, we have tried putting him to bed earlier, following the whole "sleep begets sleep" theory. Putting him to bed at 8 or 8:30 (instead of his accustomed 9 or 9:30) resulted in him getting up, for good, at 5 or 5:30 (instead of his accustomed 6 or 6:30).

In all our sleep deprivation and desperation, I have read I don't know how many books and listened to (and occasionally tried to implement) the advice of friends, relatives, or even strangers. When something works, it works for a couple of days and then we are back to night-waking. Something that continues to stick in my head, despite all the advice, are ringing voices of my mother and mother-in-law, who both attest that their sons (my brother and Dada, respectively) didn't sleep through the night until they were 2.

So I ask you...is this all just stupid? In all of our attempts to prolong Isaac's sleep, Am I trying to force an answer that will come about only when it is good and ready? As far as I can recall, the babies/toddlers I know that sleep through the night have either always done so all by themselves, or did so once their moms and dads turned off the baby monitors and quit interfering. Obviously ours has never done that. Should I keep up with our sleep experiments, which are quite frustrating in their inevitable defeat, or should I just try to relax and let Isaac sleep when he does and live with it when he doesn't?

Left brain, right brain...we got 'em all

Isaac has always been into books. Lately he also likes counting. He can quite easily count to three, or count items in groups of threes, and, when prompted heavily, can even count to five. But his most recent passion is coloring. Every day we have coloring time, which consists of him sitting at the kitchen table in his booster seat surrounded by the washable chunky crayons I bought him long ago and the many skinny crayons we have acquired from restaurant visits. I use clear packing tape to tape down at least one piece of printer paper so he can mark on it as violently as he likes. Usually these sessions start by him picking up a crayon and going wild, but after a few minutes I start making requests. "Can you draw me the moon? An airplane? A kitty?"

Tonight, to try to calm him down, we colored for a half-hour before bedtime. I suggested he draw an octopus. After five minutes, here is what he decided was the end product:


You may be impressed enough that my 19-month-old can draw in near circles, but that isn't even the most genius part about it. Look a little closer with me now, into how the drawing began. Here, highlighted is the first thing he drew on the page, upon my requesting an octopus:

It's a head, with a mouth and eyes. He drew it, stopped, pointed with his crayon, and said "Octo" (Isaac for 'octopus'). Underneath, buried in the copious swoops, are some jaggedy lines for tentacles. Immediately after he finished his octopus, he made his first of many big, repetitive swoops, highlighted here:

After a few of these, he stopped, pointed with his crayon, and said, "Skur-kle" (Isaac for 'circle').

Maybe it's late and I'm a little loopy myself...but is he a genius-monkey or what?

Real estate for the ambitious and broke

Like many others, we are also half-heartedly house-hunting. One may recall that, right now, we are at least in a house as opposed to an apartment, but are still paying rent, and to the big University machine no less. We enjoy our rental house, but after two years (three if we have a really good reason and we beg), they will kick us to the curb. We are not in the least interested in throwing Dada's hard-earned cash-flow to the rental gods ever ever again after this place. We must find something to buy.

In this we have several major problems:
1) Do you know how much a starting professor makes? It is okay. We will not starve; we will continue to walk to Starbucks, and possibly buy things there, more than once a week. But it is not too much. Now that my salary from leaky grad-student pay has run dry we are uncomfortably realizing that we must (GASP!) make a budget and (DOUBLE GASP!) follow it.
2) Have you seen what the housing market is like? In our "looking at houses", which consists of Dada seeing houses nearby listed online and us driving by them while Isaac naps in the car, we see that three-bedroom crap-shacks held together by crap-straps that are two blocks from the railroad tracks go for between $250-$300K in our town. It is not pretty, and we can't afford this right now.
3) Some of you may not know this, but in a former life Dada both built and contracted houses for a living. As far as we know, he is still a licensed professional drywaller in Indiana. While this makes him very handy to have around, unfortunately this also means he knows way too much for his own good about how crappily one can build said expensive crap-shacks, and he wants no part of that whatsoever. Obviously any shacks that are made of materials that didn't come from the sewer are even further out of our price range.
4) Dada has strong opinions about where he wants to live, and especially who he wants to live next to. You there, with the tires in your yard? Dada doesn't want to live next to you. You there, crazy old lady with the unbelievable array of highly-decorated bird mansions in your front yard? Yeah, he doesn't want to live next to you either. You there, with the gigantic lawn ornament professing your love for the Eagles? You there, walking out of Wal-Mart with the 8' inflatable snow globe to decorate your front lawn? You guessed it...you have the cooties also, according to Dada. He also doesn't want to live in a "neighborhood", where houses are built such that one can quite easily stare in one's neighbors' side windows from one's own side windows. Our Dada is an annoyingly discriminating individual, but he is usually right on, and in this case also has potential resale value in mind.

After another depressing session of "looking at houses" yesterday, Dada and I came to a conclusion today with which we have both found inner peace. We will build a nice and small house to Dada's exacting specifications. In the spring, we will buy a plot of land, probably out in the country, within a half-hour's drive from the school. In the summer (when Dada's salary will temporarily double), Dada and others will lay the foundation and frame us up a house. Sometime in the following year, Dada will wear his contractor's hat once more and will find reliable people to do the work for him finishing up our house. This will work especially spectacularly for us because there are parcels of land out there that are easily affordable and easy for us to put a downpayment on, and then we can finish up the house as we can afford to do so.

What put the extra zen in our nirvana was this house plan I found online today that we know is the one for us. Like I said, it is small; this is the key to our being able to afford to build. But small is all we need. Do I want to clean some gawd-awful mansion anyway? Heck, no.

So that's our new life-plan, and boy what a load off it is. Let's hope the stars continue to align for our little family and we can make our dream of non-crap a reality.

How to do a late-night meeting up right

Dada had a super-late faculty meeting Thursday night -- it went till nearly 8:30. I don't think I need to say that I was not terribly excited about our looooooong day, but these things (sigh) happen. We had playgroup that morning, where we ran into our friends Sara, Nathaniel, and Patrick. Sara and the boys, being closely tied to another Geography faculty member, were also affected by this heinous drawing out of the day. Sara, the experienced SAHM that she is, suggested we come over to her house to rough it together in the evening and have pancakes for dinner. Well, all you have to do is mention the words "Nathaniel" and "pancakes" in relatively close proximity, and Isaac is counting the seconds till dinner time. It was just fantastic -- Isaac got to play with Nathaniel (and Patrick of course) and all of Nathaniel's toys, and I got my first experience cooking pancakes on a stand-alone griddle. (Note: I am apparently not a real housefrau as I do not own a griddle or waffle iron.)

We ended the evening with a photo shoot of the boys engaged in Isaac's new favorite activity -- doodling. Here he is in action, with Patrick doing his best to help:

And yes, the artwork covering the entire board is courtesy of Isaac. Have I mentioned that we color now, every day, for about an HOUR? I hope you all are ready to receive his artwork for your fridges, cause mine is full up.

Claire's recipe for a pregnancy-friendly Cosmopolitan

1) Get bored of drinking water.
2) Pour self a nearly full glass of water before realizing there's cranberry juice in the fridge.
3) Top off glass of water with a splash of cranberry juice.
4) Enjoy and use the word "fabulous" way too much.

Thomas the Crack Engine

We have seen first-hand the love affair with Thomas the Tank Engine blossoming in kids slightly older than Isaac is now. From reading other blogs it would appear that the descent into Thomas-mania is inevitable. But really, I had no clue just how big of a junkie, and how quickly, Isaac could become.

It all started two days ago, when I innocently TiVoed the Teletubbies, the second episode Isaac has watched in his entire life. He digs the 'tubbies and learned "in" vs. "out" from watching his first episode several times. What caught his eye about this second episode had nothing to do with the 'tubbies and everything to do with the 30-second preview for Thomas the Tank Engine at the end of the show. When this was done, I turned off the TV. "Choo-choo?" Isaac asked. When I tried to explain to him that we were done with TV for now, he followed me all around the house "Choo-choo? Choo-choo?" Being the naive mom that I am, I TiVoed a 10-minute shorty of Thomas and his buds on PBS Sprout for us to watch later.

The weird thing is, when he watched this very short story, he seemed only halfway interested, looking and moving around the room. Very little of the episode we watched actually involved a choo-choo or even cars, though when the trains did appear on the screen, he was a little more mesmerized. The realization of the toddler-crack that is Thomas came when the episode is over -- instant, insistent, pleading "Choo-choo? Choo-choo???" until I played it again. After having watched it twice, when I couldn't stand to watch it any more myself, he grabbed the TiVo remote from wherever I tried to hide it and made desperate, whining attempts to manipulate the TiVo into showing him more "Choo-choo!!!!". Thank God Grandma Ross brought "The Little Red Caboose" book when she came, or I think he would be clawing at the TV every second of the day.

I just don't get it. There aren't any songs. There isn't any dancing. It's not really animated, just some trains and stuff being pushed around a set. The characters don't move their mouths when they talk. Alec Baldwin does every.single.voice. And yet the unmistakable, almost creepy power it holds over my darling little boy, who becomes a snarling "Choo-choo!" addict with one episode...I shudder for what is to come.

Isaac's new favorite book...

...is the Christmas Toys R Us catalog. It's in our bathroom reading materials basket, and whenever he feels the need to sit down in there, be it on the floor or on the Isaac Potty, he picks it out and flips through it. Trying to send us any hints there, buddy?

U.B. visits the O.B.

I had my 5-month checkup today. Dada came along and he and Isaac played in the hospital lounge whilst I and my practitioner did our thing. I've gained only 3 lbs since I saw her 5 weeks ago, so she told me to step it up a bit. I'm doing my part right now, as I blog, with the Lay's and sour cream and onion dip and a healthy-sized portion of some Entemann's coffee cake. Whereas at my last appointment U.B.'s house was measuring very much on the small side of average, this time the bump has swelled to perfectly normal and unworrisome proportions. After U.B. wrestled around in there as soon as she put the doppler up to my belly, U.B.'s heart rate was finally clocked at 160 bpm. My blood pressure was normal, even a bit low, at 100/50, and I got a flu shot right there in the exam room. In two weeks I go back to ingest some Orange Super-Fanta for my glucose tolerance test.

The only question I had for her was that I wanted to hear the official results of my ultrasound and triple screen. Triple screen first: U.B. has a 1 in 10,000 chance of having spina bifida (as compared a national average of occurence at 1 in 1500 or 2000 live births), and a 1 in 3800 chance of having Down Syndrome (that's 1/3 less than the average for a 25-year-old pregnant lady, which is 1 in 1250). In short, our baby is healthy as a horse. This is seconded by the ultrasound, where my patient and delightful practitioner read off every line of the radiologist's report: "Brain is normal, kidneys normal, appendages normal, heart normal, head down, cord normal..." The radiologist detected "no fetal or uterine abnormalities," which is of course just super. She then asked if they told me the gender at the ultrasound. I said the technician told me it was a boy. Super-Practitioner-Lady then said, "Yep, and they are so sure that it's a boy that they even wrote it here in the radiologist's report, which they normally don't do." So that was kinda cool. And measurements of U.B. taken during the ultrasound confirmed, to the day, my due date as predicted by the last appearance of Aunt Flo. So in or around February 21 I shall bring forth a little brother for my Isaac.

How to get your toddler to sleep in his toddler bed

Clayton's mom was wondering how we get Isaac to actually stay in his bed long enough to sleep. I started responding to her comment when I realized I was writing a book that might be of interest to others in the same book, so here is our story right now, a little less than one week into it.

To get him to go to sleep is a bit of a chore right now. We start with our pre-bedtime book reading in bed. We used to do this in his rocking chair, but I think reading in bed helps get him used to the idea that it's time to be there. When we're done, I turn the lights off, but his nightlight on, and help him lay down and tuck him in, with his stuffed doggie and kitty on either side. As soon as the lights go off, he usually starts yawning to indicate to me that yes, he really is tired and ready for bed. Then he lays there fidgeting with his animal buddies while I say his prayers very quietly, maybe with some tummy-rubbing. If he's not out by then, I sing a very quiet song or even just sit there next to his bed until he starts to close his eyes.

So far, we haven't tried leaving him in the room to fall asleep on his own, because it hasn't yet worked. I've read from other mommy blogs that this is probably something one works up to, getting them used to the idea that yes, it is bedtime, and no, though you are capable of getting up it isn't time to do so. However, there have been two nights where I wanted him to go to bed and he was clearly not ready (read: not yawning), in which case I really couldn't keep him there and he went back out with Dada and watched TV until he was more tired. And this morning he woke up at 5 and ran in the living room and poked Dada (asleep on the couch) in the eye until he woke up, too -- our solution to that was to pull him in bed with me so we could fall asleep together, mainly because I was too unconscious to deal with him running out of his bed again.

For the most part, though, I am completely amazed at isaac's instantaneous understanding that his bed was where he was supposed to sleep, and at his cooperation in staying in bed when he really is tired. He is no dummy -- he knows that a bed without walls is where Mommy and Daddy sleep, and he thinks it is so rad that he gets to sleep in a bed like that, too. I'm sure there will be completely awful times of struggling to get him to stay in bed, or putting him back there when he comes into our bedroom and starts breathing his baby-stink-breath in my face, and that will suck really hard. But it has to happen eventually, right? And I know I can say it has made the most enormous difference in the sleeping habits of my sleep deviant, so I am willing to take some lumps with my juicy sleep pudding.

After 19 months

Yesterday my big boy turned 19 months. Our last month has been busy but fantastic, with lots of luscious and helpful grandparent visitors. Let's see what I can remember about new Isaac achievements.

Every day brings new words, which are now being combined into phrases. Two of his favorite games with words are:
1) Introducing Dada and myself. This game is especially popular when in the car and we are both right there in front of him. "Dada," he says, pointing at Dada, "that's Mama," then pointing at me. You know, because we're strangers in the night.
2) Correcting himself. I do not intend to be one of those moms that sits by idly while my child calls a streetlight a moon, but instead find ways to gently correct him and also introduce new and exciting words, like streetlight!, into his new vocabulary. Apparently I do this so much that, now that he does know the right names to lots of things, he has whole conversations with himself where he does the correcting for me. "Is that the moon?" he says. "No, that's not the moon," he replies.

He has become quite an accomplished baby-jogger, such that I hesitate to let him loose anywhere near a street because he will take off, speeding away using his revved-up waddle. Because of this, we spend a lot of time walking around the dorms near our house. This in turn has led my Junior Ladies' Man to completely perfect his game with the coeds. Oh, to watch him work is so shameful. Whenever we are walking along and he and I come upon one or more attractive ladies walking towards us, he will alter his course such that he blatantly veers towards their oncoming legs and they are forced to either seriously change their trajectory to walk around him, or to stop momentarily and take him in. You can probably guess what happens every time, especially since he immediately starts in on his line: "Now that I have your attention, ladies," he says, "could I interest you in coming to look at the moon with me?" The most ridiculous part is that his shtick rarely emerges for dudes, or for ladies that Dada tells me are "not hotties." Luckily for Isaac, the campus appears to be a cornucopia of hotties who think he is "so CUTE!" One day the three of us were walking to Starbucks together and Isaac accosted two ladies. I dragged him back on course, but Dada was lingering behind and overheard the ladies' conversations as they walked away:

Hottie Co-ed 1: I love it when he walks around here. I see him all the time, and he's always so excited to see us!
Hottie Co-ed 2: ...or dogs!

This behavior pretty much encapsulates Isaac's emerging personality. My kid is the life of the party. Today he and I went to our first "toddler" storytime at the library, having been shackled into boring baby storytime for the last 2 months. The teacher starts out by singing a little song. All of the other toddlers are huddled into the safety of their mommies' laps. Where was my kid? He ran to the front of the room to a wide-open spot where everybody can see him, stopped, and then shook his butt like it's going out of style. When the teacher read a book, the same thing happened -- everybody else, sitting quietly and timidly or politely, but my kid planted his face right up in the book, probably obscuring someone's view, and asked "What's that? What's that? What's that?" until the teacher told him it's a giraffe. I love it and think he's hilarious, but I worry sometimes that I am letting him become "that kid," the one who can't sit down and be quiet when he's supposed to. But really, who ever got anywhere by sitting down and shutting up?

The biggest development in the last month has definitely been the toddler bed, which has revolutionized Isaac's life in many ways. Taking the behemoth crib out of his tiny-closet-of-a-room opened up so much space that now we actually have room to hang out there as a family. At several points throughout the day, Isaac takes one of us by the hand, says "room?" and literally drags us in his room to watch him play with his toys or bounce on his bed. He wants to crawl up in his bed and sit, or read, or even better, play peek-a-boo with his sheets. He climbs in his bed at odd hours of the day, lays down on his tummy, and says "I go sleep. Night-night!" Of course we are not so lucky when it actually IS time for night-night, and he requires quite a bit of coaxing and tummy-rubbing or bedside-sitting to get him to stay in bed when it's time and not go leaping away. But when he does relax and go to sleep, he SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT. 4 out of the last 5 nights, people. AND he is teething. Probably the best part, though, is what happens when he wakes up. Most mornings, there is no more crankiness. Instead of very loud get-me-the-h-out-of-bed crying, instead of the wake-up anger we thought he had inherited from his mama, you hear this from our bedroom at 6:30 in the morning:

...rustle rustle rustle...sliiiiiide...THUMP. Thump thump thump thump thump (out his bedroom door) thump thump thump thump thump thump thump (into the living room) thump thump. "WIGGLES!" (screaming excitedly at the blank TV)

There is no sleeping through this act by Mr. Herd of Elephants, trust me, but it is all right because we have already done so much sleeping we almost don't know what to do with ourselves. BRING IT!

Real toddler sheets for a real toddler

Dada was embarrassed that I posted the picture of Isaac in his new bed with his old crib sheet still on his mattress -- the horror! -- when we bought Isaac a new big-boy Tonka truck sheet set to enhance the appeal of the new big-boy bed. As if it needed any help. Here is Isaac dancing on his new truck sheets:


They alone are a constant source of entertainment. "What's that?" "That's a fire truck." "ee-oo-ee-oo! Fruck!"

Oh, and have I mentioned that he is getting a little lazy with the verbage? All the new words only make sense to the most practiced Isaac-linguist. "Mee-mah"? That's Isaac for "banana." "Airplane" is pronounced "amy". Did you know that "pumpkin" should actually be pronounced "monkey"? Well, look it up in your English -> Isaac dictionary, and there it is. But perhaps the worst part is the deterioration of old words. The worst is "truck", which was so clearly "TRuck" for so long, and has now become "fffffr"... well, something almost unpronounceable in polite company. And now with the fruck sheets, he totally has fruck on the brain.

If not king, then prince of the mountain

U.B. grows -- 24 w 4 d

It's been almost 5 weeks since I last took a belly picture. We don't have any full-length mirrors in the house, so really this my opportunity, as well as yours, to see what a gigantic cow I am U.B. is. When Mamaw and Dadaw were here, Mamaw kept jokingly telling everybody at home that I was "big and fat". "I'm not big and fat," I thought to myself. Oh boy, what a shocker this one was:



And to fully appreciate my new basketball, here's the larger context:



Apologies for the bra straps. Note to self: quit wearing non-maternity tops in public.

Gratuitous fall photoblogging

The past two days we have been exceptionally blessed by the weather gods, who, I think, pity us and our sleep situation. Isaac and I took this as an excuse to be "Outside! Outside!" as much as possible. This was super-fun for picture-taking because, unlike Seattle, where we have the two options of green+green+green (summer) or dead-and-brown + green (all other seasons), here in beautiful Delaware we have an almost bawdy display of color literally in our own backyard. Dada can't wait for Isaac to get a little older so they can collect pretty fall leaves together for a scrapbook. For now, Isaac is more concerned with taking foliage and throwing it on the ground. Or in a creek.

Our main adventure yesterday was a monster campus walk. We happened upon a little cranny of a walkway that houses a pair of bronze goats named Chloe and Lucinda, sculpted in memoriam of some fancy-pants university donor. Isaac insists that they are "Doggie!"s and also insists that I pet them as he does:



Here is Isaac destroying some landscaping outside the student center. He was obsessed with trying to pick these purpley-blue flowers, and I was obsessed with getting my "baby in the wild" style picture, replete with fall foliage in the background. Tell me, do you prefer the innocence of the Back-to-the-Camera pose...


...or the Watch-Me-Flash-You-My-Sassy-Eyebrow pose?



Today we visited a park very near our house, one we had previously skipped because my initial casing of the joint missed the play equipment, which turned out to be far away from the parking lot. A neat feature of this park was a little sculpture garden with climbable concrete critters like a turtle, or as shown here, a dolphin:



The park also abuts a bike trail that winds through town and, here, features a very scenic set of bridges and creeks...



...perfect for throwing leaves off of, naturally. And with a forecast of only more beautiful weather for the weekend, I think we are in store for more family park explorations in the very near future.

Lightning does NOT strike twice

Compared to the phenomenal success of Wednesday night's sleep, last night was not much fun. Isaac cried for me at 3:30, but I was able to quickly pat him back to sleep and was back in bed myself by 3:45. Unfortunately, we repeated the process at 5:00. Then at 6:00 when he woke I brought him into bed with Dada and I, where he thrashed and snoozed and thrashed and snoozed for an hour (needless to say that Dada and I were NOT snoozing). Sigh.

Nevertheless, I am determined to help reset his sleep clock with this whole nap-reduction strategy. I am sticking it out for at least a week to see if, given time, it will make a big difference. And waking up momentarily at 3:30 is certainly better than hosting a 2-hour-long baby rave at 1 or 2, so that is a start.

How to get your 19-month-old to sleep through the night

Awright, everybody knows that Isaac is pretty much the suckiest nighttime sleeper in the history of babies. Believe it or not, this week has taken the cake. Our young man has awakened in the middle of each night with the intent to PAR-TAY, and stayed awake in that vein for anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. Tuesday night he was even so bold as to shake the wall of his crib and, completely without fussing, holler "OUT! OUT! OUT!" When that didn't get anyone's attention, he stopped for a moment to think, then changed his refrain to "MILKY? MILKY?" (because he knows if he asks for milky that I will think he's hungry and take him out of the crib for a big bottle of warm milk). When he was done with his "milky", he had the audacity to exclaim "All done!" while handing his empty bottle to me, who was doing her best to hold him and rock him so soothingly. What-EVER.

In related news, we have been wrestling with the notion of getting Isaac a toddler bed since we moved. Clearly we have another tenant lined up for a crib before too long, and we knew he should move on up to a big boy bed eventually. But Isaac is still too shrimpy, or just too dazed in the middle of the night, to escape his crib -- hence the wrestling. Should we stick with him sleeping in his crib, since he's safe there, or should we go ahead and give him the upgrade?

Two days ago I noticed another blogger pondering the same issue. Most commenters agreed that switching the soon-to-be-older-sib to a toddler bed could be put off for a long time, since their newbie baby brothers and sisters are not too particular about where they sleep (in a bassinet, in a cosleeper, in a mommy & daddy bed). It was noted in several instances that the commenters' toddlers would be staying put in their cribs, as "he sleeps so well there", and "why mess with a good thing?"

Oh, did that strike a nerve with this mama. Our "thing" is totally not "good". Does "he sleep so well" in his crib? For three hours at a time, yes. For the whole night? Very, very, VERY rarely. So let's DO mess it all up, shall we?

Completely neglecting our responsibilities as baby-scientists to conduct simple, controlled experiments, Dada and I decided after Tuesday night's debacle that we would do two things at the same time.

1) Cut back on Isaac's daytime nap. While a highly troubled night-sleeper, Isaac is a proficient napper. Most days of the week, he takes these indulgent three-hour naps that are complete heaven for his pregnant mommy. When Dadaw was here to observe Isaac's deviant night-sleeping, he recalled that, when Dada was Isaac's age, the naps had to be done away with altogether in order for Dada to sleep at night. Wanting to preserve a teeny nap for my tired, preggo self, Dada and I decided the magic number for Isaac is between 1.5 and 2 hours. If Isaac was still sleeping after this mark had passed then he would be gently but firmly awakened. I must say that this is simply a horror for me -- as the famous Emerson quote goes, "There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep." Who in their right mind wants to disturb a sleeping angel? And then there is Isaac's extreme hostility towards waking up, which I hate to say he inherited from me. But in the name of Almighty Night Sleep, I have done it for the past two days anyway.

2) Buy Isaac a toddler bed. Dada disassembled the crib and put it in U.B.'s room, and Isaac watched as Dada put the new bed together. It was all mildly entertaining until I put the mattress on the bed, and suddenly a light went off in Isaac's little noggin. You could literally see the realization written all over his face: "This...is...MY...BED!!!! Righteous!" My darling child instantly hopped up (on his old mattress) in his new bed, laid down, and said "Night-night". Then, when I whipped out my camera to take a picture, my camera-shy guy, who has never professed any interest in smiling on cue, wiggles to the side of the bed and screams "CHEESE!" Here he is:



Whether it was #1 or #2 or both, something worked, and Isaac slept from 9:15 to 5:45 last night, a marked improvement over what has happened for the past month solid. Let's hope that I'm not cursing his sleep as I blog, and that our haphazard combo of sleep deprivation and newfound toddler independence works again. And again.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Two weekends ago we went to the orchard to get our locally-grown, family farmed pumpkins for Halloween. We got three -- a daddy-sized pumpkin, a mommy-sized pumpkin, and a pie pumpkin for Isaac. Isaac carts his pumpkin ("monkey!" he says)away from the porch on a regular basis, but though he may try, the daddy and mommy pumpkins are too big for him to lift. They stay put guarding the steps on our front porch.

Of course we meant to carve our pumpkins. We make a big deal every year out of pumpkin-carving, since Dada is a bit of an artiste and I am oddly fond of scooping out pumpkin innards. One year (pre-Isaac) we even hosted a carving party. This year we just didn't get around to it -- I guess it seemed like too much of a hassle to get into while chasing after the Buster.

However, it would appear that at least the daddy pumpkin found a use for someone. This morning as we stepped out the door, I noticed said gourd was no longer on our porch. I yelled back inside at Dada, who slept on the couch last night and admitted that he heard some scuffling in the porch region at some point. Though obviously Dada was a tired puppy, trust me when I say that he got a dressing-down for not fulfilling his man-duties of shooing people away from our STINKING PORCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. As freakish and unsettling as that realization was, the situation was either lightened or perhaps made even more freakish (you decide) by the fact that someone left a crisp 20-dollar-bill behind, weighted down by the mommy pumpkin, in exchange for "stealing" from us. We certainly found use for that $20 today, and it was more than 3 times what we paid for the pumpkin, but still. WHO THE H IS APPROACHING MY PORCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, AND HOW CAN I DISEMBOWEL THEM?!?!???

Music class photo-op

We go to music class all together, Dada, the Isaac-monster, and myself, almost every Saturday, but it is so participation-intense that there is no opportunity to capture the experience on film. Lucky for us, Mamaw and Dadaw went with us this past Saturday and snapped some pictures that very accurately capture the attitude of our VERY active participant. Here he is before class starts, running with a mallet Miss Sandy was so kind as to let him hog:



A goodly portion of class consists of moms and dads sitting in a circle, usually with their toddlers on their laps. Despite the fact that he is clearly the youngest in the class, he is the ONLY kid who will sit in the circle all by himself and participate:



He's also a bit of a cut-up -- here he is "falling down" before his cue on Ring Around the Rosie:



Music class every Saturday is a new source of amazement for Dada and I, who are continually in awe of Isaac's ability to follow along with every single activity Miss Sandy can come up with. Again, he is the only kid in class who is a total joiner, and will clap his hands or stomp his feet or play with his drumsticks whenever Miss Sandy beckons -- all the other kids spend at least part of the class just sitting there like lumps. Oh, not my little showboat. Music class really gives his little outgoing personality a chance to shine through. I know Mamaw and Dadaw were stoked to have seen it, too.